Slashdot Mirror
Legal Analysis Critical of Blizzard v Bnetd
anewsome writes "As reported previously
several times,
Blizzard has sent a cease and desist letter to the ISP of bnetd (which develops an open source
Battle.net emulator). Lawmeme.org (from the Yale Law School) has
published a long piece with lots of background and legal analysis on the
case. Conclusion: Blizzard has an uphill legal battle."
If they allowed bnetd to pass-through authentication to battle.net, they might have a better point. They've specifically ruled that out. (Presumably because their crypto is lousy.)
And it isn't the bnetd group that even enabled Warcraft III support.
I don't think you can say Blizzard faces an "uphill battle" even if they are on dubious legal ground, they have the funding, and the bnetd people will have a hard time coming up with funding to pay for a long legal battle, especially since there is no profit motive for anyone on the bnetd team to stick a neck out and fight this thing. I can think of another company that is also on EXTREMELY dubious legal ground, but managed to win. They are called Microsoft, and they, with thier superiour funding just trenched in until the political climate suited them better. I hate to compare Microsoft to Blizzard but in this case they are sort of in the same position - dubious legal ground, but superior funding and legal resources. :-(
- Geddes
This is one of the most anticipated titles in years. I've been looking foward to WC3 since WC2, considering what a jump WC2 was over WC1.
All these people playing the beta versions cracked are still going to buy the game? Who knows.
I feel that Blizzard, by providing great games for years, has earned the right to not have people floating around cracked copies of their games. We all wants WC3. I'm willing to wait.
If that means harassing some people with questionable lawsuits to stall for their software, so be it. I feel that we worry too much on Slashdot about legalisms and not enough about common decency.
If you love Blizzard games, show some respect and let them launch their games as they desire. They haven't disappointed yet.
Realize that the early demos of Star Craft were seen as WC in space and were hated. Blizzard rewrote the game in the next year and put out a game that people loved.
Had Warez kiddies put out those early Star Craft demos, then when the game was released it might have bombed because people had played a crappy game with the same name a year earlier.
Ripping off a company that puts out products you love is poor form.
Alex
If I were Blizzard, here's what I would have done:
"Hi this is Blah Blah Blah from Blizzard, apparently people are using Bnetd to play pirated versions of Warcraft III. Is there any way that you guys could remove WC3 support from Bnetd? - I would hate this to have to be a legal issue. Tell you what, I'll give a free copy of WC3 for the dev team if you get it done quickly."
While I can't predict what their response would have been, I'm guessing it would have been better than the current shithole that Blizzard has dug itself into...
-dbc
I see no difference between this kind of behavior and a thug with a billy club demanding my lunch money in exchange for the right to stay in line and not get beaten up.
Except Blizzard is the cafeteria lady who wants you to pay before you eat, and bnetd is the geek showing you the way to sneak out without paying. Since I _can_ get up from the table in most restaurants and calmly walk out without paying the check, should I. If I pay for my meal am I "bending over" because I could get away with it and I chose not to?
If the "information wants to be free" crowd ever gets their way you will only see more proprietary, closed, software with crappy copyprotection like hardware dongles and smart cards. You can all claim that people are playing on bnetd servers because they work better and it's a more fun crowd, but the fact is that if there wasn't a piracy problem Blizzard wouldn't care where you played.
Si vis pacem, para bellum
The only thing more annoying than a Libertarian is an (un|mis)informed Libertarian
Wrong.
If bnetd did not exist, then the hacked copies of WC3b would not be playable - bottom line.
Blizzard is not pissing all over the bnetd authors either. Blizzard is protecting their interests in the best way their lawyers see fit. They could have been quite nasty with the bnetd authors, but I feel a mild C&D letter (even if it doesn't legally hold water, gets the point across) is well within reason.
And, if you send an email (big difference between email and a letter, as well) to a support email address of course you will get a canned response. If you want real feedback, talk to their department that doesn't handle the bulk of their email.
Dacels Jewelers can't be trusted.
If bnetd did not exist, then the hacked copies of WC3b would not be playable - bottom line
--online that is. And if RW-CD burners didn't exist, then WC3b couldn't be burned to them and passed around. And if phones didn't exist, people couldn't call up their friends and tell them how to get the w3cb...
bnetd wasn't created to hack wc3b, and that's not it's primary purpose or use, so your point is moot.
When in doubt, have a man come through a door with a gun in his hand.
Several reasons, here's what I find the two most compelling (and IANAL, although I have seen several episodes of The Practice):
- EULAs claim that in exchange for removing your rights (fair use, reverse engineering, resale, etc) you are "granted" the right to run the software. This is meaningless because copyright law already allows the owner of a piece of software to make whatever copies (e.g. to hard drive or RAM) are essential to running it. Thus, you get no consideration and the "contract" is void.
- Somewhat more metaphysical: I read the EULA and decide I don't want to agree to it. But I click the OK button because that's the only way to install the software. Blizzard would claim that clicking OK means I agreed to the EULA, but the only thing that backs up their claim is the EULA itself, which I did *not* agree to. I believe somebody else summarized this as "it's my software, I can lie to it if I want to".
If this is true then I'm going to set up a booth at the flea market and sell enterprise software at half price.
Go right ahead, but only if you bought the software legally (which means you're unlikely to profit). Even if EULAs are invalid, copyright law still applies, so you can't go around duplicating CDs and selling them any more than you can photocopy and sell the pages of a book. Software publishers like to conflate EULAs and copyright, implying that they need EULAs to protect themselves from piracy, but that's completely false.
