Blizzard Rains on Bnetd Project

Sir Homer writes: "Blizzard Entertainment has shut down the bnetd project using the DMCA, as declared in their site. The bnetd project is a battle.net server emulator licenced under the GNU/GPL originally for Linux and also works on most Unix variants. Project details can be found on this freshmeat.net page." As I understood it, bnetd was a complete re-implementation of battle.net, so it isn't clear what copyright violation Blizzard alleges occurred. Note to bnetd: under the DMCA, you can file a counter-notice with the hosting provider asserting that Blizzard was wrong.

Comments

Blizzard: it's been fun

[Rev. Null]

You guys make some great games. I've had countless hours of fun with the Diablos, the Warcrafts, and Starcraft. Now I'll never buy any of your products again. Bye.

Re:Blizzard: it's been fun

[ink]

Where does Blizzard make a profit from battle.net?

Re:Blizzard: it's been fun

[Anonymous Coward]

Huh? The amounts of games sold and their advertisers (of which there are quite a few) are how battle.net makes money.

Re:Blizzard: it's been fun

[_|()|\|]

ditto

Re:Blizzard: it's been fun

[blowhole]

They make profit out of battle.net by making it the only online network you can use to play some of your favorite games (think Diablo II, great single-player game but you can only play it multiplayer with battle.net. and maybe LAN?) On battle.net, they can enforce their CD-KEYs, whereas on clone networks, they cannot. This forces anyone who wants to play online to buy their own legitimate copy.

Re:Blizzard: it's been fun

[darkith]

battle.net forces users of Blizzard's software to purchase the software to obtain a legitimate key # to play online. While it is possible to play games like Diablo II via a hacked/cracked copy, they cannot be played on b.net.

And the online games that are not played on b.net are (more) vulnerable to hacking (who wants to play with a whole bunch of Level 99 characters?). Hence the existance of battle.net strongly encourages gamers to actually purchase the game.

They may not actually make any money directly of b.net (yet...), but I'm sure that it's contributed to their sales...

Re:Blizzard: it's been fun

[nodrip]

Ditto - me too. Go f*** yourselves. I'll never buy another Blizzard game again.

Re:Blizzard: it's been fun

[sludgely]

The reason that they did this, I suspect, is due to the fact that recently people discovered a way to emulate with the Warcraft III beta. Copies are being distributed all over the net, and blizzard wants to halt it anyway possible. Perfectly understandable in my opinion.

Re:Blizzard: it's been fun

[Anonymous Coward]

God forbid Blizzard actually have people beta test the WarCraft3 beta.

Re:Blizzard: it's been fun

[i_am_nitrogen]

Don't be too hard on Blizzard themselves. It's all Vivendi's fault. Remember? The people who took MP3.com and turned it into an (even worse) annoyingly commercial craphole? The people who bought Sierra and Valve and Blizzard and made the policies on their games suck? Vivendi is evil, not Blizzard.

Re:Blizzard: it's been fun

[WoodenBoy]

You can play Diablo II over the net via TCP/IP.

AFAIK, the only profit Blizzard is making from battle.net is the sale of their product. Of course, given how widespread the WC3 beta is, they could potentially lose sales from people who only play on bnetd.

Re:Blizzard: it's been fun

[maxpublic]

I've purchased virtually every game Blizzard has ever put out, and was really looking forward to Warcraft III. I won't be buying it now.

Y'all might think about sending a nasty letter to Blizzard telling them what you think of them (include root@ and sales@; piracy@ might just be a dumping ground for vents), as I did. I doubt they give a shit if one pissed-off customer tells them to go to hell, but if five or ten thousand did that's a fair chunk of change....

Max

Re:Blizzard: it's been fun

[mrmag00]

This really doesn't matter. Maybe bnetd was making too much progress, but I have yet to see any people ACTUALLY playing on servers that do not belong to blizzard. People that actually want to play the game are going to play on the official servers with 99% of the other people, not with 5 other koreans on at 1-4am.

Now my question: Why did they target bnetd and not FSGS. They have made 2x the progress on emulating bnet and have a fairly good service. They are, in fact, emulating several game servers.

I think Blizzard better pull out of it because of the bad PR. I've already decided not to buy their products til they make a Linux port (which wont be soon, i imagine). They are just harming their image more. Occasionally I have used bnetd at lan parties where there was no net access because its so much easier then using IPX (for starcraft).

Re:Blizzard: it's been fun

[qslack]

If Blizzard doesn't have the backbone to say to Vivendi "Hey, no, that's not right," then it's their fault too. Someone would have had to alert Vivendi about bnetd, too, and it'd probably be Blizzard themselves.

Re:Blizzard: it's been fun

[SilentChris]

There's some advertising dollars as well.

Re:Blizzard: it's been fun

[Heironymus Coward]

and also, vivendi universal is a member of the MPAA, which is attempting to punish people for using DeCSS... and which also believes that the cd/dvd region system is a completely ethical way of doing business...

Re:Blizzard: it's been fun

[sameb]

A copy of WarcraftIII beta fell into my hands. I found a bnetd server, and played the game. To my surprise, I -really- liked it. I've never played any RTS games before, but this was really good, and I seriously considered buying the game because I had the chance to see just how good it was.

Now that the server is probably going to be shut down, I won't become hooked, and I'll go back to playing Unreal.

Blizzard should seriously reconsider this move. It stops a lot of potential buyers from seeing the game. bnetd won't make them lose any sales -- people who were going to buy the game will still buy it. People who are going to get a crack will still get a crack. People who wanted a chance to see before they buy... well... bye-bye.

Oh well, saves me money.

Sam

Re:Blizzard: it's been fun

[MindStalker]

What I'm hoping, is this was the work of some late night lawyer working there.
Wishful scene.
Blizzard guys come to work in the morning, read all the emails. Fire lawyer, say WOW this BNET thing, thats great, now we can release a public beta intended to run on servers other than battle.net and we don't have to worry about overloading the server. Yay! Call up the presses!

Sorry just a dream! (I'd have to buy 5 copies of WC3 then, just on principle)

Re:Blizzard: it's been fun

[BadmanX]

Oh, for God's sake. I'm sure that they'll release this thing called a "demo' - you might have heard of it, it lets you try out a game before you buy it. They just have to, I don't know, FINISH THE GAME FIRST.

Re:Blizzard: it's been fun

[_Sprocket_]

...so Blizzard is just the AGENT of evil.

Re:Blizzard: it's been fun

[Anonymous Coward]

self-righteous folks....

yes.. you /.'ters.... they are taking a stand to protect their 'alleged' property ... remove thyself from ye' vaunted high horses ... DMCA is not a decree of satan ... it has it's legitamate purposes... such as with times like these...GET INFORMED geeks!

anyhow, i warrant many of you will be playing WC3 ... hypocrites..

Re:Blizzard: it's been fun

[zulux]

Don't be too hard on Blizzard themselves. It's all Vivendi's fault.

'I vas only following mein orders'

Blizzard, and it's employees, are to blame just as much as their parent company - unless they take action and distance themselves from Vivendi.

Re:Blizzard: it's been fun

[Banjonardo]

*BOINK*

Wait, what was that? The sound of a.......

knee jerking?

Seriously, though, slashdot posters are so ignorant sometimes.

"Oh, boy, a company that codes to put bread on the table isn't allowing people to emulate their software! Gosh, I'll boycott them now!"

Jeez.

Re:Blizzard: it's been fun

[keflex]

Hehe... the Bnetd servers have a much higher concentration of WarCraft 3 beta players than the actual Bnet server does. The reason that SC and WC2 are played almost exclusively on Bnet is because that Bnet was the only choice you had if you wanted to find a couple quick pick-up games or your friends weren't available to play.

The probable reason that they shutdown Bnetd is because Bnetd was actually making it possible to play the Warcraft3 beta on their servers w/out the need for a valid Bnet key... which opens the door towards allowing the final version of Warcraft3 to be easily pirated AND playable on a Match-making Server type service.

Re:Blizzard: it's been fun

[lewp]

Erm. Quake3, Half-Life and Tribes 2 all allow you to play on independent servers while enforcing cd keys. Just set up Battle.net as auth servers and allow third parties to provide the actual game daemons. Seems to work very well for those three games.

Re:Blizzard: it's been fun

[keflex]

Yep... the ppl who immediately jump the gun and say, "Oh! Blizzard is so evil!" don't seem to understand that Blizzard popularized the Central Match-making Server service (not sure on what it's actually called) w/ Bnet and that is what helped them both A) Do so well in the RTS market and B) Popularized their RTS games.

By allowing the development of a Match-making service that is not only using a beta of a soon to be released game but also that's currently more populated than their official server for beta testing is just asking for WC3 to be pirated.

Of course I would know nothing about this even though I play on the extremely popular Bnetd servers w/ my cracked version of WC3...

Re:Blizzard: it's been fun

[Anonymous Coward]

You sir are a liar.

Re:Blizzard: it's been fun

[IronChef]

Factiod: a friend who works for Blizzard tells me that the company pays $400k per month in bandwidth for Battle.net.

Just thought it was interesting.

Re:Blizzard: it's been fun

[Dyolf Knip]

Blizzard doesn't sell Battlenet; it's a free service to owners of their games. So it's more like, "Oh boy, a company won't let me do what I want with the game I bought with real money."

If anyone sold you a book and said you could only use official [publisher] bookmarks in it, since reverse-engineering their patented bookmark technology is illegal, you'd laugh your head off. How about a sack of potatoes which you are not allowed to make into waffle fries like Chick-Fil-A's, or a box of pens with which you are not allowed to write anything about the manufacture of writing utencils, past present or future. Absolutely nobody would think these to be even remotely reasonable restrictions on usage of something I purchased. Why then is the DMCA seen as good and proper by anyone at all?

If you want to talk about knee-jerk reactions, look at the guys who thought up the DMCA. You know, the ones who think that Congress is only there to guarantee their continued income. "Oh no, new technology threatens our revenues. Our lawyers tell us that the only solution is to make it illegal to do anything we do not explicitly permit." Gee, what a great idea.

Re:Blizzard: it's been fun

[traphicone]

Bwahaha. Look at that. A comment that makes me spit Sprite through my nose, and me without a mod point.

Thank you. That was wonderful.

Re:Blizzard: it's been fun

[Anonymous Coward]

Who forces bnetd to set battle.net as an auth server ?

Re:Blizzard: it's been fun

[Anonymous Coward]

Now I wont feel so bad when I download WC3 from the newsgroups.

MUAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAH

Re:Blizzard: it's been fun

[Anonymous Coward]

Same here. I'm going in from the storm. Go to hell, Blizzard. I hope a c_lvl 99 Barbarian Leap-Attacks you to death! Suck my nads, et ali.

Re:Blizzard: it's been fun

[Shanep]

ditto.

PS Blizzard, your Battle.net servers SUCK.

This would have at least given some countries not blessed with your shite servers, something local to play with which has decent latency.

Re:Blizzard: it's been fun

[Anonymous Coward]

The 'free' service is their to help sell games. bnetd would allow pirates to get around copy protection.

Re:Blizzard: it's been fun

[Anonymous Coward]

Valve hasn't been bought by anyone. Sierra was their publisher for Half-Life and its mods and add-ons, though.

Re:Blizzard: it's been fun

[wo1verin3]

You didn't/don't buy the software anymore, you don't own it.

You own a license to use it in it's form after you've agreed to speicific terms set out in the EULA.

Re:Blizzard: it's been fun

[Ionized]

well, no, because without bnetd, you wont be able to play your cracked version on it. and as most ppl know, RTS games lose their appeal very quickly in single-player mode. the only significant replay value is on b.net so although i don't like this move, it makes perfect business sense. they don't want WC3 to be pirated widely, and this WILL stop that.

Re:Blizzard: it's been fun

[Ionized]

you dont tell your boss "no im not going to do something." its not like blizzard has bargaining power - vivendi OWNS them. they have to toe the line, they have no other choice. plus, im sure vivendi has their own snooping-types to find out about bnetd, i dont think they would have needed an informant from blizzard themselves.

Re:Blizzard: it's been fun

[gandy909]

If I *buy* it, it's *mine*, and I WILL use it or resell it or give it away or disassemble it or modify it as *I* see fit as it was **MY** money that paid for it, and no, I DON'T give a rats ass about what ANY eula says. When they send out the jackbooted government thugs to pry it from my cold dead hands they can have it back.

On top of that in a /. article recently a judge confirmed that eulas aren't worth the paper they are written on on some circumstances anyway.

Re:Blizzard: it's been fun

[Zanthor]

So your saying, you stole the software, and because they are taking measures to stop your theft, you won't buy their product...

Good riddance.

Not to come off sounding like a goody two shoes, I've pirated software in the past, however as I matured, I realized that it was indeed, theft. Using software without paying for it, is simply that.

The bnetd server WAS allowing players to steal Blizzards software. They are right in every aspect of shutting this down.

For those who say they wont ever buy another Blizzard product over this, I'd wager many never have BOUGHT a Blizzard product. If you use a product, you should pay for it. Code doesn't write it's self.

Re:Blizzard: it's been fun

[jbailey999]

I do not remember anything in the EULA about 3rd party services emulating the battle.net protocol.

If it's there, please let me know.

Otherwise this is just some stupid lawyering, and the company deserves to lose business over people deciding that they won't support those practices. This is fundamental principal of capitalism.

Re:Blizzard: it's been fun

[jbailey999]

I used bnetd on internal corporate networks where Internet access wasn't available. We had cron start the server up after hours, and anyone in the company was welcome to play (or even coleague dialing in from home). That way you *knew* everyone on the system, and people could just play to have fun.

Re:Blizzard: it's been fun

[Anonymous Coward]

It's in the WarCraft 3 Beta EULA.

Here is the direct text:
"C. You are entitled to use the Program for your own use, but you are not entitled to:

(iii) host or provide matchmaking services for the Program or emulate or redirect the communication protocols used by Blizzard in the network feature of the Program, through protocol emulation, tunneling, modifying or adding components to the Program, use of a utility program or any other techniques now known or hereafter developed, for any purpose including, but not limited to network play over the Internet, network play utilizing commercial or non-commercial gaming networks or as part of content aggregation networks without the prior written consent of Blizzard..."

And it goes on. Any other beta tester that might happen to read this can verify it for me. Though this is only from the WarCraft 3 Beta EULA, I imagine that all of Blizzard's other Battle.net games have something similar, or at least will in the future. This is what Bnetd violated. They were hosting servers allowing people to play cracked versions of the WarCraft 3 Beta. Blizzard also had sites that were providing links, or information on how to get the ISO of the beta. That is the main reason why they were shut down.

I back up Blizzard on this. It's nice to see a company willing to crack down on lamers and kids who would rather ruin them than support them.

Re:Blizzard: it's been fun

[LoneRanger]

This is what I don't understand. Why EVER sell your company? Blizzard makes money, period. Same thing with /. Why sell to VA? They lose money, and fast! I'm afraid that /. is going to go under with VA and I'm going to lose a good news source.

So what happens if Blizzard's people STOP being willing drones and say "Up yours Vivendi"?

Re:Blizzard: it's been fun

[Ionized]

well, they would be fired, and "blizzard" would hire all new employees. not a very good result for any involved.

Re:Blizzard: it's been fun

[Anonymous Coward]

Ah yes, a company shutting down a site that can potentially drastically cut their sales? How awful. Let's boycott them forever.

It's time to face reality here. The Bnet emu can easily hurt Blizzard's sales for there is no security check when you log on. You can have whatever damn cdkey you like and everything is peachy. So why buy the full game? Why not rip it and then play on a fake server?

They're defending their money. That's what a good company does. Good for them, and if you really were a "fan" of theirs you'd understand this and would support them. If they don't make enough money, they don't make games anymore. Period.

So, any more idiots out there want to make some vapid overreactions?

Morons.

(Yes that's right folks. Insults weaken your argument and don't use them unless you're dealing with people who are unable to carry on a rational and calm conversation)

Re:Blizzard: it's been fun

[Dyolf Knip]

Wait a minute! The DMCA shouldn't apply at all in this case!

They claim that bnetd is a copy protection circumvention device. Namely, that it allows you to play without a unique CD-key, i.e., a pirated copy. Problem is, the only thing the copy protection does is prohibit access to Blizzard's Battlenet. It doesn't keep you from playing single or multiplayer games at all. Bnetd is only a circumvention device if the people using it gain access to Battlenet where they otherwise wouldn't. That is not the case.

It's like claiming a left-handed catcher's mitt is a circumvention device because people who use it won't be using the right-handed version to play baseball, ignoring the fact that you can still play without either.

Re:Blizzard: it's been fun

[Fig, formerly A.C.]

Gee. That's odd. I own MULTIPLE copies of StarCraft, Broodwar, Diablo, Diablo 2, Warcraft, and lots of expansions. All original, not copies. I think I have played on battle.net twice, total. I prefer to run my own server using 3rd party software, like bnetd. No cheaters, less lag, more manageable room sizes... Don't make the mistake of assuming that everyone who doesn't succumb to the "battle.net borg" is a software pirate, because you would be VERY wrong.

Re:Blizzard: it's been fun

[zeno_2]

That copy protection you talk about is only effecting a small population of diablo 2 users. Ive played on battle.net once, but since then I like playing locally on a LAN much better. I just had a lan party this weekened, and we used my key for every machine, each machine connected to battlenet to get the update, and then we just cancelled the logon screen, and we were able to play no problem.

Bnet would allow people with bad keys to play yes, but it also gives people another option. Its almost like saying that you cannot use normal tcp/ip to play, you have to use blizzard/tcpip to play instead.

You should have every right to chose how you play a multiplayer game, you should not have only the option of blizzard.net and local lan, what if your connection to battlenet is crap, but your connection to bnetd is great? Id chose bnetd any day of the week..

Ah well, im sure that someone will release the code to let all of us run bnetd servers (I have not read into much of bnetd, not sure if it requires a lot of hardware or whatnot, but I dont see it requiring much.

Re:Blizzard: it's been fun

[Anonymous Coward]

So what they pay 400.000 dollars a month i think that only proves how proffible the market is.

Re:Blizzard: it's been fun

[PeelBoy]

How do you know what Blizzard did and didn't do? You're an idiot. Some times I am ashamed to read Slashdot. You guys can be worse than mad moms in minivans. I get the feeling that you all feel like you're so special that the fate of the world should lie in your hands. That thought scares the shit out of me.

Re:Blizzard: it's been fun

[Darby]

Ah yes, a company shutting down a site that can potentially drastically cut their sales? How awful. Let's boycott them forever.

So you're saying that it is ok for Coke to shut down Pepsi's web site?
Before you shout "moron", make sure your argument doesn't qualify you.

Re:Blizzard: it's been fun

[Anonymous Coward]

It won't stop it. And I honestly don't see what's wrong with "pirating" a beta. I don't see why they didn't do two betas... nothing finds bugs faster than EVERYONE playing the damn game.

The man will never get us down. No one believes me but hey.. I always try before I buy.. and I accept nothing but the full version. I've found that demos can be misleading.. if I see a game I like... I'll try the FULL version.. if I like it.. I *gasp* buy it to show my support. If I don't.. I just saved myself 50 dollars.

And with the price being directly correlated with the fact piracy exists at all.. so be it. I wouldn't want to waste 30 dollars either. And another thing.. software companies wouldn't make any money at all if they sold games under 25 dollars a peace.. which is money I still wouldn't want to waste for a game I ended up not liking.

Re:Blizzard: it's been fun

[Anonymous Coward]

Peelboy.. you are my savior. BTW Whatever happened with you and Jailbreak?

Re:Blizzard: it's been fun

[PeelBoy]

Why Anonymous?

Nothing happened really. Just stopped getting online for a while. Got into building cars and riding sport bikes. Plus I've been too lazy to open my IRC client :)

Re:Blizzard: it's been fun

[Anonymous Coward]

Its just kinda of funny how you people are getting so pissed off because blizzard is trying to put a stop to piracy of its own software. Here you people are saying you will never buy a blizzard title again because they shutdown your server and stopping you from playing an illegal copy of there beta program...funny

Re:Blizzard: it's been fun

[Anonymous Coward]

If it's something ILLEGAL and cuts sales, that's a different story.

Re:Blizzard: it's been fun

[Darby]

If it's something ILLEGAL and cuts sales, that's a different story.

That much is certainly true, however this is NOT illegal.
copying the game and giving it away is illegal, but making a clone of Battlenet is NOT illegal.
So Blizzard going after someone giving away their games is justified, but this is not what the discussion is about.

Re:Blizzard: it's been fun

[decoydog]

by the same token, I hope your employer doesn't think the following:
I paid for your working hours so I will use you during those hours, resell you during those hours, disassemble you during those hours, modify you as I see fit during those hours since I paid for your time, and no, I don't give a rat's ass about what any work regulations say. Get off the damn internet and stop reading /. during work hours because I own you during work hours.

Don't people look at both sides of an issue before declaring a holy war? Instead it's a barrage of *mine* *I* *MY*. That same jackbooted government that you think is going to pry stuff out of your hands is the same one that makes sure you're not a slave during work.

Re:Blizzard: it's been fun

[Anonymous Coward]

im not a coward i just dotn feel like registering and shit. i got to say is this if blizzard was really concerned with money they would make you pay to use b.net blizzard has taken a great game and made it playable online for a free service sounds great to me. although the crack doesnt work i will be buying wc3 when it comes out ive played warcraft since day 1 warcraft 1 was great fun and i enjoyed every minute of it. Go blizzard.

Re:Blizzard: it's been fun

[instanto]

Bah,

Blizzard retail history:
Warcraft
WarcraftII,
Diablo,
Diablo II.

I was in the DIablo beta, testing battle.net - When it worked, and played it a lot untill it became booring just running around with all the other cheaters.

Starcraft sucked, so I did'nt purchase it.

Diablo II i purchased, and tried to go online - guess what, their fucking battle.net service could'nt handle the load from the players and I was unable to play there. Tried for a few days and gave up. Never gone back either.

A bnetd would allow me to play the game online with other players (and bastards) and not have to watch the server jump up and down like a 5$ whore..

Blizzard knows WC3 will be pirated, and this time I'll be getting the ISO instead of purchasing the store version.

Blizzard - bugger off.

Diablo 2 sucked by the way, "oh yea, lets add 3dfx support when they are almost out of the market and keep the resolution at 640 or "magnify mode" in 800x600.."

Re:Blizzard: it's been fun

[Codifex Maximus]

> battle.net forces users of Blizzard's software to
> purchase the software to obtain a legitimate key #
> to play online.

Ok, so why doesn't Blizzard make the clients validate keys with the actual game server rather than with the listing server?

Maybe they are afraid that the actual game server will be cracked? If that is the case then Blizzard may have no choice but to force players to use their Battle.Net - because the crackers want to use the software for free and Blizzard wants to retain some measure of control.

Re:Blizzard: it's been fun

[Anonymous Coward]

Someone [sourceforge.net] already did. :) It's GPLed by the way.

Re:Blizzard: it's been fun

[Anonymous Coward]

Highly doubt they pay 400k month for B.Net servers. They'd have to maintain an average of 13k games being sold per month (and thats if they cost $30 a pop, some are higher, alot are lower)... and thats not including staffing, etc. Toss in Servers, etc, and thats a bit high I believe.

Re:Blizzard: it's been fun

[zeno_2]

That page shows that they have not released any files yet. The link to the homepage talks about their legal troubles right now..

Am i missing something?

Re:Blizzard: it's been fun

[paroxysm]

Ah yes, a company shutting down a site that can potentially drastically cut their sales? How awful. Let's boycott them forever.

hmm.. you're a schmuck.. you can't play on bnetd servers without a copy of starcrack, therefore, you really have to either purchase the software, or (oh god, I'm going to say it) bum a copy from someone else.. those who are too cheap for whatever reason to spend 12 bux on SC, weren't going to ever buy it to begin with.. secondly, the only thing having a duplicate CD key will prevent you from doing, is accessing battle.net.. now, maybe I'm being silly, but I've never seen 6000 users on a bnetd server.. only small groups of friends.. so it's really not circumventing anything.. I could setup a vlan with 8 of my closests friends, all using the SAME copy of SC even, and we could play a lan game together.. should blizzard then go after anyone who produces virtual networking products as well, because they circumvent their copy protection? also note, bnetd is not a hack of the battle.net software, it's original code.. granted packet sniffers were undoubletly used to generate that code, but there's nothing illegal about that.. try and tell me I can't packet sniff my network.. that being the case, I don't see where bnetd violates any actual laws.. I could be wrong, and if so.. someone post and let me know..

Re:Blizzard: it's been fun

[Dyolf Knip]

Very poor analogy. Software is not a person. I buy the software, your employer only rents you. You signed a contract outlining the terms of that rental. And if your boss starts treating you like a slave at work, why don't you quit?

Really, the notion of treating software as something that I do not buy but rather rent is a stupid one. I pay a onetime fee for it, same as actually buying it. I can purchase it anonymously, without having to give my name and address, same as actually buying it. I never have to return it and don't have to pay any more to keep it, same as actually buying it. I can (sometimes) return it for a full refund, same as actually buying it. Software is bought and sold, plain and simple. Treating it as a rental is a trick the sellers came up with to try and make more money.

Re:Blizzard: it's been fun

[B4UTRUST]

You've never worked for the military have you? *laughs*

Not only do they disassemble you from the mind down and reassemble you into a military non-efficent working machine(it's called basic training aka boot camp) they make you do every meanial degrading and revolting task you could imagine yourself doing, for less then you'd do it in the civvie world and when you're done, they send you over to their friend in C Flight to scrub their toilets too.

Yes, the real world does work like that occasionall decoydog.

Re:Blizzard: it's been fun

[Erik Hollensbe]

While I agree with you, Blizzard is also notorious for releasing their demos LONG AFTER the release of their products themselves, so that more people will buy the game.

The fact is, is that there are already enough cheaters on battle.net, and it would be nice to play on private servers.

Re:Blizzard: it's been fun

[Erik Hollensbe]

While there are many game programmers, designers, and the like around, I work in a programming shop too, and losing just *one* key member in a project can hurt the whole project for quite some time.

This is how it works in any shop where design and programming commence. You just odn't replace people that easily.

Re:Blizzard: it's been fun

[Achronos]

The problem with this is that you don't actually buy software, you buy the license and (sometimes) the media that contains the software. If you actually bought the software, you'd be in control of how it is used. You could freely give it away, etc.

Now, one can bitch about the notion of licenses being restrictive and having hidden clauses in them, or only using free software. But the DMCA is not bad because it restricts your use of your "bought" software. You didn't buy it. The DMCA sucks because of the free reign it gives to copyright holders over licensing and fair use.

Software is already a service, just an unlimited use service. Now, with the Internet and the DMCA, it is a lot easier for companies to make you pay renewal fees.

Re:Blizzard: it's been fun

[Anonymous Coward]

First of all.. I have bought starcraft several times. Second I have never downloaded a warcraft 3 beta. So that part does not concern me.. next I loved bnetd and similar projects. They were truly awesome considering how sucky the lag has become on battle.net. The fact people are using it in the wrong way is not fault of the bnetd creators.

You are very arrogant. The entire way you arange your conversation makes me truly sick. You assume that everyone else is immature, as if you have suddenly ascended into the heavens above to look down on us below. Your self-righteous attitude doesn't help anyone, even yourself. I will continue to buy Blizzard products if I can play multiplayer well.. but that is less likely not that bnetd has been shut down. I wonder if you have ever bought a legitimate Blizzard product. Please tell me that battle.net doesn't need to be improved, everyone here knows that bnetd was a good way to take the load down off of it. The fact it took this many years to use DMCA against bnetd simply shows that the only reason this was done was becuase of Warcraft 3.. which I will state again was not the main reason for having bnetd. And as you should know people will still get warcraft 3 anyway. Do you really think this will stop that from happening?

It doesn't help blizzard and it hurts everyone who owns their software and wants to play it multiplayer. Even if this includes some illegitimate players it also includes those like me who have bought the games. If you want maybe I can fax you proof of my ownership... but I doubt you would believe that considering you are intent on believing your own self-righteousness

Re:Blizzard: it's been fun

[Original Cyber-Surfe]

Frankly, I own Diablo, Diablo ][, never was much interested in StarCraft, and have at times owned the previous versions of WarCraft. All have been store bought originals. And that EULA is BS, and frankly I'm so sick of the US Goverment being bought by big corperations for their own use. We don't have a goverment in the US anymore, we have a cheap whore, that claims to be a goverment. (DCMA, the RIAA's activities under it with the DeCSS, and the arrest of that Russian guy awhile back.) Frankly Piss on Blizzard.

Re:Blizzard: it's been fun

[decoydog]

you bought the right to use the software as intended by the publisher not ownership of the code. Same manner that you agreed to be employed as you intended by and not into slavery. The fact that you don't have to return it or pay anymore to keep it is not the same as actually buying it and owning complete rights to it unless that was the agreement. You just don't go making up your own rules and terms after you've agreed to something.

If you like, I'm sure more publishers can adopt a software subscription program and track your name and address to make it more justified in your eyes.

If you don't like terms of use that a publisher places on a product, than don't buy it. Just like quitting or not taking on a job because the boss is going to treat you like a slave. But if you decide to do so knowing the terms of the agreement, then you only have yourself to blame. No one is putting a gun to your head and saying buy this software. You have a choice, excerise it instead of taking an easy way out and rationalizing it to your satisfaction.

Re:Blizzard: it's been fun

[decoydog]

nope, no never been in the military. I explored that out of high school but realized that I probably wouldn't survive and if I did, I would have handed at least 4 solid years of my life into voluntary slavery.

And I know the real world does work that way occassionally, the best thing to do is to avoid those situations rather than getting into them and regretting it. Right?

Re:Blizzard: it's been fun

[TossTheSaladMan]

oh come on...its not like theres going to be more people who copy their game cause they do this! maybe theres just gonna be a couple less, caus there actually is people who enjoy playing on a "fake battlenet", rather than blizzards, one of the reasons for this is, as Kain01 says, caus there can be so many llame n annoying ppl there!

the bnetd server didnt allow people to steal the game, wtf are you talking bout...didnt it just give players the oppotunity to play against each other on other servers than blizzards? those who wont buy the game, will still not be able to play on blizzards official server, but just against each other, but they still will even with this program removed, if u ever heard of LANs :P

and as a last thing, i just see pirat cds as big demos, giving you the real aspects of a game, not like the official demos!and i can be half way through a pirat game, before i go and buy it...i just dont have the money to go n buy games when i feel like, i gotta try it all first...

Re:Blizzard: it's been fun

[TossTheSaladMan]

it was supposed to be; its not like theres going to be more people who BUY their game....

Re:Blizzard: it's been fun

[Anonymous Coward]

Thats fucking bullshitt you moron, Blizzard is teh finest gaming company ever, and just cuz they aint boneheads that let everyone rip the games they make off, they all teh sudden are evil?

Maby teh software is intended to be used legit but thats not the way the world works, and you know it try for once to buy a fucking game and support quality software, bah you guys are boycotting Blizzard for bullshit reasons

Sincerly Ez^ liberator of dickheadz

Boycott

[qslack]

bnetd was a lifesaver for me. Battle.net wouldn't work with my LAN setups so when I wanted to play with friends, one of them set up a bnetd. Thank you for all you've done, whoever wrote it.

But on to the topic of Blizzard. They're soon to be releasing Warcraft III, and the Slashdot audience is going to be a major market for them. I think we should steer away from any of their products until they withdraw this complaint and compensate/apologize.

So: when you see Warcraft III on the shelves, don't buy it. Buy Castle Wolfenstein or whatever, just don't buy products from a company who is against our rights on the net.

Re:Boycott

[Cruciform]

Would sniffing packets be counter to the DMCA?
I'm no coder, but I would assume that you could find most of the information you need to send and receive in the packets if you analyze it long enough. Can someone in the know elaborate on how they did it, and why it's counter to the DMCA?

It's nice that we don't have that dumbass law up here (Canuck land), but then US lawmakers have no problems foisting such laws against friendly countries, so really none of us are safe.

Re:Boycott

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not so much the lawmakers of our nation you need fear. Look at home, and you'll see a veritable gaggle of government officials willing to sell you out to corporate interests. Look even further, across the pond, and you'll see a host of EUers chomping at the bit. Face it: you're in the same boat we are, and they've put a hole in its hull. We've been removed from the equation because we lack sufficient strength in this new world. Our dollars mean nothing to our governments when for every one we can offer, a million are coming from next door. Life is coming around full circle, and the aristocracy is coming back into fashion. There is little we can do to deter fate, but there are many good folks trying to by means of non-violent, civil action against the government. Should they fail, we are left with only two viable options: open revolt against government, or against the corporations. I'm a bit fond of our government, so I say it's time to do away with the corporations. We can't truly march en masse against them, as the police would protect the corporations, so we'll have to settle for a guerilla action. If we act properly, and maintain a strict command hierarchy, we can minimize casualties while inflicting the most damage against the corporations.

Maybe I've been watching Fight Club too many times...

Re:Boycott

[Anonymous Coward]

No offence, but it sounds like your network needs somebody more qualified to set it up.

Additionally, while there might be seventy bazillion people who read slashdot and tongue Rob Malda's asshole clean for him, it's preposterous to think that Blizzard gives a fuck if every single slashdot reader who would have bought there game, now won't. The slashdot community just isn't that large in the global scale of things. Not to mention the fact that a vast majority of the readers here purport to never buy any software, particularily windows software.

FYI. I'm not much of a Blizzard fan. The only game of their's I have bought was Starcraft out of the bargain bin and I didn't like it. Never finished the game. But it is their right to decide if they want tons of people pirating their software and to shutdown services/projects that will assist in that endevour.

Re:Boycott

[wdr1]

So: when you see Warcraft III on the shelves, don't buy it.

Amen!

In particular, please wait at least one day, so I have plenty of time to get my copy before it sells out.

-Bill

Re:Boycott

[tshak]

So: when you see Warcraft III on the shelves, don't buy it.

Unfortunately your recommendation lacks insight into the real problem. They may have shareholders that have the power to overthrow you if you don't use your corporate legal power to it's greatest extent. This has nothing to do with an "evil" company. Everytime I see a company "abuse" the DMCA (read: Use the DMCA), I frown on our government that's not acting on it.

Think about the soft money issue. Even the candidates (Gore, Nader) who where very much against soft money accepted soft money because that's the law of the playing field. If they "stood up for what was right" by "boycotting soft money" they would have had no chance in the race. Blizzard is playing by the rules fair and square. Don't like it, Change The Rules. Boycotting their product only does good if you actually use that money towards defeating the DMCA. Otherwise, you are just as passive as those who buys it with no regard.

Re:Boycott

[Anonymous Coward]

Mmmmhmm. And maybe if Gore had "stood up for what was right", the election would not have been close enough for the Bush side to pull whatever strings they did to buy the election.

Fuck 'em all - I've lost all faith in the US Government at this point. They've become as rife with corruption as the Soviets supposedly were.

Re:Boycott

[Anthony Boyd]

So: when you see Warcraft III on the shelves, don't buy it.

Unfortunately your recommendation lacks insight into the real problem. They may have shareholders that have the power to overthrow you if you don't use your corporate legal power to it's greatest extent.

Hmmm. Well, the shareholders I've known over the years have been extremely sensitive to market pressures. If your company is being boycotted, it is very rare that shareholders shrug their shoulders and say, "sorry, the law exists, we're gonna keep doing it, because we can." Hell, even Adobe gave in to pressure over the Dmitry incident. I think qslack is onto something with his/her suggestion to boycott. Losing money is a very imporant topic to shareholders, and if they lose because we had our acts together enough to boycott, they'll abandon their DMCA pursuits quickly. Again, this is only based upon my experience. But I think qslack is right.

Re:Boycott

[scanman857]

As in any case, the legal system should be seen as a last resort. If they are going to buy laws for the purpose of terrorizing their own customers (and who do you think supplied the money to buy the laws?), I see no reason not to boycott them AND support the EFF/ACLU.

Re:Boycott

[solman]

This is simply wrong. Shareholders care about one things, profits. A boycott will directly and negatively impact this.

Shareholders would strongly prefer that Blizzard NOT use its Corporate legal power if it reduces profits (through legal expenditures and/or lost revenues from a boycott)

Re:Boycott

[Chasuk]

This all ignores one simple fact:

If you buy a product from me on the condition that you only use it while wearing your grandmother's dress and masturbating into a jar of peanut butter, and you can't abide by those conditions, then don't buy the product.

Now, if Blizzard doesn't have any legalese in their purchase agreement restricting services such as bnetd, then Blizzard can fuck themselves and you can do whatever you want with your game.

