Blizzard Seeks to Block User Rights, Privacy

An anonymous reader writes "In the overlooked case between Blizzard and MDY Industries, the creator of the WoWGlider bot, Blizzard is arguing that using any programs in conjunction with the World of Warcraft constitutes copyright violation. Apparently accessing the copy of the game client in RAM using another program infringes upon their rights. Under that logic, users do not even have the right to use anti-virus software in the event that the game becomes infected. Furthermore, Blizzard's legal filings downplay the role of their Warden software, which actively scans users' RAM, CPU, and storage devices (and potentially sensitive data) and sends information back to Blizzard to be processed."

Comments

I have the right

[Anonymous Coward]

If I want to do something to my copy of the game, I can do so just as I can make any 'mods' I want to a cookbook or one of my C++ library tomes which are also copyrighted. I haven't affected anybody else's copy nor have I affected the master copy so Blizzard needs to quit bitching.

Re:I have the right

[dreamchaser]

And they have the right to ban you for life if and when they catch you. You agree to their terms when you play. Violating those terms should be punishable somehow.

No, I'm not sure that it's copyright violation and in this case I'm not sure the end justifies the means, but the *end* is a good one. Stopping cheating is a good thing.

Re:I have the right

[s_p_oneil]

If the bot just simulates input devices (i.e. keyboard and mouse actions), then I doubt it infringes on the copyright. If they actually reverse engineered it to the point where they can make calls to functions inside the application itself, then they have broken the law. Remember all the crap the creators of the first x86 clone had to go through to prove that they hadn't reverse engineered it?

Re:I have the right

[jank1887]

I would have to argue that it's not a copyright violation. If the rights holder provides a legally produced copy to an individual, and prescribes certain copy allowances to that individual (i.e., installation rights, which involves copying some/all of the copyrighted material, and execution rights, which involves additional copying of some/all of that copyrighted material to RAM, Swapdisk, etc., the details of which may slightly vary from system to system) then I don't see what additional copying happened in this case beyond what was already permitted. READING the data, especially of state objects, rather than the lines of copyrighted code, wouldn't involve copyright. Unless they intend to argue that every state produced in RAM by their copyrighted code is in itself copyrighted material, and copying that data even in part (which would have to be done in a program, at some low level, to work with/on that data) constitutes an unauthorized copy of their copyrighted work. In that case, they'd have to get the judge to agree that an active state of data constitutes a copyrightable piece of media, and that any copying of partial information from that piece of media falls outside of the already implicitly grated rights of copy (i.e., it's more than just 'reading').

I have a hard time seeing a judge thinking about things this deeply, meaning (a) he'll say, "you're full of crap. no dice.", or (b) he'll say, "wow, you're right. no program may read another program's data, whether on the harddrive, or in memory, because that implicitly involves some level of copying of information, and we must protect copyright."

Based on past events, I dread the result.

Re:I have the right

[smallfries]

While this is all true and good they are not banning the defendant. He hasn't violated their terms and conditions as he is not playing the game. They are trying to sue him for copyright infringement because he makes and sells a bot. The pdf is quite interesting (although it uses the worst font I've ever read) and it sounds like he has a very tight case. Mainly because Vivendi are misrepresenting their position - they thought that a threat to file suit would make him fold. Instead it seems like he has explained the details of the case to a lawyer pretty well, and the document that he has filed seems to tear their case apart.

As far as cheating goes - bots for grinding in MMO games are an interesting case. This isn't an aimbot that helps you beat other players, or improves your abilities. It doesn't hack the client into thinking that you have more gold / resources that you really do. It just takes the tedious repetitive actions in the "game" and plays them through. It's an autopilot. The real question for me: is a game that requires an autopilot actually fun enough to play?

(I would say no, but given that he's made a profitable business out of it, lots of people must say yes).

Re:I have the right

[dimeglio]

INAL but it seems to me that citizens have rights above what is stipulated in such agreements. The constitution of the USA allows you to bear arms. If a contract you accepted violates those rights, then the contact is voided. In this particular case, Blizzard can call it murder if they want but it simply wont hold-up.

It looks to me like they simply reverse engineered the code in order to provide additional features. Something similar to changing a Microsoft DLL for my own which would allow better access to non-Microsoft file formats.

It doesn't make their application ethical but I don't see how it would be illegal.

Re:I have the right

[networkBoy]

Actually given the money he's made, I'd say the game is more fun to play with the bot's help.

Really I think he's in the clear on this but like another poster I dread the case law that may result.
On a separate note, if I build a programmable keyboard that has the ability to macro complex keystrokes would that be an issue?
How bout if I could macro the mouse as well?
What if I also incorporated a capture device and pointed a video camera at the monitor, thus building an artificial player? (no process running on the machine with the game, all external). While this really is only a thought experiment, where is the line drawn?

-nB

Re:I have the right

[jahudabudy]

The constitution of the USA allows you to bear arms. If a contract you accepted violates those rights, then the contact is voided.

Uhm, that is not true at all. There are many places you aren't allowed to carry weapons (school grounds, public buildings in my state, my house, etc.). The right to bear arms doesn't mean you have the right to carry them wherever you want. If you agree to a contract stating you will come paint my house, and in the contract it states you won't bring a weapon onto my property, that is a perfectly valid contract, and you will be in breach if you bring a weapon onto my property.

IANAL yadda yadda

Re:I have the right

[MMC Monster]

If you are playing an online game against other players and modify your system to an unfair advantage (either by modifying the game code directly or running an AI that simulated mouse and keyboard events), you are probably cheating. The game manufacturer can certainly ban you for life from their servers.

If you want to cheat, join a server that allows cheats.

Re:I have the right

[Opportunist]

Using a bot for a game is a bit like buying a second chess computer to play chess against your already existing chess computer. Why bother playing at all if you use a program to play a game?

Re:I have the right

[soupforare]

Hey man, you should check out Eve. There's this great autopilot that helps you get to other places! It's really one of the bezzzzzZZZZZZZZ

Re:I have the right

[battery111]

well, as to your first question, the game already has a built-in macro system, so I don't think blizzard would take issue with this. as far as the third question, if I had mod points I would mod you insightful, one of the few times this mod is actually called for. This question does raise questions as to when it stops being legitimate playing and when it becomes cheating.

Re:I have the right

[Anonymous Coward]

IF you live in a retarded country that is. In a free country like most scandinavian and european ones this is perfectly legal! If you make software that bypass security register your company overseas! Easy

Re:I have the right

[daeg]

Violating those terms should only be legally punishable by a termination of the agreement. It's a civil agreement that likely wouldn't even stand up in court, or even get heard by a judge in the first place outside of a big case like this.

Me clicking on a little checkbox shouldn't be legally binding in any fashion. If Blizzard wants an iron clad contract with penalties outside of simple agreement cancellation, they best comply with what the rest of the business world does: signed and dated papers, with signed copies to each party (cross signed, not simply faxed copies).

The funny thing is, no one in my old guild had even heard of WoWGlider before Blizzard started this court room debacle. Way to keep it under the table, Blizzard. The Warden application is why I quit WoW, my data is more important to me than some silly game.

Re:I have the right

[Ihlosi]

Why?

Because by playing the game, you usually agree not to cheat.

If you don't like cheating, don't play games with cheaters.

Care to name a few ? They should allow for more than one human player at a time, please.

Re:I have the right

[mwvdlee]

Yes, you have that right
And you can even run that client on your own server, if you manage to build one.
You do NOT have a right to use it on their servers though.

Re:I have the right

[Splab]

You are only saying this because of two things, one you play the game, two you see this as only an opportunity for cheating.

If I buy a copy of a game, I should be able to do whatever the hell I please with it (except stuff that brakes the law). Them putting in an EULA telling me what I'm not supposed to be doing is as far as I know unproven in a court. Changing stuff in RAM shouldn't be illegal, just think of people putting marks in a book in order to faster read it when looking up something - thats not copyright infringement, thats just common sense.

Re:I have the right

[archer, the]

Changing your cookbook doesn't cause others to stop cooking. Cheating gets other customers frustrated, so they stop playing.

WoWGlider has been specifically developed by interpretting the data in WoW. Antivirus software looks for specific byte patterns, but does not try to interpret the various fields in WoW or any other file.

Warden (as far as I know) simply makes hashes of byte codes in the various running applications. The hashes get sent back to Blizzard. It doesn't search for the SSN field in your tax software files.

Use of software that changes your character or gives you privileged information is cheating in my opinion.

Use of a program that simply runs your character as if you were sitting at the keyboard? I'm not so sure of that. As long as you didn't run it 24x365.2425, I'm not sure Blizzard should complain. People don't want to waste their time doing everything over again, or just don't have the time to spend to get to level 70. That's why I quit. I'd probably still be a paying customer if I could use a "human simulator" program.

But, Blizzard has figured a monthly rate based on expected customer usage. They expect customers to be playing less than 24 hours a day. If everybody played 24 hours/day, Blizzard would have to raise the monthly fee.

Re:I have the right

[Anonymous Coward]

QFT.

You can do anything you want to any of the software running on your computer. They can ban you from playing the game for it, but it's not a copyright violation.

All you need to do to figure out if something is a copyright violation look at the root words of copyright, copy and right. If you aren't making copies, receiving copies, or distributing them, how can whatever rule you may have broken have anything to do with copyright?

Likewise, I can take the latest Madonna song off her cd and remix it (not that I'd want to). As long as her song (modified or not) never reaches someone else through me, I haven't violated copyright. I can butcher it up any way I want and there's not a thing anyone can do about it. I can distribute the recipe for my butchering even. As long as her song is not included with the recipe, I'm free to tell other people how to achieve the same result, or even supply the files I used (cubase project etc.).

Blizzard is trying to burn the bot-maker's money in court that's all...

-AC

Re:I have the right

[jswigart]

Wow this is some bullshit logic. I hate cheaters too, but if I were to follow your ridiculous advice and not play games with cheaters that would cut out any and every single multi-player game in existence. Real good idea there. Cheaters should be shut down, period. To imply that they should be allowed to run rampant in the name of their 'freedom', is really stupid. "Freedom" from what? To make the game miserable for others? Anyone is free to cheat in their copies of single player games, but in multi player games it is expected and should be enforced by the developers and or anti-cheat software that the players are competing on their 'skill' only, and not some wall hack, aim bot, etc doing the important work for them. Likewise for MMO games everyone should be on relatively equal levels. It feels good every time Blizzard or another developer bans x-tens of thousands of accounts. The fact is, you DON'T have the freedom to cheat freely and get away with it, so yes, stopping cheating is a good thing, though unfortunately like piracy it will never be eliminated completely. Even if every game turned into dumb terminals cheaters are already inventive with how they automate the input process, or give other advantages, spiked models, wall hacks, etc. That doesn't mean they shouldn't bother. Cheating should be stopped because it ruins the competition of the games, because it makes any real skill some players may have mean nothing, because it invalidates organized competition(clans, ranked matches, contests, etc), because it's griefing anyone that plays the game as intended, because it gives the cheater an unfair advantage(obviously), and last but not least, because it's common fucking sense. Those good enough reasons for you?

Re:I have the right

[sqlrob]

Have they broken the law? Remember, the DMCA allows reverse engineering for interoperability.

Re:I have the right

[Afecks]

There are these things called "friends".

"Friends" usually have this stuff called "trust".

When combined with a video game you can usually go without any cheaters.

If you bought a video game instead of making friends then you'll just have to go on a game per game basis.

For example, when you're playing Unreal Tournament and some guy keeps doing 180's and putting a bullet through your head from across the map... it's a safe bet he's a cheater and you should move on.

Let me reiterate this point, your "right to not be inconvenienced" doesn't exist. Stop pissing away your liberties just so you don't have to be annoyed occasionally.

Re:I have the right

[fortiguy]

Now that would be something! The first virtual Warcraft player - a robot who sat in front of the screen hour after hour playing the game non stop except for maintenance breaks and possibly some down time to cool down from overheating. That sounds more like real life than you'd first think! But is there a moral dilemma with us creating artificial lifeforms that already have one of our worst addictions? Would you want a puppy to born into the world with a snausages snack dependency? While it might have its uses in training and controlling a pet, how about the ethics?

Re:I have the right

[Anonymous Coward]

Blizzard has made their position on programmable keyboards known already. Namely that you are not allowed to use them to work around the limitations they purposely put into the macro system(namely that of using multiple skills in succession with a single button click, by using a wait to get past the global cooldown). While this is very hard to enforce, using them in this manner is a bannable offense.

Re:I have the right

[Silvers]

You would be banned for all of these. People have certainly been banned for macro keyboards.

Re:I have the right

[fucksl4shd0t]

Nah, you could still play Armagetron Advanced, where people think it's cheating to bind two keys to one turn. Only it's not. :)

Re:I have the right

[iminplaya]

Or all of you could avoid the situation altogether and simply pull the plug. In light of all this, I don't understand why you continue to give any money to them.

Re:I have the right

[passthecrackpipe]

Furthermore, the game does allow programmable keystrokes - the Logitech G15 is fully supported by Blizzard (bespite much FUD to the contrary) - Blizzards stance is not against automation per-se, its against unattended play. The tweaks and changes they make to the macro system reflects this attitude - for example, you used to be able to automate hunter kiting with auto-jumps-shots, but the macro system has been changed to prevent this.

Blizzard doesn't really want to own you system, they just don't want you to play unattended. The whole point of WoWGlider is to set your toon to run around somewhere, and kill the same mobs over and over again, grinding for you. At the end of the day, the experience is much the same as buying a lvl 70 toon of EBay: a whole bunch of clueless players running around in end-game content that requires a lot of detailed knowledge about your game and class mechanics. Blizz would much rather have you do quests and actually consume the content they designed for you - if everyone sits on end-game content, you'd get bored pretty soon.

Re:I have the right

[Afecks]

I hate cheaters too, but if I were to follow your ridiculous advice and not play games with cheaters that would cut out any and every single multi-player game in existence.

That's because you missed the point. I wasn't implying you actually try to find a game that is free of cheaters. I was trying to show you how ridiculous the idea of a game with no cheaters is. It's not going to happen.

To imply that they should be allowed to run rampant in the name of their 'freedom', is really stupid.

Wrong. I said we don't need to make laws about something we can regulate ourselves. We do it already. If you find someone cheating in a game you are playing, stop playing. It's very simple, costs nothing to implement and nobody has to go to jail. Otherwise we waste millions of dollars fighting a legal war over some bullshit issue. If you run a game and you don't want people cheating, ban them. If you can't afford to ban all the cheaters then reconsider your issue with cheaters.

that the players are competing on their 'skill' only

What skill? Clicking buttons? Memorizing key sequences? I fail to see the skill. If you consider that a skill why isn't configuring bot settings a skill. That involves clicking buttons and memorizing key sequences.

The fact is, you DON'T have the freedom to cheat freely and get away with it, so yes, stopping cheating is a good thing

The legal freedom, sure I do. That's the way it should be. You deal with in-game actions such as cheating in the game. What the hell is wrong with just banning people?

Cheating should be stopped because it ruins the competition of the games

That's your opinion. Others feel different. You should respect that. I'm not pro-cheating, I'm not saying it should be allowed, I'm saying we don't need bullshit frivolous laws for something we already regulate ourselves.

Re:I have the right

[acidosmosis]

If you don't like grinding, quit playing MMO's. Simple solution.

I can't stand people that complain about the need to grind in an MMO. They don't bitch about having to run the bases in baseball. Then again they probably would.

Re:I have the right

[Nasarius]

well, as to your first question, the game already has a built-in macro system, so I don't think blizzard would take issue with this.

I only played WoW for a month, but the built-in macros are extremely limited by design. For example: except for a few special circumstances, one cannot cast two spells in succession with one key press. Complex macros just aren't allowed within the game. So if you circumvent that with the aid of some hardware, are you cheating? I don't know. Unless you want to give periodic Turing tests or captchas to every player, I don't see how automated playing will ever be eliminated.

Re:I have the right

[trianglman]

If the rights holder provides a legally produced copy to an individual, and prescribes certain copy allowances to that individual (i.e., installation rights, which involves copying some/all of the copyrighted material, and execution rights, which involves additional copying of some/all of that copyrighted material to RAM, Swapdisk, etc., the details of which may slightly vary from system to system) then I don't see what additional copying happened in this case beyond what was already permitted.

