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Blizzard/Vivendi 2, bnetd 0
wiggles writes "It appears that the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals has sided with Blizzard/Vivendi (pdf link) in the ongoing bnetd case. According to the PDF of the opinion posted today, 'Appellants failed to establish a genuine issue of material fact as to the applicability of the interoperability exception [of the DMCA]. The district court properly granted summary judgement in favor of Blizzard and Vivendi on the operability exception. Summary judgement in favor of Blizzard and Vivendi is affirmed.' No word yet on the EFF's website as to what their next move will be."
to not buy Blizzard products (yes, this includes WoW), but that's just me.
Belief is the currency of delusion.
Please... Could have included a short explination for the 90% of us who will not RTFA. Are you new here?
Is it the case that the non-violation of the DMCA through interoperability was so blindingly obvious here that the court simply had to get it wrong?
I really do wonder how the US legal system works; do they ever find someone technically knowledgable to assist in this sort of case? Or do they just defer to whichever side provides the most fluent jargon?
Ripping an new rectum in the fabric of spacetime.
Surprise surprise. The DMCA was written by big corporations to protect them from competition (especially open source.) Now, if you write a program that works with another commercial program, good luck, especially if that program threatens a coveted corporate market with competition.
here
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
You fuckwit, go back to your limp pr0n. Some of us like to play private games with people we know, we call them "friends". See, we like to get together in a chat room and one of us will startup a bnetd server, then the rest of us join it and don't have to deal with shit heads like you while we zerg rush and hack our way through dungeons.
Shit, some of us even have legit copies, we just hate dealing with assclowns on Battlenet.
And as it should be, too. You have a right to make things cross-compatible with stuff like Samba, but there wasn't any legitimate use for bnetd besides "Bypassing Blizzard's CD-Key protection so that you could play your pirated Diablo 2 online".
Link?
For some of the games older than WoW I see your point because they all have a LAN mode of play built in.
While I understand where you're coming from what about from a WoW standpoint?
What if I purchased WoW and played on blizzard's servers for 8-9 months and decided I was tired of all the political crap between guilds on my server.
I want to start my own set of free servers only for friends and friends of friends invitation only. Should I be allowed to create a server side application that Blizzard's WoW client can connect to and invite my friends to play?
I've paid for the client. I'm just not using their monthly service anymore.
I don't know if I should be able to or not and I'm sure blizzard would crack down on this huge if it were to happen.
The man who trades freedom for security does not deserve nor will he ever receive either. - Benjamin Franklin
I owned a copy of Diablo 2 (actually I bought both it and the expansion twice because I lost my first cds). I started a bnetd server so I could play lan games with my friends with slightly more strict item rules. In typical lan games, people would do stuff like trade items and then get them back by loading an older version of their chars. :)
In any case, my use of bnetd wasn't a case of pirating at all. Everyone that used it owned a copy of the game. Disbelieve me if you want, but that's why that whole case angered me.
I've played WoW since beta too. I suck.
:wq
"(1) Blizzard's software end-user license and terms of usage agreements were enforceable contracts; (2) Appellants waived any "fair use" defense; (3) the agreements did not constitute misuse of copyright; and (4) Appellants violated the anti-circumvention and anti-trafficking provisions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act ("DMCA")."
Enforcable EULAs, sacrifice of fair use...I shake my head in disgust. Law and justice just aren't keeping up with the times.
Our side may have already lost because it is unlikely that the Supreme Court will take this case under reconsideration. The next step of this battle would be to change the laws themselves at the Congressional level. It will be a long and hard battle, but one that we must fight.
What is this battle about? this is the first i've heard about it... what happens if Blizzard wins?
Human desire will bring death.
They're one of the few publishers that doesn't even bother with "We'll see if the market supports it" when asked about Linux support for their software -- they just say "no". They sue open-source developers. They had a habit of using infamously exploitable network designs in their games. Blizzard is right up their with Microsoft in my "People What Are Evil" book -- they just have the virtue of writing more entertaining software and having managed to get Tycho and Gabe to constantly advertise for them.
Think of the applications of a law that allows a software publisher to make *illegal* any reverse-engineered interoperable software. That's quite a find.
Any program relying on (nontrivial) preemptive multithreading will be buggy.
Okay, no one ever said entertainment software has to be free, nor should it. It has such a short life, that they can't make money on it if someone else is assisting the piracy efforts and allowing illegal players to play for free. The problem here is that people here assume all software should be free, unless they wrote it or need to make a living on it. I'm all for OSS, believe me, but you can't force EVERYONE to give away their time and effort.
Yes, OS's should be free and open, but this is really no different than someone pirating a movie and then doing public theater shows of it next door to the pay theater. It's fine to make your OWN software free, but taking someone elses and distributing it freely (or allowing and encouraging piracy which is exactly what bnetd did) is not appropriate. Since it is free to play on battle.net with a LEGAL copy, it's highly skeptical that it had another purpose, no matter the "disclaimer" that may be attached.
Microsoft Sucks, F/OSS Rocks. I get mod points now right?
Wasn't Vivendi the company that made Valve create the Steam authentication software? I, too, wouldn't buy stuff from them if HL2 wasn't so damn good :(
Send email from the afterlife! Write your e-will at Dead Man's Switch.
You can play private games and have private chats for free on battle.net
I bet you're the type of social misfit that plays DVDs under Linux too.
So who put you in charge? Is there any legitimate reason to use Samba other than the "I don't want to buy Microsoft servers" argument? Are you really sure that there were no other users of bnetd than people playing pirated games and wanted something like Battle.net? I don't think so. Get a clue.
IIRC Diablo II supported Direct TCP/IP connection, so you probably didn't need bnetd to play online with a pirated copy. :P
And bnetd was pretty darn useful back when I played Starcraft, since that game did not support TCP/IP LAN play until one of the latest versions.
[]s Badaro
My sig became obsolete, and I lack the imagination to create a new one.
Check out the eff site to lobby your senator against something more important than the case in this story (http://action.eff.org/site/Advocacy?id=113). Boy, if all the /.'ers in the US did this it might actually make an impact...
Well, I haven't been on bnet much in the last month, but frankly about 1 in 3 or more games (warcraft III) tend to have at least one player time out because of bnet lag or server issues. It's wonderful that blizzard supplies bnet for free in most games, but given the lack of stability sometimes an alternative solution would be better.
When this conflict first came up I emailed blizzard to tell them I would never buy one of their products again and I've kept my word. I suggest if you care about this issue that you do the same. Oh, and tell your friends.
It's about the freedom of interoperability. If this case had appeared before, the SAMBA guys wouldn't have been able to give us their server, because Microsoft would've sued the hell out of them (AND win).
Certainly we MUST NOT allow this to become a legal precedent.
Hell, all I wanted was Realm Support without the awful lag and item changes of the official B.Net servers, quite frankly I'm just glad this shit hit the fan before I bought a copy of LoD or I'dve felt like a real ass.
If this were the case, then one of the major reasons for starting your own 'theatre' would be because the main theatre is full of whiney, disruptive assholes, is ill-maintained, and is not always available.
Despite the proliferation of other uses, bnetd was beloved by many because it was convenient, private, and oftimes more reliable than the public servers. Certain other games allow for private servers that authenticate to the primary... why can't Blizzard just make this a requirement to keep out the hacked CD-keys but allow private hosts?
"You have a right to make things cross-compatible with stuff like Samba, but there wasn't any legitimate use for bnetd besides "Bypassing Blizzard's CD-Key protection so that you could play your pirated Diablo 2 online"."
What's illegitimate about simply wanting to write a network server program? If someone wants to write a compatible server, how does it become anyone else's business why they do so - including Blizzard's? The burden should not be on them to explain - the burden should be on Blizzard to say exactly why this is an abuse of their rights. Which (in my opinion, which is apparantly different from the courts) they didn't do.
There are many many uses for bnetd
Blizzard dont have any servers in Austrlia! and ping times below 500 when using broadband are rare, therefore there are many people like ISP's using bnetd so that their customers can play battlenet games on the internet with other people in australia and have respectable ping times.
This is a big deal, and could set a very dangerous precedent!
"I reject your reality, and substitute my own" - Adam Savage
yeah and in canada im paying 1.15/L in BC which is ~4USD per gallon. welcome to the real world chumps
Anyone who's ever played a Blizzard game online knows how easy it is to congregate in a private channel and create a private, password-protected game. No one else will even know it exists, let alone the password required to join it, unless you explicitly tell them.
Valid complaints against the ruling exist; yours is not one of them, troll.
The fact that you zerg rush says a lot about you, methinks!
Battle.net allows you to password "private" games where no-one else can join but you and your bumchums...
C17H21NO4
What, precisely, do you think gives Blizzard the right to limit my use of a game that I purchased from them?
I'm not talking about making copies. I'm talking about all restrictions besides making copies.
When someone sells me a book, should they be able to sue me if I use a magnifying glass to look at it? What if I look through a blue filter when reading?
When someone sells me an electric drill, should they be able to sue me when I build a frame to hold it? What if I replace the drill bit with one sold by another company? What if I make my own drill bit?