How to solve most of our problems: 1.Lots of nuclear plants. 2.Cure aging.
intersting logic applied - the guys who arent in the wrong are the open source ones and everyone else is in the right
Slasdhot logic at its best
Why didnt you throw in Microsoft for making the OS that runs the product - that would make it complete bullshit
I refuse to argue with Anonymous Cowards - if you want a discussion get an account....
Whilst its true that Free Speech is the most popular for Pro bono there is NO way in hell you could ever cast this as a free speech case, its not. The question will hinge on whether the software infringes blizzard copyrights or circumvents legal anti copying or access control measures to facilitate use of a hacked or copied version of the software. Getting around copy protection is not the spirit or the letter of free speech - its violation of copyright or theft of intellectual property (whatever your politcal beliefs the law is the law) if getting around
Theres no free speech angle in it - Blizzard spent the money to develop a product with a reasonable expectation of security, they provide the servers and bandwith for the BattleNet system and they have an expectation that people using this system will have paid for the software. To attempt to prevent piracy (albeit not very succesfully if Diablo and Starcraft are any example) they use a CD key system.
The BNETD developers designed software that circumventes this by 'ignoring' the cd key and thus it breaks the protection. (note it did this for older blizzard releases - thus blizzard could possibly prove they have a case WITHOUT WC3)
Whether the person who modified the system or not is reponsible the unfortunate fact if that bnetd as the original developer of the product will be the first ones toe get sued as their software allowed modification (a good lawyer can argue that it encouraged it) to circumvent the copy protection system and allow illegal use of the clients IP.
In short i wouldnt waste a cent of my money in a lawsuit if i was bnetd - i would find a way to modify my software to block blizzard products and pray that my software doesnt allow any circumvention of other companies copy protection (i bet it does).
I like bnetd, its interesting software, but it can and has been used to get around the protection on blizzards software and it is very easy to prove, ultimately Blizzard will win and wasting piles of money defending what many will see as the indefensible is plain insane.
PS i read tim's letter on this and i would point out that anyone here who gets worked up about the talk about lawyers being agressive and yelling has never dealt with lawyers before - this is what they get paid for.
Open source does not mean break any and all copyrights - and the downside of collective development is that when something like this happens the courts are going to go after the most identifiable person they can get their hands on - and in most cases that will be the original developer.
Want to avoid this happening to you ? get a lwayer or IP expert to review your license agreement to ensure you are covered. Sure it costs money but then again so does getting sued.
I refuse to argue with Anonymous Cowards - if you want a discussion get an account....
All the talk about DMCA and fair use and everything else is a very good thing but i think missing a very important point, what happened to old fashioned right and wrong ?
Nobody's ignoring right and wrong..
The bnetd folks haven't done anything wrong.
The beta-cheaters are doing wrong with their use of bnetd.
Blizzard is doing wrong to bnetd because of the beta-cheaters.
What we need is some way to cut out the middle-man. Let Blizzard go after the beta-cheaters directly and not stomp on the bnetd guys. After all, they're about as much at fault for this as a crowbar manufacturer is for someone breaking into a house using that crowbar.
is it right to take someone elses property and use it without paying ?
Absolutely not. But is bnetd taking Battle.net away from Blizzard? The only thing they could be argued taking is a number of the users, and last I checked, people are nobody's property.
is it right to ignore licenses and other agreements because you 'dont care for them' ?
Absolutely not. They should never be ignored. However ignorance, lack of a real 'agreement', and civil disobedience are all different things. The key to remember is that if you engage in civil disobedience, you'd best be prepared for the consequences, and if you think there's a lack of a real agreement, you'd best be prepared to defend that position.
Is it right to damage a companies profits and endanger jobs for people ? people with families to feed ?
Morality has no connection to a company's profits. I as a human being have absolutely no responsibility to support a company. In fact, if a company is engaged in immoral acts, it is my moral obligation to help stop them, and the employees moral obligation to help stop the practices, or quit and help stop the company.
Is it right to defend anyone who comes along and finds a way around 'iritating things' like security?
Finding a way around security is not an immoral act, so yes, it is right to defend a moral person who has done so - especially if they are then made targets of immoral acts, such as the harrassment, or suppression of expression.
That Jesus Christ guy is getting some terrible lag... it took him 3 days to respawn! -NJ CoolBreeze
Amount of money the Bnetd volunteers have to fight this case: $0
If legal merit was more important than money to pay lawyers, then OJ would be in jail right now, wouldn't he?
Wrong. I don't need the publisher's permission to use the software any way I want to, including clicking on the "OK" button when I really don't agree. (What if I used a hex editor or other tool to swap the "OK" and "Cancel" buttons before running the installer?) Holding a copyright on a work does not grant the power to control all use of that work, only the ability to duplicate it (i.e. the *right* to *copy*).
You'd have a shit fest if I released modified versions of GPL software without the source
That would be copyright violation. The GPL is simply a statement that you are allowed to redistribute the software (normally not permitted by copyright law) provided you fulfill certain conditions. It's what you would use as a defense against coypright infringement, in which case you would have to show that you complied with its terms. EULAs, on the other hand, are statements (with no legal force IMO) that claim that you may not engage in activities that are *not* illegal under copyright law.
you seem to think a software company can't obligate you to the terms of a license even though you went ahead and subscribed with the agreement
EULAs are completely separate from the terms of an ongoing service. I don't dispute that Blizzard can kick people off battle.net for TOS violations (or for pretty much any reason they want).
How to solve most of our problems: 1.Lots of nuclear plants. 2.Cure aging.