Slashdot Mirror
EFF Continues Fight On Blizzard Vs. Bnetd Case
Thanks to an anonymous reader for pointing to a Boing Boing post discussing the continuing conflict between Blizzard Software and the makers of bnetd, linking to the latest EFF-authored court documents (PDF) in a continuing legal battle over "the free bnetd software that emulates Blizzard's free Battle.net gaming service." Boing Boing argues of the EFF's new documents: "The prose here positively sings, and is as good a treatise on fair-use reverse engineering as you could hope to read", going on to quote their argument that "...the dissimilarity between the 'BATTLE.NET' and 'bnetd project' marks alone warrants summary judgment for the Defendants on Blizzard's Count III. Also weighing heavily in Defendants' favor is the fact that Blizzard has still failed to come forward with any admissible evidence of actual customer confusion." We've previously covered this long-running legal battle on several occasions. In related news, other readers point out a $1.2 million bequest to the EFF from the estate of Leonard Zubkoff "to establish the EFF Endowment Fund for Digital Civil Liberties."
There's a good reason that the EFF isn't mounting a campaign against the RIAA: some of the RIAA's tactics may be scummy, and the penalties provided by the law excessive, but they're basically in the right. People who post and download copyrighted songs that they haven't already purchased in another format without the copyright holder's permission are in fact infringing valid copyrights. The purpose of the EFF is to defend civil liberties on-line, not the "right" to rip-off and distribute other people's property.
During the occupation of France during WWII the French resistence was made up largely of two camps. The young "hot heads" who wanted to "do something," and the older gentlemen who advised a studious caution.
The young hotheads most often got themselves killed while accomplishing nothing.
As I recall there was one group of 40 to 70 year olds, mostly farmers, who managed to tie up an entire division of the German army chasing them for the duration of the war without suffering a single loss on their part.
When one's resources are limited one is perhaps best advised to pursue that resistence in which one is likely to prevail. In fact Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. defined the role of the lawyer as being predictive of success.
The proper place to tilt at legal windmills is in the legislatures, not the courts.
Nor is this case a trivial one with regards to digital rights. At stake is whether a publisher has the right to tell you how you can play a game which you legally have license to play. More and more game publishers seem to be looking to charge you to play a game after you purchase it to further fill their coffers.
This could be a legal landmark case.
KFG
> If you look over the cases that they've litigated over the past several years, all the cases are essentially prima facie decideable on the side that the EFF takes up.
:-)
I think you're exaggerating quite a lot there. However, even if that's the case... uh, what's the problem, exactly?
Many of the most unjust civil cases are where a big deep-pocketed company sues the little guy over rights they don't really have. The little guy can't afford to fight a big legal war, so is forced to settle on the big company's terms. If the little guy could afford to fight there'd be no problem.
That's where legal groups like the EFF, ACLU, etc can make a big difference -- by not only winning these cases but acting as a deterent against any other would-be plantifs.
It'd be nice if we had the "loser-pays" legal system of, say, the UK but we don't. People like the EFF are the best defence we have against these kinds of lawsuits.
Now go give them a bunch of your money
"because artists don't deserve to be paid"
Heh, I agree with your outlook on it.
But, interesting tidbit - did you know premium artists like Justin Timberlake and Britney Spears get less then $1 per album sold.
I not only think ripping off music is wrong, but I think the artists aren't properly compensated.
Seriously, how much of that $15+ that you spend on a CD is for the physical media, ink, or advertising used to get word on the album out. Imagine what lesser artist's get. Like a penny an album? More, I'm sure - but it does make you wonder.
I was watching an E! 'thing' the other day on Britney Spears - which stated she had earned roughly $18M from her album sales. Lots of money, yes. But c'mon - we're talking about BRITNEY SPEARS here. And that's from well over 20 million total album sales. So she earns the music industry a few billion and they give her a few million.
Ehh, not that anyone cares. To me it's like donating money to a charity only to discover 95% of the money donated goes to pay fat executives.
The RIAA doesn't give a crap about the artists, all they care about is fattening their own pockets.
In their minds, the artist making more money is simply an 'unfortunate side-effect.'
The RIAA doesn't give a crap about the artists, all they care about is fattening their own pockets.
It's called business. It's called a contract--THAT THE ARTIST SIGNED.