When someone sells me a battery-powered calculator, should they be able to sue me when I break it open and rewire it to use solar energy?
When someone sells me a word processor application, should they be able to sue me when I write a helper app that copies and pastes text in the word processor?
When someone sells me a drawing program, should they be able to sue me when I write a program that controls the mouse pointer and causes it to draw interesting geometric patterns?
When someone sells me a chat program, should they be able to sue me when I write a program to intercept my keypresses and make them alternate between uPpEr AnD lOwEr CaSe?
What it comes down to is this: when you buy something, you own it. When you buy something that is copyrighted, you own it with the exception that you're not allowed to distribute copies of it. The company that sells it to you should have no say in how you use it.
I could run my own server that manages it's own maps and apply MY rules regarding PKing to the server. With Battle.NET, I have no such chance to do so.
Doesn't matter much. Diablo/DiabloII was passable as an RPG, but it's not got a lot of staying power. And, no, I didn't buy it- someone got it for me as a present for Christmas, I typically don't buy Windows applications, let alone ones from Blizzard when you factor in the reaction to people asking for Warcraft or Diablo titles for Linux- it'll be a cold day in Hell, is the basic gist of their response. Fine... I can live without your stuff, Blizzard. Now moreso than ever.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
I'm inclined to agree with right now, but this wasn't always the situation.
...Not that I have a problem w/ that. I bought War3 fair&square but lost the cd case (and hence, key), so I use a crack. I don't have any ethical qualms about circumventing copy protection to use the products that I own. So yeah, bnetd has legitimate uses, but my guess is that the majority of its users are those evil hacker types that the RIAA keeps telling me about.
I haven't gone on battle.net in quite ahwhile, but back in the DiabloII/Starcraft heydey BattleNet had some major kinks. It was quite common for the authentication servers to go down, friends would pop in/out of chat rooms, games would drop or take forever to start, and so on. Unfortunately, for people that wanted to play w/ friends over the internet you had no choice -- you couldn't connect to, say, your friends IP for a closed game.
I'm pretty sure this is no longer the case, however. Blizzard released a patch for Starcraft that allows internet gaming via TCP, and I think for DiabloII as well. Pretty sure that Warcraft 3 has had such functionality from day 1.
That said, nowadays it's much harder to argue that Bnetd is required for legitimate use, and if fact the majority of those that use it are trying to get around the CD-Key protection.
Let's look at the ramifications of this ruling to some of the most popular OSS. OpenOffice: Interoperability with Microsoft product by... reverse engineering GAIM: interoperability with Microsoft/Yahoo/AOL product by... reverse engineering Two huge players that could never be produced if this ruling is upheld. Anyone else scared?
Many others have gone off of Blizzard to better pastures. Here, you can do something about the farmers instead of having a GM take care of it. As for private servers, they arent "
just for the pirate", they're for those who want a bit better experience without the farming/exploits (Maybe you might want to take a clue on that one, Blizzard - or are those greenbacks inhibiting that?).
So far, NCSoft NA has been relatively sane with the well regulated private servers out there - versus the rabid Blizzard. All the bad things in L2 are usually with the commerce elements in the game. Your choice, funding invulnerable farmers and future lawsuits, or a decent pvp/grind?
"Forget the engineers." -Carly Fiorina, briber of MIT Technology Review.
Even with +4, insightful, i still think parent should be modded up, because this are some very true words that many poeple possibly never heard of...
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
Yet another steallar judgement from the 8th Circus Court of Appeals.
This court is NOTORIOUS for giving poor decisions. Sadly us Californian's are stuck with these clowns.
Is that a new icon on Slashdot? The real time strategy ogre? Anyway, a service like bnetd only exists as a way around Blizzard's key authentication. Even bit torrent which we all know is used primarily for illegal file sharing has very handy uses in distributing legal cd images (Linux distros, etc). I can't say I have much sympathy for the people on the bnetd side, even though some feel Blizzard's games have been going downhill, pay for it if you want to play it - only World of Warcraft needs a monthly fee anyway, and by now all those other games are incredibly cheap, go mow a couple neighbor's lawns and buy them.
-- Reality is for people who lack imagination.
"[P]rivate parties are free to contractually forego (...) exemptions of the Copyright Act" "parties [can] contract away a fair use defense"
....there *is* no fair use in the USA anymore. Why on earth would any copyright holder give away anything freely? Fair use rights are supposed to be rights the copyright holder shouldn't be allowed to withhold, like the right of first sale. Though I suppose by the "usage restrictions over DRM" protected by the DMCA you have no control over your own use anyway. Let me demonstrate how silly this is:
EULA for this comment: Your fair use rights are null and void. If you want to quote me (that requires my permission now, bitch), you may not write anything negative about the comment, and it must be done wearing a pink bunny suit.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
The 9th Circuit serves California, not the 8th.
And as it should be, too. You have a right to make things cross-compatible with stuff like Samba, but there wasn't any legitimate use for bnetd besides "Bypassing Blizzard's CD-Key protection so that you could play your pirated Diablo 2 online"
Umm, sorry thats complete bullshit on your part. Blizzard is trying to control how people play there games, and really, they shouldn't be in the business of telling us what we should and shouldn't do with the software we purchased. If I want to run a game server, totally independent of battle.net, it should be completely legal to do so, REAGARDLESS if you what you THINK, its designed for. Next time do the math baby, before you star spewing generalizations.
Continue developing it anyway and release it over p2p networks.
Problem solved.
We have secretly replaced these Slashdot mods' sense of humor with a rusty nail. Let's see if they notice!!
Shit, some of us even have legit copies, we just hate dealing with assclowns on Battlenet.
Nothing on BNET prevents you and your friends from "making a chat room" and then "making a private game". So the only valid point in there is that "some of you" have a valid copy. Which means the ones that don't are using bnetd to play without paying. Which isn't a good arguement. There are few things bnetd actually is good for except to circumvent blizzards copy protection.
"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."
Obviously, you've never tried to play on battle.net with 2 players (computers) behind the same firewall. Can't be done without bnetd.org. Too bad about all the other stuff that will never get made. "Thank you for your payment. Right through here, please. Stay on the path... that's right... don't worray about the blood... go ahead, it's ok..."
"Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
--- Jerry Garcia
All's not lost; you stayed awake long enough to drool out a few slightly relevant words. Next time try putting them together, collecting any stray thoughts from your mind before it clouds up. In no time you'll find yourself forming coherent arguments that actually address what your opponent said!
The maker of a product has no right to prohibit you from using it in a different way than intended.
When it comes to computer software, yes, they do have a right. And they have cases like this and more to prosecute people who use their software in ways they don't allow for whatever reason they want to give.
The vague references to civil liberties and "ill-concieved laws" are equally disturbing. When you bought a Blizzard game, you just got permission to play it in a way Blizzard condones. No personal liberty or "rights", just permission to play the game their way. Nothing else.
I really want to understand how it is you and the moderators that marked the post as insightful came to believe otherwise. Give me some feedback here. Is it that you never bothered to read a single EULA? You haven't formulated an opinion on the matter yet?
http://www.maxineudall.com/2010/02/should-economists-be-sued-for-malpractice.html
Open source needs to stop defending these type of projects and focus more on making NEW ideas.
They could have based their ruling simply on the DMCA and still schilled out an adequate though bought decision to their corporate masters without damaging individual liberty. I want to know where my part in negotiating a eula is "active". I don't get to change the terms, I don't get to talk with anyone in the company regarding it, I don't get to remove any of the add-on software they often push with their crap. And don't give me that "you choose no" garbage, I can't play realplayer files on my computer because "i choose no" simply because I don't want the baggage that goes with realplayer. The player is FREE, but i'm still screwed by a eula. I think I know of some judges who have earned themselves a special place in hell for their biased rulings today.
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
enforce EULA's.
Which, BTW, has NOTHING TO DO WITH THE GPL.
GPL is a copyright agreement, not a EULA.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
So what, in your opinion, is the "mess"?
becasue that would make them the Fruit Fucker, not Pac-Man
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Ok... it's is open source and we are in slashdot. But I don't see why that should allow them not to follow rules. Does it suck to be unable to create a private server? Yes it does... but that is not enough reason to anyone to start breaking laws... even if it is open source.
I've heard of circumvention of copy protection system, but never of a copyright protection system.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
It's just me wondering what the hell you're on about? Seriously... I want a quick precis, please...
you have never played WOW, then you couldn't have agreed to the EULA.
SO what is to stop YOU, from creating a server?
Maybe you should get some programmers together and write an bnet equivilent.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
as a non karma whoring ac: read it here.
>> Shit, some of us even have legit copies, we just hate dealing with assclowns on Battlenet.
Thanks for proofing the point.
As one who has actually PAID for those games, i am really happy that you fucktards (or at least MOST of you and your fucktard friends) cant play online.
HI O WISE PRINCE. WHT TOOK U SO DAM LONG?
the person testing is not the person who wrote it. Or using there computers.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
So... I don't want to be too blunt here... but basically, you're saying that it's okay for a corporation to bend you over and fuck you up the ass if they so choose because they've got lawyers?
