Slashdot Mirror
Q&A With Vivendi Rep About Bnetd
Colin Winters writes "War3pub.net managed to get some answers out of a Vivendi rep about why they are suing BnetD and what they hope to accomplish. Worth a read to see how Vivendi/Blizzard is thinking about the whole thing. They believe that BnetD is going to profit sometime in the future, and want to stop them now. Kind of like arresting someone because they might get in a car accident 10 years down the road. "
We didn't have long, but here's what I could get. Turns out this fellow is actually above the people on this case, and did not know as much of the details as I had hoped. However, he provided us with some legal information which describes Vivendi's reasoning for the complaint against the BNetD project.
--------
P-T: what is your stance on making open source software illegal?
Vivendi Rep: If the open source code is being used by someone other than the creator for a profit, then it is illegal under the DMCA.
P-T: Why is Vivendi suing on the claims of making the BNetD software for money? It's open source, no one is making any money off of it.
Vivendi Rep: The basis upon this charge lies on the idea that BNetD will eventually begin using their software, that they did not create, in order to make a profit. Though they have not used it yet for a profit, Vivendi believes that they would have or will use it in the future for a profit.
P-T: Is use of DMCA and attacking bnetd simply a publicity stunt to hype up Warcraft 3 before it's release? Were the supposed losses due to piracy used to justify the increased prices (compared to Diablo 2 regular and collector's edition) of Warcraft 3 regular version (from $30 to $50) and collector's edition (from $50 to $80)?
Vivendi Rep: No. We feel as though the intellectual property of the Battle.net coders has been stolen by the BNetD project. As far as I know, there are no publicity aspects involved in the suit against BNetD. It is a legal issue that needs to be cleared up and this is the way that we can do that.
P-T: Did Blizzard/Vivendi ever consider purchasing bnetd and fsgs technology as a way to improve and lessen the load off their b.net servers?
Vivendi Rep: I don't know. It's a possibility.
P-T: What do you think about the attempted hiring of a successful cracker of the Warcraft III Beta by Blizzard?
Vivendi Rep: Hiring your largest threat is one easy way to get rid of the threat of piracy.
P-T: What positive outcomes (for the gaming community and product development) do they expect to achieve by pursuing the lawsuit?
Vivendi Rep: We feel the restrictions against the theft of intellectual property will be cleared up in this suit, and will lead to a more clear idea of what is and what isn't internet piracy for the general public. In general, Blizzard is being used as a "first time" suit for this kind of piracy, and we want the public to understand that what is going on with the BNetD project cannot be done without legal ramifications under the DMCA.
P-T: Do you feel that the huge number of pirated Blizzard games will hurt BNetD in the court cases?
Vivendi Rep: Yes. The fact that it is not only pirated server software but also pirated game software will do nothing but hurt BNetD in the courts.
--------
There it is. I feel as though I got a few good answers out of him, and I hope that this helps to answer any possible questions that you all might have. My impression is that Vivendi really doesn't know as much about the dirty details of the situation, and they are filing suit on a truly legal basis. Once again, I hope this helped, and I am hoping to get some answers from the same representative over email.
I think a lot of people are misunderstanding the purpose of the bnetd project. It is used to run a bnet server on your own box so that you and your friends can play on a private server. The project doesn't advocate the use of pirating software, that's just what some of the users do. A lot of people that actually bought the game use bnetd on their networks to play their friends.
Hope this clears up some confusion about the project.
It's simply this following dialogue in some form of another when such things like bnetd appear:
Corporation Exec: Project Foo is killing our profits, what can we do?
Lawyer: You can always kill it, send the [insert antipiracy group here], or make them unable to continue the project by making them spend all their money on fighting your company in court. Corporation Exec:Do it.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
On the one hand, we shouldn't get so worked up about this. I'm no lawyer, but from what I understand about copyright laws, trademark laws, and other related laws, is that acting fast is one of the most important things you can do. Whether or not Blizzard actually wants to, they need to act like they are concerned, or they could be throwing away any chance they have to actually make a case out of it in the future. On the other hand, we need to get more worked up about this. That people actually have this attitude about an Open Source project is a Bad Thing. People that aren't as knowledgable about what Open Source really is will take the few things they hear about this - or any other legal issue dealing with Open Source - and apply it to Open Source in general. And, of course, lawyers being lawyers, they will latch onto any misunderstanding they can in order to get judgements in their favor (and if they didn't, they're not very good lawyers).
If they are humans, they can have 2 clean-room reverse-engineering feats at level 1! =D
*ahem* on a more serious note:
Actually if the DMCA is invoked then the argument isn't that they copied Blizzard's stuff, or even reverse engineered it. Its because Blizzard does key-checking with their multiplayer games to make sure you bought a legitimate copy (or have a good key-gen) of their game. The bnetd version does not include this because they don't care about keychecking, they just want to play the game.
Blizzard will argue that this will invalidate their copyright protection (cd-keys) because people can now play multiplayer without buying a license (cd-key). And they're right.
bnetd will likely argue one of a few tracks:
a) cd-keys aren't effective copyright protection. I have a starcraft key-gen. Google knows of them...
b) that they have a clickthrough license agreement (do they? i dunno) that says "by downloading this source, I agree to only use it with legitimately purchased copies of Blizzard games." or some such.
