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."
I'm confused, don't they sell those at DQ? Let's sue.
I'd just managed to convince myself Blizzard was no longer evil, and that I could look forward to purchasing W.o.W. and now slashdot's gone and reminded me that they're still evil.......
Imagine that...a weblog run by one of the leaders of the EFF, Cory Doctorow, praising the EFF's side in a court case. Isn't that just amazing?
(I'm not saying anything about the relative merits of the case here...just the amusement inherent in citing BoingBoing's opinion on an EFF affair as authoritative.)
Editor Emeritus and Senior Writer, TeleRead.org
We haven't had a good president since 1988.
I have been pwned because my
I'd polymorph Blizzard
"Don't make me turn you into a mindless sheep!"
... didn't they stop releasing Bnetd? I dunno I remember they stopped developing it a while ago because of the battle. That was back when the only WC3 was the beta. I haven't looked into it since then because after the game came out I didn't need Bnetd anymore.
Who knew those legal types could produce poetry?
The Legal brief is actually a very fun read.
Plus, you got to give some kudos for a guy that uses the term bogosity.
There are two kinds of fool. One says, This is old, and therefore good. And one says, This is new, and therefore better.
I attend college at an institution with highly restrictive Internet access. We are incapable of playing games on the Internet, such as through Battle.net. Intra-network traffic is not restricted, however. As such, with the help of bnetd, I am able to run a server that is used campuswide daily. I've been following the case for the past two years, and I'm glad to see that it's finally getting some press -- much as I love Blizzard's products, I'm also a big fan of reverse-engineering products. The services offered by bnetd (and other offshoots like PvPGN) are invaluable to many users who would otherwise have no means of taking advantage of the matchmaking services offered by Blizzard's official servers. I'd love to see their work continue unhindered by legal pressure.
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.
I'm uncertain. Did they feel the reputation of battle.net as a cheat filled hell would be impinged? Maybe they feared the loss of script kiddies and bot runners to this site? Are they not aware that the majority of pirates already play on battle.net, using keylogged CD keys stolen from the many users of bots/hacks/cheat programs?
Mind you, this is the same company that threatened legal action over an open source tribute to an 8 year old game on the grounds it may cause confusion with their modern products. Having said that, the intelligence shown by the average 14 year old Blizzard fanboy makes that a real possibility
Worried you might not keep your virginity forever? Try new Linux(TM), guaranteed twice as effective as LARPing
Blizzard has also recently issues a cease and desists letter, backed by DMCA threat to gotwow.net. Read the forum post here
Well, today I received an email from Blizzard. You may read it below, long story short, all files and the spell db will be taken down and will not be hosted on this server anymore. Here is the content of the email
I really hate Dan Patrick.
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
For the right price....
I'll pretend to be a customer who was confused and sell out free software and legitimate uses of reverse engineering and for that matter all practical applications of intelligence and education. Why the fuck not. For the right price...
private message me for details.
because I have been enjoined by this Holy Office to abandon the false opinion which maintains that the Sun is the centre
So many people seem to think there is nothing important to be had in this case; I think they are wrong. Dead wrong.
Blizzard envoked the DMCA against bnetd, claiming bnetd (primarily) circumvented their copyright protection efforts because it bypasses the cd-key check given when logging into the battle.net service.
This is obviously an abusive use of the DMCA as that 'special' cd-key check only takes place on battle.net. It doesn't happen on single player, LAN, or TCP/IP games.
Sure, right now there are larger - more important cases to be fought. But, this case also has it's place of importance.
Blizzard is clearly abusing the DMCA [Yeah, yeah - atleast ACT suprised, k?) - and if they are allowed to abuse the DMCA this way and win their case - their case will become a reference in other similar cases.
As lame as this may sound, this is something gaming companies could use as a leash to control mods that they do/don't want to allow to continue developement.
Or, say, someday MS decides that each time you log onto their xBox Live gaming service it checks some sort of key. This would prevent anyone from offering competing services to the xBox Live. Even if they are just doing it for fun, or as an OSS project.
Regardless, the point is that the results of this case could potentially have FAR-reaching implications for potential OSS projects.
Nevermind the fact that the entire lawsuit is bogus. Though, with the exception of the trademark/copyright claim for the use of the 'bnet' name. (Battle.net is, in fact, collectively known to the majority of users as b.net - and is most commonly referred to as such.)