You can't read EULAs before you purchase the product, and if you actually decide to not use it because of a bad EULA, you're probably out some money - by the time you've taken it home, opened the box and attempted to install it, you probably can't return it, at least not without a restocking fee. You think that's approriate?
You seem to think that the law is always morally appropriate, even when (based on other laws) it shouldn't be enforcable. Eh, whatever. If you want to be sodomized by the corporations you buy things from, fine. The rest of us don't.
In Gandhi's world: First they ignore you. Then they laugh at you. Then they fight you. Then you win. Gandhi
What if somebody rehosts BNET.d on a non-US server? There are plenty of non US develpers who wouldn't mind sharpening their skills while having fun working on this. Perhaps it is just time for the original development team to pass the torch.
My rights don't need management.
They're too busy being litigious assholes.
the ironic thing is that i left battle.net due to in part, people using words like assclown and fuckwit.
the point is a great one though.
using the product in a lawful (law as in one that hasn't been corrupted by "lobbyists" and "bribed representatives", though you'll find not the latter kind these days) way is the RIGHT of the customer.
manufacturer: i'll sell this hammer to you if you agree that by holding it in your hands, that you will only use ACME brand expensi^H^H VALUE ADDED NAILS.
customer: sure thing (under breath: get real bitch).
any merchant that tries to control a product after it is sold needs to **** off and die. there is no middle ground here. unless the customer signs a contract (nope, eula is not a contract and never will be) [and in contracts you cannot agree to give up fundamental rights] you have no damn business telling a customer what they can do with what they purchased. you are allowed not to give support or discontinue your warranty if the product is used in an unapproved manner.
Science : Proprietary , Knowledge : Open Source
I'm thinking multiplayer over the Internet for this discussion- besides, it's a moot point, really. As for playing hacked games, I pretty much don't do that as it'd be stealing from my colleagues considering that I port games from Windows and MacOSX as one of my professional endeavors.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
just an interesting thing I noticed, when blizzard does something they do it thoroughly.
All your base are belong to Wii.
Best line about this country ever!!!
You miss understand, you can load patches diabloii.exe with altered drop rates ect... and you can play them using the lan/ip game option which lets you play up to 8 players on any type of modified Diablo ii you want.
"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."
I'm glad I've escaped the cycle of addiction. Their products are about as costly as heroin (in oh so many ways) and much more frustrating. Good riddance.
Constitutional rights may be respected, repealed, or modified; but they must never be ignored.
The problem is that if the EFF gets this before the Supreme Court, they're going to stick some idiot up there who has to be ideologically pure instead of willing to do whatever it takes to win battles. Last time, IIRC, it was Larry Lessig arguing against the DMCA. Instead of just fighting the DMCA, Lessig had to try to fight the whole goddamn copyright reform war in one go, and argue that the copyright extensions of 1831 and 1909 were unconstitutional and should be retroactively rolled back. Now, that's just stupid. No Supreme Court is going to pass that. It would cause *chaos* in the business world. There are *vast* pragmatic issues. So by adopting an impossible cause, Lessig punched a hole in the bottom of his boat, killed the battle against the DMCA.
Don't get me wrong. I think that Larry Lessig qualifies as a good guy, someone out doing good work. But his arguments up there sounded something like a somewhat muted Stallman -- maybe visionary, inspiring flame in a crowd, but sure as hell not going to pass muster before a bunch of crochety Justices.
The EFF needs some people willing to be a lot more Machivellian, less ambitious, and less idealistic if it intends to compete with the competition, which doesn't have any of its idealistic hangups.
Any program relying on (nontrivial) preemptive multithreading will be buggy.
of apple forbidding people buying osx and using it on anything other than what hardware they choose.
/. is a losing proposition but if some people don't, others will think it's ok if companies do things like this and even believe it's for their own good.
even though no one expects support for unofficial configurations, they go out of their way, and soon with osx86, using the DMCA to prevent bought copies of it being used.
funny though, you don't hear a lot of calls for boycotts.
arguing for property rights on
stand up for all the rights of customers, not just when it's your pet company or if it doesn't involve you at this moment. i guarantee it WILL involve you sooner or later.
i had a lot more hope for the geek community to prevent abuses... but i've been disappointed.
we're no longer the x or y generation, we're the DRM and DMCA gen (P.A.T.R.I.O.T comes to mind). hope you guys like the world we're building.
Science : Proprietary , Knowledge : Open Source
i agree to an extent, how ever where it gets murky is what if i buy your hammer, then use bobs nails which bend a break and i'm not able to nail them into anything, then i come back to you and demand my money back or support? i do how ever agree that once i purchase something, i'm free to do what ever i want to it. i'd bought it outright. subject to. 1. i can't claim i invented it. 2. if i misuse it i can't claim you have any liability 3. i can't steal your idea if it's patented and sell it as my own.
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
That meant... it got cancelled. (their fault).
Zero tolerance on IP enforcement! (excepting copyleft... which is the only temporal paradise we have till people realize IP is crazy, I can't be P!.)
It's time to pick up the baton and run with it
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
... you can go off and create private areas with yet still be in a community at the next large city/fort ?
;)
Play Guildwars
There is an understood proviso there, that Ghandi's statement applies to the masses. He wasn't talking to a group of smart, dedicated, but ultimately limited-in-population geeks.
The OSS/geek world is powerful because it has the ability to release disruptive technologies (and has consistently done so, sending waves through the tech community, especially in the past few years). Its buying power may not be tiny, but it is still insignificant compared to that of the Joe Sixpack market.
And Blizzard has busily sealed off the main way that the OSS world can bring in disruptive technologies -- write software compatible with Blizzard software, and you get sued.
The only real remaining way would be to sit down and write a better version of whatever Blizzard produces, but Blizzard (unlike, say, Microsoft) produces products that have relatively little code and lots of content (audio, artwork, etc). The OSS world is rich in coders, and exceedingly poor in skilled people willing to donate talent on audio and graphics. So, yes, I can design and implement an WCIII-type RTS engine -- it still won't impact Blizzard's bottom line, because they have masses of artists and sound engineers that I *can't* get. Sure, there are open-source people busily producing RTS code, but as long as their audio and graphics aren't comparable to Blizzard's, Blizzard can easily shrug them off.
And as long as the DMCA sits around, as long as there are restrictions on reverse-engineering and producing interoperable software, the open source world is hamstrung in many ways.
Any program relying on (nontrivial) preemptive multithreading will be buggy.
I like this poster's style in putting to rest a classic and completely fallacious claim.
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
Anyone who's ever played a Blizzard game online knows how easy it is to congregate in a private channel and create a private, password-protected game.
And anyone who's ever played a Blizzard garm at the time that bnetd was being developed knows how easy it is to *NOT BE ABLE TO PLAY AT ALL* because the fscking servers weren't available.
Whoever modded you insightful is an idiot.
I've had an interest in following the outcome of this particular case, maybe more than some people, because I used to know Tim Jung, the owner of the Internet Gateway ISP and defendant.
.... but I know a lot of people in the St. Louis area who wonder what ever happened to him. (It seems the www.igateway.net web site is still up, but the contact numbers are disconnected and many things look like they haven't been changed/edited in years. So it's more of a "placeholder site" at this point.)
I assume he's not really allowed/able to discuss any specifics of the case, since it's still going on
I'm not sure if the ISP was sold off voluntarily, in an action totally unrelated to the Vivendi/Blizzard suit, or if it had to be done to cover some legal expenses? (Hopefully, it was the former!)
Slashdot readers yell as if they didn't know that it was mostly being used for piracy, and try to pretend that the majority of people only use it legitimately.
The most common use of P2P systems is to transfer copyright-infringing content.
The most common use of the Internet (in sheer bytes) is to transfer copyright-infringing content.
System-level debuggers, hex editors, and so on, all have quite shady uses and are often indeed abused.
However, all of the above provide benefits and the damage caused by the chilling effects of making illegal any of the above things far exceeds the simple ban on them.
Last time Lexmark tried using the DMCA, it was to attempt to make it illegal to produce interoperable ink cartridges. Luckily, they were shot down.
Next time, perhaps they will produce identical printer frames and differentiate between different models in software -- perhaps different drivers will "grant" access to different resolutions. And if some open-source type wrote a driver that added all sorts of nifty features, including the ability to use any desired resolution, you can bet that Lexmark would be flinging DMCA-waving lawyers at him at a moment's notice.
The question, aside from whether or not the DMCA is even a good idea at all, is whether the DMCA is a tool that can be used to create "black box" systems that cannot be interoperated with. I feel that it is damaging to society to allow such a use. Many companies obviously see the short-term benefit to themselves in taking advantage of such a black box -- society loses in the long run if everyone is out producing a black box, but each individual company wins in the short run. I don't really want a world full of black boxes. To my way of thinking, demonstrating *any* interoperability applications should immediately override any protections that the DMCA grants. That means that there are *no* sneaky ways to extend it to build monopolies and closed systems -- the applications of the DMCA would be sharply limited. Alas, Blizzard has chosen to take a path that opens the door to other companies to start exploring how the DMCA can be abused.
