[matheusmoreira]

> They took the distributed game binary and ran it through a tool that produced an approximation of source code.

> At this point the decompiled code is clearly a mechanical transformation of the game binary, and so holds the same copyright status.

Courts disagree with you.

Sony Computer Entertainment v. Connectix Corp.

https://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=716676913673727...

> The object code of a program may be copyrighted as expression, 17 U.S.C. § 102(a), but it also contains ideas and performs functions that are not entitled to copyright protection. See 17 U.S.C. § 102(b).

> Object code cannot, however, be read by humans.

> The unprotected ideas and functions of the code therefore are frequently undiscoverable in the absence of investigation and translation that may require copying the copyrighted material.

> We conclude that, under the facts of this case and our precedent, Connectix's intermediate copying and use of Sony's copyrighted BIOS was a fair use for the purpose of gaining access to the unprotected elements of Sony's software.

Not only are the methods of operation which underlie the code completely unprotected, the copying of and the application of tools to the code for the purpose of exercising your right to discover those unprotected elements is fair use.

[saagarjha]

Posting the quote “Object code cannot, however, be read by humans” in a discussion about decompiling a game is definitely a strange option to take.

[mjg59]

Where's the disagreement there? The court concluded that reverse engineering to gain access to the non-copyrightable elements the object code contained was legitimate. It didn't assert that decompiled code wasn't subject to copyright.

[matheusmoreira]

Decompiling code is a reverse engineering method that provides access to the non-copyrightable elements of the code.

[mjg59]

Yes. It also provides access to the copyrightable elements of the code. In this respect the decompiled code is identical to the object code, which is also made up of a mixture of copyrightable and non-copyrightable elements. Combining copyrightable and non-copyrightable elements into one thing gives you a work that copyright can be asserted over. The argument in the case you cited is that the defendant extracted the non-copyrightable elements and built their own work based on those. That's not what's happening in the case under discussion here, which is derived from the copyrightable elements as well.