Britney Spears didn't even write most of her music. She doesn't get all the money, because part of it goes to her image-makers and marketers, part of it to her songwriters, part of it to her producers and developers, and part of it to the label. That's what happens when you're a pop singer who doesn't write your own music or have your own image.
An artist should shop around for a better contract, or not sign one. This crap about "The RIAA doesn't care about artists" when those artists are the ones who freely signed the contracts in order to get a deal is bogus--you think those artists think they need you to pity them when they put down their signatures willingly?
There's a lot that goes into CD distribution, from marketing to production to hiring to etc.
Doing superficial good to placate the masses while doing real evil that will screw the masses long after they've forgotten about the folks responsible, does not make one half-evil, it makes one a politician (in other words, pure evil).
Seriously though, Blizzard is above even Adobe on the list of companies I will never ever buy products from, no matter how good or useful they may be, or how much I may want them. Adobe being in the black books for having a foreign citizen arrested the second he stepped on American soil for the crime of figuring out how to change a bit in one of their files.
Random and weird software I've written.
It's called business. It's called a contract--THAT THE ARTIST SIGNED
There is no alternative. You either sign up with RIAA, or you get no record, no air time, and no tour dates.
That's why the RIAA was formed, to monopolize the production of (bad) music.
Blizzard can get angry all they want, but the fact is that bnetd is none of their buisness. It is simply a matter of people using their private property (the bnetd code, and the copy of the game that Blizzard sold them) however they like. Once again, the DMCA gives anyone with a lot of money the right to tell other people what they can do with their own property by assuming them guilty.
It is possible that people use bnetd in conjunction with illegally obtained copies of blizzard games, but that has nothing at all to do with bnetd. Those people should be prosecuted for copyright infringement. No need to use the DMCA to prosecute people who did not commit a crime.
I believe that you're factually incorrect on your second point, and I just plain disagree with you on the first.
At UC Berkeley, you can make your own majors. Maybe if games are so important to you, you can go there and become a network gaming major.
I mean really, what are you at college for? Is this a survival issue
And yet, college students look for entertainment. Some go to bars, some watch TV, some hunt girls, some learn to cook strange foods, some do dope, some hit movie theaters, clubs, go paintballing, etc, etc, etc.
The point is that gaming is a perfectly legitimate form of entertainment. You hvae many friends nearby on a fast network, and most of you just got a computer in the last few years for college. Why not? Do you really never play games?
I don't know if the bnetd project is right or wrong, but it should be argued on its own merits rather than whether or not the guy from I Phelta Thi can play WCIII against his tri-Lamda counterpart.
One of the clauses in the DMCA in determining whether a device is an illegal circumvention devices is whether the primary purpose of the device is for copyright infringement. Blizzard is representing bnetd as a device designed to facilitate software piracy. When people chime in and talk about all the legitimate reasons they use bnetd, it helps undermine Blizzard's arguments on that clause.
May we never see th
Unlike Kazzaa-lite or the IM clones bnetd is not attempting to use Bizard network resources...for a matter of fact it's the opposite! They're attempting to REPLACE Blizard's locked-in service to provide playing of the game on their own terms...it's not like they're trying to hack or take over or interfere with Blizard's offical channels here...mearly offer another alternative for those not willing or able to use the "offical" channels. It's fundamentally about connecting two copies of something you already paid for...you shouldn't need "permission" to do that.
While the supporting of "pirate" copies may be a problem to blizzard, the bnetd project really doesn't have any business worrying about authentication! There's no constraint on their part to require the game to follow the "rules" that's the whole point of developing their own servers!! More than that, this would also set precedent in cases that would replace say, XBoxLive. That product is all about vendor lock-in...but the console and games themselves should be allowed a similar hack simply because it's your fair use to connect your products...especially if you are using unmodified original product...Part of this is about companies requiring you to use "specific" company-approved portals...and requiring so in the EULA! To take it to an extreme, what would the reaction be if MS forbade you from using, say, Samba on YOUR OWN networks to connect YOUR OWN PCs because they dediced to require windows license verification in AD/W2K3 server connection!! That's exactly the same issue being set forth even though it seems silly to say so. Cause remember, much of MS stratagy has been to "hide" their lock-in schemes behind the veil of "security" or "authentication" schemes. Imagine the "free-for-all" if companies can simply tag a serial number or phone home to every network connection and sue you if you don't follow it! That's totally nuts!
