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There were several times that this was done by the ninth "circus" court - a few:
MAI Systems Corp. v. Peak Computer, Inc
TRIAD SYSTEMS CORPORATION v. SOUTHEASTERN EXPRESS COMPANY
Blizzard V MDY

The most bizarre thing about this lawsuit is that Blizzard is suing MDY for lost revenue,

That would have been bizarre if they'd done it, but they didn't.

Since you made me read the whole Counterclaim, claim 49.

MDY’s sale of WoWGlider has caused Blizzard great harm in the direct loss of
revenue from terminated users, the loss of subscription revenue from WoWGlider users availing
themselves of the cheat, and from the severe damage to the goodwill of the non-cheating
population of WoW users.

The most bizarre thing about this lawsuit is that Blizzard is suing MDY for lost revenue,

That would have been bizarre if they'd done it, but they didn't.

http://virtuallyblind.com/2007/10/23/tax-virtual-profits-in-world/

Old article but hey, was the first thing I found when googling for "irs virtual currency".

Google ftw? :-p

Blizzard actively (some would complain not actively enough) pursues gold farmers and cheaters. In my opinion their suit against the Glider tool proved very effectively that we have very little rights to run what we choose on our own computers in certain circumstances. They won the suit and the TOS was upheld in a court of law.

Actually, reading the summary judgement order from the Glider case (MDY vs. Blizzard, http://virtuallyblind.com/files/mdy/07-14-08_Order.pdf ), they come up with some ninth circuit case law, from Wall Data vs. LA County Sheriff's Dept. ( http://altlaw.org/v1/cases/1139595 ), about who a "copy of a computer program" is owned by for the purpose of s. 117, that reads much like what coiledsnake was saying. From the Wall Data case: "Generally, if the copyright owner makes it clear that she or he is granting only a license to the copy of software and imposes significant restrictions on the purchaser's ability to redistribute or transfer that copy, the purchaser is considered a licensee, not an owner, of the software."

In the Wall Data case, the Sherrif's Dept. imaged Wall Data's software onto more systems than they had licenses for, and then used some management software to prevent more than the licensed number of copies from being used at once, despite the software's EULA having a specific provision that licenses could only be transferred every 30 days.

MDY vs. Blizzard interprets this as a "two-part test", which seems a little rich considering that the bit about "significant restrictions on the purchaser's ability to redistribute" only makes sense because the Wall Data case hinged on the EULA restriction on transferring of licenses. But at any rate, MDY vs. Blizzard also doesn't impose much of a standard for whether "the copyright owner makes it clear that she or he is granting only a license": they decide that since a EULA existed that itself said that "all copies of" the software, then the EULA must apply, and so the software is clearly licensed. (Whether or not the EULA was located in a filing cabinet in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying "Beware of the Leopard" was not discussed. =) ) But certainly if whoever installed the software had to click through agreeing to the license as part of the installation process, any court would find that it was clear to that person who did the install that the software is licensed, and that would probably meet this clarity standard.

It's not clear to me, that the Ninth Circuit has any idea what the remaining point would be of s. 117 under this interpretation, but at any rate... =)

So, as long as enough people were licensed copies of Blizzard's software and not sold them, and enough people who used MDY's software for its primary intended purpose would have broken their licenses by doing so, then MDY gets stuck with indirect infringement of some kind (for instance, contributory infringement).

You are completely wrong. EULA have been tested in court in the USA. They are binding legal contracts. The case is ProCD v Zeidenberg.

Thanks for being the only person that remembers Pro-CD.

Furthermore, Blizzard was awarded summary judgment in Blizzard v. MDY that loading the game client into RAM - you know, starting the program up - was copyright infringement when using the Glider bot because using Glider went against the EULA and Terms of Service. Running the game normally was a licensed action and therefore copying the game into RAM was ok. However, running the game and using Glider was an unauthorized action and therefore copyright infringement because it was an unauthorized copying of the game into RAM. (An aside, the USER was committing copyright infringement, Glider was just contributing to it. But Blizzard's not going to endure the PR nightmare of suing its customers.)

Anyone that thinks EULAs are generally unenforceable is very very wrong.

Really frustating. Really frustrating. The BBC article took every fact from my story on this over a day earlier. I know the /. poster has linked to my stuff on this before (I've been covering this from day one) but this one slipped through the cracks. Hazard of being a little guy, I guess, but frustrating to see your stuff used by a big outlet without citation. The BBC guy even refers to me -- at least I suspect so -- as the "some experts" who say that damages could have been higher at trial. What BS. Here's original post: http://virtuallyblind.com/2008/09/29/mdy-blizzard-damages/ Original stipulated damages Order (as PDF) and significantly more in-depth coverage of the backstory there.

here is the decision.

virtuallyblind does the best coverage of the case. MDY itself keeps virtuallyblind up to date on their case.

