On reverse engineering and the EULA

[simmaster07 1,221]

Hey everyone,

This thread doesn't deal with any technical aspects of modding but mainly serves to discuss one of the commandments of modding here, "Thou shalt not reverse engineer." Reverse engineering SimCity 4 has generally been considered taboo, citing EULA restrictions and taking a conservative stance to minimize legal risk. While I'm not a lawyer (and none of this is legal advice or should be construed as such), it may be worthwhile for us to be more diligent in understanding and asserting our right to reverse engineer.

The exact phrasing in the EULA is as follows:

Quote

Except to the extent permitted under applicable law, you may not decompile, disassemble, or reverse engineer the Software, or any component thereof, by any means whatsoever.

But notice that unlike most other EULAs with anti-RE provisions, SC4's provides for some legal exceptions. At minimum in the U.S., section 1201 of the DMCA could allow reverse engineering and circumventing copy protection in order to achieve "interoperability" or information exchange with some independent program. This would mean that trying to fix issues in SimCity 4 that prevent it from working properly with Windows 10 — an independently created program — would be legal. In the most ideal scenario, it's possible that the fair use doctrine in copyright law would be considered an applicable law, which would give us broad license to reverse engineer the game as long as we follow fair use guidelines.

Likewise, for European citizens there's EU Directive 2009/24, which is very similar to the U.S. DMCA exception and states:

Quote

Nevertheless, circumstances may exist when such a reproduction of the code and translation of its form are indispensable to obtain the necessary information to achieve the interoperability of an independently created program with other programs. It has therefore to be considered that, in these limited circumstances only, performance of the acts of reproduction and translation by or on behalf of a person having a right to use a copy of the program is legitimate and compatible with fair practice and must therefore be deemed not to require the authorisation of the rightholder. An objective of this exception is to make it possible to connect all components of a computer system, including those of different manufacturers, so that they can work together.

I can't say for certain whether this is the case, but I am in contact with the Electronic Frontier Foundation (which published this wonderful FAQ on the legal issues of reverse engineering) to try and talk to one of their attorneys about this EULA clause and what it means for our right to reverse engineer, and I will post back here when I have updates on that.

[SecretMbr_735754 2,158]

58 minutes ago, simmaster07 said:

An objective of this exception is to make it possible to connect all components of a computer system, including those of different manufacturers, so that they can work together.

'AN' Objective?  Are there other allowed objectives?     

[simmaster07 1,221]

10 minutes ago, RandyE said:

'AN' Objective?  Are there other allowed objectives?     

I don't know of any other objectives they necessarily had in mind, but it's worth noting that the quoted text is actually from the "Whereas" section providing background justifying the directive. The full text of the directive can be found here and Article 6 is the legal text:

Quote

1. The authorisation of the rightholder shall not be required where reproduction of the code and translation of its form within the meaning of points (a) and (b) of Article 4(1) are indispensable to obtain the information necessary to achieve the interoperability of an independently created computer program with other programs, provided that the following conditions are met:

(a) those acts are performed by the licensee or by another person having a right to use a copy of a program, or on their behalf by a person authorised to do so;
(b) the information necessary to achieve interoperability has not previously been readily available to the persons referred to in point (a); and
(c) those acts are confined to the parts of the original program which are necessary in order to achieve interoperability.

2. The provisions of paragraph 1 shall not permit the information obtained through its application:

(a) to be used for goals other than to achieve the interoperability of the independently created computer program;
(b) to be given to others, except when necessary for the interoperability of the independently created computer program; or
(c) to be used for the development, production or marketing of a computer program substantially similar in its expression, or for any other act which infringes copyright.

 

[rsc204 21,859]

Based solely on a discussion between EA and the NAM team a long time ago (I am paraphrasing, since I wasn't there at that time), I have to say I think EA will consider any .exe modification a violation of copyright. So far as I am aware, the NAM team had to agree that they would never alter the .exe code in any way, provided we did, EA were happy to allow the NAM mod to pretty much do whatever we liked. I can't see why their stance would have changed over the years. So if anyone were to start, I'd expect a cease and desist to appear from EA's lawyers as soon as it appeared on their radar.