Note that I care not one iota for the legal aspects of anything. The moral and the ethical aspects are my only concerns, and those are sometimes at odds with the legal framework. I won't live long enough even if I reach extreme old age to change unjust laws in the courts, but i do honor any and all contracts that I have assented to, and if Blizzard wants me in grannie's nightdress with peanut butter on my cock and I want to play Warcraft III bad enough, move over granny and hello, Jif.

You can't get any simpler than that.

Yes, I know that Blizzard are trying to prevent ther use/programming of a server product, but the same idea applies. Presuumably the programmers of bnetd had to obtain a legal copy in order to program their server. Therefore, if such a restriction exists in the Blizzard EULA, then I feel that the bnetd people are morally obligated to honor it. If not, well, as I said before, Blizzard can fuck thmselves.

Does the restriction exist or not?

Re:Boycott

[Cuthalion]

Blizard is owned by Vivendi Universal, a company which has revenues in the dozens of billions. Their shareholders probably wouldn't notice if blizzard just ceased to exist alltogether.

Re:Boycott

[Anthony Boyd]

Their shareholders probably wouldn't notice if blizzard just ceased to exist alltogether.

The original comment said that the shareholders will force Blizzard to pursue the DMCA strongarm tactics. I then said that shareholders care about losses from boycotts, so your counter is to suggest that shareholders won't even notice Blizzard's collapse. Which is it? Are they so involved as to force Blizzard's hand or so uninvolved to not care if Blizzard is boycotted out of existence?

Re:Boycott

[Anonymous Coward]

You're just upset that your parents decided to start charging rent now that you're 25.

Re:Boycott

[Sabalon]

Does it matter if the restriction exists? For all they care, you could microwave your CD and use it as an ash tray. They are not going after the gamers, they are going after the people implementing binetd - I guess claiming that by implemnting a protocol they are now infringing on some copywrite.

But, they don't really need to own the game to do this. All they need to do is get two friends with a copy of diablo and a sniffer. In theory, they should be able to write binetd without ever touching the game itself.

Regardless, I think you have some serious issues with your relations and peanut butter you need to sort out first :)

Re:Boycott

[Anonymous Coward]

If you buy a product from me on the condition that you only use it while wearing your grandmother's dress and masturbating into a jar of peanut butter, and you can't abide by those conditions, then don't buy the product.

Agreed, but completely irrelevant. In case you hadn't noiticed, nobody bought it under any conditions.

The conditions are imposed on you AFTER you buy the thing.

When I bought my Blizzard software (I own almost everything they've ever sold) the salesperson never presented me with any list of conditions, nor did I sign any contract.

Re:Boycott

[Anonymous Coward]

No, it does exist. They did not have to "obtain a legal copy of it" because "it" would be the server - which blizzard owns and does not distribute. This doesn't even affect Blizzards business (unless they plan on charging for online play w/ Warcrap III).

Oh well, no more Blizzard for me then.

Re:Boycott

[AdTropis]

i don't think that buying something under a set of conditions should always be legally enforced. take for instance the example of a shop owner selling hammers with the sole condition that you must murder someone with it before you can you use it to repair things around your house. so, if i buy the hammer, am i really obligated to kill someone (which, of course, is illegal)? i think not.

when it comes to software, i can see where companies can actually license the use of their programs and you do not actually own the program. you may own the media, but you don't own the code. however, when it comes to companies trying to enforce what you do *with* the software, i think that is a completely different story. i can buy a wrench and use it as a hammer-like tool. does that make it possible for the wrench manufacturer to sue me for misuse of the tool? no... it probably voids my warranty on the tool, but they have no legal recourse and i don't see why software companies do.

Re:Boycott

[Anonymous Coward]

It's always nice to see spinless people post to slashdot. It makes me so happy to see that world is full of spineless fucking idiots.

Re:Boycott

[KOIMenace]

Dear Sirs,

Your recent action using the DMCA against bnetd.org is wrong. I think you need to re-think your actions.

If you publish a game and then attempt to prohibit people who legally purchase your game from making their own "add-ons" or modifications to the game via the DMCA, your going to end up hurting your own sales. For example look at the wildly popular game "Half-Life" if it where not for the mod "Counter-Strike" the game would have died off long ago. But because Valve and Sierra had the foresight to allow user to add modifications and even game servers, IE: the Linux version, the games is one of the most popular games of all times.

I would suggest that you check some of the negative press your are not getting for your actions.

http://slashdot.org/articles/02/02/21/0136256.sh tm l?tid=127

As one of the co-owners of www.amatuer-hour.net, I have already called for a limited boycott of all of your products from our Admins. If by February 25th, 2002 you have not reversed your position, I will call for a general boycott of your products and services.

By using a poorly written law to stifle innovation and creativity, you have shown that your company is not someone I want to be associated with,

Denis Dimick

denis@dimick.net

Cc: slashdot.org, admin@amateur-hour.net

Re:Boycott

[Quintin Stone]

Contracts that require an illegal action are, by law, uneforceable. So that's not a very good comparison.

Re:Boycott

[Anonymous Coward]

But it's so hard!

Re:Boycott

[Shishak]

Aaah, but this is where you are wrong. It MAY be illegal to use Blizzard products with bnetd but it IS NOT illegel to write/maintain/deliver bnetd. The bnetd people may have broken the contract by using a Blizzard product in order to snoop the packets used to reverse engineer but the bnetd program itself isn't illegal

Re:Boycott

[Anonymous Coward]

So, is this the same slashdot audience that didn't purchase enough games to keep Loki running?

Re:Boycott

[Lonath]

I don't know, but listen to what blizzard asserts on their site: legal FAQ

Q: Does Blizzard Entertainment® allow or support other Battle.net® like or emulation servers? Can I host one of these rogue servers?

No. Except as set forth in the next paragraph, Blizzard Entertainment® does not support or condone network play of its games anywhere but Battle.net®. Specifically, you may not host or provide matchmaking services for any of our games or emulate or redirect the communication protocols used by Blizzard Entertainment® in the network feature of its games, through protocol emulation, tunneling, modifying or adding components to the game(s), use of a utility program or any other techniques now known or hereafter developed, for any purpose including, but not limited to network play over the Internet, network play utilizing commercial or non-commercial gaming networks or as part of content aggregation networks without the prior written consent of Blizzard Entertainment®.

I guess you can sniff them, but you just can't do anything to them. That's interesting to me that they say you can't run the output of their sockets through your proxy. That's like saying you can't block or redirect spyware output by use of a proxy. If that isn't bullshit, it should be.

Re:Boycott

[Anonymous Coward]

like people who post as anonymous cowards?

Re:Boycott

[PyroMosh]

www.amatuer-hour.net? Sounds like a pr0n site (correct me if I'm wrong). How much game software does a company publishing a porn site use? For that matter, how much game software does any company use?

Re:Boycott

[Cheeko]

Actually it does affect Blizzard to the extent that it allows people with pirated copies of the game to enjoy the bnet experience. At current, at least with Diablo, battlenet tracked the CD key of the person connecting. If two copies of the same key were being used, this became an issue, with this new sever people who obtained pirated versions of the game no longer had to worry about somebody else connecting with the same key. Basically Blizzard wants to ensure that they can track anyone who tries using all the features of the game in a pirated version.

Re:Boycott

[Syberghost]

If you buy a product from me on the condition that you only use it while wearing your grandmother's dress and masturbating into a jar of peanut butter, and you can't abide by those conditions, then don't buy the product.

Put that in big print on the front of the box, and I won't.

Put it on a little piece of paper inside that I didn't read at all, or didn't read until after I payed and opened the box (thereby making it difficult or impossible for me to return), and you can eff off while I masturbate into strawberry jelly in my sister's dress instead. :-)

Re:Boycott

[Anonymous Coward]

I never agreed to any such license so I don't really know how it would apply to me...

Besides, this is a DMCA case not a license case.

Re:Boycott

[Cuthalion]

I am not taking both sides. That was the only comment I have posted in this thread. I believe that many shareholders in Vivendi Universal don't even know that Blizzard exists or that they own part of it. What I think is a likely scenario is that there is some high level management pressure on Blizzard for profitability, but that Blizzard itself is, for the most part, autonomous.

My point is not that a boycott cannot work (though in this case I do believe that) but that even if it does work, the shareholders won't be part of the equation.

Re:Boycott

[steffl]

well, interesting but it's not legally binding (just pointing that out, not implying you said it was).

erik

Re:Boycott

[Maxtaf]

A lot of us posted as Anonymous Coward because we were too damn lazy to actually sign up/in.

Re:Boycott

[Gerbil912]

Why Boycott? I hear people citing game examples like Half-life, which have thrived over user modifications, but this is totally different. The games Battle.net moderates do not require private servers to keep their games running and popular. Games like Quake and Half-life are designed to allow people to be creative however the want to with the game. People can make mods, maps, and run their own server choosing their own game rules. Games like starcraft and Diablo are not like that for the average player. Games like Diablo are especially incompatable with mods. For those games, the average user needs a central median to connect to all the other players. Battle.net does this perfectly, but the key difference between Quake is that it's through Blizard's own servers. That being the case, they have as much right to regulate how the users connect to their servers to play their game. Allowing things like mods for games like Diablo and Starcraft would totally disrupt this, where as it thrives in Quake-style games simply because of the private community behind it. In the case in the article, Blizzard does have a good point. If someone makes a clone battle.net, then they have no way to control bugs or exploits that may come from that. The only way they can be sure that their game is running smothly and efficiently for everyone is if it's through their OWN products.

Re:Boycott

[Anonymous Coward]

I can't really see what would be so bad about being spinless... unless you're an electron, of course.

Overseas!

[starduste]

What about hosting the site overseas? That way, the DMCA copyright law would not apply...

Re:Overseas!

[Kryptolus]

And when the server flies to US for some reason ... the FBI aressts it ...

hmm ...

Re:Overseas!

[Anonymous Coward]

Worked really well for the DeCSS author didn't it? :)

Re:Overseas!

[shogun]

What is the velocity of an unladen laptop?

Re:Overseas!

[LiENUS]

9.8m/s^2

Re:Overseas!

[Anonymous Coward]

velocity is given in m/s

Re:Overseas!

[Scooby Snacks]

Would that be an African laptop or a European laptop?

<rimshot>

Re:Overseas!

[scanman857]

I... don't know! AAAUGHHH!!!

Re:Overseas!

[StandardDeviant]

that's the gravatic ACCELERATION constant he gave, so yeah, the units are in m/sec^2. :-) [yes, that means things fall faster (in the limit of being without drag) the longer they fall, if you haven't taken a physics course]

Re:Overseas!

[Anonymous Coward]

Get an Iranian to host it. One of the few countries not under corporate control...

Re:Overseas!

[Anonymous Coward]

now, I've seen lots of things fly.. but never a server... I realize wireless broadband is on it's way up in the world, but I hardly thing the server is going to fly to the us, for any reason.. if you're referring to the person responsible for hosting the site, that may be a different story altogether..

wcIII

[lowtekneq]

What i wonder is if this will change people's minds on buying War Craft III

Re:wcIII

[Quizme2000]

Yeah, we'll download it from Morpheus instead *sigh* No Don't do that either! I have boycotted the MPAA, Adobe and MS buy not giving them any of my money. To fight the DMCA:
1) Write your Representative and tell them how you feel about the DMCA. By law they are required to respond to all letters.
2) Don't purchase products from DCMA supporters
3) Tell DMCA supports that you will no longer buy their product because...

If you read this and think its too much trouble...fine I won't flame, but you should know that our Gov't laws are made by your representitives in congress and the senate, not by Corporations. Your congressman is a whore who values two things money and apporvel ratings. If you are a provider of either they will listen.

Re:wcIII

[C. Mattix]

This probably won't affect WC3 sales at all. Sure a few people won't buy it because of this. But Joe Bob consumer who walks into Best Buy to buy it because Computer Gaming World said that it is a good game doesn't give a care about the DCMA. They are the ones they are selling to.

It is really about corporations doing an end run around the system as much as individuals hacking products. Think about it. They are doing something illegal (well, unconstitutional) to get their way. What is copying CDs or downloading MP3s you don't own, or DivXs or whatever? Doing something illegal to get their own way. The corporations are just bigger and better at it.

-----
-2 Flamebait.

Re:wcIII

[magnified_plaid]

better yet donate what ever money you would have spent on it to an orginization that is actively opposing the DMCA EFF DMCA Page

P.S. Nice sig

Re:wcIII

[loraksus]

besides the fact that the game fucking sucks in terms of gameplay, I think that bliz will have less $$ coming in because of this.

Re:wcIII

[Jay Mirioashi]

Unfortunately, a handful of 15-25 year-old "video gamers" does not represent approval ratings, nor will your congressman believe them to.

Text of www.bnetd.org (for when its slashdotted)

[Commienst]

Sorry, ...

... we are down right now. However, this time it isn't because of technical reasons but for legal issues.

This site has been disabled as requested by Blizzard Entertainment and it will remain closed as we have no legal recourse other than to file a lawsuit against a large corporation. This is due to 17 USC Section 512(c)(1)(C) (AKA DMCA, supposedly required to be passed by WIPO treaties). Blizzard claims bnetd is in violation of 17 USC Section 1201(b), though we do not agree with their interpretation. Blizzard refused to specify a specific list of files on this site so the whole thing must be blocked. We are very sorry for the inconvenience but there is nothing we can do.

Text of original message follows:

February 19, 2002

Internet Gateway Inc.
tjung@igateway.net
noc@igateway.net
hostmaster@igateway.net

Dear Sir or Madam:
This letter is to notify you, pursuant to the provisions of the Digital
Millennium Copyright Act, that we believe one of your customers is
infringing Blizzard Entertainment's, a division of Vivendi Universal Games,
Inc. ("VUG"), copyrighted materials. Specifically, Blizzard Entertainment is
the owner of the copyright for the computer games Diablo(r) II and StarCraft(r)
and the multi-player server software run by Blizzard Entertainment on its
Battle.net(r) site. The following site hosts and/or distributes software that
violates Blizzard Entertainment's copyright:
http://www.bnetd.org/
The aforementioned site either hosts or distributes software which illegally
modifies and/or alters Blizzard Entertainment copyrighted software or
bypasses anti-circumvention technology, thereby infringing upon Blizzard
Entertainment copyrights. Accordingly, Blizzard Entertainment demands that
you act expeditiously to remove, or disable access to, the web page listed
above in order for you to claim a safe harbor under the DMCA from liability
for contributory and vicarious copyright infringement. Please immediately
delete or disable access to this web page and remove its contents from view.
Should you have any questions, please contact the undersigned at
piracy@blizzard.com or 949-955-1380 extension
1616.
I have a good faith belief that use of the material in the manner complained
of is not authorized by Blizzard Entertainment, VUG, its agents or the law,
and that the information in this notice is accurate. I declare under penalty
of perjury under the laws of the United States of America that I am
authorized to act on behalf of all of the aforementioned entities.

Sincerely,
Rod Rigole
Corporate Counsel

End of original message.

We would like to thank our users for all the support and feedback over the years.

Dark side?

[Anonymous Coward]

So does this mark the move of Blizzard to the Dark Side?

Just think...

[fluidmind]

Just think though...as buggy as battle.net is already, if they had to deal with 3rd party servers and one didn't patch, they'd all stop patching, it'd be anarchy!

Re:Just think...

[Anonymous Coward]

Damn your stupid. Get a clue before you post, 3rd party servers which were enabled with bnetd wouldn't appear in the standard server listing on Internet Games in Blizzard games, just in lan listings or specified servers (enabling hosting of true local server hosted games).

Google comes to the rescue again.

[Anonymous Coward]

Here we go, while it lasts:

http://www.cs.nmsu.edu/~rocombs/sc/

Re:Google comes to the rescue again.

[i_am_nitrogen]

Thanks for the link to a site where all the files are "permission denied." It was a nice try, at any rate...

Vivendi is evil! Dad gummit, you're telling me that somebody bought my employer and I work for the ... NO! don't take me away!! I promise to never use free software again (while you're watching)! *mumbling* vivendi vivendi vivendi

Re:Google comes to the rescue again.

[Anonymous Coward]

Well here are some Edonkey (which has a linux version)links to the files I could grab. bnetdStats-0.3.6.tar.gz

bnetd-0.4.25.tar.gz

BNS-src.zip

FAQ.htm

Re:Google comes to the rescue again.

[Anonymous Coward]

binaries http://otc.isu.edu/bnetd/sc/

source http://otc.isu.edu/bnetd/src/

Preventing cheating?

[Anonymous Coward]

I suspect Blizzard tried to shut down bnetd due to cheating reasons. On a perfect server program, intelligence is held in the client completely; of course Blizzard did not use a client-intelligence model as usual. Particularly malicious users will no doubt use bnetd for unintended purposes.

Re:Preventing cheating?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's becuase you don't need a valid cd-key to play on the emulated server. This means pirates can get together and play online. Thats the only power against pirates pc game companies had, the multiplay that went through their servers wouldn't work on a cracked copy. So if you wanted to play the multi you had to buy the game. If they can just make their own server anyone can play and they don't like it...

fsgs battlenet server still available.

[dan the person]

While it's not GPLed, the battle net server that everyone actually uses is still available.

There's no sign on their homepage that they have received nasty letters.

http://www.fsgs.com

Re:fsgs battlenet server still available.

[Carlos Laviola]

1.5) What is the history of bnetd?

The project started around the time Starcraft was released. It was created for hack value and as a solution for the problems mentioned in the reply to question 1.4.

The original work was done by Mark, who maintained releases on http://www.starhack.ml.org/ through version 0.3. That version spawned several ports to MS-Windows, most notably FSGS. (...)

Re:fsgs battlenet server still available.

[dan the person]

The fsgs server was originally a windows port of bnetd.

Nowdays fsgs runs on windows, linux, and FreeBSD.

Re:fsgs battlenet server still available.

[d3jp_]

Yes, but the FSGS server hasn't been updated in months, which leads to several Blizzard titles simply refusing to work due to new patches.

Maybe they'll release a new version soon...

Re:fsgs battlenet server still available.

[Nocturnal]

FSGS runs on windows and linux, it is also more than just a battle net clone. It covers a lot of games that dont use battle net. Downside is no access to source code and a serious lack of documentation.

Since of course they based it origional of the bnetd code, I wouldent be surprised if they are issued with a shutdown order something in the near future.

Re:fsgs battlenet server still available.

[dan the person]

Which tittles fail to run due to new patches?

That latest fsgs server has been updated to work with the recent 1.09 patch for starcraft.

The only solution

[Prop]

People bitch about the DMCA but if Blizzard comes out with a must have game, will you go out and buy it anyway ?

Time to show you intend to punish companies that wield the DMCA to clobber the little guys.

Boycott Blizzard.

Re:The only solution

[zerocool^]

It won't do anything.

I hate to burst the /. reader's bubble, but the collective group of us boycotting a game will do *nothing* to hurt blizard.
Let's think about this: Slashdot has about a quarter million users. Of these, about 1/3 are zealots who don't run windows, not even for the little pleasures. Of the remaining, i would suspect fewer than 1/5 of them *EVER* buy software because they feel damnit it should be free (beer). And after that, I would say that 10% of the remaining windows users who don't pirate software actually play blizard games but would be still willing to participate in a boycot. The rest will go on buying the game anyway because it's going to be a good game.

So we're left with 3000 people that will take part in a boycot against the DCMA and Blizzard simultaneously. Oh Ouch. How many copies of diablo II have sold?
Well here's a guess. 2.75 Million copies. And again,
how about the expansion? Another million copies. Boycotting them will do no good.

Now, I was trying to figure out why they did this, and I was thinking "oh this is easy, there's a charge for playing on battle.net, that's their revenue model. But on battle.net i found this:
Battle.net provides an arena for Blizzard customers to chat, challenge opponents and initiate multiplayer games, at no cost to the user. There is no hourly or monthly fee to use Battle.net, and there is no startup charge. To play a supported game over the Internet with other players worldwide, simply select the Battle.net option from within the game.

So what gives, blizard? How is this helping you? Are there ads in battle.net? Do you use it for free market research somehow? Do you simply want to track ALL of the online blizard games going on? Throw me a bone here.

But let's be serious: I'm not going to boycott blizzard. They've only released 5 games in their history, yet they've ALL been fantastic smash hits that i've loved. So I'm just going to go do the exact same thing that every other casual windows user on slashdot is going to do. I'm going to wait for a copy of it to hit kopykatz or morpheus and download it.

Boo fucking hoo, boycot.

~z

Re:The only solution

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree.

The last Blizzard game I bought was the first Diablo.

That has been and will be that last game I buy from them.

Re:The only solution

[Yorrike]

ARGH!

I run bnetd on one of the spare servers at work for our bi-weekly Starcraft games. It's a fantastic piece of software and it allows us (in IT) to have an IPX free network whilst still allowing for gaming (after hours of course ; ).

I hate to say it, but if I boycotted Blizzard, I'd have to boycott Nintendo as well, which is a real shame since I live and breath Starcraft and Gamecube.

On Blizzard, I was really looking forward to playing as the Night Elves in WCIII, but it looks like they'll be selling one less copy. And Nintendo, I must have spent a large percentage of my income over the last 15 years on their games, I'm a Nintendophile and I'm really close to boycotting them. It's sad really.

None of this DMCA thing makes any sense.

Re:The only solution

[Cid Highwind]

People bitch about the DMCA but if Blizzard comes out with a must have game, will you go out and buy it anyway ?

No.
Warcraft3 looks like a "must have game", but I just sent Blizzard a nasty email promising not to buy it. I intend to stand by that.

Re:The only solution

[J23SE]

Wow. They'll get a 1% drop in sales. Whoop-dee-doo. Sorry, you're not being realistic. Even if all slashdotters boycotted Blizzard games, it wouldn't make a difference. And all Slashdotters won't boycott blizzard games, because Blizzard games are some of the best games on the market. So be realistic. . with boycotting, start smaller, or at least don't rally everyone against something they won't affect.

.02

Re:The only solution

[billcopc]

Boycott Blizzard ? No no.. boycott Vivendi! (if that is at all possible).

We need to (at least try to) kick the shiznit out of these media monstrosities. They are the ones who use bribery to turn their fascist ideals into federal laws. They are the ones who squelch out free speech with the megaphone that is capitalism. They are the ones who will ultimately turn everything into a 1984 nightmare, and it's going to be much sooner than we all think unless we wake the fuck up and start defending ourselves against this absolute corruption.

Re:The only solution

[Satai]

People bitch about the DMCA but if Blizzard comes out with a must have game, will you go out and buy it anyway ?

Will I? No. I most certainly won't. But I don't think everyone will do the same - this is the same old "Hey, this game isn't out for Linux, so rather than holding out I'll buy it for Windows" situation. It seems like so many people are willing to use Free Software or go without - except when it comes to games.

It's almost like these games are the weakest link in the Free Software community - like they are the single hold that the community gives away to closed-source, proprietary vendors.

And if we don't use this as a great opportunity to stick it back to Blizzard, they win. I for one will not buy another Blizzard game - and will actively dissuade others from doing the same - until this matter is resolved to my satisfaction. Much the same way that I do not purchase or use Microsoft products, Adobe products (although the reason for that has since been reduced) or, as of this morning, Nintendo products.

We have to stand up as a community, people! Don't take this shit any longer.

Re:The only solution

[batkiwi]

The part you're obviously missing is that bnetd also let people bypass the cd-key check.

This means unauthorized (for beta, non-beta people, for the real game, people who didn't buy the game) people can now play online.

Re:The only solution

[Halo5]

Well for me, Diablo2/LOD is the ONLY reason that I boot to Win2k (I've tried D2 and Wine, but its problematic at best). I run Linux/KDE on the desktop exclusively. I paid for all of my Blizzard software (even for my wife's machine), which is well into $230.

I've been a Blizzard customer since I first downloaded the Diablo Beta (remember those days?), but I'm willing to boycott if the rest of the /. community is. I disapprove of ANY company who actively attempts to enforce the DMCA.

BTW, this will come at a cost to me; my wife has no idea what the f*** the DMCA is, she just wants to build up her Assasin character! Oh well, at least she has Throne of Darkness to fall back on... :)

Re:The only solution

[rbeattie]

You're an idiot.

You boycott something by not buying the product and then actively telling your friends and relatives not to buy it either. Whenever you hear people mention the name, you go into litanies about the company and don't shut up until whoever is listening to you agrees not to buy the product either. You post to message boards, you bug your local merchant, you do what you need to do to get your message across. Maybe you'll be lucky and get someone in the press to notice and then the word will spread even more.

3000 people know a lot of people. It's a networking effect.

-Russ

Re:The only solution

[Anonymous Coward]

The ouiju board says your best friend is going to die in three weeks. Make the most out of them.

Re:The only solution

[Halo5]

I couldn't have said it better! I think that people underestimate the influence of the Slashdot community. Also, negative customer feedback can often have a similar effect to a loss in sales.

Let's start firing off those emails!

If they even PERCEIVE a loss in sales, they may re-think their position in this matter. It's happened before...

Of course, in my case, the loss in sales is a reality!

Re:The only solution

[person-0.9a]

I wonder if it would cause any problems if a large number of users with battle.net chat clients logged on and transmitted the text of the DMCA simultaneously at some scheduled time?

Re:The only solution

[zerocool^]

see, the thing is I liken this to the new river free press, where I live. I'm a fairly liberal person. But this news monthly puts me to shame. It is more left field than any politician I can think of. Anyway, in December's issue they had a list of products to boycott this christmas season. Some of them were legit, but some of them were outrageous. Example: Boycott everything made by Kraft Foods because the cows they milk for cheese get fed Bovine Growth Hormone. Now, point one: my girlfriend is in vet school, she has a degree in animal science specializing in beef production. According to her, BGH has *never* been proven to have ill side effects in humans or animals, but just in case, there's a period surrounding milking/ slaughter that they can't feed them BGH. Point two: The new river free press is read by *AT LEAST* 7,000 people. Even if EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THEM told 100 other people, and 700,000 people boycotted kraft, it wouldn't hurt them. You know why? Market share. how many of these brands do you buy?.

It's the same thing with blizzard. That was my point. A boycott would do no good. Even if everyone on slashdot participated.

Re:The only solution

[tshak]

First, I really hate games that don't let you do a direct TCP/IP connection to another server. If my friend set's up a server, I should be able to type in his IP and not go through some stupid "online service" (which is why I stopped buying Westwood games).

Second, I don't think Boycotting is the answer. See my prior post here.

Re:The only solution

[bmetz]

Man, if you want to convince people, you don't go psycho. God, I can't stand those kind of friends. "What?! You're running Windows XP?! Let me lecture you for 15 minutes on why Microsoft is an evil, evil company and no product of theirs deserves to be judged on its merits but in my skewed biased way". Fuck off, I've got a life to live.

Seriously, people who go off into rants to their friends all the time are accomplishing nothing but making themselves look like losers. If anything, acting like that makes me want to disagree with you just so I don't have to be grouped with you in the slightest way. Antics like that are the stereotype of the slashdot crowd and make me very embarassed to admit I still read this site.

To summarize: don't buy the game if you don't want to. Tell your friends why. But don't get all uppity if you value having them as friends over them agreeing with everything you say.

Re:The only solution

[Electrum]

I run bnetd on one of the spare servers at work for our bi-weekly Starcraft games. It's a fantastic piece of software and it allows us (in IT) to have an IPX free network whilst still allowing for gaming (after hours of course ; ).

The latest patch to Starcraft that came out within the last month adds UDP LAN support, so you don't need IPX anymore. Does anyone know how to route it over the internet, so you don't need battle.net? Sure, I could use an IPX to TCP converter like Kali or Khan, but I want something that doesn't cost as much as the game itself.

Re:The only solution

[Anonymous Coward]

A boycott may not have a measurable effect upon a company's bottom line, but it is still the right thing to do. You as a consumer have a choice -- you can give your $50 to an evil company, or you can choose not to. If you do give your $50 to an evil company, you are supporting that company, and you are complicit in the evil it does.

And if everyone thought this way, then boycotts *would* work. And evil would be reduced.

Re:The only solution

[AntiChristX]

Blizzard sees some amount of revenues from battle.net in the form of advertising. However, it is so miniscule that I don't think a small player like the accused would be making much of a dent. If anything, Blizzard and Vivendi should be looking into recruiting those guys and giving them real jobs to do the thing that so impassioned them that they did it themselves, with no material gain. I guess they just want to poke themselves in their extremely loyal and fanatical PR base (yes, it will come back to haunt them).

Re:The only solution

[Kefabi]

Are there ads in battle.net?

YES! There are ads on battle.net, and they have been profitable for Blizzard since way back when.

Blizzard was the first to make a profit running an online gaming service (this was before Ultima Online and the likes) and they still do.

Also... World of Warcraft is being worked on right now, and that WILL have a monthly charge. If people perfect the World of Warcraft protocals and run free battle.net servers before the game even comes out (they would work on it during WoW's beta period, I'm sure), what's going to keep players from paying their monthly fee then? It makes sense to try to shut down b.net emulators now. It would be harder to do it after the emulators have been running for 2 years. 2 years of work gives emulators a lot more legitamicy.

This reminds me of the time where everyone bitched about Blizzard sueing a movie studio for infringement on the Diablo name. Blizzard is an entertainment company. Video Games do get turned into movies (Tomb Raider? Street Fighter? Mario Brothers? Resident Evil?). In the case of Final Fantasy, Square, the software company became Square, the software and movie company. I've read interviews with some of the cinema folk at Blizzard where they said they would be interested in a full blown movie if they ever could find the time, and if the right oppourtunities came about.

The people who work at Blizzard do it because it's their life. They live to make great games. Why should you be surprised if they're protective of what they created?

I also SERIOUSLY DOUBT that it's the developers of Blizzard games that are chasing these emulator guys. Most likely it's some bean counters at the top who could care less about video games and cares more about doing something to make him/herself look productive.

"Lookie this! I stopped these dangerous emulator guys from breaking the DMCA law and ruining our profits!"

Right, I'm still planning to buy both Warcraft 3, World of War, and whatever else Blizzard's working on. I enjoy their games, they come with extensive level/map editors, and they're definately worth the $60 or whatever I pay, even without emulated b.net servers.

Re:The only solution

[snilloc]

Kahn was at one point a free (at least as in beer) project... but the website seems to have vanished without a trace...

Anybody have a clue what happened to it?

Re:The only solution

[Anonymous Coward]

Diablo 2 lets you connect directly to another IP address without using bnet at all...

Re:The only solution

[richie2000]

people who didn't buy the game) people can now play online.

I bought the game (StarCraft Battle Chest), got my legit CD key and still can't play online since the key was "banned". E-mail to Blizzard tech support sent me to a local distributor that won't even answer my mail. Where does that leave me?

Re:The only solution

[Anthony Boyd]

Boycott Blizzard.

It won't do anything.

You mean, slashdot's collective ability to protest and cause change was a fluke? What about slashdot's notice that prompted people to write all those letters? There are other situations where slashdot was either a contributing factor in a change, or was the direct cause. Fresh in my memory are other recent things, such as the MySQL debacle and an incident where a company resold modified GPL code without releasing the patches. A quick search through slashdot's own history would show that slashdot has a ripple effect -- it may only be 3000 people that take the boycott plunge, but they'll tell their friends, and maybe get a Web site or 20 to write about it.

Slashdot has become quite effective at making people aware of issues. This seems to have slipped right under the radar of the slashdot readers themselves! We've been bemoaning how we're "just a bunch of geeks" for so long, that we haven't even realized yet that we're now quite a powerful bunch of geeks.

Re:The only solution

[AaronStJ]

It won't do anything.

I hate to burst the /. reader's bubble, but the collective group of us boycotting a game will do *nothing* to hurt blizard.

Oh, boo-hoo. Making a difference is hard. Let's not try!

If everyone sat down and decided to let their rights get run over because it was hard to make a difference, we'd still have slaverr, Hitler would still be killing Jews, and women still wouldn't be able to vote. I know this isn't the same thing, but still. If everyone decided that they were too small to make a difference, we would never progress as a society. But when a bunch of the small guys are brave enough to stand up, change happens.

Don't ever back down because you don't think you can make a difference. Stand up anyway. You'd be suprised the diffence that the little guy can make.

Re:The only solution

[Anonymous Coward]

Contact blizzard again, telling them the situation. They WILL help.

Re:The only solution

[DarkEdgeX]

I think you missed the 'networking effect' he mentioned-- sure, those 7,000 people tell 100 of their friends/relatives/associates, then THOSE 100 people tell THEIR friends/relatives/associates (so now we've got 700,000 people each telling another 100 people about this injustice-- in case you lost count at step 3, that's 70,000,000), repeat this again, and you get my point. The only thing is, people who agree with the point *MUST* be persistant or it'll NEVER work. That's the only weakness I see in his idea, it's hard to convince people of something, let alone get them to act upon it... (which is part of the reason you'll likely never see an uprising against any modern government, for example; not only do the laws forbid it (militia's can't legally be formed anymore) but people just don't care (I'm speaking of the USA here, obviously laws elsewhere may differ)).

It COULD be done though, it'd just take a ton of coaching and prodding and reminding.

Re:The only solution

[Anonymous Coward]

adobe backed down because of the media, not /.

Give it a rest. A boycott will do nothing, period. Best of luck explaining this cause to 13 year olds, let alone your 3,000 "friends"

Re:The only solution

[Anthony Boyd]

adobe backed down because of the media, not /.

Slashdot is media. And it is playing an increasingly powerful role -- you're free to slouch on the sidelines and not participate, but don't expect everyone to come sit and pout with you.

Give it a rest.

And how long have you worked for Blizzard?

Re:The only solution

[dzym]

So, you against your wife.

The winner of that little contest is a foregone conclusion.

assassin kill ama!~~

Re:The only solution

[D'Arque Bishop]

You boycott something by not buying the product and then actively telling your friends and relatives not to buy it either. Whenever you hear people mention the name, you go into litanies about the company and don't shut up until whoever is listening to you agrees not to buy the product either. You post to message boards, you bug your local merchant, you do what you need to do to get your message across. Maybe you'll be lucky and get someone in the press to notice and then the word will spread even more.

The problem there is that the people you'll be preaching to have to be interested in what you're saying to begin with. Something to keep in mind: How many of those people would have actually used this tool? Once they realize that what Blizzard doing isn't going to directly hurt or affect them, they're not going to bother. "I don't care. It doesn't affect ME..." If it doesn't directly affect them, they won't be interested. There have been a couple of times that I've tried this tactic involving Windows XP. They sometimes listen, but it only takes a minute or two before they begin to zone you out... at which point all you're doing is wasting breath.

Think of it this way... how effective has the Slashdot boycott of DVD's been? Enough said...

Just my $.02...

Re:The only solution

[rbeattie]

I actually agree with you. Rants can be bad, uneffective or worse... Whoever moderated this down is a bozo because you make a good point. But still if you believe in something you need to spread the word and sometimes that means boring the pants off whoever will listen...

But man, when I think of the vegans or the Mac owners who pulled on my ear so hard I wanted to just cry or kill and it makes me think hard about choosing my battles.

Anti DMCA is a good battle. Blizzard, Adobe, Nintendo and any other idiot company that tries this bullshit gets my wrath.

-Russ

"Wow. We were just hanging out at my 5 year old niece's birthday party and when she got a new GameBoy cartridge for a present, this weird dude in the corner just snapped. He started giving her a lecture on the evils of corporations and why Nintendo is taking away her rights as human being. She started crying, it was awful. What a FREAK..."

Re:The only solution

[Anonymous Coward]

I've said the same thing here, but about DVD's. The slashdot crowd likes to wail and gnash teeth about stuff like this, but when it comes down to the wire they are more than happy to continue pumping money into a fundamentaly corrupt system.

DVD's are consumer-hostile by design. Slashdot led the crusade against DIVX, and we were all rightfully incensed at the Big Brother Ware built into DIVX...but what about DVD? Between region encodings and Macrovision, the CSS fiasco and the general involvement of the RIAA, that should be enough to create TWICE the boycott that DIVX generated.

But oh no...as soon as the next "must-have" Anime DVD appears Slashdot is hyping it to the max.

The same goes for Blizzard and any other company that tries stuff like this....wail and gnash teeth now, but when Warcraft III hits the shelves Slashdot will be first to tell us all to go out and get it.

Folks... vote with your wallet, or shut up.

Re:The only solution

[supabeast!]

People said the same thing about the Sklyarov case, and within days of boycottadobe.com going up Adobe was begging the government NOT to prosecute him.