Any program relying on (nontrivial) preemptive multithreading will be buggy.
but there wasn't any legitimate use for bnetd besides "Bypassing Blizzard's CD-Key protection so that you could play your pirated Diablo 2 online".
Bullshit.
There was *NO* need, in any way, shape, or form, to have bnetd in order to play a pirated copy of Diablo2 online.
at all.
Diablo2 allowed anyone to play anyone else by direct connection. You didn't need bnetd to do it.
The GPL gives you rights not normally found under copyright law, not takes them away. So if the GPL is "unenforcable", you need to get the writer(s) permission before you can use said code.
How did the parent get marked insightful? The guy is clueless and probably doesn't even own a Blizzard game. I bought Starcraft when it first came out and Battle.NET was compeltely inaccessible from college, probably due to the firewall which almost all coleges have.
Playing from home was no joy ride either. You experienced drops a hell of a lot more often than when running your own server to play with friends in the neighborhood.
Also the LAN multiplayer was terribly implemented. There wasn't a single LAN game in the dorms where someone couldn't see the game or couldn't join, etc.. Once we started using our own bnet server all this went away and the game actually worked.
People circumvented Blizzard's shitty implementation and cheap ass servers and saved the playability of the game.
For example, on page 14, I fail to comprehend how this case differs from Vault. The judge says
but does not make clear to me how bnetd could have exercized the interoperability exception without violating the contract. (Perhaps someone else got it and can explain to me?)For another, on page 17, it says that the "secret handshake" controls access to the "copyrighted game". This is an extremely strained interpretation: the handshake controls access to the Battle.Net servers, and only incidentally to the Battle.Net portions of the client.
So I would be very disappointed if this weak analysis were the last word in this case.
The evaluation of an action as 'practical' . . . depends on what it is that one wishes to practice.
Anyone who used to visit blizzhackers.com for example, knows that Blizzard strongarmed them (and other sites) with legal threats, into removing all links to and discussion of private servers for WoW (there are several versions out there though, much harder to find these days).
blizzhackers.com changed the name of their site, *kept all the forums* for discussing hacking and cheating in WoW, and yet Blizzard forced them not to discuss *private servers* anymore.
HMMM.
I think it's less that the EFF/Slashdot endorse piracy and more the fact that the stance that they take pretty much leads to at least some measure of piracy always existing in the world -- if you have open, interoperable systems, information *will* copy and spread.
I agree that both the EFF and the RIAA try to market their stances by making them sound wonderful -- the RIAA pretends that its interest is something other than increasing profits without producing more works ("protect the starving artists"), and the EFF pretends that piracy isn't going to happen under the systems that they promote. That's just politics, and you're stuck with it if you're going to work with lobbyist organizations.
My belief is that the real thing that much of the Slashdot world wants is not for music to be free -- for them to have to pay absolutely nothing in taxes or fees for the content -- but for music to be commoditized, for prices to be driven down so far that anyone can have essentially whatever they want for little money. Even the Free software movement isn't about completely eliminating payment -- the GPL contains plenty of reference to payment -- but it *is* about eliminating lock-in and closed, proprietary systems.
The problem is that currently, we lack good ways to fund the production of IP. Our current approach is to try to use a mechanism that is *really*, *really* good at dealing with conventional good distribution, with physical goods -- just turn the IP into a physical product and distributed as if it were a limited commodity in a free market. So once an artist produces a song, theoretically every person on earth could immediately be given a copy and enjoy it, but because we cannot produce a more efficient mechanism for funding IP production, we are forced to provide that IP to only a limited, privileged few. The same goes for every movie and software package out there.
Open source is an example of the traditional economic systems breaking down. The cost of production is so low versus noise in the system (like the enjoyment that people derive from building software) that people can make software for free, and now that distribution is so cheap, give it to everyone.
If you are running a business that depends on the classical framework, of course you're concerned! Nobody has proposed a good way for you to continue putting bread on your table!
My guess is that within some number of years, production of IP will become increasingly centralized, funded by national or world organizations through taxes (as research often is), and then distributed freely. It's simply so much more efficient to give *everyone* a word processor that they can use forever, freely, and avoid all this screwing about with incompatible black box systems.
I don't see a "revolution", a sudden change, but rather a slow migration towards this model. Federal/state/local government providing art grants being provided specifically for the production of art that can be *digitally redistributed*. A slow increase in government-funded software production (the NSA's SELinux work, for instance). And, of course, the continued flood of hobbyist-produced work, and work coming from companies who have interest in introducing disruptive technology to a market (IBM's funding of Linux to keep MS weakened, for instance).
Any program relying on (nontrivial) preemptive multithreading will be buggy.
No, they do not have the right to prohibit you from using their product in a way they didn't intend.
Copyright gives you exclusive right to distribute your work. That is all. Anything beyond that is not covered by copyright, and certainly is not covered by the clause in the Constitution which covers copyright.
Because otherwise, the same restrictions could be applied to anything that has a copyright associated with it: books, magazines, articles, and even this message.
Just think of the things copyright holders could do if the EULA were to be applied to more traditional forms of copyrighted works. They could, for instance, forbid the sale of the work (thus circumventing first-sale laws). They could stipulate that libraries are not allowed to keep a copy of the work in question, thus effectively shutting down libraries if enough publishers did that.
If EULAs cannot be applied to non-software, why should they be valid for software?
Use 'slashdot stuff' in the subject line in any email you send me if you want to get past the spam filter.
Vote with your wallet people! I haven't played on Bnet since Diablo 1 and I am no worse for wear! You can do it too!
Never bathe in hot oil and Bisquick.
Get your http://bnetd.sourceforge.net/dist/bnetd/snapshot/b netd-snapshot-20020623.tar.gz">bnetd tar balls here!
When it comes to computer software, yes, they do have a right.
No, they don't. Try reading copyright law. They have limited rights to restrict the creation and distribution of new copies and to public performance. By law is is explicitly not copyright infringment to install and run software. US Code Title 17 Section 117.
When you bought a Blizzard game, you just got permission to play it in a way Blizzard condones.
I need no such permission.
Is it that you never bothered to read a single EULA?
EULAs are contract offers. EULAs generally offer you nothing you want or need. As I pointed out above, BY LAW you explicitly need no license at all to install and run software. You can just decline the offer and then no agreement exists.
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- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
This isn't about copyright. This is about EULA's and how they are very successfully enforced.
Please understand, if draconian EULA's aren't enforceable, then the ability for a company to capture a profit is thrown into uncertainty. This kind of uncertainty is unwelcome in capitalism and American culture. An entertainment conglomerate won't be assured they can limit the use of their products by end-users and thereby maximize profits.
They could, for instance, forbid the sale of the work (thus circumventing first-sale laws). They could stipulate that libraries are not allowed to keep a copy of the work in question
You make my point for me thank you very much. In every example you give you mention a priveledge previously given away for free. Capitalism as currently practiced encourages monetizing everything. Charge the libraries more, attempt to control the market by forbidding resale. (Something that some EULA's attempt to prevent) For example, attempt to sell MSDN CD-ROM's on ebay and see what happens.
I'm a crackpot, so I don't really expect it to play out in such a dark way because I think consumer will at some point not yet reached vote with their dollars, but I tire of people running on about their rights.
http://www.maxineudall.com/2010/02/should-economists-be-sued-for-malpractice.html
I consider my self very liberal, but I stand behind the gun nuts 100%. Do you have any idea what a bitch it would be to try and stage a revolution where the other guy has thousands of military grade arms and you can't produce a single hand gun? Not going to end well for the good guys. Free flow of arms is essential to preventing tyrany.
A Free Market requires informed intelligent consumers, such people are rare, we're in trouble.
half of you all will log onto WoW tonight anyway.
By law is is explicitly not copyright infringment to install and run software.
You're right it's not, but you are running the software in a way that Blizzard did not intend or approve. So they sue to make sure they capture that right. Copyright be damned.
I need no such permission.
Denial doesn't help your situation.
EULAs are contract offers
They may be, but corporations have a funny way of watching each other's back. For example, Microsoft enforces their EULA by preventing certain kinds of sales of their OS on Ebay. Try finding actual MSDN CD's on Ebay where the auction is not closed down by ebay. Guess what? The resale of the CD's is prohibited by Microsoft's EULA. So they are being "enforced" despite whatever LAWS are present.
The precedents are being made up because the alternative of giving away rights and priveledges to consumers flies in the face of capitalism and American culture.
http://www.maxineudall.com/2010/02/should-economists-be-sued-for-malpractice.html
Want to play a mod for a bnet game online? Install something like Zy-El or Hordes of Chaos, then see how far you get trying to play it on battle.net. Bnetd fills a real gap that Blizzard shouldn't be expected to cover. Pity that someone at Blizard/Vivendi would prefer to swat it rather than finding a way to coexist. If, for example, thier primary concern was fighting piracy, there are well-established metods to do cd-key validation of clients running on servers they don't control, without the non-bnet servers ever seeing the original keys.
When you live in a sick society, just about everything you do is wrong.
So now can you do this?
Get a group of programmers who never have agreed to the Blizzard EULA to recode the entire thing in a clean room implementation?
