Slashdot Mirror
Blizzard, Bnetd Respond on Bnetd Shutdown
From: "Tim Jung"
Subject: bnetd.org shutdown
If you would like more information on this please feel free to contact me. I am
one of the developers and the hosting ISP for www.bnetd.org. I have talked at
lenght with both the Blizzard/Vivendi lawyers and with EFF lawyers about our
options both as an ISP and as a developer.
As an ISP I did not force the group to do anything, but rather presented them
with all the legal information I have recieved and asked them what they wanted
to do. As you can imagine neither my company nor any of the developers have the
money to fight the Blizzard/Vivendi lawyers at this time. So until we are able
to get some legal help to fight this we felt we had no choice but to close down
the site for now until the time at which we could fight this legal battle.
If you have any questions or suggestions let me know.
Tim Jung
System Admin
Internet Gateway Inc.
Why should the on-line piracy validation be integrated with the server? It is "relatively" easy to split the actual battle.net serving with the vadidation process.
With an Open client/server protocol the client could get a ticket/.net pasport from the official site and play with the Free server...
Just my 5 EuroCents.
From blizzard FAQ:
"Your games sell millions of copies. Why do you care if a few people pirate your software?
The sales success of a product should not exclude it from laws intended to protect intellectual property. Software piracy needs to be combated at all levels, and at Blizzard we intend to do our part to fight illegal distribution of copyrighted media. "
I think they have a good point. After all, think of all the entertainment value you will get out of a measley $50. Really it's not a bad price to pay, especially when battlenet is free.
They need to keep the CD key algorithm secret in order to be secure
This sound like yet another amateur cryptography to me. If they used a proper public key algo they would have no need to keep it secret.In other words: reading crypto books helps.
Baker's Law: Misery no longer loves company. Nowadays it insists on it
http://www.sigsegv.cx/
Blizzard is ultimately doing the right thing in going after people cracking the Beta, IMHO.
I mean, ideally they ought to allow things like bnetd for their published games, since that reduced the load on their real battle.net servers, which I think most of us will agree is often more than they can handle.
Instead of citing security of their protection algorithms, I think they ought to be working WITH the bnetd people -- they need to find a way to allow copy protection while still allowing user-operated servers.
If they need a real example of a system that works, they need look no farther than Half-Life or Quake3 -- they can be played on LANs without authentication, but by and large, you need a licensed copy to play on the Internet.
Xentax
You shouldn't verb words.
1201a of the DMCA reads: ''(2) No person shall manufacture, import, offer to the public, provide, or otherwise traffic in any technology, product, service, device, component, or part thereof, that-- ''(A) is primarily designed or produced for the purpose of circumventing a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title; ''(B) has only limited commercially significant purpose or use other than to circumvent a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title; or ''(C) is marketed by that person or another acting in concert with that person with that person's knowledge for use in circumventing a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title."
It does not take a lawyer to know that bnetd is not a "circumvention device" under the DMCA, and by saying that the "pirates" "spoiled" it for the rest of legitimate users, they are even admitting that there are substantial legal uses and bnetd is not "primarily designed" to circumvent a copy prevention mechanism.
They wouldn't stand a chance if this went to court.
I use bnetd to play starcraft on linux on lan. I'm not going to put ipx just for one game.
Yes, I did buy the game, and yes I use winex to play it.
I also happen to be the geek to call for a few tens of persons when they have a technical problem or to talk about games.
I'm going to advice all those persons to never again buy a blizzard/vivendi game until this affair is settled between vivendi and bnet. There is obviouslly something better to be done for vivendi than to piss off fans with stupid useless legal moves.
Piracy is not harmed by this move, nor helped by the existence of bnet.
EA Originally DID shut down the UOX project which let ultima online users run their own servers for free instead of for pay. After the EA servers got overloaded and they couldn't support all the players, they dropped the lawsuits and let people have all the free servers they wanted. Now there are hundreds of free servers and UO is still in existence because of it, and the server load on the main server has dropped dramatically. Battlenet's currently running very close to the same problem. Its servers are laggy, even during non peak hours, and during peak hours its almost impossible to play.