The problem is not whether we are within the law by making such modifications, the problem is how do you as an individual, or "us" as a community fight EA should they choose to focus all their legal might against us? As an individual, the most likely scenario is that very quickly, you'd find yourself in no position to continue the fight. Justice costs money and when you go up against a well-funded army, right or wrong, you will not only fail to win, you simply won't even get that far into the process before you can no longer keep up with legal costs. Similarly, if one of the community sites were to host such works and/or documentation describing the process, that renders them liable as part of any such legal action. Anecdotally, based on the "monthly target funding" of ST, I'd say we're just about keeping the costs of running the site in check right now. Given that, how could we possibly even consider fighting EA? In reality, as soon as the cease and desist appears, you can probably forget any exposure from the main community sites altogether. Any other course of action would threaten the very existence of any sites involved.

5 hours ago, simmaster07 said:

At minimum in the U.S., section 1201 of the DMCA could allow reverse engineering and circumventing copy protection in order to achieve "interoperability" or information exchange with some independent program. This would mean that trying to fix issues in SimCity 4 that prevent it from working properly with Windows 10 — an independently created program — would be legal.

Whilst that may provide a specific exemption for removal of copy protection mechanisms, that certainly doesn't extend beyond making the application work with Windows 10. I.e. further modifications to the base code for other purposes. Given there are work-arounds, including manually digitally signing a driver on Windows 10 (not for the feint of heart), I'd have to conclude that the risks outweigh any benefits. I'd feel differently if suddenly as of Windows 10's release, no one could continue to play SC4. But, since most people got a free version from Origin (which they were freely offering for at least one year), whilst many others have picked up the game for under $5/£5/5€ in a sale, it's not really a big threat to the continual existence of SC4.

So even if a legal team gave you the green light, I still see many barriers in the way here. Although, if you could get explicit permission from EA, that would be a game-changer.

[CorinaMarie 29,857]

3 hours ago, rsc204 said:

Although, if you could get explicit permission from EA, that would be a game-changer.

It does seem to me if the purpose for the reverse engineering is to make game changing .dll files which still required the unmodified 640 or 641 version of the game it would be in EA's best interest to allow it as that could boost sales of the game. Not that they would see it that way. Logic and corporation often times cannot be used legitimately in the same sentence.

[rsc204 21,859]

Bear in mind here, hooking into the .exe through the use of .dll files is probably not covered by EULA. I'm specifically talking about altering the .exe itself, which is a whole different kettle of fish. That's why the ability to make .dll files work with the game was such a break through. Because until now, any sort of .exe modification directly has been out of the question for legal reasons, not just technical ones.

Since .dll files in no way modify the actual code (even if they interact with it), there really is no legal case to argue against them. Unless such a .dll tried to circumvent copy-protection mechanisms, that would be a no-go area.

[Handyman 785]

7 hours ago, rsc204 said:

So even if a legal team gave you the green light, I still see many barriers in the way here. Although, if you could get explicit permission from EA, that would be a game-changer.

While it does seem that the wording might allow it, I would have to agree with rsc204. Money talks!

3 hours ago, CorinaMarie said:

Logic and corporation often times cannot be used legitimately in the same sentence.

So true cori.

[SecretMbr_735754 2,158]

SC4 does seem to have a large and global following, and is still considered highly.  An alternative would be to make an offer to EA to purchase the source code and copyright from EA entirely.   The money maybe could be raised by 'crowd-funding'.  Then programmers can entirely re-build the program, make all the fixes, mods and expansions they want and then keep it as open source --even having multiple .exe builds to choose from depending on the users interest.

[CorinaMarie 29,857]

4 minutes ago, RandyE said:

An alternative would be to make an offer to EA to purchase the source code and copyright from EA entirely. 

Seems like a great idea, but I fear the price would be exorbitant if they could even find the source code.

[simmaster07 1,221]

11 hours ago, rsc204 said:

Based solely on a discussion between EA and the NAM team a long time ago (I am paraphrasing, since I wasn't there at that time), I have to say I think EA will consider any .exe modification a violation of copyright.

It seems like this would be more in the interest of avoiding circumventing the DRM and redistributing .exes that had it removed, since that'd be the only way to distribute modifications made directly to the .exe.

