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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. "
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.
So now BNetD is responsible for what Vivendi thinks they may do in the future?
As long as the bnetd guys can show they did a clean-room reverse-engineering feat, I doubt Blizzard can say much about it. I don't know how the bnetd guys would have gotten server code from Blizzard in the first place to pirate.
Imagine if 20 years ago, Compaq had not been allowed to reverse-engineer the IBM PC BIOS. The worldwide economy would probably be a few trillion dollars poorer, and God only knows if we'd even have the WWW or ubiquitous home computers...
Recursive: Adj. See Recursive.
If blizzard would get off their rears and actually fix battlenet nobody would use bnetd. If battlenet was not slow and prone to crash why would anyone consider using an alternate service?
Also, this irks me more than any of it:
"The BNETD software, which emulates Blizzard's free online gaming service, bypasses an authentication process designed to prevent the use of illegal copies of Blizzard games on the Internet." - Recent action by Blizzard to combat piracy - 4/17/2002 battle.net
How can blizzard expect bnetd to authenticate a cd key when blizzard won't release them? I could understand, if not condone, blizzard having a problem if bnetd were distrubuting pirated copies of blizzard's software but as far as I understand bnetd is not doing this.
As far as I understand the case, Blizzard's only stand is the claim that BnetD used source code from Blizzard without permission. If they can prove that, they win; if the don't, they lose. Whether Bnetd makes money or not should be irrelevant.
I'm not really impressed with the answers, and I posit the source was someone from Blizzard who doesn't really know what he's talking about. Maybe from accounting, for all I know.
I'm not trolling. Read the answers. There's nothing to see here.
So I was just wondering is it now illegal to make money off of someone elses work if you make it better?
:)
Call me crazy, but I thought that was the american way. See a product on the market, devise a way to make it better, and sell the upgrade to a public that wants it. You figure out a way to backlight a screen on a portable electronic device cheaply, you sell kits to do just that, and who knows you might make some money. You find out an ingenius way to boost a car's engine by 20 horsepower with $10 bucks worth of spare parts, by the gods sell a kit that does just that, only sell it for $15 bucks and make a profit.
Somehow its totally different when applied to software? Well I don't think it is. You don't like how Blizzard balances its online servers because they can be crashy, so you devise a application that acts as your own server on your computer. In what fucked up world should that be illegal? Because Blizzard has some lame ass excuse about piracy? How is that your problem? You aren't pirating games, and somehow your supposed to be held accountable for all those who did simply because they may (may!) have used your software. I'm sorry, thats not the america I grew up in.
> Kind of like arresting someone because they
> might get in a car accident 10 years down the
> road.
I guess you're also against arresting someone who's drinking and driving only because they "might" kill someone.
I agree with you, and it seems to me that this DMCA thingie is mostly empowering large companies to impose various policies on smaller companies who can't defend themselves. Like the google filtering and other stuff that has made the news recently. :(
It is more like handing out speeding tickets to speeders, to curtail the behavior that may lead to the accident ten years down the road.
They, in the estimation of Vivendi (yet to be seen in court), are already breaking the law. Sure a cop looks like an asshole for giving a joy riding teen a speeding ticket, but the law is there for a reason.
They are breaking the law today, and even though it seems like a harmless little fun, it will have larger ramifications in the future. The law needs to be enforced today, to make sure damages are not realized in the future. If not with bnetd, then with an actual for profit company that will use the bnetd project as a precedent.
-Jackbooted thugs need to be stomped.
-Companies are stomped by being put out of -business.
-Companies can't stay in business without customers.
-If they stay in business, we let them.
Action: boycott Blizzard. Tell your non-technical gaming friends--explain what has happened here, and how V/B intend to milk them as cash cows with a rent-a-game scheme, and tried to crush an innocent software project in the process.
If you're a copyright infringer, make sure WC3 is out there, along with the patched bnetd for WC3 support. Bring pop-in-and-play CDR's and put them on the benches at the mall outside Electronics Botique.
DO WHAT IT TAKES TO KILL THESE BASTARDS IN THE MARKETPLACE!
Uh, well, the answers to the questions from Vivendi are, well... silly
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.
Uh, first of all, it hasn't yet been used for any kind of profit (see next answer), but doesn't this rather go against the whole open source thing? Isn't the point to have it spread around and fixed by many to get the best of the best making something? And isn't it supposed to be free in most cases anyway? So what is their argument? That the only people who can use bnetd for profit is... uh, the creators, who are, uh, bnetd? So based on his answer, blizzard can't even use this code for profit as they are not the creators, so what exactly is he trying to say?
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.
And this speaks for itself. They are getting punished just because they stand a chance of making a profit off this product. Well, this is rather silly since bnet is free. The SECOND bnetd starts charging in any way, shape, or form, bnet will have a new bunch of regulars. Isn't it in blizzard's interest that bnetd starts charging? I mean, if they charge, the piraters need to either pay for the game and play free on bnet, or pay for bnetd. At this point, most would probably rather go legit and play on the official servers, rather than pay for using illegal software (that doesn't include a cool box and manual and whatnot). Which essentially means that bnetd will probably never be for profit (besides the fact that its open source and everyone has the code already anyway, so charging for it would be next to impossible given the speed of piracy nowadays).