In a legal sense I don't see bnetd have too much to argue about except that the DMCA sucks, and cd-keys suck, or cd-keys are not copyright protection as far as the DMCA is concerned.
Stupid Laws suck.
Not only that, but if you read the legal complaint that Vivendi filed against them, Vivendi actually claims that the bnetd people used their code, illegally of course. Last time I knew, listening to client/server communication packets wasn't illegal, and it's a far cry from source code. Reverse engineering software is not illegal. It kinda sounds like Vivendi is grasping at straws with most of this stuff. Note the DMCA claims that were later dropped when they realized, "Oh yeah, I guess they didn't break any circumvention."
--
Promoting critical thinking since 1994.
The whole profit thing is a sidetrack and not really the crux of the matter. The crux of the matter is where they think that BnetD uses their source code.
Story recap:
- BnetD reverse engineered the protocol (*not the code!*) used by Battle.Net.
- Using this, they created BnetD, which simply emulates battle.net. They entirely wrote their own code to do this.
- They went along just fine until the Warcraft3 beta was leaked.
- Being as the software was open source, someone else took BnetD, added support for the leaked beta, and created WarForge.
- BnetD gets the crap sued out of them.
So, where does profit come into this? Answer: it doesn't, it's some moron Vivendi rep trying to screw with your head.
BnetD does not use any of Battle.Net's source. It's a totally legal hack, reverse engineering the protocol. They didn't even need to analyse the source of the games themselves, just the protocol. Any fool with a sniffer can see the packets, after all. After that it's a matter of trial and error.
So, given that they didn't use any of the source code from any of Battle.Net's stuff.. It's perfectly legal for them to sell it and make a profit.
Of course, if you assume, like Vivendi appears to be doing, that they stole the code or that they are using their code, then yeah, BnetD would be in the shit. But they say they are not, I believe them (as I've analysed protocols before), and thus I think BnetD will win, assuming they can afford counsel.
- Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set him on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life.
That won't help. Blizzard's beef is with the very existence of bnetd, not the fact that it's open source.
The problem is that bnetd doesn't (in fact, can't) check the authenticity of the CD keys in use by the clients that connect to it - that allows people to pirate the games, hack out the CD key stuff (or use a distributed key), and then use bnetd to play multiplayer. It can't check the CD keys because Blizzard, understandably, won't give out their list of keys.
Supporting Transgaming won't help either, as this is the Battle.net server that has ben reverse engineered, not the client. The server isn't available to the general public, it's what Blizzard use to allow online multiplayer gaming. It's doubtful that Blizzard will make it available, either, as that would allow people to hack around or spoof the CD key authentication routines (if it dialled home) or extract the list of CD keys (if it shipped with them). Besides, there's no point, right? Blizzard already provide the service, for free. Never mind that battle.net is notoriously slow and buggy...
This is my solution, I'm sure my Open Source Supporting Community may end up flaming me,
So be it, I want games in linux.
Don't take my post as a flame; I want games under Linux too, but this issue has nothing to do with them.
So, they claim that bnetd is made of Blizzard's copyrighted code. This is complete bull. I asked Tim Jung (the defendant in this case) what he knew about this claim:
I am not even sure what they are talking about when they say we copied their code, since they don't explain it at all or in any details. We have never had access to their servers so there is no way for us to copy their server code. We also did not decompile the clients to get information that we needed either, everything was figured out and guessed at by looking at packet traces and packet dumps of the traffic.
You can see his entire response on my site: Boycott Blizzard. boycottblizzard.org
No. You don't get it. The whole point of bnetd is so that people can play Blizzard multiplayer games without connecting to Blizzard's server. bnetd doesn't have anything to do with playing Blizzard games on Linux.
And there is no reason for Transgaming to make a Linux version of Battle.net (or Battle.net client code). If Transgaming gets the Windows binaries of Blizzard games running under WineX, then those clients will be able to connect to Battle.net.
Then you're the idiot.
The code for BNetD is SERVER CODE. It has nothing to do with the games that are played. All the games are STILL Windows-based.
People would still connect to blizzards server!
Then who would care? The point here is NOT to connect to Blizzard's servers, but to be able to host our own.
Besides, your whole idea is based on the fact that Transgaming says they'd support battle.net. Who says Blizzard would agree to give them the information to do so anyway?
Anyway, what's the point then? I like the idea of BNetD because it means I can tweak the way things work in the games. If I want my item drops to be better, I can do it. If I want to make some of the enemies harder, I can do that too. If it's closed source, I may as well be using Blizzard's slow-as-hell servers.
Does bnetd include pirated code or not ? Read the excerpt above; Salon.com quotes Blizzard accusing the bnetd project of piracy, and then it quotes "bnetd developers", as if in response to that allegation specifically, and they don't deny it.