Sure, it'll be hard to do without actually being able to *test* the product, but still...
Steven V>
I patented screwing your mom. But it got revoked for "prior art."
Look,
I really wish it was different, but you seem to operate in some world where the DMCA didn't get passed, where DVD's aren't encrypted AND carry region codes.
It didn't take long for that to happen and there's nothing suggesting that consumers are too bothered by any of it.
As the article that started it all out clearly points out, the corporation is the clear winner and there's nothing suggesting it's going to be different anytime soon.
http://www.maxineudall.com/2010/02/should-economists-be-sued-for-malpractice.html
The day when I give those DMCA-wielding jackbooted thug pigfuckers one thin dime.
I too have felt the cold finger of injustice.
where's the part where the customer can sign to show that they will legally abide by the terms of the "contract"? hmmm?
It's right next to the line where you sign to abide by the GPL. You are free to not agree but then you don't have the right to use the software, the EULA and the GPL a similar in that regard.
We must create a free RTS game better than anything Blizzard's made! Of course it will take a few, or many, years but I think a lot of people would be intrested in contributing.
You're right it's not, but you are running the software in a way that Blizzard did not intend or approve. So they sue to make sure they capture that right. Copyright be damned.
You can sue if someone infringes your copyright. You cannot sue to "capture" rights that you do not have. You can't just make stuff up to sue for.
>I need no such permission.
Denial doesn't help your situation.
You can't just make up things to sue for. It is not copyright infringment to install and run software . You cannot sue simply because I use the spatula I bought from you as a flyswatter... a use you did not intend or approve.
corporations have a funny way of watching each other's back
WTF does that have to do with anything? Corporations are not the law.
auction is not closed down by ebay
Whether eBay shuts down an auction or not has absolutely nothing to do with the law. Coroporations bow down to all sorts of legal threats all the time when it's not worth the cost of opposing them.
The precedents are being made up because the alternative of giving away rights and priveledges to consumers flies in the face of capitalism and American culture.
Are you delusional? How about basic property rights? You buy something and it is your property. You can do anything you like with it, other than violating some law. And yes, by law the particular copy of a copyrighted work is your property. The law explicity deads with the distinction between ownership of the copyright and ownership of individual copies. The copyright holder owns the copyright and the buyer is the legal owner of the individual copy. If you buy a book then that book is by law your property and the particular copy of that novel printed in that book is your property. It would be a violation of copyright law (and you could be sued for copyright infringment) if you were to start printing up and distributing NEW copies of that book, but aside from that the particular copy *IS* your property to do with as you please. You need no license to read the book. You need no license to cut it up and make poetry out of it. You need no license to install and run software. That particular copy is your property to do with as you please, short of commiting copyright infringment. I have absolutely no right to tell you how you may use a book I wrote, short of sueing you for actual copyright infringment.
There is not "giving away of rights" here. The copyright holder owns the copyright and the copy rights. By law he owns nothing else.
I don't know why you think copyright law for software is any different than copyright law for books. You do not need to accept an EULA to read a book and you do not need to accept an EULA to use software.
Book authors and software authors have the same rights. I am a software author by the way.
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- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
That I'm with Blizzard on this one. If a company chooses to make their software open source, that is great, and we should applaud them for it. If however they choose to keep it proprietary, that is also their right and it should be honoured.
This again can be attributed to Stallman's pernicious influence, methinks. His attitude of "my way is the only correct/acceptable way," has been replicated by his followers...to the degree where it is believed in cases like this one that if a company does not license their software under the GPL by default, they are automatically fair game.
I can only hope that some people eventually come to realise that genuine freedom also includes the freedom to hold an opinion different from theirs, and also that if Stallman in particular cannot accept that idea, that he will eventually be rendered irrelevant.
I believe the point was that people didn't agree this was or should be illegal, not that we are above the law.
And I've come out with my own customer agreement.
It goes like this:
"Thank you for reviewing this EULA. This agreement is automatically agreed to by Blizzard/Vivendi selling their product to this user through any intermediary of their choosing, and predates any agreement or EULA Blizzard/Vivendi may attempt to provide to the user for use of their software or services. The sale of any Blizzard created product to this user prohibits the seller and the programming source company or companies from interfering with this particular customer's fair use of said product. The user is not required to use, purchase or participate in Bilzzard's Battle.net service in any way shape or form for networked and non-networked use so long as there is any kind of server software provided by the enthusiast community here or abroad. The customer regrets establishing this EULA and further regrets any legal inconvenience this may cause Bilzzard/Vivendi. This agreement is irrevocable within the United States and abroad unless the user agrees that Blizzard provides a better, less draconian agreement allowing the law abiding enthusiast community that will let them enjoy their fine product."
"Love is like pi - natural, irrational, and very important." (Lisa Hoffman)
Think about it this way - you bought something (a copy of a Blizzard game) and you want to use it in a different way than they want you to.
Consider: I bought a Linux CD but I want to use it in a different way than the GPL wants me to. What prevents this? The fact that the CD I purchased does not give me ownership of the copyrighted material on that disc, all I really have is a license to use that copyrighted material. Whether we are talking Linux, gcc, or a game our license to use that software is conditional to agreeing to its terms. If you do not agree you lose your right to that copyright material.
The fallacy I was pointing out was this idea that clickwrap/shrinkwrap agreements are fair/negotiable.
no court can simply void what is the real truth, but your post seems to imply that the judicial system and congress are the final say on what is "moral" or "right" in society.
I would also like to point out that most consumers either know of DRM and HATE IT, or don't know about DRM and will hate it once they find out about it.
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
Well, that might take care of the EULA for them but then there is:
a) the EULA for the users
b) the DMCA
I want to know where my part in negotiating a eula is "active". I don't get to change the terms, I don't get to talk with anyone in the company regarding it ...
Odd, one can make the same arguments regarding the GPL. One can also use the GPL to explain EULA. Like GPL'd software the game is copyrighted. The owner of the copyright only grants you permission to use the software, Linux, gcc, or game when you agree to their terms. If you do not agree to their terms you have no legal right to their copyrighted material.
Vote with your wallet people! I haven't played on Bnet since Diablo 1 and I am no worse for wear! You can do it too!
Dude, the voting is over, long, long over. People voted for Blizzard. One million subscribers in North America, four million world wide.
According to the legal docs, Vivendi's main complaint is that end users can play on BNETD without a valid CD key, therefore encouraging people to pirate their games.
Yeah I have, but I'm much more likely to be tv episodes I downloaded with azureus.
Which, apparently, makes me a criminal. Isn't IP law great?
:wq
Dishonest? and do you even know what disingenuous means?
Here's an example of disingenuous: "are you arguing that when someone pays for a product, they don't have the right to make use of it?"
You are ridiculous and ignorant, Mr Hamburger Jackass.
Copyright is the right to copy. When you pay for something under copyright, you don't "gain rights" from some "copyright system", but rather your ability to "do whatever you like" is restricted by the fact that someone else holds the copyright.
You can't copy it, you can't sell or offer rights to it. You can only use or resell your license.
This isn't complex stuff.
And yeah, somebody who has no contract with Apple, but who is using their software, is a thief.
And nobody to date has EVER bought OS X and ran it on non-Apple hardware, because there is not a version of OS X you can buy that runs on PCs. Stealing the developer preview to demo the parts of OS X that do run on PCs is a different thing to prattle about.
There is plenty of room to dislike EULAs and sloppy software licenses that deny fitness for a particular purpose, and disavow any responsibility for liability, and restrict fair use, among other things. But all the comments you make are just non-sensical gibberish, and your replies are absolutely irrational mind dumps.
I just finished reading the decision, and the DMCA portion is nonsense. I mean, complete and utter nonsense. Essentially, they rule that Battle.net's checking the CD keys was an effective anti-circumvention measure which protected access to a copyrighted work. No, not the game itself, since you can play the game without Battle.net, but instead the "Battle.net mode" of the game. The court ruled that the multiplayer version of the game when played over Battle.net is a separate protected work than the game played single-player or multiplayer on a LAN.
Now, to begin with the idea that a running version of a program is covered because it's source code is copyrighted is ridiculous. By that standard, using a slug in an arcade machine should be a DMCA violation since you've circumvented measures which prevent you from playing a copyrighted game without paying. The court totally fails to pay attention to the portion which describes what it means to effectively prevent access to a copyrighted work. In this case the work in question is compiled software, and its ability to run does not depend on Battle.net. The DMCA specifies that for a technological process to be considered to control access to a copyrighted work, there must be a transformative process. Prior to this process, the copyrighted work must be unable to be used. For instance, before being decrypted, DVDs simply cannot be watched because the contents are scrambled by encryption. Embedding an if statement at the front of computer code does not meet that definition. It doesn't even come close. The code for the Battle.net portion of the program is not encoded and does not need to be decoded. It can be run with or without having submitted a CD key to Battle.net. It just won't be as useful if you can't access Battle.net. What happens is that if Battle.net doesn't like your CD key, it does not let you sign on. All that Battle.net is preventing access to is Battle.net. So this decision is clearly ignorant of the technical facts of the case. When you actually look at it in the light of the correct facts, what the court has ruled amounts to the idea that they broke the DMCA by "circumventing" access controls which protected Battle.net by writing their own server. That doesn't make a lick of sense.
