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DoctorOetkertoday at 1:57 PM1 replyview on HN

lets try proof by exhaustion:

in those jurisdictions where either price discrimination or locking hardware are not illegal, it is typically perfectly legal to reverse engineer for compatibility purposes. So nothing prevents such resellers from upping their game and learning a thing or two about link training and general SDRAM bringup.

Once they have acquired the knowledge legally in such jurisdictions the product just flows in the other jurisdictions anyway.

Courts upheld the monopolistic position of microsoft etc. for decades, but respect has no finality, "re" + "spect" to review, so later such companies were fined for their decades long transgressions.

But during those decades it may appear legal to the average consumer.

Inaction is not permission.


Replies

Grombobuloustoday at 2:06 PM

All of this is pretty irrelevant from a legal perspective.

Reverse engineering is legal, but manufacturers don’t have to help you figure out how to reverse engineer their products and they’re allowed to design their products in a way that makes it difficult.

There’s generally not a lot of jurisdictions out there that make stuff like hardware lockdowns of this nature illegal, especially for companies that are not in regulated industries or are not monopoly/oligopoly players.

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