By that logic, the act of me reading a book is copying, especially were I to have an eidetic memory. IANAL, but in my view the installation and running of the program constitutes use not copying. Also, copyright protects against redistribution, copying for one's own personal use has always been seen as fair use, not a breach of copyright. This is why archiving and back ups are perfectly legal, but burning a CD and giving/selling it to someone else is not.

Re:I have the right

[Afecks]

The line is drawn 2 feet behind you. Move back 2 feet please. Ok thank you. Wait the line is 2 feet behind you again. Please move back 2 feet again.

Get the idea?

Re:I have the right

[NeoPaladin394]

While this really is only a thought experiment, where is the line drawn?

As you said, it's an interesting case when it comes to MMO's and bots. The line between improving gameplay and going too far can potentially vary from situation to game to company, but as far as MMORPG grinders and questers go (as a general rule of thumb from several of them), the general consensus for botting is that, as long as an in game action is triggered by a direct interaction from the player (mouse click, key hit, microphone, etc), then the action is not considered a violation.

In WoW, the scripting language does not allow for waiting, so you can't create a macro that casts a spell, makes you dance, and then casts another spell after the first one is complete, but you would not be in violation for creating a macro in the in game client and assigning it to, say, the plus key on the keypad. In fact, it's pretty much encouraged.

As a general note, though; at least as of a few months ago, the WoW guardian did not send personal data back to Blizzard as the article summary suggests. The guardian scans the users computer and browser history, memory, and processes for known bots (WoWGlider for one) and iff found, it sends a ping back to Blizz letting them know that something's up with this user.

Besides, as it is, I really do hope Blizzard gets to knock down any of these bots. I played a healer in this game, and the sheer amount of people who had no idea how to play their class was staggering. I created tanks and pullers just so that I could actually perform the job in pick up groups. If people are allowed to bot their way up to 70 (that's not even taking into account gold farmers who sell virtual currency), then it's even more of a headache for legit players who can't get groups who know what the heck they're supposed to do in a dungeon. On the surface, bots sound like they're wonderful tools that take away the "tedious grind." Looking at the whole picture, however, it cheapens the game and frustrates players. That is, unless you wanna fly solo for the rest of your gaming career.

*Note that I have not played WoW since the expanson, so the info on the guardian and macros may have changed. I...try not to stay abreast so I'm not tempted to sign up again.

Re:I have the right

[Alioth]

Power. It's all about power. It's the same reason why there are so many asshats wanting ops on IRC - they get some kind of self-gratifying power over other users on the channel.

MMORPG users want to automate it because the automation can probably do it faster and quicker than they can, leaving them with some kind of wizard character they can use to push around other players.

Re:I have the right

[davper]

This would be unattended game play and therefore would get you banned.
http://infernix.net/wowban/

Re:I have the right

[shadowrat]

What skill? Clicking buttons? Memorizing key sequences? I fail to see the skill. If you consider that a skill why isn't configuring bot settings a skill. That involves clicking buttons and memorizing key sequences.

Just because you don't value the skill doesn't mean it's not a skill. No one values mimes, but they still have a skill.

Myself, i do think configuring a bot is clearly a skill. I'd like to see a mainstream MMOG that requires bots and provides no way to directly control your character. Of course, someone would write a script that allowed key sequences to command your bot and everyone would accuse them of cheating.

Re:I have the right

[Afecks]

If playing WoW is "an ability that has been acquired by training" then so is jerking off. And in the words of Carlin "at least I have a little something to show for it when I'm done".

Re:I have the right

[Anonymous Coward]

Some people have apparently gotten banned for using a programmable keyboard.

Re:I have the right

[Torvaun]

I have a hard time seeing a judge thinking about things this deeply, meaning (a) he'll say, "you're full of crap. no dice.", or (b) he'll say, "wow, you're right. no program may read another program's data, whether on the harddrive, or in memory, because that implicitly involves some level of copying of information, and we must protect copyright."

That choice is why this will never see court. Blizzard wants to keep it's ability to scan user's computers. If this case is decided that there is no violation here, Blizzard has to sit down and shut up. If the judge says there is a violation here, Blizzard is open for a vicious counterstroke with lawsuits from everyone who has a program running when Blizzard's Warden program starts making copies.

Re:I have the right

[m50d]

No, the crap that they had to go through was to proove they had reverse engineered it (and not just copied the ones they were producing under license from Intel). Reverse engineering is and should be perfectly legal.

Re:I have the right

[m50d]

On a separate note, if I build a programmable keyboard that has the ability to macro complex keystrokes would that be an issue? How bout if I could macro the mouse as well? What if I also incorporated a capture device and pointed a video camera at the monitor, thus building an artificial player?

Don't bother with all that, just hire some cheap Indian labour.

Re:I have the right

[mgiuca]

Maybe the end is good. But let's look at the ramifications here. Basically, we've agreed this is not a copyright violation. It is simply a violation of the EULA.

So in effect, this software company is allowed to dictate terms well beyond the normal legal means or they cancel the service. This is all well and good, except that the service is inextricably linked to a product. This situation is the root of all evil.

To elaborate, my gardener is well within his rights to say "if I find anything in your garden which I don't like, I will terminate this service". If we both agree on these terms, then yes, if I have some nasty critters or something in my garden and he finds them, he can walk away, and I'll have to find a new gardener. But the gardener is just a service, and that's all, it really doesn't cost me anything to find a new gardener.

World of Warcraft is a product and a service in one. The product itself costs the normal cost of a computer game, plus the cost of the expansion. THEN you pay a service on top of that. This in itself is morally wrong IMHO. But the fact that Blizzard cancelling the service in effect makes the product COMPLETELY USELESS means it really isn't right that they can dictate the terms of the service as freely as my gardener can.

That's basically like my gardener saying "I need you to buy me a $60 pair of shears, and then I'll charge you for doing your garden, BUT if I find anything I don't like in the garden, I'll keep the $60 and suspend your service (but you're more than welcome to buy me a new pair of shears and we'll start our arrangement again - in fact I'd quite like that)". If a gardener said that to you, you'd think he was a crook.

In summary: Providing a product and service rolled into one is wrong. Being able to terminate the service at any time but keep the revenue made from selling the now-useless product is oh so wrong.

Re:I have the right

[Anonymous Coward]

It's an autopilot. The real question for me: is a game that requires an autopilot actually fun enough to play?
People using this sort of thing probably belong into one of two categories. 1) They are obsessed with being a high lvl and don't want to put forth the real effort, so they use a bot...2) They are doing it for money. They use the bot to grind and retrieve resources, it collects a few good items, you sell those items...make tons of gold at the online auction site, or sell it on e-bay or some other site for real money.

Trust me, there are people who enjoy the game that don't like these types of bots because they screw with in game economies.

Re:I have the right

[s_p_oneil]

I thought they proved that they had reverse engineered the behavior without reversing the binary code itself. Because if you have the code, it's easy to swap lines, change loops, change compiler optimizations, and otherwise obfuscate the code to make the machine code look so different that it couldn't possibly be taken for a copy. It would've been a hell of a lot easier than what I've read that they did.

Re:I have the right

[SL Baur]

the game already has a built-in macro system, so I don't think blizzard would take issue with this. The in-game macro system has designed built-in limitations, such as forbidding macros that require waiting for something to happen (like a spell cooldown), so you cannot chain spells together. This WoW Glider seems designed to specifically circumvent that. I'm not surprised they got sued.

Read Blizzard's response in the court docs. I largely agree with them, as much as I hate the implementation of the Warden. I hate cheaters more.

Re:I have the right

[Samari711]

Blizzard's argument is pretty simple and not at all like you characterize it at all. Basically they say that using WoWglider is a violation of the EULA and TOS and anyone doing so has their license revoked. By continuing to use WoW they are violating Blizzard's copyright. The EULA states that you cannot use third party programs to automate playing WoW. The makers of WoWglider know or should know that using their program causes people to violate Blizzard's EULA and commit copyright infringement and are liable for that.

Re:I have the right

[jswigart]

That's because you missed the point. I wasn't implying you actually try to find a game that is free of cheaters. I was trying to show you how ridiculous the idea of a game with no cheaters is. It's not going to happen.

No shit, and I said that in the previous post as well. Just because cheating will never be stamped out completely doesn't mean the developers should turn a blind eye to it. The best that can be hoped for is that being banned becomes such a risk(and losing significant time invested in your avatar) that people choose not to. Every MP, MMO, FPS, RTS, RPG, etc game that many people want to play has cheaters. If your solution is just to not play them, then that isn't a solution at all. Rounding up 32-54 friends for an honest game is also not a solution. It's fine for small Gears of Wars type games or RTS games, but it doesn't apply to MMO games nor does it make sense for large player FPS games. Further, sticking with your friends for gaming means you can't play competitively. Again, not a solution. The only solution is to try to make people choose not to cheat by creating enough risk if they do.

What skill? Clicking buttons? Memorizing key sequences? I fail to see the skill. If you consider that a skill why isn't configuring bot settings a skill. That involves clicking buttons and memorizing key sequences.

Skill is referring to more than MMO games, such as FPS games where cheating is even more of a problem, since we seem to be on the subject of cheating in general. I figured that was implied by the sentence following that, "Likewise, in MMO games..."

The legal freedom, sure I do. That's the way it should be. You deal with in-game actions such as cheating in the game. What the hell is wrong with just banning people?

Bull, you don't have the right to cheat. Such as one of the definitions of rights "Powers or privileges granted by an agreement or law.", of which users have been granted neither to cheat, and in fact been made to agree not to. Simply because you can and possibly get away with it doesn't make it a right. Again, given the previous case againt BNETD, which iirc featured in part the EULA as a valid agreement, effectively makes it against the rules to cheat. Honestly though, please point me to what grants people the right to cheat, I'm very interested in learning more about this. I'd be fine if they just banned the hell out of everyone caught using cheats. By jacking up the risk of getting caught high enough it would seem to me that it would eventually become an insignificant problem. By supporting cheaters being shut down, I'm not supporting frivolous laws. IANAL, but if it's true that violating the EULA, which has been deemed legally enforceable if a recall in a previous Blizzard case(emulators), and still using the software constitutes copyright infringement as several others have posted, then it would appear to me that this case isn't frivolous at all. It's common sense that cheating and gaining an unfair advantage in a competitive driven game(which MMO games still are, and certainly FPS, RTS, etc games), completely voids any meaningful competition or comparison of ability or skill or status among the player group as a whole, which in fact ruins the competition of the game. I fail to see how this can be considered anything but fact and common sense. Btw, who are 'we' ? How are 'we' paying millions of dollars for this lawsuit? And how are 'we' regulating ourselves, when cheating is still a huge problem in every genre of games? Your 'solution' is to place responsibility for dealing with cheaters on every individual honest player. Where's the logic in that? Sueing someone who is profiting from a program which allows people to cheat and farm doesn't seem that far fetched to me, but IANAL. The author reverse engineered the game to create this program(DMCA?), and then profits from it by releasing the program that allows people to cheat. I can't imagine this is all perfectly legal, but that's for the court to decide. Sure

Re:I have the right

[Anonymous Coward]

So if you circumvent that with the aid of some hardware, are you cheating?

Yes.

I don't know. Unless you want to give periodic Turing tests or captchas to every player, I don't see how automated playing will ever be eliminated.

It may never be, but it is cheating whether it's a process, a camera, an automated keyboard or even a sweat shop.

Re:I have the right

[jswigart]

grr, why is this shit removing my newlines?

Re:I have the right

[Miaomiao]

You havn't heard of Progress Quest have you?

Basically the idea is that you're entirely automated, and outside initial character generation you get no input whatsoever into the game. In fact the game is designed to minimize character interaction as much as possible.

Originally there was much cheating my editing character stats and that sort of thing (strength is ideal, as it allows you to carry more and you spend less time in town "selling", as you sell in large batch at once, 1000 snots is better than 100 snots per trip) as well as hacking character levels. Normal players are added to the Hall of fame; however, hackers and cheaters are found and added to the Hall of Infamy. It works rather well, and if you cheat, you get to join the "special class".

Re:I have the right

[Afecks]

Bull, you don't have the right to cheat.

Stop your straw man arguments. I never said such a thing. I said YOU don't have the right to NOT be around cheaters. There is a difference. The only one with rights regarding cheaters is Blizzard and that right is limited to denying service to cheaters. They can't tell other business what they can and cannot do when they aren't violating their copyrights. WoWGlider never let anyone play WoW for free. They did not facilitate copying.

By supporting cheaters being shut down, I'm not supporting frivolous laws.

Your reasons for supporting frivolous laws do not make them any less frivolous. Should we make it a crime to cheat in Go Fish? Come on you bastard I know you have some twos!

a previous Blizzard case(emulators), and still using the software constitutes copyright infringement

No. Bzzt, wrong. That was completely different. They were allowing people to use the WoW client to connect to non-Blizzard servers thereby bypassing the need to pay Blizzard money. That is what copy protection is for. This is something completely unrelated. Just because you don't agree with the defendant doesn't mean you let the plaintiff walk all over the Constitution.

We aren't talking about the right to cheat. We are talking about the right to do whatever I want to RAM that I bought and paid for with my hard earned money. I can forgive the willingness to give up liberties for protection from terrorists but you're rolling over just because of some kids cheating on a video game? That's pathetic!

Re:I have the right

[smallfries]

I don't like grinding. I don't play MMOs - which I stated, so what's your point?

Perhaps you've decided that current MMO design is the absolute nadir, and that it cannot be progressed any further. Other people have decided that it can be improved. One of the issues with this WoW autopilot is that it is needed at all. Games are supposed to be fun, MMOs that require the player to grind to get anywhere are not fun - they're an addiction. In fact they are pretty close to optimal in terms of the reward schedule, which is why they are popular.

Before you hit the reply button to slate me because I disagree with you, try reading this. It does require a free-registration hassle, or a Bug me not. If you are at all interested in MMO design then it is an interesting read, and the opinions in it are a good reflection of how online gaming will shift over the next five years. The most important point is that grinding is not an addition to gameplay - it's a barrier

Re:I have the right

[Jarnis]

Duh, that's Blizzard's argument.

Author is breaking the TOS and EULA, and Blizzard is saying that the author has therefore lost his license to the software (WoW client). So it's a copyright violation.

He definitely can't cook up his bot programs without access to the client (and continuing access to it's patches).

Re:I have the right

[GrievousMistake]

Maybe because they have some interesting places/stories/gameplay/people, but buried in a ton of grinding, back-and-forth travel and miscellaneous cheap crack. Applies to most online games I've played, really. Especially annoying is the keep-up-with-your-friends-who-play-twice-as-much-a s-you incentive, that eventually turns me off most MMORPGs. Or that explorating and taking interesting quests often gives almost no XP compared to grinding.
I've played a lot of games that were mostly fun, but had minor or major elements of tedium that I wish were automatic.

Not that I doubt that some chess entusiast out there gets off on watching his computer play with itself...

Re:I have the right

[Cervantes]

Because, the point of WoW isn't enjoying the game. The point of WoW is to get to UltraMegaSuperSayan level, with the coolest epics ever. Then start a new character and do it all again.

If the point of the game was to enjoy the game, then bots wouldn't be a problem. But they designed a game that requires countless days of mindless repetitive tasks to advance. So this isn't getting a chess computer to play against another chess computer... this is using a KIX script on your network to do your regular tasks every startup. It's saving mindless actions in an automated manner.

Re:I have the right

[asdfghjklqwertyuiop]

Basically they say that using WoWglider is a violation of the EULA and TOS and anyone doing so has their license revoked.

Yes, USING wowglider may be a violation of the TOS. But Blizzard isn't suing anyone for USING wowglider.

The makers of WoWglider know or should know that using their program causes people to violate Blizzard's EULA and commit copyright infringement and are liable for that

Why would the makers of wowglider be liable for someone else's breach of contract? The people who use wowglider have their own free will and responsibility for their actions. Wowglider didn't cause anyone to violate the ToS, the person using it made a consious choice to do so. What tool they used to do it is irrelevant. If I stab someone to death with a steak knife, would you say the maker of the steak knife caused me to murder someone?

Re:I have the right

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, his case isn't as tight as you might think.

Right off the bat in the legal, they claim that the WoWGlider software does not provide 'a tactical advantage' to players who use it over those who don't. This is blatantly false and can easily be demonstrated to be false. Because of the nature of the gameplay in WoW, your time commitment to resources is the basis on which you can advance. More grinding = more money = more gear = advantage. When you gain this advantage unfairly to apply a huge leverage of time spent on resources while away from the game physically, you are indeed giving yourself a clear tactical advantage. When you factor in casual gaming as opposed to hardcore raiding (in the terms of Warcraft) - that advantage becomes even exponentially larger.