Further, to rule that a particular mode of a program is a separate protected work is ridiculous. In this particular case the "mode" was merely a means of match-making through this particular service, and since LAN play provided precisely the same game play, just with people actually near you, it's very difficult for me to see how a match-making mode would qualify as a special part of the game worthy of its own copyright. In what sense is Battle.net access an expression of creative ideas?
Keith Irwin
>There are few things bnetd actually is good for
>except to circumvent blizzards copy protection.
Ehh, it is good for actually PLAYING the game as well.
GPL enforces the DISTRIBUTION of copyrighted works, not USAGE of them.
You can use Linux CD to wipe your ass and then eat it, noone would say a thing.
GPL is NOT AN EULA.
--Coder
This just shows the Federals court inability to understand the gaming industries needs and its lack of understanding for th complexity of this ruling.
Having seen similar things happen to other MMORPG (Mir 2 and EI) it seems clear to me that producing your own server for any commercial MMORPG is stealing their potential customers and morally wrong. Using the client is wrong, a big percentage of the development effort goes into the graphics, models, sound, animation etc within the client. Go and produce a MMORPG yourself and then sit back when people start trying to emulate your servers...
If it was OK to reverese engineer all these MMORPG they wouldn't live very long would they!
I think there is a fine line when it comes to emulating game servers. Applications are a whole different thing. If you provide support for MS Word files that doesn't stop people wanting to use Word itself. With this it's almost like Using Word for free for your own file format, which looks just like the original Word format. See my point?
>Please understand, if draconian EULA's aren't
>enforceable, then the ability for a company to
>capture a profit is thrown into uncertainty.
No, they are not. Every other bussiness in the world manage to make profit without EULAs for example, software would as well. Besides, even if that was NOT the case, are you saying that we should have a law to specifically protect a bussines that would otherwise not be viable? If so, I would like some laws that makes it possible to make profit from guiding people over streets, should we forbid people to cross streets without such guide? How else could I profit?
Do note that copyright allready give protection for software, just as it do to music, books and many other things.
the Bnetd folks wanted to check the CD is valid, but Blizzard told them they could not have the code or algorithm to do this.
So the reason why using pirated CDs are allowed is because Blizzard insisted. So they sue Bnetd...
1) Are Eulas are valid and enforceable? Answer: sometimes, it depends on the conditions.
(2) Are copyright laws which prohibit unauthorised reproduction enforceable? Answer, yes.
(3)When I install some software I have bought on a different machine from the one intended by the maker, without making unauthorised copies, is that a copyright violation? Answer, no.
(4) If I make use of some purchased software in a way the maker doesn't want, eg by using networking features which the Eula has said I should not use, is this copyright violation? Answer: no
(5) Are either of the last two prohibitions going to be enforced by the courts if contained in a Eula? Answer: no. Nor even if they are contained in some other agreement. Once you have bought any product, you can use it as you like within its technical capabilities and the general law of the land. No restrictions on use which a supplier tries to impose solely by conditions on sale will hold up, because they will conflict with competition law.
Bullshit...
Sorry, but in the US under current IP law, you bought the MEDIA and a *LIMITED LICENSE* to use the software. That is one part of all EULAs that seems to have never been struck down in court.
You did not, in any way, BUY the software. There was no transfer of ownership of the IP. NONE.
The same is true of books. You can buy the physical entity that is a book. You can do just about anything with the physical paper/carboard that makes up the book. But you are extreamly limited in what you can leagally do with the IP content of that book. You cannot even read the book to a large public audience or duplicate its contents without specific permission from the copyright owner.
It is also seems that under current law, that because much of the basis of the 'fair use' right to backup software is the fragility of most digital media, which does not apply to books, you cannot even make a backup copy of a book for archival use.
You are even running up against copyright law if you type it into your computer and never show it to anyone, as nearly all printed media that I have seen prohibits the creation of a machine readable copy without specific permission from the copyright owner.
You can argue till you are blue in the face; but the the laws governing the use and ownership of physical objects are much different then those governing the ownership/use of IP. The use of oversimplified comparisons between them just confuses the matter.
J
If EULA's were what protected software it would be poorly protected indeed. I might not be able to disregard the letter of the contract, but all I have to do is give a copy to a 13 year old and suddenly they can post it online no questions asked.
Copyright is an old bargain and it makes sense. EULA's, UCITA and the like are a modern invention meant to bilk dollars and screw with an industry.
No one has time to read these garbage contracts, and ultimately they don't matter. If you sell me a glass of water, I don't have to answer to you on what I do with it. Instead, there are standard laws governing what can and can't be done with water, gasoline or any other product that is bought or sold. However one thing there isn't is a provision for either the manufacturer or retailer to dictate use.
For software, copyright is that standard set of rules and guidelines. Anything else is over-ridden by the basic rules of commerce, by the very meaning of the word "purchase". If you ever read a commercial EULA you'll notice the first thing they have to get you to agree to is that you have not "purchased" anything instead you've done something else you've "licensed" the software. Well, based on the way merchents deal with shrink-wrap software this is merely a false-hood and as soon as the court system gets its collective head out of its ass long enough to realize this fact EULA's will be a scary fairy tale from the past.
You do have to have a key to use the game, but it is on the server side and means not much afterwards on the client after account creation. That means you have the code, but you really cant use it on their servers if you dont have something they have generated(game card codes/initial key), or will accept (credit cards/game cards). As for their licensing, they use the banhammer to enforce it- as characters gain a good deal of value over time spent. If you try to login 2 chars, both get denied and logged out.
"Forget the engineers." -Carly Fiorina, briber of MIT Technology Review.
>You do have to have a key to use the game, but
>it is on the server side and means not much
>afterwards on the client after account creation.
Were is the difference? They use a key to check if you can play, be it directly or indirectly checking the account which has the key tied to it. The check is there and thus the same argument as in the Blizzard case exists.
>As for their licensing, they use the banhammer
>to enforce it- as characters gain a good deal of
>value over time spent. If you try to login 2
>chars, both get denied and logged out.
So do Blizzard, they ban to, that was not what I asked for, I asked for the specific things that the court decided bnetd had done wrong, all due to Blizzard having them in the EULA/ToS or due to having a server side CD-key check. You acknowledge that they have the CD check (plus the tie to an account), but have not told if they have the same conditions as Blizzard. The fact that they ban accounts as well is quite irellevant from this discussion. If they have the provisions in the EULA, they are not at all better than Blizzard since they forbid the exact same things and you can end up in the exact same position as the people with the bnetd did in case you do the same with Guildwars (which I think is NCsofts game).
CLP cleaner, lubricant, preservative ... WTF???
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
>(nope, eula is not a contract and never will be)
You do realise that the very court case this is about, just ruled that indeed, the eula is a valid and enforcable contract! We may disagree, but that was the ruling in this case.
it still won't impact Blizzard's bottom line, because they have masses of artists and sound engineers that I *can't* get
I can't help wondering if you've hit on the uncomfortable core of this whole argument here: vile though the DMCA is, and massively multinational though Vivendi are, Is it not possible that this isn't plain and simple evil coporate badness? maybe what's being protected here is the work of those masses of artists? in which case isn't that exactly what copyright law is supposed to be about?
The masses of (frankly, incredibly talented) artists at Blizzard aren't there as slaves to the man, they're getting paid for doing what they love (and are really good at): collaboratively producing a finished product that's then protected under copyright law, so that there's still a market for their susequent work.
If I were one of these guys I think I'd want the suits to persue this case with extreme prejudice. After all if Vivendi lost, and the courts rules it was fair use to bolt my artwork onto any old OSS RTS project, then who'd be paying for new art in a couple of years? Say what you like about Blizzard but over the years they've significantly raised the bar for the artistic standard of games.
OK, so bnetd itself is just a means to play Blizzard's games online without going through battle.net, but in legal terms that's the thin end of the wedge. Looked at in those terms, just maybe they're right to be stomping on it hard.
If we want OSS RTS gaming to flourish as competition to the big corps, we've got to do it entirely sepparately from commercial projects, and that means finding tallented digital artists who are as commited to the OSS idea as the coders are...
The author has no idea of the topic of reverse engineering. There is no difference between watching text and binary data. A network sniffer is all it takes to figure out network protocols.
Please mod him down.
Please read a bit about the First-sale doctrine. It is a very grey area pertaining to software. Even the courts are confused about the enforceability of EULAs as they have ruled on both sides of the issue. The software companies would like to say that you only purchased the right to use the software (in a way they specify). Others contend that software is purchased and you own the redistribution rights for that particular copy of software.
Here is some case law to bolster the arguement that software is purchased like any other good from the above mentioned link (IANAL but I did stay in a Holiday Inn Express last night).
