Re: hacker copyrights was [RE: telnetd exploit code]

[Stan Horwitz <stan () temple edu>]

On Wed, 25 Jul 2001, Eric D. Williams wrote:

> Re: the lack of legal backing here are a number of links that appear relevant
> to the question (do you violate copyright by publishing hacker code, discovered
> subsequent to intrusion?).  Indeed it appears that the law is fuzzy on this one
> concerning copyright and intellectual property.  But,  given the circumstance
> that a listing or binary of the aformentioned code can not be deterined as
> authorized in the first case - the intrusion itself is illegal, it appears it
> can not pass the copyright or intellectual property tests.

So exactly how many virus authors would be foolish enough to try to assert
a copyright on one of their virus programs? Doing so would mean that the
copyright holder also accept responsibility (typically criminal) for the
virus, would it not?