File your gripes. Quickly. (800) 953-SNOW or:

Blizzard Entertainment
P.O. Box 18979
Irvine, CA 92623

Re:The only solution

[drew]

actually, you can 'type in his IP and not go through some stupid "online service"'

there are two ways to play diablo ii online. you can connect to battle.net, or you can host/join a standard tcp/ip game (some of the older games, e.g. the original diablo, you might only be able to play ipx games, but i think diablo added tcp/ip play in a patch)

i dont know if there is much of a difference in playing the rts games on battle.net as opposed to over tcp/ip (i never played starcraft on bnet) but there is a difference in diablo ii (and iirc there was the same difference with the original diablo). in diablo, your character is persistent, and if you play on battle.net, your character is stored on the bnet server and can only be used in bnet games. if you join a standard tcp/ip internet game, you can only play characters stored on your local hard drive. while there are some (dis)advantages to either situation, the most notable thing here is that it is very easy to hack characters stored on your local machine, and therefore playing on bnet offers you some protection from playing with/against hacked characters (although the hackers are getting more adept at hacking their bnet characters it seems)

Re:The only solution

[WNight]

Bullshit.

I had a CD-ROM that Diablo II wouldn't read its copy protection from. Their answer was for me to buy a new CD-ROM. They could have refunded my money, or sent me an .exe without the copy protection or many other things. Nope.

So I downloaded a crack. Was the best solution anyways (if you could spare 2.5GB of drive space) because then I didn't need to put the disk in.

But anyways, the long and short of it is that Blizzard is like and large company and they don't give a shit about you, once you bought the game. Now, if software was returnable we might see something different.

Re:The only solution

[tetraminoe]

that's not a boycott, that's being a little bitch. and that doesen't work either.

Re:The only solution

[Anonymous Coward]

Uhhh sorry Kefabi but bnetd will NOT work for World of Warcraft. People won't be able to bypass the monthly fee by using bnetd. This game will actually have most of the work performed on the server side. Its core will be similar to a text mud's. The client just shows you some pretty pictures and gets input from the player. I can't picture bnetd emulating a WoW server and allowing access to thousands of people simultaneously. I'm guessing battle.net is mostly just a simple matchup system to find people to play the games with (Diablo 2 realm games are a little different).

I agree that it's probably some bean counter at the top who's causing all this trouble.

What do I think about it? Whatever! I'm happy with simply setting up my network properly and connecting to the real battle.net. I don't know what their reason is. Maybe it's stupid and they're wrong to complain, but if it's for copy protection purposes then they have every right to complain. If you have a problem with that, you need to stop being a lazy mooching parasite on society and pay for your friggin software. If you're reading this, I'm assuming you're educated enough to bring in a decent salary and can afford to buy your software. But then again, the number of clueless people with university degrees is pretty high. I studied with some of them.

I was a big time software pirate when I was a kid because I couldn't afford all the games I played. I have no problems with kids copying games. What bothers me is adults pirating when they're making big bucks and can obviously pay for games but prefer stealing the bread off my table instead.

- A developer

Re:The only solution

[Rakarra]

I had a CD-ROM that Diablo II wouldn't read its copy protection from. Their answer was for me to buy a new CD-ROM. They could have refunded my money, or sent me an .exe without the copy protection or many other things. Nope.

Do you know if it still has that problem? I think they have most of those problems solved in the latest patches. A friend of mine couldn't play Diablo2 after 1.04b because the copy protection thing wasn't working right. It started working in 1.06 again though.. I used that as an example of how copy protection doesn't hurt the pirate, all it does it screw the people who buy the game.

Re:The only solution

[WNight]

No idea. I traded the game to a friend later.

But yeah, all it did was motivate me to crack it. The crack I ended up using was the one that came with the pirated version. The pirates didn't notice any inconvenience but the legit user...

I've since started cracking everything. I'll be damned if I'm going to dig through my binder to get the disk just to load a game. It'd be even worse if I kept the boxes, ugh.

Re:The only solution

[Anonymous Coward]

/. is always a good read, but I doubt even the collective might of all of its readers would stop this. It's really part of a much wider issue.

Besides, in normal commercial terms they aren't behaving out of sorts. As for all of you whinging about the DMCA, too late. Europe has already conceptually adopted it as an aspirational standard. Copyright is fast becoming a killer app in the world of business assets. In the UK, it's an even stronger right that in the US (that's why we Brits generally don't patent software, because copyright will give authors sufficient protection).

Anyway, I think the issues on this are simple to understand. Blizzard uses servers to run a multiplayer environment on which LICENSEES of their software play the game (for all of you out there who keep saying you OWN software - you don't. You do purchase the media it is recorded on. You acquire the benefit of a licence to use the underlying program).

Your licence gives you the right (at the moment, at no additional cost) to access this service. It's not free to the public at large. It's essentially a "members only" club. Your membership card is your CD-Key (although this could be delivered in other ways).

"Starcraft" spawned copies were (whether you lot realised or not) a bloody excellent PR idea. They were essentially a way to distribute "trial" copies of Starcraft for nothing. The primary licenced copy gave an additional right given to the licensee of the software, namely the right to sub-licence parts of the whole package, on a royalty-free basis, with the right for the sub-licensee to use the Bnet service.

At the time, I expect Blizzard wanted to give the multiplayer experience much more publicity and make their bespoke service more prolific. And didn't it work well?

Clearly Blizzard wish to have a monopoly on the ability of licencees of their software to use the multiplayer functions. This could be delivered through the EULAs (it may in fact shortly start to appear in there, after this) by imposing a negative covenant on users of the software - but even if present, doesn't really help the software company much as no publisher/author wants to sue individual users for misuse. In any event, such a restivtive covenant may well be unenforceable and anti-competitive (at least in the UK).

So, how do they stop a mass-migration of all of the licensees onto a competing multiplayer service? Well, you shut down the competition. Except you can't do it on competition law grounds. So you use copyright.

The last question is where the copyright infirngement lies. This may be technical to the extent that it is impossible to argue without all the facts. It may transpire that there has, in fact, been no infringement at all (either by copying of Blizzard's copyrighted work, or by building what could be considered as a device to circumvent copy-protection). I can see there are arguments both ways.

Don't write the company off because they are behaving in a money orientated way. That's was companies do. If you want to change the world, don't start with Blizzard. Pick a shit software developer and ruin them instead.

Re:The only solution

[Anonymous Coward]

I've since started cracking everything.

I think you meant to say that you started using (other people's) cracks for everything. You couldn't crack your way out of a wet paper bag, yourself.

Re:The only solution

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, I probably wouldn't be bad at it, considering I use SoftICE in my 9-5, can program in ASM, and used to crack Apple // games. But yes, I apply cracks to game, I don't do it manually.

Re:The only solution

[Anonymous Coward]

Anybody who refers to assembler as ASM is a PC-centric amateur.

Re:The only solution

[richie2000]

Well, I mailed them as soon as I read your reply. No response yet.

piracy???

[cakoose]

They're using their 'piracy' e-mail address to handle this...probably to scare the host.

Re:piracy???

[thermostat42]

They probably think of it as a piracy issue. What does battlenet gain them? they don't charge for it, but they do get to check serial numbers. I imagine that they figure bnetd will be used to play pirated copies of their games over the net. Not that I condone their actions, but I think battle.net was their best defence to force people to actually purchase a legal copy of the game.

Re:piracy???

[Anonymous Coward]

"They're using their 'piracy' e-mail address to handle this...probably to scare the host."

Nope it's because they really are dealing with a service that facilitates piracy, even if it was not their goal. Here's how it works.

Say you get a copy of Diablo II and want to play it on the net. Well if Blizzard is your only option you need the CD Key that comes with the game and is unique to your copy. The battle.net service checks the cd key and if one is already online it nukes the key on the premise that it is pirated. That's how Blizzard and id software (the quake guys) amoung others do it.

Well if you don't need battle.net then you don't get cd key checking. So bottom line, Blizzard did the right thing here, it's a clear cut case of circumvention that facilitates piracy of Blizzard software.

If the authors of said program don't like it, then they can try to work with Blizzard to offer a compliant product. If Blizzard says no, then attack them via antitrust. The Diablo series and expansion packs have sold over 7 million copies and so it could be construed as a monopoly in the online PC games arena and if they do not play ball, they could be seen as leveraging that monopoly.

Sure I'm not a lawyer but knee jerk Blizzard is bad crap is being moderated to the moon at the moment.

Re:piracy???

[Anonymous Coward]

That's not the only solution though. You can use programs like Khan (or Kahn? Can't remember the spelling) that allows IPX over the Internet. Hook up with others, then choose LAN game.

And why is it always the big guys that have NO problems with sales or money that try to pull this shit? The law is supposed to be around to PROTECT people and companies. But in almost every case, it's used by the already-profitable companies to simply milk more money out of the public or just to inconvenience and annoy everyone. The greed is astounding.

Re:piracy???

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually I am one of the bnetd developers and Blizzard refused to help with the cdkey info. They never helped the project once or even responded to our emails.

I'm sure this is just an excuse but it is (unfortunatly) very easy for them to take our site down under the DMCA.

Re:piracy???

[Jeremi]

Nope it's because they really are dealing with a service that facilitates piracy, even if it was not their goal.

Not true at all. "Doing nothing to prevent piracy" is not the same thing as "facilitating piracy". Facilitating piracy implies an intentional act (e.g. offering warez'd binaries for download). Simply failing to do key checking is not.

Shall we make ftp illegal now because it does no checking to make sure that the files you transfer aren't copy protected? Most of the Internet would be a violation of the DMCA under your criteria. (hell, maybe it is... in which case either the DMCA goes or the Internet goes... they can't co-exist)

Re:piracy???

[Anonymous Coward]

Thank you for a little bit of reason. I was getting very tired of reading that same argument which really doesn't make sense. In fact if cd key checking were easy to do it would already be in bnetd...

Re:piracy???

[Anonymous Coward]

"'Doing nothing to prevent piracy' is not the same thing as 'facilitating piracy'. Facilitating piracy implies an intentional act (e.g. offering warez'd binaries for download)."

Correct. But these guys enabled others to use their warez'd binaries. Was that their purpose? Hell no. But it's a result. Their work circumvented a copy control on multiple products and facilitated others in the creation of tools to expand the circumvention to games not even on store shelves. Come on this is one of the things the DMCA was put into place for.

"Simply failing to do key checking is not."

Says you who is not the copyright holder on the works in question. Blizzard sees it differently.

Re:piracy???

[Dyolf Knip]

Shall we make ftp illegal now because it does no checking to make sure that the files you transfer aren't copy protected?

The SSSCA would do exactly that.

Re:piracy???

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, this is late, but it's funny you mention the key-checking.

It would violate the DMCA, or a patent, or at least a copyright to incorporate the key-checking into the bnetd server.

So, violate the DMCA if there's no key check, violate the DMCA if you put the key check in,
looks like companies can push all competition right off the "-ing" map

Re:piracy???

[Jeremi]

Correct. But these guys enabled others to use their warez'd binaries. Was that their purpose? Hell no. But it's a result. Their work circumvented a copy control on multiple products and facilitated others in the creation of tools to expand the circumvention to games not even on store shelves. Come on this is one of the things the DMCA was put into place for.

Funny, the PCs that Dell sold to the warez'ers are guilty of all the same 'crimes'. Shall we force Dell to stop selling PCs now?

They didn't shutdown sourceforge

[Baca]

http://sourceforge.net/projects/bnetd

CVS, and the downloadable files are still there for now.

Re:They didn't shutdown sourceforge

[Buran]

"This Project Has Not Released Any Files" ...

... Nothing there to be shut down.

Re:They didn't shutdown sourceforge

[ColbyR]

Check out the the CVS tree.. they are present.. I just looked at them..

Re:They didn't shutdown sourceforge

[theCoder]

RPMFind also seems to still have the RPMs for bnetd.

Re:They didn't shutdown sourceforge

[Anonymous Coward]

IANAKW: I am not a karma whore... but QUICK
quick. someone make a poem out of the sourcecode!

Re:They didn't shutdown sourceforge

[Anonymous Coward]

mkdir bnetdcvs
cd bnetdcvs
cvs -d:pserver:anonymous@cvs.bnetd.sourceforge.net:/cv sroot/bnetd checkout bnetd
cd bnetd/src
make;make install

Re:They didn't shutdown sourceforge

[joib]

Also debian users can save a copy with 'apt-get source bnetd'. At least in testing and unstable, I don't know about stable.

Just submitted this...

[crisco]

to YRO, any bets whether it gets double posted to /. twice?

Seriously though, this only happened when someone warezed the WarcraftIII beta and modified it to work with BNetD, creating an 'open' beta test. This obviously infuriated Blizzard into having the BNetD project shut down. A shame too, since it doesn't cost them anything to have quite a few more of their fans playing the beta.

Re:Just submitted this...

[Anonymous Coward]

Bingo, you're the first slashdotter to hit the nail right on the head.

Blizzard did this because bnetd was modified to allow people who downloaded a warez copy of the Warcraft III beta to play on non-Blizzard servers. Simple as that. They won't go after fsgs, for now, because it doesn't pose the same threat. Sure, they have the exact same legal ground to stand on should they choose to do so, but the Warcraft III beta test really put them over the edge.

Re:Just submitted this...

[Anonymous Coward]

Ah but it didn't work with the standard bnetd on www.bnetd.org. There is a different server on http://www.madgrfx.com/warforge.

That site was up a few minutes ago but now it appears to be down as well...

Re:Just submitted this...

[crisco]

Yeah now Blizzard gets to play WackAMole taking down sites one by one trying to stop things. The cats already out of the bag and Blizzard isn't going to be able to stuff it back in. Now BNetD is up on Morpheus, Gnutella, UseNet and of course IRC. Worse yet, they are curating a PR fiasco. Sure, boycots and negative PR aren't going to kill them or even hurt them much in the long run but they do manage to alienate a core group of very smart people.

Re:Just submitted this...

[merlin_jim]

A shame too, since it doesn't cost them anything to have quite a few more of their fans playing the beta.

Actually, the cost is quite serious. By having fans play a pre-release beta on a quality-unknown server, they stand to impact their brand quite heavily. In addition, none of the pirate beta testers have signed an NDA, so the only way Blizzard has to limit the risk exposure to their brand is to shut off the BNetD server. I'm sure the wonderful people at Blizzard were as upset at this point as anyone else, but it was something they had to do to protect the Warcraft III brand and ensure that they can actually sell some copies of it next year...

I fail to understand the DMCA Jurisdiction

[Ieshan]

Digital Millenium Copyright Act: (layman's definition) A piece of legislature which prevents people from thieving digital ideas or products and publishing them as their own.

BNETD: A program that emulates a battle.net server.

Notice how it says "server"? Blizzard doesn't sell their server software, and nor does BNETD allow people to play the Blizzard games. I've never heard of a company shutting down a utility on the grounds that it enables more people to use their product. That'd be like a bucket company suing a mop company for making mops designed to fit in their buckets.

DMCA all over again...

Re:I fail to understand the DMCA Jurisdiction

[stubear]

It can ultimately harm the quality of their product. Blizzard has gone to great lengths to try to limit cheating, PK'ing and general misfits from ruining an otherwise enjoyable game. While they are not perfect, they control what the players can get away with. If a new cheat is discovered, they can close it. They cannot force BNETD, or any other server hosting their games in this manner, to patch cheats and issues with user interaction, thus potentially harming the quality of the game and in turn the number of players usingthe service. Remember, in the minds of most people, they will blame Blizzard for these problems, not BNETD.

Re:I fail to understand the DMCA Jurisdiction

[Anonymous Coward]

You forgot one key point (no pun intended)...

bnetd let's you play without a valid cd-key, thus circumventing the copy protection...

Re:I fail to understand the DMCA Jurisdiction

[indiigo]

In business/marketing school they teach about how a customer's perceived image of a company is one of the most important facets in repeat, ongoing relationships.

Blizzard found the easiest way to ensure that people that buy their games only receive the content that Blizzard sells, and the image Blizzard wants is their own. It's a great short term strategy but probably negative on keeping a long term relationship with enthusiasts.

Re:I fail to understand the DMCA Jurisdiction

[Anonymous Coward]

"I've never heard of a company shutting down a utility on the grounds that it enables more people to use their product."

You haven't? How about any companies that don't like it when their programs are transimitted gratis to others who didn't pay for them AND authentication schemes meant to protect the product from unlicensed use rendered useless?

Re:I fail to understand the DMCA Jurisdiction

[Anonymous Coward]

I've never heard of a company shutting down a utility on the grounds that it enables more people to use their product.

I've heard of this many times, lesse:
Connectix Virtual Game Station,
Bleem!
UltraHLE

That's a good start.

Re:I fail to understand the DMCA Jurisdiction

[Anonymous Coward]

I've never heard of a company shutting down a utility on the grounds that it enables more people to use their product.

Diamond sued developers for writing software to work with their cards. They were, to reuse a term a friend who worked there at the time used, "pissed beyond belief" about it. Think about it, they sell more cards, but their management has a months-long fit, because there was something that they didn't control.

Re:I fail to understand the DMCA Jurisdiction

[Rakarra]

In Diablo2 you can host/join TCP network games without the valid CD-key.

In Starcraft, you can install "spawn" copies legally from the main install menu. You don't need multiple copies or multiple CD keys. I don't think it checks for CD keys on LAN games either.

Re:I fail to understand the DMCA Jurisdiction

[jandrese]

If you're playing on Joe-Bob's l33t server (and you even understand how, since it involves a bit of registry hacking!), then you should not be surprised if it's hacked. Generally people play on their own bnetd servers because they're behind a firewall that blocks access to Battle.net (becoming more and more frequent these days) on a LAN party, or because they have some hack they want to try. I can't imagine people smart enough to find a server and then hack the registry would then complain that it's not as well maintained to Blizzard. That just goes beyond all sane logic. Besides, the misfits hang out on Battle.net, not the private servers.

Although the strange thing is, I can't figure out why they're doing this. It just doesn't make much sense. Maybe someone with a bug up their butt sent an anonymous email to the legal department saying that this bnetd thing was hacking their product and they just fired off the standard form letter to these guys.

Re:I fail to understand the DMCA Jurisdiction

[MindStalker]

But this is also a limited beta, in which you can only play on battlenet. For some reason they want to limit the amount of people who can see the beta, I don't know why, but they do.

Re:I fail to understand the DMCA Jurisdiction

[damiam]

in the minds of most people

"Most people" aren't going to be using bnetd. Those smart enough to use it are probably also smart enough not to blame Blizzard for its bugs.

Re:I fail to understand the DMCA Jurisdiction

[Anonymous Coward]

DMCA (laymen's terms) A law that allows a company to shut down your website at any time without any sort of due process, jail ebook text-to-speech program authors, harras creaters of linux dvd players, forbid you from discussing copy-protection measures with your friends, and generally be asshole for any reason.

Re:I fail to understand the DMCA Jurisdiction

[Jeremi]

It can ultimately harm the quality of their product.

What in the world does that have to do with copyrights, the subject that the DMCA is (ostensibly) supposed to address? Oh yeah, I forgot, the DMCA is about letting companies do whatever the hell they want at the expense of the public.

Re:I fail to understand the DMCA Jurisdiction

[afidel]

Blizzard has gone to great lengths to try to limit cheating, PK'ing and general misfits from ruining an otherwise enjoyable game

Hahahahha, thanks I needed a good laugh. Cheating is so rampant in D2 that I would guess at this point that the majority of items are dupes. I mean the servers were unusable for all of last weekend because duping was so rampant (hint ping from my pc@work on 7.5Mb ATM line to the east gateway was in range of 1200ms). The head of Blizzard North came out to defend the inclusion of the hostile switch in D2 basically saying "I like to PK and so do others so we aren't taking it out." And finally Blizzard has done almost nothing to curb the number of scammers trying to steal people's cd keys etc on bnet.

Re:I fail to understand the DMCA Jurisdiction

[puetzk]

and bnetd doesn't support WC3. There is some work based on it that does, but their main page clearly stated that the people distributing warcraft3 servers had not released source and were not affiliated with the bnetd project.

Re:I fail to understand the DMCA Jurisdiction

[Spameroni]

Amen. I'm glad that someone else can see.

Re:I fail to understand the DMCA Jurisdiction

[rossz]

Blizzard has gone to great lengths to try to limit cheating

You obviously haven't been playing Diablo II on the realms. The realms are currently in complete dissarray because of out of control cheating. Blizzard does virutally nothing to stop this. Cheaters are not punished in any way. So when someone figures out a way to duplicate the most powerful and rare items, Blizzard makes a patch (eventually), but they don't delete the accounts of the cheaters even though it is a violation of their AUP. Since there is no downside to cheating (for the cheaters), next week they come out with a new way of cheating.

It is my opinion that Blizzard is purposely letting the Diablo realms self destruct so that they can push their newest online game, World of Warcraft. I have already decided to completely boycott all future Blizzard products. They have lost a loyal customer, and I'm not the only one.

Re:I fail to understand the DMCA Jurisdiction

[Anonymous Coward]

> I've heard of this many times, lesse:
>Connectix Virtual Game Station,
>Bleem!
>UltraHLE
>
Isn't interesting you leftout the fact that these are either shareware or comerical software?

Re:I fail to understand the DMCA Jurisdiction

[compwiz3688]

In Starcraft, you can install "spawn" copies legally from the main install menu. You don't need multiple copies or multiple CD keys. I don't think it checks for CD keys on LAN games either.

Unfortunately, there is no Broodwar equivalent of the spawn version.

Although I don't know if SC works this way, but it makes sense to check the CD key on both the spawn and full install to make sure they are the same. After all, if you have two different keys, why bother installing the spawn version anyway?

Ha

[crisco]

double posted to /. twice?

shame I didn't notice the 'double twice' when I previewed...

Re:Ha

[einer]

You never know... They COULD double post it twice... It IS slashdot afterall...

The real reason it was shut down...

[csen]

I'm willing to bet some Warcraft III ladder points that the timing of bnetd being shut down was due to the Warcraft III beta. People (myself included) are using it to play the beta illegally, which maybe made them think that we'd simply use the cracked beta instead of buying the game at a later date. I still don't understand what's so bad about a few thousand extra beta testers, but hey, it's their product, they have the right to do whatever they want with it.

Re:The real reason it was shut down...

[Anonymous Coward]

Were you going to submit bugs? Were the vast majority of the people out there using pirated copies going to submit bugs? Were you going to help them test the real Battle.net servers to see that they play well with WCIII? My guess is no, so these few thousand "beta testers" don't add any value for Blizzard. Plus, they're probably going to update the beta software using battle.net frequently during the test period, so the few people using the w4r3zed copy who were going to submit bugs and suggestions for gameplay tweaks aren't really helping much either.

Re:The real reason it was shut down...

[Anonymous Coward]

umm.. they don't frequently update, and as soon as they release a patch it's avaliable online. hell, the bnetd/warforge servers could even auto update just like battle.net.

Re:The real reason it was shut down...

[crandall]

I still don't understand what's so bad about a few thousand extra beta testers, but hey, it's their product, they have the right to do whatever they want with it.

Because they aren't beta testers if they aren't submitting feedback on the game. All they are is pirates using a product illegally.

Re:The real reason it was shut down...

[TrIaX]

The BNetD project had NO support for Warcraft 3 in it, and the team was not planning on even starting to add Warcraft3 support to it until it was officially released by Blizzard.

What you had was a group of people downloading the source code and modifying the source code to work with Warcraft 3, OUTSIDE of the BNetD tree. The BNetD project had nothing to do with the leaking of the Warcraft 3 beta, nor the support for the non-blizzard bnet servers for War3.

What you basically have is somebody getting ahold of an Open Source program, changing the source to violate license agreements with Blizzard (beta testers, read the agreement over) or enabling people to play pirated beta copies of the software, and the original open source project getting busted for it. This would be like somebody downloading the source for grep, changing it to automatically break out copy protection in some program, distributing it back out on the net and then the companies going after grep as being the issue.

This leaves a bad taste in my mouth. I also just cancelled my pre-order of Warcraft 3.

Re:The real reason it was shut down...

[TheOnlyCoolTim]

I submitted several bugs/comments under a fake name and an extra hotmail address.

Re:The real reason it was shut down...

[kingos]

The ironic thing about all this is that the bnetd.org team actually posted that they had NOTHING to do with the warforge team (the team that released a forked version of bnetd that supported warcraft III beta).

So despite trying to do the right thing by Blizzard, they are going to be taken down anyway. What is to stop this happening to other open source projects? That seems to be one of the only problems with the GPL in my books ... you can't restrict access to your code to people that could use it for reasons that you yourself wouldn't endorse, and yet you are held partly responsible for giving them the foundation to work on ...

Re:The real reason it was shut down...

[clubin]

"...Added Warcraft III clienttag (or maybe it's just the beta clienttag, only time will tell)... Added more War3 packet info in bnet_protocol.h..."
BNETD 0.4.26 ChangeLog entry

Re:The real reason it was shut down...

[Decimal Dave]

That's very true; the W3 fork of BNetD is still being developed. On W3 forums, people are always going on about getting the latest bug-fixes and updates.

From what I've heard, a lot of beta testers prefer playing on the cracked servers because they actually host more active users/games than the official Battle net.

If W3 is so great that people are actually writing their own game server emulators, I can't wait to buy the real deal when it's out!

Re:The real reason it was shut down...

[Captain_Frisk]

it being open source... there is a version of bnetD that has War 3 support. I played the game myself last night. I'm not stealing from Blizzard, as I have full intentions of buying the game. This is more or less a sneak preview for me.

Re:The real reason it was shut down...

[Anonymous Coward]

Yep... I wrote that last week :)

However, even with those changes the server does not support Warcraft III.

To support Warcraft III we would have to add packet handlers for the new account creation, login, motd display, server authentication packets, and gameinfo strings.

We didn't write those. The game will NOT work with the standard bnetd server. Really. If you don't believe me then compile the 0.4.26 code and get one of those warez loosers to try it.

samba

[Anonymous Coward]

Isn't bnetd essential the same thing as SAMBA? Both seem to serve the same purpose, does that mean that SAMBA could be shut down under the same threat from Microsoft?

Re:samba

[asv108]

I believe the SMB protocol was around before MS even used it.

Re:samba

[Mdog]

I think that the samba product can fall under the umbrella of "interoperability." IANAL, but it's more of a stretch for bnetd to claim that, because they're not making a bridge between an existing product (NFS) and the product in question (Windows/Starcraft.)

So What? You can still download...

[Anonymous Coward]

You can still download at http://sourceforge.net/projects/bnetd
An since it's open source, someone else can just pick up where the bnetd dev team left off.

Re:So What? You can still download...

[dnight]

downloaded. not knowing much about it so far, I'll just put it in the "let's see how it pans out" folder.

I don't think it's Battle.net, its pirated games

[dbrown]

If I remember correctly, Battle.net is a completely free service. It's not like bnetd was taking revenue away from some online service Blizzard has. However, Battle.net does serial number verification. You cannot create a battle.net account without a unique serial number which is only obtained by buying a legit copy of the game.

I don't know enough about bnetd, but I would bet that bnetd doesn't do serial number verification. This basically allows everybody to use the same warez copy of a particular game and enjoy the benefits of Battle.net. I'm sure this is the largest reason why Blizzard wants to shut them down. Blizzard doesn't make any money off its free Battle.net service, but it does enforce that people actually buy the game.

- d

Yeah, right. The source is already out there.

[Anonymous Coward]

Good luck stopping it now.

Blizzard's Lawyers

[protektor]

Well I talked with Blizzards lawyers about this. They claim the problem is that bnetd doesn't have the CD-KEY anti-piracy that their servers have. Thus anyone with pirated copy can play online with bnetd but not on battle.net, thus we are encouraging piracy by providing a place for people with pirate copies to play online.

I suspect the real reason is the Warcraft 3 BETA mess. Combine this with the issue of other groups (http://www.madgrfx.com/warforge.html, http://www.clan519.com/, and a group on DALnet #bnetd) trying to say that they were the bnetd group and began working to support the Warcraft 3 BETA being pirated everywhere. Well I am sure that didn't help things at all.

Re:Blizzard's Lawyers

[Anonymous Coward]

But can't you play TCP/IP without Battle.net in the newer games? I think Diablo II can do this.
So what is so special about bnetd?

Also, there are other servers like fsgs and there is also Kali... what's special about bnetd?

Re:Blizzard's Lawyers

[UnknownSoldier]

> They claim the problem is that bnetd doesn't have the CD-KEY anti-piracy that their servers have.

This raises some obvious questions:

a) If bnetd did have the cd-key anti-piracy implimented, would Blizzard allow bnetd to exist?

b) Would Blizzard offerer any source, or binaries (.lib, .dll) to authenticate CD-KEYs ?

Re:Blizzard's Lawyers

[g0del]

bnetd is the one that was patched to allow you to play the warcraft III beta on it. The others weren't.

Re:Blizzard's Lawyers

[g0del]

No. Because the way the cd-key works is, there's a large number of cd-keys that will allow install (these are the ones that serial generators produce) but a small number that will work on battle.net. If Blizzard gave bnetd code to check the keys, people would hack that, and the new serial generators would produce keys that would work on battle.net, thus destroying what little copy-protection blizzard games currently have.

Re:Blizzard's Lawyers

[protektor]

Being the web site ISP in question. I specifically ask the Blizzard lawyers this question and was told "absolutely not would they provide that, or give it to us" and "its beside the point of the issue at hand"

So the short answer is NO, not in this life time.

Tim Jung
System Admin
Internet Gateway Inc.

Re:Blizzard's Lawyers

[gblues]

Well, since you've already rev-engineered b-net, you could do something like this:

1. bnetd gets CD key from game client
2. bnetd checks for CD key in "known good" db stored locally
3. if not found, bnetd attempts to authenticate with the real battle.net server using the information provided by the client.
4. If authentication is successful, bnetd disconnects from battle.net, adds the key to the "known good" database
5. Depending on the results, the game client is either authenticated or rejected.

Voila! CD-KEY authentication without using any privileged information from Blizzard. :)

Nathan

Re:Blizzard's Lawyers

[g0del]

And then the server administrator has a list of other people's cd keys. If this list gets out, those people can't ever play their legitimate games on battle.net, because someone else will always be logged on with a warezed copy of the game, and their cd-key. It's happened before when people have been stupid enough to let other people get their cd-key. This idea would just make things worse.

Re:Blizzard's Lawyers

[wampus]

One problem with that...

BlahHandleClientConnection(foo);

/* AuthenticateCDKey(); /*

DoSomeOtherStuff(baz,quux);

It is a little hard to do a CD key thing in open source.

Re:Blizzard's Lawyers

[gblues]

Nonsense. While Blizzard may simply be looking up the key in a database for validity, there's no reason that the CD key couldn't be, say, a public RSA key. At that point your authentication can be as open-source as it wants.

Re:Blizzard's Lawyers

[wampus]

But with the client not caring if the server does authentication or not, there is no reason for the warez kiddie servers to do the authentication, and you are right back where you started from.

Re:Blizzard's Lawyers

[Cylix]

Anyone who uses an IPX wrapper over tcp service is in violation based on these grounds.

I cannot remember the application I used to use to play starcraft this way. Nope, I didn't have a key at the time, but I was playing star craft against many other players. (I did eventually purchase the game) Kali did the same thing, but was a bit more dated.

In any event, the point is most blizzard games support multi-player over IPX and there is no key check. So any piece of software which wraps the IPX connection for distance playing is in violation right?

Gamespy Arcade had support for star craft as well...

Re:Blizzard's Lawyers

[Anonymous Coward]

its beside the point of the issue at hand

Talk about the pot calling the kettle black.

CD-KEYs are not required to play TCP/IP games such as Diablo2 (and others). So how can bnetd "encourage piracy", when it does nothing that you can't do without it?

It does seem like a DMCA violation to me.

[mrAgreeable]

They implement copy protection via a serial number, which is verified online through the battle.net servers. If you have your own server, and modify your hosts file or whatever so that it goes to this new server instead of the battle.net server, their copy protection is circumvented. The DMCA says you can't make a device ("device" having been interpreted to mean software) that bypasses copy protection.

It's a terrible law, which copyright holders can apply in far too broad a scope, but terrible or not, it's on the books. Write your legislator, or hope the supreme court finally stops it.

Re:It does seem like a DMCA violation to me.

[i_am_nitrogen]

I didn't modify my hosts file, I modified my DNS server. So, if you "accidentally" happen to point your DNS to .. oh, say ... [number ommitted to prevent slashdot effect], and try to connect to US West battle.net, it will go to US West battle.net. Try to connect to ASIA battle.net, and what's this? A bnetd server!

Re:It does seem like a DMCA violation to me.

[Anonymous Coward]

But it's not bypassing the check... it's just not implementing it. If this was their real concern they could do the checking in the clients. For example:

clientA connects to game port on clientB

clientB says "what is your key?"
clientA says "123"
clientB says hmm... mine is 123 as well, fuck you!

But they don't.

In fact clients with the same key can play on LAN games and can connect across the internet with diablo II!

The law that requires computer hardware and software to implement copy control protection has yet to be passed... remember all those /. stories about it?

Re:It does seem like a DMCA violation to me.

[deblau]

They implement copy protection via a serial number, which is verified online through the battle.net servers.

Please don't confuse the issue. The serial number doesn't prevent any copying. I can dup a CD bit-for-bit and use the new CD with the same key. This act of copying (if not for fair-use, etc) is illegal under pre-DMCA copyright laws. It has nothing to do with the DMCA. AFAIK, Blizzard don't really do anything to prevent copying the disc.

If you have your own server, and modify your hosts file or whatever so that it goes to this new server instead of the battle.net server, their copy protection is circumvented.

No, you've circumvented their serial number verification routine. You haven't copied or facilitated the copying of anything.

Re:It does seem like a DMCA violation to me.

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem is that the serial number doesn't actually guarantee legitimacy or copy protection. All it does is to prevent several copies with the same serial number being played online at once. There is no guarantee that this means that the person playing with a particular serial number is the legitimate owner of the copy that bore that number.

At best, Blizzard could argue that it reduced the value of pirated copies by meaning that they could not be guaranteed online play. But the counter-argument would be that playing on a bnetd server has reduced value as opposed to the official Blizzard server anyway, because of the lesser number of players available.

The problem is that this is becoming a common trick for making protocols proprietary; include copy protection in them, and then say that a) they won't tell you how to make the copy protection work (that would nullify its use); b) if you design it to not include the copy protection you broke the DMCA, and c) same thing if you re-engineer the copy protection.

I recall Real used it as well, suing a company for making a third-party player which did not respect the 'No Record' flag - while at once refusing to tell that company how to actually detect the 'No Record' flag in a stream, even though the third-party did actually state that if Real told them they would add it to their player.

Re:It does seem like a DMCA violation to me.

[SkyLeach]

But they [bnetd] didn't make a device to bypass copy protection, they wrote a device to serve network packets. The copy protection software was written with a configuration flaw which keeps it from working if the parameters of the software are changed (the server ip address).

So they didn't violate DMCA because they didn't bypass copy protection.

Re:It does seem like a DMCA violation to me.

[Quixadhal]

So, by that extension...

You're reading a web page on my server. I put a firewall rule in place to only allow access from a single IP address. You use SNAT to spoof my firewall into letting you in.

I get to go after the tcp/ip protocol people for DMCA violations?

The copy protection is to prevent you from playing on THEIR servers, you can play single-player all day long without any server at all.

Re:It does seem like a DMCA violation to me.

[Rakarra]

It has nothing to do with the DMCA. AFAIK, Blizzard don't really do anything to prevent copying the disc.

Actually, they do. Blizzard's most recent release, Diablo II, uses "Safedisc" on the CD. I haven't really looked towards what safedisc does, but it is extremely difficult for your average cdrom/burner to rip/burn a perfect duplicate of the Diablo II CD. If you get it wrong, the game can tell that you're using a burned copy and refuses to run, asking you to put the original cd in the drive.

This was a pain in the ass for some Diablo2 users.. myself, I wanted to swap items among my single-player characters using my main computer and my laptop... which requires two copies of the game running at the same time. This was a pain until I found if turned off the music and removed the CD from the host, it would continue to run as long as I didn't leave town.

A friend of mine had worse problems -- he had a laptop with a CD-ROM the copy protection didn't like. Whenever he put his original CD in, the game would eject it and tell him to insert the original CD. This has happened with all sorts of different CDrom drives, and Blizzard released patch after patch trying to fix this. One patch would fix these problems for some people, while starting problems for other people. Neither of us pirated the game, but we got screwed all the same. Blizzard's response to some people who complained: "Buy another cd drive."

Re:It does seem like a DMCA violation to me.

[Anguirel]

If the game required one to be online to play (such as Tribes 2), then this might be construed as a violation of the DMCA. However, with the case being that one can play LAN games and single-player all day without ever connecting to a Battle.net server, I hardly consider it copy protection on the game.

At best, the 'copy protection' is on the Battle.net server. If bnetd allowed one to log in to the real Battle.net server, then I might agree that something illegal was going on (not necessarily DMCA, though), since you were bypassing the in-place protection scheme on the server to gain access. However, benetd does not. It simply allows a person to set up a packet router/splitter (for all intents and purposes).

