Hector Martin

Something to think about: in software, we're used to this broad idea of "copyright" where anything related to the original code is liable to be a "derivative work". For example, the idea of clean-room reverse engineering comes from here.

So, we say, theoretically you can read some code, write some similar code, and commit copyright infringement. Hence the legal defense of clean-room RE. But copyright isn't actually a magic viral concept like this. It covers very specific things.

One example from the music industry is Taylor Swift, who is currently reverse engineering her own old masters, to which she does not own the rights (just the composition copyright), and re-creating *as identical as possible* versions, to which she will.