I'm sure that if you ask enough people, you'll hear about reasons d) through z) and then some, all of them valid.

valid is one thing, some may argue that "I want to see which algorithm my competitor has come up with to make his product so much better" is valid. I contend it is not legal, since the only purpose of doing do can be to "learn from the competitor". I contend that if you use a competitots algorithm learned by disassembly or any other way od industrial espionage, you are violating the copyright even if you use r7 instead of r3.

An example from long ago: we made an expanded bitmap for some 'title characteres' and made one small mistake in the letter 'K' which, for reasons of being minuscule was left in. Two weeks later the competitor, using a totally different processor came out with an expanded bitmap with the exact same mistake. Did he copy? no, using different processor it could not be, did he violate the copyright? YOU BET. The issue here is that a patent should not be required to copyright material, by the very name a copyright should suffice. May it be marginally legal? possibly but ethical? NEVER!!!

Maybe one of the things that has gone the way of writing your own code instead of posting "send me the code", reading manuals, reading datatasheets and such is basic honesty.

Erik