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."

Comments

How was Blizzard wrong?

[guaigean]

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.