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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."
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.
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.
-- Knowing too much can get you killed, but knowing who knows too much can make you rich.
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
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.
GPL'd web-based tradewars themed space game
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).
Cunning linguists
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?!?
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.
GPL'd web-based tradewars themed space game
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.
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.
:-) Not that I'm o sure I want to deal with Blizzard after this mind you....
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
Build it, Drive it, Improve it! Hybridz.org
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..
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).
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?
They laughed at Einstein. They laughed at the Wright Brothers. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown. -- C. Sagan
> 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?
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.
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?
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
>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?
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.
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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.
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
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
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.
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