EFF Takes Bnetd Case

An anonymous reader sent in: "As reported three previous times, Blizzard is attempting to squash the Battle.net emulator and open source bnetd project. The EFF has taken the case. Read the press release. LawMeme also has a satiric fable."

Comments

Good Penny Arcade

[commonchaos]

There is a good Penny Arcade comix describing the situation (for thouse of you with short attention spa..)

http://www.penny-arcade.com/view.php3?date=2002- 03 -04&res=l

Re:Good Penny Arcade

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm amazed they accepted the EFF's help. Apparently they're just as eager to get laughed out of course as the DeCSS case.

Re:Good Penny Arcade

[Anonymous Coward]

Isn't it universally accepted that Pac-Man is the good guy?

Re:Good Penny Arcade

[ChronosX]

The PA strip was good. What made me laugh even more is the fact that there is a link to it in the EFF press release. Did anyone else notice this?

Kudos to the EFF. That's the first time I've ever seen humor even referenced in a serious press release.

I gotta agree with Blizzard...

[DragonPup]

Battle.net is their own network that they created. I think it's reasonable that they want people to log on with only Blizzard authorized clients and not to use a emulator for that. Just my opinion on the matter...

-Henry

Re:I gotta agree with Blizzard...

[BilldaCat]

agreed. same thing with AIM and how they are handling 3rd party clients. go Blizzard!

Re:I gotta agree with Blizzard...

[fruey]

Why are you agreeing with Blizzard???

Flamebait if ever I saw it. This is about a legal context which is fair and equitable in the law, and being misused to the profit of some huge mammouth like Vivendi. Are you not scared that they control so much of the media you use and watch, and are now going to stop you creating your own, better, solutions?

Be flamed!

Re:I gotta agree with Blizzard...

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah! Why espouse a viewpoint contrary to anyone else!

This is about pompous pronouncements from terminally
nerdy children who think that managing to bring up a
Linux system on a 486 makes them some kind of expert
on copyright matters.

Your anti-groupthink is doubleplusungood!

Re:I gotta agree with Blizzard...

[TroZ]

No, it's not the same thing!

It is like creating an AIM server and telling all your friends to log the AIM client into it insted of the actual AOL server bucause you do want to be spammed by unknown people or because of firewall / network issues you keep getting disconnect from AOL.
However, the server you create will also let Trillian or whatever other client connect because you have no help from AOL

Re:I gotta agree with Blizzard...

[BilldaCat]

To quote a couple paragraphs from the Penny Arcade news item:

Obviously you can use Bnetd to facilitate quote bad things, let's say the piracy, but I hardly believe that is the focus of the project. Indeed, when discussing the issue with lawyers representing Blizzard, the Bnetd man made it clear that they would like nothing more than to roll in a function to do legitimate CD-Key checks, the way that Battle.net itself does. It's not something they can even implement without Blizzard's help. It goes without saying that the attorneys in question were not there to try and improve Bnetd, and as a result, they ain't trying to hear that. The blood of any breathing geek is enticed by the prospect of running their own Battle.net. What if they could? What if a sanctioned, but not supported product were delivered - one that diligently performed the anti-piracy measures assigned to it, ran their official ads, all while removing load from their main body of equipment? I'm trying to figure out who loses here.

Though Battle.net is a matchmaking service, it's silly to call that its only function. I've always thought of it as performing a sort of de facto authentication, a la Half-Life. This watchdog element is (I'm sure they believe) crucial to sustaining their business, and Blizzard has absolutely every right to try and protect their stuff via whatever methods they want to. Whatever else is going on here, I don't think that it's okay to make something that emasculates their security mechanism. I don't mean that in a legal sense, this violates statutes W, A, N, and G or what have you, I mean it in a personal one.

--

I support Blizzard and their attempt to protect their property, income sources, etc. What reason do they have to play nice and let bnetd do whatever they want? They certainly lose ad revenue if they do that, and they -potentially- lose more sales due to piracy.

If I had a product and was reliant upon providing a means for people to meet up for games, and used that as a revenue source, to feed my programmers and staff, and some joe schmoe comes along with a service that bypasses all that, and makes it easier for pirates to hop on, I'd be mighty pissed, and rightly so.

Re:I gotta agree with Blizzard...

[JordoCrouse]

Be flamed!

See, thats just wrong.

Its really nice to rail against the machine, and attack a huge mammouth like Vivendi, but the story is old, and tired.

Listen, they wrote the game. It cost them money, and brainpower to develop the game, and when it was finalized, they chose to provide it to the world. And they provided it for a price, because after all, they had to pay for the programmers, and administration, and deployment and on-going maintaince.

So you can see where they would be a little peeved if somebody came along and developed a free server that would let everyone get around paying them a little money to use their own server.

Now, I don't agree with their decisions, I have always thought that if you give the servers away for free, more people will buy the clients (witness Quake II/III and HalfLife), but hey, they have the right to decide what to do with their property. If you don't like it, then don't buy the game. Its a simple as that.

It would be really nice if we lived in a utopian society, where everyone gave freely of themselves, and nobody needed anything. Unfortunately, the last time I looked, my phone bill needed paying, and so instead of living in your utopian world (aka, your parent's house), I've got to go back to work for the evil corporations and try to wrench a few bucks out of their hands.

Re:I gotta agree with Blizzard...

[Anonymous Coward]

Dumbcunt, you just made a fool of yourself. j00 lu53r.

Re:I gotta agree with Blizzard...

[Anonymous Coward]

This is why so many of my posts get moderated down for disagreeing with the majority, b/c of attitudes like yours.

Sir, if whatever career you're currently in does not work out for you, perhaps you can become a censor somewhere, on a school board or in whatever company they use to slice up in-flight movies.

You're the flamebait here, buddy. Think about it.

Re:I gotta agree with Blizzard...

[Remillard]

"Though Battle.net is a matchmaking service, it's silly to call that its only function. I've always thought of it as performing a sort of de facto authentication, a la Half-Life. This watchdog element is (I'm sure they believe) crucial to sustaining their business, and Blizzard has absolutely every right to try and protect their stuff via whatever methods they want to."

I think Blizzard has the right to try to protect their property, but in general I have a BIG problem with the phrase "via whatever methods they want to." They cannot protect themselves by doing whatever they want to. There are rules protecting the consumer as well. Once you say they can do anything they want, you're essentially backing the same abusive business practices we see in the current headlines and in our history books!

Blizzard has a great product and they ought to work with the bnetd people rather than just trying to shut them down completely.

Re:I gotta agree with Blizzard...

[GafTheHorseInTears]

You're either a complete idiot or a corporate tool - probably one and the same. Everything should be free, man! Haven't you read your RMS?

See, here's how it works:
1. You spend your time creating something of value.
2. You give it away to everyone for free.
2.a. (If you decide that you don't want to give it away for free, everyone is morally justified in taking it, because it should be free.)
3. Magic pixies descend from the heavens and take care of your Earthly needs, or something like that.

See? Simple! Beautiful! All hail free stuff!

Re:I gotta agree with Blizzard...

[SQLz]

I think your information is a bit skewed. Bnetd does not infringe on the battle.net network. It does not contact it in anyway, shape, or form. It does not people to play on Battle.net with a pirate key, it does not allow people to play on Battle.net at all. It does not steal anything from battle.net. Battle.net is FREE you idiot, as well as Bnetd. Noone is making money here on this.

The agrument is not about battle.net, its about the legal right for software author's to reverse engineer a product. Since the team legally has the right to do, they should be allowed to. Since Blizzard doesn't like it, they'll use scare tactics to stop them and under normal circumstances it probably would have worked.

Re:I gotta agree with Blizzard...

[raistlinne]

This watchdog element is (I'm sure they believe) crucial to sustaining their business, and Blizzard has absolutely every right to try and protect their stuff via whatever methods they want to.

Really? So you would condone murder, rape, arsin, theft, lying, cheating, bribing government officials, terrorist bombings, and other such attrocities on the part of blizzard/vivendi as long as it's to "protect their stuff"?

Man people are sad. And if you don't get the point, I know that you probably didn't mean what you said. Of course you most likely meant that Blizzard has absolutely every right to try to protect their stuff via whatever legal and moral methods they want to. The real point of contention is whether what they're doing is legal (or moral, though that's not relevant for the court case).

If I had a product and was reliant upon providing a means for people to meet up for games, and used that as a revenue source, to feed my programmers and staff, and some joe schmoe comes along with a service that bypasses all that, and makes it easier for pirates to hop on, I'd be mighty pissed, and rightly so.

You know what? I'm mighty pissed off that America hasn't decided that I deserve to live like a king and set up a tax to support me and give me all the material posessions that I want. Well, maybe I'm not actively pissed off since this has been going on for so long (or more correctly hasn't been going on for so long), but the point still stands: we have the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. There are no guarantees that we'll actually catch happiness, and while we're all beholden to feel sorry for each other if life takes turns we don't want, that's about it. It doesn't (or at least shouldn't) give us the right to go suing everyone who we think that made this world differ from our own private little dream. Heck, little hardware stores are mighty pissed when Home Depot comes to town. It's a shame, and we should all feel bad for them, but just because one person has obsoleted the comfort and security of another, doesn't mean that what they did is wholely bad or should be stopped. Or would you rather get rid of the printing press so as to preserve the incomes of the members of the scribes' guilds?

Re:I gotta agree with Blizzard...

[Anonymous Coward]

> Listen, they wrote the game. It cost them money, and brainpower to develop the game, and when it was finalized, they chose to provide it to the world. And they provided it for a price, because after all, they had to pay for the programmers, and administration, and deployment and on-going maintaince.
> So you can see where they would be a little peeved if somebody came along and developed a free server that would let everyone get around paying them a little money to use their own server.

Nice strawman. However, no one was questioning Blizzard's right to sell the game, or run their own game server in whatever manner they see fit. What was done was providing an alternate server (in part because the official Blizzard server's service was so terrible).

Blizzard was asked to help with the authentication part so the new server would behave in an IP-friendly way. Blizzard chose not to help, so the new server doesn't authenticate - and it isn't required to.

Blizzard wants to control the game and how/where it's played, but like any monopolist, provide the lowest level of service possible in exchange for money.

Blizzard has viable, legitimate competition for its server's service, and wishes to quash it. If Blizzard were really interested in good customer service, or protecting the terms of use of its beta games, they would have:
1. Improved the quality of their own server so that the Bnetd server was seen as unnecessary,
2. Assisted the Bnetd coders in providing an authentication mechanism using the Blizzard network. No more uncontrolled beta uses, no more using pirated games.

Blizzard did neither; explain again why they deserve any of their customer's server loyalty under a competitive, non-utopian, capitalist society?

Re:I gotta agree with Blizzard...

[Jeremi]

I support Blizzard and their attempt to protect their property, income sources, etc. What reason do they have to play nice and let bnetd do whatever they want?

Blizzard has no legal basis for their harrassment, and SLAPPs are unethical and disgusting. Just because Blizzard can use our fucked-up legal system to badger the innocent doesn't mean that they should. By your logic, Blizzard ought to send out goons to the Bnetd authors' houses and break their kneecaps as well -- why play nice?

Re:I gotta agree with Blizzard...

[Anonymous Coward]

I think I'd rather be anonymous to the crowd that seems to be responding to this in the stupidest fashion possible.

Guys, I think most would agree that Blizzard has never made a buggy, sloppy prematurely released title. IMHO all of these games have been excellent for quality, content and thousands of hours of fun. The Battle.Net service is free, and for the most part very reliable, in part because Blizzard tests so thoroughly with its products.

Now I know /. has frequently come out against abuse of the intellectual property laws, but this isn't one of them. The fact that /. associates this with "Your rights online" is idiotic at best. Since when is this a right. The reason Blizzard is concerned, and rightly so, is that once a modified server is out there, people will start modifiying the client to work with bnetd, rather than Battle.net, which is certain to involve reverse engineering of the product, which violates the EULA, not to mention copyright law. nevermind the fact that there will be those out there that will start bugging Blizzard to support this crap.

Bottom line guys. Blizzard writes solid, fun games, doesn't charge a fortune for them, provides a robust, free, multiplay service, and personally, I would love to see them spending money on continuing to make great games rather than battling the EFF in court.

Re:I gotta agree with Blizzard...

[wurp]

Reposting an excellent AC reply with my bonus. I'm at the cap, so I'm not a ho.

See parent for the original comment
-----------------

> Listen, they wrote the game. It cost them money, and brainpower to develop the game, and when it was finalized, they chose to provide it to the world. And they provided it for a price, because after all, they had to pay for the programmers, and administration, and deployment and on-going maintaince.
> So you can see where they would be a little peeved if somebody came along and developed a free server that would let everyone get around paying them a little money to use their own server.

Nice strawman. However, no one was questioning Blizzard's right to sell the game, or run their own game server in whatever manner they see fit. What was done was providing an alternate server (in part because the official Blizzard server's service was so terrible).

Blizzard was asked to help with the authentication part so the new server would behave in an IP-friendly way. Blizzard chose not to help, so the new server doesn't authenticate - and it isn't required to.

Blizzard wants to control the game and how/where it's played, but like any monopolist, provide the lowest level of service possible in exchange for money.

Blizzard has viable, legitimate competition for its server's service, and wishes to quash it. If Blizzard were really interested in good customer service, or protecting the terms of use of its beta games, they would have:
1. Improved the quality of their own server so that the Bnetd server was seen as unnecessary,
2. Assisted the Bnetd coders in providing an authentication mechanism using the Blizzard network. No more uncontrolled beta uses, no more using pirated games.

Blizzard did neither; explain again why they deserve any of their customer's server loyalty under a competitive, non-utopian, capitalist society?
> Listen, they wrote the game. It cost them money, and brainpower to develop the game, and when it was finalized, they chose to provide it to the world. And they provided it for a price, because after all, they had to pay for the programmers, and administration, and deployment and on-going maintaince.
> So you can see where they would be a little peeved if somebody came along and developed a free server that would let everyone get around paying them a little money to use their own server.

Nice strawman. However, no one was questioning Blizzard's right to sell the game, or run their own game server in whatever manner they see fit. What was done was providing an alternate server (in part because the official Blizzard server's service was so terrible).

Blizzard was asked to help with the authentication part so the new server would behave in an IP-friendly way. Blizzard chose not to help, so the new server doesn't authenticate - and it isn't required to.

Blizzard wants to control the game and how/where it's played, but like any monopolist, provide the lowest level of service possible in exchange for money.

Blizzard has viable, legitimate competition for its server's service, and wishes to quash it. If Blizzard were really interested in good customer service, or protecting the terms of use of its beta games, they would have:
1. Improved the quality of their own server so that the Bnetd server was seen as unnecessary,
2. Assisted the Bnetd coders in providing an authentication mechanism using the Blizzard network. No more uncontrolled beta uses, no more using pirated games.

Blizzard did neither; explain again why they deserve any of their customer's server loyalty under a competitive, non-utopian, capitalist society?

Re:I gotta agree with Blizzard...

[Hrothgar The Great]

Your emotionally flowing speech is great; but it

A. Contains no actual content except "Blizzard makes good games. So they are good. Battle.net is also good. Why don't you like stuff that is good?"

B. Contains nothing having anything to do with actual law. EULA? Please! The UCITA has passed in 2 states that I know of, and NOT ONE case has proven that a EULA can be used as a legally enforcible document. Not one. And please, if you're going to make a statement such as "It violates copyright law" the least you could do is actually clarify what exactly you mean by that. How does it violate copyright law? This would be an important thing to explain in a discussion.

So, we shouldn't care if Blizzard abuses the DMCA because they make good games? That is the dumbest thing I've ever seen posted on Slashdot. (and that is saying a lot.)

Re:I gotta agree with Blizzard...

[El Kevbo]

If I had a product and was reliant upon providing a means for people to meet up for games, and used that as a revenue source, to feed my programmers and staff, and some joe schmoe comes along with a service that bypasses all that, and makes it easier for pirates to hop on, I'd be mighty pissed, and rightly so.

The law doesn't exist to protect your source of income. If your business model sucks, then you need to change your business model. You shouldn't be able to legislate your way to wealth.

Kevin

Re:I gotta agree with Blizzard...

[Anonymous Coward]

A. Read it again dope. Your comprehension needs serious work. The core of the content refers to:

1. The development of a 3rd party server, potentially spawning a modified client, which Blizzard may later be expected to support.

2. Companies fighting legal battles over crap like this, instead of producing quality product.

The DMCA is a horribly irresponsible law, passed by people who clearly, couldn't comprehend the meaning of what they were reading. (You come to mind, if an exmple is required.) Blizzard isn't responsible for the DMCA being what it is, but right now it's the only law that tries to govern intellectual property on-line, so what else is there?

Lastly, the EFF, doesn't give a crap about Blizzard. They're out to make a name for themselves against the DMCA. The only people who ever walk out of these things better of are the lawyers, not the public and certainly not the developers.

In the unlikely event you'd actually like to understand some of the laws I'm referring to, go here. Check some of the references. You never know, you may even learn something.

http://www.sims.berkeley.edu/~pam/papers/l&e%20r ev eng3.pdf

Re:I gotta agree with Blizzard...

[Chris Burke]

Actually, and in spite of the accepted laws of the universe, the moderators were right.

The first post was offtopic because the dumbass didn't read enough to figure out that it has nothing to do with emulation of clients (wherever the hell he got that idea). Thus his post has nothing to do with the subject of discussion.

You were marked flamebait because you're a troll, responding just as ignorantly yet more antagonisticaly to said offtopic post.

Satisfied now?

Re:I gotta agree with Blizzard...

[Hrothgar The Great]

There's so much wrong with that flame I hardly know where to begin. First you post an overly emotional, unintelligent rant about the situation; then you come back, repeat yourself, and act as if I am the one with the comprehension problem. Read your own post (assuming it was yours) and see if it really conveys anything clearly other than a bunch of whining about how we should all shut up about it with absolutely no facts to back it up. Then read your reply and realize that you added nothing to the original drivel.

Re:I gotta agree with Blizzard...

[Patoski]

I support Blizzard and their attempt to protect their property, income sources, etc. What reason do they have to play nice and let bnetd do whatever they want? They certainly lose ad revenue if they do that, and they -potentially- lose more sales due to piracy.

As someone stated eariler... Piracy is not a technological problem, its a social one. Every counter measure you put in a pirate's way is going to get circumvented. Its that simple. You aren't addressing the root problem by making it more difficult to pirate a game (and therefore making life harder for your paying customers).

If I had a product and was reliant upon providing a means for people to meet up for games, and used that as a revenue source, to feed my programmers and staff, and some joe schmoe comes along with a service that bypasses all that, and makes it easier for pirates to hop on, I'd be mighty pissed, and rightly so.

Yes, and if you put out a buggy, laggy and easily exploitable, peer to peer (p2p what were they thinking?!) method to play games should you be surprised if someone gets sick of it and publishes their own improved version of your service? Some fans created a service that obviously a _lot_ of players wanted but Blizzard never provided. Blizzard's copy protection is not implementable by anyone but Blizzard. Blizzard could have been creative and provided some means where CD Keys could be authenticated on BDnet servers but instead they chose to sue. So now you're blaming the fans because they went out and did what Blizzard wasn't willing or unable to? That's almost laughable. Nice, one Blizzard... I won't be buying any more of your software.

Re:I gotta agree with Blizzard...

[Anonymous Coward]

First HtG implying I'm overly emotional, while you seem to be foaming at the mouth over this is a little ironic. Second, you have been the only one to imply that I am telling anyone else to shut up. I am stating my opinion on the matter, not telling anyone else what to think or do. You have stated nothing, but how opposed you are to what I'm saying.

You obviously didn't read the reference I gave you before replying. So, what exactly is your intelligent, unemotional and factually supported position on the legal escaltions between Blizzard/Vivendi and Bnetd.org/EFF?

Re:I gotta agree with Blizzard...

[mirabilos]

(No this wasn't OT but plain wrong):

No one is abusing the battle.net network.

BNETD and FSGS provide(d) ways to create an own
battle.net(tm)-compatible server, for example on
LANs where IPX gaming is impossible (yes they
exist).
I have got my latest bnetd source copy from my
favorite BSD port mirror ;)

Oh, yes, they also told people how to change
the registry settings of Blizzard's programmes
to connect to their servers. Maybe this was their
greatest fault?!

