As someone who's income depends entirely on the sale of products containing code we develop in-house I'm very much against helping anyone break code.

However, helping someone who clearly owns the IP rights to some code would be OK with me IF that person completely and unambiguously identifies themselves and the product they are trying to break. I doubt that anyone strying to steal code would want to identify themselves.

The problem is that other people with more sinister plans could use the ideas presented in this forum to steal code. If we email suggestions directly to the authorized person then no-one else learns from the process.

b.t.w. I took the State of California all the way to the Supreme Court in the late 80's for copying volumes of our engineering software products (they even used their reproduction department to copy the user manuals). Check this link.

When the Supreme Court refused to hear the appeal we got Congress to make changes to the Copyright laws so California (or other States) could no longer steal (Copyright
Remedy Clarification Act, PL 101-553, in 1990. This law added section 511 to the Copyright Act, which had the effect of removing the immunity defense used by California. It became effective June 1, 1991). That was a two year effort but I learned a lot about the US legal system and the legislative system, got to testify on Capitol Hill on CSPAN TV and got the videos! :-)

Regards,

Bert