No problem

[Sir Homer]

And thank apophis of #HardOCP on irc.enterthegame.com for showing me the link!

Warcraft III Anyone?

[Warped-Reality]

Perhaps the _REAL_ reason they did this was because of Warcraft III Beta.... Since W3 is Battle.net only, It doesn't make sense to give copies to all your friends... they can use up your cd key (and since there's only 5000 copies, Blizzard likely has a list of all valid keys making a keygen futile)

Now with this bnetd, you can copy your Warcraft III Beta CD over and over again and simply play on your LAN or any bnetd server

With that in mind, Blizzard probably should have gone a different route then using the DMCA

Re:Warcraft III Anyone?

[Anonymous Coward]

That's my imrpession, too.

Re:Warcraft III Anyone?

[Anonymous Coward]

you couldn't use bnetd to do anything with warcraft 3. the only thing you could use to play wc3 beta was a project called "warforge" *based* on bnetd.

Re:Warcraft III Anyone?

[Anonymous Coward]

I've always hated the notion of a central server REQUIRED for any form of Internet play, whether it enforces some lame copy-protection or not. If I want to play this game 10 years from now and the company is out of business or no longer provides the server, I guess I'm screwed? Tough-o? That's it?

Fuck them! The only way I'd be able to play a game like StarCraft in a situation like this is with a program like bnetd. But of course they want to crush that too..

Therefore, I refuse to purchase any game that requires some sort of central server in order to play. I do not like companies telling me what I can and cannot do with MY software (yes, licensing be damned, I shelled out $70 for a game, it's fucken MINE now).

Packet Dumps

[protektor]

Packet dumps of what is going on between the client and the server were exactly how the protocols for connecting to the servers were done I believe. I have several of the packet dump files here that people sent in to various of the developers to help fix bugs and figure out how things were suppose to be done.

It is still on sourceforge.

[Commienst]

It is still on sourceforge for download as well.

Re:It is still on sourceforge.

[Anonymous Coward]

Not anymore, but the CVS tree is still there. I just checked out a copy.

cvs -z3 -d ':pserver:anonymous@cvs.sourceforge.net:/cvsroot/b netd' co bnetd

Re:It is still on sourceforge.

[david614]

NO IT IS NOT. Follow your own link and see what you find.

Here is why, in the bnetd programmer's own words:

This site has been disabled as requested by Blizzard Entertainment and it will remain closed as we have no legal recourse other than to fight a long protracted lawsuit against a large corporation. This is due to 17 USC Section 512(c)(1)(C) (AKA DMCA, supposedly required to be passed by WIPO treaties). Blizzard claims bnetd is in violation of 17 USC Section 1201(b), though we do not agree with their interpretation. Blizzard refused to specify a specific list of files on this site so the whole thing must be blocked. We are very sorry for the inconvenience but there is nothing we can do.

Accuracy Please!!!

Re:It is still on sourceforge.

[Anonymous Coward]

YES IT IS.. USE CVS :)

mirror

[jbridge21]

http://censored.firehead.org:1984/bnetd/

I expect to get the CVS version of the project up there soon as well.

Re:mirror

[linzeal]

The port being 1984 is a nice touch.

counter notice won't do any good

[bugstomper]

The article's suggestion to bnetd to file a counter-notice won't do any good. If you follow the link you see that the copyright holder is supposed to respond to the counter notice by filing suit in court within 14 days. That doesn't seem to me like a desirable outcome for someone without the money for legal expenses.

Sianara Blizzard!

[Evil_Furby]

You've lost yet another customer. If you had any balls you wouldn't use the DMCA. Feel free to kiss my behind.

Bye Blizzard.

[Restil]

You've fallen. Starcraft was one of my favorite games. In fact, its the last game I ever bought, as I'm no longer much of a gamer. Me sitting here vowing to never purchase another of your games will no doubt fall on deaf ears, and it would be a pointless guesture since I'm not buying them anyways.

But consider something. bnetd costs you nothing. If anything, it saves you bandwidth costs. You still sell the games. Oh, sure, you might complain that there's no cd key verification in bnetd and people can play cracked copies online with others now. Is this your reason? Perhaps it makes sense. Perhaps it doesn't. Maybe this gives cheaters the upper hand, maybe it doesn't. Maybe nobody really cares anyways.

What have you accomplished? Did the DMCA stop the proliferation of decss? No, it just moved it underground. You've taken a legal product and forced them to become outlaws. Now they have NO desire to cooperate with you, nor should they. Here is a group of people, who for NO MONEY WHATSOEVER have taken it upon themselves to provide services in your honor, to promote your products. And how do you respond?

What could these people have done for you? Its these same dedicated individuals who spend countless hours creating maps, who create all the fan sites. Creating for years on end an almost insatiable market of gamers who drool in anticipation of your next quality release, so they can start all over again starting with a purchase that puts money in your pocket and funds your next game. They're your customers. They're people who have a vested entertainment interest in prolonging the life and creative talents of your fine establishment. Without these people, your games would have no community. They would be played for a few months then forgotten. Your sales would never reach the levels you're used to seeing. These people are the reason you exist as you do today.

And you've just gone and pissed them all off. Great job. I truely admire your lack of vision.

-Restil

Re:Bye Blizzard.

[theoddone33]

I'll still buy Blizzard games, assuming I can find them for under $10.

I hope if you're really concerned, you sent an email to Blizzard's marketing department containing the above text. It's not like all the people at Blizzard are going to be browsing Slashdot and happen to see this post.

Re:Bye Blizzard.

[Soko]

Your answer is in the letter sent to the bnetd folks, as posted here:

Blizzard Entertainment's, a division of Vivendi Universal Games,
Inc. ("VUG"), copyrighted materials.

*Subliminal Guy mode on* VU are the same nice people (blood sucking control freaks) that bring you movies (and prosecute the exchange of ideas like DeCSS), music (and squash P2P music exchange) as well as other forms of entertainment (cultural control). *SubGuy mode off*

Go figure.

Soko

Re:Bye Blizzard.

[Xofer D]

Vivendi is also the company who killed off Dynamix, incidentally, right after Tribes 2 shipped. Apparently they've got a great track record.

Re:Bye Blizzard.

[Anonymous Coward]

>complain that there's no cd key verification in
>bnetd and people can play cracked copies online
>with others now.

If this is really the reason why the DMCA could be applied, it's pretty dang silly. Online cd-key verification *doesn't* prevent copying. It doesn't even prevent people playing pirate copies on the official servers - it just prevents people playing a pirate copy and a legitimate copy at the same time. (And lets pirates with key generators launch DoS attacks on legitimate users.)

The DMCA says the technology has to prevent illegal copying - not usage of the illegal copy.
Furthermore, if you are playing on a server emulator, you are *not* playing on the official servers and therefore aren't doing the thing that the old technology was stopping you doing.

Now, I *could* have understood that Blizzard could have got them for just plain' ol copyright infringement on the functionality of the server itself, but I don't see where the DMCA comes into this.

bnetd and war3

[Anonymous Coward]

Just a bit of speculation, but I imagine the reason that bnetd was shut down today and that fsgs remains up is that the bnetd source has been modified to allow for war3 games. This means that the war3 beta CD's can pirated and played without actually having to be a beta tester. I don't know exactly how this hurts Blizzard (buggy beta version without single player support or full player support) but at least this movement makes some chronological sense. I seriously doubt that Blizzard cares how people play local Starcraft games: they just dislike people playing war3 before they've released war3.

Blizzard Contact Info

[tsm_sf]

Ok, here's the contact info straight from their web site, if you feel like voicing your opinion. Couldn't really find a "bitch at us" address...

Blizzard Entertainment
P.O. Box 18979
Irvine, CA 92623

Sales Information/Ordering
USA: (800) 953-SNOW
International: (949) 955-0283
sales@blizzard.com

Support
support@blizzard.com or
macsupport@blizzard.com

Re:Blizzard Contact Info

[GiorgioG]

Might want to address it to these 2 characters:

Ken Cron will head the new organization as CEO of VU Games. He will oversee the division's global strategy and provide overall leadership to the organization. Cron will also be responsible for advancing the division's development of key brand franchises, while focusing on the strategic objectives of cross-platform distribution, global expansion and the development of online subscription-model content.

Luc Vanhal, formerly CEO of VU Interactive Publishing North America, has been appointed President and COO, North America, of VU Games. Vanhal is responsible for all aspects of the company's North American business and strategy. He also oversees the Partner Publishing Group and the company's three North American-based development studios - Blizzard Entertainment, Sierra Entertainment and Universal Interactive. Vanhal reports to Ken Cron.

I got this info from Vivendi's site...

Re:Blizzard Contact Info

[UU7]

Thanks, email sent :)

Re:Blizzard Contact Info

[nodrama]

Thanks. Here is the email I sent (I don't expect it to have any impact, but it made me feel better):

I have been a loyal customer of Blizzard since Warcraft II. I've bought:

Warcraft II (twice! once as single title, once as the battle chest)
Diablo I (and once again as a gift)
Starcraft (ditto)
Starcraft expansion (ditto)
Diablo II
Diablo II expansion

Total of *10* purchases. Having been repeatably impressed by the quality of your titles I have been looking forward to Warcraft III. However I will *not* be purchasing Warcraft III, either for my use or as a gift, due to your behavior towards bnetd. You have lost what could have easily been a "life-long customer".

I hope someone in your organisation is measuring the real cost of your *ideological* stance because it does cost you real revenue. Please keep this in mind when you justify you actions as "protecting shareholder wealth". This form of heavy handed protection has a direct cost in terms pissing off your loyal customers who provide your revenue stream.

Sincerely and goodbye,

nodrama

PS: I've never used, or am likely to use, bnetd but that is not the point.

Re:Blizzard Contact Info

[Yub]

Blizzard's main phone number from whitepages.com: 949-955-1380. In case any wants to call and complain or a Slashdot editor wants to try to get a comment straight from Blizzard

Re:Blizzard Contact Info

[vldmr_krn]

Thanks. This is what I wrote to them.

I'm writing to you to voice my support for your shutting down the bnetd project. The den of thieves known as slashdot seems to be believe that they have a right to the products of your minds and efforts. Their talks of boycotts is unjust, and I will probably buy your products more eagerly because you're being unjustly victimized. I just hope there are more sane people out there than the typical slashdot lunatic and that this doesn't hurt you financially. You are perfectly in the right here. Stay selfish. Stay principled. Ignore the bastards.

bnetd is mature

[Anonymous Coward]

bnetd is already very mature and stable, and since its gpl'd has been included on any number of Linux distro cds. its going to take a lot more than stopping one site to destroy it from the internet, which i might add, is probably close to impossible.

anyway, i say we boycott blizzard, and besides that, everyone should go download a copy of Freenet and start sharing the bnetd source.

Re:bnetd is mature

[slakdrgn]

I don't think blizzard realizes this, but this move will prolly push the program out to "its illegal, time go get it while u can status" which will, in effect, cause it to spread more like wildfire (kinda like the slashdot effect on websites, since everyone knows it'll be taken down, ppl will grab it while they still can weather they use it or not.). so IMHO, they just caused this program to be seriously distributed. ;p

I kinda get annoyed at the sudden "boycott" mentallitity, it won't work unless u have a *lot* of people boycott blizzard, and really in a way (no matter how small) they kinda hurt themselfs by closing this project forcivly.

god I can't spell tonight :(
this *all* is in my opinion.. i could be very wrong.. so just ignore me, its for the best ;p

Starcraft

[jjccss]

If I am not mistaken you could play Starcraft with up to four players on a local lan all using the same cd key. I forget the actual method but in effect weren't they already circumventing their own copy protection. This seems redundent. You can use our software to play our game on a lan, but not your open source server software.

Re:Starcraft

[Drakin]

The would likely be the Spawned copy.. which only woked in network games.

I don't get it?

[jsimon12]

How does Blizzard lose out if people want to play their games? Seems this would only sell more Blizzard video games.

Time to take (in)action...

[deblau]

Suck it up, and don't buy Warcraft 3. Don't steal it from your friends. Tell them not to buy it or steal it either. And write a letter to Blizzard explaining why you did so. The crowd here contains the most avid fans of the gaming industry. Let's (not) do something about it, and make sure they know they're pissing off their biggest customers.

Re:I don't think it's Battle.net, its pirated game

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, but people could play the games anyway becaus e the clients don't do a duplicate key check. You don't need bnetd in order to be able to play with a pirated copy.

Did the DMCA really make it illegal not to implement copy control protections? I thought that law was called CCCS or something and hadn't been passed yet!

get the files here while you can

[kajoob]

if you want to grab the files while you can, grab it from sourceforge here or here or here while they last. That should cover all the flavors.

Re:get the files here while you can

[Wizy]

or here

Ermmm....

[Floydian123]

How is this possible at all? If this is possible, think of what it can lead to - you buy a game, then cannot proceed to connect to any server, only official servers. Imagine if Quake/Half Life was just "Official Servers." I take it they are very different cases, but what if a company did come out with a death match game, or any other for that matter, but who shut down anyone who made a server like theirs.

Also, in regards to the DMCA's power, I have no idea why they can force someone to stop so easily... shouldn't they have to go to court and prove their case? Other people have to go to court, why don't they??

Plan of action:

[Timbo]

wget -r ftp://ftp.bnetd.org/pub

mirror...

Re:Plan of action:

[Timbo]

Bah, too late.

Oh well, I still have my copy

[motorsabbath]

We started using bnetd to play starcraft because, unlike battle.net, it didn't suck. 4 people on a server (with legitimate copies) sure beat the snot out of 80,000 on a server which split and lagged all the time.

Bad move Blizzard, or Vivendi, or whoever. Oh well, I wasn't gonna buy Warcraft II anyway so it's not like they lost *my* business. And my copy of bnetd works fine (as does StarCraft in WinE)...

JB

You suck at trolling

[i_am_nitrogen]

Sure, I'll probably get moderated down right along with you, but .... Here goes...

Bnetd is not a Linux endeavor. It is an Open Source endeavor. Battle.net has nothing to do with Microsoft. Bnetd works in Linux, BSD, Windows, MacOS, ...

You sir, are a moron.

blah

[Anonymous Coward]

I won't be buying any blizzard products now.

Granted i never actually bought a blizzard game in my life, but there's no way in hell i'll be starting now.

I only played one blizzard game and it didn't even come close to the hype...

I played a iso'd copy of diablo 2 for about an hour before i got bored of the lame click-click-click-click-swarm-of-enemies-for-15-mi nutes-till-they-all-die-then-repeat gameplay...glad i didn't waste 50$ on that shit...bummer to waste 3 blank cds on it though.

blizzard can go jump of a cliff.

Warcraft III - The Irony!

[Anonymous Coward]

They are actually upset about people using the W3 beta that aren't beta testers using bnetd. However the bnetd project they shut down does not support warcraft 3. There were huge flame wars about this is thier forums because they were afraid it would promote piracy and refused to implment it.

However if you are interested in warcraft 3 support those sites have not been shut down (ironically). Being an Open Source project means that the users were free to do it themselves. And that they did!

http://www.madgrfx.com/warforge.html
http://www .clan519.com/

Those sites even offer serial numbers and stuff!

Re:Warcraft III - The Irony!

[Dizzy49]

From http://www.madgrfx.com/warforge.html
Site Down

As a result of the bnetd.org shutdown and our own usage of the source, we've elected to shutdown this site pending a resolution of the matter. Read more on slashdot here. Or read more on k5 here. Please note Blizzard has not contacted us.

We all love and admire Blizzard games. The last thing we intended was to hurt Blizzard or bnetd in any way. We are just fans.

See you on battle.net when WC3 goes retail,
Warforge team

Also http://www.clan519.com/creed/war3 gives permission errors. Both sites are currently down.

This is nothing new.

[Maul]

One of my roomates was responsible for the work (mainly analyzing the packets) that brought bnetd to
life several years ago. In fact, the news was on Slashdot at the time, IIRC. He gave the project to
someone else, and no longer has anything to do with
bnetd.

Incidentally, he told me he recieved a cease and desist order from Blizzard when the news got out about his work. He also says he ignored it, and
nothing happened. However, this was before the DMCA existed, IIRC, so now Blizzard has the
teeth to follow through.

So Blizzard has been after bnetd before. This is
nothing new.

Re:This is nothing new.

[markb]

Actually, it was the SPA that sent me the cease and desist e-mail. I exchanged a few e-mails with the SPA lawyer until he didn't respond any more. The Slashdot story is here:

http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=older/980411091 225

I imagine the publicity that the Slashdot story generated was what convinced the SPA and Blizzard to back off. Maybe it will work again this time.

Anyway, I'm somewhat amused to be a certified DMCA criminal! ;)

Re:This is nothing new.

[DarkEdgeX]

WARNING: IANAL

Actually, IIRC, the DMCA has statutes/statements in it about how the law isn't retroactive (IOW: if someone started circumventing an access control method prior to the law taking effect, the DMCA couldn't be used against them). If your friend indeed started working on this prior to the enactment of the DMCA, I don't think the BNetD guys have anything to worry about.

It might be worth looking into, sure, it's a backwards way to avoid the DMCA affecting their work, but it sure beats folding like they have.

Sourceforge

[boobert]

Did anyone happen to notice the source is still available on sourceforge. Go get it while you can ;)

I can honestly see why this is happening...

[AnimeFreak]

I can say for a fact I know bnetd was being used to play pirated copies of Warcraft III.

Yet, Blizard was dumb enough not to put any protections in their software to make it harder to pirate. If they were smart, they would have done something similar to Windows' WPA crap (I hate it, but it does a good job) and catalogued all of the user's hardware as soon as they install the software.

Re:I can honestly see why this is happening...

[slakdrgn]

don't forget tho, even the WPA has been cracked.

Re:I can honestly see why this is happening...

[Anonymous Coward]

But not the version on www.bnetd.org! We refused to support the beta. It was a bunch of guys on dalnet that made a version of bnetd that supported Warcraft III beta.

They shut down the wrong site!

Re:I can honestly see why this is happening...

[Anonymous Coward]

I am glad to see some level head thinking going on here on /.

Blizzard has a legit reason to want to shut down bnetd. No Blizzard game is free software and they have the right to put a stop to anything that allows for piracy of their product. Besides its not like they charge $70+ for a piece of crap game. Blizzard games are decent games and are sold for a decent price when compared to other companies.

I actually thought that the whole free software and open source movement was a good idea. Unfortunately there are too many people that I have read comments from or have spoken to in person that remind me of "born again christians". They whine and cry and pervert what they beleive in to try and back up or accomplish some fucked up goal that only hurts every one else in the end.
If this is what the *nix community is about, then I will have to grudgingly throw out my distro CDs. MicroSoft may be evil and may be scum, but at least they don't hide it.

oops - typo!

[motorsabbath]

I meant " I wasn't gonna buy Warcraft III" - WarCraft II just might be my favorite game of all times. It also runs fine in WiNE.

Let Bliz know...

[TheTrunkDr.]

I think we should all send an e-mail to blizzard letting them know how we all feel about this sort of thing. various e-mails are available, support@blizzard.com sales@blizzard.com the probable marketing@blizzard.com and broper@blizzard.com or would it be bill.roper@blizzard.com or billroper@blizzard.com whatever we can all add an extra address on that 'to' line. Blizzard was a well liked successful game company, this is definitely proof of their corruption, it seems for our once loved blizzard nothing but the almighty dollar is all that is important, well I've got several they won't be getting... on any product of theirs. I own virtually every blizzard product they've released up this point (everything from war1 up to diablo2 exp.) but I guess that will be it, warcraft2 is to this day one of my favourite games why did you have to do this blizzard?

please see:

[CTho9305]

if this is in fact the case, I musta gree with blizzard. Even though the DMCA has many bad uses, this would be a good use IMHO. Unfortunately, the RIAA could cite a good use like this as evidence of its "good"-ness

battled is back!

[famazza]

Yes, I'll re-open the project in a server here in Brazil! And now I want to know: Who will shut me down? Who will tell me that I can't do a deamon like this because the law in a North American country does not allow?

I say let's re-open and wait for the evil-axis come and close us.

Re:battled is back!

[Anonymous Coward]

Isn't Vivendi a French company with large tendrils in the States? The only evil done here is the ignorance of allowing the DMCA to be passed into law.

"Never give any government a power that you don't want them to have forever!" - My Hippy Government Prof.

Re:battled is back!

[Anonymous Coward]

bless you, friend. Post a mirror?

How to shoot yourself in the foot with the DMCA...

[Anonymous Coward]

1. Succeed in making it illegal to hack your product, ban serial cables, ROM kits, re-interpretation of your ideas.
2. Wait ten years.
3. There are now no hackers with the ability or desire to create and support your product, you are now footless.

I had an Amiga, first year they were made. It rocked! I stole compilers, games, anything the one computer store for 300 miles happened to have in it's demo box.

Next thing you know, I'm learning FORTH from one of the Fred Fish disks. Writing a terminal program in BASIC to connect to the one BBS I'd been turned on to. Having to add the ability to capture a session so I could download a real terminal program.

Then it's hacking hardware, fixing video output, turning of audio filters. Building a memory/cpu expansion card with a math co-processor from the pile of parts to working.

Things continue like this... Ten years later I'm still hacking like mad, hard and soft, day and night for a major private university. I think the ends justify the means. If companies use the DMCA to chop off the hands of todays kids who have the inital hacker spark they will soon find themselves searching like mad for that next bright new-hire to create their next source of income. They won't find him, he won't be there.

Jezus.

[Pope Slackman]

That's two in one day.
Two companies I actually like(d) (Nintendo being the other), both using the Digital Consumer Molestation Act to be total jerks.

Wonderful.

C-X C-S
To hell with nat^H^H^Hpatriotism. America sucks more every day.

bnetd is not their product

[vipw]

and they don't have the right to do whatever they want with it.

Re:bnetd is not their product

[TeraCo]

Ah, but if since I own a car, surely that give me the right to run your car off the right. It should be perfectly legal since I own my car and can do whatever I like with it.

If I didn't know better, I'd say you were astroturfing for Blizzard.

Re:bnetd is not their product

[vipw]

your analogy is very weak. it's not as if blizzard is alowed to sue their direct competitors out of business. think of it this way: if there's a road between two cities that only allows trucks, and you make a road over your OWN LAND, and let any cars on it, the owner of the main road really shouldn't have legal power over you. especially if your road is better, and not designed just to circumvent the older road.

bnetd is better because you can configure it on local machines and remove the latency of online games, while still having the added flexability of a dedicated server.

Re:bnetd is not their product

[Emugamer]

your analogy is very weak. it's not as if blizzard is alowed to sue their direct competitors out of business. think of it this way: if there's a road between two cities that only allows trucks, and you make a road over your OWN LAND, and let any cars on it, the owner of the main road really shouldn't have legal power over you. especially if your road is better, and not designed just to circumvent the older road.

Hmm I think the problem is that bnetd allows "Illegal trucks (meaning unpurchased serial geneerade games)" on its road and the trucks is where blizard gets all its money.

Re:bnetd is not their product

[Banjonardo]

My lord, that's pretty dumb.

The industry works as follows: they make a game, and sell it on the premise that you'll play multiplayer, where they shall sell ads and get money for maintenance.

And then someone comes along and makes it possible to multiplay circumventing their mechanism.

Please, tell me why they should not be able to say that you cannot use their product in a way it was not projected, sold, marketed to be? I know you can do whatever you want with your things, cause you bought them, but that's just not fair to blizzard, guys who make great games.

Re:bnetd is not their product

[vipw]

because you paid for it and should be allowed to use it in ways you see fit in accordance with standard personal freedom.

and i really doubt they make money off battlenet, it's a service to the customers, not the revenue stream for the product. warcraft 3 will have single player campaigns...

Re:bnetd is not their product

[Banjonardo]

I dunno, man, I still think they should be able to do what they deem reasonable, since there is no other way for them to enforce that.

Say I wanna make a game, that I'm Blizzard. I want X. If I can't enforce X, I won't make the game. And we, gamers, don't want that.

All I really care is that they're happy, so in turn I'm happy with their games.

Re:bnetd is not their product

[Anonymous Coward]

My lord you are dumb :)

The DMCA doesn't guarantee ad revenue. It doesn't make "ad circumvention devices" illegal.

So what exactly are you talking about?

And about "abusing" products...

If I use a book as a doorstop am I evil and bad? After all "why they should not be able to say that you cannot use their product in a way it was not projected, sold, marketed to be?"...

Re:bnetd is not their product

[Original Cyber-Surfe]

"I dunno, man, I still think they should be able to do what they deem reasonable, since there is no other way for them to enforce that. Say I wanna make a game, that I'm Blizzard. I want X. If I can't enforce X, I won't make the game. And we, gamers, don't want that. All I really care is that they're happy, so in turn I'm happy with their games. I like Muffins. MOLDY muffins." Your a corperate sheep.. Someone from Microsoft's Sales dept. will be calling you shortly to offer you a really great deal on the newest, and most secure OS they make. As for myself. I will not be buying anything from Blizzard anymore.. and I will dissuade my roomate from doing the same. Death to the DCMA.. it's a corperate f**king of the american people, and now the RIAA, and other "Artists Right Groups" are trying to give the legal schlong to our canadian neighbors..

Re:bnetd is not their product

[Banjonardo]

Look, I dislike the DMCA as much as the next guy, though I'm not an American. I like blizzard's games. I buy them for enjoyment. So, as cartman would say, "Screw you."

and here come the local mirrors

[ShinGouki]

http://64.21.72.66/bnetd-0.4.25.tar.gz

come get em

Two words: Embrace and extend.

[NFW]

Expect MS to make a proprietary extension to SMB that can only be accomodated by violating the DMCA.

I second that

[sam_handelman]

Blizzard is a big player in the PC videogame industry, but Slashdots million (?) readers are still an important slice of market pie for blizzard. Those half a million copies of Diablo II we bought (you know you did, even though Lord British's disembodied head came to you in a dream and told you not to; that the game was stupid and had no plot) brought them over 10 million dollars of pure profit - cash money to swim in, through up in the air and let it rain down on their heads.

So, that's 2 for a boycott. No more blizzard games for me, until they disavow this bullshit in writing. Also, I need to knock off the red wine and sharp cheddar before going to sleep.

Forget about it!

[pctainto]

The faq on their former page said that it was needed because battle.net was down, slow, hard to find friends, etc, yet, they must have never actually played on battle.net! Before I got dsl, i used to play games of Starcraft on there without any lag with 3 other modemers. Now, I hardly experience any lag. As for it being hard to find friends, all you have to do is tell them "meet in chatroom BLANK" and then all you're friends are there, you can make a game taht has a password, and wha-la, you're playin with friends. I think the slashdot crowd as a whole over-reacts to this. Bnetd is shut down? Just get on Battle.net! Also, as an afterthought, Blizzard checks cd-keys upon connecting you to battle.net, so as to make sure two people with the same cd-keys aren't on, decreasing the ability to pirate the game, so, since bnetd doesn't check multiple cd-keys, then it is possible for a group of friends to be playing an online game with the same cd key, which, to me, sounds like a copyright problem. Oh well. Mention someone using DMCA, and /. will immediately say its an uncalled for attack. What can ya do...

Re:Forget about it!

[Cirvam]

so how can I connect to battle.net at a private lan party without internet access? IP over carrier pigions?

Re:Forget about it!

[pctainto]

there's this thing they call a "LAN connection type" in StarCraft, you should really check it out. Its amazing I tell ya

Re:Forget about it!

[Anonymous Coward]

Umm... but that doesn't check for duplicate keys.

Therefore Starcraft is a tool to violate copy protections. It is illegal just like bnetd.

Very sorry

[NonReal]

First I'd like to note I was one of the developers of the code fork that infuriated Blizzard into doing this to bnetd. For my part in that I'd like to apologize to the bnetd developers, they shouldn't have gone after you.

Second I would love to know exactly what bnetd did wrong. They reverse engineered the protocol from looking at a packet dumps of the communcication to and from Battle.net. Then they wrote their completely own software to act in the same manner. In my option this should not be illegal. It doesn't matter that in theory it could allow copied versions to go online because bnetd has no method to check cdkeys. In theory I could take a hammer and kill someone with it.

Re:Very sorry

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, they prodded and asked if we had stolen the Battle.net source code which of course was laughable.

What they officially object to is that bnetd doesn't check cd keys.

However they also admitted they were angry because of the Warcraft III beta.

Who knows... it's a big company in the US. They can do whatever they want.

why they did it-

[/tmp]

The reason that blizzard wants to shut them down is simple.
Battle.net is the way that blizzard is able to control piracy of their games. Yes you could copy the cdrom and use it in single player mode but if you tried to use the same copy/serial number on battle.net you had problems. And the real reason people buy their games is for the battle.net usage, single player mode is not the selling point of the games. With a battle.net server clone they no longer had control over the net usage of their games. You could buy a copy of their latest release and then make 10 copies and give them to your friends then hop on a bnetd server and play away by only paying for one copy. Before bnetd all 11 of you would have had to shell out $ to be able to get on battle.net to play against each other. in this scenario they would be out 10 sales.

this is why they acted. bnetd will take the control that blizzard has always had away from them and that is not good for their business.

my lettter to Blizzard

[moebius_4d]

Subject: DMCA action => no more customer
From: [my email address]
Date: 20 Feb 2002 22:16:13 -0500
To: Rod Rigole

Dear Mr. Rigole:

Blizzard has had good success in parting me from my money. I have half a
shelf of the fine games your company has produced. However, that era is
over. Your ridiculous and short-sighted attack on the bnetd project,
claiming that the creation of a program that interfaces with your
somehow infringes on your copyright, may successfully stop that
interesting effort. Regardless of its success, it has cost you my
business forever, and you may rest assured that I will bring to the
attention of anyone soliciting my views of what to purchase your
company's bad behavior.

In an industry where some companies, like iD and Sierra, find great
success in opening their flagship products for interoperability with
customer-designed modifications, and even release old source code as a
learning resource for the larger community, your company has decided
that preventing enthusiasts from working with your products somehow
protects you. What it will protect you from is getting any more of my
money.

Sincerely,

[signature]

Re:my lettter to Blizzard

[Anonymous Coward]

From: [my email]
Sent: Wednesday, February 20, 2002 9:22 PM
To: support@blizzard.com
Subject: regarding the shutdown of the bnetd project

Dear Sir or Madam,

I have been a satisfied user of your products for many years (since you
released Warcraft). I am also a broke college student, so when I
continue to spend my hard earned and rarely seen money on your games you
can be assured that a lot of thought goes into the decision. The only
real complaint I have ever had with your games is the dodgy battlenet
system. It slows down multiplayer games to the point of being
unplayable, and is filled with obnoxious middle and high school
students, who's innane babble one has to wade through to find a game.

Enter bnetd. I have also been a happy user of bnetd for a number of
years since the project was released. It makes it quite easy to converge
with a number of like-minded people and actually enjoy gameplay in a
sane fashion. Your heavy-handed shutdown of the project has done a great
disservice to the gaming community.

There is little or no reason to take such action. One could claim that
battlenet provides a form of copy protection, by refusing to allow
multiple copies of a single serial number online at a given time.
However, this is easily circumvented with (1) direct TCP connections,
and (2) serial number generators. This argument is thus faulty.

Perhaps one could claim that bnetd allows the harvesting of serial
numbers from clients that connect to it. This is certainly a
possibility, but it is also easily circumvented. Best practice dictates
that sensitive information (such as serial numbers, passwords, etc) not
be transmitted in the clear. Some sort of hashing, as used in NTLM and
other common security systems might be in order. Better still, you could
implement a ticketing system where the client connects to a central
server to get a signed authorization to connect. This keeps privledged
information out of the clear and out of the hands of node operators.
Obviously this argument is flawed as well.

Since I can see no legitimate reason to take such drastic and rather
unprofessional action against a project that only seeks to *enhance* the
experience of legitimate users of your games, I regret that I will not
be purchasing any more of your wonderful games until this matter is
properly resolved, and I will certainly inform others of this decision.

Regards,

[Me]

Re:my lettter to Blizzard

[Demiah]

Heh. As this is really the first time I've actually got off my ass
& taken part in one of these protests slashdot seems to partial
to, you've got to question my priorities. For what it's worth,
here's my letter of protest:

Dear Sir/Madam,

Having purchased many fine Blizzard games over the years
from Warcraft to Diablo 2, you've enjoyed my support -
and indeed my many hours of unpaid technical support on
battle.net.

Your recent actions regarding a piece of "open source"
software called "bnetd" have come to my attention though,
and have left a bad taste in my mouth.

As I understand it, a forked/modified version of the
application has been made that supports of a "warezed"
version of your Warcraft III beta test. What I fail to
understand is the chain of events that lead to the forced
closing of the UNMODIFIED project using a piece of
legislation that is controversial at best.

I hope that members of the gaming community will receive
clarification of your reasons behind your course of action
in the near future.

Yours faithfully,
[signature]

Re:my lettter to Blizzard

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't bother writing to support@blizzard.com -- they generally ignore actual suport questions, so your complaints about this will certainly be ignored. Instead, hit the inboxes of the people who run Blizzard. Email adresses at blizzard are of the form [first initial][last name]@blizzard.com

So Bill Roper's email is broper@blizzard.com

Some other blizzard people worth contacting, from the credits list in the D2 manual:

Project and design leads:
Dave Brevik dbrevik@blizzard.com
Erich Schaefer eschaefer@blizzard.com
Max Schaefer mschaefer@blizzard.com

Various producers:
Mike Morhaime mmorhaime@blizzard.com
Matt Householder mhouseholder@blizzard.com
Kenneth Williams kwilliams@blizzard.com
Michael Huang mhaung@blizzard.com
Bill Roper broper@blizzard.com
Mark Kern mkern@blizzard.com

If you only email two of these people (but there's no reason not to send a copy of your complaint letter to all of them), email Max Schaefer and Bill Roper.

Oh yes, you might want to email Chris Metzen (cmetzen@blizzard.com), who was reponsible for the Diablo 2 story concept and script editing and manual design, layout, and artwork, and the cinematic script, and the coice casting and direction. In other words, he came up with the D2 plot. Ask him what part of the Diablo 2 story includes the fans getting f*cked over by Blizzard.

Wont Purchase A Big Product Ever Again

[Anonymous Coward]

Well I will never buy another product from them.
I don't think marketing/law departments understand how damaging it can be to
crush the little guy under the eyes of
millions? ( billions? ) on the internet.

Perhaps a sane, rational letter to sales@blizzard?

[BlackStar]

I've just written a quick letter to sales. I include it here to hopefully inspire a few more to respond to them in a civil and straight-forward manner in the hopes we can get them to reconsider:

Subject: bnetd.org, please reconsider

Dear Sirs,

I am a happy and proud owner of Warcraft II, Warcraft II Expansion, Diablo, Diablo II, Starcraft and Starcraft Brood Wars. I've enjoyed a great many hours playing your excellent games both stand alone and on Battle.net, and occasionally on bnetd when Battle.net was either having some splitting issues, was overloaded, or we were firewall imprisoned.

I am very disappointed in the legal bullying action that Blizzard has taken towards and open source reverse engineering project that in no way harms Blizzard's core properties or business. People using these systems don't see enough impressions on Battle.net to make a significant difference on ad revenue or impact, and in many cases would simply not be able to enjoy the multi-player aspect of the games without bnetd. This is akin to Blizzard attacking the Wine project that allows many of us to run a great set of games under Linux rather than having to use a less capable and less stable OS from Microsoft. Fortunately you also port to Macintosh, which I wish to thank you as well for a great Starcraft Carbon patch to make it OS X native. That's the best platform I've seen your game on yet.

I ask you to please rescind you legal action against the bnetd team, as they are only trying to help your business and make your games more accessible to a wider variety of players in a more diverse and distributed set of network scenarios.

I hope you will reconsider. If you continue the questionable enforcement of a bad law, I will be forced to act in accordance with my conscience and unhappily not purchase the Diablo II expansion, and further not purchase the Warcraft III game due to your company offering no substitutes to take the place of the products you have wrongly and unfairly taken action against. Products done by people on their own time without hope or expectation of compensation of any kind, but only in the interests of being able to play the games of yours that we have paid for.

sincerely, etcetc...[snip]

Feel free to use parts or all of the above in your communications if you think it will help.

what's the problem?

[syrinx]

Honestly... people are playing pirated copies of the War3 beta which they couldn't do without bnetd. This is a fact. Bnetd also allows people to play pirated D2 or Starcraft or whatever online as well. They use CD keys for a reason, so people have to buy their games if they want to play on their server. Makes sense to me. And it works too. Sure, there are key generators for the older games, but those aren't very reliable from what I've heard.

So you can't play your w4r3z anymore. Don't bitch at Blizzard about it, go buy the damn game.

(I fully expect a -1 troll for this, but so it goes.)

Re:what's the problem?