Re:I gotta agree with Blizzard...

[mirabilos]

There has been an EULA that did not prohibit
reverse engineering the NETWOR PROTOCOL (as
opposed to the actual code), neither did it
forbit to connect to alternate networks.
As I have accepted the old EULA I may.

Re:I gotta agree with Blizzard...

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm the same AC that's having the spirited discussion with HtG. I don't think Blizzard has any legal grounds at this stage because it's an independently developed server, but I do understand why they want to try to prevent it. Aside from piracy concerns that they've already stated it's the prospect of bnetd developing features Battle.net doesn't have that could result in modification of the client. Once it has reached that stage however, it becomes much more difficult to control.

Either way, I still think the lawyers are going to be the only people to benefit from this for a while.

Re:I gotta agree with Blizzard...

[Eric Damron]

As I understand it, Bnetd does not use the Battle.Net network at all.

Players meet on the Bnetd server then the Bnetd server facilitates a point to point gaming session. So the Battle.Net server isn't involved at all.

Re:I gotta agree with Blizzard...

[firebat162]

What it seems like is this the case is that if bnetd servers become popular, Blizzard will lose many users on their standard Battle.net servers and in that way, new players who don't know about bnetd will find it hard to play a game with random people on battle.net.

Also, Blizzard pays alot of money to the ISP's (exodus, etc..) who host battle.net and if the users aren't there, they will be in a tight situtation.

There's a problem

[TrollMan 5000]

When providing a service offering additional functionality can cause a problem like this.

I wonder how not checking a CD-KEY counts as "circumvention"? I thought circumvention was a "sin of commission", not "omission".

Re:There's a problem

[Anonymous Coward]

That's an interesting question and is of course up to the court to decide. But it is probably easy to argue that not checking against a protective device is, is circumvention. Thus violating the provisions of the DMCA.

I would argue that Battle.net is trying to rid itself of competition for their upcoming MMORPG and/or other online games for which they're planning on charging a fee. If you could play their games for free on some other server, that would essentially kill them.

As screwed up as the DMCA may be, I think Blizzard may have something going for them here. It's sad to see, but just because a competing product is open source, doesn't mean that it is exempt from the DMCA. Just take the DeCSS case as a precedent...

What a terrible approach to build game interest!

[Yoda2]

Yikes!

It is these gaming communities that build interest in the games, add features, etc. These enthusiasts dump untold hours into improving games and this is how the software companies reward them?

I have some ties to N.E.R.D., the worlds 3rd largest CounterStrike server and would venture to guess that 90+% of the gamers happily paid for their software. The community only gets better when Sierra Games backs the gaming centers.

Damn Karma Whore

[Anonymous Coward]

The question isn't about autorized clients is a server replacment! Dipshit RTFA. next time and have a clue before you post, you dickfuck.

Why?

[Penguinoflight]

Why is Blizzard opposed to a open source battle.net server clone? Do they have any ads on battle.net, or are they just being dumb?

Re:Why?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why is Blizzard opposed to a open source battle.net server clone?

Because they were bought by Vivendi Universal, and V-U rabidly attacks anything that competes with them.

V-U was the company that launched the original VCR lawsuit in 1978, they're the company that's releasing all of their CD titles with "copy protection", and they're one of the primary backers of the DMCA and SSSCA.

This is wrong

[Vardamir]

Ethically, I believe that software developed under an open source license has the right not to be attacked by corporations because it exposes how their closed source software works.

Re:This is wrong

[Anonymous Coward]

Why should open source be different than every other company in the eyes of the law?

Re:This is wrong

[Vardamir]

Because Open Source isn't a company, it is simply knowledge. Also, if Bnetd was closed source, Blizzard wouldn't complain, because the information would be hidden and could do them no harm.

Re:What a terrible approach to build game interest

[Yoda2]

Stupid me! It is Valve, not Sierra that makes Half-life (which is what CounterStrike is based on). Sierra makes my wife's board games software!

Not a good defense.

[TheViffer]

provision states that developers of interoperable programs do not have to respond to CD-KEYS

This is the one that Blizzard/Battle.net may get the upper hand on.

Whoever stated that Diablo II, Starcraft, etc were to be "interoperable programs"? I believe by the TOA that Blizzard products are only sanctioned to run with other Blizzard products (two copies of Starcraft for example) or Battle.net.

Don't get me wrong, I think this is a load of crap on the part of Blizzard and Battle.net. (here on out I will never purchase another Blizzard product) But the truth is, the EFF has made a very bad claim in defense of bnetd.

Re:Not a good defense.

[barawn]

That's not the point. What they're trying to say is that a program which is interacting with another program (bnetd interacting with Diablo II) does not have to respond to authentication methods of one of the program.

You can't say 'Diablo II is only allowed to interact with such-and-such programs' and more importantly, you REALLY wouldn't want to. What about input drivers, such as any of the Gravis programs which remap keys? That's a program "interoperating" with Diablo II. Does Blizzard really want to injoin those programs from working?
So long as a program isn't written to specifically get around anti-piracy provisions of a second program (bnetd is NOT: it's written to provide a server. the lack of CD-KEY checking is necessitated by Blizzard. This is exactly the argument that Bleem won in their lawsuit vs. Sony).

Keep in mind that the TOA of Blizzard products isn't law, and bnetd is NOT violating that TOA - the person using the Blizzard product might be, but that's not bnetd's problem (again, Bleem/Connectix case...) In any case, somehow I doubt that that TOA is even valid for certain things (we REALLY REALLY need some judge to come and say "get real, this is crazy" on these idiotic software licenses)

Blizzard is REALLY STUPID to continue this case in the court. IANAL, but honestly, the case is just way too similar to the Bleem and Connectix VGS case to survive. Here, Blizzard/Viviendi have an uphill battle, whereas all the EFF has to do is start filing briefs with tons upon tons of references to previous case law.

Re:Not a good defense.

[Xader Vartec]

TOA?

"After you buy this car, I will give you the key. When you first open the door their will be a face down piece of paper describing the only legal ways you can use this car. You must legally abide by this paper after you purchase the car."

Re:Not a good defense.

[3rd_Floo]

Sounds like the product licenses I used to get on some M$ and other software where on the jewel case was a sticker saying 'By opening this case and breaking this seal your hereby accept and abide by the terms of the enclosed license.' Where the license was on the inside cover of the jewel case.

Re:Not a good defense.

[nachoman]

I believe there are legit uses for Bnetd but...

For the most part it's an easy way to save the $50 on the price of the game. Most of the fun in playing Diablo 2 is the multiplayer. You can only get on Battle.net if you have a valid CD-Key (ie bought the game. I'm not taking into account key generators). Therefore with bnetd you don't need to buy the game.

Essentially Blizzard is using this to try and stop people from pirating their software. Either that or force bnetd to have an out of band authentication to battle.net... But that would defeat the purpose.

Re:Not a good defense.

[Schnapple]

Easy way around that one - open the CD case from the other side. Take the two extended pieces of the clear plastic cover (the "top piece") and gently pull them out until they let go of the tray (the "bottom piece") and then swing the cover open using the sticker as the hinge. You haven't broken the sticker, so you haven't agreed to squat! How well this would hold up in court, however, remains to be seen. I used to work for Babbage's and we had to do this to MS CD's so people wouldn't lift them. PSX CD's were even more fun, since they're sealed along the top like music CD's, so you have to be real careful not to break that seal.

Oh, and at the very least these days the EULA for MS products is on a separate piece of paper from the jewel case.

Re:Not a good defense.

[Happy Monkey]

Careful, if you do that, you are circumventing the effective access control for digital data!

Re:Not a good defense.

[TheOnlyCoolTim]

Reminds me of my new plan to circumvent game EULA's... Start the installation program, turn off my monitor, and hit enter several times...

Tim

Re:Not a good defense.

[Brendan Byrd]

Pointing it out that it exists in a EULA isn't a good defense strategy either. Most judges realize that putting "you owe the company $5 billion if you click this" on a EULA doesn't mean anything.

Re:Not a good defense.

[Maserati]

I'm not sure if this is +1 Insightful, or +1 Funny. Either way, good post and good night !

Re:Not a good defense.

[roju]

It might be easier to just get your neighbour's kid to agree to the EULA. Since he's underage, it's not binding, but the software still runs. There you go, no legal problems.

"Freedom" of thievery? Indeed.

[theonomist]

Blizzard has put a lot of money into creating a valuable commercial property. Why is it valuable? Because customers want it. Any service that people are willing to pay for is, by definition, valuable. In creating value, Blizzard has created jobs. This is the equation of capitalism: Value begets value. Creation begets creation. A free capitalist system rewards those who create value.

BNETD belongs to a competing model, the parasite system (called by some a "gift economy", meaning that creative members of society are coerced into providing the fruits of their labor as a "gift" to those unable or unwilling to create value). Their aim is to siphon off the value created by Blizzard, thereby, in effect, punishing Blizzard for creating value.

You can make any excuses you like, but that's what they're doing. I understand that people don't like to pay for things. Who does? Everybody likes to get something for nothing. If somebody wants to give away a service for free, that's just fine, too: It's their service. In a free society they may do as they please with it. However: Doing as you please with somebody else's service is a different matter.

It is perfectly appropriate for Blizzard to see legal redress when they are victimized by criminals.

Re:"Freedom" of thievery? Indeed.

[BilldaCat]

agreed. you made my point better than I could have. this should be modded up, but with the way slashdot is, who knows.

Re:"Freedom" of thievery? Indeed.

[DrSkwid]

how would me running a BNETD server for me and a few friends ONLY to log in to, we all have regged clients but not fixed ip's so running in p2p mode isn't so viable.

I'd rather run a bnetd server on my co-lo box and let friends connect to it!

Verant tried to do the same Everquest did the same but at least they have the excuse of revenue stream losses (though at 35 quid a pop for the add-ons it's not like the monthly fee is the stream).

What this suggests to me is that Battle.net will stop being free once Warcraft is released and Blizzard are going to start charging for access.

All the other piracy stuff is just FUD

Re:"Freedom" of thievery? Indeed.

[Xader Vartec]

So, you don't believe in charitable causes. You must really hate Habitat for Humanity. I mean, my God, they build people houses FOR FREE. This is sooooo wrong.

I.E. Open Source is no more incompatable to capitalism than charitable causes.

Re:"Freedom" of thievery? Indeed.

[barawn]

Oh, please. Do you people NOT understand that reverse engineering is legal, and completely allowed. Do you also not understand that a free capitalist society WITHOUT the ability to reverse engineer would be a complete disaster? You wouldn't have two chipmakers competing in the x86 market, you wouldn't have any open source software whatsoever, not to mention that many scientific projects would be down the drain as well!

Blizzard sells games - people BUY games. Bnetd is not challenging the sale of those games - it's allowing people to play the games as they were intended - on a Battle.net server. Blizzard cannot, should not, and absolutely will not ever be able to say "oh, and you can only play these games on OUR server at Battle.net, and if you try to play them anywhere else, that's illegal."

bnetd is creating a free alternative to a necessary extra piece of 'hardware' to use the game to its full value. This is IDENTICAL to the Bleem/Connectix case. Completely identical. In that case, they created a free implementation of a Sony PlayStation on a computer, and the courts agreed "well, yes, if people BUY the games, they can attempt to PLAY them on whatever they want." If you try to say that bnetd is wrong, then by extension WINE is wrong, Bleem is wrong, hell, VMware is wrong. But they're not. Why? Because reverse engineering is legal, and critical, for any healthy economy.

Blizzard makes money off of games. In fact, Battle.net earns them no value, no reward in your own terminology. God. Blizzard, and everyone else, are just plain stupid here - let bnetd run, and Blizzard makes MORE money, for crying out loud. How the heck can it be bad to offer people MORE ways to play a game you're selling?!?

Re:"Freedom" of thievery? Indeed.

[DrSkwid]

bah typing dork strikes again

it's not like the monthly fee is the stream

should be

it's not like the monthly fee is the only stream

Re:"Freedom" of thievery? Indeed.

[ethereal]

Not to feed the troll (although it appears that the moderators are :), but:

f somebody wants to give away a service for free, that's just fine, too: It's their service. In a free society they may do as they please with it. However: Doing as you please with somebody else's service is a different matter.

I think you're incorrect in this case - the whole point is for people to be able to do without Blizzard's service, not to use it for free. Nobody is stealing any time on battle.net that they haven't paid for; in fact it's quite the opposite - people have paid Blizzard money (some of which will hopefully go into sustaining battle.net) and now those people are not even making use of the service that they paid for, but are instead making use of a free service instead! I don't see Blizzard being ripped off here at all.

You can whine about "parasites" and make other such ad-hominem attacks, but in this case I don't think your argument holds water. People using bnetd have already paid everything that Blizzard is asking, so they're not parasites. People developing bnetd have created something of value (a free implementation of a proprietary service, which is even willing to work together with Blizzard for authentication purposes if they wish) and given it away for free, so they're certainly not parasites. Try as I might, I can't see any parasites here.

Re:"Freedom" of thievery? Indeed.

[/dev/trash]

So, you don't believe in charitable causes. You must really hate Habitat for Humanity. I mean, my God, they build people houses FOR FREE. This is sooooo wrong.

Actually the people who get the house put sweat equity into building it and after it is done they do have a mortgage to pay.

Re:"Freedom" of thievery? Indeed.

[erasmus_]

Do you people NOT understand that reverse engineering is legal, and completely allowed

Were you asleep when DMCA got passed somehow? As pointed out in the argument summary and many posts on here, this law made reverse engineering very illegal in most cases, and this law has been tested in courts. Please don't talk down to "us people" when you don't understand the legal grounds on which Blizzard is making their argument.

How the heck can it be bad to offer people MORE ways to play a game you're selling?!?

Yes, Blizzard is very stupid. When 10 of my buddies and I use our warez'ed ISO copies to setup our own Battle.Net implementation with our keygen'ed keys, I definitely see how Blizzard makes MORE money.

Re:"Freedom" of thievery? Indeed.

[Anonymous Coward]

When 10 of my buddies and I use our warez'ed ISO copies to setup our own Battle.Net implementation with our keygen'ed keys, I definitely see how Blizzard makes MORE money.

Thank God you used sarcasm there! Imagine if you had written "LESS money". ... the perfect joe-the-gamer quote Blizzard's lawyers are looking for.

Re:"Freedom" of thievery? Indeed.

[barawn]

Ignoring CD-KEYS is specifically allowed in the DMCA, in case you missed THAT summary linked to in THIS ARTICLE.

I do understand the legal grounds on which Blizzard is making their argument - that is, none. Bleem was upheld even under the DMCA, so look, Blizzard has no chance.

And maybe Blizzard should find a way to stop warez copies, rather than stopping a Battle.Net server emulator. After all, even without the bnetd server emulator, there're still many different ways to play multiplayer games.

Look, piracy's basically a constant in terms of cost: it goes up a little some years, down some others. Why? Because pirates are smart people - and fundamentally, there's no way to prevent piracy - it's digital, and you can mess with it. The only way you could get rid of piracy is for a game like EverQuest, where the 'game' is located somewhere else, and EVEN THEN, someone could STILL make an additional 'EverQuest' server if they emulated it clean-room.

If Blizzard wants to stop piracy, stop the pirates, not the people who are doing perfectly legal things. But why aren't they doing this? Because it's bad for companies (and inefficient) to go after individual people. Too bad. Individual people are breaking the law. Sue them, not people who are doing LEGAL things.

Re:"Freedom" of thievery? Indeed.

[clare-ents]

This is an advertisment for company $foo.

For a fee of $x / month we will allow you to use some of our network services with limited disk space allocated to you.

These are the services on offer

1 HTTP : You may connect and download material from our HTTP server.

2 FTP : You may connect and upload or download material from our FTP server subject to your disk space limits.

3 SMB / CIFS : You may upload or download files subject to your disk space limits

4 IRC : You may connect to our IRC server and engage with other paying users of our service

5 BNETD : You may connect to our bnet server to play online games with other paying users.

6 ECHO : You may have packets echoed back to your IP.

7 NFS : You my transfer files subject to your disk space limit.

8 QUAKE3 : You may connect to our Quake server and play against other users of our system.

Can someone tell me why *I* as service provider am breaking the law if someone uses a pirated client in case (5) but I am not all the other cases.

Re:"Freedom" of thievery? Indeed.

[erasmus_]

I'm guessing it's because the server is not licensed by the makers of the game, who is currently suing its makers. If your server in case 8 (Quake 3) was running a pirated copy, you'd be liable as a provider. Similarly in case 5, you might be allowing illegal copies to play on your server.

Two quick points - first of all, I think the case will resolve in Bnetd's favor, and have contributed funds to them as I pointed in another post. Secondly, Quake3 connects to the master id network to validate its key, as does Battle.Net, validating keys, after which the users can play. So it's not correct for you to compare the two, as eliminating the legitimacy check from this battle.net implementation would create a completely separate environment from the official Blizzard network, unlike Quake3.

Re:"Freedom" of thievery? Indeed.

[Anonymous Coward]

What prevents you from playing the game anyway?

Single player mode still works, IPX, UDP and any other form of other network play still works.

Sure it's inconvenient to host a LAN party instead of each person sitting in his respective home but inconvenience is hardly a form of copy protection.

Besides it's entirely possible to hack a VPN to forward IPX or rebroadcast UDP. Does that suddenly make VPNs a violation of the DMCA?

Re:"Freedom" of thievery? Indeed.

[mirabilos]

Most people who warez'ed ISOs wouldn't have
bought the game, and we who first burn copies
to evaluate, and then buy the game ourselfes,
help(ed) blizzard.

Re:"Freedom" of thievery? Indeed.

[Coldfire-DS]

Barawn:
Without getting into a moral debate with you about how legal BnetD isn't, I just thought I'd point something out. Bleem is not the same as BnetD. Bleem has no other function than to allow you to play Playstation games on your computer. Emulators are not illegal. You're lumping console emulators and BnetD (because it is a -server- emulator) into one group, and that's inaccurate.

Re:"Freedom" of thievery? Indeed.

[barawn]

Why is it inaccurate? It's the same thing. Bnetd has no other function other than to play Blizzard games online, and Bleem has the sole function than to allow you to play Playstation games on a computer. Both these products are doing the same thing - allowing you to play the game on hardware other than the original manufacturer intended (in the bnetd case, on bnetd servers rather than Battle.net servers, and in Bleem's case, on a PC rather than on a Playstation), and this kind of 'fair use' is EXACTLY what the courts are trying to uphold.

It's EXACTLY the same. Software to facilitate the playing of a legally purchased game is not, can not, and never WILL be illegal. The fact that some people use it for an illegal purpose does not even come CLOSE to eliminating the fair use intent of the bnetd server, which is to play Blizzard games on hardware other than was originally intended.

Bleem is a piece of software which facilitates a legal program running by providing the interfaces that a proprietary piece of hardware uses. Bnetd is a piece of software which facilitates a legal program running by providing the interfaces that a proprietary network protocol uses (or, by extension, the proprietary "system" that Battle.net is).

Bnetd does not facilitate or get around the copy protection in any of Blizzard's games: that's done by the actual CD-KEY generators themselves, or the cracked warez ISO. All they're doing is emulating a piece of external hardware, which has been validated in courts many times over by now.

Blizzard doesn't have a chance. There's tons of legal precedent supporting bnetd, and none supporting Blizzard.

Re:"Freedom" of thievery? Indeed.

[Anonymous Coward]

Yup, all three of you.

Re:"Freedom" of thievery? Indeed.

[barawn]

If it's a cleanly reverse engineered protocol, and you didn't have to break any encryption (which they DIDN'T, so screw the DMCA) it's legal. Period. It's completely identical to any of the already-out there emulator cases.

If your argument were true, then Microsoft could sue anyone who uses SAMBA, since all the Linux SAMBA servers aren't licensed by Microsoft, who developed SMB (probably :) ). Using an unlicensed, cleanroom developed server can never be illegal, or you're eliminating fair competition.