I have a very good friend who got into WoW last summer to come play w/ a bunch of us from work who also played. He loved the game, but "didn't have the time to grind" and could only play limited times during the weekend. So he and a couple friends invested in WoWGlider and started botting a couple of hours a night. Well, in the prior 3 months he had gone from level 1 to 28 by grinding with the time he had. After he started botting, he got to level 50 in less than 2 weeks. Myself and others kept telling him "hey, technically you're cheating" and that we didn't approve. He defended it in the name of "Well, I want to keep up with you guys."

Then, he got banned. Now he can't keep up, and he isn't going to get a new account. He's pissed at Blizzard for banning him, but how would that be different than getting tossed from a Vegas casino for using loaded dice?

*shrugs*

I hope they shut this guy down, frankly. It's not just that it helps players cheat, but it also pretty much just BEGS 'gold farmers' to use it to continually rape the server economy and not have to worry about paying as much cheap labor.

Also, how is this different than say, cracking DVD decryption or bypassing copyright schema on software? There is no legitimate, viable, applicable use of this program outside of cheating in an online, competitive environment.

Virtual Steroids, anyone?

Re:I have the right

[MeanderingMind]

We do not have a right to avoide inconvenience, but Blizzard has a vested interest in assuring that we are not. If we, in attempting to derive entertainment from their product, more often find ourselves encountering stress due to the actions of other players we are very likely to stop playing. This is not something Blizzard wants.

Blizzard may be overstepping the boundaries on this case, and if they are it should be shot down. However, I do support the ideal of preventing cheating.

Friends are very helpful in settings without strangers, but in an MMO that isn't possible.

Re:I have the right

[mdozturk]

Actually if they find out you are doing some sort of suspicious behavior (doing boring grinds for 30 hours straight for example) they will try to chat with you, if you don't answer (I bot using the keyboard and mouse probibly couldn't respond intelligent enough) they ban you.

Re:I have the right

[Anonymous Coward]

The reasons you gave are the same that were always thrown around in Ultima Online when I played it. And they still don't hold water. I'm sorry but if I've already lvled a char to 70 where is the fun for me to do the same quests again. I mean while I enjoy the game I enjoy the pvp and the endgame stuff a 1000 times as much as I enjoy the lvling. If they have a problem with bots then they need to set time limits for accounts so that they can only be played for so many hours of the day say 3 hours. Then that solves everything and everyone will be on even ground.

Re:I have the right

[Sparr0]

You seem confused on the meaning of "cheating" as opposed to "hacking", both of which are not neccessarily the same as "exploiting". Let me lay it out in simple terms for you. If I can do it myself within the bounds of the rules, it isn't cheating. If I can do it without modifying anything about the game, it isn't hacking. And if the game was designed to allow me to do it, then it isn't exploiting.

The kind of mindless repetitive grinding that games like WoW require could easily be taught to a pet. At one point I was "botting" in Everquest (1) with a Lego contraption that just pressed 4 keys in sequence over and over, as if a person was sitting there tapping their fingers. The same can be done in WoW, although it isn't the most efficient way.

I have seen people banned for fully utilizing their programmable keyboards like the logitech G15. Blizzard can't draw a firm line between "helpful" and "unattended playing", which is really their only concern here. Is it unattended if I use one of the priest macros that auto heals while I press the same button over and over? What if I am not looking at the screen while I do it (hey, Baywatch is on!)? What if I just tape the key down and turn on autorepeat?

Re:I have the right

[blueskies]

Check this out:
Blizzard's WoW software incorporates a component known as "Warden" that serves as a technological measure that effectively protects Blizzard's rights as a copyright owner by restricting users' ability to make unauthorized copies of WoW.

Isn't that a flat out lie? Can you lie in court?

Re:I have the right

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey, shouldn't you be doing something else right now, like killing yourself?

Re:I have the right

[MeanderingMind]

Morally wrong?

What about satellite dish companies, or cable companies, or DSL? I paid for a product (cable box, satellite dish, DSL modem) and a service (cable, satellite TV, or an internet connection). If I cancel the service, the product is useless. Heck, the same can go for light bulbs if I don't want to pay my electric bill.

You may not like the arrangement, but I think "morally wrong" is pushing it.

Re:I have the right

[jswigart]

Forgive me if i interpreted your response of

The legal freedom, sure I do. That's the way it should be. You deal with in-game actions such as cheating in the game. What the hell is wrong with just banning people? as a response to

The fact is, you DON'T have the freedom to cheat freely and get away with it, so yes, stopping cheating is a good thing as some implied right to cheat. I never claimed not being around cheaters as a right, I simply support a developer in beating/banning cheaters whenever possible, and in the larger cases of someone profiting from selling cheating programs built from reverse engineering and violating the EULA, they should come down on this guy like a ton of bricks IF the EULA has been deemed to have that binding authority. The whole point of bringing up BNETD is that the judges ruled that the programmers did indeed violate the EULA, giving it some level of legal binding. That specifically applies to this glider program as well, but simply banning the account of the program author is meaningless. They can't tell when he logs on to RE each new version after a breaking wow patch, but he is without doubt doing it. What choice is there to shut it down other than taking to court? Turn a blind eye?

We aren't talking about the right to cheat. We are talking about the right to do whatever I want to RAM that I bought and paid for with my hard earned money. I can forgive the willingness to give up liberties for protection from terrorists but you're rolling over just because of some kids cheating on a video game? That's pathetic! Sure you can do whatever you want with your RAM. When that involves 'hacking' a game and selling the resulting cheat I hope you get sued too, though hopefully for something a little more solid than copyright infringement, which doesn't seem to apply specifically to this situation. Nobody in 'rolling over' by hoping a cheat author gets shut down and the users banned.

Re:I have the right

[SL Baur]

This won't be the first or last time I'm confused about something, so OK.

Let me lay it out in simple terms for you. If I can do it myself within the bounds of the rules, it isn't cheating. If I can do it without modifying anything about the game, it isn't hacking. And if the game was designed to allow me to do it, then it isn't exploiting. Apparently there is stuff in their network protocol that includes information that they do not want players to have. Talking to the enemy (translating Horde/Alliance language) is forbidden, but apparently allowed in the sense that the network protocol allows it. I wouldn't label that "cheating", but Blizzard doesn't like it and I can see where it could be used for creating an unfair advantage.

Based on discussions I've read about using the extension language for writing addons, it seems there is forbidden functionality that is implemented and available, but using it creates an unfair advantage, in Blizzard's official opinion.

I have seen people banned for fully utilizing their programmable keyboards like the logitech G15. Blizzard can't draw a firm line between "helpful" and "unattended playing", which is really their only concern here. Ouch. I'll keep that in mind as I start writing my own macros.

Re:I have the right

[Tantor12]

First of all, you need to do a little research before you make such blanket statements as to what your rights are. Blizzard sued, won and got a case upheld in US Supreme Court in a previous suit against DNet... just a few things people should know from that case as the EULA/TOS are pretty much identical in WoW. 1.) You dont own the software, you only pay for the privilege of being granted a license to use a copy of it only if you use it to access their servers. 2.) You can give up your right to reverse engineer software if it is stipulated in the EULA/TOS. 3.) You cannot attempt to circumvent copy protection schemes when developing 3rd party applications per the DMCA. 4.) The 'i accept' button on the Blizzard EULA/TOS complies with all the requirements for an enforceable contract. WoW is a paid subscription service and Blizzard has the right to regulate the state of the machines that connect to their private servers... hell they could say you can only play standing on your head, and they would have every right to enforce it. Blizzard has a lot of settled law on their side... and given what WoW does, I am suprised they havent talked a DA into going after the WoWGlide guy under RICO law.

Re:I have the right

[Impy the Impiuos Imp]

Ahh good old EverQuest.

When the game started, you used to be able to tell your pet to "guard" you. It would attack anything that came into range that was an NPC and not something like a vendor.

This was pretty cool, too, as your pet could go off on a slaughter spree like the guards in the halfling woods.

They ended this when people found a few areas where there was a single spawn that the pet could handle AND was high enough to give xp AND was slow enough respawning the pet could heal back up between spawns. Just park the pet on guard and let 'er rip.

Then people "worked around that" by "feigning death" such that the pet protected them in the same spots, so they made the pet disintegrate after 2 minutes of feigned death so you couldn't go afk.

Although not the most outrageous nerf, the first one was the most irritating -- not because I didn't understand the problem, but that I hated a pet that would let a damned level 1 rat walk right in front of me without me having to tell it to kill the rat explicitely. Where's the Evil Overlord fun in that?

Re:I have the right

[2short]

"For example, when you're playing Unreal Tournament and some guy keeps doing 180's and putting a bullet through your head from across the map... it's a safe bet he's a cheater and you should move on."

And if I'm running the server, I'll ban him. On servers Blizzard runs, I see no problem with their defining what is cheating, and banning who they like.

Suing someone for copyright violation who has not actually copied anything is still incredibly stupid of course.

Re:I have the right

[Ziwcam]

Break the rules, lose the money you invested. It's not hard. It's not morally wrong. Nobody is requiring you to break the EULA. If you do, its by your own choice, and you deserve to lose the money you paid for the product (whos agreement you so wantonly (sp?) ignored)

Re:I have the right

[Danga]

Wowglider didn't cause anyone to violate the ToS, the person using it made a consious choice to do so. What tool they used to do it is irrelevant. If I stab someone to death with a steak knife, would you say the maker of the steak knife caused me to murder someone?

While I agree that people should be liable for their own choices I think your steak knife arguement is a little flawed. A steak knife has a known main purpose which is to allow a person to eat tasty steak, it can be used to stab a person and commit a murder but that is not what its main purpose is.

Wowglider on the other hand has the main purpose of providing an automated way to play a WoW character which is clearly a violation of the TOS for a WoW account. Even on the front page of the Wowglider website they state "Glider is a tool that plays your World of Warcraft character for you, the way you want it. It grinds, it loots, it skins, it heals, it even farms soul shards... without you."

Take a look yourself: http://www.wowglider.com/

Wowglider would be more like having someone sell landmines to anybody and everybody. A landmine is made for the sole purpose of killing people and it serves no other purpose. Obviously there are laws against selling landmines to everybody (similar to the TOS for WoW not allowing automation) and anyone providing that means should be liable for their actions.

Re:I have the right

[asdfghjklqwertyuiop]

A landmine is made for the sole purpose of killing people and it serves no other purpose.

That's true, but ultimately the person that would actually do the killing would bear most of the responsibility, unlike in this case.

Also, this precedent they're going for is much too far reaching. We may tolerate laws against selling land mines, but most of us wouldn't tolerate government surveilance in every aspect of our lives to prevent the sale of landmines. We'll take the freedom, live with the risks, and place responsibility on the free individuals.

Re:I have the right

[pw1972]

I've got an application that modifies the memory of the application. It essentially takes out all of the text in the EULA and replaces it with white space. At that point, I agree to the EULA and play the game. I've successfully glided for years without being caught and I'm not breaking the EULA since I don't actually agree to theirs. Technology is great!

Re:I have the right

[legirons]

"And they have the right to ban you for life if and when they catch you."

A good way to avoid new customers though, don't you think?

e.g. try the World of Warcraft demo, the first thing you see is an EULA demanding root access to your PC and boasting that they _will_ abuse that power any way they can. Amazing that some people allow it to do so.

Re:I have the right

[Danga]

Also, this precedent they're going for is much too far reaching. We may tolerate laws against selling land mines, but most of us wouldn't tolerate government surveilance in every aspect of our lives to prevent the sale of landmines. We'll take the freedom, live with the risks, and place responsibility on the free individuals.

I mainly brought up the landmine analogy since your steak knife analogy was slightly flawed since a steak knife serves a main purpose other than killing people. I was not trying to say that the providers of the landmines should be punished for the actions of those who they sell the landmines too just that they should be punished for providing them the landmines.

I also wouldn't tolerate the government watching every aspect of my life but when I freely and openly provide something to people that allows them to violate laws/rules then I think I should be held liable for providing that service (but not liable for the actions of others using what I provide).

While I don't believe that Blizzard has a case saying accessing WoW's RAM violates their copyright rights I do believe they have the right to check for cheaters as well as should have the right to go after people who openly provide cheaters a way to cheat (especially when the people providing a way to cheat do so profitably). Blizzard just needs to find another way to sue Wowglider out of existence and as far as I know there is not currently a way to do that which is a shame. Not being able to stop the cheaters in WoW would force many people (myself included) to probably end up quitting if it got bad enough and that would end up costing Blizzard a lot of revenue as well as take away the fun of the game from the non-cheaters.

Re:I have the right

[m0rph3us0]

It's not cheating.

Clothing manufacturers don't "CHEAT" by having machines make their clothes.

It's just being more intelligent. I don't pry bolts off my car by hand, I use a tool that makes it easier. Gliding wouldn't be an issue if the game wasn't such a grind fest.

I honestly found it more a of challenge to setup the Glide right and perform the right actions based on input than to play the game. It taught me a lot about game mechanics than anything else, it really forces you to think about what the best thing to do in a situation is.

Re:I have the right

[Maltheus]

Blizzard doesn't really want to own you system, they just don't want you to play unattended.

I always thought that it would be great to have a game that let's you script whatever you want, up to the point where you can play unattended. A game that rewards the best programmer rather than simply the quickest fingers. Whenever I play a game, I always think I could do a better job with the A.I., I'd like to have a chance to put my money where my mouth is and I don't have time to write an entire game by myself.

Re:I have the right

[passthecrackpipe]

To be honest I would not be averse to having some mechanisms in place that allow you to level an alt faster - XP bonus or whatever, however, that in turn would open the door for more goldfarmers

Re:I have the right

[asdfghjklqwertyuiop]

I also wouldn't tolerate the government watching every aspect of my life but when I freely and openly provide something to people that allows them to violate laws/rules then I think I should be held liable for providing that service (but not liable for the actions of others using what I provide).

Such is your opinion, but I liken the right to write software to the right to free speech. It should simply not be possible for a company to say what kinds of software other people can and cannot write, regardless of what other people use it for. If people use that software to violate a contract, those who did so should be held liable for breach of the contract.

The guilty act here is the breach of ToS contract between Blizzard and the cheater. The guilty party here is the cheater.

I can agree that the freedom to distribute land mines should be restricted, but only because there is a huge risk to society of their misuse. It is an exceptional situation. Cheating in a video game just doesn't meet the same standard. Situations where we spread guilt beyond the person who actually committed the guilty act should be exceedingly rare in order to keep society as free as possible as a general principle. Excuse the cliche, but "slippery slope" comes to mind.

Re:I have the right

[smallfries]

You make a good point, and I'm not going to disagree with you over whether or not WoWGlider is cheating. I don't play WoW, as I think grinding is not really gameplay (see the other reply that I made with a link to Gamasutra). If you see the game as a timesink, and progress as dependent on time "invested" rather than skill (which I guess you do) then sure, it's cheating.

But you can't sue someone over allowing people to cheat in your game. You can sue people over copyright violation, and that is what Vivendi has tried to do. So whether or not WoWGlider is cheating, I still think that his (legal) case is pretty tight.

Also, how is this different than say, cracking DVD decryption or bypassing copyright schema on software?

Well, the those are examples of copyright protection - they stop people from copying the product. WoWGlider is an example of software that people cheat with (I'm going with your argument on this one). Cheating is not a copyright violation.

Re:I have the right

[Anonymous Coward]

Except that MrWowGliderTankGuy83 detracts from my enjoyment of the game because he has no clue how to play his character correctly and gets me killed repeatedly when I take him on a group and then end up having to boot him from the group and spend another 5-10 minutes trying to find a tank who knows what they are doing.

Re:I have the right

[Anonymous Coward]

One of the issues with this WoW autopilot is that it is needed at all.

It's not needed. It's just a tool for cheaters to make extra gold/xp while not at the keys. Millions have played the game through max level without "needing" a bot.

Re:I have the right

[cubic6]

It's not cheating.

Clothing manufacturers don't "CHEAT" by having machines make their clothes.

It's just being more intelligent. I don't pry bolts off my car by hand, I use a tool that makes it easier. Gliding wouldn't be an issue if the game wasn't such a grind fest.

