This legislation, enacted in 1998, makes it illegal to reverse-engineer copy protection schemes.

ECONOMIST: Digital copyright

American officials have previously cast doubt on Iran's ability to extract useful intelligence from the captured spy plane, and have said that reverse-engineering a copy would be beyond Iran's technological capability.

BBC: Iran shows 'hacked US spy drone' video footage

Meanwhile, the copy-to-China cloning trend shows signs of a reverse.

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