I'll say this once again, though: the DMCA doesn't apply. They did NOT break any encryption. The DMCA even specifically states that CD-KEY type authentication doesn't have to be incorporated into interoperating programs. So, without the 'DMCA crap', Blizzard's just yelling about an unlicensed server, which is definitely legal.

After all, Blizzard already REJECTED Bnetd's request to somehow incorporate the CD-KEY checks into bnetd: they can't claim that it's not possible to do it, as Q3 already does, so in this case, it's clear that Blizzard has no desire to protect its intellectual property from piracy, so claiming bnetd should be removed because of piracy concerns is crap.

Honestly, this case is going to be over very quickly in the courts: Blizzard really doesn't have a leg to stand on.

Re:"Freedom" of thievery? Indeed.

[barawn]

Or what about ipx_bridge, or Ethernet forwarding? All of this is easily accomplished, but no challenge there. Why? Oh, because this is Battle.net?

The Battle.net implementation has a lot of nice extras, but that's like them suing bnetd and saying "Their product, completely independently and cleanroom developed, is too nice. We want you to protect OUR product, which is exactly the same, but ours is special because we wrote the other piece of software it works with." God. If that worked, Microsoft could block Linux SAMBA servers in favor of Windows servers.

I've never used Battle.net. I never will. It's crap, and it always has been crap. Why should I only be able to play when Blizzard's local portion of the Net is accessible to me and not flooded with traffic, rather than at any time? My network's still running. Their network is still running. Complete junk.

And don't forget that without bnetd, when Blizzard collapses sometime in the future (they all do - just give them time) all these games are useless.

Re:"Freedom" of thievery? Indeed.

[erasmus_]

I agree with you that the case should be won in favor of Bnetd, and have never stated otherwise. My original points were contesting your "all reverse engineering is legal" point, which you made and is false, as well as "how can Blizzard possibly not benefit from this." Of course, I lost karma over it, so clearly arguing or pointing out problems with a post modded Insightful is not something that should be done on Slashdot. I will note this in the future.

Re:"Freedom" of thievery? Indeed.

[barawn]

All reverse engineering is legal, within the definitions of reverse engineering. It basically comes down to "what is reverse engineering?" Reverse engineering is developing a work-alike simply by using the product without any knowledge of how it works inside, and without breaking any encryption between it and other devices. The DMCA just changed the definition of reverse engineering (very very weakly, IMHO, but every corporation seems to think it's a panacea), not eliminate it.

As for the problems of Slashdot, eh, whatever. Everyone who wants to gain karma eventually does, so it's not important if you lose a bit here and there.

Re:"Freedom" of thievery? Indeed.

[zapfie]

Blizzard makes money off of games. In fact, Battle.net earns them no value, no reward in your own terminology. God. Blizzard, and everyone else, are just plain stupid here - let bnetd run, and Blizzard makes MORE money, for crying out loud. How the heck can it be bad to offer people MORE ways to play a game you're selling?!?

The issue here is that Blizzard uses its battle.net server to check CD keys. If an invalid key was used, Blizzard could block that users access to battle.net, and thus, effectively block that persons ability to play online. bnetd allows users to compete online without use of valid CD keys. I am not saying Blizzard will make more or less money one way or the other, nor am I commenting on the legality of Blizzard's/bnetd developers' actions, but I think Blizzard's logic is by sllowing people to play online with invalid/duplicate CD keys piracy will be more rampant, and thus they will make less money.

Re:"Freedom" of thievery? Indeed.

[clare-ents]

Okay, in my example,

Samba is not licensed by Microsoft, but I am not breaking the law if I allow pirated copies of WinXP to connect to it. The lawbreaker is the owner of the pirated copy of XP.

Apache is not licensed by Opera. If someone uses a cracked copy of Opera to access my server that's not my fault.

In the case of bnetd, I believe there are channel bots that can be used. If a cracked channel bot is used on Battle.net is blizzard liable if the purpose of of Battle.net is to enforce copy protection?

Re:"Freedom" of thievery? Indeed.

[barawn]

As has been mentioned many times, the problem is that they are trying to protect something illegal (a Battle.net monopoly) by claiming it protects against piracy, when there are perfectly valid OTHER methods to protect against piracy, or to give up the Battle.net monopoly while still protecting against piracy.

The fundamental problem here is twofold: one, the basic problem is that Blizzard's CD-KEY authentication method is junk. Anyone can, and has, cracked it, and so therefore, invalid/duplicate CD-KEYs are rampant. This is the first of Blizzard's argument's problems: bnetd is not responsible for the poor technological safeguards inherent in Blizzard's software. If Blizzard is so worried about piracy, they should do something more aggressive to prevent the illegal copies from being out there. As many people have said, it is not a road's job to check if there are stolen cars driving on it.

The second problem is that Blizzard is trying to protect a Battle.net monopoly on piracy concerns, and protecting that monopoly that way is completely illegal. What if Microsoft were to come and say "Linux is illegal, because people can use Linux to change a Windows NT/2K/XP administrator password and hack in!" (which you can, and I have done, and I'm glad you can do, as I lost the admin password to an old machine)

I'm serious - this is exactly the same exact thing, and it sounds ludicrous when referred to in this way, and it sounds ludicrous in Blizzard's case. It's stupid. So, let me stress it again:

bnetd is not responsible to fix the stupidity of Blizzard's anti-piracy controls.

Just because Blizzard's anti-piracy controls suck doesn't mean bnetd can't exist, any more than Linux can't exist because Windows security sucks.

Missing the Point

[Anonymous Coward]

bnetd isn't about logging onto Battle.net with unauthorized clients. It's about running a server separate from Battle.net which the authorized clients (Diablo, Warcraft, etc.) can use in place of Battle.net to manage Internet play.

Re:Missing the Point

[Anonymous Coward]

Mod parent up!

Re:Missing the Point

[dzym]

It involves modifying the client to use the 3rd-party servers instead of Blizzard's own. You are making the program do something which the program would never have allowed by itself.

The reasons is ...

[TheViffer]

Without checking CD-Keys, one copy of Diablo II could virtually service 10,000 people by just swapping the program around.

Currently as it goes, if you want to play with others online using a Blizzard product, you are almost force to buy a legal copy. The introduction of emulators will by-pass that.

Blizzard has a legal beef here.

Re:The reasons is ...

[DahGhostfacedFiddlah]

I agree completely. It's far easier to set up a server on your computer than do something as difficult as download a key generator from here, here, or here.</sarc>

CD keys keep honest people honest. They do nothing to prevent people who don't want to buy the game from playing the game.

Re:The reasons is ...

[ThePof]

Which is not completely true. If I am not completely mistaken, you can for example play Starcraft over Kali which doesn't check for cd-keys either. You can also play their games in other multiplayer ways that does not check for the cd-key. Most (all?) their games have other multiplayer options than bnet.

Re:The reasons is ...

[erasmus_]

This keygen works for single player potentially, but does not help on BNet, where the key has to be valid in the system, and not just valid based on an algorithm, and has to be not used by another user.

As for your last statement about cd keys keeping people honest, this may be true, but no company has an obligation to make it especially easy for pirates to use its programs. Playability on Battle.net is something that Blizzard sees as a key selling point, and it does not have to release its cd key validation if it doesn't want to dilute this selling point.

Re:The reasons is ...

[mongoks]

Would that be because Kali is spoofing IPX over TCP/IP and therefore the game thinks the game is being played on a LAN?

Re:The reasons is ...

[ThePof]

Perhaps, I really have no idea how Kali works, but you can play (or at least could) SC on it. I think Diablo was playable on it too, at least the add-on Hellfire was although it did not officially had multiplayer support. On the other hand diablo had no cd-keys to start with.

Re:The reasons is ...

[AHumbleOpinion]

Would that be because Kali is spoofing IPX over TCP/IP and therefore the game thinks the game is being played on a LAN?

Well that AND they got a license from Blizzard to do that I believe.

Re:"Freedom" of thievery? No.

[iamsure]

Incorrect.

As a paying customer, I demand value and satisfaction from my Blizzard software like Warcraft and Diablo2.

Since the Blizzard server is:

- SLOOOOW
- Unreliable
- Hacked all to hell
- VERY buggy

I choose to have the ability to play my ALREADY PURCHASED SOFTWARE on a server of my choice. Just because Blizzard would prefer I didnt doesnt mean jack.

Your argument that Bnetd is punishing Blizzard for creating value is totally incorrect.

It punishes Blizzard for NOT creating value on the server side.

I rewarded them for their client side software. What I choose to connect to is *MY CHOICE*.

And its entirely legal too..

A good defense.

[iamsure]

Its actually a good defense. If you take the time to read through the DMCA portion relating to interoperable programs you'd understand better.

No one stated that Diablo, etc. were Interoperable programs. That was directed at bnetd being interoperable. Since Bnetd is trying to interoperate (thru reverse engineering) with Blizzard software, the DMCA clearly states that they do not have to interoperate with ALL the functonality Blizzards' server provides.

Its a very sound defense using the very law you are attacked with to defend yourself.

Re:A good defense.

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh, a great defence!

The EFF LOST!

As they will this time...

Linkified for the Lazy

[EricKrout.com]

http://www.penny-arcade.com/view.php3?date=2002-03 -04&res=l

monolinux.com :: Beware the Penguins (doobie doobie do...)

Re:"Freedom" of thievery? No.

[cisko]

Well, I'd agree with you for your purchased software. Problem is, bnetd makes for an easy way to use pirated versions of the software. Even _that_ wasn't enough to get Vivendi to bring a suit... until people started pirating the WC III beta. Playing the beta thru bnetd kind of violates the whole point of having a beta in the first place, and (arguably) jeopardizes Blizzard's ability to bring the product to market. I can see why that'd be a big concern.

Re:What a terrible approach to build game interest

[TheFlu]

You didn't screw up, both Valve and Sierra are involved with Half-Life and CounterStrike. I believe that Valve developed the game for Sierra. I'm just waiting for Sierra to come out with a FPS version of Mahjong.

Re:"Freedom" of thievery? No.

[l33t j03]

You don't get to decide how their product is used, they do. If they want to run a lousy server, then its a lousy server you'll use.

You bought a license to play a copy of a Blizzard game, and you are allowed to exercise that license according to the terms laid out by Blizzard. If you don't like them you should stick to playing Penguin Navigator or some other GPL'd game (if there are others).

Actually Contributing

[erasmus_]

Payment Information

A payment has been sent to bnetd-defense@bnetd.org.
You will receive an email receipt for this transaction shortly.
For details on your transaction, please contact bnetd-defense@bnetd.org.

Item Name: Bnetd Project Defense Fund
Item Number: Defense Fund

Rather than just talk about it, I have put my money where my mouth is on this issue, by donating to the cause. I encourage everyone else to do the same at this link.

Re:Actually Contributing

[ZenJabba1]

I have never contributed to anything like this, but I think this has a chance to become a good test case, and hope it will start to break the DCMA

Re:Actually Contributing

[Anonymous Coward]

Completely offtopic, so I'm AC'ing this, but isn't it funny how much easier DCMA flows off the tongue than DMCA? Unfortunately, the latter is the proper acronym (digital millenium ...). Just FYI, I thought you'd like to know you're not the only one who says it wrong :)

Maybe it's b/c of ACDC.

Re:Actually Contributing

[Bilestoad]

Just think Village People:

D-M-C-A!
Cease and desist it's the
D-M-C-A-a!
You could wind up in jail
Never get out on bail
Have to steal just to pay the lawyer...

Re:Actually Contributing

[Anonymous Coward]

Completely offtopic, so I'm AC'ing this, but isn't it funny how much easier DCMA flows off the tongue than DMCA? Unfortunately, the latter is the proper acronym (digital millenium ...). Just FYI, I thought you'd like to know you're not the only one who says it wrong :)

Maybe it's b/c of ACDC

Actually, maybe its because no one wants to be associated with the Village People's YMCA...

-C

Re:Actually Contributing

[Anonymous Coward]

"-1 Flamebait" is actually a moderator's way of saying "I disagree".

Very few have the moral courage to allow a contrary opinion to be heard.

Great to see a Microsoft VisualStudio.net banner ad on this page - try it out, emacs/vi/Borland users, it really is a superior IDE.

Re:Actually Contributing

[BlackGriffen]

I've become so fed up that I donated to bnetd defense and joined the EFF. I hope Blizzard does try to take this to court, and the EFF is able to stick it to Vivendi and the DMCA.

BlackGriffen

Getting there

[quantaman]

As reported three previous times,
Well at least they're taking a proactive approach to repeat stories now! (and Yes I know that this article with the EFF thing is new but c'mon, can't you just pretend:)

Re:"Freedom" of thievery? No.

[iamsure]

Its a concern, certainly.

Bnetd doesnt HAVE to cause that problem. Blizzard can provide a very simple network request scheme to allow the Bnetd server to challeneg the cd-key.

Blizzard does NOT want that.

As such, it is a simple case of a software manufacturer who does NOT maintain their software (server-side) driving their customers to find alternatives.

As to playing the beta thru Bnetd violates the point of having an open beta?

It still exposes bugs on the client side, and BOY does Blizzard ever have PLENTY of those in EVERY release.

Blizzard Entertainment sadly mislead?

[pinkUZI]

I wonder what Blizzard hopes to achieve by taking this route. It would seem to me that it has been proven that being a nazi doesn't improve sales. Why don't they look to companies like ID software and the example they have set with Quake. Creators of one of the most successful multiplayer games to date, ID Software has maintained a much more loose policy for multiplayer game play. {plus they have a policy of releasing every game under linux!}

Re:Blizzard Entertainment sadly mislead?

[shaka999]

Quake and bnet are different items.

I wish people would open their eyes and see what will happen if Blizzard loses this. It will change their business model. I would not be a bit surprised to see them go to more of a server side architecture (with possible fees).

Re:Blizzard Entertainment sadly mislead?

[Anonynnous Coward]

I wish people would open their eyes and see what will happen if Blizzard loses this. It will change their business model.

Yep. Their business model is now fighting the EFF in court. That ought to get them lots of revenue. We need to continue to get the message out: "Sue your customers and die!"

I hope the case bankrupts them or at least drives them out of the game market. And I will dance a jig on their grave.

I get to decide, according to the law.

[iamsure]

Nope. Wrong.

By law, as a consumer, once I purchase a product, I am entitled to FAIR USE.

Software "licensing" has NEVER been successfully upheld in court, and many argue that it goes entirely against the protections the law has traditionally given the consumer.

Further, the Blizzard licensing agreement does not in fact restrict me from playing my software with a third-party server software.

Not to mention, they didnt come after the END USER violating those terms of service! They came after programmers who offered them an alternative. Programmers not bound by those TOS/Licensing terms.

So, No. I get to decide what I do.

Re:I get to decide, according to the law.

[Anonymous Coward]

You haven't got a fucking clue, have you!

You get to decide what to do, yes. Blizzard get to decide that bnetd can't run a server. Too bad for you :-(

What do you think "fair use" means? Really, I want a laugh - explain it for us, in terms of your "fair use" rights concerning software. Ignore the fact that you have licensed it and not purchased it for a minute, just spell out your rights for us.

Re:I get to decide, according to the law.

[l33t j03]

You people seem to think that Fair Use means whatever pops into your head when you hear the words. It doesn't, it has a very clear legal definition that does not include the vast majority of the things you all seem to think it does.

Considering that the battle.net server would be excluded from Fair Use by T17-C1-S107(4), Fair Use doesn't enter into the equation for them. For you, it might, which is probably why they aren't going after end users, but if there is a license agreement that prohibits you from connecting to third party servers then it would take precedence, although I still wouldn't expect Blizzard to come after anyone who bought a legitimate copy of their stuff.

As for software licensing not being upheld in court, you must be thinking of the GPL. There have been enough court decisions involving everything from shrink wrap licenses to click throughs to fill up the widest of Slashdot pages. You can find some yourself if you're really that interested, because I can't be bothered to give you a link. Try Caspi vs. Microsoft, I testified in that one, dumbass.

You are correct that the software license that comes with the client doesn't bind the programmers of battle.net. The DMCA does though, and if they participate in copyright violation, even by proxy, they should be punished.

Re:I get to decide, according to the law.

[Anonymous Coward]

You didn't read his post very clearly, did you? HE'S POINTING OUT THAT HE DIDN'T LICENSE THE SOFTWARE, HE BOUGHT IT. The whole "licensing" sham is what the software industry wants you to believe, but law says "you purchased it, it's yours".

You wanna toss your rights away and just suck up that pablum the industry feeds you, go right ahead. Don't expect those of us with a little free will to follow your idiocy though.

Re:I get to decide, according to the law.

[Anonymous Coward]

The reason he (and now you) was clueless is nothing to do with licensing vs. purchasing. Unless of course you claim that once you purchase a game or other copyrighted work, you "own" it and can then resell it to all your acquaintances.

What I asked the little twat to explain is how "fair use" applies to that software once he has bought it... Perhaps you'd like to, since you are the same little twat anyway.

Re:I get to decide, according to the law.

[amccall]

You are fundamentally misunderstanding copyright law here.

When you make a software purchase, you are entitled to fair use of your software. Courts have repeatedly ruled AGAINST software licenses - Klocek v. Gateway, Hill v. Gateway 2000. In general rulings FOR software licesning make a few statements, for example, from the most famous case FOR software licenses:

"Shrinkwrap licenses are enforceable unless their terms are objectionable on grounds applicable to contracts in general (for example, if they violate a rule of positive law, or if they are un- conscionable). Because no one argues that the terms of the license at issue here are troublesome, we remand with instructions to enter judgment for the plaintiff." (ProCD, Inc. v. Zeidenberg)

Here is where things get tricky. The majority of court opinions I've read view software licenses in terms of redistribution of purchased software(piracy), or warrenty disclaimers - I have yet to see a ruling state that such a license could govern HOW you use the software.

Fair use DOES NOT give you the right to redistribute software as you seem to state. Instead fair use gives you the right to A.) use the software as you see fit, B.) take screenshots/publish reviews, etc...

Basically, imagine purchasing a book. You can not legally copy the entire book or sell it as your own. You can however, quote, review, copy pictures from, write in, and research it.

IANAL, blah blah blah blah blah

Re:I get to decide, according to the law.

[Anonymous Coward]

You didn't read his post very clearly, did you? HE'S POINTING OUT THAT HE DIDN'T LICENSE THE SOFTWARE, HE BOUGHT IT. The whole "licensing" sham is what the software industry wants you to believe, but law says "you purchased it, it's yours". Is the GPL a "licensing sham"? Does the law say "you purchased it, it's yours" when you buy a copy of RedHat, or must you abide by the license?

Re:I get to decide, according to the law.

[TheFrood]

The reason he (and now you) was clueless is nothing to do with licensing vs. purchasing. Unless of course you claim that once you purchase a game or other copyrighted work, you "own" it and can then resell it to all your acquaintances.

I most certainly can sell my copy of the game to one friend, by giving him my original copy of the game, deleting it from my hard drive, and destroying any other copies I've made. Anything else would be violating Blizzard's copyright. I can own a book without having copyright on the contents, and I can own a game without having copyright on the game.

Of course, your use of the word "twat" suggests to me that you're not really interested in an intelligent debate as much as you're interested in name-calling.

TheFrood

Re:I get to decide, according to the law.

[TheFrood]

Try Caspi vs. Microsoft, I testified in that one, dumbass.

Really? Did you use the word "dumbass" in your testimony? Did you testify under the name l33t_j03?

TheFrood

Re:I get to decide, according to the law.

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, he is very wrong then. You don't buy software, you purchase a license to use it. If you were to 'buy' the software, then you would be buying all the rights that are reserved to blizzard, which they are not going to give up for 50 bucks.

If you dont like it dont buy it =)

Re:I get to decide, according to the law.

[Anonymous Coward]

I never said "you buy the copyright". When I buy software, that piece of software is mine and the only real restrictions I have are:

1) Can't give copies to others.
2) Can't redistribute modified copies of it (part of #1)

Other than that, everything's fair game! I wanna take the copy protection off it for my own convenience, I'll do so. If I want to hack the game and cheat so I can beat it, I'll do that too. If I get tired of the game, I can sell it to a friend, providing I didn't retain copies for myself after doing so.