12 hours ago, rsc204 said:

The problem is not whether we are within the law by making such modifications, the problem is how do you as an individual, or "us" as a community fight EA should they choose to focus all their legal might against us? As an individual, the most likely scenario is that very quickly, you'd find yourself in no position to continue the fight. Justice costs money and when you go up against a well-funded army, right or wrong, you will not only fail to win, you simply won't even get that far into the process before you can no longer keep up with legal costs.

Finding pro bono representation through my local bar association or the EFF and similar organizations would be the way to go in that scenario. Failing that, yeah, I suppose we would have to just surrender to EA's legal team. ᖍ(ツ)ᖌ

12 hours ago, rsc204 said:

Similarly, if one of the community sites were to host such works and/or documentation describing the process, that renders them liable as part of any such legal action.

Not really; for Simtropolis, at least, DMCA safe harbor provisions would absolve them of legal liability for user-generated content if they didn't know it was infringing, and it'd just get taken down quietly. Either way I wouldn't have planned to document anything of the sort here anyway.

12 hours ago, rsc204 said:

if you could get explicit permission from EA, that would be a game-changer.

It would be, though that's far beyond the realm of possibility as far as I can tell. I can't find any legal contacts for EA, and even if I could there'd be a lengthy formal code release process to go through according to Paul Pedriana, and that's still assuming that they agree to allow reverse engineering. There's also the possibility that they decide to impose restrictions like non-disclosure agreements that defeat the purpose of doing so, which isn't helpful if the EULA is already permissive enough for a fair use defense.

7 hours ago, rsc204 said:

Bear in mind here, hooking into the .exe through the use of .dll files is probably not covered by EULA. I'm specifically talking about altering the .exe itself, which is a whole different kettle of fish. That's why the ability to make .dll files work with the game was such a break through.

However, there's a limited amount of progress you can make in developing a framework for DLL mods before you have to disassemble parts of the program, which the EULA may or may not permit. Debugging for mods like SC4Fix falls under the same umbrella, hence why there hasn't really been much progress on either of those projects for months.

4 hours ago, RandyE said:

SC4 does seem to have a large and global following, and is still considered highly.  An alternative would be to make an offer to EA to purchase the source code and copyright from EA entirely.

This would require them to basically forfeit any future profits and would involve an even more convoluted legal process, so I don't see this happening either.

[MeMyself&I 379]

5 hours ago, RandyE said:

SC4 does seem to have a large and global following, and is still considered highly.  An alternative would be to make an offer to EA to purchase the source code and copyright from EA entirely.   The money maybe could be raised by 'crowd-funding'.  Then programmers can entirely re-build the program, make all the fixes, mods and expansions they want and then keep it as open source --even having multiple .exe builds to choose from depending on the users interest.

Definitely a great idea, however . . .

5 hours ago, CorinaMarie said:

Seems like a great idea, but I fear the price would be exorbitant if they could even find the source code.

Agreed.  Logically speaking; if SC4 still sells to this day at GOG and Steam both for 19.99 regularly then it's safe to say the price to sell out the code would have to easily be in the millions of $$$ - or more, most likely.  It would be really hard to gather even close to that amount especially considering that ST has to practically beg for money every month just to cover bandwidth for the site.  Even if the selling price were an even 1 million (for an example) divided by say 5,000 investors the price would still be $200 apiece, and that's simply a random and very generous example.  Some of us would pay it but not enough of us.  If I were a multi-billionaire I would buy it all just to make the dream a reality without needing a monetary residual from my investment but where are the billionaire SC4 addicts who feel that way too?  I would think that only another company with an interest in developing the game further for their own profits would have any interest in paying the ransom and that's probably not going to happen.  It just doesn't make good business sense in today's video game market, especially when it doesn't run all that great on new rigs, as a general rule, and people would need to either downgrade their machines a bit or the investors would have to invest further to make it work with both older AND newer machines, if that's even possible.  It is, in fact, all about the money on every side and from every angle - except for ours - the players and modders who simply love the game and want to see the underlying, hidden genius brought out to it's fullest extent.  There is no charity nor bleeding hearts in the world of big business and, therefore, any selling price would indeed be exorbitant.

Any kind of progress made in this, even one small step forward to finding something new without legalities and liabilities, would be terrific and should be explored further IMO.