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.
Is bnetd theft of intellectual property? They claimed that they used code from blizzard, which is near impossible unless they "hacked" them and stole code, which would be another thing all together. It'd be a bit easier to write from the ground up than steal the code and risk all sorts of other problems. And i'm sure they got quite a bit of documentation that this was a straight reverse engineering process (i know the guys responsible for the warcraft3beta code for bnetd did reverse engineering with port dumps and so on, since the daemon STILL doesn't work as well as bnet, and they had to play with much to even get it working with 1.21, and many things are still not supported, as well as "new" features i don't believe existed in bnet).
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.
Contrary to popular belief, bnetd CAN be used with retail blizzard games. Just because it can be used for pirated games doesn't mean it is illegal. Like the emulator situation, the games/roms are illegal, the fact of getting the thing working isn't (thus legal demo roms). If bnetd ONLY worked for pirated games, then that'd be another situation.
Silly...
I'm sure they will too, because this has absolutely nothing to do with Linux gaming. You're talking out of your ass and hoping to karma whore, and it will hopefully get regarded as the offtopic dribble that it is. Try reading the article next time, okay? This has nothing to do with gaming under Lunix.
>>>
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.
>>> end quote
What does that mean? That anyone using Apache for servering pay content is illegal under the DCMA? It's like they don't understand what these words mean they just repeat them in hopes of brainwashing the public into letting them have their way.
This way bnetd would get control over blizzard's games.
How so? This is just a server we're talking about, a means to facillitate communication between what are essentially fat clients.
bnetd can't do anything, as they have no way of supplying (or creating) updates to the software being used by the end users. Blizzard will still retain complete control over that, no matter who writes the server software.
That's not the most glaring thing they're ignoring; They're ignoring the fact that the IP in question - bnetd - IS NOT THEIRS. They are complaining about use of their source code, which never happened, at least as far as we know. Instead, the people created something similar based on the outputs of their source code.
The IP in question is open source, and as such belongs to everyone. Not to any one member of everyone, but everyone - So Blizzard doesn't have a legal leg to stand on. They probably thought that bnetd would just go away when they filed, and weren't counting on them actually getting a lawsuit. When this goes to court, assuming the judge is half-clued, Blizzard will be out on their ass so quick it'll look like they wore shorts into a mosque.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Why not boycott all of vivendi? Oh yeah, they make every media we might BUY!
First of all, speaking strictly as someone living in Finland and listening to online gamers daily as a part of my job, I can easily see the reasons why bnetd came to be.
Lag is a global enemy. For people here, playing on battle.net means connecting to Sweden, which means foreign bandwitdh, which means it's much more easily lagged than local connections. Local unofficial servers can be seen here and there, just because gaming is much more comfortable on them. Actually, bnetd can pretty clearly increase game sales from what I've asked around - as it allows people to make gameplay more enjoyable in places where the Blizzard doesn't want to support the gamers. A bnetd user is NOT a synonym for a software pirate.
So the idea mentioned here, of a closed source solution. From my point of view, it would be a good idea. I can smell some potential things that need be verified and looked into, I at least don't personally want to support game servers where one can play with pirated games, but I do like to see local people having local servers. There's a lot of places like this on our big earth, where there are players, but the place just isn't interesting enough for Blizzard to arrange a server deal.
In tiny short words: let the gamers play
...in the end, has Blizzard really looked at the HUGE variety of different players, different locations and different viewpoints? There's a lot of non-US players too. I can't run a bnetd server because of the uncertainties, but I would love to see Blizzard playing along here so I could, without worries, play along with the local gamers. Bnetd is what came to be because it was just needed. I don't neccessarily view it as a solution, but as a sign that Blizzard/Vivendi needs to play along.
After reading the First Amended Complaint, I see a wrinkle nobody mentioned before. EULA violation. According to this, the EULA states (in section 11) that if they agreed to the EULA, they are forbidden from emulating the networking features of the games in question.
Also, according to section 17, they claim code theft because the BnetD emulator copies the results of a bug in the username/password authentication portion of battle.net. Well.. depends on the bug, but that doesn't necessarily state that they copied code from battle.net. They may have simply copied the protocol. Anyway, how did they get access to that code? Seems fishy to me.
- 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.
1 (arguable assumption): The CD-Key authentication as used to authenticate players of network games on servers owned by Vivendi is a protection mechanism within the definitions bounded by the DMCA
2 (provable fact): The BnetD server system does not utilize any CD-Key authentication.
3 (Conclusion 1:2): The BnetD server system circumvents a protection mechanism as defined by the DMCA
according to statutes that the EFF cites...
This is simply untrue. As an initial matter, it does not appear that Blizzard's CD-KEYS system controls access or copying within the meaning of 1201. Even assuming that Blizzard's CD-KEY system meets the requirements of the statute, 1201(c)(3) contains an unequivocal "no mandate" provision that ensures that no person is required to design software so that it responds to Blizzard's technological protection measures. It provides:
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).
This provision means that bnetd is not required to design its server software to implement your "key" system or other any other technological measures you might choose to place on Blizzard games.
and unless im mistaken, that would be the reason that Vivendi dropped this part of the lawsuit