Bnetd doesn't violate 1 or 2 since they don't use any of blizzard's source code, it's technically a new product. If you're against this type of action, you must be against ANY sort of emulator, or a product like WINE.

Re:I get to decide, according to the law.

[Anonymous Coward]

> Is the GPL a "licensing sham"? Does the law say
>"you purchased it, it's yours"
> when you buy a copy of RedHat, or must you abide
> by the license?

Well, seeing as how the gpl GIVES you ADDITIONAL rights beyond what the law gives you, whereas commercial liceneses try to get you to agree to give up many rights that you had when you paid your money for the product... I don't see why anyone wouldn't want to 'abide' by the GPL. You're given MORE freedoms than you'd have if you ignored the license!

Re:I get to decide, according to the law.

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't see why anyone wouldn't want to 'abide' by the GPL.

Seeing as every other week a slashdot editor posts some "GPL violation" story (usually overblown), I think the motive exists.

Wasn't this already solved in the Sony case?

[Frobnicator]

To suggest that Bnetd is illegal due to copyright is insane. The product is not a duplicate of the original, it is a service provided by a second company developed from their own source code.

Whether it violates the DMCA is another issue. The courts ruled recently against Sony where developers reverse engineered portions of the Playstation to get access to underlying protocols so that developers could create an emulator for the PC. Even though the reverse engineering violated some terms of the DMCA, there were two important facts facts: (1) the new product was legal, and (2) they attempted to obtain the information from Sony, but they refused to offer it.

It appears that this case is the same. The defendant was unsatisfied with a product. The producer was unable or unwilling to provide the desired product. The defendant was forced to reverse engineer that product in order to offer the desired services. The only remaining question is whether Blizzard applied for a patant for their network protocols. (unlikely.) If they did not, they do not own the IP of the protocol (since the protocol is a method and must be patented, not copyrighted) and therefore Bnetd is fully within their rights to publish it.

Re:Wasn't this already solved in the Sony case?

[mjh]

The only remaining question is whether Blizzard applied for a patant for their network protocols. (unlikely.) If they did not, they do not own the IP of the protocol (since the protocol is a method and must be patented, not copyrighted) and therefore Bnetd is fully within their rights to publish it.

IANAL, but I think we can safely assume that the protocol is not patented. If it were patented, part of the patent application would be the requirement for full disclosure of the thing being patented. In other words the protocol specifications would have to be in the patent application and available for public viewing.

Thus there would be no need for reverse engineering the protocol.

But, I could be wrong, and it wouldn't surprise me.

Re:Wasn't this already solved in the Sony case?

[vicviper]

The defendant was forced to reverse engineer that product in order to offer the desired services.

Forced? No one forced anyone to do anything...

The only remaining question is whether Blizzard applied for a patant for their network protocols. (unlikely.)

You forgot the question: "Does bnetd facilitate the use of pirated software?"

Re:Wasn't this already solved in the Sony case?

[CrazyBusError]

Perhaps you forgot to think before you phrased the last question. Computers facilitate the use of pirated software. TV's facilitate the use of stolen video recorders. Roads facilitate the use of stolen cars. Seeing a pattern here?

Duh...

Re:Wasn't this already solved in the Sony case?

[greyfeld]

The internet facilitates the use of pirated software.

Re:Wasn't this already solved in the Sony case?

[vicviper]

Perhaps you forgot to think before you phrased the last question.

Wouldn't be the first time :)

Computers facilitate the use of pirated software.

My point was bnetd facilitates the use of pirated Blizzard software as it does no CD key validation. Blizzard is not attempting to prevent piracy on all PCs, they are protecting their IP.

Re:Wasn't this already solved in the Sony case?

[GSloop]

That road you built, well, it doesn't check to make sure that all cars travelling on it are NOT stolen.

We're going to sue your ass because you didn't make sure that a stolen car couldn't be driven on your road.

[Sheesh Bonehead!]

Cheers!

Re:Wasn't this already solved in the Sony case?

[Anonymous Coward]

> My point was bnetd facilitates the use of pirated Blizzard software as it does no CD key validation. Blizzard is not attempting to prevent piracy on all PCs, they are protecting their IP.

SIGH The reason the bnetd server doesn't authenticate is because Blizzard deliberately withheld the information needed by the bnetd designers to do the authentication.

If Blizzard were really interested in protecting their IP, they'd have worked with the bnetd folks - eg, make a binary auth module available to the bnetd folks so they could do proper authentication. Now, perhaps that authentication would still be bypassed by other builders of the bnetd server code - and the operators of those incomplete servers could legitimately be prosecuted since an auth method existed and its use was encouraged.

But Blizzard never even tried, they just said NO.

Re:Wasn't this already solved in the Sony case?

[Anonymous Coward]

> If Blizzard were really interested in protecting their IP, they'd have worked with the bnetd folks - eg, make a binary auth module available to the bnetd folks so they could do proper authentication. Now, perhaps that authentication would still be bypassed by other builders of the bnetd server code - and the operators of those incomplete servers could legitimately be prosecuted since an auth method existed and its use was encouraged.

Or better yet, fixed their own damn servers so they worked well enough that the bnetd server was irrelevant. Blizzard would have a better case if they had a satisfied server user group compared to the one they have now.

Re:Wasn't this already solved in the Sony case?

[Bilestoad]

Blizzard deliberately withheld the information needed by the bnetd designers to do the authentication

BECAUSE they didn't want their encryption/authentication methods documented in the OPEN SOURCE bnetd project. Don't you realize that supplying even a binary auth module makes it trivial to reverse engineer, code and distribute the authentication mechanism? Hell, CSS was supposed to hard and looked what happened to that.

Re:Wasn't this already solved in the Sony case?

[vicviper]

That road you built, well, it doesn't check to make sure that all cars travelling on it are NOT stolen.

Good thing that road I built isn't covered by the DMCA. :)

Of course the EFF will argue neither is bnetd... and if it isn't I'm thinking that claims that this will test the DMCA won't hold true.

Re:Wasn't this already solved in the Sony case?

[barawn]

You don't have to have the CD checks done on the bnetd source - they could've passed the network challenge along to Battle.net and done it that way.

Blizzard's argument is completely full of holes.

Blizzard, versus anyone intelligent:

"bnetd facilitates piracy!"
"Why?"
"Because it doesn't do CD checks to make sure all of the clients are valid."
"How is this illegal?"
"It circumvents our copy protection scheme!"
"No, it doesn't - the illegal CD key to install already did that."
"Oh. Well, CD keys are easy to crack, so we had to come up with something else!"
"So what? Sorry. Come up with better technology next time."
"But, but, they figured out how to get around the CD checks!"
"No, they didn't do them. They don't have to. The DMCA even SAYS they don't have to."
"But, how are we supposed to prevent piracy if everyone can play online?"
"Didn't Quake 3 work fine?"
"Yah, but we don't want anyone else to have a battle.net server, because we want to charge for it and offer nothing new!"
"Suck it up and deal. Competition, baby, life sucks for you. Offer your customers something worth paying money for."

Re:Wasn't this already solved in the Sony case?

[mcc]

Forced? No one forced anyone to do anything...

Incorrect. the bnetd and fsgs groups were forced to remove the results of their volunteer software projects from their websites.

Re:Wasn't this already solved in the Sony case?

[Anonymous Coward]

If they could have passed authentication queries to a Blizzard server without requiring help from Blizzard then they should have done it all along and they wouldn't be in the mess they are in.

If they can't do it without Blizzard's help, why should Blizzard have to help? Did bnetd people offer to pay for the engineering and support costs?

Re:Wasn't this already solved in the Sony case?

[barawn]

Blizzard should have to help to prove they actually care about just the anti-piracy concern, which is real and legal, and NOT the Battle.net monopoly, which is NOT legal.

Yes, Blizzard has a monopoly, and they're trying to use "anti-piracy concerns" to protect it. That's what this is all about, and that's why it's bull.

Re:Wasn't this already solved in the Sony case?

[Bilestoad]

Blizzard has a monopoly on online gaming? 'scuse me while I laugh...

Blizzard has a monopoly on their own products? Well, by definition...

Re:Wasn't this already solved in the Sony case?

[barawn]

A monopoly is where you have the ONLY product in a certain market - in this case, Blizzard has a monopoly on Battle.net-type gaming.

Battle.net is not their product - Diablo II, etc, are. More importantly, though, Battle.net, as I'm speaking of it, is just a -type- of online gaming. You can't attack a work-alike of Battle.net anymore than Microsoft could challenge KOffice for being an office productivity suite. Blizzard created a market - a type of product - a Battle.net server. They have the only product for it.

The point is that you can't protect the monopoly that that product has - at least not legally. :) bnetd created a product that worked like Battle.net, and Blizzard is trying to challenge them, because they WANT the 'Battle.net style gaming' monopoly.

They created a protocol. bnetd can reverse engineer it. The DMCA even allows them to. This is how capitalism works. Someone creates a market. Others enter it. Competition creates the best product. Blizzard's just trying to get around the fact that they have competition now, and they don't want to improve their product (Battle.net, that is).

9 more days to find out if Blizzard wants to lose in court or not.

Re:Wasn't this already solved in the Sony case?

[Bilestoad]

bnetd won't be killed because it is Blizzard's product, it will be killed because it facilitates piracy of Blizzard's product. Blizzard could work with them to make authentication work but why should they? No advantage in it for Blizzard - and _that_ is how capitalism works. Blizzard don't have a monopoly, they just happen to be the most popular publisher in this genre. If they want to protect a monopoly why no suit over Icewind Dale, surely a Diablo-like game? The recent Command and Conquer: Generals preview stated that Westwood had considered a battle.net type arena for C&C at one stage. Anyone is free to do it, as long as they do it all.

Last year EA beta tested a Battletech RPG which used a very similar client/server setup - it didn't launch, but while it was up I played it. Not a squeak from anyone about monopolies or lawsuits then. The difference is that EA created a game and a server rather than being a parasite. The definition of parasite is something like "An organism that grows, feeds, and is sheltered on or in a different organism while contributing nothing to the survival of its host". The shaky argument that bnetd is somehow helpful to Blizzard because it attracts new players is about the only reason not to call bnetd a parasite, pure and simple. They create nothing and offer no value - the idea that battle.net is never up and gamers are crying out for something that works is just wrong, I know I was able to waste way too many hours on Diablo II. bnetd is a tool for piracy, and all the high-minded arguments in this discussion can confuse the issue but not change that.

Re:Wasn't this already solved in the Sony case?

[barawn]

Wrong, wrong, wrong. bnetd doesn't "facilitate piracy of Blizzard's product": it MAY "facilitate playing of pirated Blizzard products online", but NOT "facilitate piracy". What facilitated piracy was Blizzard's weak copy protection initially. Why do you continually keep ignoring that fact? The games are already pirated - the copy protection FAILED. If Blizzard wants to stop the piracy, STOP THE PIRATES. Stop the damned games from being pirated in the first place.

Once again, a road is NOT responsible for stolen cars driving on it! Period!

Answer me this:

Suppose Windows implemented a 'license checking' on its SMB servers. All computers which logged into the SMB server on Windows 2000 are queried to find out if they have a valid product installation key, with several blacked out, checked against a master list, etc. Any one that doesn't is barred from access.

Now, Linux has an SMB server. But Linux doesn't have to implement that 'license checking': could Linux be sued because they're 'facilitating Microsoft piracy'? NO. No way. No chance, no way, no how.

Do you argue with this? How is this any different than Blizzard's issue?

I'm trying to be clear here, but I keep repeating the same thing: Blizzard has a monopoly - they are the only company that makes Battle.net servers, that is, servers which communicate with other programs via the Battle.net protocol. You might say 'well, duh, they created the battle.net protocol, they don't have to let anyone else make one!' YES, they DO. That's the law. They don't have to HELP them, and they didn't, but they can't STOP them from doing it. That's what this case is going to say, flat out, no question.

And just because Battle.net is OK for you, doesn't mean it is for everyone else. Battle.net blows - it really does. It's idiotic that when I can connect to my friend down the hall in a dorm with an IP on a different portion of the network, but the outbound network is down, we can't play. (different Ethernet network = IPX doesn't cross through). I fought, scrambled, and clawed to try to get it to work (I was the ONLY ONE on that portion of the network!) but I just couldn't do it. bnetd would've completely made my life easier had I known about it back then.

Here's the next question: what about actual usage patterns? Can you prove that the people who connect to bnetd servers have pirated copies, and can't play without bnetd? You never will be able to, because it's complete crap. bnetd might make life easier for pirates, but so does Linux and ethernet bridging, and IPX bridging (which I couldn't get to work then, but know why now... grr). So have Blizzard go after Linux, too!

8 more days to find out if Blizzard is really stupid and wants to lose in court.

Re:Wasn't this already solved in the Sony case?

[Bilestoad]

The equivalent question involves a situation where a Samba server queries license keys but only windows exists - there are legitimate copies of windows and there are those that are copied. The copied ones won't work on the real Samba server - so yes, an alternative server allowing use of the copied CDs would be a tool to facilitate piracy. It's a circumvention device.

If you look at it the other way you would have a situation where bnetd decided to reverse engineer the protocol and ALSO write their own game. There would be no Blizzard involvement in the process at all other than having written the protocol - and they could probably still shut down bnetd if they wanted to, not having published or licensed it.

You're not going to argue that copy protection is a good thing are you?

Can you prove that the people who connect to bnetd servers have pirated copies, and can't play without bnetd?

Easy - count the number of legitmate WC3 beta CDs issued and the number of WC3 users - this is why Blizzard went after bnetd. It was tolerated up until the beta started being passed around on peer-peer networks. I took a look and found four or five sites hosting the .iso.

bnetd might have survived if they had just banned WC3 users.

Re:Wasn't this already solved in the Sony case?

[barawn]

Unfortunately, your analysis of the alternate situation that I presented is wrong under current law. So, they might be your personal beliefs, but they're (legally) wrong - the DMCA specifically says that alternate implementations do not have to use anti-piracy devices in one implementation. So, even if you do believe it's a circumvention device, it's not illegal.

I can't honestly understand how you can think that this is a good idea - that provision was put in the DMCA just for that purpose.Otherwise Microsoft WOULD do what I just described (it'd make all copies of Linux illegal), not to mention dozens of other companies (AOL, any other company that's had a protocol reverse-engineered) would do the same thing. What you just described is a really really easy way to make competing products illegal - it would kill all of capitalism.

But I'm confused - You just said that even if Blizzard was not involved at all (no Blizzard games), then Blizzard could still shut bnetd down because they didn't publish or license the Battle.net protocol?

How the heck can a company shut down a server if all they've done is reverse engineer a protocol? Reverse engineering is LEGAL. Reality check here: first off, the Battle.net protocol isn't patented, it isn't copyrighted, and it doesn't matter in any case, as a clean-room reverse engineer of the protocol is fine, so long as you don't break any encryption on the data stream. Blizzard DOESN'T HAVE to 'publish' or license ANYTHING.

Yes, I am going to argue that copy protection is a good thing. It's critical. If you want to prevent people from pirating your work, prevent the damned thing from being copied illegally in the first place. Is it hard? Yes. Too bad. Suck it up and go hire intelligent people to come up with an intelligent solution.

You said it yourself - "I took a look and found four or five sites hosting the .iso" - GO AFTER THOSE SITES. They're breaking the law, not bnetd. I can't understand why we're arguing this: it's clear cut that they're breaking the law, right? It's NOT clear cut that bnetd is breaking the law (because they -aren't-).

If Blizzard is really concerned about WC3 betas being passed around, they should've 1) had tighter control on the release process (it's not bnetd's fault that Blizzard is incompetent), and 2) they should've ASKED bnetd to refrain from adding WC3 support. Your response is probably going to be "they didn't have to" - my response is "Yes, they did - because what bnetd is doing is LEGAL."

I find it curious that in response to my challenge to prove that the people who connect to bnetd servers have pirated copies, you didn't mention bnetd at all. How do you know they didn't find another way around the Battle.net CD authentication (because we know that Blizzard's control over it's own software is SO good)? All you've proved is that there are pirated WC3 copies out there. You haven't proved that they use bnetd exclusively, and that no one who uses bnetd has a legitimate copy.

Re:Wasn't this already solved in the Sony case?

[barawn]

I should also point out that bnetd doesn't even support WC3, so the whole WC3 argument is crap. Why are they going after bnetd? Even if all the illegal WC3 owners are playing on something else besides Battle.net (which is LEGAL - the illegal part was getting the copy illegally!) it's NOT bnetd.

Re:"Freedom" of thievery? No.

[Eccles]

Well, I'd agree with you for your purchased software. Problem is, bnetd makes for an easy way to use pirated versions of the software.

And we all know, while pirates might send around the multimegabyte WC III beta, they won't attach bnetd to the archive and send that out. That would be dishonest!

Re:"Freedom" of thievery? No.

[Anonymous Coward]

Blizzard doesn't HAVE to do any such thing. They can just stomp on bnetd developers in court - and after asking nicely, that's exactly what they are about to do.

Your bleating about rights is all quite cute. Unfortunately it's about as far removed from reality as I am from becoming President. It's also quite pathetic - go develop your own client/server system and create content for it if you're so fucking clever.

wrong

[Anonymous Coward]

The aim of bnetd was to allow owners of Blizzard software to play the game without using the flaky Battlenet servers. This increased the value of the Blizzard games. The aim was not primarily as a piracy tool. If Blizzard had employed the bnetd developers to develop a commercial form of their software which worked with newer Blizzard games and authenticated CD keys, they would have created more jobs and more value. But they didn't.

Re:"Freedom" of thievery? No.

[otopico]

If Bnetd would incorporate a key check that would prevent dupe keys, betas, and the no key at all folks, I would be suprised if Blizzard didn't drop their complaints.

Blizzard got whiney when kids were warezing the beta.

The EFF really should think before they jump into cases, there must be more important issues than a few kids that cant play starcraft online.

Re:"Freedom" of thievery? No.

[iamsure]

> You were stupid to keep it
Why? I love the client side piece, I hate the server side piece, and I can replace that.

Why should I return it?

>The fact that Blizzard's service does not meet your expectations has nothing to do with the right of bnetd developers to reverse engineer Blizzard IP and exist parasitically

Nope. It simply provides ME with the right to LOOK for alternatives. Thats my right as a consumer under FAIR USE laws.

>What you choose to connect to might be your choice
Yes it is.

>but it's Blizzard's choice to kill bnetd - and bnetd, right now, are completely fucked. Doubly so since EFF stepped in, incompetent communists that they are.
No, it is their choice to attempt to kill bnetd. And fail.

And the EFF beign incompetent?

I presume since you post as AC, you have a law practice that defends the rights of millions of computer users around the world -- SUCCESSFULLY -- pro bono in most cases..

Right?

You know it's good when....

[LogicHoleFlaw]

the press release has a link to Penny Arcade. Bnetd, PA Style

WARNING GOATSE LINK ABOVE

[Anonymous Coward]

EVIL SUKKERS

Re:"Freedom" of thievery? No.

[Anonymous Coward]

I presume since you post as AC, you have a law practice that defends the rights of millions of computer users around the world

What the fuck are you talking about? I'll just presume you are a stupid cocksucker justifying piracy when it's convenient. Go stick a pro bono in your ass.

It's all the Korean's fault.

[kasper37]

if it weren't for them, Blizzard wouldn't be so hard pressed on making sure that they get to authenticate cd keys. You think I'm joking!? It's not a coincidence that there are three asia realms and half of the people I play Diablo 2 with speak in unicode...

Re:It's all the Korean's fault.

[Anonymous Coward]

Ok. Saying "Korean" might be being a little quick to judge. But he does have a point. I mean, Asia is the big global piracy scene. Rate that man up, mod-gods, rate that man up.

Re:"Freedom" of thievery? No.

[Anonymous Coward]

It still exposes bugs on the client side, and BOY does Blizzard ever have PLENTY of those in EVERY release.

Yeah, I'm sure all the w4r3z monkeys who've been downloading the beta off IRC and playing through bnetd servers have been diligently filing bug reports with the people at Blizzard. Give me a fucking break.

