content: So it's not the bizarre analogy of breaking into a house.   She uses the analogy of a house but, last time I checked, you can't just duplicate a house at zero-cost.  So it's not the bizarre analogy of breaking into a house. It's more like renting a house and checking to make sure that the doors are actually secure, and then pointing out to the landlord if they're not and that they should be fixed.  Even better: you posess a lock and want to take it apart to examine it. Some copyright and patent law applies to certain pieces of the lock, which might mean that you can't copy certain parts, but you can otherwise look at how it works. Unfortunately, US law pretends like reverse engineering has to do with copyright.