Dead Games: Recent CJEU ruling state that an EULA cannot prevent a lawful end user from decompiling the software to get it working

[xrogaan]

As a preamble: I would have posted this in the serious section, but since I'm an entrenched lurker I do not possess the required amount of posts to be allowed there. If a moderator believes that this topic would be better in another section of the forum, then please feel free to move it with your moderation power.

 

The CJEU (is the Court of Justice of the European Union) had to make a preliminary ruling in a case opposing the Belgian State to Top System SA. The Belgian State (here simplified to the State) wants to decompile a software developed by Top System SA to have to working on their system. This went all around the Belgian courts system to finally reach the CJEU, the conflict started back in 2008.

 

The preliminary ruling answers two questions:

1. Is Article 5(1) of [Directive 91/250] to be interpreted as permitting the lawful purchaser of a computer program to decompile all or part of that program where such decompilation is necessary to enable that person to correct errors affecting the operation of the program, including where the correction consists in disabling a function that is affecting the proper operation of the application of which the program forms a part?
2. In the event that that question is answered in the affirmative, must the conditions referred to in Article 6 of the directive, or any other conditions, also be satisfied? (Note: As I understand Article 6, it limits the range of actions available to the end user to get the software working.)

 

The answer to the first question is that the lawful purchaser of a computer program is entitled to decompile all or part of that program in order to correct errors affecting its operation. And that, to answer the second question, the end user is not required to satisfy the requirements laid down in Article 6 to achieve interoperability.

 

From my understanding it may means that, to get a dead game working again, we can decompile in order to test and resolve issues, and to that effect we're allowed to share information about the process so long as it remains topical. I'm obviously not a lawyer, so my understanding is as limited as any other layman.

 

What do you all think about this?

Edited October 11, 2021 by xrogaan (see edit history)

[kerdios]

Most dead games nowadays are actually because their server is killed, and that is one part that isn't usually sold to the consumer, so decompiling it legally is irrelevant (except in edge cases).

[xrogaan]

On 10/11/2021 at 6:00 PM, kerdios said:

Most dead games nowadays are actually because their server is killed, and that is one part that isn't usually sold to the consumer, so decompiling it legally is irrelevant (except in edge cases).

Unofficial world of warcraft servers were written by looking at the client API calls. I highly doubt those people had access to the server codebase. So it's possible to retro-engineer servers.