When you play Monopoly with your friends, do you just reach over and take all their money and declare yourself the winner, since that's obviously the "more intelligent" way to meet the winning condition of the game? The thing you left out in that statement is that when you play WoW, you're agreeing to play by a set of rules that specifically prohibit tools for unattended play. Regardless of the legal issues of click-through EULAs, process scanning anti-cheat tools and Blizzard's claim of "copyright infringement", you definitely ARE cheating.

Re:I have the right

[WNight]

But that's insane. The one thing it isn't is copyright violation. He presumably bought a legit copy of the game, so he owns it and can look at it as much as he likes, space shifting as desired. (Which is obviously necessary with a non human-readable media.)

They might have a case of contract violation against him for the ongoing monthly use of the online service despite violating the contract. But totally not for copyright reasons.

Why do the supporters of Blizzard (Tivo, etc) go into reality denial mode, where whatever their favorite company says must be true? This is so obviously not copyright, yet you (all) get carried away with your support for "stopping cheaters" and let yourself end up supporting 1984ish black-is-white nonsense.

You don't need a license to read a book. Wake up. You don't need one to use software either. Theoretically someone who entered into an agreement with the vendor might get into trouble for letting you be near a terminal running the software or have access to the media, but not you because you didn't sign anything. You're copyright safe as long as you don't create a lasting duplicate of the work.

Re:I have the right

[WNight]

Exactly. There'd only be about half as many IRC users tomorrow if ops were suddenly replaced with a /ignore that really worked. Without someone's ass to kiss, for the power to get people to kiss your ass, most people aren't interested. In my experience these are the people most likely to watch shows like Survivor, Fear Factor, etc.

I wish there was a game that didn't attract these people. The existence of WoWGlider is proof enough that WoW is a crappy game. That Blizzard is so outraged by it shows they know how crappy WoW is and plan on keeping it that way. Proof enough that Blizzard hasn't and won't changed their ways.

I think the idea should be to buy WoWGlider from the guy and integrate it into the default client. Now fill the player's time with something else while they're getting XP. Make the world less bland so that the player can't just assume everything around will be level X +/- 5%. Make the monsters attack back - if a bunch of Orcs go missing send a raiding party. Then let the player watch the show as their character fights until something jumps out that will take an actual human to decide.

Ideally an MMORPG would be designed with an in-client bot, made by a separate dev team. They try to turn as much of the game into Progress Quest as possible while the other dev team tries to defeat the bot, but only with complex systems (ones worthy of a human) where people will want to override because they can, if skilled, do better. The UI would continually evolve to make things easier and automate anything you could describe as wanting automated, while the game would get more complex and interesting so that you don't want to blast through so much.

Re:I have the right

[lnjasdpppun]

Blizzard aren't just angry at the un-attended leveling offered by WoWGlider style bots. It also effects the WoW economy, which impacts their 7 to 8 million paying customers. If gold farmers, or players using bots have more gold* then prices go up, which makes it harder for the honest players to get enough gold to purchase items in-game.

*Gold being the WoW in-game currency.

Re:I have the right

[SL Baur]

They ended this when people found a few areas where there was a single spawn that the pet could handle AND was high enough to give xp AND was slow enough respawning the pet could heal back up between spawns. Just park the pet on guard and let 'er rip. Ah, that explains why if you never touch an NPC your pet kills, you get no loot or credit for it (which makes putting your pet on Aggressive mostly pointless). Thanks for the history lesson.

Re:I have the right

[Opportunist]

In other words, WoW is for people who enjoy doing manual backups daily?

No wonder that I didn't enjoy it.

Re:I have the right

[Nefarious Wheel]

I left Kramden, my Level 41 Demicanadian Battle-Felon running on ProgressQuest while I went off to Rowany Festival. I came back and found him at level 50. What an amazing thing! I could RPG while I was off getting dust on the tent in RL.

Re:I have the right

[AnotherBrian]

Robocode

Re:I have the right

[KnuthKonrad]

Maybe the end is good. But let's look at the ramifications here. Basically, we've agreed this is not a copyright violation. It is simply a violation of the EULA.

Depending on where you live, not even that. According to german laws, I must be able to read any EULA before purchasing the product. So all of those "You agree to whatever we like by opening this box" or even better EULAs presented at install time are simply void.

Oh, and pointing me to a webpage where I might find the EULA for the product while I'm in the shop and about to buy the box isn't good either.

Re:I have the right

[mgiuca]

It isn't about merely "breaking the rules". The EULA is a set of terms defined entirely by the company, which I might add, may change at any time without notice, and has in the past. It is (not specifically the WoW EULA but EULAs in general) a contract with far-reaching and overly-generic terms.

The fact is, it isn't a case of "you broke the rules as defined in the EULA, we're terminating your service". It's actually a case that the EULA specifically gives the publisher, in this case, Blizzard, the right to terminate the contract at any time. This means they need to have no reason whatsoever, or they could just make up a reason on the spot.

Furthermore Blizzard use automated tools to detect when people "break their rules" and have been known to ban players falsely. Legally there is nothing the banned player can do but buy a new game, because the terms of the EULA state that Blizzard can ban whoever they want.

From the World of Warcraft Terms of Use:

If Blizzard finds (your username) to be offensive or improper, it may, in its sole and absolute discretion (take certain remedies) and/or suspend or terminate your use of the Program.

(My emphasis). See the link above for the ridiculous naming rules. Maybe they are sensible enough, but realise that breaking these very loose rules (such as leetspeek or "GeneralTed") WOULD legally constitute breaking these terms.

certain acts ... are considered serious violations of these Terms of Use (including) the following: ... Anything that Blizzard considers contrary to the "essence" of the Program.

(My emphasis).

Blizzard reserves the right, at its sole and absolute discretion, to change, modify, add to, supplement or delete any of the terms and conditions of this Agreement at any time.

BLIZZARD MAY SUSPEND, TERMINATE, MODIFY, OR DELETE THE ACCOUNT AT ANY TIME WITH ANY REASON OR NO REASON, WITH OR WITHOUT NOTICE. For purposes of explanation and not limitation, most account suspensions, terminations and/or deletions are the result of violations of this Terms of Use or the EULA.

(My emphasis). Worded another way, but with exactly equivalent semantics, Blizzard explicitly grant themselves the right to terminate your account for any reason at all whether it is in violation of these terms or not.

Blizzard may terminate this Agreement with or without notice by terminating your Account.

WHEN RUNNING, THE PROGRAM MAY MONITOR YOUR COMPUTER'S RANDOM ACCESS MEMORY (RAM) AND/OR CPU PROCESSES

But as you say, if Blizzard decides to terminate my account, it's my fault and I deserve to lose my $80 plus $60 I paid for the expansion pack now bound to my account.

(I'm not an angry troll who got his account banned, I'm just an angry ex-customer who will not agree to blatantly immoral and all-powerful license agreements).

Re:I have the right

[C0R1D4N]

Maybe, but only if you have the right to set up your own server ala FreeEQ. Blizzard's already been shown to be vehemently against that with their fight against the free Battle.net

Re:I have the right

[Anonymous Coward]

"In summary: Providing a product and service rolled into one is wrong. Being able to terminate the service at any time but keep the revenue made from selling the now-useless product is oh so wrong."

So, by your reasoning: cell phones, iPods, Movie Box, and the Dish Network are different how?

Buy a cell phone and you HAVE to buy a service also, to use it, and they are generally locked to one provider. Switch companies and guess what? New phone.

iPods were initially designed to *only* work w/ Mac format files in an effort to help foster iTunes in its infacy. Arguably, the iPod can be used without iTunes, but Apple sure as fuck wishes you wouldn't. 1G iPods and proprietary AAC format anyone?

movie box and dish: both require purchase or at least rental of hardware coupled with a service. If you don't get signal b/c of snowstorm, do they refund the rental cost of your box for those days? Hardly.

Re:I have the right

[tgkilgore]

You are misguided in the thinking that you own your own personal copy of the game. If you read through the End User License Agreement and the Terms of Use that you have agreed to, you will see that you have acknowledged that the software, your account and anything associate within are the property of Blizzard. Buying a copy of the game, or most software for that matter, merely gives you a license, or the right to use, that particular piece of software. In this case, you are licensed to use the software and you have the right to "rent" account space on their servers. This case comes down to what the EULA allows and disallows and what aspects of which are concrete enough to past legal muster. Lets not for get that Blizzard did not sue MDY, yet this is an answer and counter suit to the suit MDY brought against them. Blizzard's case is fairly weak, (I believe that their main argument is that Glider's code contains in game scripting commands which are their property) they had to do something to show their community that they are trying to fight against botting as doing nothing would have been a huge black eye. I do condone botting, but I don't see that MDY did anything legally wrong here. I don't necessarily agree that Blizzard should be allowed to scan a persons RAM et al while they are playing, bu this is another matter that is permitted by their EULA and that every user has agreed to.

Re:I have the right

[Anonymous Coward]

I'll throw together an analogy to explain this. Imagine Picasso is selling a bunch of paintings. Some one buys the painting and now owns this paticular copy. He's permitted to do anything at all he wants to it, and decides it looks better with a big yellow smiley face in the middle of it. This is perfectly legal. So is selling yellow paint and the decal to other people so they can paint the smiley face on their bought copies of the painting. Nothing wrong with this.

However, they then take the paintings to an Art Gallery and claim them to be Picasso pieces- clearly they are not! This is where the legality issue of copyright comes into play. The art analogy isn't quite perfect, but it gets the idea across. You're taking modified Blizzard software and passing it off as normal Blizzard software. It's copyright infringing because you're COPYING the Blizzard game and simply adding a few lines of code to produce something that IS NOT Blizzard software.

I'll say it again. They're USING BLIZZARD SOFTWARE to create software that IS NOT BLIZZARD SOFTWARE, yet plays and CLAIMS TO BE Blizzard software whenever you log on to their servers to play.

With this understanding I can clearly see why having this sofware installed could be copyright infringment.

Re:I have the right

[loucura!]

Who the f*** decided that sentences on the Internet shall no longer be formatted with two spaces after a period?!

With the advent of variable width fonts, it is no longer necessary to signal a full-stop spacing with two spaces.

Re:I have the right

[iamcf13]

I agree with your parent post, Blizzard is in a bind in their effort to protect their IP.

Nobody with money-paying data on a computer would install such intrusive software--why risk it.

If you gotta have your World Of Warcraft fix, do it from a 'throwaway' PC with no valuable data on it. PC's are cheap enought to do something like that. However be prepared to pay BIG BUCKS for system performance if you want the 'throwaway' PC to be an ACTUAL online gamer PC 'rig'....

P.S. OT reply from iamcf13 to torvaun - please reply

Re:Remove all financial incentives for malware...

Sorry, I didn't reply before the topic was locked...

Sadly, money is required to get ANYTHING 'worthwhile' done in a capitalistic society like the USA.

Look at how the media showers the financially successful and lucky money winners with LOTS of attention and accolades.

Open source has it's place in the world but all it does is 'open doors' for those who contribute to it (if it does at all)--not pay the bills they have to pay RIGHT NOW.... :(

The 'black hatters' that spread malware for free are either outright antisocial and/or psychopathic or are otherwise on somebody else's payroll getting paid IN CASH for their 'skills'. If you get a chance, watch the NUMB3RS TV episode 'Backscatter' for a GREAT example of the dangers of for-profit black hat 'hacking' (really cracking).

Re:I have the right

[Torvaun]

My point was that monetary gain is not the only reason for things to be done. Look at just about every hobby. People don't expect to get rich from stamp collecting. Likewise, there is hacking done out of boredom rather than profit. The form of hobbyist hacking depends on the person, as I mentioned in the other thread.

Also, there are psychopathic and sociopathic black hatters, as well as ones who do it for practice, even when they aren't getting paid, so they can get paid later.

Assuming greed as the motivation for every action is as foolish as assuming altruism.

Re:I have the right

[iamcf13]

Assuming greed as the motivation for every action is as foolish as assuming altruism.

Understood but consider this bleak fact:

If you are employed, but not self-employed, you are being taken advantage of by your employer!

You are creating MORE value for your employer than (s)he pays you in wages for the work you do.

If this was not the case, capitalism couldn't work.

All non-fraudulent non-profit and charitable work is eminently commendable.

It's just that it is 'drowned out' by all for-profit business taking place worldwide... :(

I did computer programming as a unpaid hobby before I did it for a living.

Now I am unemployed and have been unable to get a job doing things I did before I got the computer programming job!

Any suggestions on how I can make money with my computer programming skills WITHOUT working for someone else EXCEPT for any 100% telecommute computer programming jobs that are free to apply for that do not require people with degrees but have paid experience like I do?

Re:I have the right

[Torvaun]

You only see one side of the coin.

I am employed, but not self employed. In this, I am taking advantage of my employer. Look at my skill set, heavy on the technical things like configuring networks, light on finding people who would like to pay me to configure their networks. Comparing the money that was coming into my bank account when I was a freelancer, and the money that comes into my bank account with a boss, the boss has been a net gain for me. You look at the boss, and you see that he gains, so you call the relationship parasitic, but if you looked at yourself, you'd call it symbiotic instead. You even admitted as much, stating that you're having problems finding the work you need now that you're unemployed.

Re:I have the right

[iamcf13]

Thank you for your comments.

I heard that a 6% unemployment rate is necessary in the USA for the economy to remain stable.

100% employment wouldn't work in the American capitalistic system... :(

I don't have anyting more to say about this.

However I haven't given up in my quest for employment.

Thanks again for your response and input.

Bryan

Looks great but

[BeoCluster]

Can I make a Beowulf Cluster of WoW bots to create an army of fake chinese farmers ?

What is at stake here?

[KeyThing]

There are many programs that (programatically) do what the glidebot does. Like Spyware protection, antivirus, etc. There are "add-ons" to popular programs that make them more userfriendly by interacting with them.

I think Blizzard is approaching this case wrong. The bottom line is that they consider people using the glidebot to be cheating the system. Personally, I don't use it mainly for fear of having my account canceled. I'd much rather have something else go thru the grind for me than have me sitting in front of the game for hours on end. While such programs are prohibited by their AUP, I think they're going too far on this one.

Re:What is at stake here?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd much rather have something else go thru the grind for me than have me sitting in front of the game for hours on end.

How bleak. We buys games so we can have programs play them for us? Does it send you a TPS report charting the fun it had for you too? Or is there something more to WoW than playing the game? If there is a sense of accomplishment for reaching lvl 70, isn't it robbed by having a bot do the 'work' for you?

I've heard of aimbots for FPS games, but I've never seen anyone looking for an autopilot for a flight sim, and that seems like what people are looking for in glidebot.

Re:What is at stake here?

[F34nor]

When I was playing WoW I thought that some grinding did get old. If part of Wow wasn't intensely stupid then SouthPark couldn't have owned it so badly and danced over the corpse. Really 60 percent for me was grinding 25 was lookimg for a group and 15 was having a great time working a difficult instance.

  Then again I was grinding all the time because everyone in my clan was l60 but me. I would have been fine letting someone else or an AI make me some gold, which is worth real money to some people, while I slept. That's the rub, time is money and glidebot saves or makes you money. This pisses off the people who have no jobs or wifes/gf's who kill boars in the forrest.

  Blizzard is probably the biggest gold merchants on the web (pretending to be chinese and using shady sites) and want to prevent competition. It would be easy to pretend to be shady and would gernerate HUGE revenue.

Re:What is at stake here?

[TheJasper]

While I don't directly see how haveing a bot level grinding for you ruins the game for others, I can imagine this to be the case. In any case Blizzard has the right to tell their subscribers not to use these programs. This in no way gives them the right to prevent people from running a program that accesses ram on their pc, unless you want to take the personal out of it. There is no copying going on, thus no violation of copyright. I say to Blizzard, fix the problem on your side. Don't like bots? I imagine they can be identified quite simply based on behaviour. don't like what a program I have is doing to *my* ram. know, what, I don't care.

Re:What is at stake here?

[gweihir]

Blizzard is probably the biggest gold merchants on the web (pretending to be chinese and using shady sites) and want to prevent competition. It would be easy to pretend to be shady and would gernerate HUGE revenue.

This is complete and utter nonsense. Why do peopla keep thinking that? There is zero proof and no motivation for Blizzard at all to do this. In fact it would be very likely criminal (tax evasion, e.g.) for them and the IRS is a really, really dangerous adversary.

Re:What is at stake here?