[Anonymous Coward]

Except that that has nothing to do with bnetd. Piracy is Blizzard's problem. You can still play pirated games on a LAN, just not over IP. Bnetd didn't pirate any games, stole none of blizzards secrets, did nothing but observe packets going back and forth between games they purchased to produce a utility that as an unfortunate side effect allows pirates to play but also allows everyone else to play without having a network that connects to battlenet, or putting up with the cheating, poor connections and bullshit that plagues the public battlenet servers.

They don't deserve to be shut down and this isn't about piracy.

Everytime someone on slashdot says this is wrong because of fair use reasons, somebody else yells "PIRATE! GET HIM", and this time, you are him.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Dont like it? DO SOMETHING!

[buss_error]

From the bnetd.org site:
===>QUOTE
This site has been disabled as requested by Blizzard Entertainment and it will remain closed as we have no legal recourse other than to fight a long protracted lawsuit against a large corporation. This is due to 17 USC Section 512(c)(1)(C) (AKA DMCA, supposedly required to be passed by WIPO treaties). Blizzard claims bnetd is in violation of 17 USC Section 1201(b), though we do not agree with their interpretation. Blizzard refused to specify a specific list of files on this site so the whole thing must be blocked. We are very sorry for the inconvenience but there is nothing we can do.
===>END QUOTE

Enjoy your victory. I will never again by any product from Vivendi Universal, including games, music, software or television signals. I've canceled my Cable and DTV.

I intend to make my position clear to my elected officials that my support for their campaign will be subject to a simple litmus test: The DMCA has got to go.

Yes, Vivendi Universal deserves compensation for works they license from artists. Yes, the artist needs to be paid. No, you don't get to run roughshod over every one in the world in the name of "Intellectual Property". The above example and the fact you did not state the files in question clearly indicate that you have no intention whatever of honestly challenging the content provided, and do not wish to honestly engage in protecting your legitimate interests. This was, in my opinion, strictly a move to shutdown speech you do not like.

Since this asinine behavior doesn't seem to be limited to Vivendi Universal, I am boycotting all MPAA/RIAA members. Those that can create are few. Those that wish to push off substandard swill and non-confrontational news reporting on a dumbed down populace can watch my tiny trickle of revenue go to other pursuits. I'm voting with my feet and pocketbook. I'm sure you will never miss my tiny trickle of money. It is my hope that with this public letter, others will decide as I have and vote with their feet. May that tiny trickle turn into a tsunami of adverse public opinion and bury you.

I am challenging my peers to a very simple action: For every dollar they spend on an MPAA or RIAA member's products, donate ten cents to The Electronic Frontier Foundation, join EFF as a dues paying member, and in addition, find one member of the general public each month and explain just how Sony, AOL/TIME WARNER/CNN, Vivendi, and the other MPAA/RIAA members are eroding the rights and privileges of a free society. I urge all to check www.opensecrets.org and see just how much money lobbyist spend to further the causes of the giant IP owners, who gets that money, and call the official on it and make them accountable to those that cast the votes, not those that cast the dollars.

I sincerely hope that MPAA/RIAA members will re-think their position on the DMCA, and come to realize that the Nazi Copyright Police have no place in a community that wishes to further the free exchange of ideas, and to do otherwise is un-American, anti-freedom, shameful and dishonest.

Re:Dont like it? DO SOMETHING!

[damiam]

I've canceled my Cable and DTV

Ummm... why did you need both of them in the first place? Isn't one or the other enough?

Re:Dont like it? DO SOMETHING!

[buss_error]

DTV for the chans. with one iota of IQ, cable for local stuff, public access, and the like.

Re:Dont like it? DO SOMETHING!

[indiigo]

uhhhh so you cancelled your account with your cable provider and dialed in via your backup ISP to let us know this? Gee... we feel honored you went through the effort but the rest of us will keep our net connections--however related they may be to a life-critical online game that rules the world.

Re:Dont like it? DO SOMETHING!

[buss_error]

Actually, I have ISDN, which I WAS going to throw out in favor of Cable. Now I won't, or if I do, it will cost an extra $15.00 a month for EFF (I'd already ordered a /30). I'll put my money where my mouth is, if I deal with the Cable Empire. And yes, you can get data without a TV signal in my area for 150.00 a month.

Sue the lawyer?

[Lee Bottemiller]

From the mouth (keyboard) of the lawyer...

The aforementioned site either hosts or distributes software which illegally modifies and/or alters Blizzard Entertainment copyrighted software.

I have a good faith belief that...the information in this notice is accurate.

What would happen if the lawyer for, say, Blizzard, was personally sued for participation in abuse of process? What would happen if a judge learned that Blizzard didn't actually think bnetd was really in violation?

The threat of personal liability just might encourage other lawyers to think twice before blindly obeying when Mr. CEO hollers, "Sic 'em!".

Pff. Yeah. That'll happen.

Re:Sue the lawyer?

[cronik]

If Mr. CEO thinks that not sicking the lawyers could hurt the corporate interest then they are legaly REQUIRED to do something. Its called due diligance people.

here's my letter

[vipw]

I'm distressed and disappointed to see the legal action initialized against
the bnetd project. In fact, it has distressed me to the point at which I
have decided to try to share what distress I can.

Until this evening I was really looking forward to playing Warcraft III when
it was released, in fact, I was expecting it to have a shot at being in the
running for the the best game of all time. Alas, it appears that my
enthusiasm will be for naught, because I will not purchase another Blizzard
product, or any product distributed by Vivendi until a retraction and public
apology is made. Your vicious attack on this charity software based on
entirely imagined copyright infringements is disgusting enough to me to
permanently boycott your company.

Re:Google comes to the rescue again. (Ross)

[Anonymous Coward]

Sorry, I had to change the perms because the school's server was getting hammered. If I don't get a message from the admin I'll fix them tomorrow....

Yawn.

[base3]

Another day, another dollar. File, Save as, \\xr4ti\downloads\suppressed, OK

. . .

Directory of \\charon\downloads\suppressed

02/20/2002 09:25 PM <DIR> .
02/20/2002 09:25 PM <DIR> ..
07/27/2001 01:34 PM 746,194 aebpr22.zip
01/12/2002 10:57 AM <DIR> ASPI Me (backdate to 1998)
02/20/2002 09:18 PM <DIR> Blizzard Jackboots
09/22/2001 04:05 PM <DIR> Broadcast 2000
01/30/2002 04:22 PM <DIR> eBookReader (old verson)
06/07/2001 06:50 PM <DIR> PanoTools
08/25/2001 12:06 PM <DIR> SKIE
06/08/2001 07:24 PM <DIR> TiVo MPEG
12/31/2001 08:00 AM <DIR> WMA crack (v7)
12/31/2001 08:06 AM <DIR> Xolox
08/25/2001 12:06 PM <DIR> xp-stuff
1 File(s) 746,194 bytes
12 Dir(s) 10,921,562,112 bytes free

Think these intellectual property assmonkeys see a pattern yet? If you want the widest distribution of a file, just try to stamp it out.

* machine names changed to protect the guilty

No...

[Bartab]

I never played RTS games, really. Last one I bought was Warcraft (one) however I'm currently in the beta for war3 (Officially, not the warezed version) and was actually finding it fairly enjoyable as many of the things that annoyed me about most RTS games were reduced. I was planning on buying the final.

Now, not a chance. Nor will I buy Diablo 3, or -anything- developed by Blizzard or any other game by a Vivendi subsidary.

Re:No...

[SamBeckett]

please transfer your beta copy to me then.

Mirrors

[damiam]

web.archive.org saves the day agin! True, it doesn't archive the actual source files, but you can get those from sourceforge. If you want to see the website, though, it works just fine.

Alternately, apt-get install bnetd still works, and I'm sharing the latest development version (bnetd-0.4.25pre3.tar.gz) on the OpenFT network, in case they take it off sourceforge. Someone should stick it into Freenet too.

Re:Mirrors

[Anonymous Coward]

That's older than 0.4.25 which was released last month I think...

Counter File Paperwork

[Malk-a-mite]

Adjust to your needs and fill in the blanks.
Was orginally made to deal with Napster issues at the height of the craze.
--
Malk-a-mite
=============

Dear Internet Service Provider:

This letter is written in response to your notification to me of a complaint received about my webpage(s). The pages in question are:

(insert list of URLs here).

The complainant's claim of copyright violation should be rejected because (please see all checked items):

The material in question is not copyrighted, or the copyright has expired. It is therefore in the public domain and may be reproduced by anyone.

The complainant has provided no copyright registration information or other tangible evidence that the material in question is in fact copyrighted, and I have a good faith belief that it is not. The allegation of copyright violation is therefore in dispute, and at present unsupported.

The complainant does not hold the copyright to the material in question and is not the designated representative of the copyright holder, and therefore lacks standing to assert that my use of the material is a violation of any of the owner's rights.

My use of the material is legally protected because it falls within the "fair use" provision of the copyright regulations, as defined in 17 USC 107. If the complainant disagrees that this is fair use, he or she is free to take up the matter with me directly, in the courts. You, the ISP, are under no obligation to settle this dispute, or to take any action to restrict my speech at the behest of this complainant. Furthermore, siding with the complainant in a manner that interferes with my lawful use of your facilities could constitute breach of contract on your part.

The complaint does not follow the prescribed form for notification of an alleged copyright violation as set forth in the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, 17 USC 512(c)(3).
Specifically, the complainant has failed to:

Provide a complaint in written form.
[17 USC 512(c)(3)(A)]

Include a physical or electronic signature of the complainant.
[17 USC 512(c)(3)(A)(i)]

Identify the specific copyrighted work claimed to be infringed, or, if multiple copyrighted works are covered by a single complaint, provide a representative list of such works.
[17 USC 512(c)(3)(A)(ii)]

Provide the URLs for the specific files on my website that are alleged to be infringing.
[17 USC 512(c)(3)(A)(iii)]

Provide sufficient information to identify the complainant, including full name, mailing address, telephone number, and email address.
[17 USC 512(c)(3)(A)(iv)]

Include a written statement that the complainant has a good faith belief that use of the disputed material is not authorized by the copyright owner, its agent, or the law.
[17 USC 512(c)(3)(A)(v)]

Include a written statement that the information in the notification is accurate, and under penalty of perjury, that the complainant is authorized to act on behalf of the owner of an exclusive right that is allegedly infringed.
[17 USC 512(c)(3)(A)(vi)]

This communication to you is a DMCA counter-notification letter as defined in 17 USC 512(g)(3):

I declare, under penalty of perjury, that I have a good faith belief that the complaint of copyright violation is based on mistaken information, misidentification of the material in question, or deliberate misreading of the law.

My name, address, and telephone number are as follows:
(insert your name, address and phone number here).

I hereby consent to the jurisdiction of Federal District Court for the judicial district in which I reside (or, if my address is outside the United States, any judicial district in which you, the ISP, may be found).

I agree to accept service of process from the complainant.

My actual or electronic signature follows: ________________________________.

Having received this counter-notification, you are now obligated under

17 USC 512(g)(2)(B) to advise the complainant of this notice, and to restore the material in dispute (or not take the material down in the first place), unless the complainant files suit against me within 10 days.


David S. Touretzky is a principal scientist in the Computer Science Department and the Center for the Neural Basis of Cognition at Carnegie Mellon University.

Re:Counter File Paperwork

[ocie]

IANAL, but According to the law:

If it is determined that the copyright holder misrepresented its claim regarding the infringing material, the copyright holder then becomes liable to the OSP for any damages that resulted from the improper removal of the material. [512(f)]

How should these damages to a developer be quantified?

Re:Counter File Paperwork

[Anonymous Coward]

Wrong paperwork, sorry.

Blizzard doesnt claim that bnetd infringes its copyright. Instead they claim that the bnetd application is an illegal device under the DCMA:
it circumvents the copyright protection build into a game developed by them.

I think the only chance is leaving the country, unless you have a few million dollars for the lawsuit.

What about something like thefreeworld as a new hosting site? Im sure sourceforge will be down soon, too.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Dear Vendors:

[Jay Carlson]

Dear Vendors:

We really hate the DMCA.

No. I don't think you understand. We *REALLY* hate the DMCA.

So if you think you have been wronged, feel free to send out your lawyers. Just do NOT invoke the DMCA, or you are going to have a lot of your potential early adopters start spitting when they see your corporate logo.

Signed,
Someone who usually will buy your games

Congratulations! These domains are available!

[Anonymous Coward]

