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

[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

[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

[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

[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

[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

[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

[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

[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

[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.

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

[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

[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

[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

[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

[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

[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

[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. :-)

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!

[shogun]

What is the velocity of an unladen laptop?

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.

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

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. (...)

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

[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

[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

[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

[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

[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

[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

[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

[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

[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

[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

[richie2000]

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

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.

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...

[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

[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

[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

[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.

Ha

[crisco]

double posted to /. twice?

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

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...

[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...

[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.

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

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

[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

[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

[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

[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...

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: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.

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

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.

mirror

[jbridge21]

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

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

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.

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:samba

[asv108]

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

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.

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.

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.

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

[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.

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.

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.)

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]

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.

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!

[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!

[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.

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.

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

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?

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

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?

[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.

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

[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...)

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.)

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).

/. 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

[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: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)

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)?

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.

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

[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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

[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.

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: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: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: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

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.

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: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

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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

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: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.

Re:Piracy = Bootleg Warcraft III Beta - So WRONG

[Cheerio Boy]

Someone please mod the parent to this up - it's from the current DEVELOPER!!!

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"

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.

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.