[tbannist]

While I agree with you about the tedious grinds (Kill 20,000 Furbolgs to get the useless Furbolg Trinket). Botting
pisses off people who have a life as well. People who bot make it harder for everyone who don't bot because the botting is there all the time killing the same mobs over and over again. While your bot is killing those furbolgs, or elementals, or undead the other players who are trying to earn their rep, gold, or materials the honest way get screwed over by your bot.

The problem is an intractable one in WoW. Most players are prevented from effectively griefing bots by the normal game rules, but there's nothing that prevents bots from griefing other players by scouring an area clean of mobs. I've seen situations where there were 4 separate bots killing the mobs in the same field.

The solution? Don't play WoW. The game is mostly an endless grind fest. It's the timesinks that make botting popular even though it can and does get your account banned. Of course, on the flip side Blizzard is extremely slow to ban botters. I've seen bots still operating more than a month after I first reported them.

I've been much happier since I quit.

Re:What is at stake here?

[nukeevry1]

Not to mention what you can do with a greasemonkey script to a copyrighted website... Should the government shutdown greasemonkey, too?

Re:What is at stake here?

[Anonymous Coward]

Ever since the bnetd case, I've boycotted Blizzard for their litigious asshattery in using a legal department on a project I thought was just providing a useful service that happened to be usable for illegal purposes as well. They filed that case under the overly broad and universally hated DMCA. Now they're trying to get a legal precedent set that effectively creates a legal requirement for the kind of internal partitioning between programs that Microsoft proposed with the TCPA and encrypting all the data in processes running on your own damn computer. Any process that a certain list of companies spawns on your machine should be untouchable, meanwhile they should be allowed the keys to access whatever they want on your system no matter how private.

Should we really allow a *games* company to set such a shitty precedent? Is any form of entertainment worth such a sacrifice of control over my own system?

Honestly, I used to be against botting in MMOs, but after being *driven off* by the ensuing boredom of the grind and not being able to reach the "fun" part of a game... I really have to start to wonder if *this* kind of bot is really all that unethical. Perhaps instead of litigating, patching, and fighting tooth and nail, games companies should learn to quit making grind treadmill piles of tripe.

But that would require a) getting the hint and b) admitting they're wrong. Something most companies and people are really horrible at doing.

So I think we'll see this case followed through to the gruesome end, and the fallout damage to the PC industry as a whole might be quite bad. I always assumed big brother would be a mostly government entity. Never figured the start would come from a corporation, and that it would be *game* that they tried to use to get their fingers in.

Re:What is at stake here?

[Fozzyuw]

What is at stake here?

What's at stake here is a software company telling you what you can do with your computer. The grey area that's causing a problem is the fact that what you're doing with your computer is transmitted back to the WoW server.

The best analogy I can think of is, you buy a car, you add some components to the car to make the car run more efficient, and the gas companies sue you because they're loosing revenue because you're not filling up as often as you use to. Of course, that would best fit if the Gas companies also sold you the car and you signed a contract stating that you wouldn't improve your car to make it more efficient.

IANAL, but I think the issue here is, once you buy a product, and that product is yours, are you free to do what you want with it? Are contracts that say you have to use a product as the company wishes legal or do they fit under some sort of antitrust? Of course, it's perfectly legal for a company to stop providing you their (non-critical) service, just as a restaurant does not have to serve you nor does a department store have to sell you their good. Just as the above example, the gas station could stop selling you gas, where you will have to find gas elsewhere or create your own (hypothetically saying it wouldn't be entirely too difficult, but as a non-programmer, programming your own game might be as difficult as refining your own gas).

I would hope that this case sheds some new light on consumer/business protection with regards to software.

1. Once software is purchased, does the consumer have the right to modify the files in anyway they like? (Does deleting files fall under modification? If I deleted a UI file that Blizzard installed, did I just modify the program?)
2. Does the owner of their computer have the right to modify their computer to perform in any respect they like?
3. Who owns the digital information that is stored in RAM? You purchased the code, but everything that operates the code is owned by the consumer. The code simply will not work without the consumers hard-ware. The software company is not supplying computers to everyone who wants to use their software (like those old Tiger electronic hand-held games). Unless a software company starts suppling their own hardware to the client, do they have to give up some rights to let their software run on someone else's computer?
4. Does a MMO software company, who's real service is the allowance to send and receive information from their servers, to your computer after the software is purchased, in a specific proprietary data format, have any copyright standing if the format was never changed but the data inside the format was changed by a 3rd party program, instead of their 1st party program?
5. Does a software company have the right to ban people form communicating with their servers if they so choose?
6. Does the consumer still have the right to use the software code he purchased, anyway he wants, if his connection to the companies servers has been terminated?

One thing I find interesting, is that last bit. If you purchased the software and reverse engineer your own WoW server, such that the code on your server does not resemble the official Blizzard servers, except for how the data packets are generally formatted, does that break trademark and/or copyright law? Some interesting questions.

I know from a business standpoint, it would be, "we own everything and you're only renting our software. You MUST supply your own hardware but we have the right to tell you how to use it as well, if we feel it interferes with our product and our ability to make money on that product."

As a consumer, I know I would say to the extreme; "I purchased the product. I now own it. I have the right to do whatever I want with this product because I purchased it. If I want to modify the data, then I have that right, as long as I do not e

Re:What is at stake here?

[MeanderingMind]

1. Technically yes. However, in WoW's case agreeing to the EULA is agreeing not to. Exercising your right gives Blizzard a reason to exercise their right to stop their service.
2. Again, yes. But again, if what you do violates the EULA Blizzard has the right to stop their service.
3. I can't say I've ever thought about whether or not I own the data in my RAM. I'm inclined to think that I do, but at the same time (and like the other bullets thus far) I'm liable for the consequences of doing anything with that data which violates the EULA I agreed to.
4. I don't know enough about copyright to answer this. I suspect that this is what this case is meant to determine.
5. They do so long as it is in keeping with the contract or EULA dictating the terms of service. If there is none, then they have a right to do so at any time.
6. Yes and no. So long as the use of the code and software is not in violation of any actual law then they may. Although I would expect any reverse engineering attempts to draw Blizzard's lawyers out, and we'd see just to what extent we can mess around with the software we purchase.

Re:What is at stake here?

[Tantor12]

6.) You dont own the software.. you only purchased a license that allows you to use it under certain circumstances.. and if you buy the box and dont agree with the terms, Blizzard gives you 30 days to return the box for a full refund provided you did not activate your account key. And thats the crux of the situation.. and Blizzard's position already has case law backing the validity of their EULA/TOS.

Re:What is at stake here?

[toriver]

Well yes you can do what you want with the software. But if you do, Blizzard have no obligations to provide the SECONDARY product, which is the services provided by the servers (login, patching, gameworld and chat). And WoW like all purely online games is worthless without access to those services.

Re:What is at stake here?

[F34nor]

I know its nonsense, I was kidding. Then again one bad Blizzard employee could makes some duckets on the side.

As to the IRS they could report the income. No fan boy is going to take time off killing furblogs to really disect the statement of cash flows to determine where all the money Blizzard is making is directly coming from. Speaking of money they must be making a shitload! Jesus, digital crack what a concept!

You know...

[Marrshu]

... the fact that a game that I just bought a 60-day card for is spying on me is scary. But dammit, killing dragons and giants is fun!

Re:You know...

[TobyWong]

"Spying on you" like an AV program...

Re:You know...

[richdun]

You just bought a card and are already on the dragons and giants? You hax0r!

Re:You know...

[Anonymous Coward]

I can do that in T.o.M.E. and quite enjoy it. For those who require the MMORPG aspects, there's tomenet.

Re:It's simple

[ivan256]

Including grossly abusing the law?

Sorry, but if we have to pick between expansion of copyrights and some people cheating at a stupid game, I'm going to side with the cheaters. Preventing cheating in an online game is not a cause worthy of limiting access to general purpose computing for.

Um..

[FMota91]

This is like saying "Windows can't access my program in RAM, it's copyright violation!"

...

Re:It's simple

[nobuddy]

Wowglider = cheating. Agreed. Blizz doing whatever it wants to stop it = asinine. There are limits to anything, and this is too far. I have a reserved parking space. If someone parks in it, I have the right to have them towed. I do not have the right to sue them for their car.

Why not make a policy?

[odourpreventer]

WoWGlider bot [..] constitutes copyright violation

IANAWoWP, so I may be missing some details, but can't they just make a "bots will get you banned" policy? Other MMORPGs seem to have successfully implemented that.

Re:Why not make a policy?

[nobuddy]

They have such a policy. They have banned accounts in the 100,000 range thus far. The issue is they give out those 14 day free accounts, and the Chinese farmers use those to bot and farm till they are banned and make another free account. They need to quit slitting their own throat and end that practice. When it costs you $39US to get banned, it becomes self regulating. I lost my first account because I screwed around with the tools and bots out of curiosity. $40 and a do-over later I won't touch them.

Re:Why not make a policy?

[Anonymous Coward]

No, they can't bot with a trial account; with a trial account you can't level above 20, and you can't trade any items or gold from it in any way.

They do spam using whispers with trial accounts, advertising the goldselling sites (WTB [Auto-Ignore Whispers From Trial Accounts Option] which would neatly solve that one), but they never bot with them. They actually have to pay for their accounts.

However, since it costs around $30 for an account, and that's the market price of about 1000 gold, the botting probably very rapidly pays for itself while the bot levels up - after which it's all gravy. Until Blizzard tracks them, figures out where the gold's being sent, and bans the goldbank accounts (which hurt far more than the bots).

Given that it's a tool specifically created to violate the EULA and terms of service of another service, I'd rather like WoWGlider to be taken down. I'd like to be on Blizzard's side, but this could set bad precedent for offline games and a whole bunch of other things like debuggers, so I can't. They should've gone with tortious contract interference, I reckon they'd have a clearer case. The DMCA doesn't really apply, as it's not really an access-control method protecting a copyrighted work that's being circumvented.

Until then, it's incredibly obvious who's botting. The little chicken-walk they to do back up, the fact that they run in circles, the turning on the spot towards the next mob, absolutely scream "glider". If they don't ban right away, it's probably because they're trying to follow the money.

Re:Why not make a policy?

[Saint Mitchell]

They do ban bots, but it takes forever sometimes.

I've reported the obvious ones but the GMs don't seem to do much about it. You just get a canned response that they "are looking into it." Since that doesn't work, (on a PvP server) you can take matters into your own hands and kill the bot a few dozen times to break its loop. They get confused really easy if you kill it a few times and it ends up in a spot it doesn't know it just kind of freaks out.

Re:Why not make a policy?

[keraneuology]

*Disclaimer* - I've never played WoW and am pulling this idea out of some orifice or another.

If this is indeed what the Chinese farmers are doing - repeatedly logging on with the free accounts to quickly bot-mine/farm then are either of these viable solutions?

• Ban multiple free trials from the same IP address within number of days
• Prohibit free trial accounts from transferring gold/equipment to any other player (if you can't sell the veggies, why farm?)

Re:Why not make a policy?

[Anonymous Coward]

The issue is they give out those 14 day free accounts, and the Chinese farmers use those to bot and farm till they are banned and make another free account.

Tial accounts cannot use the auction house, cannot trade gold or items with other players, have a limit of 10 gold and a maximum character level of 20. So no. Farmers of any nationality do not use them to bot or farm.

Even if they were able to by pass the trading restrictions on a trial account the 10 gold limit would make it pointless. A high level character can obtain much greater amounts of gold far more easily. So farming gold via the traditional methods is more productive.

Even more productive still is the method of pretexting/keylogging an established account, vendoring everything they have that can be vendored from every character they have, and then mailing the gold off to be bounced around so many times Blizzard gets tried of trying to trace it all.

Re:Why not make a policy?

[gweihir]

*Disclaimer* - I've never played WoW and am pulling this idea out of some orifice or another.

If this is indeed what the Chinese farmers are doing - repeatedly logging on with the free accounts to quickly bot-mine/farm then are either of these viable solutions?

You cannot really farm with a trial-account. It is limited to level 20, which lets you maybe farm 1 gold/day. At level 70 you get 1G per minute.

Re:Why not make a policy?

[Echo5ive]

I play on an RP server, meaning you're not flagged for PVP by default. I see tons of bots. Nearly all of them are hunters. They're easy to spot: they seem to glitch around like they lag real bad, they nearly always have an unnamed boar as a pet, and if you check them in the armory they wear all BOE gear with agility.

Some of them are even guilded; which makes me wonder if they're either someone paying for powerleveling, or just someone who got their account hacked. Probably the latter; if they're powerleveling they'd leave the area once they don't get experience points there any longer. Most don't.

I have yet to see a bot actually get banned. If they're Horde like me I add them to my friends list to see when they're online, and they're still there, weeks after I've reported them.

Re:Why not make a policy?

[seebs]

Free trial accounts haven't been able to trade things for as long as I can remember.

The free trial accounts are being used only for in-game spam. Mostly for "peons for hire", whom I hope die of horrible diseases. Or, at the very least, stop spamming me.

Re:Why not make a policy?

[Opportunist]

Well, it's less of an issue in other games since there is usually some content during those leveling times. In WoW, it's mostly mindless grinding without any sense.

Sure, there is low level "content". Doing it, though, is utterly pointless. In other MMORPGs, you actually get something (status points, Realm points, whatever) that has its "worth" even when you finally grow out of the bonus item you got. In WoW, all you get is that crappy bonus item, which is invariably already useless by the time you finally slay those 10,000 mobs you have to grind to get it, simply 'cause you leveled past it.

Why should anyone do any of those low level quests?

So everyone tries his best to speed up that boring times between 0 and 60 (or, now, 70) to finally get into the crunchy instances, where you finally get the equipment you need, because then you don't get your +wis, +str or whatever by gaining another level, you get those +attribs from the items.

Re:Why not make a policy?

[C0rinthian]

The issue here is that the people who developed Glide apparantly don't have WoW accounts, and obviously don't need WoW accounts to keep selling their software. Blizzard has no EULA/ToS leverage on them at all, so they're trying to make the software illegal.

A Horrible analogy: Imagine if selling cocaine was legal, but using it is illegal. This would mean that the only people law enforcement could target was the end users, but couldn't touch the dealers. You can imagine in that situation that law enforcement would find any loophole they could to charge the dealers with anything. (Tax evasion anyone?)

Blizzard is in logically the same situation, but dealing with contractual breach instead of legal.

Re:Why not make a policy?

[EvilGrin666]

They do spam using whispers with trial accounts, advertising the goldselling sites (WTB [Auto-Ignore Whispers From Trial Accounts Option] which would neatly solve that one)

Try UI addon called Spam Sentry for that. It'll block the messages automagically and record them. You can then instruct it to fill out and send a GM request with the relevant information to report the spammer. It'll also let you manually report botters.

Re:Why not make a policy?

[robnauta]

You must be stupid or just enjoy posting false information...

A TRIAL account cannot trade, send mail or use the auction house. All the gold or items that a TRIAL bot might gather are confined to that character, there's no way to transfer gold or items to others. That makes using them for botting totally pointless.

Re:Why not make a policy?

[MeanderingMind]

I'd mod you +Informative if I could, that's a great find.

Re:It's simple

[QuijiboIsAWord]

WoW !> Civil Liberties.

A chilling effect?

[Suzumushi]

Apparently accessing the copy of the game client in RAM using another program infringes upon their rights. Also known as the Blizzard chilling effect.

Re:It's simple

[AcidLacedPenguiN]

agreed, regardless of the rights infringements, cheating violates the EULA. I don't know why people have to make this a big deal. If a company made a device that would allow people to cheat at a casino, do you think the casino would have to live with it?

Re:It's simple

[KeyThing]

While I agree with you, what comes next? If this goes through, and Blizzard gets their way, they could prohibit any/all 3rd party applications from interacting with their program. Game timers, profile/stat pushers, anything. Of course, it all depends on two things: 1. If the court rules in their favor, and 2. how the final verdict is written.

Power to the SUN

[SolitaryMan]

By that logic, SUN owns every program written in Java. On the other hand, Intel owns every program that uses processor's instructions.

May be there is some "license" from Intel of SUN involved?

Misleading.

[SatanicPuppy]

As always, they're arguing that using another program or set of programs to circumvent the code that Blizz uses to try and stop people from using bots and other hacks violates the DMCA...And it's hard to see how they're wrong in that. The anti-virus argument is an over broad generalization; I don't know of any case where a virus actually modifies WoW binaries.