Have the lead bnetd developers ever denied that bnetd contains code stolen from Blizzard ? And even if they did deny it, how could we trust their statement ? Any contributor to bnetd who got his hands on Blizzard's source could have snuck it into bnetd, claiming it as his own work. Since nobody except Blizzard has seen Blizzard's source, how is anyone on the bnetd project to know whether bnetd includes code stolen from Blizzard ?
By backing bnetd in this the EFF is setting itself up to be painted as a defender not of free software, but as a defender of software piracy; If Blizzard can prove that bnetd includes stolen code, EFF gets screwed.
Blizzard has seen Blizzard's source and, we can assume, they have seen bnetd source. The EFF has only seen bnetd source. Blizzard is alleging piracy. Think about it.
Ceci n'est pas une signature.
How this might play out: after allowing some time for "discovery" (basically, exchange of relevant documents and taking depositions of witnesses), bnetd files a "motion for summary judgment," accompanied by a sworn affidavit of whoever was in charge of the coding, saying "we swear we didn't copy any source code," and by excerpts from the testimony of various Vivendi witnesses, who will hem and haw but finally be forced to admit they have no clue whether bnetd copied a single line of their code. (I have no idea myself whether they did or didn't, but word on the street is pretty consistent that it was a legitimate reverse-engineering job with no copying.)
At that point (in my hypothetical), because Vivendi has the "burden of proof," it would have to do more than just accuse bnetd's witness of lying. To prevent a judge from granting summary judgment to bnetd, Vivendi would probably have to either (1) come up with a witness of its own with personal knowledge that copying took place (unlikely), or (2) hire an expert witness who will compare and analyze the battle.net and bnetd code, and conclude that it "must have been copied" because of various similarities. Assuming #2, the judge would determine whether the expert's testimony was reliable enough to be admissible (assuming they're in federal court), and then determine whether the testimony was sufficient to carry Vivendi's burden of proof. This is by no means a gimme: although it's true that you can find some "expert" to opine almost anything, judges often do find their testimony insufficient to defeat a summary judgment motion.
So with that long discourse, I hope I have helped a little bit in understanding the "burden of proof." As an earlier comment stated, anyone can file a lawsuit in the US -- all you have to do is show up at the filing window with the filing fee and a stack of paper that looks sufficiently like a complaint to get past the court clerk. But there are many opportunities for defendants to get a groundless lawsuit dismissed, and it happens all the time. (If the complaint doesn't sufficiently describe how the defendant violated the plaintiff's legal rights, you can often get it dismissed without going through the time and expense of the "discovery" stage.)
No, no, no. This is not a sig.
For all who do not believe the validity of the interview, I'm sorry. It occurred at Woodberry Forest School in VA last night after the Vivendi Representative gave his speech. In order to get the interview from him, I made the promise that I would not disclose his name on the web. I have not yet done so. The reason for his appearing at our school was so that he could discuss online piracy of -any- form of entertainment--DVD, Music, Games, et al. However, please realize this: The representative is not a lawyer on the Vivendi v. BNetD case. He is legal counsel for the entire Vivendi Universal company, and the most involved that he has been in that case is when he assigned the lawyers to it. I have emailed him again, asking for more answers to questions that I had, but he said from the very beginning that he DOES NOT know all of the details regarding the case. As most of you should know, Vivendi is currently very busy with another legal issue revolving around the firing of the president of one of their French television stations. The BNetD case is not as big of an issue, and that is why some of these answers might seem a bit out of the ordinary. If you don't believe me now, I'm sorry. There will be follow ups to this interview, and I hope that many of you will find them helpful in the understanding of the Vivendi side of things. Regards, Paul Toms www.war3pub.net
I'm not sure how many of you have actually read the DMCA and know exactly what it does and doesn't allow. It seems a lot of people are confused and misunderstand what the DMCA does allow for projects like "The BNETD Project". The DMCA allows you to circumvent the copy protection of software and hardware in order to develop an inter-operable device or program. Also the DMCA specifically says that leaving out the copy protection of a device for inter-operability is *NOT* a violation of the DMCA. Nor is defeating/removing the copy protection in order to figure out how to make something inter-operable. Also note that the key sections of the DMCA require that either the primary purpose of the device be illegal and/or that it defeats the copy protection for profit. Neither of these statements are true of "The BNETD Project". Please note the 2 quotes below or read the entire law yourself at:
c hapter12
http://www.loc.gov/copyright/title17/circ92.html#
DMCA Section 1201-bc3
"Nothing in this section shall require that the design of, or design and selection of parts and components for, a consumer electronics, telecommunications, or computing product provide for a response to any particular technological measure, so long as such part or component, or the product in which such part or component is integrated, does not otherwise fall within the prohibitions of subsection (a)(2) or (b)(1)."
DMCA Section 1201-f
" Reverse Engineering.-(1) Notwithstanding the provisions of subsection (a)(1)(A), a person who has lawfully obtained the right to use a copy of a computer program may circumvent a technological measure that effectively controls access to a particular portion of that program for the sole purpose of identifying and analyzing those elements of the program that are necessary to achieve interoperability of an independently created computer program with other programs, and that have not previously been readily available to the person engaging in the circumvention, to the extent any such acts of identification and analysis do not constitute infringement under this title."