Something I find interesting

[ThePof]

For years now, Blizzard has always argued that battle.net is not at all part of the games you buy (lets not argue if it is or not that is not the point) but actually a "free" (usually people argue about what free here means) service that they provide and thus not part of their games. Now, suddenly they claim that they have put the copy protection mechanisms, not in their games but in this "not part of the game but free service". Seems strange to have a copy protection not being part of what it is supposed to protect. Just an interesting observation.

Re:Something I find interesting

[rusty0101]

Hmm sort of like only allowing a Sony VCR to communicate with a Sony TV if the TV is informed of the serial number of the Sony VCR, yet the Sony VCR will interoperate quite well with the Toshiba TV, so Sony decides it is time to sue Toshiba....

Re:"Freedom" of thievery? No.

[Edgewize]

Since the Blizzard server is:
- SLOOOOW
- Unreliable
- Hacked all to hell
- VERY buggy

Excuse me, but I've seen these assertions before, and I have no idea why people make them.

Starcraft/Warcraft are peer-to-peer games. Battle.Net is the matchmaking service. There can be no gameplay issues with the servers because games do not connect to the servers.

Diablo II is the only client-server game, and admittedly it has major problems. The original Diablo was also a bit of a multiplayer disaster so I think the problem lies with their Blizzard North department, not their Battle.Net service.

And yet people use Diablo II as an example of why Battle.Net sucks. But by doing that, they have willfully ignored the fact that Diablo II supports direct TCP/IP games (not restricted to LANs) as well as an 'Open' player-hosted mode.

The point I'm making is this: As long as all people involved have a CD-KEY, I have never seen a valid reason for the existance of a Battle.Net emulator. That doesn't mean its wrong to create one, but it *is* wrong to justfy its creation by some manufactured need. And don't throw LAN party crap at me - there's no reason that 50 people can't either use LAN play mode or else all log into a private Battle.Net channel.

Re:"Freedom" of thievery? No.

[Anonymous Coward]

You were stupid to keep it - stores exist that will take returns on software you don't like. You should have tried it, and when it turned out to be disappointing, returned it.

Sure... Just return the software, because we all know that the retail chains gladly accept opened software packages, and refund the money with no questions asked. Bwahahahaha.

The software return policy of most stores is that you can return the opened package only to exchange it for the same title, protecting you from bad install media.

This could only have been posted by someone that has never actually purchased software before.

Re:"Freedom" of thievery? No.

[Anonymous Coward]

"And its entirely legal too.."

Check your box.

Item One: Playable on Battle.Net (Logo)
Item Two: Playable on TCP/IP network upto 8 Players (Requirements)
Item Three: Battle.Net reqired low latency Internet connection (Requirements continued)

So your box said that if you want to play it on the Internet, you need to use Battle.Net. That's the only official/supported method. You knew this when you bought the game.

Now check your license agreement. You want to play online you must use Battle.Net

Bet you entered into what could be a legally binding agreement when you signed up for a Battle.Net account OR broke the shrink wrap OR both.

Your "choice" as you put it is legally, to use one of the methods Blizzard permitted you to use. Anything beyond that is in untested legal waters. But really this is not about you and your rights. That's a red herring.

What this is about is whether those bnetd guys software is breeching the DMCA and related laws.

Also as an aside if you really like bnetd maybe you should NOT be pointing to them as "punishers" of Blizzard. Usually when one is punished there is harm. Harm is often followed by some form of reparations. A better description is that they addressed the needs of the market even when Blizzard would not.

Who modded this up ?? It's a troll !!

[AftanGustur]

To those that modded the comment up :
Print out the comment '"Freedom" of thievery? Indeed.'. Hang it on your wall where it is easily visible to remind you of what a troll looks like.

The point

[SQLz]

The point of this whole thing is that legally the bnetd project has the right to reverse engineer Battle.net. It says so in the DMCA. The fact their code does not check CD keys is trivial to this matter because bnetd itself was not created to bypass copy protection. Its a piece of standalone software. Its not a crack/hack file that patches anything in the client and allows it to bypass Battle.net key checking.

Even if you agree with Blizzards point that the bnetd project does in some way promote piracy, unless you are a complete fool, you should not agree that the DMCA applies to this case. Blizzard is grasping at best.

Its everyone's right as a consumer to fight this even if you agree with Blizzard. This is everyone's chace to stop complaining about the DMCA and actually do something. This will determine if software companies have the right to not only tell you how, when, and where you will utilize their products after your purchase them but also gives them the right to prosecute you if you don't. If Blizzards case holds up, it will open the door for many many more useful emulation projects to be shut down.

Re:The point

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, in order to use it, yo DO have to apply a crack to the game. You have to add entries for the bnetd servers into the gateway list. It's a fairly straightforward one, but it is a crack nonetheless. I don't believe you can get it to work without using that crack.

Re:The point

[alcmena]

You could just enter the IP address of the bnetd server you want to play on in your hosts file. Map it to "useast.battle.net" (or whatever the DNS name they use is) and you're good to go. Even those who are twisted enough to call a registry change a "hack" would have a hard time attacking the host file change.

Re:The point

[Anonymous Coward]

> Actually, in order to use it, yo DO have to apply a crack to the game. You have to add entries for the bnetd servers into the gateway list. It's a fairly straightforward one, but it is a crack nonetheless. I don't believe you can get it to work without using that crack.

Unless this involves a change to the game binary, it's not a crack. Changing network settings on the host computer isn't cracking the game.

Re:The point

[Puk]

Here's a question for someone who has read the DMCA more carefully than I. I remember that in the Napster case, they were trying to show that Napster had "substantial non-infringing use", or something along those lines. Does the DMCA have any provisions like this? Is it against technologies that enable and allow copyright circumvention, or that are for copyright circumvention.

Okay, I got slightly un-lazy and did some reading:

"2) No person shall manufacture, import, offer to the public, provide, or otherwise traffic in any technology, product, service, device, component, or part thereof, that -
2a) is primarily designed or produced for the purpose of circumventing a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title;
2b) has only limited commercially significant purpose or use other than to circumvent a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title; or
2c) is marketed by that person or another acting in concert with that person with that person's knowledge for use in circumventing a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title."

Okay, so 2a and 2c seem okay -- it is not primarily designed to circumvent copyright protection, nor is it being marketed for that purpose.

It's 2b that scares me. Does it only have a limited commercial purpose other than copyright infringement? I cenrtainly has a very significant other purpose, but is it commercial? It's free! Some of the definitions for commercial and commere of commercial seem to indicate that it must be for profit (commerical-3), but some indicate that it might not (commercial-2, or commercial-1 with commerce-2). Could bnetd be illegal because it has a "bad" use, but is non-commercial, whereas if it were a commercial product it would be okay?! What's the legal/governmental definition of commercial?

I'm clearly NAL, so if someone who's more clued in could give me a little insight into what's really going on here and what things I've missed in my extremely brief survey, I'd appreciate it.

-Puk

p.s. The 3rd defition of commerce is "sexual intercourse". That's is news to me -- I don't even want to think about the implications. :)

Re:The point

[extrarice]

Bock-quote the poster:

The point of this whole thing is that legally the bnetd project has the right to reverse engineer Battle.net. It says so in the DMCA. The fact their code does not check CD keys is trivial to this matter because bnetd itself was not created to bypass copy protection. Its a piece of standalone software. Its not a crack/hack file that patches anything in the client and allows it to bypass Battle.net key checking.

True, bnetd is not intended to defeat copy protection. But this is the most frightening thing of the DMCA: if a device has the CAPABILITY of circumventing ANY copy prevention or encryption system, it is in violation of the DMCA. The actual use or intended use of the product is not the issue. Look at it this way: A hammer is a tool. A hammer can also be a deadly weapon. Instead of punishing those who use the hammer to kill, the hammer itself would be outlawed.

Re:The point

[SQLz]

You call that a crack? Its simply an alternative configuration. The gateway list is not encrytped or anything. A trained monkey could edit it.

Re:The point

[SQLz]

True, bnetd is not intended to defeat copy protection. But this is the most frightening thing of the DMCA: if a device has the CAPABILITY of circumventing ANY copy prevention or encryption system, it is in violation of the DMCA. The actual use or intended use of the product is not the issue. Look at it this way: A hammer is a tool. A hammer can also be a deadly weapon. Instead of punishing those who use the hammer to kill, the hammer itself would be outlawed.

This is true too but the key protection is designed to stop multiple keys from playing on BATTLE.NET, not 3rd party servers which are NOT BATTLE.NET. The key system was not designed to stop people from playing multiplayer games. You can play multiplayer via LAN or direct TCP/IP without key checking. You can use IRC to basically accomplish the same thing.

Re:The point

[Electrum]

Actually, in order to use it, yo DO have to apply a crack to the game. You have to add entries for the bnetd servers into the gateway list. It's a fairly straightforward one, but it is a crack nonetheless. I don't believe you can get it to work without using that crack.

You don't have to crack it. You merely change the server IP's in the registry. Is Registry Editor now in violation of the DMCA?

You might be pissed but...

[BLKMGK]

You'd be $hit out of luck IMHO. If you build a networking protocol that only allows certain computers or clients to talk to one another and someone decides they want to do the same thing by reverse engineering yours you've got no leg to stand on. Unless there was some sort of copy protection (DMCA SUX!) in it that they had to crack then Sorry Charlie.

In this case it would seem that Blizzard feels that they DID have some sort of copy protection and that this software went around it - that's not so. What Blizzard HAD was a FEATURE in their server software that performed the JOB of checking for legit copies. While that could be construed as some sort of "copy protection" these guys did NOT crack it. They did NOT infringe - they simply chose not to include that feature. And for this Blizzard is unhappy? Would they have been happier if these guys had cracked their feature and implemented it? I think not...

The scenario of the early IBM BIOS has ben brought up before and I believe it's a VERY good parallel. IBM tried to take Phoenix and others to court for creating a "clone" BIOS years ago. However these folks were smart enough to have created a "clean room" implementation of the IBM BIOS. They simply (cough) created two teams - one to examine the original BIOS completely and the other to create a version of it without ever seeing the real original code. They were able to ask questions about timings and what occured when certain signals were injected into the "black box" - the results of those questions influenced their coding. When done they had code that did the same JOB as the original firmware but one that didn't actually the same CODE.

IBM lost their case - as Blizzard should surely lose theirs. These programmers never had access to Blizzard's original works - how could they possibly have infringed? IMO this is pretty cut and dry. Unless these people have included portions of the Blizzard binary or other "works" in their code they have no leg to stand on. Saddest of all is that these people are FANS of Blizzard's work and they are being stupid enough to alienate them. Duh!

Personally, I'm happiest with clients like iD has created (Quake etc.). Yeah, they rely on a "master server" but they don't require you to go through their "portal" to get the information you want. For that matter iD releases SOURCE of older games - they're VERY friendly to their fans and I buy their products as a result. Tribes and others have used this model too - it's nice though I don't think they release source. The GameSpy software sprung from this and I think it's terrific when a 3rd party can concentrate on a niche like that. Enter Blizzard... I don't know how different the Blizzard model is but if it's "broken" enough for people to work to code their own then they've got problems that need to be addressed by something other than a lawsuit against their fans. somehow I cannot imagine a company like iD doing this. Funny, I was considering buying one of their games too - glad I DL'ed the server code before it got zapped :-) Not that I'm o sure I want to deal with Blizzard after this mind you....

YHBT. YHL. HAND.

[Anonymous Coward]

Geez, you'd think with such a low uid you would have learned to spot them by now.

Re:YHBT. YHL. HAND.

[barawn]

I respond to trolls. Actually, on this specific topic, I'm not sure all of them are trolls - they don't have the 'troll-ific' nature that they normally do.

I find it easier to organize my thoughts when someone gives me a starting point, so I tend to respond more than I 'original-post'.

Mods note that I know this is offtopic, that's why I struck the score +1 bonus myself. :)

(yah, my UID is low. Should be lower, too, but I thought registering was for weenies for the longest time. :) )

Excellent examples! Thanks.

[theonomist]

WITHOUT the ability to reverse engineer ... You wouldn't have two chipmakers competing in the x86 market

I'm all in favor of competition, naturally. I applaud IBM's continuing effort to market the obsolete and discredited PowerPC architecture. That, however, has nothing to do with, for example, AMD's ongoing criminal violation of intellectual property rights. Intel has made a massive investment in research and development. They have advanced the state of the art by decades, and all computer users benefit. It is right that Intel should reap the rewards for their work. It is not right that AMD should traipse in late in the game, with no R&D department of their own, manufacture cheap knockoffs in Taiwan, and make a fortune exploiting somebody else's innovations. This is called "dumping" and it is, under the wise and just laws of our nation, a criminal act.

As for "open source", there again we have poorly-paid (or entirely unpaid!) workers producing cheap imitative knockoffs of innovative products. This serves only to reduce the market value of real software, thereby snatching food from the stomachs of those who create real software. The avowed intent of the "free software" pirates is to reduce the market value of software.

...WINE is wrong, Bleem is wrong, hell, VMware is wrong.

That is correct. All of those are, in effect, criminal conspiracies to damage the economy by reducing or eliminating the natural rewards given by the free market to innovative and effective competitors.

...reverse engineering is legal...

WRONG. Intellectual property law has reached maturity in this country. Those who create valuable ideas are now guaranteed their right to retain full ownership and control of their own property under the terms of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.

Thanks for playing.

Re:Excellent examples! Thanks.

[barawn]

OK, for a moment I felt like responding, and disproving every point made in this post (you know, even as a troll, you could try to post, i dunno, real facts or something like that...) but nah.

Re:Excellent examples! Thanks.

[Anonymous Coward]

> WINE is wrong, Bleem is wrong, hell, VMware is
> wrong.
> All of those are, in effect, criminal conspiracies to damage the economy

VMWare and WINE is a criminal conspiracy? LOL... where do you come up with this.

Last I checked, VMWare is software which emulates PC hardware and WINE is an implementation of the Win32 API. How on earth do you get from there to "criminal conspiracies to damange the economy"...

+1 Korean Bashing

[Anonymous Coward]

Can't we all just get along...

Who has Responsibility?

[dschuetz]

I see a lot of people here commenting that if the open-source server simply did a check for CD keys or whatnot, that the case probably wouldn't have even been brought. That is, they're facilitiating piracy, so they must be shut down.

But I ask -- whose responsibility is it to ensure that the players are using a legitimate copy of the game? Should that be done at the network level, by the open-source game server, or at the client / cpu level, by the software that should have actually been paid for?

I say that the key-checking isn't anyone's responsibility but their own -- if you write software, and it doesn't check, then nobody else should be forced (or even expected) to do that job for you.

Look at it this way -- does HP have a responsibility to ensure that all users sending print jobs to its printers are doing so with properly licensed installations of Microsoft Office? 'cause that's about what the people here are asking for. There's no method for a printer to check whether a printjob came from a paid copy of Word, just as there's no way for bnet to check the validity of an incoming connection. Nor should there be.

They came up with a lousy copy protection / validation scheme. Too bad for them.

[note -- I admit that I'm not particurlarly versed on the specifics of this case, so if I zigged when I should have zagged up there, try to ignore that and focus on my argument, eh? thanks.. :) ]

Re:Who has Responsibility?

[Steveftoth]

Even if you didn't read the notices, that's fairly true.

Blizzard should not to have assumed that when playing on Battle.net you would always be talking to the actual Battle.net servers controled by Blizzard. They made an assumption that is not always going to be true.

On a side note, thinking about this battle.net thing, what if (in an alternate universe) Blizzard had gone bankrupt and the Battle.net service shut down? Without projects like bnetd, there would be no way to play these games multiplayer over the internet.

Re:Who has Responsibility?

[Sloppy]

But I ask -- whose responsibility is it to ensure that the players are using a legitimate copy of the game?

Nobody's. To legally place that responsibility upon anyone, legitimizes copy protection.

Copy protection is just a hack. It's a cheap way for publishers to avoid expending effort enforcing copyright. If it works for some of them, fine: let 'em try doing things that way. IMHO, it's a bad idea, but they should have the right to try it (for now -- but every time I see it abused, it makes me want to take away that right). Copy protection should never be legitimized or legally recognized or institutionalized. It should remain merely a hack. That's where DMCA went wrong.

Blizzard should deal with the copyright issue and sue the infringers, instead of thrusting new responsibilities upon other parties.

Re:Who has Responsibility?

[vicviper]

But I ask -- whose responsibility is it to ensure that the players are using a legitimate copy of the game? Should that be done at the network level, by the open-source game server, or at the client / cpu level, by the software that should have actually been paid for?

It should be the gamers responsibility to ensure that they are not using pirated software :). Their software *does* check for CD keys. This is a method by which they use to prevent piracy. bnetd circumvents this check allowing pirated copies to exist.

Look at it this way -- does HP have a responsibility to ensure that all users sending print jobs to its printers are doing so with properly licensed installations of Microsoft Office? 'cause that's about what the people here are asking for.

Not really. AFAIK, MS have software that does printing that authenicates that you are using non-pirated copies of office. This would be the same situation if MS had created a print server of some kind that checks registration, and HP had released an emulated version of that server that had allowed pirated copies of office to use it. This situation does not occur because MS does not use this sort of process to validate office (maybe XP and OfficeXP?)

They came up with a lousy copy protection / validation scheme. Too bad for them.

It's too bad that they have to deal with pirates using their software on bnetd. If Blizzard wins this based on the DMCA, it'd be too bad for bnetd that they created a product that violated the law.

Re:Who has Responsibility?

[Peyna]

what if (in an alternate universe) Blizzard had gone bankrupt and the Battle.net service shut down? Without projects like bnetd, there would be no way to play these games multiplayer over the internet.

What if Amoco went bankrupt and my illegal gasoline distribution center that pumps oil from their pipelines was shut down? Without my illegal gasoline distribution center, there would be no way to use Amoco fuels in your vehicles!

You're blaming the wrong party here buddy.

Re:Who has Responsibility?

[shadow303]

If blizzard went out of business, they wouldn't care that their product lost the best part of it's multiplayer experience since there wouldn't have any effect on their anticipated revenue. Once a company stops making money off of something, they don't care if it dies, they just don't want anybody else messing with it. Of course, some (most?) of the developers would probably like to see things continue, but they are too low on the company totem pole to make any difference in corporate policy.

Re:Who has Responsibility?

[Toddarooski]

They came up with a lousy copy protection / validation scheme. Too bad for them

You're right. Here's what Blizzard should do -- they should set up Warcraft III in such a way that it won't work until you "activate" it by calling Blizzard tech support when you first install it. But, if any hardware associated with that activation code changes too drastically (indicating the software might be installed on a second computer), you'll need to call Blizzard again to get another product activation code...

What?! Why is everybody looking at me? Was it something I said?

Re:Who has Responsibility?

[Steveftoth]

What about ROMs of old nintendo games? Nintendo doesn't make those games anymore, but they threaten most sites that distribute them.

The digital world is a strange one since copying is free.

Re:Who has Responsibility?

[Quixadhal]

Everyone seems to be distracted by all the details, so let me ask this question. For Blizzard, what is the difference between me playing a single-player game of Diablo II (legitimate or not), playing a LAN game of Diablo II with two copies (legitimate or not), playing an internet game using a third-party bnetd server (again, legitimate or not), and playing on the official Battle.Net?

Only in the last case am I using resources owned by Blizzard. In every other case, it make absolutely no difference to them... if they are concerned about CD-Key checks, then why doesn't it validate the CD-Key when I play single-player without being connected to the internet?

No, you can't have it both ways Blizzard. Either you write an actual REAL security system that doesn't rely on stupid hardware tricks (cd-based copy protection), or people will copy it.

The best copy protection in the world is a good product with a manual. Anyone remember Infocom??? They didn't need copy protection. People bought their games because they were fun and had packaging that added to the game (rather than throw-away boxes with pretty pictures). If you make a good product and DON'T PUNISH THE PEOPLE WHO PAY YOUR BILLS, I'll keep buying your games just like I have all your previous releases.

PS: As long as EULA's exist, a really simple way to protect a network game is to require a credit card number. Don't charge it, but if multiple logins are detected whose key matches the key which registered the card, start charging the card for violation fees...

Re:Who has Responsibility?

