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. "

Comments

In case the forums get slashdotted...

[Anonymous Coward]

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.
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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.

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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.

eh? 3rd ed?

[Telastyn]

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.

Re:I'll tell you something

[IpalindromeI]

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."

This is a side issue

[Otto]

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.

Re:If you guys want battlenet i have a solution

[AngryAndDrunk]

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.

This is bull.

[drivers]

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

Re:you dont get it

[Sancho]

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.

Re:Established companies trying to shut out others

[raresilk]

Although it's true under US law that the standard of proof in civil actions is "more probable than not" (versus "reasonable doubt" in criminal cases), there is still somewhat of a "presumption of innocence." The plaintiff in a civil lawsuit still bears the "burden of proof", meaning that the defendant automatically wins any point on which the plaintiffs fail to produce evidence. At some point, unless Vivendi demonstrates there is a genuine factual dispute as to whether bnetd acted illegally, the judge will not even let the case go to a jury. (It's called "summary judgment," for legalese jargon fans.)

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.)