Slashdot Mirror
Blizzard Rains on Bnetd Project
Sir Homer writes: "Blizzard Entertainment has shut down the bnetd project using the DMCA, as declared in their site. The bnetd project is a battle.net server emulator licenced under the GNU/GPL originally for Linux and also works on most Unix variants. Project details can be found on this freshmeat.net page." As I understood it, bnetd was a complete re-implementation of battle.net, so it isn't clear what copyright violation Blizzard alleges occurred. Note to bnetd: under the DMCA, you can file a counter-notice with the hosting provider asserting that Blizzard was wrong.
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.
qslack.com
http://sourceforge.net/projects/bnetd
CVS, and the downloadable files are still there for now.
"The once beautiful rose blackens slowly..."
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...
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.
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.
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.
http://censored.firehead.org:1984/bnetd/
I expect to get the CVS version of the project up there soon as well.
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.
A solution to the problem with music today
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
Play with my webcams and lights here
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
Literalism isn't a form of humor, it's you being irritating.
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.
"You spoony bard!" -Tellah
It won't do anything.
/. reader's bubble, but the collective group of us boycotting a game will do *nothing* to hurt blizard.
I hate to burst the
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
sig?
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.
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)
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
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
Me