Slashdot Mirror
Tecmo Sues Game Hackers Under DMCA
blueZhift writes "This Reuters report on CNet states that Tecmo has filed a federal lawsuit in Chicago under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act accusing the site owners and perhaps some users of game hacking site www.ninjahacker.net (now offline) of knowingly infringing on their game software. This should be another interesting test of the DMCA and just how far it can be pushed to restrict what end users can do with/to their software purchases. This might ultimately affect the legality of cheat devices like the Game Shark and even the mere sharing of cheats or exploits."
Nowhere in TFA or the ninjahacker page (Even though I only skimmed it) are cheat codes mentioned. The article says "hacking into popular games... to change their codes" which doesn't have ANYTHING to do with cheating, sounds more like cracking/reverse engineering. You guys are exactly right in saying using the DMCA against cheat codes is ridiculous - hence why this has nothing to do with it.
to stop using proprietary software. There are a lot of amazing free software game projects that need our support (like e.g. WorldForge) that not only allow but in fact encourage hacking. Proprietary crap is good for uneducated people who want to have a one-size-fits-all black box. For thinking people who want to learn by tinkering, free software is the way to go.
Sincerely,
Pan Tarhei Hosé, PhD.
"Homo sum et cogito ergo odi profanum vulgus et libido."
Really, though...the DMCA sucks, but I can't see cheat codes being a violation while game makers keep putting them in on purpose. Aren't they the ones writing code to do different things when we enter the codes in? What next, prison time for opening an easter egg in Word?
The difference here is that they appear to be filing a suit against a hacking group that modified the actual program code of their games.
This to me is an incredible abuse of the DMCA. Hacking a game is like modifying anything else you've bought. It's not like game hackers generally distribute the developer's code, just a set of instructions for modifying the code that is already sitting on other people's consoles or PCs.
IMO this is the equivalent of a car manufacturer suing the makers of nitrous oxide systems or aftermarket body kits.
I'm not even sure why they care anyway - when I had more free time, hacking games was in some ways more fun for me than actually playing them. I extended the play time of Soul Reaver to something like 500 hours because of my extensive hacking of the PC version, for example.
"...always new atoms but always doing the same dance, remembering what the dance was yesterday." -Richard Feynman
I haven't been able to access the site, and the article doesn't say much, but how is hacking games to have new graphics breaking copy protection? Or is there another part of the DMCA they're using? Unless they were distributing hacks to disable CD checking, then maybe, but if they're just altering gameplay, how is that breaking copy protection? Heck, if the patches are done normally, they wouldn't even need to contain any copyrighted material.
From the Slashdot article:
This might ultimately affect the legality of cheat devices like the Game Shark and even the mere sharing of cheats or exploits.
The other article might not make upsurd claims like that, but this one does!
They aren't being sued for the cheats, they are being sued for making skins (including a bunch of nude ones that TECMO doesn't seem to like) for these games.
Apparantly they had to reverse engineer the games to make these skins and therefore they are being sued under the cover of the DMCA (natch).
Personally I think it's a bitch that modifying something that you've paid for, to add value to it so that others are more likely to want to pay for it in the future is seen as a suable offence by TECMO. Bioware, Id, Valve and others make it as easy as possible to make mods since the community efforts can add considerable value to the product at zero cost to the developers.
Counterstrike anyone?
So?
Of course you can drive your car at 200mph.. On a closed track.
Just like having a massive spoiler is perfectly legal, unless you go out on the public road.
There's (obviously) a big difference between "What you may do with your property" and "How you may use your property in the public area".
Making a massive spoiler and selling it is perfectly legal.
Hacking a game and distributing the hack should also be perfectly legal. (in a sane world)
It becomes more complicated if you use a hack in a multiplayer game, which is a service with rules. Break those rules and you can lose the right to use the service. (makes sense)
Getting sued for altering your own property in your own home is an abuse of the justice system.
The path I walk alone is endlessly long.
30 minutes by bike, 15 by bus.
The keyword here probably is nude. Aren't those US lawyers fun ?
Next time make a skin where they wear spacesuits.
May contain traces of nut.
Made from the freshest electrons.
This is one of the reasons I will never buy a console. Console games are geared to be throw-away games. i.e. You spend $50 on a FPS, and you are stuck with whatever maps the publisher sees fit to let you have. Even those games on the Xbox that have downloadable mods. Mods on Xbox live see: here are limited to publisher produced material. This means that you will never see a candyland map for Uneal Championship, or the gigantic burger joint map for that matter.
I have a few hundred megs of Maps for games like Unreal Tournament, Doom 3, Red Faction, Starcraft, etc, etc, etc. that were created by fans. I have a friend who is really into Morrowind, which is over 3 years old, and mods that offer nudity, god mode, extra locations, extra equipment, skins, and anything else some fan has the imagination and inclination to produce. He has been playing this game off and on for 3 years... I'm still playing Neverwinter Nights.
And for the game companies: attack your customers at your peril... We don't care about IP, we don't care whether you are too puritanical for nude skins, or whatever. A new game is a toy to us that will be used as we see fit. If you want to clamp down, many people simply won't buy from you. I sure as hell won't. And furthermore this makes me feel like I have made the right decision in avoiding the console market altogether.
The real complaint they have is the hacking around of Dead Or Alive Extreme Beach Volleyball.
Team Ninja made a blatently sexist load of shite where the main aim of the game is to win the money required to buy the skimpiest bikini for the digital women they spent so much time accurately recreating the chest-bouncing physics for.
However, because they like to have some semblance of decency about what they do for a living, you never actually get to see anything, and they've got plausible deniability that it's really all about the volleyball.
A bunch of fans decided that this was a silly copout, and 'fixed' that problem, thereby making them look as much a part of the dirty mac brigade as some had accused them of in advance. They found this offensive, and want to stop such things.
Given how practically every female main character seems to attract 3rd-party nude patches, and their advertising campaign being entirely based around "Look, Girls!!!", it's hard to believe they didn't see it coming.
"I Know You Are But What Am I?"