It's funny, there's actually a pretty simple solution to all of this, which neither Blizzard or the /.-ers want to admit: Blizzard just needs to release a legitimate version of the B.Net server, with CD key checks enabled, that anybody can use to start up a B.Net server. This should solve both the complaints of those, like me, who own a legitimate copy a game, but have never been able to actually get a game up and running on B.Net with friends due to the servers being so overloaded, and Blizzard, who seems to just be worried about piracy. But, that would be giving the customer freedom of choice, now, wouldn't it, and then Blizzard couldn't start charging for access to B.Net eventually.
--to see which opensource Diablo lookalike is furthest along and offer your support towards its development.
If you want a real laugh, make it use the bnetd as its server [bnetd is GPL after all], so bnetd server can no longer be primarily regarded as a piracy tool [if it ever was]
Game development takes a long time and several years of effort, so a complete start from scratch to produce something that operates in a similar fashion to Diablo is probably not a good idea, but if you can assist on something that runs on both Linux and Windows you'll rip a lot of their profit base from under their feet. What better way to be avenged ? I suggest the bnetd developers have a look around for a suitable project!
Donte Alistair Anderson Roberts - hi son!
Karma: Chameleon
something like a quarter of a milion people read slashdot (or so i'm told). my suggestion for a solution is simple:
if you don't agree with the politics of this desicion, don't buy the game. tell your friends not to buy yhe game.
i'll bet they are going to lose a lot more money from that then they would ever have done due to piracy.
try protecting your intellectual property from that!
Acts@core.mailboks.com Acrux@core.mailboks.com Adam@core.mailboks.com Adar@core.mailboks.com Ada@core.mailboks.com
using Kali, a software that's been around since.. 95 at least, http://www.kali.net/ , gamers were able to play IPX game on the net under the guise of "Lan" emulated games. Eventually this evolved to encompass tcp/ip games, such as diablo, allowing users to play together without connecting to battle.net server.
Kali therefor ALSO bypasses the battle.net cd verification software, and has done so for the past 7 years.
Blizzard cracked down on bnetd, for the only reason, that it allowed ten's of thousands of players to play their closed beta unchecked.
Spite is what it really comes down too, as the piracy issue did not affect sales in any way for this beta.
another good deed for vivendi......
>They wrote it.
Yes, they did. They wrote the battle.net server.
>They earned the right to sell it and protect it.
yup. but they aint selling the battle.net server software, and have protected it. As I understand it, bnetd is a cleanroom implementation. It was built from the ground up. Nobody stole the code, they're just getting competition that's better and cheaper than they are.
//rdj
No one can understand the truth until he drinks of coffee's frothy goodness.
--Sheikh Abd-Al-Kadir, 1587
I'm disgusted not only by what Blizzard has done, but by the fact that they feel the need to slander the bnetd project as well.
This is from the announcement on battle.net's main page:
Certain programs have been developed that allow users to bypass Battle.net's CD-key-authentication process. Although these programs might have been made with good intentions, they directly promote software piracy by allowing users who have illegitimately obtained our games to play them as if they'd been legitimately purchased. Furthermore, because these programs allow access without a CD key, they render malicious users unaccountable, thereby eliminating Blizzard's ability to protect legitimate consumers. Therefore, Blizzard has taken an aggressive stance opposing the use of these programs.
This paragraph contains at least on case of spin-doctoring, as well as one outright lie:
"Certain programs have been developed that allow users to bypass Battle.net's CD-key-authentication process." Technically, this is true, but it's a gross misstatement of the bnetd project's aims. This sentence implies that circumventing copy-protection was bnetd's primary purpose, when in fact it was not.
