I wasn’t thinking forbidding them from decompiling it or anything. I don’t think any rights are violated if government doesn’t issue any further copyright protections (even though I don’t think this for the best).
I am not saying that the puzzle author should have any legal authority to restrict people from disassembling the puzzle.
I’m just saying that the government shouldn’t compel the puzzle designer to distribute disassembled versions of the puzzle.
If other people want to take apart their rubix cubes, they’re free to, I just shouldn’t be forced to help them take it apart.
A reasonable tradeoff to explore is that software ought to work like a halfway-point between copyright and patents: in exchange for an exclusive right to distribute your binaries for 10-15 years, you provide your documentation for how it works (including source code) so others can build on your work after the exclusivity period ends. The exclusive right does not cover the basic idea/independent implementations of the same functionality.
Potentially utilitarian software and creative software could be treated differently, e.g. have an escrow for games (for which user customizations are less important).
Obviously DRM to restrict user modifications is unethical and harmful toward functioning markets and should be illegal.
I am not saying that the puzzle author should have any legal authority to restrict people from disassembling the puzzle.
I’m just saying that the government shouldn’t compel the puzzle designer to distribute disassembled versions of the puzzle.
If other people want to take apart their rubix cubes, they’re free to, I just shouldn’t be forced to help them take it apart.