There is no alternative.
Bullshit. There is no easy alternative. The "artists" go the easy route and sign up with the RIAA labels because it's the easiest and most comfortable way to get their dime-a-dozen craptacular pop music out. The alternatives would require hard work and talent, so I'm not surprised they don't take them given their lack of both. But they exist.
---- Take the Space Quiz!
Blizzard spends a lot of time and money keeping people with illegetamate CD Keys off their network. Perhaps that's a secondary consideration to some, but preventing people with stolen/passed-around keys from having an alternative Network to play over prevents a certain amount of software piracy.
I know that when we wanted to do some two-player games here at home (My wife is a much bigger Diablo II fiend than I am) I went out and bought a second copy. I'm sure I could have dicked around on the 'net and found ways to do it without spending the twenty bucks, but it just wasn't worth it.
---
What I'm saying is that that is not legally significant -- that it is financially beneficial to Blizzard for something to happen is not enough to have the courts rule in their favor. Even crime reduction is not enough to force someone to do something -- if packaged food were eliminated, it's likely that people would litter much less. However, food packers do not need to get rid of packaged food.
I am quite sure that there are many people out there that have used bnetd to avoid paying for a copy of a Blizzard game. I am also sure that plenty of illegal content is swapped in IRC channels. Neither is a reason for shutting down a group of people that produce a tool that *may* be used to facilitate pirating a game.
I've never used bnetd, but here are a number of reasons I could see someone legitimately using it:
* Blizzard kicks a player off Battle.Net, for whatever reason. They can still play their game, just not using Blizzard's servers.
* The player and his friends have limited or nonexistant network access. If I work in village in many countries, I probably have lousy network access, but a fair number of folks that would like to play a game locally all in one place (especially an older game like Warcraft II that works on older computers).
* Pure interest in reverse engineering and writing a server. It's *fun* to do something like this, and you feel good when you can sit back and look at the finished product. I remember when folks reverse engineered the Hotline protocol (a vaguely BBS-like server that was quite popular on the Mac at one point). It was very neat to have something like this done.
* Ensuring that the game continues working. Blizzard may give "lifetime access to Battle.Net", whatever that means, but at some point, Blizzard will go out of business, just as all companies do eventually. Blizzard is very likely to continue sinking money into the service forever. If there is an open-soruce implementation of the protocol, people can continue playing as long as they'd like, just as with Quake.
Any of these are good reasons, and if any of these were the primary purpose of bnetd, rather than bypassing copy protection mechanisms, then the bnetd people are in the clear relative to the DMCA.
May we never see th
But some Corporation's ability to make a buck off of me shouldn't be more important than my freedom to do whatever the heck I want to with my own property.
The U.S. has to stop treating corporations - tools designed to deflect liability and dodge taxes - as living entities. A Corporation's goals do not benefit mankind - they benefit the stockholders.
When you give a non-human entity greater rights and priveleges than you do actual people, it enslaves us.
BNetDguys: Hey, we've managed to emulate your servers so that we dont need you anymore. Now, if you could just give us your CD-Key scripts so we can make sure these guys arent cheating...
What Blizzard Hears:
Hey guys, we just disabled your ONLY way of fighting piracy. Now, if you could just give us your CD-Key scripts, we can make it so you never sell another blizzard game again!
Posting Anon, because you hate to hear the fucking truth.
You would be hard pressed to find a company that displays more naked contempt for their community than Blizzard routinely does, however.
Blizzard representatives openly mock posters on the public forums. Granted these posters often ask inane or redundant questions, but there is an astonishing lack of professionalism displayed. Questions like "what can you tell me about feature X" are often answered "when you find out, tell me, I'd love to know!" There's no need for that kind of reply. Even Microsoft doesn't actually resort to taunting its users.
Posters who ask difficult questions -- like "what happened to the clan ladder that was advertised on the box of Frozen Throne?" -- have their posts deleted. Repeat "offenders" are summarily banned.
On the other hand I know they have a lot of extremely bright and talented people working there, and some are about the nicest people you'd ever hope to interact with. Knowing the long hours and the limitless passion and energy they put into creating and refining each game, it's hard to harbor any ill will towards the company. After all, these guys are the ones that really make Blizzard great.
It seems to me such a waste to let their berserk legal department and bizarre PR attitudes overshadow that.