"...they directly promote software piracy by allowing users who have illegitimately obtained our games to play them as if they'd been legitimately purchased." Again, making it sound as though that's the primary goal of the program, and ignoring the fact that the bnetd team asked Blizzard if they could implement CD-key checking.
"Furthermore, because these programs allow access without a CD key, they render malicious users unaccountable, thereby eliminating Blizzard's ability to protect legitimate consumers." This is a lie, pure and simple. Blizzard will stll be able to protect leigimate users on battle.net from malicious ones; the existence of bnetd won't change that one bit. Bnetd poses no danger to batle.net users, and claiming that it does is scurrilous. Blizzard is fabricating this to make users think it's acting in their interests. It's not.
TheFrood
If you say "I'll probably get modded down for this..." then I will mod you down.
I'm a user of FSGS so I can play starcraft multiplayer games - here's why
My network consists of two segments, a wireless ethernet segment and a wired 10Mbit segment. Inbetween these is a linux machine with an ADSL connection to the internet.
Starcraft is UDP based, it's a horrendous amount of firewall hacking to get the three (or more) machines behind the firewall to play on battle.net. I can't use IPX since the linux machine won't forward the packets across network segments.
It was trivial to install FSGS on the linux server and point all the clients at it - hey presto - we have working network play *even* if my ADSL line is off.
What did I do that was illegal ?
Incidently I have to use a cracked version of Starcraft on the laptop because it only has one pcmcia slot so it can only use one of the network or cdrom at anyone time.
Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former. (Einstein)
Both are reverse-engineered implementations of a proprietary server protocol.
// TODO: fix sig
Here are reasons why bnetd was needed:
Based on my use of the product, I can assure you that people trying to use hacked copies were in the strict minority.
This is the IP equivalent of setting fire to a village because it might contain spies. If this kind of "ends justifying the means" logic were applied to any other aspect of life it be considered Draconian, but the DMCA allows this -- companies can prosecute groups whose work may present the slightest threat.
"I just wanted to play starcraft at work... and now I'm going to jail?" *sigh*
Yes, they would, for the very same reason I have problems playing on Blizzard's BattleNet servers with a windows client. Their BattleNet servers are overloaded, full of spamming jerks, and are completely unusable for any group of people trying to play a game together.
That is why my friends and I setup our own bnetd server. When we login to our own server, we can actually find each other. We can all join the game that someone creates. We don't get incessant messages while we are playing: to join a clan, visit a site, or make money fast.
We all have legitimate copies of the game. Blizzard made their money from us. Let us play the game.
Edward Burr
Having a smoking section in a restaurant is like having a peeing section in a swimming pool.
If Blizzard phased out a product, then bnetd.org would fall under the DMCA's protection against obsolesence. That would be something we would be looking for because then when Blizzard brought suit against bnetd.org, the people responsible for bnetd could ask EFF to write up the legal documents to ask the judge to throw out the case on those grounds.
Education is a better safeguard of liberty than a standing army.
Edward Everett (1794 - 1865)
I'm surprised nobody has suggested it already: Hosting and development could just move to Freenet, which would protect the identities of the developers and make it quite impossible for Blizzard to shut the project pages down, and for US courts to prosecute any US developer.
You can view the letter in its entirety here at Blizzard Takes Action to Protect.