o boycottblizzard.com
o boycottblizzard.net
o boycottblizzard.org
o boycottblizzard.info
o boycottblizzard.biz
o boycottblizzard.cc
o boycottblizzard.tv
o boycottblizzard.ws might be Available

~~~

What about the Source?

[Anonymous Coward]

Does anyone happen to have the bnetd-0.4.25.tar.gz lying around somewhere? I'd like to get a copy now, but the one on thier freshmeat site is gone. Mirrors anyone?

Re:DeCSS?

[base3]

Where's DeCSS? No collection would be complete without that!

Heh :). In a tar on the Linux partition--I knew someone was going to catch that. I just didn't know it would be that quick.

Are these people on acid?

[MillionthMonkey]

This was an incredibly stupid miscalculation. If you run a company that makes a living off the disposable cash of geeks, you don't use the Digital Millenium Copyright Act to shut down a SourceForge project! They might as well shrinkwrap their games in flashy packaging that says "Boycott us!" Anybody who uses the DMCA for anything is getting lots of hostile attention. Using such a hated law to attack your own customers is pretty risky for such an easily boycottable company. I hope they've all been polishing their resumes.

I'm going to stick to the moral high ground, and never play another Blizzard game again unless it's a pirated version.

Re:Are these people on acid?

[Banjonardo]

They might as well shrinkwrap their games in flashy packaging that says "Boycott us!"

Ha, like that would stop me from buying Warcraft 3!

Re:Are these people on acid?

[|<amikaze]

I'm going to stick to the moral high ground, and never play another Blizzard game again unless it's a pirated version.

Morals seem to be strong in this one... If Ford makes a dangerous car, do you only drive stolen ones? I know the analogy is flawed, but it's still the same concept.

Re:Are these people on acid?

[White Shadow]

I'm going to stick to the moral high ground, and never play another Blizzard game again unless it's a pirated version.

Uhm, I don't see how pirating software is sticking to the moral high ground. I can see how boycotting Blizzard products might be the moral high ground, but that doesn't justify you pirating their software. Just cause Blizzard is doing something wrong doesn't mean you can do something wrong back at them. You should probably get off your moral high horse.

Re:Are these people on acid?

[MillionthMonkey]

I knew after I clicked "Submit" that the lack of a smiley face on that last statement would come back to bite me in the ass. It was a jooooke.

Everyone knows Ford makes dangerous cars. But you don't boycott a company because it makes inferior products- that isn't really a boycott. If you didn't drive a Ford because of the courtroom antics they play with the First Amendment, that would be more like it.

Re:Are these people on acid?

[Anonymous Coward]

You are thinking of "crack". Acid is what made their games good the first place. :-)

Sounds like bullshit

[Tom7]

I'm no lawyer, but this sounds like pure bullshit to me.

It's common practice for corporate lawyers to send vague threatening (but totally unfounded) e-mails to people when they don't like what they're doing, even if they have no intention to fight a losing legal battle.

Here's why I think this is stupid:

- The anti-circumvention clause deals with access to a copyrighted work. There doesn't appear to be a copyrighted work in question here.

- There is an explicit exception for reverse engineering for the purpose of interoperability, with a sentence like, "... to achieve interoperability of an independently created computer program with other programs." Which seems to be almost precisely what they are doing.

FYI, the text of the DMCA is here: http://www.loc.gov/copyright/title17/92chap12.html .

Even if you can't afford a lawsuit, please guys, make it expensive (in some sense) for corporations to make these kinds of threats. That can mean fighting back a little and racking up legal fees, that can mean spreading the word on fansites and such and causing an *increase* in popularity (when what they want to do of course is to stifle the project). It can mean starting up your own similar project and making them have to track you down and threaten you, too.

Personally, I've had a couple of these run-ins myself. For the first one, I got help from the FSF and the lawyers finally backed off. Most recently, I had a run in with some type foundries over my program "embed" ( http://www.andrew.cmu.edu/~twm/embed/ ); simply letting the lawyer know that I wasn't willing to back down without a fight convinced them to give up.

Re:Sounds like bullshit

[Danse]

I think Blizzard's point is that bnetd is a circumvention device that allows people to bypass their serial code system that controls access to their games when played online. Thus the bnetd guys would be trafficking a circumvention device, exactly the same reasoning behind DeCSS. Sucks, but I think they have a pretty decent case under the DMCA. If bnetd checked serial codes, then their case would probably go out the window. But I don't think there's any way for them to do such checking, so they're probably screwed. Sucks, huh?

Re:Sounds like bullshit

[Tom7]

It's not exactly the same as DeCSS; DeCSS bypassed an encryption (CSS) to access a copyrighted work. Though there is a copyright (say, Warcraft II) involved here, and perhaps encryption (I don't know the protocol well enough), but the encryption does not control access to some copyrighted work in the same way that it does in DeCSS. While the DMCA seems to be written precisely for the DVD case, you have to make a real stretch in this situation.

So I see why Blizzard might not want people playing online with bad serials, but I don't see how the DMCA is relevant.

Re:Sounds like bullshit

[Anonymous Coward]

Exactly.... Thank you for thinking before posting. If only more people would do that this would be a happier place :)

Re:Sounds like bullshit

[Danse]

This is what the DMCA says:

No person shall circumvent a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title.

It says nothing about encryption, so it doesn't matter whether Blizzard's serial code system is a form of encryption or not. It also doesn't matter whether it controls access in the same way that CSS controls access to DVDs. As long as it controls access in some manner, it's covered.

Re:Sounds like bullshit

[Tom7]

I understand that. You had said that exactly the same reasoning applies as in the DeCSS case, which is not true. That's what I was pointing out.

I still maintain that the DMCA is not relevant, though. There is no "access" (nor a "technological measure" as far as I know); they are simply reverse-engineering a protocol and implementing a server for it. And in particular, this act is specifically exempted in the DMCA.

Re:Sounds like bullshit

[Danse]

There is "access" in the sense used by the DMCA. You're gaining access to the multiplayer part of a Blizzard game by using a tool that allows you to bypass Blizzard's serial code verification (which would certainly a technological measure under the definition used by the DMCA).

As for the reverse-engineering, I agree that bnetd should be legal, but this is what I was talking about when I said it was the same as the DeCSS case. DeCSS has what I would consider "substantial non-infringing uses", as does bnetd. However, the court didn't seem to be especially swayed by that argument, and I don't expect much difference with this case. The part of the DMCA covering reverse engineering is weak at best, as it includes the phrase "to the extent that doing so does not constitute infringement under this title or violate applicable law other than this section."

Actually...

[Tom7]

The DMCA threats against DeCSS didn't move it underground, they moved it into the public spotlight!

I agree with what you're saying, though. There's a certain knee-jerk reaction to these intellectual "property" issues that make companies do dumb stuff sometimes. They should take lessons from id software, who build a very strong user base through active collaboration with their fan developers. (Though I would like to see what would happen if someone made a server for Q3A that didn't check CD keys...)

Re:Actually...

[Magila]

Though I would like to see what would happen if someone made a server for Q3A that didn't check CD keys.

Nothing of course, the id master server stopped checking CD keys a while ago.

Not Really

[BlackGriffen]

Every Blizzard game I've seen since WC2 has been playable online if you know your buddy's IP address. Excluding Warcraft I, and maybe Diablo I, every Blizzard game has been playable over just the plain old internet. The thing is that Battle.net is the only place where there's sure to be a large enough concentration of Blizzard players to get a good mix of competition.

Now, Blizzard has claimed in the past (like 6 months ago or so) that battle.net was expected to be a loss leader, but that it actually made a profit off of ads. I doubt that that's true now, judging from the general decline in banner advertising and the amount of self advertising I've been seeing on battle.net in the past couple of months (things like: WCIII will be the greatest game ever, coming... or You're ad here! we have lots of users...). So what I'm betting is that this is just Blizzard scapegoating whatever they can over a lack of profitability for battle.net.

BlackGriffen

All Bnetd Files are Still Available

[Anonymous Coward]

As previously mentioned, the Sourceforge project page of bnetd is still working.

Also up is the project's CVS repository on Sourceforge, which can be retrieved with the following commands (if you have CVS installed):

cvs -d :pserver:anonymous@cvs.sf.net:/cvsroot/bnetd login
cvs -d :pserver:anonymous@cvs.sf.net:/cvsroot/bnetd co bnetd

A snapshot of the current bnetd CVS repository is available at: http://kainga.quasarnet.org/~trisk/files/bnetd-cvs .tar.bz2. Let's get this as widely distributed as possible...

Re:All Bnetd Files are Still Available

[Anonymous Coward]

Ack, the downloads on Sourceforge page have been removed now! :\
Fortunately, I have the tarballs mirrored. :)

The current stable release (0.4) of bnetd:
http://grex.cyberspace.org/~trisk/bnetd-0.4.tar.gz
http://kainga.quasarnet.org/~trisk/files/bnetd-0.4 .tar.gz

The current development release (0.4.25) of bnetd:
http://grex.cyberspace.org/~trisk/bnetd-0.4.25.tar .gz
http://kainga.quasarnet.org/~trisk/files/bnetd-0.4 .25.tar.gz

Enjoy. :)

You're pretty stupid, haha!

[Luminair]

You don't realize how many people DON'T buy Blizzard games because they can play on bnetd servers.

It's a sound business move to stop this, and that is the end of THAT.

I know of THOUSANDS of people playing the Warcraft 3 beta now WHO DID NOT GET INTO THE BETA.

How many do you think will be playing when the game is released for money?

Re:You're pretty stupid, haha!

[NonReal]

You don't realize that bnetd had nothing to do with supporting WarCraft III.

You also don't realize all the people playing the beta now are (or atleast were if they are planning to boycott now) going to buy the game when they are able to. It may be technically illegal for them to have the beta, but the server itself is not (or should not) be illegal.

Re:You're pretty stupid, haha!

[Anonymous Coward]

all of the people that illegally download the game, are going to go out and buy it legally when it arrives? ALL of them? please remove your rose tinted glasses, put down the crackpipe, and unplug your computer. you are done.

Wrong analysis, right conclusion...

[Tom7]

Your analysis is wrong. The relevant section of the DMCA prohibits the trafficking of devices that circumvent access controls for a copyrighted work.

Copyright already prohibits the thieving of digital products, and patent law protects ideas.

However, I do agree that the DMCA is inapplicable to bnetd. That's because there is no circumvention of access controls going on, and because there is a specific exception to the anti-circumvention clause for the purpose of developing interoperable software. (See my post "sound like bullshit" for more detail.)

You, too, are pretty stupid!

[Luminair]

You don't boycott RedHat for trying to make money selling something that is pretty much free. You also shouldn't be a RETARD and try to boycott Blizzard for trying to protect their interests.

You don't realize how many people DON'T buy Blizzard games because they can play on bnetd servers.

It's a sound business move to stop this, and that is the end of THAT.

I know of THOUSANDS of people playing the Warcraft 3 beta now WHO DID NOT GET INTO THE BETA.

How many do you think will be playing when the game is released for money?

Re:You, too, are pretty stupid!

[Anonymous Coward]

Red Hat never threatened to sue me though...

Re:You, too, are pretty stupid!

[Halo5]

How can you play on a bnetd server without the original game? These are separate products, and separate issues. Killing the bnetd servers WON'T diminish piracy of Blizzard games.

We'll see if it is a sound business decision. I'm betting that it isn't.

Re:You, too, are pretty stupid!

[TotallyUseless]

easy, download a blizzard game from a warez site, then connect to any bnetd server you want. i think that is blizzard's point in this... they use bnet, partially at least, for license verification. each cd gets a user id attached to it, and you can only have 1 ip using an id at a time. Not the best checking in the world, but it keeps most people from giving the game to their friends so they can hook up and play... cause they cant. at least not on bnet. with bnetd you can play online without any checks that you actually bought the game. so while they may not actively encourage piracy, bnetd does nothing to diminish it, which is one of the key functions of the original bnet

Unlike the others

[Anonymous Coward]

The one and ONLY use for bnetd was to play pirated copies of blizzard games. Keep that in mind. There were NO other ligitimate uses, unless you go to GREAT lengths to contrive some sort of 'oh, we were using it as a chat server' or something.

This is not some company coming down on 'the little people' on a program with legitamate uses. This is a company trying to destroy something which had a SOLE PURPOSE of defeating the copy protection. I hope they win.

Re:Unlike the others

[Anonymous Coward]

These are slashdot people, they're not going to listen to any point of view which contradicts their own. And eventually this post will be deleted, while hundreds of "dood, I hate dmcaa, i wont buy ur game" posts will be modded up.

Re:Unlike the others

[protektor]

Actually a lot of people use it to play from behind a firewall, since you can't do it any other way. Also how about the nasty server splits or when the servers are to too full or when they simply keep dumping you in the middle of games? Or what about dealing with some of the dupers or jerks who just ruin the whole game?

These are all legit uses for bnetd. Guess there are legitimate uses. I guess I just went to greath lengths to justify uses, NOT!

Re:Unlike the others

[Anonymous Coward]

I have to agree, when you get into a split server and can't join a game with your friends, it's time for bnetd.

When you're sick of cheating Korean kids who spam you with "^^ HAHAHA U = SUKS ^^ I KILL ^^ HAHA," it's time for bnetd.

When you're sick of playing 3ON3 BGH, and would like to play a map that involves actual resource management... it's time for bnetd.

When you want to play Warcraft III (a game you've already pre-ordered), instead of looking at the 86,000th screenshot and listening to some completely worthless fansite webmaster prattle on about it, it's time for bnetd.

Blizzard is encouraging people not to play their games, now, apparently. Well guess what, if I don't play your game, I'm not going to buy it.

Some stuff to do....

[TheOnlyCoolTim]

Besides just emailing them...

Go to battle.net and fill up their forums with complaints. Recently though they changed it to require a Blizzard game CD key so dig up the old Starcraft CD first.

Play warcraft III beta on cracked servers just to piss them off.

The worst part is is that BNETD.ORG the first site they shutdown made absolutely NO WARCRAFT III support at all. It was an open source project which other groups improved on. They have also apparently shut down the Warforge (WCIII compatible Bnetd version) official sites, but the files at least are back up somewhere else now, and the Warforge game servers themselves seem to be still up.

DMCA is a totally fucked-up move...

I'm going to go play some Warcraft III now, suck it Blizzard lawyers!

Tim

You, sir, are correct.

[Luminair]

Popularity grows, it doesnt shrink. War3 has thousands of illegitimate users. As do the other Blizzard games.

How many do you think will buy the game when it comes out, when they can just continue to play it for free?

Re:You, sir, are correct.

[Anonymous Coward]

Tons, because you can't play it properly. It has no cinematics, single player, or lan player. They intentionally left out 75% of what I want to play. Your argument holds no water.

Kali? Khan? FSGS?

[dnoyeb]

Both of those enable every BLizzard game to be played online. Why didnt they go after them??

Interesting choice to go after the guy that gives it away for free. There has been the Free Starcraft Game Server around for years and they didnt hit those guys. THey are running exacly a battle.net type server. This is very interesting.

Why these guys only???

Re:Kali? Khan? FSGS?

[Kharny]

Because Kali and FSGS don't allow you to play unreleased beta games? This is purely protecting the beta.

Re:Kali? Khan? FSGS?

[Anonymous Coward]

They didn't go after them, as a modified version of bnetd allows you to play wc3 online WITHOUT a cd key check (you still need one to install, but the server doesn't check it). This way you can have 284128 people playing on a server with the same cd key.

Re:Kali? Khan? FSGS?

[Anonymous Coward]

U can play any game on kali and khan and I'm sure fsgs that you want regardless if it doesn't support it. That is assuming the game supports ipx "LAN" or TCP/IP. "War3 beta doesn't have the option for LAN enabled"

Kali for instance allows IPX over TCP/IP by emulating IPX over TCP/IP

Anti-circumvention technology

[nosse_elendili]

Just a point of clarification. Obviously bnetd is not copyright violation since it is reverse engineered. But this isn't why they are getting shut down...

The aforementioned site either hosts or distributes software which illegally
modifies and/or alters Blizzard Entertainment copyrighted software or
bypasses anti-circumvention technology

The reason Blizzard is panicked about bnetd is that it bypasses their "anti-circumvention technology". In other words, Blizzard will claim that the BattleNet servers are their method of ensuring that people don't illegally copy their games. It is the only time that they check to make sure that you aren't using somebody else's licence. At least in the past, Blizzard game installations have not checked with centralized servers to make sure you don't install on multiple machines. The only thing that you couldn't do if you installed on multiple machines with the same licence was play on BattleNet. Now that has been taken away from them and there is nothing that a copied version of a Blizzard game lacks.

It seems like there are few solutions to this (other than legal ones which are costly and only piss people off):

1. Blizzard could take a Microsoft approach and check a centralized database when you install the game to make sure that licence wasn't installed on somebody else's computer. In other words, they could come up with another method of anti-circumvention technology
   
2. The bnetd guys could try to cooperate with them. They could somehow check with BattleNet to make sure that multiple users aren't using the same licence even if they are on a bnetd server. (I think CounterStrike does something like this since I tried to get it to work with a cracked version of Half-Life and it yelled at me saying I had a bad registration code.)
   
3. The bnetd guys could build a set of features not offered at all in the regular BattleNet servers. This seems like the most important thing for them to do since if the only difference between their version and the official one is that it allows users to play without legit codes, Blizzard could definitely peg them as "circumvention technology". They may already offer a better feature set, I've never used it. I'm just saying that this will be their strongest point.
   

Anyways, I hate to see big companies picking on fan-made tools, but I guess I understand why Blizzard feels threatened. I hope they can come to a mutually satisfying agreement that will let us all have more fun with Blizzard games but still lets Blizzard make money since they work long and hard to make quality games (far better games than any free-software group has ever made IMHO).

The notice was incorrectly served and not binding.

[Ndr_Amigo]

First, you can still download the source from CVS. Get it while you still can and mirror it on your own website!
http://sourceforge.net/cvs/?group_id=6933

Also Blizzards takedown notice was not legally correct.
http://lweb.law.harvard.edu/chilly/faq.cgi?CatID=1 4#QID131

"Question: Does a copyright owner have to specify the exact materials it alleges are infringing?"

As Blizzard did not specify any files, or even the NAME of the software, the takedown notice is quite probably legally non-binding.

Also the BNetD project can, as noted above, issue a counter-notice and instigate put-back procedures because the takedown was incorrectly served:
http://lweb.law.harvard.edu/chilly/faq.cgi?CatID=1 4#QID132

- Ender
www.quakesrc.org

Partial Mirror

[Akardam]

http://lookingglass.akardam.net/mirrored/bnetd/

"me too!"

[Building]

Y'know, my attitude towards Blizzard has always been of the gushy, complimentary variety. Not much of a gamer as a general rule, I've always been deeply addicted to Starcraft, simply because it's a work of art in its melding of an enjoyable sensory experience, humor, and interesting gameplay. I've always gone out of my way to throw money at you guys (such as by buying multiple copies of games, for the hell of it), simply because I appreciate your "it's released when it's done" development model, and the resulting quality of your products.

Most of the sating of my Starcraft urge is played out on a private server, amongst myself and a number of other legitimate owners of the game, for a number of benefits too obvious to be worth enumerating. Now that Blizzard has decided to invoke the ill-conceived DMCA on the Bnetd project, our server software of choice, we're pretty much stuck. I'm feeling pretty betrayed to
see a company whose approach to the gaming business I respected go the route of content delivery control, a business practice I believe to be counterproductive, sleazy, and in the long run a danger for consumers, all for the sake of, I'd imagine leveraging some potential new revenue stream.

Good job screwing up a good thing, there, guys. Guess I don't have to spend any more money on you.

Options against this action

[Anonymous Coward]

Okay, I guess they won't be able to OFFICIALLY release new bnetd daemon... But, I saw we are enough to mass release the actual version everywhere...

If everyone that download bnetd can put it on their own website, or even create a new website on some free hosts and put the file on it, or if you save it into your *morpheus,kazaa,edonkey* directory, or mass send it on xdccs on *IRC, they won't be able to do anything against that.

The point of shutting down the main website is to stop the distribution of the files, but if new sites pop up everywhere, everyday, they won't be able to stop the file distribution... After sending 1000 or more letters, they will have no other choice than stopping this ****** procedure. If we unite, we can win

Why pull an OLGA?

[Anonymous Coward]

Blizzard's lawyers would be full of shit if they even knew what they were talking about.

Even with DMCA, they don't have a leg to stand on.

Tell 'em to fuck off.

--rgb

Re:Why pull an OLGA?

[Anonymous Coward]

Take it back. Don't just tell 'em to fuck off. Sue 'em for libel, harassment, anti-trust, restraint of trade, whatever else will stick.

They're the ones that believe in lawyers, and I'm sure you can get one who'll handle this for you.

"Court?! Court's...expensive!"

Works both ways, too.

--rgb

Dry Fist Up the Poop Chute for Blizzard

[Anonymous Coward]

The way to fuck Blizzard up the ass is to make open source games that are as good as commercial products.

They way to fuck the record companies and movie companies is to support independent music and movie labels. That means BUY their shit, not copy it from Morpheus, et al.

Oh yeah, and write your legislators while its still legal.

And if you have a lot of money, hire a bunch of lawyers and try to get a case to the Supremes (if you live in the USA).

Open source the Internet are bollocks if the community cannot overcome the old school interests.

Than why did Blizzard made money on Starcraft

[Edmund Blackadder]

The FSGS (free starcraft game server) was always out there. Nevertheless blizzard made a killing on starcraft. Its true some people used the free servers to play pirated games online, but people that liked the game eventually bought it. Most people that use the free servers actually own the game, but prefer those servers to battle net for various reasons. There are FSGS servers for more skilled players, there are FSGS servers for people in different countries, where connection to battlenet is slow, some people start FSGS servers only for their friends etc. So every body wins. Consumers start their own FSGS servers that are better suited for their needs, and Blizzard does not have to pay for the support for thousands of gamers that would have gone to battlenet otherwise.

/. doesn't get it

[qwerty123]

Ok, I know I'm posting this a bit late, but if anyone sees it mod up! 2 things.

1 The DMCA/Blizzard thing is not new. They've tried it against many many sites and people that release hacks for their games (such as duping in diablo or maphack in sc)

2. It's a shame that blizzard pulled a DMCA on bnetd, but the reason for them shutting down it down were legit. Basically right now the beta for warcraftIII is out, but only 5,000 out of 100,000 got it. As a result many many rabid fans have gone to desperate measures to get it. Right now the ways to play it without getting the beta mainly consist of getting the ISO using one a ripped key or else a no key hack and then playing with another single player hack. Blizzard cannot do much about this and the player can't really play against opponents since there is no computer ai in the beta. Recently (friday) Bnetd released their a new underground version that will allow war3 to be played. This is why blizzard doesn't want it. They don't want a public beta for reason that I will not get into here.

Re:/. doesn't get it

[Anonymous Coward]

No, no, no.

You have it entirely wrong!

The bnetd project refused to support Warcraft III beta because so many people were just wanting to steal the beta test.

So a bunch of people on dalnet went and made a server and setup a page and called their project Warforge.

That stuff had nothing to do with the bnetd guys except that it used their source code as a base.

Please please research this stuff...
Your post was very accurate other than that.

Re:/. doesn't get it

[Anonymous Coward]

http://threshed.com/WC3_Server_Editor.zip

bnetd plays war3beta, I have done it.

Re:/. doesn't get it

[kindbud]

They don't want a public beta for reason that I will not get into here.

Then I don't want to believe a word you say, for reasons I will not get into here.

Re:/. doesn't get it

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, I wote it and I will tell you it does not.

The copy of bnetd you are using was hacked up by some people from dalnet.

What I said was correct. The parent article was not. The moderation here really sucks....

-Ross

Seems to me...

[TrebleJunkie]

That if Blizzard would have said, "hey, we don't mind bnetd, we think it's really cool, but could you maybe put some serial number verification code in the bugger as not to encourage piracy?" and given them the code to do so, it probably would have been a win-win for everyone.

Of course, business is as business does, and business does a lot of shooting itself in the foot.

I will not buy Warcraft III. I will not buy Starcraft II if they ever make the damned thing. Pity, Blizzard. You make good games, but the two of your probably could have actually worked this out in much better ways.

Re:Seems to me...

[mlk]

While, in theroy the idea is great, but would you want a copy of your code checking software floating in the internet...

Also, how long before
bool isLegalCopy() { return [complicated_math]; }
becomes
bool isLegalCopy() { return true; }

No, Bliz should have had the legal-checking stuff client side.

Re:I don't think it's Battle.net, its pirated game

[Anonymous Coward]

It's up to the server operator to set up the key verification. It _does_ work correctly though. That's why this doesn't make any sense. If anything, Blizzard should be going after servers that allow invalid clients (much like ID Software does), instead of shutting down a useful project.

it's a tool for piracy

[duran.goodyear]

I bet people have said this already, but the real reason I bet is that it's being used as a tool to play pirated versions of the game.

if the BNETD project wasn't going, there would be no way to play the pirated war3 beta.

if anything, its the best use of the DCMA that I have ever seen. it wasn't a decision made to be stupid, their protecting their product in a very fair way.

Re:it's a tool for piracy

[protektor]

How is it that your able to on battle.net behind a firewall? What's that you can't? Hmm guess you shouldn't have blow off bnetd so quickly. Oh you hate the dupers and the number of people who ruin playing games online and you can't do anything about it? Hmm bnetd would have fixed that. Oh your in a foreign country and your latency is so bad no one will play with you? Hmm guess you shouldn't have kissed off bnetd so fast.

See a pattern here? If not, well I am suprised you play online at all then.

This is getting silly

[Coppertone]

Well, I don't live in US but after reading all those DMCA related news last few days I am beginning to getting concern - it seems to me that big US Corpration (even though I work for one ;-p) is beignning to *ABUSE* DMCA as a way to close down anything that they don't see fit - Okay I can understand why they want to shut down Advance Flash Linker, but why bnetd? Can't those corp. america sees that these initiative will help them further their market share? Can't they see this is a healthy competition? Seems like the World is beginning to run by commerical interest instead of in the interest of the advancement of technology - What next? Micrsoft shuts down WINE project because it helps decoding Window's secret? This is getting stupid you know....

Can one still host CVS server for bnetd outside US and still being legal? Maybe we should run a sourceforge like service in HongKong or something like that ;-p Is there anything I can do, not being a US citizen? I know UK (where I live and work) is thinking of a DMCA equivalent - maybe it is time I have a chat with my MP.....

Re:I can honestly see why this is happening WRONG

[Anonymous Coward]

Please leave the "*nix community"... we don't need you and if you aren't happy then why stay?

As for level headed thinking... well maybe. Yes, they are correct about checking for keys. But what you said was that anything which can be used for pirating should be able to be stopped.

Care to package up your computer and send it to me? After all, you shouldn't need it. It's a pirating tool.

My Letter to sales, piracy@blizzard.com

[al3x]

"To whom it may concern:

You have cost yourself a loyal customer as a result of the unjust legal action taken against the bnetd Project. I am not alone.

The Digital Millenium Copyright Act stands on its own as an ill-concieved law without invocations like this at the expense of the average consumer.
In this case, you have shut down a project that did little more than encourage the purchase of Blizzard games and take some of the burden of
hosting game servers off of your infrastructure.

You would be wise to listen to public opinion regarding your actions if you intend to remain in business."

Re:My Letter to sales, piracy@blizzard.com

[pajor]

I made a phone call to the number on the site (since I am in orange county). The contents was pretty much

I own 5 internet cafes, 3 in orange county, 2 in san fransisco with 3 more scheduled to open in Dallas. I currently own 121 copies of diablo II plus expansion pack, and 130 copies of starcraft. I would have bought 90 more copies of each game for the new cafes in dallas but because of your actions concerning bnetd I will not be. I most likely would have bought 240 copies of warcraft 3 when it came out, and I will not be doing that, nor will I purchase any blizzard product for my cafes ever again. I will also be telling two of my close friends who also run internet cafes to not purchase warcraft III.

I hope you reconsider your actions concerning bnetd, for my customers enjoy your games.

Thank you

Why?

[Jimmy_B]

This action makes no sense. Battle.Net is not a money-maker for Blizzard; if anything, it is an expense, despite the presence of banner ads, made to boost sales of the games. Blizzard was dependent on third-party matchmaking utilities from the beginning, with Kali (a pay service, no less!), and Blizzard supported them (by including a copy of Kali on the CDs); had there been no third-party applications for multiplayer Warcraft, there would've been no multiplayer Warcraft at all, and much less of a community for Starcraft to take hold in. So, what's their reason for shutting down bnetd? Unrestrained lawyers are the only reasonable explanation; it is clearly to Blizzard's financial disadvantage. I expect that Blizzard will back off when higher-ups find out about this.

Re:Why?

[Chris Mattern]

> This action makes no sense. Battle.Net is not a money-maker for Blizzard;

Wrong. Absolutely wrong. Battle.Net is Blizzard's copy protection. You can pirate a copy of a Blizzard game, install it, give it a made-up CD Key, and run it just fine--single player. But Battle.Net has a list of valid CD keys. You can't play on Battle.Net without a valid CD key, which *only* comes with a legitimate copy. In order to play on Battle.Net, you must have a CD key associated with a legitimate copy of game, since the only CD keys on file with Battle.Net are keys that were issued with legitimate copies of the game. bnetd, of course, checks none of this. bnetd strikes at the heart of Blizzard's revenue model. Expect Blizzard to fight bnetd to the death.

Chris Mattern

Re:Why?

[Jimmy_B]

Well in that case, what about Kali, or similar programs? That doesn't have any copy protection, and people certainly can play there to get around CD keys. Why wouldn't Blizzard just require bnetd to do authentication (through Blizzard's servers)?

Last time statistics

[atl]

Last time statistics from bntrackd - daemon that tracks all (allmost) wc3 bnetd servers
servers: 197 users: 3125 games: 991 accounts: 25757
Last updated Thu Feb 21 04:24:02 2002 GMT

I'm siding with Blizzard for now

[Simon Garlick]

As I see it (and I may be completely wrong) the reason behind the bnetd-shutdown is that the imitation-Battle.Net created by bnetd does not check for invalid/duplicate CD keys, and thus enables warez kiddies to obtain the full benefit of a legitimate game from a warez version.

If this is the case, the action seems perfectly reasonable to me.

Re:I'm siding with Blizzard for now

[Anonymous Coward]

Thanks a lot. If we could implement such checks we would.

Why does not implementing such checks make us the bad guys? We are not stealing anything. We tried very hard to keep people from doing that.

In fact, bnetd does not support Warcraft III beta because of that and the fact it requires a client-side hack.

We really can't control people and I don't think we should be punished for the poor behavior of others.

Again, thanks a lot for your support....

Re:I'm siding with Blizzard for now

[KagatoLNX]

I've always found this line of reasoning to be interesting.

The warez kiddies commit a crime with an otherwise legal tool, so sue the toolmaker.

This applies to all IP, right? So if someone locks out portions of an Excel Spreadsheet, and I happen to export the file to text (which exports the whole thing), is Microsoft liable? I don't think so.

After all, Microsoft didn't implement (in their 3rd party program) sufficient protection against stealing someone's IP.

The lunacy can go way too far. People still build CD burners (even though they make possible piracy of physical media). Heck, originally the 'uncopyable' CD was *THE* copy protection for years. What about Windows Networking allowing a single CD to be used over a network? Doesn't that allow circumventional of your 'exclusive-media' copy protection system.

Face it, the DMCA exists as a legal club that will never really get tested all the way to the Supreme Court for quite some time. Literally, companies would rather have it as a way to sap money from opposition. They never want to risk a conviction, appeals could overturn everything! It's one more tool in their 'circumventing fair use' toolkit.

Here's a radical idea. Laws are IP. They provide some sort of protection, right? Let's pass the CLUE (Corporate Lobbyists Usurpation Enactment). Laws exist for reasons. Lobbyists lobby for laws that make other laws and judgements ineffective since they can't achieve a direct repeal of the laws. Well, laws can be repealed for a reason--so instead, make it a crime to propose or lobby for a law the nullifies another standing law or judgement without repealing it. IP legislation needs to butt heads *directly* with fair use. After all, doesn't fair use exist purely because they were obviously implied by the nature of copyright? When did we lose that? I mean, copyright didn't even *CHANGE*! So why a "Digital Millenium Act" as anything other than as a convenient excuse.

While we're at it, let's legislate some limits on contract law too...

Re:I'm siding with Blizzard for now

[killj0y]

So why were there commits to the official sourceforge CVS repository to support Warcraft 3? Your claims do not seem to hold 100% truth.

[(file)] file.c 1.4 9 days rcombs Added Warcraft III clienttag.

Re:I'm siding with Blizzard for now

[Anonymous Coward]

As I am a developper myself, getting ahead is always required. It does not mean that adding a clienttag to support FUTURE product or future version of the product automatically implies that we are encouraging piracy! It did not make bnetd accept WC3 connection event though this tag was added. What made bnetd support WC3 was the release by another group AND a CRACK by another group and this was nothing related to the bnetd project.

Thanks.

mmmmm, FreeBSD is tastey

[gladbach]

ports are your friend. *wink*

Where Blizzard has a "legitimate" case with DMCA

[Anonymous Coward]

Everyone here seems to be ignoring the fact that bnetd allows you to bypass the license key check on Blizzard software. Thus, it aids in the use of pirated software. Now, this is ostensibly the reason that Blizzard would like to cry wolf in this case. Us Slashdotters, we know better, at least we suspect they want to introduce a pay-for-play network service. This is a very interesting legal case for these reasons alone, and combine it with the fact that this is open-source software that has already been released to the masses, you can't exactly retract it. It would be nice for someone to battle this in court should Blizzard be willing to bring it that far, rather then see the bnetd folks take their site down. I'm sure the EFF and other folks have desire to help with a project like this.

In other news

[Graymalkin]

It has been reported by the Register, the unofficial source of all slashdot news, that at least 22 slashdot geeks have been found dead this evening from sponteneous combustion. Apparently they were viewing a recent slashdot article containing the words Blizzard Entertainment and the acronym DMCA in the same paragraph. Reports are still sketchy but it is believed that seeing the company responsible for geek favourites such as Diablo and Starcraft enforce their will with the DMCA simply caused the slashdot geeks to explode. It is also feared that more such explosions have taken place because many of these victims are living in basements and bedrooms of their parents' houses and missed the call to dinner. Who knows how many more geeks will be found in this manner.

bnetd staff not responsible for War 3 beta support

[Stucco02]

The obvious reason Bliz is going after bnetd is because Warcraft 3 beta support. The interesting fact is that bnetd staff did not even add it themselves. The version of bnetd that works with Warcraft 3 beta was released by preople that modified the open source code.

Bliz did not help their own situation by releasing a beta cd that you can copy simply by zipping the contents and copying across a network. You don't even need a cd in the drive to run the thing.

At this point it doesn't even really matter because it is all so widely distributed that nothing will extinguish the beta hacking.

http://www.clan519.com/creed/war3

Re:They didn't shutdown sourceforge (direct link)

[Anonymous Coward]

http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/bnetd/bnetd-0.4 .25.tar.gz

What is Blizzard's nightmare?

[logout]

I have been running a bnetd Starcraft server for more than two years. That's a really bad news for me. --- without bnetd, I cannot continue to run my server.

IMO, the trouble Blizzard is afraid of facing is that it can lose the market for the Warcraft3. Blizzard is going to use the same Battle.net service for the new Warcraft3. Recently, especially right after the release of the WC3 beta, there has been an active development at the bnetd project. I was thrilled at the possibility that my bnetd server can be turned into a WC3 server sooner or later.

But there was a raid from the Blizzard today.
They might be afraid of having a *competitor* in the Battle.net service market. If bnetd development is so successful as to be competitive with the original Battle.net service, then they might be thinking about shutting down the clone server development. It is true that bnetd, if left untouched by the Blizzard, has high possiblity of running flawlessly right after the official release of WC3.

But the trouble here is that people need to buy Blizzard's game to connect to the free bnetd servers. In fact, they are the revenue source for the Blizzard! I cannot see here why Blizzard is trying to shut down the bnetd project. But it is true that some company can compete with Blizzard with the clone Battle.net service and improved service quality than Blizzard.

Some interesting aspect from Blizzard is that Blizzard seems to be not caring about fsgs, another Battle.net clone. The difference is that fsgs is closed-source product, even if it can be downloaded for free.

Anyway, Blizzard should let the bnetd project go on. The development of the bnetd clone server itself does nothing to do with the profit of Blizzard. In fact, the free bnetd servers can increase the user pool of the Blizzard games. The freedom of developers should be respected.

Re:What is Blizzard's nightmare?

[killj0y]

Actually, your comment about how the people who use bnetd and fsgs are Blizzard's revenue source is not really true. In fact, the complete opposite is true. Since those Battle.net clones do not do any sort of CD-Key authentication, they are a haven for people who are pirating Blizzard games. They provide one of the few features which Blizzard was still able to keep away from the pirates.

Re:Counter File Paperwork - orginal link

[Malk-a-mite]

Found the orginal

Dave Touretzky's home page

http://www-2.cs.cmu.edu/~dst/Terrorism/form-letter .html

Don't mod this up - it's just for reference.

There's another fully functional Battle.Net server

[tweakt]

FREE STANDARD GAME SERVER

Check out FSGS, it's available for windows and linux and works great. I tested it at a lan party, we played 4 or 5 8-player starcraft games with it on the local LAN using TCP/IP!! (NO MORE IPX!!!).

It works for westwood games too (Red Alert, etc).

FSGS

lets stop this legislation.copy this letter to all

[Cardhore]

Please, Help Abolish The DMCA


The DMCA harms every American. It allows organisations and corporations to terrorize citizens of the United States with threats of jail time and fines for citizens, scientists and academians (a Princeton professor was threatened to not publish a paper) who perform math and science. The DMCA makes is a crime to "circumvent" copyright protection systems, on materials you bought and that you have a right to fair use of. Essentially the DMCA is a war on education. The DMCA, or Digital Millenium Copyright Act (United States Code, title 17, chapter 12, section 1201 http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/1201.html), can put you in jail for creating, using, or distributing software to playback the DVD's you legitimately purchased on a computer you paid for. It can put you in jail for reading electronic books you pay for without authorisation from the publisher! In fact, Dmitri Sklyarov was arrested and imprisoned for writing such a software program. It can put you in jail for making copies of music you purchased so that you can listen to it in your car.

The DVD consortium locks each DVD disc with a key, and then gives the key to manufacturers of DVD players. The key itself is a number. With this key, one can rightfully play the DVD's one owns on his equipment. However, the DMCA makes it illegal to speak about or distribute said number! It makes it illegal to do math and science. This is a flagrant violation of your first amendment rights, which reads "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."


Please, sign the Abolish the Digital Millenium Copyright Act: http://www.petitiononline.com/nixdmca/petition.htm l Please, write to your US senators and representatives and tell them you want abolishment of the DMCA. You can find out their mailing and e-mail addresses at http://www.senate.gov and http://www.house.gov


The DMCA harms every American. It was bought by organisations that want to be able to completely control what, when, where, and how often you use media--television, books, music, and movies. The DMCA is not a valid exercise of Congress's enumerated powers. It is unconstitutional. Please show your support to strike down the DMCA. Please forward this notice along to your friends, family and co-workers.


For futher information please see http://anti-dmca.org

Copy-protection circumvention

[Trepidity]

Blizzard implements a copy-protection mechanism via keys. Users are required to login to battle.net before engaging in online play, and keys are checked upon login, thus preventing pirated copies from being used to play online.

Distributing a server with no such keychecking is a method of circumventing this copy-protection.

Re:Copy-protection circumvention

[Anonymous Coward]

Yea it is circumventing copy protection, on a product they don't sell or distribute. The server.

Re:Copy-protection circumvention

[Trepidity]

Uhh no. The server has no copy protection that I know of (other than them simply not giving out copies). The copy protection being circumvented is the client-key mechanism.

Re:How to shoot yourself in the foot with the DMCA

[Anonymous Coward]

Companies succeed by outselling their competitors. If there is a scarcity of developers that affects everyone, nobody gains or loses.

And if you believe that one action by one company will change things, you're even stupider than the average slashbot.

Well, at least I have the beta.

[SnicklesTheElf]

Do i really need to buy the game now? I have the beta...sure it's a little rough around the edges, but its fun. I have the server software and packages. mmm, I have cake and i'm eating it.

It saddens me that blizzard is pulling this. WC3 is warcraft, with a more starcraft-esque interface and Diablo elements. It took them 4 years to put pre-existing ideas into a game and they led everyone along like children to the pied piper. Now they're surprised when their beta is leaked, cracked and assimilated by a legion of hungry gamers? Please...

but it's a circumvention device under the DMCA

[Trepidity]

Blizzard implements a copy-protection mechanism via keys. Users are required to login to battle.net before engaging in online play, and keys are checked upon login, thus preventing pirated copies from being used to play online.

Distributing a server with no such keychecking is a method to facilitate circumvention of this copy-protection.

Re:but it's a circumvention device under the DMCA

[Anonymous Coward]

No you don't have to login to Battle.net to play online.

Bnetd is just one way to do it. You can also do direct TCP/IP games or you can use Kali to play LAN (IPX) games over the Internet.

hell no

[Trepidity]

Not until somebody makes an RTS better than Blizzard's StarCraft.

Unfortunately for your boycott, it looks like Blizzard's WarCraft III is the only StarCraft-killer RTS on the horizon.

yes they do

[Trepidity]

Duplicate keychecking has always been done, but up to 5 or so simultaneous keys have been allowed to keep users from being inconvenienced by Battle.net's ever-preset ghosting problems. In the past month or so this has been reduced (I think to two, but don't quote me on that), so it's essentially impossible to play with a pirated copy these days.

And the DMCA makes it illegal to circumvent copy control protections, so bnetd would be illegal if Blizzard can show that its primary intent (or perhaps a significant intent, I'm not sure what the standard is) is as a too to circumvent Battle.net keychecks. Which based on my experience, it is.

The reason behind shutting down bnetd

[SageMadHatter]

This has nothing to do with Blizzard been "evil". This project has been running for many years and Blizzard never touched it. Why all of sudden they sought to shut it down? Because of Warcraft III beta (and potentially it's release version as well.)

Hackers got a hold a of the beta and began distributing it. Now you can not play over B.net without a CD-key, so what do people do who don't have a legal copy? They go to bnetd, who doesn't require you to have a CD-key.

Warcraft III illegal distribution got so popular that bnetd had 3 to 4 times larger of a population online at any given time more than Blizzard's B.net! Now tell me... if you are a comapny who's product is been pirated by 80% of the people using it, are you just going to sit idealy by? I don't think so.

Blizzard has spent 4 years in the development of Warcraft III. I say they deserve to be rewarded for all the hard work they've poured into this wonderful game.

SageMadHatter

Re:The reason behind shutting down bnetd

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree whole hearteedly, blizzard is being stolen from, and thats wrong, not shutting down a server farm that allows pirated software to be played, even encourages it!

Was that paper or email?

[Spazmania]

That notice smells like an email.

Hint: Valid notice under requires a specific certification under penalty of purjury.

Hint: It is not possible to make a certification under penalty of purjury in a letter without a written signature.

Hint: It is not possible to include an original written signature in an email.

This is part of what makes the DMCA so dangerous to an ISP: If the ISP compelled you to take it down due to an email notification, you can sue them for damages. Improper notice = no notice. Suspension of service without cause (note: no notice thus no cause) is a breach of contract. Money (or assets that can be valued monetarily, such as your time) lost due to a breach of contract = damages.

The ISP is only protected when responding to a *correctly architected* notice, and it takes a lawyer to figure out whether a particular notice contains the necessary elements.

Hey bnetd guys: if you're looking for a place to host your stuff, drop me a line. I work for an ISP whose owner is rather passionate about the censorship issue. And it ain't a rinky-dink place subject to the upstream whims, either.

Re:Was that paper or email?

[Anonymous Coward]

In the DMCA it says a signature can be electronic. Thanks to a law that Clinton passed pretty much anything counts as an electronic signature (not to be confused with a digital signature which implies good cryptographic proof)...

As for email, yes it was in email.

As for written signatures for certification... I'm not sure but I think the same law applies here.

Re:Was that paper or email?

[Spazmania]

I havn't heard of a contested "electronic" signature yet holding up in court. Have you?

If a paper signature is contested in court, there are two ways to prove its real:

1) Handwriting expert that testifies convincingly that the signature is legit while the opposing expert fails to testify convicingly that its not.

2) Document containing the signature was notarized by a duly appointed notary public.

If I contest an "electronic" signature in court, what are your options to prove its legitimacy? E-Mail is trivially forged, making the equivalent of handwriting analysis impractical. Organizations like Verisign attempt to offer a notary-public like service for electronic signatures, but they have no legal standing and are not likely to: There is a reason you have to appear in person before a notary public, and a reason that the notary only validates that document and not your signature in general.

So what is the legal process to authenticate an electronic signature? You ask the sender to resend it as a signed and notarized paper document!