[Happy Monkey]

What about Exxon, BP, Shell, Texaco, etc? Are they illegal because they compete with Amoco?

Re:Who has Responsibility?

[Peyna]

As long as they aren't hijacking Amoco's tankers, I think they'll be alright.

Re:Who has Responsibility?

[Happy Monkey]

What if they use the same barrel design, teamster unions, cargo train companies, and nozzle manufacturer, so they can interface with the same end users and national transportation systems?

Re:Who has Responsibility?

[Peyna]

I think the analogy has been stretched beyond its capacity.

Is This Fight The Good Fight?

[EXTomar]

I do think Blizzard has mistepped here. You should fight "abuses" with technology not lawyers.

Regardless does the EFF really think this is something worth fighting over? IIRC, Warcraft 3 and Battle.net will have gone under major release/revisions and all of this will be moot. Why fight over something this transitory? I would would rather see the EFF tackle more serious issues like privacy issues than this...

So what is the underlying moral issue to fight for here?

Re:Is This Fight The Good Fight?

[kindbud]

Regardless does the EFF really think this is something worth fighting over?

No dude, this is nothing to worry about. Fair Use and all that rot is just a bunch of theoretical bunk the pointy-headed academics use to keep us all confused. Just do whatever Blizzard and Disney want, and you'll be fine.

And when American Standard gets around to joining the game, you can ask them for permission to shit, and it'll be all good.

Re:Is This Fight The Good Fight?

[Anonymous Coward]

A shutdown project isn't transitory. When Warcraft III is released will the takedown notice suddenly go away?

AMD's ongoing criminal violation

[Anonymous Coward]

Excellent troll! Thanks.

Bah, simpler argument

[Anonymous Coward]

Bnetd or not, Blizzard games are still protected by copyright, end of story.

Re:Bah, simpler argument

[barawn]

How does bnetd violate their copyright? They're emulating a server - it's just as justified as SAMBA is, or (as I've pointed out eight times already...) just as justified as Bleem is, as Bleemcast! is, as Connectix VGS is, or ANY emulator is.

Blizzard copyrighted their GAME. They did NOT copyright the protocol that their game uses to interact with Battle.Net, nor could they (at least, not without someone being able to do a clean-room reverse engineer).

God, suck it up, Blizzard. Blizzard didn't even come UP with the "Online Play" idea in the first place! Why the hell are they the only ones allowed to play?

Re:"Freedom" of thievery? No.

[Anonymous Coward]

"Item Two: Playable on TCP/IP network upto 8 Players (Requirements)"

Gee, last time I checked, the Internet used TCP/IP! Guess what type of network you're using when using bnetd??

Re:"Freedom" of thievery? No.

[Anonymous Coward]

retail chains gladly accept opened software packages

Who said anything about retail chains? "Stores" was the word.

iamsure@psychasia.com accepted that this is the case - if you don't believe it to be true you just haven't looked.

most stores

Ah, there we go. And you shouldn't have to get off your fat ass to find a store that serves you as the consumer best, you should just be ale to ignore all copyright because it isn't handed to you on a plate.

Re:"Freedom" of thievery? No.

[Anonymous Coward]

It's so wrong to want to play with my friends, on our OWN battle.net replacement, and still have "closed" characters? I mean, think about it. Playing Open battle.net and TCP/IP games means that everything is client-side, and as a result, hackable, trainable, and just plain not fun.

Enter bnetd. Bnetd lets me run my own battle.net replacement for me and my friends. It lets us avoid annoying PK's, it lets us avoid the characters being stored locally, it avoids the lag, the hacking, everything that battle.net has associated with it. Most importantly, it lets us play our characters from any computer because they are stored on the bnetd server.

And now, for an attack on your position:

there's no reason that 50 people can't either use LAN play mode or else all log into a private Battle.Net channel

50 players sharing a slow connection to an already lagged to hell battle.net server. I'll pass thanks. And I already mentioned why LAN play sucks, there's too much faith in the client.

Servers are the key to growth

[BadBlood]

Why doesn't Blizzard ask id why they allow home-grown servers to flourish, making the demand for their products skyrocket? Or Valve? Or Epic?

Re:Servers are the key to growth

[fireduck]

currently (5 pm EST), there are 133771 users on battle.net. on gamespy there are 101650. Blizzard's 6 games draw more online users than all of the FPS games offered by gamespy. I think Blizzard clearly understands how to make demand for their products skyrocket. Besides, EVERY Blizzard title released sets sales records. Diablo 2 set the record for most units initially shipped, at around 4 million (?).

maybe home-grown servers foster a better community, but they definitely don't beat the demand for Blizzard games (and remember, the majority of Blizzard gamers don't even play online).

I've just donated $65 USD to the EFF...

[wo1verin3]

... which I was going to use to purchase WarCraft III. This won't be happening, I'll be waiting for C&C Generals now

Re:"Freedom" of thievery? No.

[Anonymous Coward]

Stop whining.

Re:"Freedom" of thievery? No.

[Anonymous Coward]

It's a pity that this logic is beyond you.

Satisfying ONE requirement in a list of several does not mean that you satisfy ALL the requirements.

Re:"Freedom" of thievery? No.

[rusty0101]

First of all, I have not played on either server. However your argument strikes me as missing some points.

You point out that the servers provide matchmaking services only. Ok, I have seen similar arguments before. Other people are saying that play with the blizzard supported server is affected by a slow server, a server that is regularly hacked, a sserver that is buggy, etc. which they subsequently report is not a problem on the bnetd server. Could it be that what you see as trivial requirements on the part of the server are not as trivial as you think, and are not being met on the authorized server?

As a hint, the slowness being reported may very well be a result of a buggy server that has been hacked so that new or returning users have to spend an unusually long time waiting to connect to another player. The server may have been hacked so that players with unmodified games get linked up to players with modified games. The bugs could be preventing people from connecting with the server at all, making the server appear to be unreliable. All of this presumes that the server has been hacked, or is buggy, or is slow, or is unreliable. Since I have not played on it, I am not a good judge of the situation.

As for the CD-Key portion, let me see if I have this right. Playing this game stand alone does not require a CD-Key. If it did then a player would never get as far as requesting a connection to a server. This means that the CD-Key authentication is built into the server, not the game, or it is built into the part of the game that connects to the server. As people are currently able to play the game through a server that does not require a CD-Key, the authentication code must reside on servers that players have to have the CD-Key to play on.

So people setting up competing servers will need one of two things: access to the code that can validate CD-Keys, or access to a service provided by the game manufacturer which can provide authentication of CD-Keys. As the server does not already authenticate CD-Keys on it's own, I suspect that the code for authentication is propritary, and the game manufacturer is not going to make it available. Since there has been no complaint indicated that competing servers are not using an authentication service provided by the manufacturer, I can suppose that this does not exist either.

As there have already been at least three links to websites that will provide CD-Keys in responses to the article, it can reasonably be assumed that CD-Keys are no more proof of ownership than a copy of the upc, or the upc number.

From what I read, your arguments do not stand up.

Then again, it's only my opinion, I am happy with the prospect that I may be wrong.

-Rusty

Jury nullification of an unjust law

[yerricde]

The real point of contention is whether what they're doing is legal (or moral, though that's not relevant for the court case).

The judicial systems of the United Kingdom and United States (except Louisiana state law) are built on the common law. The common law has a concept of "jury nullification," which specifies that a jury may find the defendant not liable on grounds that the law is unjust. Want more info? Ask Google.

What the hell are you talking about?

[Anonymous Coward]

Listen, they wrote the game. It cost them money, and brainpower to develop the game, and when it was finalized, they chose to provide it to the world. And they provided it for a price, because after all, they had to pay for the programmers, and administration, and deployment and on-going maintaince.

OK, and can you tell us exactly what this has to do with ANYTHING?

What about Everquest, or Command and Conquer? Why has Vivendi not gone after these people? They're making products that people might use to entertain themselves! And since the makers of these other games don't give any money to Vivendi, then they're obviously stealing from them, right?

bnetd is an independant project. It does not take anything away from Vivendi or it's employees.

It's not about "not buying the game", it's about harrassment. Vivendi should not have the right to harrass innocent people.

Moron.

Re:Who modded this up ?? It's a troll !!

[NoMoreNicksLeft]

He could have just been playing Devil's Advocate, you know. It did generate alot of worthwhile discussion.

CVS is still up, mirror it !

[BigJim.fr]

Hail SourceForge ! Make sure that you have a .cvspass file (even if it is empty) in your home directory. Then execute the following commands :

cvs -d:pserver:anonymous@cvs.bnetd.sourceforge.net:/cv sroot/bnetd login

cvs -z3 -d:pserver:anonymous@cvs.bnetd.sourceforge.net:/cv sroot/bnetd co bnetd

And presto... You've got the latest CVS tree. Enjoy it while it last !

Did anyone ever think about CVS over Freenet ? Now would be a good time !

Re:CVS is still up, mirror it !

[BlackGriffen]

It asked for password, I did not have one. Pls post source to ftp or similar.

BlackGriffen

Re:CVS is still up, mirror it !

[Genyin]

you need to hit enter when it asks for password (so it feeds in a blank one)
Or did you try that?

Re:CVS is still up, mirror it !

[BlackGriffen]

Sshhhh! Don't you hit me with your technobabble and jargon! :D

thanx:)
BlackGriffen

Bnetd ok, but not ok

[Apreche]

I don't think that bnetd is a bad idea. I don't think the DMCA is good either. However, this one circumstance I have to side with "evil". Most of the time the DMCA only makes our lives difficult by taking away my fair use. However, in this one case it is preventing indirect software piracy. You see, to play blizzard games online you need to use battle.net. And battle.net run by blizzard keeps track of cd-keys and such, the same way half-life has wonids. Making another way to play blizzard games online isn't bad at all. Except for the fact that it allow people who have pirated blizzard's games to play them online, which they would not be able to do with only battle.net. Therefore bnetd is essentially a program that allows users to get by the copy protection on blizzard's games.

It's one thing to pirate music. The RIAA is an evil organization and I have no moral qualms about stealing from them. Blizzard is the only game developer to never ever make a crappy game. They almost made one crappy warcraft game, then they cancelled it. In fact not only are none of their games crappy, they are all smash hits, amazing, etc. I have moral qualms about stealing form blizzard, they deserve to get money for their software.

Why don't blizzard and bnetd team up to incorporate the copy protection into bnetd? Why doesn't blizzard write their own?

Re:Bnetd ok, but not ok

[Hrothgar The Great]

But why do you think that the product should not be made, even if some people want to use it legitimately? Do you own a VCR, CD Writer, Screwdriver? (with which you could take things apart to study how they work or even KILL someone!) Is it the tool maker's fault if the tool is used for illicit purposes? NO. According to almost ALL legal precedent in this area, if a tool has significant legal purposes, then it can not be outlawed simply because it is possible to use it illegally. Sorry.

Re:Bnetd ok, but not ok

[kindbud]

You see, to play blizzard games online you need to use battle.net.

Bnetd proves that you don't need battle.net to play Blizzard games.

Except for the fact that it allow people who have pirated blizzard's games to play them online, which they would not be able to do with only battle.net.

So fucking what? They can also play pirated games offline where there are no controls at all. Shall we outlaw offline play of Blizzard games because there is no CD Key checking?

Bnetd has many completely legal and ethical uses. It allows people who have bought the game to play it even if Blizzard decides to close up shop (which seems only a few months off, way things are going) or even if Blizzard's ISP is having technical difficulties. It also allows people to play in a controlled environment free of cheaters, something Blizzard has failed to provide.

It's also not strictly true that you can't play with illegitimate CD Keys on Battle.net. Keys are valid until Blizzard invalidates them. You could tell your friend your valid CD Key, and as long as neither of you are online at the same time, both of you can share the CD Key and play on Battle.net. So much for stopping piracy. Battle.net does not in fact, prevent piracy of Blizzard games. In fact, one could say that, like Bnetd, the primary purpose of Battle.net is not to prevent piracy, but to provide an online arena where players can meet each other and play. That it can have some effect on piracy is a secondary function. Bnetd tried to add this secondary function, but Blizzard refused to cooperate. So it was left out.

I have moral qualms about stealing form blizzard, they deserve to get money for their software.

What exactly has Bnetd stolen from Blizzard? Be specific. Name an item that Blizzard once possessed that they no longer possess because of Bnetd. If no one has lost anything, no theft has taken place.

It's one thing to pirate music. The RIAA is an evil organization and I have no moral qualms about stealing from them. ...I have moral qualms about stealing form blizzard, they deserve to get money for their software.

This is not morality, this is what some people derisively call situational ethics. Your "morals" amount to "I'll do what I please." Following your ethical compass, it's OK to pirate Blizzard's software if you think it or the company sucks. I'll think I'll pass on your theory of ethics.

Re:Bnetd ok, but not ok

[ChronosX]

I'm pleased to see that you support a company that has brought you so much joy over the years. Unfortunately I see your faith in Blizzard as being misguided.

Let's go over a couple of basic facts first.

(1) While Blizzard's games are of high quality, their battle.net service not. It is plagued by lag, cheaters, and other unsavory bits.

(2) Bnetd can be used to facilitate piracy, that was never its intended purpose. The developers even asked Blizzard if they could include the CD-Key checking into their software, but alas, Blizzard declined.

There is much more to this story than Blizzard wanting to prevent piracy of their product. If that were the case, Blizzard would have worked with the Bnetd people to create some sort of secure interface that would allow the program to validate cd-keys without giving up the precious secret algorithm that creates/validates them.

The questions you posted at the end of your message are very appropriate. Why didn't Blizzard work with Bnetd? The specter of piracy doesn't make sense. The world may never know the real reason...

Re:Bnetd ok, but not ok

[Anonymous Coward]

You are wrong on a few factual points but since they have been repeated in several dozen other posts I won't repeate them again.

What I will say is this: How is a case that involves NO copying somehow worse than one that involves fair use copying? Are you saying that the DMCA allows companies to control what other people do with their own time and money even if they aren't stealing or making circumvention tools? The DMCA doesn't even say that!

Re:Bnetd ok, but not ok

[JMZero]

There is much more to this story than Blizzard wanting to prevent piracy of their product. If that were the case, Blizzard would have worked with the Bnetd people to create some sort of secure interface that would allow the program to validate cd-keys without giving up the precious secret algorithm that creates/validates them.

What happens when people abuse this needfully high bandwidth interface in order to find legitimate CD keys?

Not saying Blizzard did everything right here, just saying that perhaps this isn't a trivial problem.

.

Re:Bnetd ok, but not ok

[mirabilos]

DMCA, DMCA, I can't bear it any more.

The battle.net(tm) protocol emulating servers
were written before the DMCA became law.
No backwards-punishing.

FSGS, as opposed to bnetd, is based in a country
without such a bad thing as you US DMCA.

Sign the petition

[drivers]

Please sign and spread the word about the Blizzard/DMCA petition.
http://www.petitiononline.com/blizdmca/

Your logic is ... not there

[Hrothgar The Great]

>What reason do they have to play nice and let
>bnetd do whatever they want? They certainly lose
>ad revenue if they do that, and they -
>potentially- lose more sales due to piracy

It's not up to them whether they should "let" people do things that are perfectly legal. It's not "playing nice" to respect the rights of other people; it's the way it has to be. Get all of the other fascists together and get this through your hard stone heads: Blizzard CAN NOT create legal policy; nor can any other corporation. They are not lawmakers; they can not decide to declare something illegal because it presses upon their revenue stream. They (and you) also need to realize that stretching the boundaries of an existing law while operating under the assumption that your legal opponents will not gather the funds needed to fight back is intolerable and does ABSOLUTELY NOT constitute fair defense of your property.

>I'd be mighty pissed, and rightly so.

No, not rightly so. It would suck because someone is COMPETING with you. Are you a capitalist or a dictator?

Re:Your logic is ... not there

[Anthony Boyd]

Blizzard CAN NOT create legal policy; nor can any other corporation. They are not lawmakers; they can not decide to declare something illegal because it presses upon their revenue stream.

Tell that to Disney & the RIAA, mmmmkay?

Re:"Freedom" of thievery? No.

[Edgewize]

Well well, rational discussion on Slashdot? I'm shocked :) Here is my reply.

Could it be that what you see as trivial requirements on the part of the server are not as trivial as you think, and are not being met on the authorized server?

Not in this case. I have examined my network traffic carefully, and gameplay is completely separate from the Battle.Net service. The only connection to Battle.Net remains idle until the game is over, and then it reports the outcome with a small status packet.

the slowness being reported may very well be a result of a buggy server that has been hacked so that new or returning users have to spend an unusually long time waiting to connect to another player. The server may have been hacked so that players with unmodified games get linked up to players with modified games. The bugs could be preventing people from connecting with the server at all, making the server appear to be unreliable.

Interesting idea, but I doubt that this is the case. Having followed Battle.Net's status carefully for several years, I can say that I have only seen the server's security compromised once, and that was for a Diablo II game server and not the Battle.Net chat service.

Connection issues with the server have previously been a major problem; I'll admit that up front. That said, many of the worst time periods were a result of DOS attacks, and the hosting ISPs for Battle.Net have really tightened up.

... CD-Key authentication is built into the server, not the game, or it is built into the part of the game that connects to the server.

No - there are two levels of CD-Key authentication. The game itself checks that the CD-Key is mathematically valid. The Battle.Net service also checks all its clients for uniqueness and for revoked keys - two things which cannot be checked in offline play.

So people setting up competing servers will need one of two things: access to the code that can validate CD-Keys, or access to a service provided by the game manufacturer which can provide authentication of CD-Keys.

Access to the code would be pointless because the strength of Battle.Net's authentication is in the uniqueness and revoked-key checks. Without the Battle.Net key database, these checks could not be performed.

Creating a key-oracle service would also be ineffective, because it would require that the connecting server accurately report usage data. A modified third-party server could simply bypass the oracle check, or else it could check the key but not mark it as 'in use' to block other clients from sharing it.

From what I read, your arguments do not stand up.

I hope I have strengthened them somewhat :)

Letter sent to Blizzard...

[Bonker]

To Whom it May Concern:

I have been purchasing and playing Blizzard games for about four years. I have enjoyed Blizzard titles like 'Diablo', 'Diablo II', 'Starcraft' and 'Starcraft: Broodwar'. I have spent hard-earned money on Blizzard titles and have spent countless hours playing them.

That said, I do not plan to purchase or play any more Blizzard titles. Why? Blizzard games has threatened legal action under the DMCA against the Bnetd project (http://www.bnetd.org/), an open source multiplayer system for games that use Blizzard's 'Battle Net' multiplayer system.

In press releases and news articles, Blizzard has indicated that it feels that because Bnetd will not and cannot check users for proper licensing that it contributes to piracy of Blizzard games.

Unfortunately, Bnetd is a small project run by volunteers who have no ability to hire expensive lawyers to defend themselves against Blizzard's claims, regardless of their merit. Blizzard software is effectively using their financial resources to silence and eliminate a possible competitor.

This practice is despicable. I don't associate with individuals who believe that this is an acceptable practice and I will not support a company who does so either.
Further, I will encourage everyone I know to stop supporting your company and to stop buying Blizzard games because of this reprehensible act. In effect, your 'anti-piracy' concerns have lost you a paying customer. I hope that the irony of this is not lost on money-conscious salespeople or executives.

Hopefully, Blizzard games will realize that it is driving away in dependant developers, gamers, and other customers with this act and will with withdraw its legal threats against the Bnetd project. Hopefully, it will even issue a formal apology to the members of the Bnetd project. Until then, what I stated above remains in effect. You have lost me and everyone else I speak to on the matter as paying customers.

Re:Letter sent to Blizzard...

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh boo hoo! Poor Bonker! Fortunately for Blizzard your sphere of influence is about as large as one of the pimples on your repulsive, sallow face.

Re:Letter sent to Blizzard...

[mirabilos]

Once again... Two or three years ago I did this,
too. I'm not sure whether /. reported about, though.
(I think it was about the EULA/ToS changes)

Oh, and please don't forget FSGS (net-games.com)

Re:"Freedom" of thievery? No.

[Edgewize]

Well, you're intentions are good, but you've missed something important:

Bnetd does not clone game servers, only the peer matchmaking service.

