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."

Comments

Old Fashioned Right and Wrong ?

[q-soe]

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 ?

I mean beacuse the bnetd developers developed an open source product and then someone els modified it then they and the owner of the copyright product they are using to circumvent it is in the wrong and the poor guys from bnetd are in the right.

The fact is blizzard spent the money, many millions of dollars in fact, to develop a product and they have a right to ensure their intellectual property, copyrights and investment are protected. They own the intellectual property to the product and thus they can and will take action to protect it.

The information on this case thus far presented doesnt seem to be asking for anything exceptional, and i dont see them going after the bnetd guys for every cent they have, so why the outcry?

This is a pitfall of open source, that a product you develop MAY be modified in a way that you did not intend and then used for a reason you did not forsee. This is fine and in most cases a good thing BUT like everything we do in life it has consequences and crying about it is not going to solve the issue - sitting down like proffesionals and talking to blizzard would be a good first step (one i suspect they are in the process of doing)

And my final comment is this - all of you out there riding the white horse of Anti DMCA and Anti Big Company - Tell me

is it right to take someone elses property and use it without paying ?
is it right to ignore licenses and other agreements because you 'dont care for them' ?
Is it right to damage a companies profits and endanger jobs for people ? people with families to feed ?
Is it right to defend anyone who comes along and finds a way around 'iritating things' like security?

If you answer yes to these then i thing you have bigger problems that you can ever imagine - youre abetting criminals and its hard to morally accept one form of it and reject another.

i was disgusted with open source over Skylarov and now i dont know what to think - it seems that the concept or right and wrong no longer means anything to so many of you.