Shadow Conflict Boycotts Blizzard

[diablo-d3]

Shadow Conflict, an open source 3d rts game, has offically boycotted Blizzard Entertainment, and all
said software products. I suggest other open source development groups do so as well.

not much modification

[Trepidity]

As the name implies, bnetd is essentially a Battle.net workalike. The game-specific code is minimal, as it mostly just sets up connections between clients and lets them handle the majority of the game-specific details. From what I understand, bnetd was modified to have Warcraft 3 support in a matter of 2-3 days.

circumvention device before what it circumvents?

[tsiar]

How can something be a circumvention device if it was created before the thing that it circumvents? This could set a whole new legal precedent where if some company doesn't like some software package (that currently is perfectly legal), creates some protection mechanism after the fact that the previous software could circumvent, making it then illegal under the DMCA. Very troubling.

I don't get it

[Thakandar2]

There is no issue of fair use, nor is there any issue with the beta-test. The issue here is that bnetd is almost identical to battle.net server software that Blizzard owns, serves the same exact purpose, which is meant to serve Blizzard game players with a matchmaking service.

How is this different from a judge ruling that since one song from an artist sounds almost exactly like the other song of the second artist, the first artist has a copywrited piece of IP that has been infringed because the second artist published second. I don't have a right to patent the lightbulb even if I came up with it on my own, because Edison did it first.

Mod me down all you want, but I think people don't see the point that battle.net was there first, was copywrited, and connects people who play products from Blizzard's within Blizzard's domain. Stop whining.

And remember, for every poster on Slashdot who says they would never use an illegally attained copy of WarCraft III, there are 100 script kiddies and joe schmoes who will. If it was my software, I'd send the letter as well just to smite those few actual pirates.

Re:I don't get it

[GameMaster]

IANAL, but fom what everything I've heard you can copyright source code but you can't copyright the compiled binaries and the interface between the server and the game. Unless the people programming the bnetd software somehow got their hands on a copy of Blizzard's Battle.net sourcecode (which I highly doubt) then what they are doing is called Reverse engineering.

There is nothing illegal with reverse engineering a product as long as you do it without inside information (like a look at the source code). The only way reverse engineering could be illegal is if Blizzard has a Patent on some of the things Battle.net can do (which they would have laid claim to in the e-mail if they did).

Your example are totally wrong. As I mentioned before, software copyright only covers the source code and not the binary code. As for the lightbulb, you are comparing a Patent (which by now has probably expired so while you can't patent the ligthbulb, you probably _can_ produce and sell lightbulbs if you wanted to) to a copyright. These are totally different things and are treated radically differently under the law.

Blizzard has no right to be doing this. They have no legal leg to stand on if this ever goes to court but, then again, they're relying on the fact that it'll never go to court. This is a case of Blizzard using its status as a wealthy corporation to bully some people by threatening to sue. They know that the ISP will just reflexively pull the site down and that these guys can't afford to go to court.

-GameMaster

Re:I don't get it

[Anonymous Coward]

IANAL, but there's nothing preventing me from getting a band together and mastering a CD of us performing all the songs on U2's latest album and selling it.

Now I'm not talking about sampling or distributing a copy of U2 performing the songs. There's a long history in the music industry of artists performing versions of other artists' original work, and it doesn't require permission from the original artist either.

on morpheus now

[Anonymous Coward]

Not the best I know but no hotline server

Re:on morpheus now

[Anonymous Coward]

yep... warforge-bnetd-win32-v1.exe (winrar self-extracting) archive

Simply innane

[Anonymous Coward]

I look through the topics and posts here and all I see is uninformed pissing and moaning about how evil Blizzard is. Well if some would take time to read other posts before throwing their feces against the wall, they would learn the reason for their decision, namely anti-piracy and with reason.

The main reason from what I am able to discern is that bnetd was shutdown due to the lack of key checking features. This means any battle.net product could be copied and used with the full benefits of battle.net. The advocates here are warez kiddies, nothing more than that to me, as they are preaching about the evil Blizzard upon a soap box of hipocrisy. How about you try BUYING the game instead of stealing it and you will have no problem at all getting onto battle.net with a LEGAL copy.

Suck it up, pay up, and quit stealing.

Everyone's missing the point.

[Spameroni]

The reason that Blizzard is forcing them to stop work on bnetd is because the bnetd people have ground the bnet servers to a halt trying to reverse engineer them. It's reasonable to want fast speeds for users who want to play, rather than remake Blizzard's server systems. In the past month or so, all the people trying to reverse engineer battlenet have basically ground the entire system to a halt, making it essentially unuseable for those who wish to play.

That is why Blizzard is pursueing them -- this is not a cause worth a boycott!

Re:Everyone's missing the point.

[Halo5]

I'm not buying this... If this where the case, a simple remedy would be to open up parts of the bnet source (for non-commercial use) to remedy the problem.

Developers shouldn't have to reverse engineer the server code anyway, especially when private bnetd servers may decrease the load on Blizzard servers...

Re:Everyone's missing the point.

[silentbozo]

Yes, have private bnetd servers decrease the load on Blizzard servers... and deprive Blizzard of ad revenue (those annoying banner ads on bnet.)

I think this is the real reason here - ad dollars and eyeballs. No doubt some catbert-like MBA marketdroid put their lawyers up to this...

Re:Everyone's missing the point.

[Anonymous Coward]

That is crap! All the people that are reverse eng the traffic, are doing it transparently. That is what packet dumping/sniffing is!. It would just be the normal amount of connections, and the normal amount of bandwidth.

Re:Everyone's missing the point.

[bigbadwlf]

bnetd had nothing to do with that. The battle.net servers ground to a halt about a month ago because of a dupe hack people were using.
Read the news page at www.battle.net before you start blowing smoke.

Re:Everyone's missing the point.

[Ionized]

battle.net is a loss leader. they LOSE money on it. the banner ads are just there to soften the blow. a poster further up mentioned that their bandwidth costs are in the $400k/month range. they provide battle.net free as an incentive to sell more games.

(link to said post)

Re:Everyone's missing the point.

[Anonymous Coward]

That's the dumbest thing I've ever heard. Here's a thought: quit making shit up.

Warcraft3 1.03 bnetd has been emulated...

[Postal21]

lol .... im in the warcraft3 bnetd development team called "warforge" we are the people that created the first working emulated server for 1.03 version of warcraft3... and to say we never had any working server is a joke... as of today the official server load was at 1400 when the news broke that bnetd.org was shut down, not to mention the countless other servers that are using the server-side software... lets just put it in warcraft terms for all of you gamers out there... you can destroy our farms and our barracks... but you cant destroy the IRC horde... GG warforge... GG blizzard on stopping something that had nothing to do with warcraft3... except the basic source to begin bnetd for warcraft3.

Oh btw the project has moved underground... weee!

-- Postal --

Re:Warcraft3 1.03 bnetd has been emulated...

[Decimal Dave]

you can destroy our farms and our barracks... but you cant destroy the IRC horde

It sounds more like they've invaded and destroyed your main base, but the peons were sent scattering to the four corners of the map...Off to build new (vengeful) armies; far away from the enemy's prying eyes of blimps and Goblin technology.

Re:Warcraft3 1.03 bnetd has been emulated...

[Anonymous Coward]

Hmm...I'm on the warforge team and I don't think I know you.

We aren't a bunch of 12 year old warez hording scipt kiddies.

We just wanted to play wc3. =)

Re:I don't think it's Battle.net, its pirated game

[Banjonardo]

Blizzard doesn't make any money off its free Battle.net service

Probably just enough from the ads on the top to pay for maintenance.

Re:I can honestly see why this is happening WRONG

[The Bungi]

we don't need you and if you aren't happy then why stay?

Remember, you can only say that so many times. It's like using up one of your lives. Use it wisely.

Freenet Sourceforge

[IdeaMan]

Sound like we need to have a Freenet style Sourceforge archive. Nobody can take it down & the authors woiuld be protected from these types of silly lawsuits.

Westwood Studios sounds the same

[DarkEdgeX]

I've never played a Blizzard game, but I'm wondering of Battle.Net is at all like Westwood's (now EA's) crap setup for online play-- if you were to look at it, you'd swear Westwood Online (or as they call it, WOL) was built on top of an IRC server of some sort. The ONLY way to play internet based TCP/IP games is to use their login system and meet with a friend on WOL. You can't just enter an IP address/port and connect, it's gotta be through them. LAN-based play is limited to IPX/SPX gaming, NO LAN TCP/IP support.

Is this the way Battle.Net is? And why aren't more companies like id, allowing people to JUST PLAY THE WAY THEY WANT TO? (FYI: id has master servers that provide a list of public games you can connect to, but you can also enter an IP/port and connect to a private game (be it on a LAN, or someplace on the internet).)

I'm just curious if someone can clarify the differences.. and if they are the same, I wonder if someones written a replacement for WOL. =)

Re:Westwood Studios sounds the same

[bonzoesc]

That is exactly how b.net works, except that Blizzard QA is worlds beyond anybody else's QA in the game industry. Now, look at the people who buy Blizzard games. It isn't just smart people who like IP addresses. To quote Hakan on somethingawful, "99% of all Starcraft gamers are either Korean or mentally retarded (or both)," This means that without b.net, these people would never play online Starcraft. If it becomes too complex for them to do it, they'll probably give up and play 2D fighters or whatever retards do these days. Making it simple is their main goal.

Re:Westwood Studios sounds the same

[Anonymous Coward]

The ONLY way to play internet based TCP/IP games is to use their login system and meet with a friend on WOL

Is this the way Battle.Net is?

The answer is neither yes nor no. There are two separate ideas you're presenting.

If you replaced "TCP/IP" above with "Battle.net", then the answer to your question would be "YES"

However TCP/IP play and Battle.net play are two separate things.

You can still play Diablo2 (and most other Blizzard games) by entering an IP address, instead of connecting to battle.net.

Re:Westwood Studios sounds the same

[Anonymous Coward]

Well obviously if this whole ip address option in a hidden "expert" menu confuses one person, then we must not provide this option and force everyone else to suffer with an inferior product.

Makes sense to me.

Flood their support e-mail with boycott

[bferrell]

Announcements. It may actually get their attention.

Re:Simply innane (flame reply but he deserves it)

[Anonymous Coward]

Two words:

Fuck You.

Seriously, don't preach to me or the other bnetd developers about warez. We did a LOT of hard work in the last few weeks to keep the warez kiddies off our our server. We didn't implement Warcraft III support simply because of that.

You are the one spouting off without knowing what's going on. We are the ones dealing with this while you sit back in your nice comfy chair and preach to us about how evil we are. I do _not_ pirate software and bnetd was never intended to be a pirate tool. It was a fun project that allowed friends to play on small servers without a bunch of looser high school kids hanging up halfway through games.

So puhleeez... just go fuck yourself.

While good,

[Amiasian]

your letter did have one mistake. Does Blizzard really care which OS you use, as long as they can generate money from it? I, being a Mac user, have no love for Microsoft. However, to outright criticize another business using much the same techniques as Blizzard (or worse as is MS's case) to protect their " Intellectual Property" is not going to help them see your position. One customer's decision will not sway an entire company, I'm sorry to say. What will though, is pointing out how they're harming themselves in doing this decision.

Get Bnetd From SourceForge

[JungleBoy]

The files are still on sourceforge's ftp server.

ftp://ftp.sourceforge.net/pub/sourceforge/bnetd

Don't hurt yourself. :)
-The JungleBoy

Re:Get Bnetd From SourceForge

[Anonymous Coward]

No they aren't and they weren't at the time you posted this.

They removed all the projects files and also cleaned out CVS.

Re:Get Bnetd From SourceForge

[JungleBoy]

Dude, I hauled down the files just before posting that.

The JungleBoy

Re:Get Bnetd From SourceForge

[Anonymous Coward]

Hmm... ok, they are still on ftp but they are missing from the web interface. Strange!

Re:circumvention device before what it circumvents

[Anonymous Coward]

Damn good point! Thanks! But they will claim that it is the older games which are what they are talking about even though the timing reveals that is probably not the case.

From the FAQ...

[Mr.Ned]

From http://www.blizzard.com/legalfaq.shtml:

Does Blizzard Entertainment® allow or support other Battle.net® like or emulation servers? Can I host one of these rogue servers?

No. Except as set forth in the next paragraph, Blizzard Entertainment® does not support or condone network play of its games anywhere but Battle.net®. Specifically, you may not host or provide matchmaking services for any of our games or emulate or redirect the communication protocols used by Blizzard Entertainment® in the network feature of its games, through protocol emulation, tunneling, modifying or adding components to the game(s), use of a utility program or any other techniques now known or hereafter developed, for any purpose including, but not limited to network play over the Internet, network play utilizing commercial or non-commercial gaming networks or as part of content aggregation networks without the prior written consent of Blizzard Entertainment®.

------
This is to prevent guys like MSN Gaming Zone, MPlayer, TEN (does that still exist?), Gamespy, etc. from drawing users away from Battle.net. Why? Blizzard can't check keys if people play outside of battle.net, and battle.net runs ads. Mostly Blizzard ones and some from the server hosts, but ads none the less. Most importantly, it makes sure their servers are populated. All the time. If you think this is bad and they'd like to send people elsewhere, you've never played an online game that has just about no one hanging around.

Although the reasons for taking down the bnetd are probably EULA-ized, I think this is crap. Personally, I won't buy any more of thier games. My purchase won't hurt them, but it will make me feel better.

Oh, and my copy of bnetd is now being stored with DeCSS, Unfuck, and a host of other DMCA violations. :)

WarForge.

[Anonymous Coward]

This was obviously caused by the 2000+ people who have download WC3b ISOs and have been playing on WARFORGE servers. Cracking their files using WARFORGE patches. Editing their registry keys using WARFORGE utilities. Using CDKeys to install given to them by WARFORGE.

See where I'm going with this?

Geeze

[rattid]

You guys are morons

[Anonymous Coward]

For Just a Second, Consider the Other Side of This

[EatenByAGrue]

Most of the posts here are anti-this, anti-that. Consider for a moment the people who write the code for these games. They want, and deserve, some tall dollars for their efforts. Maintaining control of battle net is part of that.

Wake up.

If you spent years of your life developing a gaming property as valuable as battle net and the games that go with it, you would certainly be protective of anything that might destroy your ability to capitalize on it in the future.

I know I would.

Re:Text of www.bnetd.org (for when its slashdotted

[Anonymous Coward]

IANAL, the following advice is no substitute for a lawyer.

AFAIK, if they don't give you a list of files, they have not complied with the DMCA. As such, you are under no obligation to take the site down. Inform them that their request was malformed and you cannot therefore honor it. If they do give you a proper request, you can always file Notice & Putback. All of this is done without lawyers. They have to drag you into court if they want to do any more than that.

Even so, you should demand that they give you a proper DMCA Notice & Takedown before honoring it. They should know better than that...

correct me if I am wrong

[Anonymous Coward]

wouldnt a battle.net emulater increase the number of ways people can play, thus giving people even MORE reason to buy thier products. If nothing else it wouldnt cut into blizzards bottom line. heck it might even cut some of thier bandwidth demands and cost if people ran thier own servers

Re:correct me if I am wrong

[zaffir]

Well, the way BLizz's anti-piracy system works is that it checks your CD-Key with ones that have been officially generated by Blizzard (and or include more checks than the one the installer/single player game uses). This check is done when connecting to the battle.net servers. What happens if you can get the full use out of the game without using Blizz's servers? You can use a generated CD-Key. You then have a fully-piratable game, not a semi-neutered one you can't play online with others.

Re:correct me if I am wrong

[decoydog]

or better yet, go to the software store and steal the CD-Key like a couple of losers I saw. They just walked in, opened the bottom of the box, copied the cd-key down, and put the box back on the shelf. The clerk just kind of shrugged his shoulders when I told him.

If that isn't stealing then what is?

Re:correct me if I am wrong

[CrazyDwarf]

I'm kind of on the fence on this particular issue. I don't have a lot of time to play games anymore, but I used to really enjoy some of Blizzard's products.

I can definately see how more servers hosting games could lead to more sales of their products. It seems to me, that the wise thing for Blizzard to do here would be to make a deal with the people wanting to run these servers to have it check the CD-Key with their server when you connect. This adds a little bandwidth useage to Blizzard, but opens the door for more people to play online, which is a big selling point. Then, they could go after the non-sanctioned servers and /.'ers everywhere could smile and say, "That Blizzard, what a hoopy company."

Re:correct me if I am wrong

[Anonymous Coward]

I can tell you from experience that a lot of the clerks at software stores will do that themselves, and then pretend they found it on the shelf that way, and that a customer did it.

Re:correct me if I am wrong

[B4UTRUST]

You mean you can't get full use out of a game by using Blizz's B.Net servers? Thats...laughable. To prove a point just now I've gone out and downloaded CD-Key creators for Diablo II, D2 Expansion Pack and Starcraft. I have legal copies of all three of these games, currently installed on my system, all up to date. Went into my registry, cleared out my official CD-Key, and ran each CD-Key Gen 15 times. Average B.Net Playable CD-Keys I got? 4. So almost a 3rd of the time I got a CD-Key I could use to play on B.Net. The point of this statement? Blizzard's CD-Key check is worth less then the code it's written in. Just like I tell people who want to secure their machines with every conceivable form of Anti-virus and firewall. If the hacker or cracker(yes there is a difference, dispite what you neanderthalic idiots think) still wants to get into the system, they will get in. No ammount of security, on any site, system or computer in the world, will stop someone who wants in badly enough. The next thing out of your mouths, well according to you, why even try then? As the old addage goes, locks keep the honest people honest. 90% of the world wouldn't know how to go about programming CD-Key generators using algorithms or even what they are. And without this knowledge, they have no way of doing it. It keeps them honest. Those who still want to, will inevitably, succeed. Those who can't do it on a try or two, it's a passing fancy, no one gets hurt, they give up and go on.

tcp/ip

[ShadowDrgn]

I'm not sure they ever allowed simultaneous use of the same cd key. I remember plenty of times when battle.net would randomly disconnect me and I'd have to wait a minute or two to reconnect because it would tell me that my cd key was in use (by me).

Diablo 2 supported playing with tcp/ip out of the box, and the latest Starcraft patch added that same functionality in (you could always play either game on a LAN with no cd key checks). Even if you don't have a valid cd key, you can still easily play these games with other people without having to use bnetd. Wouldn't that mean Blizzard is circumventing their own copy protections by allowing this? Not that it's illegal for them to do so, but it would undermine their position in accusing bnetd for doing the same thing.

Re:For Just a Second, Consider the Other Side of T

[EllF]

In a market sense, what the bnetd guys are doing is a good thing for everyone. By creating an alternative (and thus creating competition) for Blizzard, they are forcing Blizzard to improve what they offer to their users. If Blizzard wants people to pay for their games, they need to continue to create software that blows away the competition - they need to make something so Cool that you have to have it, and are willing to pay.

Stifling competition, especially in a case like this, where the bnetd team doesn't seem to have broken the law, or used any unfair means of designing their alternate software, based on the effort put in by Blizzard's programmers isn't good for either you or them. For you, it means that they will have no reason to write better network gaming software - after all, no one can threaten their particular system, Battle.net. For them, it means that there really isn't any need to keep paying their coders, as Battle.net is in place and nobody is going to levy a serious threat to it.

If you spent years of your life developing a gaming property as valuable as Battle.net, then you should expect that others will try to emulate what you have done and even attempt to do it better. It is only so long as you can continue to do better work than your competition, and at a lower cost, that you deserve "some tall dollars", in my opinion.

Mirror this!

[scanman857]

If you run a web site, MIRROR BNETD! It is still available from here and here! Hurry!

Boycott!!!! Slashdiddlies!!! Bwahhaaahaaaahaaa!!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

It you really think the average Slashdiddly will be able to tear himself away from his DVD collection and the new Warcraft 3 (tm) when it arrives then I think you have got something coming!

Lets face it; boycott? As a cohesive group, /.'ers haven't got a chance.

Prove me wrong.

101 uses of the DMCA

[Loki_1929]

Headlines:

"Man stabs wife 37 times, sued by Ginsu for unauthorized use."
"Hardware store sued for circumventing copy protection; ignoring words 'Do not duplicate' on keys."
"Man wipes ass with Windows XP EULA; exclaims, 'How's this for fair use?!'"
"Mechanic sued by Ford for reverse engineering break system after taking it apart to check for problems."

Re:101 uses of the DMCA

[SnicklesTheElf]

Legislation passed that outlaws the most potent circumvention device, the human mind. Most of United States' population unaffected.

Re:For Just a Second, Consider the Other Side of T

[EatenByAGrue]

If Blizzard wants people to pay for their games, they need to continue to create software that blows away the competition - they need to make something so Cool that you have to have it, and are willing to pay.

Unfortunately, piracy has always been a major drain on gaming companies. It isn't just about competition, Battle.net is Blizzard's way of incentifying users to actually PAY for the software so many people steal. If someone wants to compete, go ahead and make a multimillion dollar client application. That's where the real value to consumers is.

EULA

[Anonymous Coward]

IANAL, but it looks like implementing and running a Battle.net-compatible game server is a violation of the game's license agreement, section 3.C.iii.

It's too bad. One of the reasons I've never tried Diablo II in multiplayer is the registration requirements for Battle.net -- I'm too paranoid about having my personal information leaked out to marketing agencies. I'd probably have felt safer using a Free server. Oh, well; at least there's still a TCP/IP multiplayer option.

here's my take

[Lelon]

first, just because its in an EULA doesn't mean its law. if you agreed to be gfraziers butt slave i doubt they could make it hold in court

blizzard markets their games based on the multiplayer expierence. but (contrary to what some of you state) there is no TCP/IP option for starcraft or war3. You are *forced* to use battle.net in order to play on the internet (for free). this is not the case with, say, quake3 (which still manages to implement CD-keys).

battle.net sucks. its laggy, crowded, everyone plays realy stupid maps, everyone cheats, etc etc ETC. my view is, i've bought the game, now its mine to do with as I PLEASE. if that means i'd rather play on bnetd then crappy battle.net, so be it. they're stupid for expecting me to pay for a game, then log onto their server so i can look at their ads. no one is making them host battle.net

Open Source must be the problem here.

[Dhalka226]

If Blizzard's issue is that bnetd does not provide the same sort of authentication of legal copies of the software that battle.net does, the obvious question becomes, "why not help them do so?" That would be a fine solution to all involved, as far as I am concerned. Bnetd could continue to exist and provide the services it was meant to. Blizzard can be assured that bnetd is not contributing to the pirating of their software, and in fact, it may even mean MORE sales for their products. What's the problem? Open source, of course. The fact that anybody can download it and change the source code. Of course, people are going to do that anyway. Rather than pissing of its loyal customers, with no benefit to themselves, Blizzard should try working with bnetd to reach some amiable compromise. DVDs were originally encrypted to help prevent piracy, but it took approximately six seconds for somebody out there to crack it. What makes Blizzard think that threatening the manifestation of a program is going to stop the perceived problem? It won't. It will just turn everybody against them. Blizzard certainly has a right to protect their copyright. Problem is, bnetd does not infringe upon it. The DMCA is bloated legislation that just won't work. The whole thing is purely ridiculous, and Blizzard will be receiving my nastygram.

fsgs

[blitz77]

The A HREF="http://www.fsgs.net" software does practically the same thing as bnetd doesnt it? so if u cant use bnetd, just go and use fsgs software.

chickenshit cowards (bnetd, I mean)

[Anonymous Coward]

This is what used to be called "sabre rattling" or a "baseless claim on a non-applicable point of law". Obdedience is 9/10 of the law, and you guys jumped the hoop nicely. Where's your sense of integrity? One lame ass lawyer sends a threatening letter and you freak out and pull the site? lame lame. If you're worried, move the server to germany or something or one of the other hundred countries on this planet. It's like these guys think strategy is only applicable in Warcraft and not in real life. "oh, the ogres are attacking, I guess I better forfeit the game."

We never host in the US because the laws and lawmen are so retarded there, and it's a wonder that anyone does. We've been "threatened" with lawsuits by 5 companies on over 10 occasions, including Kraft (Phillip Morris) and McDonalds, and we just ignore the letters, and nothing ever comes of it. Come on, people, be clever and curageous in the face of unjust laws. Martin Luther King: "it's our moral obligation to disobey unjust laws."

How companies work

[Anonymous Coward]

Employees arent (all) to blame.

Do you think Vivendi bought Blizzard just for the fun? They bought it to control something. Vivendi is at the helm now.

Re:How companies work

[OeLeWaPpErKe]

get real ... following an immoral order is just as immoral as thinking of it yourselves. But for most people the law cannot be immoral (never mind it once stated that women found outside of their homes were to be put in stocks in the centre of the city and raped during the night)

Re:How companies work

[wo1verin3]

naw, you can't blame the employees as much as I'd like to, not all of them anyway. What are you going to do, call tech support and bitch? We know the first level agents, the supervisors and those supervisors have nothing to do with that decision.

It may have been the outside legal firm that noticed this going on....sigh.

CD Key?

[Val314]

Blizzards game sends the CD Key to the battle.net server, doesn't it? i dont think i want my CD Key transmitted to a server i cant trust/dont know.

/. and the DMCA - schizophrenia?

[sp1nl0ck]

So are Slashdot and it's readers for or against the DMCA? There have been scores of articles posted here in the past couple of years calling for the abolition of this nonsensical piece of legislation (a couple of things here - IANAL, and I'm in the UK, where we don't have anything quite this silly - yet). However, in this article, you're actually advocating making use of it to beat these people in the courts. While one can make use of procedural anomalies on the part of VUG, I don't see how one could logically use the DMCA to argue their case when, generally, opinion is completely against the existence of this statute.

The fact of the matter is, no matter how noble your cause might be, you can't use what could reasonably be called the "tools of the enemy" to achieve that end (imagine www.gnu.org being hosted on W2K/IIS, for example).

Make your mind up, Slashdotters - either you want this law, or you don't. You can't have it both ways.

Alan.

Re:/. and the DMCA - schizophrenia?

[SnicklesTheElf]

some people want it some don't. Slashdot isn't a political party, nobody here HAS to take sides.

That's smart Blizzard

[codexus]

Get people angry when Warcraft III is going to be released real soon now. But I guess they are going to sale so many warcrafts that they don't care about losing a part of their cutsomers.

Re:That's smart Blizzard

[killj0y]

Do you actually think that the miniscule gathering of Slashdot users who are pissed about this action even constitute a tiny fraction of Blizzard's total user base? Starcraft has sold in the multi-millions of copies.

I am pretty sure Blizzard is not going to be hurting .

die pigs

[aminorex]

personally, i think the only morally respectable
response to this state of affairs is terrorism.

Re:There's another fully functional Battle.Net ser

[VirtualWolf]

Version 1.09 of Starcraft/Brood War, which was released quite recently, has only 2 options for multiplayer now: TCP/IP and Battle.net.

(No more having to use IPX if I want to play with PC users on a LAN :D).

I haven't actually tried it, but it ought to work over the internet too, not just LANs.

Why not host the project on freenet ?

[OeLeWaPpErKe]

That way it cannot be traced. Use the email/news over freenet feature to support the program and

1) you have drastically reduced bandwidth cost
2) you are completely anonymous, unless someone cares to search the ENTIRE freenet network computers (they would have to go to them) for your private key, and that would not be proof
3) you will probably spread freenet a lot wider
4) there are probably no lawyers comptetent enough to send email over freenet (outlook won't do it) so they will have no legal recourse ;-)

just my 2ct

Re:Why not host the project on freenet ?

[multiview]

You're 100% correct.

Freenet is beautiful idea, as the freedom of speech is continued to be threatened.
Please insert the content of bnetd.org into Freenet and publish the KSK key on the frontpage of bnetd.org, but don't make it a link, since linking is only for outlaws.
This should have been done before posting these news on /.. Many users would have tried freenet, just to see if they could get to bnetd.org's content.
Hopefully a few will stick to FREENET

I DO understand the DMCA Jurisdiction

[osolemirnix]

The DMCA is a national law in the US. Move the bnetd project to a server in a country with no DMCA (currently most of the countries worldwide).
Case closed.
Yeah, maybe it would still be illegal for you US americans to download and use the stuff, but the -case- would be closed.

And IMHO a better solution than trying to argue for the DMCA not applying to bnetd, as circumventing jurisdiction will hopefully make them understand how futile their stupid efforts are (though I fear it won't).

Re:I DO understand the DMCA Jurisdiction

[Roadmaster]

Oh, sure, and next thing we know the US sends aircraft carriers and bombs the hell out of whatever southamerican or asian country for "harboring terrorists" and providing server hosting for the bnetd project.

Dont you love bullies?

anyone surprised?

[Anonymous Coward]

I dont understand why people keep hosting stuff in the US? - it makes absolutely no sense to me. The us voted the DMCA through - that ought to tell all of us that we should get our stuff (projects/code etc.) out of the US in into a jurisdiction where you've got basic human rights. Any one who moans now is just stupid. The US has declared - in an honest and straightforward way - that they will side with large corporations - against entrepreneurs, open source projects and others who cant contribute significant amounts of money to various election campaigns.
Just accept it, change jurisdiction and stop moaning.

Re:anyone surprised?

[Anonymous Coward]

Because we didn't think there was any DMCA-bait in bnetd. It never occured to us that _not_ implementing a Battle.net feature would cause it to be a circumvention device. I think that's really a long stretch. In fact Diablo I didn't have any keys and when we asked if we could remove support for SC, BW, and WCIIBNE, they said "that's beside the point".

And I'm not moving to Europe just to work on a hobby. Sorry. Canada... maybe :)

Now what needs to be done...

[Anonymous Coward]

Is a rounding up of all of the current patches for the games bnetd had server emulation support for.

This way, if they release any patches to stop them from working with the current bnetd, we have patches that DO work.

Re:bnetd staff not responsible for War 3 beta supp

[killj0y]

Actually I do not know how true your comments are regarding that bnetd did not add Warcraft 3 support. Take a look at the CVS history on sourceforge and you will see some recent commits regarding Warcraft III. This is in their 'official' version on sourceforge.

Re:For Just a Second, Consider the Other Side of T

[killj0y]

Uhm.. what does this have to do with competition? They are providing a means by which you can play pirated Blizzard products online with other people.. How are you supposed to compete with that?

Even if their intentions were not to hurt Blizzard (which I am pretty sure they don't intend to do), they are still providing a method of circumventing Blizzard's copy-protection. Which in the end hurts Blizzard.

Answer back on their forums while you still can!

[Anonymous Coward]

http://forums.battle.net/war3-general/posts/ei/177 88.shtml

Apathy and boycotting

[modipodio]

The apathy of the general public is a real problem when trying to get them to do some thing About what blizzard has done.Blizzard realises that most of the people who play diablo will not give a dam about what they have done.

However most of the people who used/had something to do with the bnetd project will give a dam, a minority of motivated people who are relatively intelligent can make a difference, for example DOS
attack could be launched against the battlenet servers people who are on the servers could start spreading the word and asking people who use battlenet to complain to blizzard.

Pirated versions of blizzards games could be singeled out and heavily mirrored and links to the game's old and new could be given to people on battlenet.

people may be to apathetic to boycott blizzard but they could be convinced to download blizzards
games for free and give them to there friends, this would annoy and hurt blizzard . I can imagine spam bots logging into bnet channels and posting urls amongst other things.

My point thow is not an advocation of piracy or dos attack's ,(They will not change blizzards attitude and that is the key issue here). I personally will not be buying or using ,(warezed or otherwise), ANY blizzard games till blizzard changes there policy regarding thebnetd project.

The reason why I will not be using blizzard products is because I dislike the concept of the precedent this sets with regards to blizzard products, basicly what they are doing is calling into question people who make modifications for games and I think this takes away on the whole from the value of there products.One of the main reasons I bought quake3/quake/quake2/doom and most Id products , is because there is a great community behind them and this community is incouraged and helped by john carmack and Id software.

I like games which foster a community and I
like companys that allow and encourage there community's to grow ,when company's start cracking down on there community's and when company's try to stop people being creative in ways which does not hinder the sales of there product but in fact incourages it then you have got to question the company and ask you're self "Do I want to encourage this sort of behaviour?" ,"Do I really need this game enough for me to ignore what this company stands for?"
Personaly I do not need what blizzard has to offer enough for me to ignore what they are doing to bnetd and even thow I am sure blizzard will
survive the disaster that is me not buying there games ,I am boycotting blizzard not because I think it will make that much of a difference but because I think I should and I think blizzard are worth boycotting for what they have done and the attitude they foster.

Hmm...

[Tuonenkielo]

Personally, I wonder how big a racket you all Blizzard-boycotters raise when Vivendi announces that 'due to the crash in Blizzard profits' the parent company is closing the game developer down and kicking every developer out.

Or that Blizzardcloses Battle.net and creates an asinine new product licensing system to ensure people can only use legal copies of the games. How about users need to call Blizzard every time they run the game to acquire a new activation code, at maybe a dollar/pop? Or something even sicker.

Truth is, the instant Warcraft3 Beta worked on BNetD,Blizzard's profits were endangered, which in turn can lead to a whole lot of nastiness in business world.

To be brutally honest, I find a lot of the attitudes here sickening. Having seen how many interesting game projects andgame producers kick the bucket lately due to issues in profitability, seeing jerks gloat at the way they insure that the up and coming game will be sidelined just so much faster because there's no profit in improving and maintaining game because significant portion of the user base just gets warezed piece and never even considers who'll pay for the continuation of the game...

Oh well. I am willing to bet not many of thegloatershave to worry about paying their living, what with high school andparent'sbasement being so nifty.

Just my rant.

Re:Boycott, they don't have to lose money!

[budgenator]

Realy they don't, you just have to make it SOUND like they are losing money. Imagine a 10 sec sound bite on local TV where game-addict says "Blizzard is attacking us, the hard-core gammers, their core market. bnet rulz!" Maybe some media orientated pickets on WC3 street date ect. Just make the stockholders think something big is going on

Move the project - Was:Blizzard: it's been fun

[g011um]

I've still got the code, just move it out of reach ;-)

Sourceforge released files

[dmaxwell]

"This Project Has Not Released Any Files"

When you see this on SourceForge, it generally means that everything the project has done up to that point is considered beta quality at best. There is no official "release" of the project yet. However, there is often a CVS repository that can be used to slurp up the current state of the project. The parent poster was attempting to point out that you can still use CVS to download this from SourceForge. I hope Blizzard misses this point long enough for a ton of people to get the files.

In addition to the boycotts being called for, I thought of a way for development to start back up. Use anonymous remailers to post signed tarballs and patches to USENET. That's awkward but would allow development to start back up unimpeded by Blizzards lawyerbots. Serve 'em right too.

This could be a killer app for Freenet if someone could think of a way to host a project inside it's cloud.

Re:Sourceforge released files

[Anonymous Coward]

Quite true, altho last night they did have files posted there, bnetd-stable and bnetd-develop Both are now gone ;

long live CVS

Re:Sourceforge released files

[Anonymous Coward]

They nuked CVS too... if you try to check it out you get nothing. They did this sometime last night.

Host it outside of the US!

[Anonymous Coward]

Says it all. Why not move the sources to a country with real laws and keep working on them there?!

Rod Rigole

[Daengbo]

A quick Google search for him turns up the following companies: Universal Interactive Flipside Havas Interactive Blizzard Entertainment Sierra On-Line Educational Resources He is listed mostly under the provacy policy pages Dan

Looks like Blizzard needs to be taught a lesson

[Anonymous Coward]

Say goodbye to your next sale.

Destroying the DMCA

[Anonymous Coward]

What if two parties agreed to sue each other over parts of the DMCA you'd like to see thrown out? Set up the details of the situation to expose the faults of the legislation to its fullest, then litigate until it gets thrown out.

Where's their proof?

[Anonymous Coward]

What kind of BS is this? Sue them for harrassment until they can prove their allegations.

Legal chill

[geoswan]

I looked at bnetd's shutdown announcement. I read the formal request from Blizzard to shut it down. It is signed by a guy named Rod Rigole.

So I did a google search on Rod Rigole.

Are you sure this guy is a lawyer? Maybe he has just around lawyers. Maybe he is just a paralegal.

The first thing that comes up when you do a google search on this guy is that he was the guy who filmed the civil suit the family of Ron Goldman filed against OJ Simpson. Okay, maybe that is the way he paid his way through law school.

Now I don't know anything about your game, or your project, except that I am sure you have put in a lot of work on it. But I wouldn't fold over a vague letter like this.

Re:Legal chill

[Anonymous Coward]

Err... and he is listed as legal council for Universal Studios....

Sounds like a lawyers's lawyer to me :)

ummm.... completely false

[Ender Ryan]

You sir, need to get a clue. Companies are in the business of making money, and by extension of that shareholders are as well. Shareholders demand that the company make as much money as possible.

When you do not buy a companies products, they make LESS money. If they can make MORE money by changing one of their policies, then they will change their policy. The policy is there in the first place to try to make as much money as possible, so when it fails, they change their policy.

That's how business works. They need people to buy their products in order to make money. If people don't buy their products, they do whatever they can to change that.

I think you are just so addicted to their games that you want to excuse yourself from doing what you believe to be the responsible thing. That's your call, maybe it's worth it for you, but don't lie to yourself about it.

Re:ummm.... completely false

[tshak]

You sir, need to get a clue.

Right back attcha.

Companies are in the business of making money.

Right. So, if they perceive this Battlenet clone to be a significant enough loss to legally act on it, I highly doubt that a handful of people will equal the potential loss of the clone. My point is we don't have the numbers, and /. seems to think that they represent 99% of the consumer base, but in reality, we probably represent a lot less then 1%. People are not a bunch of extreme zealots out there - they just want to play cool games.

Re:ummm.... completely false

[Ender Ryan]

You are correct, we simply do not know the numbers, but that's not what you said in your original post.

In any case, you are certainly correct that first and foremost we need to "change the rules".

The DMCA simply has to go, but I think pressure should be applied to companies to not use the DMCA as part of that effort. But, I'll be honest, that probably won't really help. What we need is sane representatives who understand these issues, which is obviously not the case today.

You people are scum, WC3 will be a better game

[Anonymous Coward]

without you. I bet you lot would be exactly the sort of people to use Map Hack on SC/D2. And you will do the same for WC3. Blizzard does not own you ANYTHING WHATSOEVER. Battle.Net is BLIZZARDS properaty, and this "emulator" was breaking the law.

Re:You people are scum, WC3 will be a better game

[Anonymous Coward]

Blizzard owes me something...
to not censor my speech!

I have never used a game hack. Only insecure wannabe loosers like you would find on Battle.net do that. In fact bnetd is largely popular because Battle.net is filled with such people.

And bnetd is NOT their property. You do not seem to have any understanding of the law yet you tell me that my software was breaking it? Please just crawl back to the Battle.net forums or back to your high school class .

maybe blizzard is right

[Sublimed]

I know i'll probably get flamed for this but....
Did you ever think blizzard might be right? Blizzard puts out quality games, and lets people use battle.net without any monthly charge. Blizzard is probably just doing this because Battle.net is their way to prevent people from easily pirating the game. All this talk of boycott, it's ridiculous, i like blizzard as a company and i am still going to buy their games.

what a good marketing ploy...

[Anonymous Coward]

Not only has Blizzard just succeeded in killing off a great project, but they've also just gotten tons of free advertising.

Even bad publicity is publicity... :)

you're illiterate

[Ender Ryan]

Did you even read his post? It would seem not, as what you have just stated is completely beside the point of his post. Without the huge fanbase that is created by projects like bnetd, they would seel even fewer copies of their games.

Ranting, commitment and social change

[geoswan]

Seriously, people who go off into rants to their friends all the time are accomplishing nothing but making themselves look like losers. If anything, acting like that makes me want to disagree with you just so I don't have to be grouped with you in the slightest way. Antics like that are the stereotype of the slashdot crowd and make me very embarassed to admit I still read this site.

And one stereotype of techy boys is self-centered pigs who think, "I've got my toys, so the rest of the world can go hang for all I care. War? Poverty? Injustice? Fuck 'em, I have to get back to my game." Now I am going to try to assume this stereotype doesn't apply to any of you -- that you would join in, and raise your voice, if you thought an issue was really important.

Well, how do people get convinced an issue is really important?

Do you remember reading about the "underground railroad"? Would you be proud if you learned that one of your ancestors took heroic risks to help slaves escape over the underground railroad? Well, how do you think their close friends reacted to their "ranting" about the evils of slavery?

Or take child labour, or women's suffrage. When those were hot issues lots of people just didn't get it. Kids had always had to work. Women had never been able to vote.

Things change when people give a darn, and make an effort to convince other people to give a darn.

Okay, strategically, when your friend stops listening, you back off, and wait for another opportunity. But if your friend won't ever listen to you, are they really your friend?

There, I wasn't ranting, was I? FWIW, I do consider Microsoft an evil company.

set up public bnetd servers wich deny acces from

[Anonymous Coward]

paid versions of warcraft 3 and only allow pirated or otherwise mangled clients...

Was this the first notice?

[Queuetue]

Depending on how blizzard and the bnetd group got to this point would change how I look at this situation. Did the folks at blizzard talk about thier concerns and issues in a constructive dialog with the bnetd folks, or did they just drop a hammer out of the blue? This was a letter to thier isp, and not to the bnetd folks... Was there any blizzard/bnetd communication at all?

I'm not necessarily convinced that a solution that satisfied blizzard could have been worked out (it would be tough to enforce keychecking in bnetd), but did they even try?

I'll also add that they could have taken this action *without* invoking the unconstitutional monstrosity called DMCA. I'd have a lot more respect left for Blizzard if they did. My coworkers and I all went out and bought (additional) copies of StarCraft recently to show our support and help fund WCIII. Now, I'm not sure if I'll be playing Blizzard games anymore.

Re:Was this the first notice?

[Anonymous Coward]

They never spoke to us before that letter. I had tried on a few occasions to get a response from them on using autoupdate MPQ files and other issues but they refused to talk.

The very first correspondence is posted on the bnetd.org web site.

(Well, there was the starhack incident but Mark can speak to that bettre than anyone else.)

Re:For Just a Second, Consider the Other Side of T

[EllF]

The point I make is that this *is* a form of competition. Bear with me for a moment.

Imagine the following: As with the current situation, Blizzard sees that there is now a way to play pirated copies of their software, albeit not on their network, but on bnetd. For the purposes of our example, let's pretend that they can't the DMCA around, but instead have to find some other way to defend their business.

A team of engineers and designers sit down, and hash the problem out: someone else has reverse engineered - legally - the method for connecting to Battle.net, and has created another network that can do the same thing. The engineers propose that they increase the complexity of the network protocol, and the designers argue that by adding content to Blizzard.net, more people will want to use it over the alternative. If either of these are pursued, who benefits? Blizzard, if they do things well, have lured more people into Battle.net, as they will be using a better protocol and offering more content. Legitimate users benefit from both of this, and can now play Diablo (that's a Blizzard title, isn't it?) online with lower latency and with ranked standings, telecasts of games, and all sorts of other bells and whistles.

What about those people playing on bnetd? Aren't they hurting Blizzard by *not* buying into their service? Probably not. With a few exceptions, software pirates are not a group known for shelling out for software just because they can't get a free copy. Were Blizzard to shut down bnetd, those people would most likely move on to some other game, not decide to travel the moral high ground and buy legal, boxed Blizzard games.

So what *should* Blizzard do? Compete. Improve their software in a variety of ways, making the non-free network substantially more lucrative than a free alternative. That free alternative is the very essence of competition - a less costly and more efficient alternative. If Blizzard cannot offer an alternative that is worth more to consumers, with worth being determined by how much those game-playing shoppers are willing to pay, then they deserve to flounder.

Not that any of this will occur, of course. We live in a society where we shy away from such harsh market action, throwing out terms of "injustice" to describe the results of normal market behavior. To paraquote Hayek, a prominent bastard of a economic philosopher, unintentional actions cannot be unjust, although we are free to dislike them. Bnetd is not *trying* to kill Blizzard, they are just offering an alternate service. If you as a consumer prefer that alternate, then put your support there.

