안녕하세요... 오픈소스 관련하여 질문사항이 있어서 이렇게 글을 올려봅니다.

The Copyright Act permits an individual in rightful possession of a copy of a work to undertake necessary efforts to understand the work's ideas, processes, and methods of operation.

This permission appears in the fair use exception to copyright exclusivity. Section 107 of the Copyright Act states that "fair use of a copyrighted work, including such use by reproduction in copies ... for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching ... scholarship or research" is not infringement.

Reverse engineering, untainted by the purloined copy of the 10NES program and necessary to understand 10NES, is a fair use.

In this case, the source code obtained from the Copyright Office facilitated Atari's intermediate copying of the 10NES program. To invoke the fair use exception, an individual must possess an authorized copy of a literary work. See Harper & Row, 471 U.S. at 562-63, 105 S.Ct. at 2232 (Knowing exploitation of purloined manuscript not compatible with "good faith" and "fair dealings" underpinnings of fair use doctrine.). Because Atari was not in authorized possession of the Copyright Office copy of 10NES, any copying or derivative copying of 10NES source code from the Copyright Office does not qualify as a fair use.