[rsc204 21,859]

49 minutes ago, MeMyself&I said:

Logically speaking; if SC4 still sells to this day at GOG and Steam both for 19.99 regularly then it's safe to say the price to sell out the code would have to easily be in the millions of $$$ - or more, most likely

So far as I can tell, sales are fairly lackluster in the grand scheme of things. But they are sufficient to contribute to EA's bottom line, especially considering this is a product they stopped developing a long time ago. It's sales that tend to create a sudden sales boost, most people are paying less than $5 would be my theory. That said, many small sums still add up. I don't think EA would sell you the code, it's not as simple as putting a price on it. It contains proprietary IP of EA, stuff they may feel is not something they want others poking around. Even if a price could be agreed, I can't imagine it would be less than 7 figures.

49 minutes ago, MeMyself&I said:

If I were a multi-billionaire I would buy it all just to make the dream a reality without needing a monetary residual from my investment but where are the billionaire SC4 addicts who feel that way too?

I don't think most people get to be a billionaire by playing videogames. But that would be a poor investment IMO, there is no money to be made, if you did this, it would be to open source the code surely, i.e. for the love of the game, it'd be more of a donation. However, if you were willing to splash that kind of cash to buy SC4s code, you'd be much better off spending it on a team of developers to make a new game instead. You'd end up with something vastly more useful, which may actually stand a chance of selling and making some of your investment back.

49 minutes ago, MeMyself&I said:

especially when it doesn't run all that great on new rigs, as a general rule, and people would need to either downgrade their machines a bit or the investors would have to invest further to make it work with both older AND newer machines, if that's even possible.

I hear this argument all the time. It's simply not true, SC4 runs just fine on new machines, in fact, since processors are so much more powerful, it runs better in most cases than it ever has. Enabling larger cities and higher populations, along with higher-quality content than at any other time in the games history. The only thing preventing SC4 from running well is your graphics card, specifically it's drivers and their compatibility with DirectX 9. Even in cases where those drivers looked like they'd never work (example Intel's On-Board HD-Graphics/Iris Pro series), they have ultimately been updated to work. Since Intel on-board solutions are default on every Intel PC today, I'd argue compatibility is better than ever.

Both ATI and NVidia are really big on backwards compatibility too. They know what gamers expect, to be able to play old games too and make sometimes herculean efforts to continue supporting old games. Case in point, the latest NVidia drivers work just fine with SC4. ATI have recently refreshed their drivers too, which seems to have resolved compatibility issues. Although in almost all cases, simply finding a driver that works and sticking with it is sufficient. Sure, if you are stuck using Software Rendering, the game experience sucks a little, but that should work on any system regardless, it's a last resort if all else fails, but it is a sure fire way to run the game. That said, on a fairly mid-range NVidia GTX 750ti (currently $100 give or take), SC4 utilises something like 400MB of the video ram and when scrolling at most 40% of the GPU's power. When not scrolling, that falls to less than 10%. You really don't need any high-end or fancy GPU for SC4, it's all about the CPU.

The only users who should have problems are laptop users. Let's face it, just because you might want to play SC4 on a laptop, doesn't mean that laptops are really suitable for playing games. Ask any gamer, they'll all tell you a laptop is really not the way to go. Older on-board cards are pretty crap, but even then most actually will still play SC4. For normal PCs, the option is there to put a cheap second hand card in the machine, specifically for playing SC4, which isn't really possible on a laptop.

Love SC4? Buy a second hand Core2Duo machine, one of the high end ones, 3Ghz or higher dual core is best, although a more modern CPU is even better if you can afford it. Make sure it's got 4GB RAM and doesn't have only an on-board graphics card. That'll set you back $100 tops, if you buy a decent brand, you can get a slimline form factor and superb reliability too (I'm talking about IBM/Lenovo ThinkCentre systems specifically). The market is flooded with these ex-business machines, finding one is very easy. Have a little more money to spend, get a Mac Mini, I've a 2011 model, it runs XP and is tiny, quiet and energy efficient. It doesn't play SC4 as smooth as my i7 rig, but sits under my monitor and doesn't ever get in the way either.

2 hours ago, simmaster07 said:

However, there's a limited amount of progress you can make in developing a framework for DLL mods before you have to disassemble parts of the program, which the EULA may or may not permit. Debugging for mods like SC4Fix falls under the same umbrella, hence why there hasn't really been much progress on either of those projects for months.