To Slashdot, it's a "culture movement" because artists don't deserve to be paid for the work they put in to renting a studio, spending a month recording something, pressing CDs, and marketing it with their label.
There's an organization called the RIAA that happens to represent their label, so suddenly it's okay to pirate the artists' music. The legality issue is completely ignored.
> 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
I feel for anybody whose circumstances prevent them from playing on bNet. But as long as a project like this gives the ability for anybody to effortlessly negate Blizzard's main layer of piracy control, as well as providing a tool to use in developing cheats that will work on bNet (by providing a nice reference on the network protocol), I fully agree with Blizzard's decision to shut it down. It's indisputable that bnetd provided both of those things, and I'm pretty sure that some form of copy protection wasn't on their list of future features, either. Neither did they plan on closing the source to deny bad cheaters easy reference.
I'm not saying that piracy and cheating don't happen on bNet, of course. But the way I see it taking things like this out of the picture is like locking your door in a bad neighborhood. It sucks for a guy walking by who needs some shelter, but is that really going to change your mind about it?
Excuse me? We never fight the fight on the side that looks to lose?
My god, I wish that were true. Do you know nothing about the EFF? I guess I should be thrilled that our PR is so good that some people remember only our victories. Obviously we don't like to trumpet our losses, but I am still baffled by this charge. We spent near a million dollars -- an amount equivalent to our annual budget just a few years ago -- losing the 2600 DeCSS case, a very hard case which we took on because it had to be fought, and a case based on the same principles of defending reverse engineering that are deemed unimportant by the above "insightful" posting.
I will have to relay that "we always" win sentiment down to the lawyers in the trenches. It will cheer them up, at least until they stop laughing.
Plus don't get the idea that the EFF has anything remotely close to deep pockets. Quite the reverse. As you may have missed in the note, the donation was put into an ENDOWMENT. This means it will be invested, and the earnings from the investment can be used to fund our battles. The million dollar donation is extremely generous, and I hope that others might remember us in their wills (or even better, beforehand) in this way, but it is an endowment, not operating money to give us deep pockets.
Please, actually learn about the EFF and its history before making ludicrous claims like these.
Has it been over a year since you last donated to the Electronic Frontier Foundation
But games played with dirt and potatoes just aren't as fun.
Totally agree. Like it or not, the RIAA do have the backing of copyright laws. What is the EFF suppose to argue in court? That the copyright laws should be changed and in light of the required changes to said laws we should win this case here before you your Honour?
So I for one am glad the EFF is not trying to take the RIAA to court because it would be a total waste of resources.
"She's a West Texas girl, just like me" - G.W Bush Iraqis
I find it hilarious that Blizzard can complain about copyright infringement when their entire IP is stolen from Dungeons and Dragons and Games Workshop
Taken from a Cease and Desist issued by them
Recently, we have received an increasing amount of feedback from our customers in regard to the probable copyright infringement of Diablo, Diablo II, Starcraft, Warcraft II: Battle.net Edition, Warcraft III and World of Warcraft products (each, a "Program") on the Internet. We here at Blizzard share the concerns that many gamers are voicing. In this regard, we have contacted one of your users in connection with the aforementioned site and the infringement of Blizzard intellectual property. Please note that all title, ownership, and intellectual property rights in and to each Program and any and all copies thereof (including, but not limited to, any titles, computer code, objects, characters, character names, stories, dialog, catch phrases, locations, artwork, animations, sounds, musical compositions, audio-visual effects, methods of operation
Seemingly Blizzard now claims the rights to the entire RTS genre
Worried you might not keep your virginity forever? Try new Linux(TM), guaranteed twice as effective as LARPing
In court you fight the fights that need fighting that you can win. To do otherwise is pointless.
In the halls of the legislature you fight the good fight, with all your might.
Even civil disobedience is either directed at cases where one feels one can prevail and overturn a law, such as the Scopes trial, or where conviction under the law forces the hand of the legislature to act, such as in the civil rights movement of the 50s and 60s.
The fact that Blizzard is not seeking to charge for the use of their servers is irrelevant to the issue of rights. If a game publisher can force you to specific terms of use after purchase, then charging for such use is inevitable by someone.
If a publisher cannot enforce terms of use after purchase than the whole issue becomes moot. It's your game.
My game is Grand Prix Legends. A game that six years after it's release not only still has a strong community, but is still selling. Since it is now a bargain title there are people who buy it several copies at a time to give them away. In one case someone in England just sent a copy as a gift to a young teen in South America who was complaining that he couldn't buy it locally and couldn't buy it over the net, and was thus constrained to the six year old demo version.
