Slashdot Mirror
Blizzard Stomps Bnetd in DMCA Case
base3 writes "The EFF reported that the Vivendi/Blizzard vs. the good guys case has been decided, and it doesn't look good. Some highlights from the ruling
are: A clickthrough EULA isn't unconscionable (and thus enforceable); Fair Use rights can be waived in a EULA; First Sale rights (!) can be waived in a EULA; The DMCA's interoperability provisions are not a defense. If this ruling is allowed to stand, it will allow one-sided EULAs to force the waiver of the rights of First Sale and Fair Use. This, combined with the Supreme Court's recent assent to perpetual copyright, a few decades at a time, will destroy any semblance of balance in U.S. copyright law. Fortunately, the EFF plans to appeal the ruling."
Better?
If you want it to get better, you have to do something about it, not just sit on your ass and say "it will probably get even worse!"
When things get better, it's cause someone stood up and said "I want to make things better!"
Think american revolution, WW2, and the people who protested vietnam. These people did something, because the faced the fact: Yes, if you keep sitting there complaining,
IT WILL GET A LOT WORSE!
So say you click thru a EULA, you agree to it. You install the software and then decide to pirate it, saying "the EULA is not legally enforcable".
You do that, that's retarded.
You want to know a better solution? Don't agree with the EULA. If you don't like the terms that it sets out for you, stop the install, put the media back in the box, and drive back to the store and bitch about it.
Then simply don't buy that software from them again.
You know what would happen if people did that?
Bizzard (and other software companies) would STOP MAKING UNREASONABLE DEMANDS ON THEIR CUSTOMERS.
Whala, problem solved.
And saying that it won't work beause people are sheep is no excuse for your own llamma-like behavior. Stand up for yourself, stop being such a wimp all the time.
I mean don't you think that it's pretty pathetic to trade your self respect in order to play WoW?
I do.
...to open a second front against companies like this, and just refuse to buy their products?
If Blizzard is a necessity of life for you, like food, I guess you lose. But it seems like a luxury to me, and isn't it time to just refuse to give a company your money if you don't like what they do with it?
It's your money that's paying for their lawyers.
The EFF is just doing their job, as lawyers, to explain the worst case possibilities of this ruling.
You can bet your ass that Blizzard's lawyers, and EA's lawyers, and MS's lawyers, and Sun's lawyers, and IBM's lawyers, and probably even SCO's lawyers are reading up trying to figure out how they can best leverage this into their own products.
Next thing you know, your iPod will only work with iTunes.
Oh. Right...
blog
It's interesting to note, however, that a lot of the decisions were built upon Blizzard's stating that a person can take the software home, read the EULA, reject it, then take it back to the store for a refund within 30 days. I didn't see anywhere pointed out that you won't actually GET a refund in the real world. So Blizzard offers a "way out" of the one-sided contract that cannot actually be used.
Hopefully the appeal will point this out, in which case I think most of the other rulings won't have a leg to stand on, since Blizzard now has $50 of the customer's money, and the customer is left with nothing they case use (without giving up a bunch of rights).
There was a lawsuit about a year and a half ago in California regarding this very issue - naming MS, Symantec, and others. It basically said that you were being forced to buy software that you cannot return after opening without seeing a EULA that you are forced to agree to in order to use the software. I haven't seen any updates, so it may have been settled out of court.
This ruling CANNOT be allowed to stand. It's WORSE that UCITA. It's so one-sided, it makes one wonder whether the judge was really impartial on this one.
"Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
--- Jerry Garcia
They come with the installation of software--after you've already paid for it.
The big problem most people have with EULA's is that they aren't presented at the time of purchase. I go to the store to buy a copy of Warcraft 3, I see no license agreement, I am presented with no conditions on my purchase, I pay for it. Contract concluded. Finito. I now have all the standard rights of the consumer to a copy of a copyright-protected work.
What makes you think Blizzard can then say, "Oh, and you have to agree to surrender some of those rights. Tough luck."
Society, as a whole, doesn't give a fuck about fair use rights, perpetual copyrights, or click-through EULAs, either. Yet here we are.
Just because there isn't massive popular sentiment against what we here think of as an injustice doesn't mean it's not worth fighting against. You have to start somewhere.
But according to the EULA you're not buying the software, you're buying a license to use the software. Even if your original media is destroyed or unusable, your license is still valid. Either the software manufacturer owes you a free copy of the software (minus media and shipping costs), or you can use your backup. No effect on the market.
Another thing I just thought of - I don't understand how making archival copies for backup purposes is a protected right that can't be infringed by an EULA but reverse engineering for compatibility is a fair use right that CAN be infringed by an EULA (actually, I just looked it up and apparently the government now suggests that parts of Title 17, including the right to archival backup, can be thrown away by EULA).
Fair use and archival backup are both sections under Title 17 of the Copyright Act. In order to accept that any of exemptions can be made not to apply, you have to accept that the software you are buying at a store isn't 'bought' at all, it is solely licensed after the fact by the EULA. So as to the question of what happened in that store when you handed them cash or your credit card and carried that box home, I basically give up trying to make sense of it.