How is reverse engineering different from circumvention?
Circumvention, according to Section 1201(a)(3)(A), means “to descramble a scrambled work, to decrypt an encrypted work, or otherwise to avoid, bypass, remove, deactivate, or impair a technological measure, without the authority of the copyright owner.” Reverse engineering, on the other hand, is the scientific method of taking something apart in order to figure out how it works. While not all acts of circumvention require the use of reverse engineering, the reverse engineering of works protected by technological mechanisms requires circumvention. The placement of digital protection systems on copyrighted works essentially fences in the information a reverse engineer seeks to discover about the way the product works.
