Slashdot Mirror
GameSpy Sends DMCA-Based C&D To Security Researcher
chowbok writes "Luigi Auriemma has found several security holes GameSpy software over the past few months. He has reported them all to GameSpy but never got a response... until today, when he got a threatening letter from their lawyers. It says he's violating the DMCA, he needs to cease-and-desist, yadda yadda yadda." Update: 11/12 21:09 GMT by S : GameSpy has now posted an official response from the company's founder, Mark Surfas.
quote: I'm 22 years old and I live in Milan district in Italy. The DMCA doesn't apply to him. Cease and decist this!
This isn't exactly what you want, but I think you'll find it of interest:
Chilling Effects
In response to an email my email I got the prompt response:
(SNIP)
Hi Hunter -
Unfortunately, he's not telling the truth. What is happening is simply attempted extortion. He didn't contact us, never has, and has been harassing us for over a year.
Mark
(/SNIP)
Most people didn't notice, but Bugtraq was moved to Canada, and turned over to a Canadian moderator a couple of years ago.
There's one problem with your logic. To my knowledge, Gamespy still doesn't actually own the source to Gamespy3D, to which I believe these security holes refer. That codebase is owned by the original coders of Quakespy, the program that got the company started. The deal was: Surfas owned the brand, the coders owned the code. Never at any time could he talk them into selling it. That is the primary reason for the original development of Arcade - to bring ownership of some form of Gamespy software in- house.
How do I know? I was one of the original coders at the company back when Arcade was just an idea tossed around the Tuesday morning staff meetings. And no, I didn't have much of a hand in Arcade, thankfully, so please don't put a pox on me.
Of course, if this guy was pointing out holes in Arcade (to be honest, I couldn't tell from his website, it didn't seem 100% clear which product he was testing) - well, it's going to take *alot* more than a single day to fix.
Not that you really want to know this, but Arcade was very tightly coupled to a stock MFC, App-Wizard generated Doc/View project, and didn't stray too far throughout its lifetime. In fact, by the time I left, most of the code was essentially layered on top of rather poorly implemented MFC classes. (Props, Walla!) It gets even uglier (like data and UI being completely interleaved), but I'll save you the anguish.
Suffice it to say, you would be ill-advised to hold your breath while waiting for these issues to be fixed. Better to use the All Seeing Eye instead. That's what I do. And this coming from a Gamespy stock holder! hehe.
It goes from God, to Jerry, to me.