G. Washington on Government "it is force. Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master."
People keep bringing this up. It isn't a valid complaint in the case of World of Warcraft
http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/legal/eula.html
"IF YOU DO NOT AGREE TO THE TERMS OF THIS AGREEMENT, PROMPTLY RETURN THE UNUSED SOFTWARE PROGRAM TO THE PLACE OF PURCHASE, OR CONTACT BLIZZARD CUSTOMER SERVICE AT (800) 592-5499 FOR A FULL REFUND OF THE PURCHASE PRICE WITHIN 30 DAYS OF THE ORIGINAL PURCHASE. "
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Ummmmmmm....NO.
So if I buy the game now as a gift to give away at Christmas, what then? Besides, if you do NOT agree to the EULA, it is quite irellevant what it states since it is not binding anyway. So they can actually decline it too.
Your argument is all wrong. Creating M$ Word supported formats in OpenOffice DOES make people not want to use Word, and thus stops the revenue into M$'s pocket. If M$ decided to put an EULA in its next version of Word stating no one could reverse engineer its products, I can think of a lot of people who are screwed.
Lets take this one step further...SMB, Exchange EMail, AIM, M$ Messenger, Yahoo, and the list goes on. As stated before, these were all reverse-engineered. These would not exist if someone didn't put a sniffer on them, figured out the order of packets, and started coding. This is no different than what the bnetd people did to the Battle.net code, I would suspect. In no way did they provide copies of the client, and any piracy of those clients were done by the users, not the developers.
What surprises me most is the sheer number of people who are OK with this. Would you be ok if Ford decided to put proprietary fuel connections on their cars, forcing you to use their "prefered" gas stations?
And shouldn't I be free to use something as I see fit? Can't I mod my car if I want too? If I buy an axe for wood, but use it to split pumpkins, does the company who made the axe have the right to tell me what I can and can't do with it. I can't see how companies can force me to accept their EULA if it tells me how I am to enjoy their product, and what I can and can't do with it. And what happens if I don't...would they give me a full refund on my purchase? I doubt it.
Many of the things we take for granite today stemed from collaboration and integration. Both get stimied with policies like the DMCA.
The hacker friends should not be liable since they never accepted the EULA and TOU. The owner of the game is not liable because they did not do the actual sniffing and reverse engineering of the protocol.
Wait, I got kinda stuck at this one. IANAL, but is reading the data flowing through my own network, and drawing conclusions from it, really reverse engineering? Wouldn't that make all firewall, NAT and similar application-level gateway software illegal too, at least when made by third parties?
Yes, imagine such an insane world were you might walk into your local Best Buy, pick up a CD full of music, a PS2 videogame, a movie, and a copy of Windows for Dummies, pay for them, take them home, then use them as you like without having to agree to some contract.
Oh, wait, I guess I can do that today and the world hasn't ended.
If a company wants to sell me software under contract, feel free to do so. Businesses do so all the time. You sign the contract, you pay for the license, then you get the actual software. But if I walk into a store and buy a music CD, a book, a PS2 video game, and a PC video game, I would suggest that I own those particular items and am free to use them as I wish. But you're claiming that I get home, open my purchases, and I can read the book without an agreement, I can play the music without an agreement, I can use the software on the PS2 without an agreement, but I need to agree to some new thing for my PC video game, that's just insane.
Now if only there was some sort of law that could stop people from maing copies. Perhaps by granting a monopoly right to copy to the original author/publisher. Perhaps we should call it copyright. That seems like a good idea to me.
Thet LEGISLATIVE limitation you seem so worried about already exists. It works fine for books, music, console video games, movies, television programs, plays, maps, essays, articles, magazines, paintings, photographs, and more. Perhaps most importantly, it covers computer software.
You are right about one thing, the legal ignorance here is disturbing. Perhaps you're seeing your reflection in your monitor?
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Oddly enough, when I bought my last Blizzard game, I got a physical thing. It was a cardboard box, it contained a small book and a CD with data on it. Around the same time I purchased some music (another CD with data on it) and a novel. I got all of these home and dropped them on my kitchen table while I emptied my pockets. At that point in time I owned, by any reasonable sense of the work, that copy of the game, that copy of the music, and that copy of the novel.
Later I listened to the music and read the book. I didn't need any license to do either. I was free use them in ways the original publisher probably wouldn't have liked. I ripped the music to MP3 and stuffed the CD in my binder of CDs I store. After reading the book I loaned it to a friend. When he returned it, I sold it to a used book store. I managed all of this without any licenses or anything else.
Yet when I tried to play the game, I was confronted with what claimed to be a legal notice. Suddenly CD with data wasn't my property in some strange way. I wasn't free to use it as I wished. Indeed, apparently my purchase several hours earlier wasn't really a purchase (despite the fact that I was handed a product in exchange for money).
You should be offended that computer software publishers (and not console software publishers) have managed to create some magical new right for themselves that other copyright-based industries don't have. It's a shameful handout. There is some legal precedent for software EULA's, but it's hardly ironclad. EULA remain a debatable subject both morally and legally.
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The GPL is not a EULA. It does not restrict anything you do which would not be legal if the GPL weren't there. If a product doesn't have a EULA when you buy it, you can install and use it. The "default" license just prevents you from exercising rights that are given only to the copyright holder: the rights to duplicate, distribute copies, put the work on public display, and to make derivative works.
Since you aren't doing those things to run a program (the copy into RAM is fair use and implied license), the restrictions in the EULA are enforced by contract law.
The GPL doesn't need contract law, only copyright law. The only things it forbids are distribution without source code or making derivative works without putting them under a compatible license. If you didn't have the GPL you couldn't do either of those things under any condition.
If there were no default license, what gives you the right to download things from a Web site, ftp site, etc.? What are the terms for use of this post? Default is all rights reserved, but no special rights created. I'm not requiring you to dance on one foot while quoting this text. Actually, that gives me an idea....
Are you implying that:
A guy with an knife is going to fair well in armed combat against a guy with an m16?
OR
That you can prevent tyrany being imposed by force with means other than force?
A Free Market requires informed intelligent consumers, such people are rare, we're in trouble.
This is the most rational post I've seen in this news topic.
You can play with others at LAN parties without using Battlenet. Just select Local Area Network when creating a game.
You only need Battlenet to play against others if you're going OVER the internet. I don't know what the big deal is. If Blizzard wants to check my key to make sure its legal when I use their FREE service (Battlenet) to play online then it's their right.
The bulk of you complainers are just bitching because you can't play with your buddies and their illegal copy.
Stand on your soapbox all you want and argue about OSS but doesn't Blizzard have a right to protect their product!?! Especially when they never meant it for open source. Protest in the proper fashion. If you don't like it, then don't buy it.
Well even if everyone and their dog had m16's, the government force is still going to be backed by tanks/planes/boats wtf-ever else they would normally have logistically. So if it came down to guns you're modern-day revolution is going to get stomped anyways.
What I was disagreeing with is that guns need to be freely available to the every day person. There are so many examples of where controlling access to guns reduces violent crimes drastically.
In a modern democratic country it would be damn near impossible for a tyrant to even get close to taking power away from the government. We have all these nifty modern things like tv and the internet where dissemination of information is near-instantaneous and nearly impossible to control. We have laws upon laws to prevent that from happening.
That said, this will not hold for countries that are already run by tyrants or dictators or countries going through political turmoil, but for established and stable democracies there is no need for everyone to be armed.
Let's not even get into the fact that a book publisher *tried* to attach an EULA-like use clause, and it was *STRUCK DOWN* by the courts. A decade or so later, software came into being, and was added to the list of things the copyright covers. Suddenly somebody got it into their heads that a list of conditions presented to a buyer *after* the sale could be enforced, BUT ONLY FOR SOFTWARE. I'll never understand the logic behind that decision.
1. A game is not "property". It's just not that simple anymore.
n line_games_ruling
Let me give you a crazy example:
When you "buy" a house. The best case scenario in capitalism is you would likely purchase the right to build/resell and occupy a house on a lot owned by someone else. That is all. You wouldn't be allowed to do anything else to it and there would be consequences if you did something else.
Look how Yahoo is spinning this:
Three men illegally bypassed anti-piracy controls when they developed free technology to let computer users play some games against each other online without using the gamemaker's own system, a federal appeals court has ruled.
So the individual may buy the game and get some privelidges, they do NOT however get to play the game as they please. For example, they are not allowed to play on bnetd. http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20050902/ap_on_hi_te/o
To use your example, the spatula is for flipping burgers, not swatting flies. With DMCA, I CAN sue you for swatting flies because you are re-engineering the burger flipper in a way that the DMCA prohibits. This is why the DMCA is so great/scary.
2. The copyright holder owns the copyright and the copy rights. By law he owns nothing else.
That's where I'm trying to show you that in a capitalist culture, that the traditional copyright holder has not captured *all possible value.* Corporations know this and are trying to fix it with computer software. (digital entertainment too)
I know it's not so much about the EULA itself, but you need to understand businesses are building a "legal toolbox" control (monetize) every use of their software.
If you are lucky enough to write software for a living, then you should support this kind of behavior because it will only make you richer.
