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BnetD v. Blizzard Suit Moves Forward

Posted by Zonk on from the i'm-not-your-friend dept.

Gamasutra has news that the ongoing legal battle between BnetD and Blizzard Entertainment will move to a new circus ring when the appeals court session begins today, Monday the 20th. From the article: "[The] EFF took the case to stand up for consumer choice in the marketplace. Reverse engineering is often the only way to craft a new product that works with older ones. Congress expressly recognized this when it created an exception to the DMCA for reverse engineering."

5 of 114 comments (clear)

  1. Finding it hard to get upset by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I know this isn't going to be a popular thing to say on slashdot, but I'm actually finding it difficult to get particularly upset about this whole case. I'm no Blizzard fanboy; Starcraft left me cold, I quite liked Warcraft 3 but didn't go mad over it and World of Warcraft hasn't impressed me in the slightest. However, I'm finding it hard to see them as particularly villainous here.

    I mean, yes, I know the DMCA is a "bad thing". However, it does seem to me that the only practical purpose of the whole bnetd thing was to allow people to play pirated copies of Blizzard games online. Blizzard's own battle.net system has always seemed a good system to me; it's fast, it's free (unless you include WoW) and I haven't noticed serious reliability problems since shortly after the Diablo 2 launch.

    Maybe I've just got the wrong end of the stick here (and I'd be happy to be corrected if I have), but is this a case of the "good guys" picking the wrong battle to fight over digital rights? I mean, it would be easier to fight the DMCA on terms that would make it easier to convince the educated (but non-techie) public, as well as lawmakers, if we weren't using a program whose main purpose in the wild is always going to be the circumvention of legitimate copy protection as the test-bed?

    1. Re:Finding it hard to get upset by bain · · Score: 3, Insightful

      You're assumption that bnet was used only for pirate copies is wrong. There are countries around the world where we are not as connected to the internet as the rest of the first world. Connecting to battlenet is not an option.

      The only way we can have multiplayer is to use bnet.

      There are also still people that doesn't have internet access and use bnet to play multiplayer.

      The real use of bnet is to replace battlenet functionality when connecting to battlenet is not an option.

      Saying it's only use is piracy is the same as saying crowbars is only used for breaking open locks and should therefor be banned as well.

      --
      Sanity is a majority vote.
    2. Re:Finding it hard to get upset by tuxedobob · · Score: 2, Insightful

      it is also used at LAN parties, where battle.net is not available.

      What? Who runs a LAN party without providing internet access?

      And if you answer that one, how do you set up a LAN party such that the LAN option in the games doesn't work?

    3. Re:Finding it hard to get upset by MrResistor · · Score: 2, Insightful

      you CANNOT say BNetD was not use for piracy.

      And you CANNOT say BNetD doesn't have significant, non-infringing uses, which SHOULD make the DMCA irrelevant in this case.

      As for the rest of your post:

      People were using it for tournaments and LAN parties, where the whole point is to have a game shared only among people in a single location, not the entire internet. Additionally, even if there was internet access, there almost certainly wasn't the bandwidth to support several players at once, and even if it did, adding the inherent latency involved in using a battlenet server was completely uncalled for. AND battlenet was unstable as hell, so even under ideal conditions it was still a deficient option.

      BNetD's creation had absolutely nothing to do with piracy, and everything to do with Blizzard failing to understand their market. Blizzard failed to provide the experience the market wanted, and BNetD was the market's reaction. Rather than fix their mistake, Blizzard decided to litigate.

      --
      Under capitalism man exploits man. Under communism it's the other way around.
  2. To add to this by phorm · · Score: 3, Insightful

    As a longterm battle.net user, I'd say that often enough bnet isn't all that reliable. More often than not a lengthy game of warcraft III will end up with an ally being dropped by the bnet servers, or something similar. A project like this allows not only for cloned functionality, but to create a better, more tolerant (and private) environment than the offical servers.