The software, bnetd, no more promotes piracy than a crowbar promotes breaking and entering. Just as a crowbar can be misused, bnetd emulator can also be misused. A lock pick set is illegal here in California without a license because its primary purpose is to circumvent security. No license is required to own a crowbar or hacksaw just because these devices might be used in an illegal manner. I'm a legitimate consumer. I own just about everything ever made by Blizzard. Your disrupting the development of bnetd has interfered with my ability to play the game. Shutting down bnetd is a violation of my fair use of software I legally own. Please explain the logic used to derive at the conclusion that disrupting my ability to play is actually helping me. No one disputes this right, but you have not gone after the pirates any more than the police would by going after the manufacturer of crowbars. Security through obscurity is no security at all. Your algorithm with be reverse-engineered, eventually. When that happens, the inherent weakness will be public knowledge. CD key generators are already floating around the web. Obviously, the security of the CD keys has been seriously compromised. If you make the CD key verification code public, it can be implemented into bnetd and most users of the program will, no doubt, implement. In truth, the CD key verification should not be necessary. The game will not run without a valid game CD in the drive. If something is circumventing this verification, is is completely unrelated to bnetd. We are not pirates and we do not like pirates. No, Blizzard - you have. The pirates are always going to be there, regardless of what you do to legitimate owners of the games. You have? When did this happen? Diablo 2:LoD has been virtually unplayable for several months now. Why do you think we seek an alternate closed realm? Since Blizzard has obviously abandoned the game to the hackers and cheaters, we have been forced by you to come up with our own solution. If you actually made an attempt to do something about the horrid condition of the realms, we might not be setting up our own realms. We want a nice place to play the game, free of cheaters and dupers. You won't give this to us; so, like an abandoned step-child, we must try to go our own way. With the state of the realms in a perpetual state of self-destruction due to Blizzard's neglect, and with Blizzard's complete lack of interest in making existing customers happy, I have decided there is no reason to purchase another Blizzard product ever again. You have lost a customer. How many will you have to lose before you realize you must SUPPORT YOUR EXISTING CUSTOMERS. During the previous duping exploit a few weeks ago, a Blizzard talking head said they had "come up with a solution that should be satisfactory to most people." We're still waiting. When is this mythical solution going to be implemented? Perhaps when he said "most people" he was referring to the Blizzard marketing division and the dupers. I'm sure the the only people satisfied with Blizzard's non-solution will be the marketing people (they are hoping it will drive people to their new game) and the dupers (they are free to abuse the realms to their heart's content).-- Will program for bandwidth
One, you aren't modifying the game to run it on bnet. Two, by your own admission, you do own the copy.
If you want to stick it in a microwave, you're free to. If you want to make modifications to it locally and not distribute them, you're free to do that too. Copyright law only says that you can't distribute copies publically or off to random people. It's called 'Fair Use'.
I don't care what the stupid license agreements say. They're largely unenforceable, and morally wrong anyway. If a license agreement in the front cover of a book isn't legally binding, one on the front cover of a DVD box or inside a game box isn't either.
No company's 'ownership' rights reach inside my own house to things I've bought and control. Such thinking leads the way to an invasive police state, and I will have none of it.
Need a Python, C++, Unix, Linux develop
It may interest you to note that Blizzard, during the time of warcraft 2 and kali actively supported kali, by releasing a build of warcraft that was optimized for kali...
anyone remember war2kali.exe ?
In other words, consider the difference between bnetd and kali: why was kali never considered a threat to blizzard?
It was considered even an ally.
While I do give Blizzard *some* slack regarding their actions leading to bnetd being killed, this will be a costly mistake for them in the long run.
First off, Blizzard needs to realize that not everyone who uses their software is pirating it. By assuming the legitimate users are potential pirates, their actions will probably increase the likelyhood of piracy. (If you're going to be assumed guilty, you may as well commit the crime.)
Next, Blizzard should try to focus more on offering an alternative to bnetd servers for its legitimate users. There is no reason Blizzard can't set up a "pay-to-play" service that would provide access to an uncluttered, high-bandwidth server for a small monthly fee. Blizzard would have no problem getting $9.95/month out of it's more dedicated users in exchange for much-improved online gaming experience. By simply cutting off access to alternate servers without providing legitimate users with an alternative, they are making their games much less desireable.
Finally, Blizzard should be asking its users for input on how battlenet should be improved. If you can give your customers what they want, they'll have no reason to look elsewhere.
Blizzard *does* produce some of the greatest games out there. I, for one, would like to see that continue. But, without the support of it's users, Blizzard will not last long.
8==8 Bones 8==8