Also, it's not like I applaud all of this craziness, but it's the way it is and not enough people seem to want it any other way.
http://www.maxineudall.com/2010/02/should-economists-be-sued-for-malpractice.html
This isn't about "bolting on artwork" to another project. The bnetd server doesn't do _anything_ but arrange gameplay, hold account stats, organize tournaments, or other "meta" activities. It's not a mod, conversion, or other type of client-side change. It's a network service.
>1. A game is not "property". It's just not that
s c_sec_17_00000101----000-.html
>simple anymore.
A copy of a game is normal property though. It is a material object according to the copyright law:
http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/html/uscode17/u
>So the individual may buy the game and get some
>privelidges, they do NOT however get to play the
>game as they please. For example, they are not
>allowed to play on bnetd.
Since when do you need any priviledge or permision to use anything you buy? When you buy a burger, are you claiming you can't put extra ketchup on it unless you were specifically allowed so through a contract recieved when buying the burger? Of course not. You can do anything as long as it is not against the law. There is no special law saying they can't play the games of Blizzard on bnetd.
Yeah XP an 2000 Server are different products.
But Exchange Server and Exchange Server Enterprise are not. And there are plenty of other examples of software that are identical code licensed for different numbers of users or 'unlocking' or allowing use of certain features, including being able to run on certain hardware. Ever heard of per processor licensing?
You can license MS products per server or seat, or per site, all of which involve a different type of agreement and sometimes offer different features or support agreements.
If software were a durable good, every corporation could just obtain a single retail box and distribute it throughout the company. The point of licensing is to create a method to fairly pay software creators for their work in proportion to its use, and ensure they continue to develop and support the software.
Duh.
You need to lay off the absolutes when denying the possibility of things that... happen everyday.
It appears many people forgot what this case was all about. The real concern for Blizzard was the software created by the bnetd group allowed people with illegal copies of WC3 to play network style games in a battle.net type community. See, Blizzard uses the server side checks to verify user keys and that is how they ensure that only legitimate people are using their games, because seriously how long does the fun of WC3 or D2 last without multiplayer and w/o battle.net.
This case may be using the DMCA to destroy bnetd, and the EFF look stupid trying to defend them. To be honest I sometime wonder if the EFF remembers who/what they should be fighting. Blizzard decided to try and curb piracy, and the best way was to take out bnetd. How many people do you suspect were using it with legitimate copies, I am willing to bet the percentage was VERY LOW. This is not some EVIL corporation here. They are trying to protect their bottom dollar.
Battle.net has been offered to free for users of legitimate copies of their games for years, and has continued to run as a FREE service despite the tremendous server loads and maintenance it employs. bnetd gave users a way to play online, the major attraction to most blizzard games, without having to ever purchase a legitimate copy of said game by circumventing the protection scheme that blizzard put in place.
We are not talking about one of the *AA's here, we are talking about a company that has earned the right to protect the intellectual property that its designers and engineers worked hard to create. Hell, they support the MAC people and I know you can make WC3 and D2 run in wine. Time to get off your high horses and remember that every once in a while the legal system in this country does do something right...
"Some days you just can't get rid of a bomb."
1. A game is not "property".
By law the disk is the buyer's physical property. By law the particular copy of software on that disk is the buyer's physical property.
The buyer is of course prohibited from commiting copyrght infringment, however installing and running that copy is not copyright infringment. The buyer does not need to agree to anything to get permission to install and run that software. The buyer does not require any EULA to do so.
Let me give you a crazy example:
When you "buy" a house. The best case scenario in capitalism is you would likely purchase the right to build/resell and occupy a house on a lot owned by someone else. That is all. You wouldn't be allowed to do anything else to it and there would be consequences if you did something else.
I did not understand your example at all. It sounds incorrect in that I cannot see any way to reach the result you seem to be trying to reach.
Three men illegally bypassed anti-piracy controls
DMCA circumvention law is a big fat mess. An entire text book can be written on whether what they did was a DMCA circumvention violation. A second entire book can be written on whether it should be against the law. A third entire book can be written on whether the DMCA is even constitutional.
However the DMCA has absolutely no connection to EULAs, and the DMCA has absolutely no connection to copyright infringment.
So the individual may buy the game and get some privelidges, they do NOT however get to play the game as they please.
If you choose to be bound by an EULA then you receice whatever the EULA offers. However you are perfectly free to decline the EULA and receive nothing the EULA offers. If you decline the EULA then you are not restricted by anything the EULA says. If you decline the EULA then it is entirely null and void. If you decline the EULA then you are simply bound by general law, you are bound not to commit murder, you are bound not to smash people's windows, and you are bound not to commit copyright infringment. You are perfectly free to install and run the software, as that is not copyright infringment.
the traditional copyright holder has not captured *all possible value.* Corporations know this and are trying to fix it with computer software.
They can *TRY* to do anything they like, within the law. They are perfectly free to offer me a contract with the letters "EULA" at the top. However they cannot force me to accept that contract offer.
If the New York Times sells you a newspaper, and then you're sitting eating breakfast and you find a contract printed on page 65, the New York Times has no basis for claiming you are bound by that contract. There is no possible terms printed in that countract that could force you to be bound by the contract, as the contract and all terms are entirely null and void untill you CHOOSE to establish a valid binding contract. If the contract says "if you do not accept these terms then you can (or must) return this newspaper", well that term is still a nonbinding one sided offer. In fact that term ADMITS the fact that you can decline the offer and you are then bound by nothing in the contract. You can simply decline and NOT return it.
I know it's not so much about the EULA itself, but you need to understand businesses are building a "legal toolbox" control (monetize) every use of their software.
They can try, but they can't just make stuff up and expect it to be binding. They have to operate within the law.
Property law says the box of software is your physical property. Contract law says that contract terms are null and void unless both parties agree to establish a binding contract. Copyright law says installing and running software is not copyright infringment.
If you are lucky enough to write software for a living, then you should support this kind of behavior because it will only make you richer.
Frist of all, invalid legal reasoning i
- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
They didn't take someone else's software and make it open source, they reimplemented functionality. It wasn't even (as far as I can tell) patented functionality. It was good for everyone, including Blizzard, because it added to the number of ways the game that you'd just bought could be used. And they got done for it by some power-freak manager, for violating the EULA (which they couldn't avoid doing, so their use should have been legally protected).
This has nothing to do with Stallman. It has very little to do with the GPL. It has to do with our ability to behave as anything other than sheeplike "consumers". It has to do with Blizzard being very, very lame. And now it has to do with the US justice system being willing to support that sort of dictatorial crap.
For the love of God, please learn to spell "ridiculous"!!!
The buyer does not need to agree to anything to get permission to install and run that software. The buyer does not require any EULA to do so.
Yes they do. The buy must agree to the EULA in order for the software to install. Right? When was the last time a major software title let you opt out of the EULA and still install the software? It hasn't happened in a very long time, and therefore the EULA will be fully enforced.
However you are perfectly free to decline the EULA and receive nothing the EULA offers. If you decline the EULA then you are not restricted by anything the EULA says. If you decline the EULA then it is entirely null and void.
As stated above, you *must* agree to the EULA before major-label software will install and run. Add to that the absurdity of trying to return open software and actually getting a full refund because you didn't agree to the EULA?
Strictly speaking you are right in many ways. But the pricipals you describe aren't applied in ways anywhere near what you describe.
http://www.maxineudall.com/2010/02/should-economists-be-sued-for-malpractice.html
The buy must agree to the EULA in order for the software to install.
First of all if you make the effort you can always fix it to skip that.
Secondly, we are back at the exact same circular logic bootstrapping. If I choose to reject the contract offer, well I still have every right to use my computer however I like and I still have every right to run the software however I like. The EULA itself is the only thing claiming that anything I do to install the software would qualify as acceptance of any contract. It's again no different than saying "by opening your box you indicate acceptance". It's the same circular logic that I can be bound to a contract by doing something with my own property that I already had the right to do. Not that the "counter examples" to this reasoning pretty well all directly involved doing things that would would NOT have had the right to do. By entering a concert or sporting event, you are indicating acceptance to the contract on the ticket through an act that would otherwise be tresspassing. By parking in a pay parking lot you are again indicating acceptance through an act that would otherwise be tresspassing. By doing anything with other people's property you doing something you did not otherwise have the right to do. If you communicate acceptance to someone that would be acceptance or fraud. However if you are sitting home alone and you make it perfectly clear to everyone involved (which would be you and you) that you are rejecting the contract, then no contract is formed if everone involved knows that it is not intended to establish a contract. Just as signing a contract during a movie shoot does not form a contract if all parties invloved are perfectly aware that there is no intent to form a contract.
The alternative is that any contract can be printed on any product, and merely using your own property can bind you to anything. Very very bad logic. It is reasoning that a contract that is not yet valid can somehow REMOVE your existing property rights over your own property.
Note that I'm not saying I would win any and all court cases. I am perfectly aware that companies can will spend a fortune fighting it. I am perfectly aware that judges sometimes make rotten rulings and bad law. If software EULAs can be enforced then there is no reason an EULA on a tomato would not be just as enforcable. If I'm wrong, if my reasoning is not accepted, then our entire society is about to go right down the shitter as every new product starts coming with printed contracts, just like those ink cartridges.
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- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.