Agree with the DMCA or not, this is a "valid" use of it.

Re:Misleading.

[caramelcarrot]

I was under the impression that the DMCA only prevents circumvention for the purpose of breaking copyright, hence the contention that accessing their memory space is violation of copyright, which is bollocks. Reading the content of a book isn't copyright violation.

Re:Misleading.

[schon]

using another program or set of programs to circumvent the code that Blizz uses to try and stop people from using bots and other hacks violates the DMCA...And it's hard to see how they're wrong Actually, it's pretty easy to see how they're wrong.

Unless you can point out where the DMCA says anything about bots.

Agree with the DMCA or not, this is a "valid" use of it. Only if by "valid" you mean "completely unreasonable and wrong".

Re:Misleading.

[Kierthos]

Well, look at it like this. Circumventing Blizzard's controls allows access to content that the Bot-user wouldn't otherwise have. I mean, sure, I'd love to powerlevel a character from 1-40 in one day, but I have things to do. It's going to take me some time. But using this (or other) botting software, I can cut a lot of the time needed, plus have it play while I sleep or am at work...

Which is not what Blizzard intends to be done with their game.

Re:Misleading.

[SatanicPuppy]

Unless you can point out where the DMCA says anything about bots.

Did your mother drop you on your head? This has nothing to do with bots. It has to with whether or not the people who write the bot software are allowed to manipulate the game code in memory. Blizz says no, and says that it's a copyright violation, which is at least arguable, if over-broad.

Re:Misleading.

[Anonymous Coward]

DMCA is not remotely applicable. DMCA concerns anti-reproduction technologies... if Blizzard software was running that prevented you from burning a copy of your game disks, then interfering with it would be a violation. But this software does not do that.

Re:Misleading.

[elrous0]

I don't know of any case where a virus actually modifies WoW binaries.

There will be about 5 seconds after the script kiddies engage in their yearly "Day Without a Huff of Glue" ritual and realize how many people are playing WoW.

Re:Misleading.

[Anonymous Coward]

The fact that it's not their intended use of the game isn't my problem. They can see that I haven't logged off for 60 hours, send me a message in-game, and decide that I'm a bot when I don't respond. They can then ban me. That doesn't make botting a copyright violation.

Re:Misleading.

[cgenman]

The trouble is, people have been expanding the DMCA to cover things like ink cartridges and garage door openers when it actually is very limited in scope. The DMCA prevents you from making or distributing technological means of circumventing a copyright protection schema. This specifically means that it would cover the case of someone trying to duplicate the client CD's. It does not cover cheating.

Blizzard / Vivendi is trying to extend the DMCA to mean that any application scripting and macroing is illegal. This means that not only would you be banned for doing something the game developer doesn't like, but that their decrees would have a jail sentence behind it. This seems wrong to me, both morally and legally.

Now, as a game developer, I think WoW cheaters should be hit hard and fast with the banstick, and think that MMO's should consider gathering together to create clustered bans... I.E. get banned from one MMO, and you're out of most of them. I hate online cheaters with a passion reserved for those who have to deal with them. But I don't think that constitutes legal grounds to send people to jail for the DMCA-specified term of 10 years.

You have the right to script your computer. And they have the right to never let you play their game again. But they don't have the right to incarcerate you for years for it. So guard your rights, or any time any company asks you not to do something they'll be able to throw you in jail for it.

Re:Misleading.

[egburr]

What does copyright have to do with altering anything? If I scribble in a book, that is not a copyright violation. If I white-out words and write different words over them, that is not a copyright violation. I could even sell that modified book as long as I didn't try to claim it was in new, from-the-publisher condition.

Copyright deals with copying. From what I understand of these bots, they are not copying the game from memory, they are just changing it just as I could do to a book. If I could alter the bits on the physical CD that I received when purchasing the game, that is still not a copyright violation. I could even sell that CD as long as I didn't try to claim or imply that it was in new, from-the-publisher condition.

Copyright should not even be the issue here. The only issue I see would be a contract violation, but I doubt Blizzard is ready to test the enforcability of a post-sale click-through EULA.

Re:Misleading.

[Churla]

Actually there are more than a few Trojans, Keystealers, and other forums of viruses/malware that do specifically target WoW. To the point the Blizzard has posts on the forums specifically dealing with them.

the more you know...

Re:Misleading.

[Rogerborg]

"manipulate the game code in memory?" It read the transient data. Do Blizzard own the copyright on the data comprising the number of hit points that a particular Garrulous Goblin has at any moment in time?

Re:Misleading.

[Relic of the Future]

Using a bot is NOT a copyright violation (how could it be? The bot is using my copy of the game, and my copy is legitimate); it may be a terms-of-use violation, but that's not the same thing. Blizzard barked up the wrong tree, and their case is just another example of how companies misunderstand and abuse the DMCA to punish just about anything they don't like.

Re:Misleading.

[Anonymous Coward]

"The only issue I see would be a contract violation, but I doubt Blizzard is ready to test the enforcability of a post-sale click-through EULA."

      That is something I never understood. Isn't it somewhat illegal to sell a non-returnable piece of software that then pushes a contract in your face and says "Sign me or enjoy your $20+ coaster." Is there someway to get your money back from a company if after (rare i know) you actually read the EULA you realize that maybe they trying to fsck you.

Re:Misleading.

[Anonymous Coward]

"I don't know of any case where a virus actually modifies WoW binaries."

WoWGlider doesn't modify the WoW binaries either. It reads what WoW has written to RAM and makes decisions based on that. Anti-virus software scans the same data for a different purpose. To outlaw one solely based on action outlaws the other.

Re:Misleading.

[fucksl4shd0t]

Blizzard is like a race of aliens, and these WoWGlider people, well, they're Neo.

Re:Misleading.

[SatanicPuppy]

Eh. They're also faking up the I/O, blah, blah, blah.

I don't think this is the best way to go about it...If it were me, I'd just beef up my monitoring software, and make sure people understood that there would be a zero tolerance policy for this sort of thing. Someone else also mentioned the 14 day free trial accounts, and how useful they were to bot farmers...It'd kill their profit margin if they had to buy a new copy of the game every time they got banned.

Re:Misleading.

[pla]

And it's hard to see how they're wrong in that

Simple - The "access" they wish to block, they don't control.

If they want to test the integrity of their program and its memory, fine. If they want to TOS people for certain behaviors, fine. But they don't own my keyboard, mouse, joystick, or OS. If I want to run a program to stuff my keyboard buffer, Blizzard has NO right to do a goddamned thing about it other than ban my account. They don't have the right to run spyware on my machine, they certainly don't have the right to actively kill processes or delete files, and trying to invoke the DMCA boogeyman, well, I can't wait for that one to get laughed out of court.

Hard to see how they have it wrong? No, hard to see how they can make such claims without bursting into laughter halfway through.

Re:Misleading.

[Anonymous Coward]

This has nothing to do with bots. Then why did you say it did??!?!?!

You said that using the DMCA to stop people from circumventing code that "stop[s] people from using bots" was reasonable.

Sounds like you're the one who got dropped on your head.

is at least arguable, if over-broad Ahh, so we've gone from "hard to see how it's wrong" to "arguable".

Funny how you're admitting that your post is wrong, but rather than apologize, you decided to insult him.

Re:Misleading.

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't have a reference other than a podcast (here), but the understanding I got from that is that the glider thing actually does hack the binary to get around the warden scanning which is circumvention something and affecting the software, etc.

Re:Misleading.

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm sure the stream of data transferring between your PC and Blizzard's servers are also subject to copyright, and the only authorised way to access that data is via the WOW program - decrypting or interfering with that stream is most likely protectable under the DMCA.

By all means hack around with the WOW program, just don't connect it online and not expect repercussions.

(not a WOW player)

Re:Misleading.

[Rogerborg]

Eh. They're also faking up the I/O, blah, blah, blah.

And sending mouse and keyboard events ("faking up the I/O") to WoW violates Blizzard's copyrights... how? Perhaps it's the "blah, blah, blah" that's doing it.

Re:Misleading.

[Anonymous Coward]

I am not sure about how the DCMA applies to client software re: copying the program to RAM, but an argument could probably be made that the security circumventions allow players who have violated the terms of their subscription (by using 3rd party programs) to illegally copy content from the Realm Servers (that is, any of the code that is handled server side).

Re:Misleading.

[SatanicPuppy]

I'm just saying why they think they have a case. Pull the stick out of yer ass, I'm not their lawyer, you don't have to argue it with me.

Re:Misleading.

[Anonymous Coward]

In the case of an MMO like WoW, using a bot is more than just simply cheating...

For all practical intents and purposes, WoW isn't being run on *your* computer. It is being run on a server farm in X data center is Y state. What you are running on your computer is merely a client to access the actual game program.

This distinction is important, because what these bots are attempting to do is hijack the actual game program on Blizzard owned and run servers by providing it with false inputs. If this weren't a game, but say a financial service, it would be the equivalent of someone creating software that could alter your bank account balance via a web browser.

In this sense, bots in WoW are a form of malware, maliciously interfering with a program in a way undesired by its owners and in an undisclosed fashion. This only is the case with a client/server approach that MMO's use.

In that sense, I think Blizzard's position is entirely defensible, and criminal prosecution of someone who develops and distribute malware isn't something I am opposed. IANAL, so I don't know how the law feels about it.

Re:Misleading.

[schon]

I'm just saying why they think they have a case. That's the problem - they don't have a case - they're filing the lawsuit because they have more money that the defendant, and want to use a bogus lawsuit to shut them down.

There is nothing in the DMCA or copyright law that supports this action, and Blizzard knows it. As pointed out elsewhere, their filing contains wholely fabricated statements (like "warden" being a copyright protection device) whose only purpose can be to make the suit look plausible to the court, in the hopes of killing off a legitimate program.

This is just like the bnetd suit - lie to the court in the hope that they court will do what you cannot.

Re:Misleading.

[Kharny]

Blizzard allows for money back within 30 days if you haven't used the cd-key to create an account.

Since account creation is after the eula etc, this isn't a problem as such.

Re:Misleading.

[Rogerborg]

If you don't want to "argue it", then admit to yourself that you're utterly full of shit, and walk away.

Re:Misleading.

[AP31R0N]

The bot is using THE game, not YOUR copy. WoW operates on a server/client system. The client connects to the server, the client gives you an interface to the game. The game occurs on the server, not your PC. Your PC merely renders and interfaces. If we were talking about Diablo II, then yes, it is YOUR COPY. Scilla and Darrowmere are not yours (insert "Not Yours" pic). Blizzard *is* barking up the wrong tree, they can use the EULA to ban these players. Using copyright law is wholly inappropriate and could put people in jail for being lazy when banninating them would do the trick.

Re:Misleading.

[SatanicPuppy]

Is it my lawsuit asswipe? I don't have anything to walk away from.

Re:Misleading.

[Rogerborg]

Then it's curious that you're incapable of doing so. Is it that realisation that you've made a complete yeast-infected twat of yourself that's causing you to stick around just to get in the last word to try to salvage the last tattered shreds of your masculinity and self respect?

Re:Misleading.

[egburr]

Blizzard allows for money back within 30 days if you haven't used the cd-key to create an account. Since account creation is after the eula etc, this isn't a problem as such.

What does this have to do with copyright? You are still talking about contracts.

Yeah, you can get your money back if you haven't opened the package yet, which means you can't get to the license to read it. Once you open the box and can read the license, nobody will let you return it.

If you accept the license, it gives you a way to get your money back if you don't accept the license. If you don't accept the license, then the money-back clause of the license doesn't apply, now does it? So, that is a worthless offer.

If you actually take Blizzard up on the offer, you still have to pay the shipping costs to send it to Blizzard and wait a couple months for your money back, and even then you probably have to call a few times to remind them.

So, no matter what, if you don't accept a license that you cannot discover until after the purchase is complete, you are still out time and money to return it.

Account creation is NOT after the EULA. The physical act is, but that is irrelevant. At the time you purchased the software, you paid for the implied ability to use the software. The only way to use the software is to create an account using the included key. So, now you have not one but two post-sale licenses.

Options

[GFree]

Under that logic, users do not even have the right to use anti-virus software in the event that the game becomes infected.

I think Blizzard would let this particular circumstance slide when determining the requirements for who should be dealt with in their investigations. There's gotta be some gray-area here, assuming Blizzard is a reasonable company.

Furthermore, Blizzard's legal filings downplay the role of their Warden software, which actively scans users' RAM, CPU, and storage devices (and potentially sensitive data) and sends information back to Blizzard to be processed.

If people have a problem with Warden, they can choose to not play WoW (assuming they know what it is of course). Given the millions of current players however, I don't think gamers care that much anyway.

Re:Options

[SatanicPuppy]

Honestly, I prefer it; the fewer cheaters, the better the game. The people in this case who are screaming about a "right to privacy" are mainly just people who want to try and hack the system, and I don't have much sympathy.

Re:Options

[GFree]

Agreed; I'm just addressing the issue as an impartial observer. I've never even played WoW (I'M PURE!), but hey, people still have a choice.

Re:Options

[Anonymous Coward]

The people in this case who are screaming about a "right to privacy" are mainly just people who want to try and hack the system, and I don't have much sympathy.

I believe this is known as the ad logicam fallacy. I don't know if you've heard of it, but it's when you claim a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument. In this case, while it might be fallacious to argue that you have a right to hack the system, it doesn't mean that the conclusion - that you have a right to privacy - is also false.

Re:Options

[shadroth]

If people have a problem with Warden, they can choose to not play WoW (assuming they know what it is of course).
You're right - to choose not to play WoW, they'd have to know what "not playing WoW" is.

Given the millions of current players however, I don't think gamers care that much anyway. Do you work for a tobacco company by any chance?

Re:Options

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem when settling things in court is that you can't assume all parties that get in a similar situation are going to remain reasonable. What if the next company that does this is feels anti-virus software should be prohibited from accessing their client software? Or what if Blizzard decides that? The Blizzard of today is not the same Blizzard of tomorrow.

You can't give out power to entire groups on the assumption that everyone in that group is going to act reasonably. Doing so is just asking for trouble.

Re:Options

[MeanderingMind]

It does, however, mean that the arguments are silly and the conclusion doesn't follow from them.

There are better ways to making these arguments, but they don't seem to be making an appearance today.

Re:Options

[GFree]

Moron. I said they'd have to know what WARDEN is, to have a problem with it.

Re:Options

[shadroth]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double_entendre

In Summary....

[MrLizard]

"Waaaah! Blizzard won't let me cheat!"

Drug tests for athletes aren't invasions of privacy. Cheat programs in online games are the same thing. You want to cheat? Play "Oblivion" and use all the mods you want. In any kind of multiplayer environment, the use of third-party programs must be verboten. Don't like it? No one is forcing you to play.

Re:In Summary....

[kennedy]

damn straight!

I have no issue with someone cheating/moding the heck out of a single player game - the only person it affects is the player. Once you go online though - your cheating affects me and everyone else playing online, and therefor i am completely against it.

anyway i wish i had some mod points - mod parent post UP!

Re:In Summary....

[Zephyros]

Even if this is cheating, the claims of copyright infringement and DMCA circumvention are a disturbing extension of those already-disturbing areas of law. Blizzard's well within their rights to stop cheating, I think, but not like this.

Re:In Summary....

[ATestR]

Drug tests wouldn't be an invasion of privacy. Perhaps this is more analogous to forcing mandatory surgery to open the athletes up to make sure they haven't swallowed a balloon full of drugs.

Re:In Summary....

[TheJasper]

Drug tests for athletes are most certainly an invasion of privacy. However they are one you agree to. You can also refuse the drug tests, however the sports organisation is free to refuse you entry to the contest. One could argue the same for Warden. The Eula and ToS most likely mention it somewhere, and it could be argued that you consent to any invasion of privacy to prevent. The problem is that noone reads eula's or tos'. Lawyers know this, and encourage by filling it with legalese. However this also means that in certain countries the Eula and Tos aren't enforcable except in the parts that anyone can be expected to know. You could also slip in something about being allowed to access your online banking service to continue you subscription indefinately (or copying your address book, or just analyzing what games you have installed). This would be illegal no matter if you wrote it in your Eula or Tos. Many jurisdictions (and I'm talking across the world, not necesarily US) do not allow you to abuse human behaviour in this way. It's like the shrink wrap license.

Re:In Summary....

[Durzel]

What is the point of a EULA/ToS then if it is neither enforceable or binding? If it is expected and even accounted for legally that people do not read them then what's the point of them even existing?