The real issue seems to be software pirates, not bnetd. Bnetd doesn't steal from Blizzard, the warez kiddies do. By the same logic that says that bnetd is "providing a means by which you can play pirated Blizzard products", I could argue that my car provides a means for me to mow down mass numbers of people. Should either be banned? Are we so removed from personal responsibility that we must cater to the least responsible members of our society, at the expense of those who wouldn't steal/kill/etc.?

No offense to you, killj0y.

Piracy = Bootleg Warcraft III Beta

[mikelu]

I'm surprised you guys haven't figured this out yet, but here goes...

The reason Blizzard is so pissed at Bnetd is not because they're trying to implement a substitute Bnet server, but rather that Bnetd's server, in conjunction with a crack *posted on the Bnetd webpage* allowed widespread piracy of the Warcraft 3 beta test, which was intended to be a closed beta. College campuses all over the U.S. have 10-100 copies of the War3beta running off numerous bnetd servers, each.

I think that Blizzard is completely legit in trying to keep it's beta under wraps.

Just circumvent the DMCA

[Simpler]

DMCA is valid only in the US.

Take the site, and have it hosted by a european country which doesn't like the DMCA. Heck, have it hosted by a Russian ISP. After the fiasco with Adobe, the Russian court system would likely laugh at the prospect of trying to enforce a local US law.

Since you don't have a company to go after, I'd like to see Blizzard try to filter out the net. You can't shut down a non-profit group such as this. There is no entity to attack.

Re:Just circumvent the DMCA

[Rakarra]

Take the site, and have it hosted by a european country which doesn't like the DMCA.

This is sticking your head in the sand. What about when the EU passes its version of the DMCA? (I'll give you a hint -- the answer is "very soon" if they're WIPO signatories)

Heck, have it hosted by a Russian ISP.

And have all the programmers living in Russia? Hint: simply hosting in Russia doesn't offer a project immunity. Remember in the Adobe case, the Russian programmer was arrested pretty quickly once he entered the US. I guarantee you any US programmer on the bnetd project would be arrested if Blizzard decided to go through with it, even if it were hosted in Russia.

Circumvent the DMCA

[Simpler]

DMCA is an American law. It is unenforcable anywhere else in the world.

Unlike the Skylov/Adobe scenario, there is no company/entity for Blizzard to attack. The US authorities can't sieze assets that don't exist, nor can they threaten to limit business access to the American market since there isn't business conducted in the first place.

My suggestion to you is to thank your ISP for the time you've had together, and get your site hosted by one found outside US borders. Russian ISP would be a sweet revenge... their court system would have a field day when the US authorities asks them to enforce a local American law.

In fact, just for protection, all open source non-profit projects should have a base outside of the US because of this archane law.

Then the only recourse for companies like Blizzard would be to hunt down any active servers located inside the USA, and pray that evil foreign hands don't get their hands on a copy. :-)

The DMCA

[SirNonya]

See what government by the corporations, for the corporations, and of the corporations is like?

My email to Blizzard.

[jbailey999]

(I sent this to both sales@blizzard.com and support@blizzard.com)

You don't seem to have a PR department email, so I'm sending this to
both sales and support.

I have purchased Starcraft, Warcraft II, and Brood Wars - so as I
customer I tell you that I'm very dissapointed in the recent shutdown
of the bnetd site.

I have used bnetd in the past for playing games with friends, and this
product is directly responsible for me purchasing the Brood Wars pack.
The stupidity of shutting down a product that doesn't harm Blizzard in
any way is certainly a mis-application of the DMCA, and in fact
encourages sales amazes me.

Unless you immediately rescind the injunction against the bnetd folks,
I will choose to not purchase any further Blizzard products. The DMCA
is a bad law in the first place, and misuses like this cannot be tollerated.

Tks,
Jeff Bailey

Re:The only solution{OT}

[the_consumer]

Actually, I don't buy Kraft products because Kraft is a subsidiary of Phillip Morris. Nor do I buy Miller beer, Post cereals, Oscar Meyer, or Louis Rich products. Also, their products are crap. Does this hurt Phillip Morris? Of course not, but that's not why I do it. I do it because I have principles, which distinguishes me from Phillip Morris. As far as BGH is concerned, tobacco executives will tell you that cigarettes have *never* been proven to cause lung cancer.

too many lawyers

[Eugene O'Neil]

Note that I care not one iota for the legal aspects of anything. The moral and the ethical aspects are my only concerns, and those are sometimes at odds with the legal framework. I won't live long enough even if I reach extreme old age to change unjust laws in the courts, but i do honor any and all contracts that I have assented to, and if Blizzard wants me in grannie's nightdress with peanut butter on my cock and I want to play Warcraft III bad enough, move over granny and hello, Jif.

I can never understand the typically libertarian attitude that the government is stupid and the law is irrelevant, but even the most flimsy and unenforcable contracts between individuals and private interests are completely sacred and should be obeyed no matter how stupid they are. In other words, we should not let the government force us to obey laws that were passed through an open and democratic process: instead, the government should only force us to obey contracts drawn up by weasely lawyers working for international mega-conglomerates that answer only to greedy stockholders who want nothing but money.

Well I say, screw that! I may not trust the government to do the right thing all of the time, but I would not trust a corporate lawyer any further than I could stab him in the eye with an ice-pick. If some corporate lawyer wants to enforce the twenty-third paragraph of fine print on a legal contract that I cannot even read until after I pay for the product, that is his problem. If I didn't sign the contract, then as far as I'm concerned, I didn't agree to it: all I did was pay money for a product. If I see someone sneaking around my house, peeking in the windows to make sure I am wearing the right dress and jacking off into the right brand of peanut butter, I will call the police and have him hauled away for trespassing. It's a good thing I can do that without first having a contract with every potential trespasser that defines the terms under which they can be kicked off my property.

Re:too many lawyers

[david614]

What he said!!!

(Just a little Karma whoring on the side).

Banning's on Battle.net Forums

[gulfan]

Battle.net is currently rejecting posts from your site. -- I posted a well-educated post regarding the BNetD situation and I got banned. I think blizzard loves censorship.

Developing over telnet

[Anonymous Coward]

The big problem isn't that they have yanked the files, mirrors are already up.
The problem is that we lose the developers. Is it possible for the developers to write code over telnet on servers in Europe or South-America while still complying with the DCMA?

Oh, yeah, it WILL be enforced in other states too.

[Anonymous Coward]

While DMCA is an american law, United States and the IP Companies are Lobbying other nations to adotp DMCA-like laws too.

China, a so-said communist country, said that agreed to enforce laws against piracy.

Uckraine on the other hand, has been threatened with embargoes, if it did not change her own IP law.

And WTO members just last year agreeded on the TRIPS (Treaty on Intellectual Properties)

Both Argentina and Brazil (after 1998) passed laws against software piracy

August 2000, in Italy passed a law that is even worse by long measures than DMCA, as it doesn't imply that there could be interoperability or compatibility issues in reverse-engineering... it has been news of the last days that Sony compelled Origa, a PS2 modchip maker to surrender production and redistribution of those "anticircumvention devices". (And yeah, Country Lock and Piracy Lock are the same thing in PS2 checks).

What do we read on http://www.newsforge.com ?
Bsa and European Union caught going in bed, and Software Patents going to pass even in Eu.

And what about the WTO? WTO members agreeded recently on TRIPS: Treaties for Intellectual Properties...

> My suggestion to you is to thank your ISP for
> the time you've had together, and get your site
> hosted by one found outside US borders. Russian
> ISP would be a sweet revenge... their court
> system would have a field day when the US
> authorities asks them to enforce a local
> American law.

Yeah, yeah... Last Year I saw on Times a picture portraiting Bush, Putin, the Chinese President and other random morons all dressed up in chinese pajamas... they were in Bejing I suppose...

Just Another Mirror (in Sweden)

[Anonymous Coward]

http://davids.pchemma.nu:8080/bnetd/

What about pirate games?

[Maset]

All bnet hast to do is allow pirated games to play on servers running its code. Tada, instant consequence to Blizzard.

Now Warforge has chickened out.

[welthqa]

they shut down without even getting a letter. but the server they host is still up as are many others, guess i'll go get in some war3beta games while i still can. warforge

Re: Now Warforge has chickened out.

[Anonymous Coward]

Just because the website isn't up doesn't mean they chickened out. It just means they dont want to waste a lot of time and or money which we don't have in legal precedings.

FSGS broken

[Linknoid]

My friends and I are big Starcraft fans, and while we played pirated versions of it for a while, we finally all went out and bought the full version. We all have legal copies, with legal CD keys. However, battle.net is such a mess, we eventually got fed up with it. It's full of cheaters and immature people who cuss you out over nothing. We decided we wanted to just play among friends, and the lag on battle.net was so bad, I went searching for an alternative, and finally came across FSGS. After a lot of messing around (one of my friends is running W2K and we had to do some registry hacking to get FSGS to work), we finally got it going.

Now here's where it gets interesting. At the beginning of this month, Blizzard released a new patch for Starcraft, 1.09. My friend who was running the server told us all to upgrade to the new patch, so we did. After making the upgrade, we all simultaneously discovered that 1.09 disables FSGS. In other words, we couldn't connect to his server anymore. Fortunately, I had a copy of the previous patch that I had saved, and I shared this around (the old 1.08b patch from Blizzard's FTP was broken) and after fighting with W2K all day again, we finally got it all working again.

But if you want to use FSGS, DO NOT upgrade to 1.09.

-Bryce

Re:FSGS broken

[Anonymous Coward]

This is because Blizzard changed the registry entries which store the battle.net server names. Poke around on the old bnetd site and you'll find a new utility that will work. Alternately, go to http://www.icequake.net/battle and look for the information there.

Re:FSGS broken

[Rakarra]

Does FSGS support version checking/upgrading? With 1.09, Starcraft now requires version checking from the server, and if the server skips this step, the client won't connect. This requires downloading some mpqs from battle.net...

Re:There's another fully functional Battle.Net ser

[mrhuman]

this is a null issues, the most recent version of starcraft/broodwars (1.09) allows lan play via udp packets.

StarCraft and Broodwar.. deleted.

[Ojibar]

I valued bnetd as an educational and practical project. Not only I will never buy, but never play another Blizzard game again.. no matter what they do. Incidently, this removes any use for Windoze on my private network. :)

Re:StarCraft and Broodwar.. deleted.

[KnumbKnuts]

Hahahaha Jihad! I'm sure Bliz felt the disturbance in the force.

Re:StarCraft and Broodwar.. deleted.

[Ojibar]

Indeed. Blizzard has just joined Microsoft in my esteem and it is appropriate to wipe them off my systems together.

Re:yes they do - Correction!

[Anonymous Coward]

And the DMCA makes it illegal to circumvent copy control protections, so bnetd would be illegal if Blizzard can show that its primary intent (or perhaps a significant intent, I'm not sure what the standard is) is as a too to circumvent Battle.net keychecks. Which based on my experience, it is.

That is crazy. The purpose of bnetd was to be able to play on non-crowded servers and to be able to use TCP/IP with friends wighout having to connect to slow overloaded servers. It is great for LAN parties for for friends that like to play games together. Lots of people also use bnetd to chat and to use bots since Battle.net disallowed bots.

The fact bnetd does not check keys is something the developers never thought about much. It is somewhat difficult to do since those packets are encrypted and since anyone can start another server or disable it in the source code it wouldn't really make much sense anyway.

So what is it in your experience that tells you the primary purpose of bnetd is to avoid Battle.net duplicate key checking?

Publicize This

[Anonymous Coward]

They are probably counting on most people never hearing about this. We need to get onto gaming forums and post comments about this till we are blue in the face. They know slasdot audience will be pissed, they know the numbers of people playing on bnetd servers are inconsequential. But not if we piss of a hundred thousand game buying fans. I am going to take it a step further than sending an email to blizzard, I am going to take a picture with the boxes of the three titles I own and write a letter vowing to never purchase thier titles again. I've purchased 3 titles, and dont know how many people Ive turned onto thier games but I will not advocate purchase of thier games. Blizzard has been one of those software companies this linux GPL nut actually wanted to give my money to, no more! Take that Blizzard!

Re:Piracy = Bootleg Warcraft III Beta - So WRONG

[Anonymous Coward]

No such crack was ever posted on www.bnetd.org. We fought people that posted links to it and other such things in the forum. You are thinking of another site or you are just lying or you are just making shit up.

Please stop that.

The official bnetd server as written by myself and other bnetd project members DOES NOT SUPPORT WARCRAFT3 and DOES NOT USE OR REQUIRE CLIENT MODIFICAITONS.

Why do people keep spreading lies? Does anyone here actually know what they are talking about?

Thanks,
-Ross

Email adresses of blizzard execs

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't bother writing to support@blizzard.com -- they generally ignore actual suport questions, so your complaints about this will certainly be ignored. Instead, hit the inboxes of the people who run Blizzard. Email adresses at blizzard are of the form [first initial][last name]@blizzard.com

So Bill Roper's email is broper@blizzard.com

Some other blizzard people worth contacting, from the credits list in the D2 manual:

Project and design leads:
Dave Brevik dbrevik@blizzard.com
Erich Schaefer eschaefer@blizzard.com
Max Schaefer mschaefer@blizzard.com

Various producers:
Mike Morhaime mmorhaime@blizzard.com
Matt Householder mhouseholder@blizzard.com
Kenneth Williams kwilliams@blizzard.com
Michael Huang mhaung@blizzard.com
Bill Roper broper@blizzard.com
Mark Kern mkern@blizzard.com

If you only email two of these people (but there's no reason not to send a copy of your complaint letter to all of them), email Max Schaefer and Bill Roper.

Oh yes, you might want to email Chris Metzen (cmetzen@blizzard.com), who was reponsible for the Diablo 2 story concept and script editing and manual design, layout, and artwork, and the cinematic script, and the coice casting and direction. In other words, the entire plot of D2 came from him. Ask him what part of the Diablo 2 story includes the fans getting f*cked over by Blizzard.

Blizzard gets money from Battle.net

[Jesse Miller]

I believe that Blizzard has advertising on Battle.net which means that they're making some money from it. Not to say that they're right in trying to shut down bnetd.

You really want to hurt Blizzard?!

[Dizzy49]

I've read everyone shouting "boycott, boycott!" Personally, I'm weak, and I enjoy playing Blizzard games and I'll probably be getting it. At the same time, though, everyone is stating that it won't make a difference to Blizzard.

There are enough copies of BnetD around, and the fact that for some reason FSGS isn't shut down that no one needs to buy Warcraft 3. Everyone get hacked/cracked/copied/pirated copies. They may not care that people aren't buying their game, but when they see that thousands and thousands of people are playing their game and haven't paid for it. Then they may take notice.

Like others, I have purchased damn near every game Blizzard made. I usually get a copy of it, play it, and if I like it, I will then shell out the cash for it. I am a programmer, and I believe that people should get paid for good work. I also believe that large companies flexing and trying to snuff out "competition" while hiding behind laws meant to protect them from piracy need put down.

-Dizzy

Find a technical fix

[dmmjr]

As I understand it, the clients will send their IDs to bnetd, but bnetd has no way to verify whether they are valid or not. So what if bnetd were to just forward each client ID to battle.net and await validation before letting that client join the bnetd network? You'd be stuck with an initial roundtrip to battle.net for each client, but afterwards the play could proceed independently.

Even if this is not technically possible right now, battle.net has an obligation to consider supporting low-impact measures like this that preserve their rights without trampling on other noninfringing uses. The courts are there to decide disputes when the parties can't agree, but this dispute seems pretty easy to deal with.

So, it's an unwelcome development, but if the bnetd developers decide to spend some time now trying to work with battle.net to find a technical fix, it's time well spent. In particular, the courts are not going to be sympathetic to battle.net if a straightforward solution were proposed but then ignored by battle.net.

My email to the execs

[tfurrows]

Dear Sir or Madam: It has been brought to my attention that your company has encouraged the website located at http://www.bnetd.org/ to discontinue service. In your letter to this company you site a violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) as your reason for requesting this cessation of services.

As a consumer it is greatly disconcerting to see companies abusing the scope of this unconstitutional act. Blizzard has long provided exceptional entertainment in the gaming industry, and it is sad to see such a blatant attack on their own customers rights and privileges.

http://www.bnetd.org/ has provided a service that increases Blizzard's popularity, customer base and coverage. Pursuing legal action against them will be very damaging to Blizzard from a public relation standpoint.

As a concerned consumer and Blizzard customer I would appreciate a brief reply stating your viewpoint on this situation, as well as the steps you are willing to take to restore customer confidence in your company. I thank you in advance for your time in this matter.

Joseph Lyman jlyman@onebox.com

well, okey...

[Anonymous Coward]

...maybe the ground is not as high as it could be ...but still...it's high (i'm getting dizzy)

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

A Devil's Advocate in Training

[KalenDarrie]

After looking at this a little, I can sorta see where Blizzard is coming from on this, regardless of if they are in the right or wrong legally. I'm not up on all the new laws and crap, so don't bring legalese to bombard me with. Mostly this is looking at it from a 'Why would they' prospective.

For one, it's a matter of pride. Blizzard has, for years, maintained and cultivated BattleNet, servicing well over half a dozen games/expansions and tens of thousands of players. It's their pride, their commitment and having someone make a reinvent of their server technology to do what they do could be like a slap in the face.

Secondly I'm sure that Blizzard would like to keep their responsibilities squarely on their own shoulders. Rather than having someone create servers to host realms and mediate SC and WC games and do it poorly. If someone has a problem playing online, you can be sure its something to do with Blizzard. If someone starts playing with on a homebrew BattleNet, Blizzard can't be expected to cater to problems with their games due to uncertainty about this homebrew server software and just what issues it has. Thus it creates uncertainty and, through that, hurt feelings by those that might think it's Blizzard's job to fix what's wrong with their game when it would be folly to assume any legal responsibility to.

Third I've no doubt that Blizzard keeps track of the popularity of their game by the general numbers of players on Bnet. So if a homebrew Bnet server software starts to cut into that it throws off their general numbers and makes it all the more difficult to judge the popularity of certain games.

For that last you might think Blizzard could try and get a thing going with the makers of the software or any major users to share numbers and ideas. That could be, but even so the numbers could be doctored one way or the other(for whatever reason).

Personally, I've not heard of this software before today and I have no deep knowledge of its aims, capabilities or guarantees. But on the overall I can see why Blizzard would be upset by this, especially considering its unlikely the makers over approached Blizzard(to my knowledge) with a dialogue about the project. As to the legal issues, those have been covered and I'm no expert so I'll keep my fingers where they belong.

Re:A Devil's Advocate in Training

[Original Cyber-Surfe]

I agree.. I'm no legal expert either..
However, let me give a few examples to the contrary.

1) There's a Key Server crack out for Return to Castle Wolfenstein, that lets you play the Warez Version of it On-Line, even with a hacked/keygen'ed CD Key

2) Medal of Honor was out in the Warez circuit 2 weeks before it ever hit retail shelves. Many people I've talked intend to buy the full retail box.

3) Half-Life. 4 years old and still in one form or another has thousands of players every day.

4) Half-Life's Mod community.
Valve has let Mod makers not only edit their game. They've supported them, while still incorperating a CD Key Check maintained by Valve/Won (And to this day I have yet to find a working crack for the Multiplayer CD Key issue, even though I own the game.) They have also allowed 3rd party mod developers to sell their mods and products relating to the mod's WITHOUT paying a royalty. Now that's Fan base support. Blizzard could learn alot from them.

As # 1 & 2 above demonstrate, where there is a will there is a way. You can play the Warez version of MoH-AA on Gamespy with no problems. RtCW can also be played on-line once applying the CD-KeyServer Crack. So what was the big point here. Instead of being Nazi-ish about this Blizzard should have worked with the team. It would have given more to the community, and raised Blizzards standing as a supporter of their fans, instead of being the PR Disaster it is.

I also like you had not heard of Bentd before this..

Re:A Devil's Advocate in Training

[Original Cyber-Surfe]

As a side note to #3/4 ... Each mod can include it's own custom version of the Half-Life multiplayer server files... the core is the same, but the add-on DLL's and such (depending on if Linux or Win32) can be completely custom.

Re:For Just a Second, Consider the Other Side of T

[Anonymous Coward]

I spent years of my life working on bnetd and so have others? Why is our work not as important? It can be snuffed out because some company does not like it? What if I said: Blizzard's games are a circumention device for bnetd since they do not connect to it? Does that make any sense?

Legal recourse, as an insider

[Tyriel]

Speaking as someone who's been involved in the bnetD project (though not in the center of it), I should probably point out a couple things, on the offchance someone hasn't mentioned them already. Typhoon and Mysticales are working on a legal response (possibly in line with the helpful link the original poster made). In any event, the project isn't going anywhere. Some people in these threads support Blizzard or at least think they have a case, so please let me address that. The specific complaints Blizzard lists in their note are:

The aforementioned site either hosts or distributes software which illegally modifies and/or alters Blizzard Entertainment copyrighted software or bypasses anti-circumvention technology, thereby infringing upon Blizzard Entertainment copyrights.

Let's run down the list there.

• Modifies or alters Blizzard software. Nope, it's entirely independent. Users choose to connect of their own accord, by their own means. We only run our own software.
• Bypasses anti-circumvention technology. What, the CDkey system for Blizzard games? We don't enable users to pirate software, we only provide gaming servers for people who already own the games.

Something else to consider. If BnetD violates copyrights, then how about the 15,000 average concurrent users on FSGS? Anyone remember Kali? Surely if Blizzard let those services exist for years upon years, bnetD is no more harmful a precedent. Last, Blizzard ought to rethink their policy of aggression on anyone who tries to enhance the experience for their users (might I mention UltimateBot). The thousands of users that FSGS claims are NOT hogging the limited bandwidth (or development resources) of the battle.net staff. FSGS, BnetD and any related projects are really helping Blizzard more than they're hurting them. All fans of the project can rest assured that this isn't the last you've heard about BnetD :) Thanks,

Re:Legal recourse, as an insider

[Anonymous Coward]

Well as for anyone that this may concirn enough people have the source code to this server program if blizzard keeps threatining BNetD im kinda sure you will see a bunch of pop ups as in underground development as it seems FSGS has gone yet again.
by the way FSGS has had the same threat in the past of its existance how did they get threw these years without beeing shut down?

~HellForU

~Blizzard's Corporate Board Sucks My Left Nut.

The actual warforge site....

[Anonymous Coward]

The actual warforge site (http://madgrfx.com/warforge.html) did not post a serial.

Just thought I'd mention that.

CVS tarball

[bleyddyn]

Sorry if this was already posted below my reading threshold...

The full CVS tarball for bnetd is apparently still available (as of this posting) from sourceforge. The direct url is http://cvs.sourceforge.net/cvstarballs/bnetd-cvsro ot.tar.gz

Re:yes they do - Correction!

[Trepidity]

So what is it in your experience that tells you the primary purpose of bnetd is to avoid Battle.net duplicate key checking?

The fact that most people I know who use it are people who can't get on Battle.net because they don't own valid keys. The people who do own valid keys mostly just get on Battle.net because they don't want to bother setting up their own servers.

Real Cow's only MOOOOO

[Anonymous Coward]

Ya all a bunch of cow's MOOO ing at the farmer. He'l still cut ya up so he can have his dinner

You know its illegal to hack/crack/copy I wont say dont do it but have some respect for you'r self when its taken away. If you would shoplift the game and be arrested for it. Then I don not think the copper's/lawyer's/yudge's will say "bad boy thats not legal but we'll let you go cause captilisme REALY BITES ARSE"

I wouldent be suprised if the mayor part of all potential buyers arrent even AWARE of it being possible to play whif out to pay. Back to my cow isue we cow's dont care/rember/know if one gets slaughter. So be happy ya got it all for as long as you did.

And for all those who claim to or are REALY using it because there is no other way. Then dont worry there should be an release of the same software somewhere right now. Cause all things that are illegal/socialy incorrect are done right on internet and we yust can't get anouf of its addition.

The only way ya really can change this is when we all stampede and thats called an revolution. I really dont see that happening over such a small isue.

Re:Real Cow's only MOOOOO

[Anonymous Coward]

W0w, y3r e1th3r like 12 y33rs old 0r yer jus7 t0 d0p3d up to sp311 pr0p3rli. U shud t4ke a l3ss0n fr0m a r33l l337 sp311er h0m3 b0i.

'nuf s4id

Re:Piracy = Bootleg Warcraft III Beta - So WRONG

[Cheerio Boy]

Someone please mod the parent to this up - it's from the current DEVELOPER!!!

Now I know about bnetd...

[demo9orgon]

Like most people who enjoy stomping butt in one of the best RTS games on the planet (Broodwar), I do not devote much time to getting around the cesspool of B.net. However, because of this new move by Blizzard, there is a chance I can get online, and find another way to get some buddies into a game without b.net at all. Screw this boycott crap. What I am looking forward to is the day when I can login to b.net and see only about 1/3rd of the users because people are hosting themselves. Now that is the stuff! And I hope they are scared shitless of that reality. Wonder how long it will be before some international company is pushing bots through IP space to look for illegal or unlicensed services/software--Just like M$ has been doing for the last six years? That's ok, because the true meausre of a firewall monkey is how well they can keep everyone except friendlies out of sensitive networks.

Seeing that Blizzard is part of that whole Vivendi scheme makes my skin crawl. Sure I buy music and software, but it is almost always second hand...for financial reasons.

Kali? Kahn?

[Sparky9292]

Since you can bypass Blizzard's Battlenet by using the IPX emulation software like Kali and Kahn, I wonder why they've never gone after those two. Kali has been around since the Doom days, and I still play with Starcraft with Friends over Kali if Battlenet is down or freaky.

There's another Windows server called "Free Gaming Server" that's floating around. I know it emulates Westwood and Blizzard servers. You have to change your registry with the IP of the new server to get it to work.

Grab the entire CVS repository

[Logic]

The entire CVS history can be pulled down from:

http://cvs.sourceforge.net/cvstarballs/bnetd-cvsro ot.tar.gz

Grab it while you can.

Re: Blizzard right? not.

[Ojibar]

Their copy protection issues are none of my concerns. By treating everybody as presumed thiefs, they are infringing on my personal rights and everybody who has legally purchased their products.
Some do not care, I do.
On top of that - their Battlenet service does suck big time. There is nothing more frustrating than getting disconnected right in the middle of intense action.
I give them two thumbs and a toe down.

Won't help

[Krilomir]

So: when you see Warcraft III on the shelves, don't buy it.

I'm afraid that it won't help anything. You make it sound like the majority of Warcraft III buyers are slashdot readers.

My letter...

[QuantumG]

I would just like to express my approval with the recent action taken by Blizzard to defend its online key verification system. It is a shame that other gaming companies are not so willing to shut down third party servers such as the makers of Ultima Online.

Buy Warlords Battlecry 2 isntead :-)!!!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Cool new RTS with Heros, 12, sides 100+ spells the works:

http://www.ssg.com.au/wbc2/

I think it will be much better than Warcraft III.

...

[Anonymous Coward]

Reading some replies to this story really made me ashamed to read slashdot.

The simple fact is that these Bnetd servers allowed pirated versions of Blizzard games to be played without a hitch.

If you guys want to get the low down (of course not all of what's going on behind the scenes, but a good understanding) just read this post on the Blizzard Battle.net forums: http://forums.battle.net/war3-general/posts/fc/183 09.shtml

Still looking for it?

[Anonymous Coward]

If you want the bnetd files, they are still available in the debian package mirros. Don't know for how much longer though. Although some of the mirrors aren't in the US methinks, so they may live on there for quite a while.

For those running windows, there is FSGS, but I don't know if that runs war 3.

The EULA actually forbids Bnetd

[Anonymous Coward]

In the back of the StarCraft manual (section 3.C.iv) it says you are not allowed to:

"host or provide matchmaking services for the Program or emulate or redirect the communication protocols used by in the network feature of the Program, through protocol emulation, tunneling, modifying, or adding components to the Program, use of a utility program or any other techniques now known or hereafter developed, for any purpose including, but not limited to, network play over the Internet, network play utilizing commercial or non-commercial gaming networks or as part of content aggregation networks without the prior written consent of Blizzard."

So, pre-DMCA, they were not allowed to create Bnetd. I also happen to be in the un-popular "I think this is a valid use of the DMCA." camp.

Re:The EULA actually forbids Bnetd

[Anonymous Coward]

What if an emulator for battle.net was developed by people who never purchased Diablo/Starcraft/et al. and are therefore not bound to the EULA? Do you think it would still apply then?

What about existing reverse engineering laws?

Re:The EULA actually forbids Bnetd

[Anonymous Coward]

Or what if the purchased the games but never installed them or agreed to any crappy EULA?!

Plus the DMCA specifically allows reverse engineering for purposes of interoperability and also claims to not affect fair use (though we all know that using a copy control can do an end run around that part of the law).

Destructive marketing tactics

[tokiko]

From: tokiko
To: sales@blizzard.com
Subject: Destructive marketing tactics
Date: Thu, 21 Feb 2002 22:55:48 -0600
X-Mailer: Sylpheed version 0.7.0 (GTK+ 1.2.10; i686-pc-linux-gnu)

Please reconsider your position against the free software movement and
your recent actions against bnetd.org.

Neither DMCA nor current copyright law provide Blizzard Entertainment any
legal presence over a legitimate free software package such as bnetd.

Already, high volume sites such as NewsForge http://www.newsforge.com/article.pl?sid=02/02/21/1 344204&mode=thread
and Slashdot http://slashdot.org/articles/02/02/21/0136256.shtm l?tid=127
have posted articles and shed Blizzard in a negative light. Can Blizzard
survive such destructive marketing tactics with the upcoming WarCraft
release?

Until Blizzard Entertainment reverses its policy, I will personally see
that absolutely no individual or group I know will purchase another
Blizzard product. Rest assured, you will see many hundred fewer copies
being sold in every gaming circle, online resource, and area that I have
influence in.

PLEASE READ (BLIZZARD DID THE RIGHT THING)

[BaGGyGCX]

This is one reason why Blizzard HAD to shut down bnetd. Mainly because of the Warcraft 3 beta test was leaked to the public, and programmers used Bnetd as the source to emulate the Warcraft 3 servers. In which caused lots of harm on Blizzards half. I am sad and yet I am happy, because they didnt have much other choice. They cant make a patch to disable it because people would have found a way around it. They just simply had to shut down the source of the cause. So yes Blizzard might have done a wrong thing in your opinion but you all prolly didnt know that WarCraft 3 was cracked hacked and ripped and they were using Bnetd as the core of the project. If these "people" wouldnt have used Bnetd's source and not have ripped the game Bnetd would be still avaliable to us. But sadly it cannot be :( If you still dont understand, just reply to this post and I will possibly give more info.

Re:PLEASE READ (BLIZZARD DID THE RIGHT THING)

[Ojibar]

You're the one that doesn't understand. Their licencing problems is none of my concerns. Because some people are criminals, it shoudn't mean the cops can bust into your house and treat you like one because they think they don't have any other choice. Or.. is it ok because they need to make sure you're not doing anything wrong and it's all the 'criminals' fault?

Re:PLEASE READ (BLIZZARD DID THE RIGHT THING)

[BaGGyGCX]

so... now your saying warez are a good thing? you better rething that.

Fallacy Sampler!

[RedSynapse]

Browsing at +3 so generally avoids the chum, but it seems where the DMCA (aka Instrument of Unmitigated Evil) is concerned all reason seems to be thrown out the window.

Fallacy Sampler:
Not true at all. "Doing nothing to prevent piracy" is not the same thing as "facilitating piracy".
Perhaps you are unfamiliar with the meaning of the word facilitate, it means to make less difficult and while it is true that if Bnetd was a project totally divorced from the realm of software piracy (i.e. it was a knitting club) then it would indeed be doing nothing. Rather Bnetd creates an environment where people without CD-Keys (pirates) can play networked games. THIS FACILITATES PIRACY. They do not need to offer warezed copies of Blizzard games to make piracy easier. Repeat this 100 times, then take a pill.

I'm going to stick to the moral high ground, and never play another Blizzard game again unless it's a pirated version.
I laude your ethical integrity! In an effort to follow your morally superior stance (and logic) I plan to only obtain my vehicles through carjacking (because I disagree with Detroit's production of gas guzzlers), my clothing through shoplifting (because of the sweatshops), my home electronics through home invasions (toxic chemicals used in their production) and I'm also planning to knock over the neighbourhood liquor store cause it's promoting alcoholism. Who knew having such high morals could be so much fun?

Blizzard doesn't make any money off its free Battle.net service, but it does enforce that people actually buy the game.
I think the Anti-DMCA storm troopers are missing this point. Blizzard just wants to make money off the game it invested a lot of money in creating. If people can't play multiplayer without purchasing the real game this is going to be a big incentive for people not to use the pir8 version, and allows Blizzard to claim it's just compensation.

I don't think the DMCA is a particularly good law, neither I would argue is the second amendment, but when someone uses their CCW licensed Glock to blow a hole through someone trying to commit a rape I have to admit that while I disagree with the law as a whole its application does have the possibility for individual positive outcomes. Ditto DMCA. Bnetd may have been created with the best of intentions but the fact is pirates would use it or its source to rip off Blizzard. As for me I'm gonna buy War III when it comes out and ya'll righteous free software soldiers marching as to war can stick with pong and your misplaced morals.

are you really that dumb?

[Anonymous Coward]

Sorry dumba$s, but you just labeled yourself much more idiotic than anyone else here, Pepsi didn't make their soda out of a base of Coke, they didn't extract something from Coke and use it in Pepsi, they also didnt use the same can design or anything that actually related to Pepsi. In this case, they are using software based off Blizzard material, and allowing people to use things they are not at liberty to use (i.e. warcraft III beta, who the fuck are they to play it when they didnt make it in, prolly pre-pubescent 12 year old who get a boner from knowing theyre doing shit they shouldnt). Pepsi also didnt devise a way to, by drinking Pepsi, get free Coke every sip, ya thats right, you've just been made an ass of, now why don't YOU think before you make a post.

-CaM3Lt0Sis
kornchild331@earthlink.net

Re:are you really that dumb?

[Darby]

Pepsi didn't make their soda out of a base of Coke, they didn't extract something from Coke and use it in Pepsi,

Nor does Bnetd use something of Blizzards. It is a clean implementation.

In this case, they are using software based off Blizzard material,

No again. they are using software they wrote. They reverse engineered the Battlenet server protocol which is legal even with the DMCA since reverse enginering for the purpose of interoperability is completely legal.

ya thats right, you've just been made an ass of, now why don't YOU think before you make a post.

I think it's clear who is the ass here. Also your complete lack of understanding of the issue is apparent.

Re:yes they do - Correction!

[Rakarra]

Interesting. Everyone I know who uses it (I run a bnetd server myself) uses it because Battle.Net is unstable and laggy as hell at times. I downloaded it and compiled it in a fit of frustration one night after myself and 4 friends were unable to even create/join the same game together due to the lagged servers. We tried Kali, but the lag over that was terrible (Starcraft's IPX code seems to assume everyone is on the fast local LAN, and it syncs all play to the laggiest person -- not good if someone is on a slow modem). We tried to get on to Battle.Net for a little Starcraft party that night, and it just wasn't an option until bnetd was set up.

Re:There's another fully functional Battle.Net ser

[Rakarra]

Version 1.09 of Starcraft/Brood War, which was released quite recently, has only 2 options for multiplayer now: TCP/IP and Battle.net.

Actually, this is incorrect. V1.09 of Starcraft has 5 options under multiplayer:

• Battle.Net
• Local Area Network (IPX)
• Modem (never used this before.. it allows one player to use the modem in receiver mode, and the other player calls that number -- I have never seen a game which dials the modem like this, but I didn't play online games before the Internet era...)
• Direct Cable Connection (NULL serial cable, I assume)
• Local Area Network (UDP) (this is the new option added in 1.09. Once again, it doesn't work over the Internet.. just the local LAN)

Unfortunately, there's still no more TCP/IP option, at least not one which works over the Internet, like there is in Diablo 2.

(No more having to use IPX if I want to play with PC users on a LAN :D).

Pardon my ignorance, but what's wrong with IPX on a fast LAN? The only problem I've seen with IPX is over WANs with tunnelers like Kali and such.

This link might be of help:

[Anonymous Coward]

Bnetd Server List page

Won't buy?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, bla, bla, bla. We'll see how much your lame boycott affects sales of warcraft III. You are all so lame it's priceless.

Generalising for X

[Anarchofascist]

Wait a minute! The DMCA shouldn't apply at all in this case!

Welcome to the Noughties! You're guilty until proven capable of affording a lawyer. The equation goes something like this:

Elected officials: "You cannot X unless Y"
Cabal of Lawyers: "You! Stop X!"
Victim: "But Y! "
CoL:"Pay money and we'll prove you did Y and leave you alone."

End result: If you have money, you cannot X unless Y. If you have no money, you cannot X.

Blizzard doesn't have the right!!!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Lets raid their fridge while we are at it!!!

slashdotters lobbying(was Re:The only solution)

[Anonymous Coward]

Slashdotters going all political and _lobbying_ for someone not to buy a game !?!?

In your dreams.

Tarball

[delta407]

Sourceforge makes a daily tarball of the CVS root. Granted, it has all the CVS metainformation in it still, but it's there...

http://cvs.sourceforge.net/cvstarballs/bnetd-cvs ro ot.tar.gz

Thought this might be useful for someone.

why not use freenet?

[Anonymous Coward]

An anonymous, secure P2P content distribution channel such as freenet would make an ideal home to projects that could find themselves being oppressed by the DMCA. Pity the client sucks though.

Re:Fallacy Sampler! Please Read Response Developer

[Anonymous Coward]

Sigh... you are also making many logical fallacies. Let's take the one people are using the most:

"bnetd made it easy for pirates therefore it's bad... it makes it easier to pirate games therefore it is illegal and Blizzard has every right to make money on their product."

That can be attack from so many directions it's not even funny.
1) bnetd did what was possible to make it difficult for pirates, cdkey checks are a trade secret so Blizzard does not want to share and we have no way to access them. If we started reverse engineering the cd key system for their games you know what they would say: "Dirty pirates trying to break our copy protection scheme... DMCA, DMCA!"

2) things like CD burners and the "cat" command also make pirating easier... why are they legal?

3) nobody has said bnetd is illegal (in public anyway)

4) Blizzard has no "right" to make money. They DO have the right to receive compensation for the products they sell and they have the right to not have people copying their games without permission but there is no right to do what you want just becasue the bottom line is threatened.

Thanks,
-Ross

Letter to Blizzard

[g_bit]

Dear Blizzard,

Shutting down bnetd does nothing to prevent piracy of your games. The source code is out there already :) The people who know how to crack your anti-piracy measures are also smart enough to get their own servers running and with the proliferation of broadband there is nothing stopping them from using it.

Shutting down bnetd did nothing but get you bad Press. Instead, you should have made a seperate server product that just stores/checks the CD Keys and require other servers like bnetd to implement this service.

However, I don't think that you really care as much about piracy as you do the loss of advertising revenue on your Blizzard.net service. I don't think you like competition in your own backyard, that is why you're hiding behind the DMCA.

Just my .02.

Wayne

Bullshit

[evil_one]

From the article: "Why doesn't Blizzard provide facilities that enable these emulators to authenticate CD keys through Battle.net? In order for us to keep our proprietary CD-key algorithms secure, we cannot allow outside servers to query for the validity of CD keys." This is an outright lie. Pass on the CD-key (if you're worried about security, ssl-it) and have it respond with a checksummed "yes" or "no"

Is KALI next? Let the bnetd live on file sharing!

[Anonymous Coward]

Kali has support for Blizzard games without checking for a cd key. So I guess it's ok, as long as W3 support isn't there.

As for Bnetd, it can live on. Setup a website without the files. The files can easily be found on Morphues and other file sharing platforms.

Don't let Blizzard win, they can't win, we can't be stopped.

Longtime Blizzard fan dating back to the original WC (coincidentally found via warez, though I have since purchased WCII/SC/Diablo series of games and expansion packs).

Re:Zanthor

[Kain01]

I have pirated softwear in the past and the only time I ever buy it is when I have respect for the game and the company. I've always been a long time fan of thier products because I know for sure they are going to be quality products. Saying that about any one company is a minor miracle in the gamming industry with all these clones and half finished crap that takes up 60% of games. Unfortunatly most people on battle.net are complete assholes, take it from me, I've spent entire summers playing Diablo, Diablo 2, Diablo xpac, Starcraft and Warcraft 2. Espacially Diablo one and two, I only first realized this once I started playing EverQuest. In EQ everyone is so polite and trustworthy, and the role-players are a real pleasure to be around with their charming acting. Strangers approach me and ask me to hold stuff so they can move it form one charater to another, something totally unheard of in Diablo 1/2 where everyone guards their items like their made out of pure gold.

Re:Zanthor

[Anonymous Coward]

Respect for the game and company is the core of why people purchase software from companies, especially repeat purchases. Yes Blizzard should certainly take a leaf out of the EQ book and get rid of the annoying dickheads it has attracted. D1 and D2 almost encourages selfishness, aggression and that act that schools try to stamp out called "bullying". When you dare to challenge these cheating losers in the game they state "it's just a game". Which is total bullshit - it is a reflection of their attitudes in general. Society does not condone the prevailing attitudes currently circulating in D2 so why do we say it's ok to do it in a game?
Why is it "ok" to steal peoples accounts, constantly attempt to rip other players off, PK others just for that momentary feeling of "power and perceived superiority"?
Those cheating bastards who want to fuck up other peoples games should not be allowed to do it. Whether by penalties or by game design they should ensure these attitudes are not allowed to thrive. The majority of players in D2 are children, in EQ they are Adults as it is a longer more challenging game and not as repetetive as D2(some say boring), and kids on average just don't have enough patience to appreciate EQ in it's entirety. With that said, why is Blizzard "allowing" children to foster these anti social destructive attitudes? I have an 11 yo son who loves D2 and was basically a very good kid, but after months of D2 and being immersed in the attitudes of others he has started to adopt their ways. Why? "Because they are allowed to do it" and "He stole my gear so now I have to do it to someone else to get some gear". Alarmingly these attitudes have started to carry over into his everyday life. For us oldies we might say he has been tempted by "the dark side" and is now using his talents for "evil" rather than "good". Come on game designers and implementers there is an onus on you, as these "children" are tomorrows "adults" and will decide the fabric of society tomorrow. Lets not make it any harder for them and us than it already is.

Re:Piracy = Bootleg Warcraft III Beta - So WRONG

[BaGGyGCX]

Check out server irc.dal.net channel #warcraft .. #warcraft3 .. and #warforge (WarForge is the one who modded AND used bnetd to create these servers for Warcraft 3) so blame WarForge.

well

[Trepidity]

I don't know anyone who uses Linux, so setting up a private bnetd server isn't really an option. The people I know who connect to bnetd servers find public ones in IRC channels and connect to those (since they don't have valid keys). The people with valid keys don't want to go through the hassle of going to IRC to find what bnetd servers are up today, so they just use Battle.net, despite its obvious flaws.

Re:I don't think it's Battle.net, its pirated game

[Forthoffer]

Why can't bnetd validate CD-KEYs by automatically logging into battle.net, validating the CD-KEY, then instantly logging out? And perhaps maintining a database of such validated CD-KEYs.

version 1.09 includes tcp/ip support

[Anonymous Coward]

This means that lans running only TCP/IP can use Starcraft. Woohoo!
This also means that bnetd's main advantage is lost (for me, anyway). Is this a response to bnetd and it's ilk, or just a final bonus (1.09 is the last patch for SC)?

Just a comment...

[Anonymous Coward]

Has any of you guys tryed entering in battle.net with an invalid CD key and trace the connection?
I'll tell you what happens: <b>Blizzard illegally takes information from your computer's registry (precisley, your name and e-mail)and sends it to their servers</b>. The first game using this was Starcraft, so it doesn't seems like they care so much about the law...

Just to think about it...

[Anonymous Coward]

Has any of you guys tryed to enter battle.net with an illegal CD key?
I'll tell u what happens: Blizzard ilegally takes information from your registry (precisley, your name and e-mail adress) and sends it to their servers...
Maybe it's for piracy controlling, but it is illegal to retrieve this information from your computer, it's almost like including a trojan in their software! This system has been implemented for the fist time with starcraft, and since then with all of their games!
Just to think about it, I don't think blizzard cares so much about the law...

Brand image

[crisco]

I would disagree.

Some who would download the beta illegally might do it to 'check out the game'. These might be the ones that decide not to buy it based on problems they see with the beta. However, these might be the ones that would warez the game when it was released anyway.

A second class that would obtain the beta are the Blizzard fans, the ones that tried to get into the official Beta to begin with and when faced with a chance to take a look and play the game, eagerly jump at the chance. These would buy the final product no matter what they see in the beta.

I would bet there are a great deal more of the latter playing on bnetd server than the former.

Secondly, I am aware of no NDA affecting the use of the official beta. Certainly Blizzard and its fan sites are posting every detail imaginable regarding this game.

Sorry you guys are confused.

[Anonymous Coward]

Blizzard makes great games and people are gonna use this stuff to pirate games. If you can't see that you are hopeless.

theft is not a righteous thing

[Anonymous Coward]

god i hate your kind, you admit to an illegal act, brazenly and openly, and without any thought to what is actually happening. people like you are taking money directly from blizzard. if you came and took money from my house, i'd probably try to stop you, how is that any differnt than what blizzard is doing. I will always be a loyal blizzard fan!