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

BNetD responsible for Vivendi's opinions?

[kefoo]

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?

Established companies trying to shut out others

[NMerriam]

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...

Am I missing something?

[FurryFeet]

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.

Ummm, no.

[Spankophile]

> 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.

Re:Ummm, no.

[SecurityGuy]

I am, absolutely. Arrest them because driving while under the influence is illegal. I can't think of an instance where you can be arrested because you "might" do something, only where you are suspected of breaking an actual law. Around here you can be arrested for threatening someone. You won't be arrested because you might carry out the threat, but because you've already broken the law by issuing it.

Re:Ummm, no.

[markmoss]

I guess you're also against arresting someone who's drinking and driving only because they "might" kill someone.

Pedantically, you can arrest someone who's drinking and driving because they are breaking a law, while (depending on the interpretation of some unnecessarily complicated laws) what bnet is doing may or may not be breaking the law now. You can't arrest them because they might break the law later.

But the interesting question is, why is it right to pass a law against drunk driving because they might kill someone later, and wrong to ban something because it might turn into a copyright violation later?

Answer: IRREMEDIABLE HARM. The copyright holder can wait until there is an actual copyright violation, then go to court, shut them down, and also get monetary damages to replace any alleged lost sales. But if a drunk kills someone, no court can bring them back to life. So given that it is easily shown statistically that drunk drivers are far more likely to kill someone than nearly all sober drivers, it is reasonable to stop them when they start weaving around the road, test them, and arrest them if alcohol or other drugs are the cause, rather than waiting for the crash. There are at least two fine lines here that the legislature should consider, how much hazard is too much, and what kind of tactics are acceptable to catch the drunks.

Note that personally I don't much approve of tactics such as waiting near the bar, pulling everyone over for breathalyzer checks, and prosecuting solely on the basis of the blood alcohol content, rather than looking for evidence of impairment first. I and some of my relatives can get pretty drunk at well under the legal BAC limit. (Inherited metabolic peculiarity. I figured that out in 1976 and haven't drunk since, but if I was an idiot and an asshole, I could drive home drunk every night and never get arrested.) Other people can be functioning pretty well when their BAC is high enough to be illegal in any state. Many of them will have faster reflexes drunk than I am when going home after 14 hours at work -- although if they're driving drunk, they're probably reckless too, and fast reflexes don't make reckless driving safe...

Re:Hmmm

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

This is just silly...

[yeoua]

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...

Re:Pointless

[drinkypoo]

Despite their justification, it seems to be another case of a company attempting to hold on to its intellectual property, ignoring the fact that letting people run with it will in aid their sales revenue in the long term.

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.

New info

[Otto]

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.

not really

[martissimo]

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