Hypothetical question

[cayman shen]

I was curious about the ethics of reverse engineering. Is it in the same class as recasting?

I'm going to say that if you reverse engineer and sell someone's individual work or unique creation, it's unethical.

But what if I bought a balance pipe replica and reverse engineered it? Theoretically your pipe, my pipe, and the original are all identical. I just couldn't get an original so I used yours.

It feels wrong, but has this kind of thing ever come up?

And no, I'm not trying to reverse engineer anybody's work. I can't even use calipers right. Just wondering.

 

[BlindSquirrel]

Aren't all replicas reverse engineering (to varying degrees)?

 

[midnightfett]

How do you think we (the U.S.) built the X-1,
the first plane to break the sound barrier?

By reverse engineering the crashed Roswell spaceship.

Reverse engineering helps humanity....

 

[Too Much Garlic]

Done with the intention of selling: yes.

Most items can be manufactured in some way, so no need to take some other private individual's work, redo it a little and then offer castings for sale.

 

[franz bolo]

<div class='quotetop'>(cayman shen @ Sep 7 2006, 10:24 PM) [snapback]1315362[/snapback]</div>

I was curious about the ethics of reverse engineering. Is it in the same class as recasting?

I'm going to say that if you reverse engineer and sell someone's individual work or unique creation, it's unethical.

But what if I bought a balance pipe replica and reverse engineered it? Theoretically your pipe, my pipe, and the original are all identical. I just couldn't get an original so I used yours.

It feels wrong, but has this kind of thing ever come up?

And no, I'm not trying to reverse engineer anybody's work. I can't even use calipers right. Just wondering.
[/b]

Take the booster replica Serafino will make. He didn't just copy a booster he had. He researched the fin radius the fin thickness and many other details that were unique to the original prop booster.

To copy his would be taking his hard work and his unique creation since it wasn't based on just any old booster.

Plus all replicas aren't created equall. There might be a bunch of people to make balance pipes, but they will all be different even though they all might have used a real one for reference.

FB

 

[James Kenobi 1138]

Reverse Engineering is perfectly legal, if done correctly. It's how many computer companies copied the IBM computer chip in the late '70'5 and '80's.

First, you give the product to a team who reverse engineers the piece and details everything about it.

Next, you take that research material and give it to a seperate group of engineers who who nothing about the original item or original team and say, "Go build this".

If 'you' reverse engineer something, and then 'you' take the data and build a copy, it's usually considered wrong.

I disagree that reverse engineering Serafino's booster would be unethical, just wrong if done here in our comunity. The original booster did not just spring out of the thin air, is was designed, engineered, tested, retested, built, and produced- not an easy feat. To say that Serafino spent countless hours researching the original booster and studing it to produce his replica somehow discounts all the time, money, and energy of the original booster development team would be the pot calling the kettle black.

He can reverse engineer the original but you can't reverse engineer his because he spent hours developing it himself? Slap in the face of the original design team. They put in their sweat and time, so did Serafino, and so would you if you reverse engineered his correctly. I'm not saying anyone on the RPF should attemt to reverse engineer anything that the RPF has produced, because we honor the code of honor among theives, but I don't agree thats is unethical.

Recasting, that's unethical.

 

[SethB6025]

I just had a conversation with someone about this, interesting "plate of shrimp" effect. Huh? Nevermind.
In business this is done all the time, as prop replicators, we do it all the time (with originals). When you do it to someones replica, it certainly feels a little crummy, but I would not view it as wrong. Certainly not in the same arena as recasting, not by a long shot. With that said, I probably wouldn't do it without asking the creator. However, when you make something and set it loose you cannot control how it is used. So if something exists in the 3-dimensional world, it is fair game to be used as reference. Considering we do this sort of thing with real props or found objects, I would have a hard time arguing against doing it with a derivitive work of aformentioned objects.

 

[Serafino]

It is best to just restrict the question to: what is okay within the community, as JK suggests. The minute we bring in broader moral questions much of the validity of the hobby itself becomes, shall we say, arguable.

Within our community there is a widespread preference for respect to be given to those who have invested their time and effort in order to recreate something which was not previously available. Recasting is so clear cut that there are outright policies against it at the RPF.

'Reverse engineering' is a bit of misnomer, because the term usually applies to extremely difficult process of discovering how something works and learning how to recreate its functionality.

With regard to props, the only real issue is appearance, and this is a pretty simple matter of taking measurements. Not really much different from making a mold, and so really not much different from recasting. For this reason people who do not wish to be too blatantly unethical will sometimes make an arrangement with the person whose work they copy--for instance Roman got permission from Gav to reproduce his emitter design a generation back.

This is a matter of respecting people for the work they have done within and for the hobby community, because that work was created within the community and in a sense for the community. Work done for films, or the military, or what have you, is treated differently within the community, rightly or wrongly, because it already exists and was created for a purpose already realized and paid for.

It's a shaky reason for saying there's a difference, I admit, but I think it is a good description of the general feeling within the community on the issue.

 

[Too Much Garlic]

Serafino... that made good sense to me. .)

Well, if permission is asked for and given to have an item reverse engineered into something else, then there should not be a problem. Just get the permission in writing, in case memory fails in the future, as has been seen before.

 

[TheSt.LouisKid]

I bought a Ferengi phaser about 12 years ago. It wasn't symmetrical. I scratch built my own and made it better. No casting was made from the one I bought. I see no problem there.


Say I bought a prop that a fellow RPF'r sculpted and stripped the paint off, made some adjustments on the prop, poured rubber over it and sold copies. That would make me a scumbag.

But then thats just my opinion.