• Are computer viruses copyrighted
    8 replies, posted
Is there legally or from a practical standpoint, a copyright for viruses?
Anything made by you has an inherent copyright. Though if you give a shit, formally copyright it via a government agency so it can be legally protected easier. So yes, a virus can be copyrighted.
considering the fact that they're likely illegal either way if you were to, lets say, sue someone for stealing a virus, I mean, I doubt that'd go well
[QUOTE=J!NX;51871255]considering the fact that they're likely illegal either way if you were to, lets say, sue someone for stealing a virus, I mean, I doubt that'd go well[/QUOTE] I don't think the act of writing one or the possession of one is an illegal act in itself.
[QUOTE=gk99;51871278]I don't think the act of writing one or the possession of one is an illegal act in itself.[/QUOTE] I don't know, this isn't the same as lets say, 3d printing and making a sword for fun. The big point in writing a virus, is to use it maliciously. With the exception of people who make virus's to learn about them / work against them, but that's quite a different thing, and I can imagine that would hold in court easily.
[QUOTE=J!NX;51871283]I don't know, this isn't the same as lets say, 3d printing and making a sword for fun. The big point in writing a virus, is to use it maliciously. With the exception of people who make virus's to learn about them / work against them, but that's quite a different thing, and I can imagine that would hold in court easily.[/QUOTE] There was also that one virus that fixed security issues in routers. Honestly, I think that if you formally copywrite it you're golden, but the thing is that it's generally not something you want to admit to with your real identity if you do use it maliciously.
why u ask
on a large note yes since its your IP the minute you put in tangible form, on the other hand computer viruses violate the computer fraud act so I doubt you can enforce a claim unless you are a security firm or something that has legitimate uses for it. also you should be looking at patenting instead of copyright if your virus works in a novel way or hasnt been patented yet
[QUOTE=J!NX;51871283]I don't know, this isn't the same as lets say, 3d printing and making a sword for fun. The big point in writing a virus, is to use it maliciously. With the exception of people who make virus's to learn about them / work against them, but that's quite a different thing, and I can imagine that would hold in court easily.[/QUOTE] The law's a weird one. If you make a virus for personal use (research etc) then it's fine. As soon as you release it onto other PCs, you can then be arrested for "illegal access to another computer" or "Illegally modifying another computer to prevent access or to disrupt use" (obviously the wording will be different in different parts of the world, but the idea's the same). It's the same problem with Mirai. Many researchers [B][I]COULD[/I][/B] have prevented the spread of the Mirai worm (which created a Botnet out of IoT (internet of things) devices) but they couldn't because the only way to prevent the spread/infection would be to get into the device in question (which they don't own in the first place) and modify it (update it in other words) to prevent Mirai from getting in. They could have been arrested under hacking charges even though their intentions were not malicious and to the benefit of the owner but the law just sees you in someone else's stuff and leaps on you. [B][I]To the OP:[/I][/B] Yes, a virus' code could be copyrighted but since 95% of Viruses are recycled shite which are copy-pasted off of each other, you'll find it hard to copyright it in the first place since it won't officially be "unique work" as others will have either copied or used the same process/code before you. The code doesn't have to be fully copy-pasted either to not count as copyrightable. Using a couple of lines of another virus for example, will void your claim. Not sure why you'd want to anyway. It's not like those wanting to spread viruses onto other PCs for various purposes will look up any copyright/license info on the code they use in the first place. You could copyright your code and have some skid copy-paste it later on for their own, stupid use and you can't do anything about it (they won't reply to court orders etc for a start).
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