I totally understand, being able to modify the games code would unlock so much more potential. But as I've said, EA have been very insistent on this point, not because we brought it up, they did, worried that we might try. I just don't see that attitude changing.

2 hours ago, simmaster07 said:

Finding pro bono representation through my local bar association or the EFF and similar organizations would be the way to go in that scenario.

Assuming they would support us in this fight, sure that would be a solution to the issue. But, that's far from a foregone conclusion, not that it should prevent anyone from trying.

[simmaster07 1,221]

24 minutes ago, rsc204 said:

I totally understand, being able to modify the games code would unlock so much more potential. But as I've said, EA have been very insistent on this point, not because we brought it up, they did, worried that we might try. I just don't see that attitude changing.

It's not even so much as modifying existing game code. If we take a strict interpretation of the EULA's RE clause, it also prohibits debugging and disassembling, both of which are extremely valuable in order to make DLLs like city hall upgrading and extra cheats.

24 minutes ago, rsc204 said:

Assuming they would support us in this fight, sure that would be a solution to the issue. But, that's far from a foregone conclusion, not that it should prevent anyone from trying.

I could try and bring this up with an EFF attorney if they call next week. They do have a history of supporting such cases though, namely Blizzard v. Bnetd (which failed in part because the EULA was more restrictive and expressly forbade all reverse engineering under all circumstances).

[Cyclone Boom 17,031]

The vagueness in legal agreements is often subject to interpretation. This really depends on the exact terms of the laws which apply to SimCity 4's EULA. In Clause 13 "Governing Law", it states that English Law applies if you reside in the EU, and California State Law for anywhere else. It then specifies that 'other' national and international laws may apply, depending on the conduct. The phrase "applicable law" is used 8 times in total. All very ambiguous, and as expected, there is no clarification how the various laws may apply. Also since they're posted by Steam, are we sure these aren't just generic terms? For example, the EULA for Spore is worded very similar, and contains identical phrases.

Something else worth considering is whether any new EA license would supersede and invalidate the original agreement for SC4, which isn't listed along with other legacy games. On EA's website here, these are the general Terms which seem to apply to all their products. This also twice states:

Quote

unless expressly authorized by EA or permitted by law

Regardless, there is uncertainty, even if consulting a qualified attorney (not to mention the costs). They will never provide assurance, and can merely give advice based on their knowledge of statutory and common law. So therefore, as a community, we would still be treading on very thin ice here. It wouldn't be wise to make assumptions on what may or may not be permitted. With any doubt on the legalities, and unless EA explicitly gave the all clear, it'd be on a road to nowhere. I know this isn't the idea here. But speaking from the perspective of a site admin, we absolutely don't have the resources to support or endorse a legal process. Any threat of a lawsuit from EA would endanger the very existence of ST and related sites.

The probability of EA giving permission to reverse engineer their software is extremely unlikely. Amongst many other reasons, they could argue since the game was developed for older 32-bit systems (XP and earlier), any issues like SafeDisk are a by-product of technology advancement. Also, who exactly would they grant permission to? One person, a group of people, or anyone worldwide? Even though legitimate intent would not aim to infringe copyright or make a profit, it could open the door for abuse.

Really, it's true that assurance would only result from the source code being released. But as it stands, even though to a lesser extent, the game is surely still profitable. Consequently from a business perspective, what is their financial incentive? A 14 year old game is probably the last thing on their agenda right now.

All this said, even amongst the many barriers, it never hurts to ask. With such doubt, communication is the prudent way forward. In the rare event of an agreement being reached (or EA providing the source), it would certainly be an unprecedented outcome for the SC4 community.

[CorinaMarie 29,857]

10 minutes ago, Cyclone Boom said:

All this said, even amongst the many barriers, it never hurts to ask.

Allow me to throw some cold water on that. By asking it makes them aware someone somewhere might already be doing it and now having their attention drawn to it they might issue the cease and desist thinger. For an encounter which has a 99.9731% chance of being contrary to what we want, I'd say keep a low profile.

