Digital Convergence, makers of the free barcode scanner available at Radio Shack, is issuing cease and desist letters to people who have reverse engineered the output of the device and write their own software. DC claims infringement of "intellectual property rights owned by Digital Convergence."

What intellectual property?

Before the Digital Milleneum Copyright Act, reverse engineering was legal. Reverse engineering involves no contact with intellectual property, consisting only of observing the behavior of a physical product, which we are supposed to own when we buy it. I suppose DC could have put a "license" card underneath the plastic bag, using "contract" law to subvert actual law-- but they didn't even do that. (Even then, I believe they could only "license" the software, which nobody has to use anyway thanks to the simplicity of the device. --Is this correct?)

After the DMCA, reverse engineering is illegal except when done for "interoperability." A Slashdot reader rightly points out that in the case of the CueCat, virtually all software that comes as a result of reverse engineering is for interoperability with a piece of hardware (the scanner). This, of course, does not excuse that part of the DMCA, but makes a point about the flaw in DC's claim.

Obviously, DC is worried that other companies can exploit the proliferation of the devices with their own software, undercutting DC's business model of becoming a bar code scanner portal. But DC wanted to do this very very cheaply, and so made a simple plastic device with virtually no encryption instead of a real device with proprietary drivers.

Not that encryption is the solution, of course. What makes DeCSS (you've heard me talk about DeCSS before) so interesting, but sometimes difficult to understand, is that it involves many layers of many issues, including both using and forgoing traditional concepts of property. The DC case, if it ever becomes a case, boils DeCSS down to its chewy reverse engineering center.

Incidentally, you probably wouldn't be using an inexpensive PC if it weren't for reverse engineering. But you already know that story.