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

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...

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.