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You take back what you said about Raph Koster and his project to modernize the opinion-gathering function of the Federal Register, or your kids are spending the rest of their lives in Gitmo, starting tomorrow, bud! We give you citizens access to the workings of government, but we can ban you just as quick!

> Raph Koster of SWG is now an expert in designing societies?
> Please.
> If you play SWG, you know what kind of society it is. One where players are encouraged to do mindless missions in pursuit of the mystical plum to be a jedi

"He's perfect for the job!"
- Treas. Secretary John Snow

> Have players complained? Sure, check out the development forums (restricted to paying subscribers of SWG), and you'll find many requests going untouched.

"He's perfect for the job!"
- Norm Mineta, the entire Department of Transportation, and TSA

> And the people who actually go and complain on a bulletin board is just a small percentage of the persons who actually play, get disgruntled, and leave.

"He's perfect for the job!"
- The entire contingent of HomeSec that used to be the INS

And what the original didn't say - people who do raise questions about things like server stability or scalability tend to get banned from the forums.

"He's perfect for the job!
- Atty. General John Ashcroft.

according to the dev's of SWG, on a radio broadcast on Unknownplayer.com last week, they are at 240,000 already and growing.

I also saw the effect, or rather the non effect of newer MMOG's on the older ones. Numbers arnt dropping as much as i thought, but rather the whole market is growing. like you said.

i was really hoping these planetside numbers where incorrect, and it seems they could be because the author cant get data for this game bceause non has been released

Ironically, I found this ruling on a site saying that this ruling was "DIfferent case showing how shrink wrap licenses are not binding": First Sale and U.S. Copyrights

In addition to that, a different college friend of mine who is now a lawyer was interested in the question, and did a case law search. The result was the same: EULAs are legally binding contracts, especially if you have to "click-through" the license agreement to make the program run. It may be critical that the person agreeing to the EULA "contract" makes some "affirmative action" to signify agreement. The "Click OK to agree" button is such an affirmative action.

Here is another example of EULAs being upheld, Here is an analysis done by a non-lawyer but it has a lot of good cases. He says: "So, are clickwraps legal? It must be clear by now that the answer is 'it depends'". However, if you pay attention, you will see that all the cases he cites where the licensee took some "affirmative action", the license was upheld, as long as it was a valid contract. The real answer to the question is: "yes".

I should put up a Slashdotters are idiots who don't know what they're talking about page for all the people who don't even do a Google search before making up legal shit like they're experts.

If you had bothered to look past the first 2 documents you would have seen these... BTW I have edited the article so that these judgements are easyer to find.

http://www.unknownplayer.com/images/blacksnow/2_3% 20copy.gif

http://www.unknownplayer.com/images/blacksnow/2_4% 20copy.gif

Scott Miller
Founder and Editor in Chief
The Unknown Player Network.
http://www.unknownplayer.com

If you had bothered to look past the first 2 documents you would have seen these... BTW I have edited the article so that these judgements are easyer to find.

http://www.unknownplayer.com/images/blacksnow/2_3% 20copy.gif

http://www.unknownplayer.com/images/blacksnow/2_4% 20copy.gif

Scott Miller
Founder and Editor in Chief
The Unknown Player Network.
http://www.unknownplayer.com

If you had bothered to look past the first 2 documents you would have seen these... BTW I have edited the article so that these judgements are easyer to find.

http://www.unknownplayer.com/images/blacksnow/2_3% 20copy.gif

http://www.unknownplayer.com/images/blacksnow/2_4% 20copy.gif

Scott Miller
Founder and Editor in Chief
The Unknown Player Network.
http://www.unknownplayer.com

From the court, we find that the owners of Blacksnow did their trading in game. Now, argue all you like about most people not reading the EULA, but professional traders have no excuse for not reading it.

As regarding whether they did or not, and whether they clicked through and agreed to it, remember that this is civil litigation. The burden of proof is not beyond all reasonable doubt, but rather balance of probabilities. In deciding what is fact, the court only has to consider the most likely scenario. And the most likely scenario is that Blacksnow (if not the players) did read (or should have read) and did agree to the EULA. If they didn't, then the burden is on them to show that.

Also note that the issue is about the actions that they chose to perform on the service, not what use they made of the software.

Given all this, it looks pretty clear cut that Mythic are right, and Blacksnow are wrong. My only problem with this is that it feels wrong. Effectively, Mythic are saying that they have complete control over everything that happens on their servers, and that they will be the final arbitrator on who did what - and more importantly, why they did it.

The reason that this last point is important is that from the point of view of Mythic, what's the difference between these actions?

• I drop a Sword of Boinking because I agreed in an email conversation with Blacksnow that I would do so in return for money.
• I drop a Sword of Boinking because I agreed in an email conversation with another player that I would do so in return for money.
• I drop a Sword of Boinking because I agreed in an email conversation with another player that I would do so in return for them dropping an in game item.
• I drop a Sword of Boinking because I agreed in an email conversation with another player that I would do so in return for beer.
• I drop a Sword of Boinking because I agreed in a verbal conversation with my son that I would do so in return for him taking out the trash.
• I drop a Sword of Boinking because I hit the wrong key.
• I drop a Sword of Boinking because I'm drunk.

The answer is that from Mythic's point of view, there is no difference. The action that Mythic sees is: Player X wants to drop a Sword of Boinking.

Now, Mythic get to decide what the motivation was behind this action, and to punish me or terminate my account without possibility of appeal. In the case of Blacksnow, it looks clear cut, but that's because Blacksnow have been decent enough to be above board about what they have been doing. But now the precedent is set that Mythic and other online services can charge money to access content that they control and can deny access to at any time for any reason that they like, and your option is to suck it up or... actually, there is no "or".

Is that just? Well, actually yes, because it's Mythic's service, they can set the rules, and nobody is forced to play it. Is it enforcable? Demonstrably, yes. Does this kind of control freakery damage online games? Not really, it's rampant on EQ (down to them enforcing their own particular view on what's an appropriate "fantasy genre but non trademarked" name), but that's still going strong.

But does it feel right? Hell, no. Is there anything that we can do about it? Probably not. I wouldn't play such a horribly restrictive game in the first place, and so I don't even have the meagre threat of withholding my money, but the plain old fact is that most players simply don't know and don't care (enough) about it to leave. So, by the Great and Powerful Laws of Capitalism, Mythic is in the right here, and will continue to remain so until the money stops flowing in.

http://www.skotos.net/articles/BTH_21.shtml (Go down to the section titled "I'll See Your Account Bannings And Raise You $7,000").

http://www.unknownplayer.com/archive/02/03/15/442. php