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.
So how, exactly, will shutting down the main bnetd site keep cracked copies of their games from being distributed? I seem to recall that there are many no-cd cracks (even some that let you play on battle.net) for Diablo II and its expansion pack.
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.
Common decency should apply to Blizzard also. Is it considered common decency to threaten loyal gamers who created a tool so they could play without connecting to the cheater-ridden, laggy, and resetting battle.net?
Besides, do you really think that all of the beta testers who already have bnetd are going to go play it on battle.net? They already have it! Maybe Blizzard should have contacted the authors of bnetd and said "Hey, here's how you can detect the WC3 beta, can you have the server pop up a request to go play on battle.net?" or even have it not allow WC3beta to play. Sure, it wouldn't catch everyone, but at least they would have a reminder that they are supposed to be testing the game on battle.net so Blizzard can improve the game. Maybe even the warez kiddies who copied/cracked it would load battle.net a little more and give them a scaled test..
Ripping off a company that puts out products you love is poor form.
Pissing off most of your existing customer base by getting rid of a useful and legal product because of a product you haven't released yet (and those pissed off customers won't buy) is in poor form.
Of course, this argument implies that the same people griping about how horrible shutting down bnetd is now won't turn around and say "Ohh! New Shiny!" when WC3 is actually released..
There are two kinds of people: 1) those that need closure
If you love Blizzard games, show some respect and let them launch their games as they desire.
This is so backwards.
I like Blizzard games. I've purchased and enjoyed them since Warcraft.
But I love my rights. I love your rights, and those of the bnetd developers. Anyone who values Blizzard software more than our rights under the law and constitution of the US, or your respective country, has some seriously skewed priorities.
You're saying that if I like Blizzard's games, I should be willing to forgive a little legal threatening, some innocent trampling of my rights.
I say the reverse: Because of Blizzard's actions here, I won't be buying any more of their games, enojoyable though they may be.
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.