I agree with your point about "unreasonable terms", but simply not reading a EULA and then pleading ignorance when you break one of the rules therein is no defence.

Re:In Summary....

[Anonymous Cowpat]

important to note the difference from the sport example. Drug tests are an invasion of privacy. Athletes may refuse drug tests. Sports governing bodies may refuse entry to a competition. This does not prevent the athlete from taking part in the sport. Cross-country runners who won't submit to a drugs test can still run around a park with a stopwatch.
On the other hand, there is only one place to play WoW - Blizzard's servers and since Blizzard refuses to let other people run servers (AFAIK - I don't actually play WoW) they've got no business being arbitrary with regards to what people are allowed to do on them. (Unilaterally making rules, but enforcing them evenly is still arbitrary).
Don't try to deliberately make yourself the only source for doing X activity if you want to make the rules about how it's done. You don't have the choice of "play WoW on Blizzard's servers or go elsewhere" you have the choice of "play WoW on Blizzard's servers or don't play WoW" - I think this strikes most people as unfair.

Re:In Summary....

[mwvdlee]

Drugs tests test for drugs.

How about complete background checks for athletes, to find out criminal past, previous relationships, religious orientation. Complete medical exams, psychological evaluations and IQ tests.

Warden doesn't just test for cheats; it tests everything.

Re:In Summary....

[punkr0x]

It's cheating, and bannable by the rules of the game, but it's certainly not illegal to write software that plays your WoW character for you. They're going after this by the wrong means. They should write a patch that checks to see if you are using the glider program, and ban you from the game if you are. It appears to me they're incapable of doing that, and so instead are going after the programmers who have done nothing wrong!

Re:In Summary....

[analog_line]

Well, I believe that technically drug tests for athletes ARE an invasion of privacy, and you're allowed to refuse to submit to one.

However, the athletic organization has the right to not allow anyone to compete in their events, and take away a medal should you refuse the test right after completion of the event.

Blizzard should be allowed to disallow people that won't let them check for cheating from playing their game. I don't think that includes suing the makers of software that allows you to cheat.

Re:In Summary....

[jswigart]

Yea and like every other cheat program that 'checks for cheat x running', the same day after it is detected a new version of the cheat comes out which is not detected. That's not to say this isn't useful, if it sees you are running it and outright bans you, even if the author keeps updating it to be non detected there would be such a high risk with using it that most people wouldn't want to risk losing their account on it. Could there be legal issues with that? Could a banned user sue for denial of expected services or something if banned by Blizzard? Suppose a user did make a legal deal out of it, would Blizzards logs be evidence enough to justify a banning on the person. Isn't there some legal expectations with a company you are paying subscription to is providing a service such as this that the user be able to access the service to some level? I'm just guessing, there may not be, or it may not be applicable to these cases.

Re:In Summary....

[TheJasper]

I disagree. You can't run around that park if it happens to be private property. You can start your own MMO if you want, just not WoW. So it's not as if you can't do similar things, you just can't do what I do. Even then the content is only protected for so long (ok, thanks to Disney it's longer than most of us will live, but never mind that). The choice of "play WoW on Blizzard's servers or don't play WoW" doesn't strike most people as unfair. If the choice was play WoW or never play a (mmo) computer game again, well that would be unfair.

Re:In Summary....

[Relic of the Future]

Cheating? How's it cheating? When you "play" (i.e., grind) WoW, you wander around, clicking on things until they die. When this bot "plays", it wanders around, clicking on things until they die. It takes just as long, only you don't have to be there, bored, watching it.

What if I let my little brother wander around with my character, clicking things? Is that cheating?

What if I paid him to do it? Is that cheating?

What if he played for years, and I bought the account off him only after he'd grinded (ground?) the character up?

What if it's just a random guy in China instead of my brother?

An AimBot cheats; it reads information from the game state that the player doesn't necessarily have access to (namely the precise position of the opponent's character's head) and takes advantage of that. This though? This is just people getting pissed at having to grind, and other people getting pissed back at them because they didn't "earn" their... whatever through the same repetitive, boring, "honorable" ("stupid") way they did.

And no one's forcing you to play, either.

Re:In Summary....

[Anonymous Coward]

Right, and eating shit is not annoying because no-one's forcing you to eat shit.

Re:In Summary....

[MrLizard]

Which is better?
Ever-more-intrusive 'scan' programs to look for cheaters, and a constant war between makers of hack programs and the company, or simply attacking the source of the problem?

I'm not sure the "copyright" angle is the best way to go, but I cannot help but believe most of those upset about it are crying crocodile tears, much more concerned with their access to cheat programs than any moral issues of copyright and privacy.

A lot of features which would make MMORPGS more fun can't be implemented because doing them server-side is too resource intensive and doing them client side means exposing them to hacks. A solid "You will be sued and fed your balls" message to the makers of hack programs would, in the long run, add up to better gaming. (So would better process and memory space protection, but that's a different problem....)

A lot of the "hacker ethic" of openness, user control, and so on simply doesn't apply to online, multiplayer, games, and I wish some of the knee-jerkers would recognize that fact. When you enter any kind of shared, competitive, environment, the moral standards change. "Protecting the gamespace" trumps "Information wants to be free".

Re:In Summary....

[MrLizard]

Given that no one is forcing you, if eating shit annoys you, you really only have yourself to blame if you're annoyed.

Re:In Summary....

[brouski]

I'm not sure exactly what it is you're arguing. Surely no one has a "right" to play WoW.

Indeed, I think the only rights in operation here are the right of Blizzard to adopt whatever rules they see fit in their game world, and consequently your right to terminate your play if you disagree with their rules.

Re:In Summary....

[MrLizard]

Cheating is defined as "Anything which breaks the rules of the game".

The rules of the game are spelled out in the EULA you agree to. If you're the type of person who signs an agreement intending to break it, well, that's between you and your sense of ethics, I suppose, but I wouldn't trust you to keep your word regarding anything.

Among those rules are no one else -- not a bot, not your kid brother, not some guy in China -- can use your account. Nor can accounts be sold or bought. The only exception I know of is that a parent can pay for an account to be used by a minor child. (This is why is you call up blizzard and say "My kid brother logged into my account and trashed my characters! Help!", Blizzard will say, "Well, you weren't supposed to let him have access to your account. Sucks to be you!")

You don't like the rules Blizzard has? There are dozens -- hundreds -- of similair games you can play.

When you sit down to play a game, it is with the presumption "I am going to play by the rules". Do you normally decide that pawns can move like knights while playing chess? Or, to use a slightly better analogy, do you get to use a chess program to make your moves for you while your opponent has to rely on his own skill?

If the game is so boring that you want to pay someone else to play it...well, the game isn't worth playing, is it? Go play something else. (And from a game design perspective, tedium is a part of the balancing mechanism -- scarcity of resources and rate of leveling are set, in part, on the presumption that "No one is going to stand doing this for more than 'x' hours per day." Remove the tedium by botting, and you break the game balance. Non-botting players cannot gather resources as well, so they're forced to bot. It is, indeed, very similair to the use of steroids -- non steroid users feel that "have to" use the drugs in order to compete, and audiences begin to demand levels of performance no unenhanced human can match, leading to an ever-increasing cycle of drug use and the destruction of sport as a test of unaided human ability.)

Re:In Summary....

[nukeevry1]

You have to admit, it's sad that this is the approach their legal team is taking. In that respect, it makes Blizzard look a bit lazy -- I mean, who actually drudges through the mid/lower levels of this game and doesn't get the idea to write a bot to do the dirty work? Isn't that what computers are for, anyway? They had to see this coming, right? And this was Blizzard's contingency plan -- to sick their lawyers on people? That's what strikes me as lame about the whole thing.

If you want to make a drug analogy, then do so the right way -- killing demand is the way to truly solve the problem. Not killing supply. A better analogy for this whole situation are bid sniping tools for eBay -- what Blizzard really wants is for things to be fair for paying patrons of their service. If there's enough demand here for a Glide bot, though, maybe they should rethink the design of the game. What are the elements in the game would create demand for such a bot? What are ways around that?

With most games, this whole concept is completely nonsensical, but their game's design does make a very compelling argument for these types of programs. It's why I stopped playing -- and not that anyone still playing WoW cares, but there are a lot of people who stopped playing for the same reason. The burden here is on Blizzard and other successful MMO game developers, and as someone who freely and openly stopped playing WoW for this very reason, I can tell you that I honestly think that Glide/farm bots are a good thing for Blizzard and MMO -- they'll force designers to come up with better games in the end.

Blizzard would do well to learn from this in the future and keep their legal wolves at bay. It's getting old, people go to lawyers to help them "protect" their interests, and all the lawyers do is use scare tactics and set these confusing, logic devoid precedents to sway public opinion and create fear to do anything creative. Isn't that the exact opposite intent of a copyright?

Re:In Summary....

[Anonymous Cowpat]

no, but most parks aren't private property. The point is that you have the option to take part in someone's event or to do the same activity elsewhere. If you don't like the rules of an athletics meet you can go run elsewhere. If you don't like the rules of your local laser quest you can set up your own (you can't call it laser quest, but the actual game will be identical). If you don't like the rules for Blizzard's WoW servers you can't set up your own. You can play another MMO but that's not doing the same activity (everquest != WoW).
I have no statistics to back up "play WoW on Blizzard's servers or don't play WoW" being seen as unfair. But I see it as unfair, unreasonable and downright outrageous, and that should be good enough for slashdot.
"play WoW or never play a (mmo) computer game again" is equivalent to "submit to drugs testing for this cross-country race, or never take part in any track & field events ever again". Obviously unfair, agreed. But wouldn't "submit to drugs testing for this cross-country race or never be allowed to run more than 500m in one stint anywhere ever again" (the equivalent of "play WoW on Blizzard's servers or don't play WoW") look just a tad unreasonable. The Football Association may ban people from playing in FA sponsored events, it may not ban people from kicking a ball.

Re:In Summary....

[Anonymous Cowpat]

Someone who has paid for WoW has a 'right' to play it without Blizzard trying to coerce them into playing only by Blizzard's rules. Indeed Blizzard should have the right to set the rules in their game world as long as users have the right to terminate their playing in Blizzard's world without terminating playing WoW altogether. Currently Blizzard has nothing to discourage them from being jerks with their rules because people who still wish to play WoW in some fashion do not have a choice to leave.

Re:In Summary....

[punkr0x]

I don't think there is any legal problem with banning people. They provide the service and they have the right to deny that service to people who violate their terms. Also I would think it would be much more expensive to try to take people to court every time they break the rules, especially when I think there's a good possibility they would lose the case. Easier just to lock their program down in such a way that prevents abuses.

Re:In Summary....

[MeanderingMind]

You can play another MMO but that's not doing the same activity (everquest != WoW).

I'm going to argue some semantics here, but I find the quoted statement to be inaccurate.

If you play another MMO, you're still playing an MMO. It's the same activity. The specifics are different, but not the general action you are taking.

Lets say I can not run the Boston Marathon but run in a different marathon. I'm still running a marathon. They're different sporting events, but the same activity. The same goes for the WoW/EQ comparison.

If you don't like the rules for Blizzard's WoW servers you can't set up your own.

That is true, but at the same time misleading. Going back to my marathon analogy, if I don't like the rules of the Boston Marathon I can't set up a marathon I call the "Boston Marathon", claim the same history as the original marathon, hold it the same day on the same course etc. etc.

I can make my own Marathon, call it the "Marathon of the Meandering Mind", have a different day and follow the same route, but it's not going to be the Boston Marathon. Similarly, you can make your own MMO that's very similar to WoW. It won't be WoW, and it'll be hard to make. However, that's your option outside of finding someone else's MMO/marathon.

Re:In Summary....

[MeanderingMind]

Except in paying them for the service you agree to the terms of service, which in turn gives Blizzard the right to terminate service should the terms be violated.

Players do have the right to terminate their service with Blizzard and seek it elsewhere. However, Blizzard is the only one who offers WoW service. You have the right to choose, but you can either choose Blizzard or no service.

Multiple services would likely not deter jerks either. In fact, it would possibly only encourage them. "Company X does Y with WoW, why doesn't Blizzard?" If there was a service that allowed botting or other "jerkish" activities, there would inevitably be players moving to Blizzard's service and repeating these behaviors.

Re:In Summary....

[MeanderingMind]

...who actually drudges through the mid/lower levels of this game and doesn't get the idea to write a bot to do the dirty work?

*raises hand*

I enjoy the dirty work. I like finding ways to efficiently grind. I like seeing if I'm capable of clearing an area so fast I'm done before it all respawns. I like tooling around with different DPS cycles. I like ignoring efficient grinding methods for flare. I like needlessly jumping around when fighting otherwise stationary mobs. I like standing still. I like spending mindless hours killing things. I like the mental activity and planning required in PvP. I like thoughtfully helping other players without cost or charge. I like attacking cities and depriving people of quest NPCs. I like sticking with one character for an extended period of time and mastering them. I like branching off into hideous amounts of alts who never breach level 20. I like binge playing for hours. I like not playing for weeks on end. I like playing by myself. I like joining massive raids.

I don't like people who don't like the game, but somehow seem compelled to play it anyway. Bots or not, that seems silly.

Re:In Summary....

[Anonymous Coward]

If you're going to use a crappy analogy, at least use a car analogy.

Re:In Summary....

[Anonymous Coward]

No-one's forcing. You can either either eat shit or stick sharp rotating objects in your bottom.

Re:In Summary....

[Anonymous Cowpat]

I believe you've hit the nail on the head for me

"Except in paying them for the service you agree to the terms of service, which in turn gives Blizzard the right to terminate service should the terms be violated."
And my point is that if a customer does not have the choice to get the 'product' from another source (because other people are artificially restricted from providing the 'product') then Blizzard should not be allowed to present 'terms of service' in order to get the product.

"Players do have the right to terminate their service with Blizzard and seek it elsewhere. However, Blizzard is the only one who offers WoW service. You have the right to choose, but you can either choose Blizzard or no service."
If no-one else offers WoW service because Blizzard's lawyers jump on anyone else who starts offering WoW service, how are people free to seek service elsewhere? 'Blizzard's rules or no Wow' is not a choice as to who's rules you play WoW under.

"Multiple services would likely not deter jerks either. In fact, it would possibly only encourage them. "Company X does Y with WoW, why doesn't Blizzard?" If there was a service that allowed botting or other "jerkish" activities, there would inevitably be players moving to Blizzard's service and repeating these behaviors."
And I'd have no problem with Blizzard coming down on them like a ton of Bricks. Blizzard has every right to set the rules for their community Provided that people have the choice to go elsewhere for the same or similar service (playing a different MMOG is not 'same or similar'). You can live in the United States if you agree to the rules, or you can live in Canada. In both cases you get to do the same activity ('live') but in a slightly different way ('drive an SUV, eat MacDonald every day & use the bathroom' or 'cut down trees, eat ma lunch & go to the lava-tory'). Also, in this example, although the Canadians may not let you in, the United States (a) won't stop you leaving and (b) won't try to stop Canada existing.

WTB 1x[Clue] PST

[Mondoz]

I read through most of the filing... (What I could understand of it, anyway) I never understood how the Glider program violates anything other than the EULA or TOS. I didn't see anything that would violate copyright...
I could understand if it used WoW code to do what it does, but I didn't see anything along those lines.

Re:WTB 1x[Clue] PST

[cfulmer]

The theory is that Blizzard allows the user to load World of Warcraft into his computer only if they follow the EULA, including the part about not using programs like WoWGlider. By using WoWGlider, the user is not following the EULA, so they do not have permission to run WoW. Since running the program makes a copy of it in computer memory and since the user does not have permission to do so, that copy in memory is an infringement.

In that way, it's just like the GPL: "You do not have to follow this license, but nothing else gives you permission to use the software."

The claim against MDY is of vicarious infringement -- the company isn't doing the infringing itself, but it is helping others to do so, and profiting from it.

Re:WTB 1x[Clue] PST

[Nutty_Irishman]

I didn't see anything that would violate copyright... The DMCA card has been used under far more controversial events: including preventing competition in toner cartridges and garage door openers http://picker.uchicago.edu/Papers/PickerDMCA.100.p df

Re:WTB 1x[Clue] PST

[Bogtha]

Since running the program makes a copy of it in computer memory and since the user does not have permission to do so, that copy in memory is an infringement.