It's a great game, and still considered by many to be state of the art, but what has really played the key role in its longevity is this:
It was released with rock solid net code, but the publisher provided no official servers. Nothing. Here it is guys, you're on your own. Every copy of the game can function as a server. Have at it.
And we have. And continue to. And will probably continue to for many years. And will keep purchasing copies of the game as long as it's even vaguely possible to do so.
All because it's our net game, that we control.
KFG
Okay, for starters - bnetd said they would implement the cd-key check system Blizzard uses on battle.net. Blizzard in fact agreed to it at one point, then retracted and filed suit.
The CD-Key check on battle.net is NOT Blizzard's primary form of anti-piracy. Hell, it's not even a good one. CD-Key gen's are available for every Blizzard title. EVERY title. (Well, all those that require a key anyway.)
All can be found with little effort, navigating the right hack sites. In fact, many people trade them off for items in games.
Another problem with calling Blizzard's CD-Key check their main anti-piracy protection is the fact that SP, LAN, and TCP/IP play do _NOT_ have any sort of CD-Key authentication.
In fact, the MAIN anti-piracy measure Blizzard has taken is unquestionably the initial CD-Key check required during the installation of the product.
The battle.net CD-Key check feature merely ensures more then one person isn't using the same key on the same service at the same time. Hardly a main piracy protection scheme. Though, it's a good and valuable one.
However, if it were so important that a product like bnetd would harm their business - it would suffice to say they would not have allowed TCP/IP, LAN, and SP without the same CD-Key check.
Now, take notice to what you are saying. According to you, a company [such as Blizzard], could effectively hold a monopoly over a service by merely adding a copyright protection feature to their own proprietary service - such as a CD-Key check.
The way they do it is simple. Make product, product can use online service. Make online service do a CD-Key check that ONLY producer can do.
BANG, no one can offer a competing service.
To my brother Louie, who said I'd never remember him in my will. Hello Louie.
Sorry. Couldn't resist.
KFG
(I kid, I kid)
The silly Flash cartoon game that shows users how to fileswap without breaking copyright law is the least important.
I believe that that game was meant to help produce an example that could be pulled out when judges seeking to censor games claim that games cannot contain significant political expression, and thus do not merit First Amendment protection. (This happenend some time ago when someone-or-other was suing someone-or-other over a game.)
May we never see th
Well, what you're talking about there are cases taken on contingency, personal injury and the like where the lawyer is representing the plaintif. The current situation is a bit different.
In the old days though it was considered part of the lawyer's professional ethics to take certain cases pro bono because they needed to be fought. Clarence Darrow is a prime example of someone who took this seriously, using his success in these cases to be able to charge high rates to offset his loss of time and expenses. There are still those lawyers who follow this practice, but their numbers are dwindling.
That said my statement that you fight the fights you can win is meant to be taken as meaning you fight the fights you believe you have a chance of winning. It is always a question of probability, not certitude.
Mr. Templeton's example of the 2600 DeCSS case is a good example of this. I certainly thought they could win. They did not. They did not pursue appeal to the Supreme Court. They felt another future case along the same lines would have a better chance of prevailing.
The recent decision in California supports both the idea that the issue was winable, but that someone else was going to be the one to do so.
Sometimes you give it your best shot, but cut your losses when things do not go as you might have hoped.
Thus the example, ironically I guess, serves to both support Mr. Templton's claim that the EFF fights losing battles and my own that you fight battles you can win.
KFG
No no, you've got it all backwards!
Free as in mason.
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.
I happen to run across another lawsuit that is about to break. It appears that Blizzard Entertainment is in a trademark dispute with a New York company called Blizzard Records. Here is the only link I've found on it in the public sector. Based on what I've heard this could really hurt Blizzard Entertainment.
This is really obvious to anyone who tried to sign up for the beta test. They have to shut down any free versions of battle.net because they're planning on making money off of world of warcraft monthly fees.
You know that 200000+ people hitting a server and constantly refreshing is rough right? I mean the forums were flooded with "When are beta signups" and when someone posts that it's up, everyone looked. 400000+ total applications and a bunch of 'em being spammed isn't nice.
Battle.net service is NOT being shut down. WoW business model is an MMORPG. Yes they charge monthly fee. That's NORMAL. Battle.net will remain up and free.
-Dat ^_^
ex-MVP