Slashdot Mirror
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.
"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.
Did anyone happen to notice the source is still available on sourceforge. Go get it while you can ;)
Your ad here ask me how!
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...
I think my principles are reachin' an all time low
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.
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