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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.......
I'd polymorph Blizzard
"Don't make me turn you into a mindless sheep!"
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
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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.)
> 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
Cory doesn't hide his position, but he's not a leader, he's our online outreach coordinator, a sort of technological evangelist and analyst who studies and writes and slogs around to do hard work representing the EFF in important places.
But he's also one of the most respected web journalists, and if he writes that he really likes a brief, I would wager that he really means it.
Has it been over a year since you last donated to the Electronic Frontier Foundation
I find it hilarious that Blizzard can complain about copyright infringement when their entire IP is stolen from Dungeons and Dragons and Games Workshop
"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.'
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
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.