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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."
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.
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.
There are plenty of legitimate uses for alternative Battle.Net servers. For example, the custom map Dota Allstars has attracted a crowd of Warcraft 3: FT players in the hundreds of thousands. A serious problem with the emergence of the map, however, is that there is no ranking system. Players can simply leave games at any time with no repercussions. Most games are an hour long, with 5 players per team, which means that once the action really starts to get sticky, the experience can be ruined by one jackass who simply decides to quit -- because he has no incentive to stay in the game.
Blizzard's Battle.Net treats all custom maps the same -- no ranking system, no automatic player match-ups, etc. They're unregulated.
I've been on alternative servers (for Starcraft) that allowed statistics tracking for all various kinds of maps. A solution like this would be ideal to promote custom maps. I have participated in talks with the guys who run Dota-Allstars.com to create a ranking system that runs along side existing Battle.Net and specific to their map to address these problems; Blizzard refuses to recognize the issue.
Alternative Battle.net servers can be used to do a lot of other things besides promote piracy.
Boy that'd be nice... that's also what this was really about. Blizzard didn't want anyone making a WoW version of bnetd so they nipped it in the bud before it could even start. They also have several lines in their EULA about not making your own server. You do read these things, don't you? Here's what you should pay attention to:
I've paid for the client. I'm just not using their monthly service anymore.
You should know better than that. You did not buy anything but a box with shiny discs in them. The software is 0wned by Blizzard and not you.
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.
I also play warcraft III, a lot. I rarely see this issue. People with unstabel connections do drop, when I had cable (as opposed to the DSL I use now) I dropped often. But bnetd wouldn't help this, the match making system is all blizzard servers but the games are peer to peer with little to do with bnet. I have lost connections and was still able to finish my game, although bnet recorded it as a disconenct in starcraft and as a win win war III. The lag you see isn't the blizzard server, that would be the lag in finding games, and in connecting to the otehr players, after that it's p2p or someone is designated host (custom maps).
"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."
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
just an interesting thing I noticed, when blizzard does something they do it thoroughly.
All your base are belong to Wii.
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!)
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.
The "OSS world" doesn't need to be rich with graphics artists and musicians to produce the content we need for Open Source games. Why does everyone assume that everything related to OSS must be free and a hobby project? Let us consider that it might be worth paying people to do this artistic work for us! (Just like we currently pay these people indirectly through today's game software publishers.) There would be a huge payoff in the end because it wouldn't be a one-shot ordeal. Not only would we get a quality game, but we would get a quality game that eventually forks into new and different quality games.
I'm all for keeping the code GPL'ed, but we need to explore hybrid business models to pay artists to produce what we want. Some possibilities:
- Fundraising.. Develop the game content after a certain amount has been raised. This is very difficult because people are reluctant to pay for something they can't see ahead of time. There's no guarantee of quality.
- Proprietary now, Free later: produce non-free content sold at a typical game price ($50-60) and guarantee its release to the community after all artist costs have been covered. State in the EULA that the content shall become free after x years or $y in sales, whichever comes first. This would be similar to the Free Blender campaign, but more commercially oriented. As a consumer, I would much rather buy a product with a long term benefit to myself / society instead of one that will be completely worthless in about 5-10 years. Note that this concept is how the founding father's of the US envisioned original copyright with its short terms. It really was a great idea and an engine for progress. Today's rendition has been corrupted by monopolistic players, but that doesn't mean we should throw it out altogether when it properly fits the scenario!
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?
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...