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Legal Analysis Critical of Blizzard v Bnetd

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the how-to-look-at-it dept.

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."

3 of 362 comments (clear)

  1. Blizzard does have a point though... by Gogl · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Don't get me wrong. I'm a huge fan of open source, bnetd, yada yada, and I agree that the official Bnet has tons of issues (ranging from lag to dealing with people whom I'd at least rather not deal with).

    However, to my understanding they're doing this largely as a reaction to the WC3 beta. It was cracked within days of release, using bnetd and other "fake" bnet networks that don't check cd keys. This is allowing many people who shouldn't be playing the beta to play the beta.

    "Big deal" you say. And part of me is inclined to agree, as it doesn't hurt Blizzard to have a few extra thousand people playing the beta.

    Well, I'm a beta tester, and I can tell you that the "official" beta network is sorely underused. Of the 5000 beta testers there are probably only 30-60 games going at any given time. I know, you might think that is a lot, but it's basically the same people over and over. From the buzz I've heard, a lot of legit beta testers have even been going to the bnetd networks, just because there are more people there (easier to find big 3v3 and 4v4 games, etc.).

    So yes, DMCA bad. Making reverse engineering bad. Open source good, bnetd good. But Blizzard still does have a point, and perhaps some sort of compromise needs to be reached...

    1. Re:Blizzard does have a point though... by WNight · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Multiplayer is 90% of the reason to buy a Blizzard game.

      Battle.net is a good reason to NOT buy a Blizzard game, especially for games like Starcraft and Warcraft3 that aren't ongoing (Diablo 2) and don't require a persistent universe.

      By going with Battle.net you get a whole bunch of jerks, cheating, lag, and a generally lousy experience.

      Compare this to Quake3 where you can join any of a thousand servers, or create your own. You get to play with people you want, find a server that doesn't lag, and otherwise customize the experience.

  2. But the CD KEYs *are* working. by wls · · Score: 5, Interesting
    Okay, maybe it can be approached this way:

    Suppose you have a software package, and the CD KEY is used to allow you to install the software. Presumably, it takes some encrypted form and mutates it into a useful version. Alternately, such a code might be used to alter program logic to affect software behavior -- whatever. The point here is that the CD KEY is a protection mechanism at the client end.

    Like the rest of the /. majority, I too find the DCMA an example of knee-jerk legislation produced by the uninformed and easily lobbied. But in this, suppose you even agree with it...

    According to Tim Jung's post the gripe expressed was that the bnetd.org server does not do CD KEY checking. My point -- it shouldn't have to.

    It appears that the design of this product is such that invalid CD KEY prevents people from stealing battle.net server resources. Apparently, that is working; good for Blizzard.

    As I understand it, people aren't forging false CD KEYs and inappropriately using battle.net server's resources -- doing so would make the case more plausible. Yet in this case, it would an individual service hijacking player who should be the focus of legal attention.

    So what was designed and built by Blizzard is something that actually says "show me your receipt and I'll let you use our systems." Rather than forge CD KEYs to do something illegal like steal Blizzard's service, the user community has provided their own resources, built their own software, and opted not to check for a "receipt" to use those services. Technically, it's not duplicated Blizzard's server then either, since it's a subset.

    True, this does let people try an approximation. However, it isn't the actual golden master -- by definition it's build with low confidence, and possibly broken with missing features. Blizzard wasn't passing out free copies of a production game, it passed out something else with the expectations of comments.

    About the only real complaint Blizzard has is that they aren't getting as much beta feedback as they could had they expanded the beta base. However, if Blizzard's servers are locked out via a CD KEY except to only a few, then they weren't going after that data because they wouldn't be getting that data anyhow -- so there's no loss, other than potential they forgot to go after. That was a business mistake.

    Blizzard's true error then is not designing the software to require something only their servers could provide.

    However, I can tell you as a software consumer, if I purchase a product that depends on someone's website being up and around, I get jittery about them going out of business or no longer supporting it and wouldn't make the purchase.

    I suspect if Blizzard kindly asked for it, anonymous beta testers would happily provide feedback. Feedback that would make the game much better, improving overall sales. Blizzard actually has a very positive opportunity here, if they can get past the shortsightedness.