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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."
There is a good Penny Arcade comix describing the situation (for thouse of you with short attention spa..)
- 03 -04&res=l
http://www.penny-arcade.com/view.php3?date=2002
agreed. same thing with AIM and how they are handling 3rd party clients. go Blizzard!
BilldaCat
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
BilldaCat
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.
-- Knowing too much can get you killed, but knowing who knows too much can make you rich.
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..
GPL'd web-based tradewars themed space game
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
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
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
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.
--It's Pimptastic!--
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.
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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.
GPL'd web-based tradewars themed space game
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?!?
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!}
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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
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.
//TODO: Think of witty sig statement
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
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
> 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?
GPL'd web-based tradewars themed space game
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.
- 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.
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.
echo '[q]sa[ln0=aln80~Psnlbx]16isb572CCB9AE9DB03273snlbxq' |dc
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..
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.
Please subscribe to see the more insightful version of th
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?
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?
Praying for the end of your wide-awake nightmare.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
Will I retire or break 10K?
He could have just been playing Devil's Advocate, you know. It did generate alot of worthwhile discussion.
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?
Hail SourceForge ! Make sure that you have a .cvspass file (even if it is empty) in your home directory. Then execute the following commands :
v sroot/bnetd login
v sroot/bnetd co bnetd
cvs -d:pserver:anonymous@cvs.bnetd.sourceforge.net:/c
cvs -z3 -d:pserver:anonymous@cvs.bnetd.sourceforge.net:/c
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 !
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?
The GeekNights podcast is going strong. Listen!
Please sign and spread the word about the Blizzard/DMCA petition.
http://www.petitiononline.com/blizdmca/
>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?
Well well, rational discussion on Slashdot? I'm shocked :) Here is my reply.
... 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.
:)
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.
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
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.
The next Slashdot story will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and slashdot the links early!
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.
Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former. (Einstein)
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?
Build it, Drive it, Improve it! Hybridz.org
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.)
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?
social sciences can never use experience to verify their statemen
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?
Build it, Drive it, Improve it! Hybridz.org
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.
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.
Please subscribe to see the more insightful version of th
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
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.
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?
The enemies of Democracy are
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.
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.
G. Washington on Government "it is force. Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master."
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
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.
Check out my podcast: DreamStation.cc Video Game Show
Valve is responsible for Half-Life, yes, but Counterstrike started as a mod, with all content created for fun by some random guys.
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.
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).
Build it, Drive it, Improve it! Hybridz.org
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.
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.
:) ). Using an unlicensed, cleanroom developed server can never be illegal, or you're eliminating fair competition.
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
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.
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.
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.
echo '[q]sa[ln0=aln80~Psnlbx]16isb572CCB9AE9DB03273snlbxq' |dc
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.
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.
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.
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?
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
Omnia vestra castrorum habetur nobis.
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
Omnia vestra castrorum habetur nobis.
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?
Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former. (Einstein)
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.
Click Here!
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.
echo '[q]sa[ln0=aln80~Psnlbx]16isb572CCB9AE9DB03273snlbxq' |dc
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.