Blizzard, Bnetd Respond on Bnetd Shutdown

EvilDonut writes: "Following the roar of protests following the shut down of the BnetD-project, Blizzard has posted a Battle.net emulation FAQ, citing their reasons to to search out and close any project that allows people to play Blizzard games online without using Battle.net. Their main arguments are software piracy and the ability to control and expire the WarCraft III beta." There's also a brief note from the Bnetd people, included below.

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.

Comments

First

[Anonymous Coward]

yep, just had to say it.

f1r5t ps0t!

first post

[Anonymous Coward]

Fo'sheezy my neezy
Keep my arms so breezy

Big shout out to all 'dem Caltech bitchez.

Ode To Jon Katz

[Anonymous Coward]

On a spring Sunday
Jon Katz breaking through O-ring
thirteen year old boy

This troll was reposted from the Troll Library without permission of the original author. If you object to this post, or if you wish to add your troll to the Troll Library, please reply to this message.

Slashdot cuts ties with Editor Over Bogus Story

[Anonymous Coward]

HOLLAND, MI (Reuters) - Online weblog Slashdot said on Thursday it had cut ties with a freelance writer for falsifying an article about an Afghani "netizen" -- the latest in a series of ethical lapses by Linux advocates.

A rare "Slashback" in Thursday's frontpage said the writer, Jon Katz, had acknowledged that his Oct. 18 story in Slashdot.org about one boy's experiences was in fact based on an obviously hoax email. It said that many facts were extrapolated from Katz other obsessions, including bad movies, hellmouth, and online culture.

"Slashdot's policies prohibit posting innuendo, rumor, speculation, duplicate posts, or using fictional devices in factual material," the note said.

A Slashdot spokesman said the last time it published an article that turned out to be falsified was this morning.

Spokesman Hemos said Katz had written eight other articles for the website in the past 2 moths and that he had assured Slashdot that none of those were falsified or fictionalized. The website said it didn't care as long as it increased page viewership.

This is interesting...

[gamgee5273]

What has Blizzard done that is so wrong? They're protecting their property. If they don't want Starcraft or Diablo played on non Battle.net servers (unless, of course, you're running over UDP or TCP), who are we to complain? They created and wrote the game, they sell the game - it's their decision how they want to handle their own property. This isn't a case of fair use ala Napster - you bought a license to use this game not the game itself. Blizzard can decide how they want to administer their property.

I. for one, will still play Starcraft or Diablo and judge any new products as they come out on their merit. If I decide that server emulation would be a good idea at that time, then I will complain and contact Blizzard. But, for me personally? I've no issue with Blizzard cracking down on BnetD

Stephen King, author, dead at 54

[Anonymous Coward]

I just heard some sad news on talk radio - Horror/Sci Fi writer Stephen King was found dead in his Maine home this morning. There weren't any more details. I'm sure everyone in the Slashdot community will miss him - even if you didn't enjoy his work, there's no denying his contributions to popular culture. Truly an American icon.

Re:Translation

[Anonymous Coward]

BUY THE FUCKING GAME you freeloading fuckwit. then you can play it all you like.

you have NO right to pirate software, what makes you think you have?

get it into your thick fucking skull...jeez

Re:No Big Deal

[Anonymous Coward]

you bought a game? how dare you!!

you have no place here. this board is for hypocrites and thieves only.

property is THEFT
intellectial property is MIND STEALING

you cannot allow these capitalists to make any money from the products they make. everything should be free!!!

because you use open source software, EVERYTHING should be free

Re:Suggestion for bnetd authors

[Anonymous Coward]

no. you are wrong. we have a right to play the game irrespective of whether we have bought it. isnt that right me fellow open source zealots?

Re:Full Text

[Eccles]

It does not take a lawyer to know that bnetd is not a "circumvention device" under the DMCA

You have this reversed.

It takes a lawyer to know that bnetd is primarily a "circumvention device" under the DMCA. The rest of us, not being lawyers, actually go by reason and common sense.

Simple technical fix

[Anonymous Coward]

There's a simple technical fix to the Blizzard problem. For years, Blizzard has been assholes to the gaming community in the name of "combating piracy". They were caught with spyware before on Battle.net, they're claiming DMCA rights to prevent people from writing GPLed servers, and frankly, it's gotten too far.

Since Blizzard claims that "copy protection" is the reason for what they're doing, if it becomes unnecessary, they won't pull the stuff they have been any more.

There are plenty of people on Slashdot with a fair degree of technical ability. Write an Outlook worm. It does one simple thing -- grabs all the keys it can find in the registry for Blizzard games (look around with Regedit and find out where they are), and then forwards those keys, along with a copy of itself and all the keys it already knows about, on its merry way.

You don't need too many out there to have so many public keys out there that Blizzard's copy protection system will become completely worthless. There is *no* way to ever recover their system, no matter how many annoying CD checks, send-personal-info-to-battle.net secretly transmissions, or other things they try to pull. So many users would be affected, and it would be so incredibly expensive to try to figure out who's a legitimate user and who isn't that they'd have to scrap the system.

Just a thought. I'm feeling a bit bitter towards Blizzard and all the other companies making consumers miserable though use of the DMCA right now.

yet another post from trelane

[Anonymous Coward]

so wait a second blizzard == vivaldi == counterstrike (valve) == won == remotely identifying cd keys through a seperate nonintegral part of the counterstrike server. THEY ALREADY HAVE THIS WORKING. by that one simple equation we (I) have proven that blizzard is full of shit. Vivaldi has the tech and the servers in place to WON Authenticate every fucking cd key on battlenet bnetd openbnet any other bnet. THIS IS A CROCK OF SHIT.

and frankly it is a case of the left hand not knowing what the right hand is doing. the arguements blizzard makes are crap. frankly vivaldi knows they are crap because the tech exists to do exactly what they say they CANNOT DO, and in fact they are ALREADY DOING IT.

trelane
save-bnetd.org