Bnetd's 'closed game' support simply forwards the game to a modified 'open' server. It is no more secure than playing on open games.

And I have to ask, if you are playing with friends, why are you worried about people using hacks and trainers? That seems to be more of an issue with your friends than with the game.

How exactly...

[BLKMGK]

Does this differ from IBM suing Phoenix for reverse engineering the SOFTWARE in their BIOS? These people had NO access to the original source SERVER software - this was a black box reverse engineering job - simple as that. Does the DMCA prevent Reverse Engineering? If so I wonder where we would be without 3rd party BIOS implementations... For that matter Sony vs Bleem is a good example as well - they reversed how it worked, built server software of a sort and even SOLD it (the horror!). So, how exactly does this differ? There was a protection mechanism of sorts present, this is true, but instead of breaking it they simply failed to implement it. Where did they do wrong?

Re:How exactly...

[l33t j03]

The DMCA is in place now, so it does differ. The DMCA prevents reverse engineering, except under certain circumstances. As for where we would be without 3rd party BIOS: A) I don't know because your point is entirely speculative, B) That has no bearing on whether battle.net violated the DMCA.

A person or company that offers to the public a device (or software) that facilitates copyright violation is subject to legal action by the copyright holder. That is part of the DMCA, the standard that defines facilitating copyright violation is in US copyright law.

Once again, just because you people can't work out in your heads why something is illegal doesn't mean that it isn't. If you, with your infintessimal knowledge of the way businesses earn money and your left skewed politics, can't find the inured party, no one cares. Go back to rambling on about the newest kernel release.

Hello Monopoly

[Anonymous Coward]

It's just Blizzards way of eliminating the competion so they can start charging users for using Battlenet.

No leg to stand on

[dh003i]

Blizzard's case is weak and has no merits. They're trying to claim that the DMCA requires that developers, hardware manufacturers, etc., be forced to include recognition for anti-circumvention/copy-protection in their products, which it clearly DOES NOT. In fact, the DMCA explicitly states that no one has to recognize anyone elses copy-protection or anti-circumvention devices.

So its clear that this case is a flop for Blizzard. Aside from it being a flop, there's nothing wrong w/ bnet. They're creating a superior open sourced solution for customers who paid GOOD money for Blizzard's products and DESERVE better than a laggy, slow, sucky network. Furthermore, how exactly do you shut down an open-sourced project, since it need not have any center of development? The best they could do is shut down the server bnet's using...but that doesn't stop the software from being developed. Sure, they can get an injunction against distributing the software, like in the BULLSHIT DeCSS case...but as DeCSS showed, an injunction against distributing something which is free to distribute DOES NOT WORK. DeCSS is more widely available now than it was before the court cases banning it.

However, this case DOES illustrate the dangers of the SSSCA as proposed by that fuck Hollings (who ever said the Democratic Party was the party "for the people". The SSSCA will like the DMCA be unconstitutional if passed; there's some hope it won't pass, because there are some very powerful interests that don't want it to pass (namely, IBM). However, pass or not, its just another example of how this is really a plutocracy not a democracy. Professors, librarians, programmers, scholars, college students -- all of these people's concerns and interests were steam-rolled over in the passing of the DMCA. Whether or not the SSSCA is passed, the people who MATTER won't have their voices heard.

On another note, inspired by Sen. Hollings, here's my list of the top 10 people who should've been in the WTC when it collapsed:

1. Bill Clinton -- ex. Pres., #1 on the list for signing the DMCA into law. What a fuck.
2. Hollings -- #2 on the list for supporting a piece of legislation even worse than the DMCA (the SSSCA). Another wanker.
3. This one's a tie: Gary Wenig (President of Global Crossings) and Lawrence Whaley (President of Enron). These fucks got rich by selling stocks off of inside information while stock-holders got screwed.
4. Hillary Rosen -- President of the RIAA and one greedy bitch. Need I say moret han RIAA to explain my reasons here?
5. Jack Valentini -- President of the MPAA, another greedy fuck. Likewise, need I say moret han MPAA?
6. Robert Holleyman -- President of the BSA, a real greedy fuck who also uses Gestapo tactics to force compliance. Need I say more?
7. Jerry Falwell -- he thinks the purple teletubby is gay, and he thinks that 9/11 is punishment delivered to our nation for being sinful. Apparently, he'd prefer we bring back the inquisition, start torturing homosexuals, burning women at the stack for witch-craft, and throwing stones at Prostitutes.
8. Pat Robertson -- founder of the Christian Coalition. Christian Coalition to women: we own your uterus. CC to hoomsexuals: your evil and should all be converted. CC to prostitutes: your evil and need forgiveness or your going to hell. CC on witches: we need to stop spending money teaching evolution and use it to hunt down the Blair Witch.
9. Ingrid Newkirk -- president of PETA. According to these PETA fucks, animals are more important than people. A bunch of farmers in Ohio should go broke just so they can protect some fucking sucker-fish. Not only that, but we're all murderers because we eat meat. If these fucks like animals so much, how about they live with them?
10. Gary Condit -- need I say more?

Any suggestions for additional entries?

Re:No leg to stand on

[kindbud]

Any suggestions for additional entries?

Anyone who posts lists of people who should have been in the WTC.

Re:No leg to stand on

[EllF]

Reminds me of a little saying: "Hatred will never cease in this world by hating, but rather by not hating. This is an eternal truth."

Might ponder that one next time you're drawing up a list of people you wish had died in an act of violence and anger.

Re:No leg to stand on

[Anonymous Coward]