Spoiler

*Cori runs and hides now*

 

[rsc204 21,859]

10 minutes ago, CorinaMarie said:

Allow me to throw some cold water on that. By asking it makes them aware someone somewhere might already be doing it and now having their attention drawn to it they might issue the cease and desist thinger. For an encounter which has a 99.9731% chance of being contrary to what we want, I'd say keep a low profile.

You make a good point. I'm guessing EA aren't really paying much attention to ST or the general goings on of the SC4 community. In all likelihood we probably couldn't be further off their radar. However, if that were to change, who knows what they would or wouldn't do, sometimes it's best to keep a low profile.

[simmaster07 1,221]

31 minutes ago, Cyclone Boom said:

since they're posted by Steam, are we sure these aren't just generic terms? For example, the EULA for Spore is worded very similar, and contains identical phrases.

From EA's legal page, the closest EULA available is SimCity Societies, which has pretty much the same boilerplate. Either way, if the EULA given to me by Steam is the one I'm agreeing to in order to use the software, I'd be bound by its terms anyway.

[Cyclone Boom 17,031]

29 minutes ago, CorinaMarie said:

By asking it makes them aware someone somewhere might already be doing it and now having their attention drawn to it they might issue the cease and desist thinger.

For sure, if they're aware of someone already, it would virtually prevent them ever granting others permission. Usually in law, what applies to one, applies to all...

At some point, even if legal advice was gained, communication with EA would surely be a necessary step. Yes, it may be thinking a little too far ahead as a starting point. But unless there is certainty (which there doesn't appear to be), action couldn't be taken without their explicit approval. Of course, if they said 'no', that's the end of discussions.

[simmaster07 1,221]

14 minutes ago, Cyclone Boom said:

For sure, if they're aware of someone already, it would virtually prevent them ever granting others permission. Usually in law, what applies to one, applies to all...

At some point, even if legal advice was gained, communication with EA would surely be a necessary step. Yes, it may be thinking a little too far ahead as a starting point. But unless there is certainty (which there doesn't appear to be), action couldn't be taken without their explicit approval. Of course, if they said 'no', that's the end of discussions.

The problem is that EA doesn't have any public contact information for their legal departments, which we'd need to request legal permission for reverse engineering. This means we'd have to pay for and hire a lawyer anyway to submit such a request.

[Handyman 785]

1 hour ago, Cyclone Boom said:

The vagueness in legal agreements is often subject to interpretation.

I've seen a lot of valid ideas and ensuing discussion here, and while I agree with the sentiment, I think the statement by Cyclone Boom is probably the most pertinent. Regardless of the way we read the language, the final say will depend on a third parties interpretation.

[SecretMbr_735754 2,158]

Does EA own the rights to rebuild SC4?   EA is the publisher, but who ultimately owns the code?   Is it possible for the game to be revised and expanded?     Can we get a Simcity 4 version 2?

[rsc204 21,859]

18 minutes ago, RandyE said:

Does EA own the rights to rebuild SC4?

Why wouldn't they? They bought Maxis and all their IP. I can't imagine who else would own it.

45 minutes ago, simmaster07 said:

The problem is that EA doesn't have any public contact information for their legal departments, which we'd need to request legal permission for reverse engineering. This means we'd have to pay for and hire a lawyer anyway to submit such a request.

I think a letter would suffice (or perhaps e-mail, I'm a little backwards). I don't understand why a lawyer would be needed to write such a request? I think the problem is, like so many big corporations, there is a good chance they just ignore you, rather than provide a response.

[matias93 7,535]

Just by the way, Isn't there more than a few lawyers on the community?

[CorinaMarie 29,857]

10 minutes ago, matias93 said:

Just by the way, Isn't there more than a few lawyers on the community?

I don't know about in our community, but in a different game I played there was the law firm of Dewey, Cheatem & Howe.

[rsc204 21,859]

2 hours ago, CorinaMarie said:

Dewey, Cheatem & Howe.

Maybe we should find a fake SC4 company name, one from an actual BAT. Then make an official looking letter and send it to EA's legal department? If nothing else, it would be funny (perhaps). .

[jeffryfisher 2,176]

Nevertheless, circumstances may exist when such a reproduction of the code and translation of its form are indispensable to obtain the necessary information to achieve the interoperability of an independently created program with other programs.

Well then, it seems clear to me that we just need to code some independent programs that need some inter-operability.