There will be an appeal that MDY has to win on all counts to negate the damage judgement.

2. Blizzard shall not be entitled to double or triple recovery for counts I, II and III. That is, Blizzard shall be entitled to receive a total of $6,000,000 in damages for counts I, II and III. However, should liability on any one or two of the counts be reversed on appeal, any one of these counts independently supports the $6,000,000 award.

Because they are far more draconian than At&T's ever was.

Just saying, most Game Company EULAs actually state that you don't even get a service in return for your payments and that your payments are non-refundable and you have no expectations of privacy and your computer is for all intents and purposes the property of the gaming company for as long as their software resides on your computer...

I wish I was making this up but as you can see here (the most popular online game in the world):
http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/legal/eula.html
http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/legal/termsofuse.shtml
I'm not. And as an even more negative note this EULA actually stood up in court of law.
http://virtuallyblind.com/2008/07/14/blizzard-wins-sj-mdy/


Your RAM is actually Blizzards. You have no right to sue. You have no right to a refund. You have no right to class action. You have no right to communicate to anyone about what Blizzard communicates to you. Because, it is all copyright. That is a huge legal determination.


This brings us back to the topic at hand, AT&T. Because in all honesty, "waive the right to class actions, require confidentiality, shorten the Washington Consumer Protection Act statute of limitations, and limit availability of attorney fees." these things have already been ruled as legal in several gaming company cases and RIAA cases (which for brevity I did not touch on).

To tell AT&T (and every other company on the planet)that they are breaking the law because they are not using copyright as the rational for their arguments makes absolutely no legal sense whatsoever.

Because the end result is that all company claims against their consumers will be twisted in to copyright claims and therefore automatically upheld...

In the midst of all this frothing-at-the-mouth has anyone ever actually bothered reading Blizzard's response as to why the concerns of Public Knowledge really don't apply to games like WoW (Games which you must connect to centralized servers only after agreeing to a plethora of EULA and ToU agreements and cannot access any game content otherwise). This case if you examine it deep enough obviously has no ramifications beyond preventing further hijacking of entertainment service providers such as Blizzard through World of Warcraft.

Can anyone give a single example of how this narrow ruling can possibly have a chilling effect on peoples "right" to do anything other than ruin an online community by violating agreement after agreement to effectively ruin a (game) market through unchecked greed? I bet you can't.

As per the response Blizzard filed to Public Knowledge's concerns:

"Accordingly, Blizzard's WoW EULA clearly constitutes a license rather than a sale even under the 'test' formulated by Amicus. In this way it is also similar to the sort of license agreements that are part of almost every piece of software sold in the United States."

In the midst of all this frothing-at-the-mouth has anyone ever actually bothered reading Blizzard's response as to why the concerns of Public Knowledge really don't apply to games like WoW (Games which you must connect to centralized servers only after agreeing to a plethora of EULA and ToU agreements and cannot access any game content otherwise). This case if you examine it deep enough obviously has no ramifications beyond preventing further hijacking of entertainment service providers such as Blizzard through World of Warcraft.

Can anyone give a single example of how this narrow ruling can possibly have a chilling effect on peoples "right" to do anything other than ruin an online community by violating agreement after agreement to effectively ruin a (game) market through unchecked greed? I bet you can't.

As per the response Blizzard filed to Public Knowledge's concerns:

"Accordingly, Blizzard's WoW EULA clearly constitutes a license rather than a sale even under the 'test' formulated by Amicus. In this way it is also similar to the sort of license agreements that are part of almost every piece of software sold in the United States."

A far better source of real information about what both sides are claiming in their summary judgement filings is here:

http://virtuallyblind.com/2008/03/23/mdy-blizzard-motions/

If you read the text from Blizzard's claim, then it's pretty clear that their lawyers are using the very common tactic of making a whole bunch of different accusations in the hope that one or more of them will be accepted by the judge. The bit about copyright violation is therefore (a) quite a small part, and (b) entirely predicated on a specific EULA prohibition of using unauthorised third party launchers to copy the software into memory, so it's by no means as broad as the writer of the blog being quoted claims it is.

Note that I'm not defending Blizzard, their tactics, or any claims they've made in their court documents.

Have you ever watched a young person buy their first cel phone thinking 30 cents a minute it cheap ? Then when the first bill comes due for four or five hundred dollars the person is totally shocked ? Although Nicholas eventually gave his real name the last thing I recall him admitting about his real age was "In my 20s". So here's my speculation:

A 16 or 17 year old Brazilian kid who can't do math sneaked into SL a few years ago, started a bank, and all the avatars fell for it because they really wanted to believe.