You're absolutely right. I'd rather they have been the subject of slow, deliberate torture than just one quick act of hatred and anger.

~~~

Re:No leg to stand on

[dh003i]

All I'm saying is that it'd have been better for the world if these 10 people were in the WTC, instead of 10 good, normal citizens.

If you could've had the 10 people on that list in the WTC, as opposed to 10 ordinary upstanding citizens, wouldn't you?

Re:No leg to stand on

[Amizell]

Wishing people were dead (regardless of their sins in your eyes) is very bad karma. alex

Re:No leg to stand on

[EllF]

I do not deign to judge such things, friend. It's my belief that all people are equally valuable: all people are equally worthless. Thankfully, I do not have to make decisions about the life and death of anyone.

"...all in Time."
--James O'Brien, This Time You've Gone Too Far

Re:No leg to stand on

[Anonymous Coward]

Replace this list with you and 9 others like you.

In that case the BnetD guys are in the clear

[BLKMGK]

And Blizzard should be going after the client side violators. In your example I see no infraction by the BnetD folks - all they did was provide software that clients CHOSE to use. Where's the problem? We should prosecute knife makers for murders too? That's an extreme example but can you follow the logic?

Wrong issue

[dachshund]

You bought a license to play a copy of a Blizzard game, and you are allowed to exercise that license according to the terms laid out by Blizzard.

Which is tough for the people who bought Blizzard games and use them with bnetd. But what the hell does it have to do with shutting down the bnetd project? I don't see any allegation that the bnetd folks broke licensing agreements.

Re:"Freedom" of thievery? No.

[dachshund]

If Bnetd would incorporate a key check that would prevent dupe keys, betas, and the no key at all folks, I would be suprised if Blizzard didn't drop their complaints.

It's Open Source. Any key check routine could be easily snipped out, which is why Blizzard is none too keen on the idea.

"Squash"

[Dr_LHA]

Why is it that Americans/Slashdotters keep saying "Squash" when what they really mean is "Quash"?

Re:"Squash"

[Anonymous Coward]

> Why is it that Americans/Slashdotters keep saying "Squash" when what they really mean is "Quash" [dictionary.com]?

Because Americans speak better American English than you do; from the Merriam-Webster online dictionary:

"Main Entry: squash
Pronunciation: 'skwäsh, 'skwosh
Function: verb
Etymology: Middle French esquasser, from (assumed) Vulgar Latin exquassare, from Latin ex- + quassare to shake -- more at QUASH
Date: 1565
transitive senses
1 : to press or beat into a pulp or a flat mass : CRUSH
2 : PUT DOWN, SUPPRESS
intransitive senses
1 : to flatten out under pressure or impact
2 : to proceed with a splashing or squelching sound
3 : SQUEEZE, PRESS
- squasher noun"

Re:"Squash"

[Dr_LHA]

OK. OED says for Squash: "To Quash" (3rd definition down). Can't give a link because it's a pay only site.

Still us English speakers (as opposed to American English) would always use "Quash" as it's meaning is unambigous.

Re:"Squash"

[lazn]

And it is tasty too.

:)

Re:"Squash"

[Anonymous Coward]

Why is it that Americans/Slashdotters keep saying "Squash" when what they really mean is "Quash"?

Because we actually mean "squash".

We know that "quash" is also correct, but we sometimes substitute "squash" when we're in a more whimsical mood. The word "squash" can convey the same basic meaning, but it also suggests a vivid physical image as well.

Essentially, it's a playful metaphor: We paint a verbal picture of someone stomping on a tomato ("squash") as a metaphor for someone stomping on our freedom of expression ("quash"). The lexical similarity of the two words adds another level of depth and richness to the metaphor.

Rest assured, we would use "quash" in serious writing. However, we might consider using "squash" if we were writing a cartoon caption, or a Slashdot comment.

Re:"Squash"

[stonecypher]

> Why is it that Americans/Slashdotters keep
> saying "Squash" when what they really mean
> is "Quash" [dictionary.com]?

My. How quaintly arrogant of you to suggest that because you do not use a word as slang in a particular format, it's wrong.

The phrase is used much in the way that one would describe what happens to an insect when stepped upon: it is squashed. Bugs in software picked the term up easily: when one kills a software bug, one makes a joke about it as an insect which was squashed. Language being the mutable thing that it is, that's gotten out into the wild.

Why is it that Britons insist on using a 'u' in colo(u)r, when the country with the most english speakers on earth doesn't?

(Just waiting for him to whine that English belongs to Britain and not America; then I'll be able to point out that I meant China.)

This ain't the king's english anymore, bub. Get over it. You lost control of the lexicon by not having enough kids. Now either go out and screw, or make up another language. It's squash. Get used to it.

Re:i can't cross the street???

[dzym]

No, you'd be prosecuted under the traffic laws for jaywalking.

*bzzt*

Try again.

Wait a Tick

[Vardamir]

I'm in high school and my dad owns a manufacturing company - so I can't get a job yet (though I'll probably be going to Rose-Hulman next year), though, being a conservative republican, I'm sure I'll find a good one at some point.

Thanks for the advice dipshit.

Re:Wait a Tick

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh well, there's some hope for you - you may yet grow up.

Until then shut your hippy fag mouth before it encounters the boot of reality.
A republican ought to understand that kind of choice.

Re:Wait a Tick

[Vardamir]

What choice; you didn't give me any. I don't particularly like hippies or fags, sorry. Are you saying that IBM, HP, etc. are composed mostly of hippies and fags?

Yes, I believe there is more hope for me than there ever was for you; but don't let that get you down - even republicans believe that everyone has a place in this world.

Check duplicates

[(trb001)]

Maybe I'm missing the point here, but couldn't they just add duplicate CD-key checking into bnetd? That's all that blizzard checks for, isn't it? You have to have a valid CD-key to play the game at all, single or multi-player, right?

I agree, the bnetd project isn't really getting around CD-keys since you have to have one to play the game, but I could see a problem where multiple people have the same key. If it's possible to check that key (which it may not be, depending on how it's encrypted/sent), that would make bnetd legal I think.

--trb

Re:Check duplicates

[Anonymous Coward]

Blizzard said in a phone conversation that that would not be enough and "was besides the point". Tim Jung (?) who owns the ISP in question posted that comment in either the original story or the followup. I don't feel like searching for it right now so you will have to yourself ;)

Re:Check duplicates

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem is that there exist more potential cd-keys than actual valid cd-keys. It is quite easy to download a starcraft cd-key generator off the internet, and use it to install starcraft. The cdkeys are generated using a complex mathematical algorithm. Starcraft's installer, and other blizzard games, contain code which checks to make sure that a user's key was generated using such an algorithm. However, only a relatively small portion of the keys that could be created by such a generator are actually valid, i.e., blizzard has a list of cdkeys which were generated by the algorithm, and has approved only a couple million or so for online play. The check to see if the cd-key is valid or not is done when connecting to battle.net. The check obviously cannot be done upon install, or else someone would be able to crack the starcraft code and discover all possible valid cdkeys.

Duplicate cd-key checking on bnetd would not be able to check for invalid keys, it could only check that the keys followed the formula, and that no one else was using the same key.

Re:Check duplicates

[mirabilos]

It was especially unavailable in pure-LAN situations.
And if, it would gibe blizzard usage facilities,
and maybe they even demanded bnetd giving them the IP
address of a user trying to auth with an invalid,
duplicate (over all instances of b.net-compatibles)
or whatever key.
No for me. man Datenschutzgesetz.

BnedD doesn't help pirating the Blizzard Game

[Anonymous Coward]

Any pirated game must be pirated before it can run on a BnetD server. Otherwise, that game won't even run because of the game's anti-piracy protection. Right?

Then, the party who is responsible for the piracy is the creator of the crack. Why is BnetD project responsible for something they didn't do?

CD-Key checking is a means for battle.net to decide whether the user is entitled for the use of the service. Why BnedD is required to do the same thing when BnetD like to provide the service to anyone who choose to use?

The logics of the law suit seems really strange here.

Re:BnedD doesn't help pirating the Blizzard Game

[mirabilos]

No, your premise is wrong. No crack is necessary
in order to get, say Diablo, connecting to a bnetd.

Conspiricy Theory

[thepler]

What if Blizzard is just doing this for the publicity? I'll admit that I went back and played StarCraft a few times after I saw this story first show up on /. It's just another was of getting people hyped up for the forthcoming release of wc3. Every time this story makes the front page of /., lots of people think "oh yeah, when is wc3 gunna come out"

Re:Conspiricy Theory

[Anonynnous Coward]

What if Blizzard is just doing this for the publicity?

That would prove that they have the stupidest PR flacks in the universe. Maybe Adobe had Sklyarov taken away in chains to drum up publicity for eBooks, too.

Massive backfire

[ChaosDiscordSimple]

"There is no such thing as bad publicity."

Prior to this incident, my Diablo II addicted friends all played on Battlenet. They disliked Battlenet and complained about it frequently, but they weren't aware of any real alternatives.

Yesterday these same friends were giving each other tips on setting up bnetd servers.

I think Blizzard/Vivendia misjudged their customers.

Re:Massive backfire

[Anonynnous Coward]

Hell, I've never played one of their little games in my life. And now I'm sharing the WC3 ISO with the patched bnetd server on three filesharing services, just because I want to see the bastards die. I can't imagine how pissed I'd be if I had actually given them money in the past.

Re:Massive backfire

[mirabilos]

Or FSGS servers, although I liked the bnetd ones
more (cheaper in ressources).
FSGS was more configurable, though, and legally
safe because originated in Europe (mostly Germany).
I have latest bnetd from BSD Ports, but not FSGS
(it was yet down).
But there (net-games.com) can you/were you able to
find very good argumentation about alternative
servers being legal.

Re:Massive backfire

[SQLz]

Yeah, I didn't even consider running bnetd until this crap. I have 6 servers running now.

Re:What a terrible approach to build game interest

[zaffir]

The deal with BNetD, that has already been stated, is that it allowed people to used pirated software, and blizz refused to give out its keycheck algorithm. They are within their rights to do that.

The reason BNetD has a chance is that Blizz could EASILY have the game do its keycheck algorithm to the main b.net server, and then allow the game to connect to a server of the user's choosing.

The only problem is that keeping several people from using the same key at once is harder. Maybe they could implement something like won.net has with half-life and CS?

Yes it is a good fight.

[LordZardoz]

Blizzard is in a very nasty situation right now. They want to be able to expire the beta, and then launch WC3. Bnetd prevents them from expiring their beta. If Blizzard delayed WC3 so that they could develop a method for validity checking, the customers would very likely turn to using a Cracked Beta on bnetd.

Blizzard cannot afford to delay launching WC3, and they cannot afford to let the beta software remain active. If it were possible, I would take the Beta users who let their discs get copied for use on Bnetd to court and try to get them some jail time.

In the end however, the current business model is not really viable with current technology. But for the moment, there is not much to be done about it.

END COMMUNICATION

Re:Yes it is a good fight.

[TheOnlyCoolTim]

Go onto IRC, dalnet channel #warcraft3. Ask how many people there plan on buying the full game when it comes out. The majority of responses will either be "Yes" or "No, I am boycotting Blizzard" (because of their use of the DMCA.

Going after the beta users who made ISOs isn't really an option because when I and everyone else hanging out on IRC don't have the slightest idea who made the ISO, I'm pretty sure Blizzard doesn't.

Tim

This has little to do with Blizzard.....

[ThomasMis]

Step back for a moment and look at the bigger picture...

This case will be about our rights as software engineers to reverse engineer a protocal. This is something we have all benefited from, something we all have to do in our jobs as software developers at one point or another. Let's change the players in this lawsuit. Would most of you change our opinions if this was let's say Microsoft sueing the SAMBA team? Please correct me if I'm off base here, but that's what this is the equivalent too. Just because Blizzard makes video games doesn't mean we as software developers shouldn't stick up for our right to fair use.

Re:i can't cross the street???

[DapperDan]

would != could

*bzzt*

Try again.

The whole point...

[sheyal]

is that offending and alienating honest people does Blizzard zero good. By viciously attacking bnetd, this is what Blizzard is doing (same thing with RIAA and MPAA).

Dishonest people will ALWAYS find ways to break the law. This BS is like saying, we'll stop larcenous thieves by hiring five thousand policeman and have them shoot on sight anyone wearing all black and/or ski masks.

It won't stop dishonest people from breaking the law (much as the death penalty does not stop people from murdering in cold blood). All it does is strips the freedoms of HONEST people and pisses everyone off.

That's the main point, not the fact that Blizzard is trying to protect its software, but the fact that they throw lawyers at a problem that can never be solved, unless you sell your product to NOBODY, or you enslave the population of the planet and keep everyone in jail cells (and guess which one Blizzard would do first).

Ciao!

Re:The whole point...

[TeraCo]

It won't stop dishonest people from breaking the law (much as the death penalty does not stop people from murdering in cold blood). All it does is strips the freedoms of HONEST people and pisses everyone off.

Ah, but one of the benefits of the death penalty is not deterrance, but the fact that the killer can't do it again. It is similar in this case, they might not be able to stop all of the copies out there, but they'll certainly be able to stop new copies being distributed [at least publically]

So what?

[sheyal]

Who cares if bnetd makes it easier for people to use pirated software??? AOL made it EASY to pirate software, so why didn't they get shut down? Same with usenet.

This whole illogical argument was used to dethrone Napster and it has no intelligence behind it whatsoever.

Just because I run a service on which illegal things CAN be done, means I should be shut down??? Huh??

That means we have to strip away every person's freedom's because, god knows, every person is a possible CRIMINAL. Since any one could be a criminal, the only solution is to lock them all away!

That's RIAA/MPAA's solution and it looks like Blizzard's solution too.

Ciao!

Re:"Freedom" of thievery? No.

[mirabilos]

Hehe... exactly what I read on FSGS (net-games.com)
three years ago when I started playing starcraft.
I used to play on FSGS with a guy from Chile ;)

It's perfectly legal, especially here in Germany,
but they took it down anyways.
So I get with my bnetd mirror (BSD ports).

Re: Amazing!

[Anonymous Coward]

A post that actually made sense logically and actually got the facts right! It's about time :)

Re:"Freedom" of thievery? No.

[mirabilos]

- LAN without decent Internet connection
(just TOO frequent here in Europe)
- LAN without IPX ability

Re:"Freedom" of thievery? No.

[mirabilos]

You could anyways never play on the official
battle.net(tm).

Or, as me, have gotten your battle.net(tm)
account BEFORE the EULA/ToS changed. Starcraft
1.03, those were times...

Yes. It does. (in a way)

[sheyal]

Section 1201(a). Did a thesis on it for my telecom degree.

It's a piece of shit. It says that even if you BUY something, you canNOT take it apart and reverse engineer it TO GET AROUND COPY PROTECTION (otherwise it's questionable).

Remember those mod chips for PS1's that allowed you to play copied CD's? Outlawed by the DMCA. Although it is MY PS1 and MY mod chip that someone else made, it is illegal.

Pretty shitty, eh?

That's the DMCA for you. It makes illegal not only the act of piracy but anything that could be conducive to a FUTURE act of piracy.

That is what the SSSCA is all about too. Only then, it's not only illegal to have a situation conducive to FUTURE piracy... It will be illegal to have NOT have a federally regulated watchdog (hardware or software) ensures you don't have a situation conducive to piracy.

Yes. That IS what the DMCA and SSSCA say. No, this isn't a nightmare... It is real life and it is YOUR government (and mine) that is doing this.

Ciao!

close...

[jslag]

Valve and Sierra are involved with Half-Life and CounterStrike. I believe that Valve developed the game for Sierra.

Valve is responsible for Half-Life, yes, but Counterstrike started as a mod, with all content created for fun by some random guys.

Re:What a terrible approach to build game interest

[zeno_2]

I dont know much about this, but it was mentioned many times that Kali works with Blizzard, they got some sort of license for hosting blizzard games...

Was it maybe that bnetd did not want to pay for a license? If they would have, would they have the cd-check built into bnetd?

Does anyone know if Kali does cdchecks? Can you play d2 or any of the other blizzard games that use cdchecks on kali?

Re:"Freedom" of thievery? No.

[sheyal]

I wonder why (really). More kids warezing the beta means a whole TON of people ready to buy the game when it is released.

I saw the beta and I would have dropped $50 on WCIII in a heartbeat.

Now, with their asswipe suit, I dunno...

It seems like a BAD business move by Blizzard. They may say that they can't allow people to steal their stuff, but that woulda happened ANYWAYS. Now all they did is got a whole bunch of people pissed at them.

Ciao!

Whatever...

[sheyal]

So should I drive to Philidelphia to find this ONE store that supposedly exists, to buy a copy of WCIII (I live in Denver) and drive back a week later to return it for another game?

I have yet to see a store that would allow you to return anything opened for a different title. It's even worse, they'll only allow you ONE WEEK to even do that, otherwise you are SOL. (I brought back a copy of the POS known as Deus Ex, great game but buggy as hell, EIGHT DAYS after I bought it only to be told by the Software Etc. manager/witch that I was SOL. I HAD been a regular customer of theirs for 14 years. No longer.)

The fact is 99% of stores don't offer refunds or returns for different titles. And that means that it is NOT a customer choice, by most legal definitions.

Anywho...

Ciao!

Re:Whatever...

[Anonymous Coward]

You're the consumer and you made a choice. You didn't ask the return policy before opening your wallet? Stupid! You knew the policy but kept it for longer than the period you knew you were limited to? Even more stupid!

Your CHOICE is whether or not to hand over your money. If nobody is offering the deal you want are you forced to choose one? Wah wah, wanna play game!

Re:Missing the Point (Still)

[RA]

Not at all. It involves changing a registry setting that specifies what server the client connects to. That's no more modifying the client than changing my default home page is modifying Internet Explorer.

RA

Re:AMISH VIRUS!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

This was not remotely funny when the clueless were passing it around in e-mail, and it's even less funny on slashdot.

Wow...

[sheyal]

A perfect example of total and complete lack of critical thought. Congratulations.

Did it ever occur to you that this country exists today how it is BECAUSE of innovation.

If it were up to you, Alex Bell should have been thrown in jail for infringing on Elisha Grey's inventions, to name ONE example.

The computer industry would have gotten NOWHERE (because IBM would have claimed all rights and sat there with them, just like AT&T did for a century, why in hell would they wnat to innovate or license if they could just filibuster and make millions?).

The telecom industry would have been flatlined, and consumers would be bound and chained to businesses, because they couldn't even take their toasters apart without getting slapped with a lawsuit (this is under your dictatorship regime).

The idea that the DMCA is intellectual "maturity" and that stifling and crushing innovation except for the one bozo who owns a 'patent' is what will kill this country's R&D and technological advancement.

Jesus. I know you can't help but be comepletely fundamentalist here, but sheesh!

Ciao!

Re:"Freedom" of thievery? No.

[Anonymous Coward]

> Item One: Playable on Battle.Net (Logo)
> Item Two: Playable on TCP/IP network upto 8 Players (Requirements)
> Item Three: Battle.Net reqired low latency Internet connection (Requirements continued)

Right, thats "PlayABLE on Battle.Net". It does not say "not playable on anything other than Battle.Net". Big difference.

Re:What a terrible approach to build game interest

[AHumbleOpinion]

Does anyone know if Kali does cdchecks? Can you play d2 or any of the other blizzard games that use cdchecks on kali?

IIRC Kali was for playing Warcraft II IPX-based LAN games over TCP/IP, this was all before Battle.net even existed, before Blizzard used cd-keys, back when games were MS-DOS based, ...

Apology

[Hrothgar The Great]

I've re-read my previous comment and I was obviously a tremendous dick. I apologize. My factually supported position on the matter (i don't know about unemotional) is that bnetd legally (in my opinion) reverse engineered a network protocol, which does in my mind enable them to write interoperable software. There has been much debate over whether there is any interoperability, since the reverse engineered software (battle.net) never interacts directly with bnetd. This has merit; however, it is extremely similar to other open source software derived from commercial protocols; i.e. Samba, WINE, etc. People seem very willing to support their development while at the same time unwilling to see how bnetd might be extremely similar, as it provides a third party competitive product utilizing non-copyrighted information (battle.net protocol).

It also must be protected because it is in fact a legal, competitive product. Even if it undercuts battle.net, which has not been conclusively proven, it has a right to compete if it wishes to. Whether it is given away for free or not is irrelevant. If Bob sets up a lemonade stand and sells lemonade for 25 cents a glass, and I set up across the street and give it away, I am a jerk; but a constitutionally protected jerk (though I may fall under anticompetition laws for undercutting his price - this does not apply to bnetd since battle.net charges no fees).

Once again, I apologize for acting like an ass. I get emotional myself at times.

Re:Apology

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually I think you were not an ass; Henceforth you will be known as "Hrothgar the knob-jockey".

Id's business is not to sell games ...

[AHumbleOpinion]

Id's business is not to just sell games, a large part of their business model is to sell licenses to their 3d engines. Their games are in part advertisements/working-examples for their 3d engines. This is why they are loose wrt to piracy, this is why they have high system requirement, why they can support OSs that do not make business sense (id's phrasing not mine), etc.

And Sony vs Bleem!?

[BLKMGK]

Address that. Was the DMCA not in effect? How is what Sony charged different?

Frankly, legal or not it sux. I'm more than willing to violate those laws that are just plain crap. I will support the EFF and I will continue to try and educate those folks I meet who don't understand why the DMCA needs to be dumped. Kripes the damned thing contains a clause protecting BOAT HULL DESIGN! Add this new SSSCA pile and the protections that Disney and friends purchased. I'm more than happy to boycott, vote, and support while violating. Honestly though the list of companies screwing us is getting to long and entangled that it's mighty hard to keep track of them all (sigh).

Re:"Freedom" of thievery? No.

[Anonymous Coward]

Heh, and I got modded up! When I was factually incorrect too!

Damn I love /.

FPS and Strat are different worlds

[AHumbleOpinion]

(1) Blizzard has already demonstrated a greater ability to make demand skyrocket, ex. Starcraft and Diablo II.

(2) First person shooters and Strategy games are in two different worlds with different needs. I.e. FPS had no other choice.

(3) You don't understand Id's business model. Retail sales are not their only interest, licenseing their 3D engine can be much more lucrative. Their games are advertisement, proof the engine works, etc. Some of the other examples you cite are also in the engine license business.

Things are far more complicated than you realize.

YHBT! YHL! HAND!

[Anonymous Coward]

Stop feeding the troll please, he's fat enough as it is.

Open Betas...

[KillboyPHD]

DMCA, EFF, win or lose, what it comes down to is this:

This is the last time you'll see Blizzard do a public beta of any of their products.

And that's a damned shame.

Re:Open Betas...

[Anonynnous Coward]

Hopefully, it'll be the last Blizzard product we see, period. The DMCA-toting jackbooted bastards need to go under.

Re:Open Betas...

[ShadowDrgn]

Could be the reason they've created the Blizzard friends list. It's a good idea anyway: let the best beta testers come back for each beta. I figured they'd combine that list with another random pool of people and do the same thing again - effectively generating a bigger and better friends list each time. They have to do a public (or at least semi-public) beta for World of Warcraft though, unless they want to release a buggy, unbalanced, cheatfest for a game.

I don't really see why Blizzard cares about extra people playing their beta. The only people spending the time to download the ISO and set up servers for friends are the same people that will be the first in the store buying the game when it's released. Other people won't go to so much trouble to get their hands on a beta; Blizzard is just pissing off their biggest fans by cracking down on this.

Re:Who modded this up ?? It's a troll !!

[AftanGustur]

He could have just been playing Devil's Advocate, you know. It did generate alot of worthwhile discussion.

Even if he/she was playing Devil's Advocate it's still a troll.

It's a troll when you take 1 extreme side to the extreeme end and don't even mention that there is another side on the matter.

Flaw in your argument

[Anonymous Coward]

There is no such thing as karma. Even on /. it is a figment of Malda's imagination & has no value.

Re:Flaw in your argument

[mirabilos]

No, karma exists.
Read Steiner's book "Theosophie" about some of
it, and more can be found in the "Geheimwissenschaft".

I am sure your favourite bookstore will have a
translation. They are pocket books No. 601 and 615.

Re:Flaw in your argument

[Amizell]

Do some things you know are wrong and observe the outcome. This is karma.

It doesn't matter what you "English" speakers use

[Anonymous Coward]

You live in a 3rd world neofascist shit hole.

bnetd

[Anonymous Coward]

And I quote:
Somebody call for an exterminator?

Thanks but no.

[Vardamir]

And what the fuck are you talking about? In what ways am I stupid. If Bnetd was closed source, we both know that it probably wouldn't have been attacked.

Re:Who modded this up ?? It's a troll !!

[NoMoreNicksLeft]

That's hardly fair, or preferable. If you beat everyone back down, anytime they take an extreme position, you end up with no one expressing an opinion at all, just a bunch of "me too's". It would make for a boring slashdot. Besides, this guy is only a troll because I suspect he didn't believe this, he was just saying what he calculated would get a flame war going. I've been moderated as a troll, even when I didn't qualify that way. I believe we would be really lucky, if we got one or two such trolls per story... it really does help to spur conversation along.

Re:What a terrible approach to build game interest

[Paradise Pete]

The deal with BNetD, that has already been stated, is that it allowed people to use pirated software

I don't see how that can possibly be their responsibility. They are not running the pirated program - all they are doing is dealing with the output of that program. If I write a program that does something with Excel files do I have to figure out if the Excel was a legitimate copy? Does a printer have to check the validity of Word before printing? Does my FTP server have to check the client?

They get messages from a program. They send messages back. That's all they do.

Re:"Freedom" of thievery? No.

[Edgewize]

Latest patches for Blizzard games support TCP/UDP play on LAN, no IPX required.

How to dissuade Blizzard

[Performer Guy]

There is one way to get back at Blizzard for this. Don't buy Warcraft III. It's tough for some I know, but that's what you've got to do. If buying a game from someone means selling your freedoms then don't buy it. I like that the EFF has gotten involved, but unless there's some associated pain for this Blizzard will keep pulling stunts like this in future, and in the mean time the courgts offer insufficient protection for the digital rights of consumers.

Just say no to WC III.

Seems Like we have some vivendi employees here.

[dinkle123]

Hmm one day the board is completely against vivendi.. today everyone wants to support the evil blizzard corp... seems odd.

Re:"Freedom" of thievery? No.

[scot4875]

First: Mod me down -- I'm on Blizzard's side.

Blizzard can provide a very simple network request scheme to allow the Bnetd server to challeneg the cd-key.

It doesn't take much creative thinking to see how this would be exceptionally *bad* for Blizzard's paying customers.

Blizzard allows bnetd to check CD keys. Great. bnetd is open source. Great. Anyone can grab the CD key checking code. Not quite so great... Anyone could modify the code to just check hundreds/thousands/ALL CD keys, and spit out a list of which ones work. Yeah, defninitely not great.

Finally: I attempt to log in to Battle.Net with my new copy of WC3 and my CD key is already taken by someone that stole it because they had access to a utility that was written before the game even hit the shelves. Screw that.

Yeah, in an ideal world, Blizzard could just let bnetd have access to all of bnet's services. Obviously, we don't live in an ideal world. But everyone makes these "ideal world" arguments anyway.

In an ideal world, all of our doors would be unlocked. Are yours?

--Jeremy

Calling in lawyers is a sign

[nyet]

If it is one thing all these cases seem to indicate it is that corporations are levering the law to prop up a faulty business model.

Blizzard should NOT be marketing their game as a shrink wrap product you buy at a store (like a toaster, or a pork loin) but rather as a SERVICE like EverQuest, WarBirds, Anarchy Online, Ultima Online, Dark Age of Camelot, etc.

Why? Let's look at the competition. battle.net provides a service to people wishing to meet online and play Blizzard's games. bnetd does the same.

However, each cost money to run. Bandwidth to start, not to mention tech support, customer service, etc.

How is bnetd competing? At a loss, because presumably their overhead is low. They are on a limited connect. They don't have 24 service. They don't provide referees, or administered ladders, or tournaments etc.

So add VALUE to battle.net. Provide a reason for users to connect to battle.net rather than bnetd. Recoup your investment there, and forget about "selling" the game as a product. Charge for ISO downloads (providing enough bandwidth to allow people to download 700Megs at a time is NOT cheap). Allow pirates to do your work for them. *THEY* are providing Blizzard a service *FOR FREE*. Online distribution through mirroring costs Blizzard nothing.

Sure, you can still charge for the CD in stores (charge what you want, $50, $30, whatever; MOST people can't afford to dload/burn an ISO anyway).

I really don't understand why this is so hard for PHBs to grasp. Distribution COSTS money; why are they so set on keeping a monopoly on a business model that is a loss?

Re:Calling in lawyers is a sign

[stonecypher]

> Blizzard should NOT be marketing their game as
> a shrink wrap product you buy at a store (like
> a toaster, or a pork loin) but rather as a
> SERVICE like EverQuest, WarBirds, Anarchy
> Online, Ultima Online, Dark Age of Camelot, etc.

Feces. I only play with local friends on LANs. I wouldn't buy an online-only game. In fact, I haven't: I have never owned any MMORPG, nor any of the similar things listed.

Why? Because I like to play games with my friends. If Blizzard limited their game to people who want to play against those they find at random on the 'net, they'd lose a lot of their gaming populace. It's teh right thing to do to allow the player to choose.

And before you tell me that I could get to my friends through battle.net, consider the a) unnessecary load on battle.net, b) the unnessecary extra time spent waiting for a connection, finding the room my friends are in, and getting the network connections, and c) that there's just no benefit at all to doing it that way.

Re:"Freedom" of thievery? No.

[mirabilos]

Which games?
Even then, I sometimes want to play SC 1.00
(not only the missions, but also multiplayer).

Public SC-1.08-Beta playing?

Anyways, on a different agrumentation layer you
still can't persuade me with this, although I
can live with this and even am happy about that.

(Can you include an URI?)

Re:What a terrible approach to build game interest

[Anonymous Coward]

You are dumb.

Simple solution

[TheOnlyCoolTim]

First program the client to directly check with Blizzard before it starts any multiplayer functionality whether on Battle.net or an alternative server. Then alternative server developers would have no responsibility to prevent piracy since checks would be done entirely between the Client and Blizzard Auth Servers. (Of course this will be hacked out of the client but you can't stop that...)

Then put a delay between the Authorization Requests for a single IP. For example if you made one request and it turned out bad (packet dropped or something), you have to wait five seconds before you can do another request, then a minute, then 10 minutes, then an hour, a day.... So you would end up being able to check very few CD Keys if you were trying a brute force attack.

Tim

Re:"Freedom" of thievery? No.

[TheOnlyCoolTim]

Actually, Blizzard's Bug Report Form doesn't require a valid Beta CD Key. I have made about 3 bug reports if I remember right.

Tim

Well ...

[Vardamir]

While pirating may be an application of BnetD, it is far from it's actual purpose - to be used on mostly private networks and among groups of friends who want to play their own games and control their own server. I doubt bnetd could ever anticipate to put a dent in Blizzard's profits through this side-affect.

Even so, there are better solutions than to completely shut down bnetd, such as making it illegal to publicly advertise an alternative bnetd server to the masses, which is different than playing with only a few people on a private server.

Re:It doesn't matter what you "English" speakers u

[Dr_LHA]

You live in a 3rd world neofascist shit hole.

I live in California - is that what you mean?

I don't blame Blizzard...

[Dark Nexus]

Can you really blame Blizzard for trying to protect what is SUPPOSED to be a PRIVATE beta test?

If it hadn't made things so easy to pirate the CLOSED beta (keep in mind, copyright law is a bit different there, since nobody has actually PAYED for the War3 beta), then this probably wouldn't have happened.

You can't really claim "fair use" when it comes to Warcraft III yet. And it's the War3 issue that's force this to happen. The CD Key issue is secondary, and just to give them a bit more legal ammunition.

No, the blame here isn't really on Blizzard (IMO), but on it's parent company (Vivendi), and the immorral programmers that added support to BNetD for a PRIVATE beta.

Note that the programmers I'm referring to aren't the people who are primarily responsible for the BNetD project, but the people behind Warforge. I could be wrong about the main BNetD people refusing to add War3 Beta support, but I can't check because the article previously posted here on /. seems to be currently inaccessible.

Re:I don't blame Blizzard...

[Anonymous Coward]

Has anyone here read the lawmeme analysis of the case? There was hardly sufficient legal grounds for the cease and desist order. What is clearly happening is a wealthy corporation with slimy lawyers are bullying the little guy around. Companies have used similar tactics to silence critics in the past. The average person cant afford to defend themself so this usually works. Hats off to the EFF

Re:What a terrible approach to build game interest

[cheese_wallet]

That is silly. Let's sue intel because their cpu's allow users to run pirated software.

Re:What a terrible approach to build game interest

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, same with the warez FTPs i visit, and the kazaa users we all download music and movies off of. They jsut respond to my messages for files. What's wrong with that?

Re:What a terrible approach to build game interest

[Anonymous Coward]

It doesn't matter if its silly or not - its Blizz's stance on the issue, and the reason for their suit.

Re:What a terrible approach to build game interest

[Paradise Pete]

Yeah, same with the warez FTPs i visit, and the kazaa users we all download music and movies off of. They jsut respond to my messages for files. What's wrong with that?

Nothing, as far as the maker of the FTP server is concerned. It's not the FTP server that's stealing, it's you.

Re:"Freedom" of thievery? No.

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, I guess we found the exception to the rule.

The end of the argument.

[CashCarSTAR]

I can connect to bnetd servers. I cannot connect to battle.net.

I do own a copy of starcraft.

Legitimate use that doesn't involve copying.

Go away.

Re:

[Hrothgar The Great]

Click Here!

Re:Who modded this up ?? It's a troll !!

[AftanGustur]

If you beat everyone back down, anytime they take an extreme position, you end up with no one expressing an opinion at all,

You forgot the second-half of the troll-requirement. "Without mentioning the other side at all".

In a normal logical discussion, people bring up the arguments of the other party. try to show why they are wrong and try to argue for their own belives. That's what a good discussion looks like.

Read over the guys comment.

He doesn't even try to argue about *why* he is right, he just *assumes* he is right and then uses that to criminalise those with different opinions.

Re:Who modded this up ?? It's a troll !!

[NoMoreNicksLeft]

I don't buy this as the troll requirement. For one, I've seen too many obvious trolls, where they do beat the qualification, if only barely. It's not the failure to debate properly (often times, you may not know the other sides arguments, how can you bring them up? Someone has to start). True trolls though, aren't arguing for something they believe, they're just arguing to piss people off. That's why it can be tough to determine trolldom, you can imagine at least 1 idiot out of 6 billion believing such crap.