At least in the USA, it is not copyright infringement to copy software for the purpose of using it. 117. Limitations on exclusive rights: Computer programs:

(a) Making of Additional Copy or Adaptation by Owner of Copy. -- Notwithstanding the provisions of section 106, it is not an infringement for the owner of a copy of a computer program to make or authorize the making of another copy or adaptation of that computer program provided:

(1) that such a new copy or adaptation is created as an essential step in the utilization of the computer program in conjunction with a machine and that it is used in no other manner, or...

Re:WTB 1x[Clue] PST

[gweihir]

The theory is that Blizzard allows the user to load World of Warcraft into his computer only if they follow the EULA, including the part about not using programs like WoWGlider. By using WoWGlider, the user is not following the EULA, so they do not have permission to run WoW. Since running the program makes a copy of it in computer memory and since the user does not have permission to do so, that copy in memory is an infringement.

Correct. At least some people here get it. They actually hav a three-prat EULA and one is specifically about cheating. You have to confirm all of them on each patch.

Re:WTB 1x[Clue] PST

[fleck_99_99]

In that way, it's just like the GPL: "You do not have to follow this license, but nothing else gives you permission to use the software."

GPL refers to distribution, not use.
<pedantic>

I do find Blizzard's argument interesting. I think this is still abuse of a draconian law, but the question of whether an executing copy of a computer program in RAM can be an infringing copy under copyright law is far from a settled issue.

Re:WTB 1x[Clue] PST

[Kjella]

In that way, it's just like the GPL: "You do not have to follow this license, but nothing else gives you permission to use the software."

I don't know what license you've read, but it's not the GPL. The GPL is NOT an EULA. Maybe you're thinking abou this?

"5. You are not required to accept this License, since you have not signed it. However, nothing else grants you permission to modify or distribute the Program or its derivative works. These actions are prohibited by law if you do not accept this License. Therefore, by modifying or distributing the Program (or any work based on the Program), you indicate your acceptance of this License to do so, and all its terms and conditions for copying, distributing or modifying the Program or works based on it."

Re:WTB 1x[Clue] PST

[cfulmer]

Yeah, so I didn't say that the copyright infringement claim was particularly strong. Do note, however, that most software publishers would claim that when you buy a box with some computer media in it, you are really just buying a license and not a copy of the computer program.

The stronger claim, I think, is the tortious interference claim -- MDY's defense that Blizzard is misusing its copyright is really a stretch.

Re:WTB 1x[Clue] PST

[Rogerborg]

Thank you. It can all get a bit frenzied around here before the grown-ups step in.

One correction though: you're free to use GPL software in any way that you want. GPL version 2 says "nothing else grants you permission to modify or distribute the Program or its derivative works".

Re:WTB 1x[Clue] PST

[mwvdlee]

It probably violates the DMCA too, which is a copyright act.

Pretty much doing anything but staring at a black screen seems to violate DMCA these days.

Re:WTB 1x[Clue] PST

[SillyNickName4me]

http://www.copyright.gov/title17/92chap1.html#117

Specifically:

(a) Making of Additional Copy or Adaptation by Owner of Copy. -- Notwithstanding the provisions of section 106, it is not an infringement for the owner of a copy of a computer program to make or authorize the making of another copy or adaptation of that computer program provided:

(1) that such a new copy or adaptation is created as an essential step in the utilization of the computer program in conjunction with a machine and that it is used in no other manner, or

(2) that such new copy or adaptation is for archival purposes only and that all archival copies are destroyed in the event that continued possession of the computer program should cease to be rightful.


If copying into RAM for the purpose of using the program is a reproduction or not is an interesting detail, but if it is a reproduction then it still is one explicitly allowed by law (just like there are some other cases of reproduction which while being a reproduction are still not a violation of copyright law)

The text you refered to is an interesting read, but is mostly stating that faulty defense is to blame for cases that have been lost over this. There are problems with title 117, esp. when looking at fixed disks and such, but the copying into RAM for the purpose of using a program is pretty clear I'd say.

Re:WTB 1x[Clue] PST

[fleck_99_99]

Your point (and reference) is good, and the creation of a RAM copy for purposes of executing licensed software is well-established as noninfringing... EXCEPT that I think the issue Blizzard is really going to be trying is whether or not the RAM copy is infringing once you violate the ToS/EULA (and thereby void your license).

Re:WTB 1x[Clue] PST

[SillyNickName4me]

EXCEPT that I think the issue Blizzard is really going to be trying is whether or not the RAM copy is infringing once you violate the ToS/EULA (and thereby void your license).

I believe Blizzard is arguing (like many software companies) that you never ever become owner of a copy of the software, rather, you buy a license to use. The copy in their idea never becomes your property.

Title 117 gives rights to the owner of a copy, and since (if we follow the reasoning of Blizzard and quite a few others) you never become the owner of said copy, you also don't have the rights granted in title 117.

Of course I believe this line of reasoning should be considered a loophole and be laughed out of court, but that is not going to happen.

A bit of history (sorry, I don't have the references at hand)

Before title 117 was introduced, it was unclear but thought likely that a copy of a program in ram in order to execute that program would infringe copyright (we get into the transient copy mess here that is nicely discussed in the article by Kirsten Mathews)

Because of this, a license to use was thought to be required for actually running software protected by copyright.

Title 117 was meant to address this, but if I remember correctly, congress actually discussed the issue of software licenses and how title 117 does not apply in many cases where a software usage license is used that does not transfer ownership, in other words, the 'loophole' was knowingly (and possibly even intentionally) left in place.

Bottomline, as long as you are actually the owner of (a copy of) the program, you do not need any special permission or license to run it. The intention seems to have been for software use licenses to go away, but sadly that never happened, they just got a lot worse.

Re:WTB 1x[Clue] PST

[Pofy]

>At least in the USA, it is not copyright infringement to copy software for the purpose of using it.

That holds true for many, if not most, countries in the world. It seems that in the US, it is slighly complicated by the use of the terminology "owner" in the text of the law, which is lacking in for example the EU directive regulating the issue, instead they tend to talk about "lawfull aquirer" which makes the whole "you don't buy it you license it" irrellevant. It doesn't matter who actually owns the specific copy in question.

Re:WTB 1x[Clue] PST

[Pofy]

>I believe Blizzard is arguing (like many software companies) that you never ever
>become owner of a copy of the software, rather, you buy a license to use. The copy
>in their idea never becomes your property.

Since many other countries doesn't have that requirement of ownership, how would that affect the case? Must someone writing a program as the one in question specifically try to prevent and note that someone in the USA can't buy it (if he is living in the USA, otherwise it is of course not of interest). Can he sell (and make?) such a program at all living in USA? It woudl obviously (from that point of view) be a perfectly legal program in other countries were one doesn't need any license to use or load WoW into memory and so on.

Re:WTB 1x[Clue] PST

[fleck_99_99]

I like your reasoning. It certainly worries me that a case like this could introduce a precedent that a company could ban me from executing software I purchased what should be a perpetual license to run.

Re:WTB 1x[Clue] PST

[SillyNickName4me]

Well, there are also countries that don't have a provision in copyright law at all for this situation, in which case you can only run it if you have a license specifically allowing that.

Copyright law is supposedly 'harmonized' among those who signed the Berne convention, but to me it seems that only aplies to things like how long it lasts and the automatic aspect of it, but not to the rights that users have.

I'm afraid that you'll have to deal with the laws of the country in which you are using the product (since automatic copyright applies and the work is protected, but your rigts as a user are based on local law)

Re:WTB 1x[Clue] PST

[Pofy]

>Copyright law is supposedly 'harmonized' among those who signed
>the Berne convention, but to me it seems that only aplies to things
>like how long it lasts and the automatic aspect of it, but not to
>the rights that users have.

Copyright tends to work not by telling what "users" can do, but rather what they can't do (by giving those things as exclusive to the copyright holder). Everything else is not covered or regulated by copyright law. So basically, if copyright law doesn't say something is only allowed to be done by the copyright holder, you can do it. Copyright law tend to give only a specific small set of rights (things to do) to the copyright holder. The main ones being copying and various forms of making the work available to the public. That is it. Further, there are usually exceptions to the exclusivenss so that others can do it anyway without permission.

So the problem comes up of the country's copyright law doesn't give any exceptions at all for copying needed to actually use something you allready lawfully aquired either by specifically allowing it for coputer programs or having general exceptions like for personal use or for temporary copies like the ones done by the computer when you use software. In such countries you might get a problem.

Re:WTB 1x[Clue] PST

[SillyNickName4me]

Copyright tends to work not by telling what "users" can do, but rather what they can't do (by giving those things as exclusive to the copyright holder). Everything else is not covered or regulated by copyright law.

"tends to", yes, but thats not the whole story.

The specific rights we were discussing are granted by http://www.copyright.gov/title17/92chap1.html#117 which is definitely part of copyright law in the USA.

Another nice example is fair-use.

Both provide exceptions to the exclusive rights of copyright owners, and by that also provide certain rights to owners of a copy.

This is for the USA.

In the EU, and for example in Canada, copyright grants certain rights to users either directly or indirectly that allow for making private copies of copyrighted works on media for which a levy has been payed.

I'm not very familiar with the laws of other parts of the world, but I bet that somewhat similar provisions exist in many places.

One can have a long argument over if those things are exceptions to exclusive rights or rights granted to others then the copyright holder, but effectively that is the same thing in this case.

Re:WTB 1x[Clue] PST

[Pofy]

>The specific rights we were discussing

I was not talking specifically or only about the USA copyright law, I was talking about copyright in general.

>are granted by http://www.copyright.gov/title17/92chap1.html#117
>which is definitely part of copyright law in the USA.

Which are only limitations on the exclusivness of specific rights. The law still tells about the ri ghts the copyright holders got and leave everything else for anyone to do. It doesn't list the "rights" of non copyright holders. Thus when you said that copyright law doesn't list what rights users has is in fact right, copyright law, as I replied, are not listing rights users has and then if something is not listed (everything else), it is an exclusive right of the copyright holder, it is the other way arround.

Your example above is not any different, it is only a limitation of the exclusive right given to the copyright holder, not list of rights the user has.

>Another nice example is fair-use.

No, fair-use is not rights given to the users, it is listing conditions were the exclusivenss given to copyright holders doesn't apply. That is, it tells when something you do would otherwise have been a copyrigth infringement is not. It is again a limitations on the exclusiveness of the rights given to the copyright holder. Just because something doesn't fulfill the requirements of the fair use tests (which exists in various forms in many countries) doesn't mean it is a copyright infringement and you can't do it. The action must to start with have been one that was given as a right to the copyright holder.

The point I try to make is that copyright law tells in various ways what rights the copyright holder has, everything else is free for anyone. If you can't find about something in the copyright law, it is by default OK and not infringing. Not the other way arround.

>In the EU, and for example in Canada, copyright grants certain rights
>to users either directly or indirectly that allow for making private
>copies of copyrighted works on media for which a levy has been payed.

They are limitations of the rights of the copyright holder. They are not completel lists of rights the users has. On the other hand, the copyright law gives complete listing of the rights of the copyright holder, anything else is free to do by anyone.

You may argue it is a "right" of the users but the reason is that it is not copyright infrinement because it is NOT given as a right to the copyright holder. And the danger of looking at it as if the copyright law doesn't say specifically a user can do something, it is infringement is wrong, becase that is not how copyright law is written and constructed, which was my point.

>One can have a long argument over if those things are exceptions to
>exclusive rights or rights granted to others then the copyright holder,
>but effectively that is the same thing in this case.

Agreed, we should not end up discussing the semantics or meaning of the worlds, but what I feel is important as I mentioned above is to note that the copyright law completely lists what the COPYRIGHT HOLDER has when it comes to rights. It is a complete list of their rights (sometimes expressed as exceptions or rights of the users to restrict). If not listed, the copyright hodler doesn't have control or exclusivness in it. It does however not have any completel lists of what "rights" users have or what users can do. It is the other way arround, if not listed as a right of the copyright holder, then a user can do it. Hence why I objected to your statement that "but not to
the rights that users have.".

Re:WTB 1x[Clue] PST

[SillyNickName4me]

Agreed, we should not end up discussing the semantics or meaning of the worlds, but what I feel is important as I mentioned above is to note that the copyright law completely lists what the COPYRIGHT HOLDER has when it comes to rights. It is a complete list of their rights (sometimes expressed as exceptions or rights of the users to restrict).

I agree that 'the people' have all those rights that are not explicitly taken away by law as a general principe.

That however isn't the full picture I believe.

For example, copyright holders have an obligation to society in exchage for the protection they receive. That is, society as a whole, and with that the users of the copyrighted work, have a right to use the work as part of the public domain after a certain amount of time when the copyright expired.

It is very important to regard this as a right because if we do not do so, we get to the situation where copyright holders try to not pay that price.

If not listed, the copyright hodler doesn't have control or exclusivness in it. It does however not have any completel lists of what "rights" users have or what users can do. It is the other way arround, if not listed as a right of the copyright holder, then a user can do it. Hence why I objected to your statement that "but not to
the rights that users have.".

The bill of rights does not claim to be complete, yet it is an explicit list of rights of citizens of the USA. The fact that a right is not listed does in no way imply it doesn't exist, rather, the rights that are listed are considered so important that they have to be made explicit.

An explicit list of rights does not mean that your rights are limited to that what is listed, rather, as you suggest yourself, unless stated otherwise, you normally have a right. This applies to everyone, including copyright holders.

Hence I believe it is a lot better to regard copyright law as a list of restrictions and some explicit rights for the user of a copyrighted work, incidentely also resulting in a list of rights for the copyright holder.

Re:WTB 1x[Clue] PST

[SillyNickName4me]

I like your reasoning. It certainly worries me that a case like this could introduce a precedent that a company could ban me from executing software I purchased what should be a perpetual license to run.

I'm afraid most such licenses allow termination of the license, something you supposedly agreed with by agreeing with the license.

Software companies actively encourage you to not read the license by filling it with pages and pages of legalese that few people can read even if they wanted to and the result is that most people just accept whatever license is presented to them.

It would be so helpfull if people refused licenses that contain such conditions, but most will never be aware of them.

That said, I doubt Blizzard forbids you from running their software, but they can quite well ban you from their network.

Re:It's simple

[Simon Garlick]

At what point did the man with the gun force you to purchase, install, and run World of Warcraft?

What's that you say? You bought the game of your own free will and could stop playing it at any time? I never would have guessed.

Re:It's simple

[SatanicPuppy]

This is the DMCA. The law itself is a gross abuse, and I think this falls pretty solidly under the anti-circumvention provisions.

That being the case, it's hard to see why Blizzard wouldn't use the law to do what it's designed to do.

Re:It's simple

[ajs]

Wow Glider = Cheating, therefore Blizz should do what it can to keep it out of the mix. WoW Glider use is cheating. WoW Glider itself is just a program.

The problem is that Blizzard (and their legal department have always been MUCH less cool than their coders, sadly) has decided to try to use the law to force people to not cheat. This is dubious at best, the way they're trying to do it, and sets frightening legal precident if they win.

If they win, then any attempt to analyze and modify a running program would constitute copyright violation. That means that programs which debug, dissassemble and tweak performance of running programs would no longer be allowed on 3rd party software. It would also bring into question the relationship between emulators and the software they run. Mame, Wine and a number of other projects might be useless if this becomes precident.

Cheating in WoW is one thing. Setting precident that hurts consumers is another.

If the game becomes tedious ...

[Ihlosi]

I'd much rather have something else go thru the grind for me than have me sitting in front of the game for hours on end.

If you find the game so tedious, why are you playing it ? How about playing something that's actually fun ?

Then again, WoW is very light on the grinding side (unless you're doing nothing but leveling up one char after the other). At least on the type of grinding that's easily automated. It'll be a while until 25 bots can run a raid instance.

I quit 2 months ago (not because of the grind, but because of the ongoing Priest class issue), and found other games to be just as entertaining.

Re:If the game becomes tedious ...

[penp]

I quit 2 months ago, too. Not because of the grind (I have been playing since launch), but because I realized how completely ridiculous the game was. I know the point of an MMO is to have fun playing online with other people, but when there is actually a point in the game that you can reach where you also stop having fun by yourself then there's really no point to continue on.

The grind never ends, really. Once you hit 60 (now 70), if you want to get anywhere, you have to be in a guild. And if you're in an aggressive guild (i.e., one that you want to feel any level of "progression" in), you have to dedicate your life to it like everyone else on the 'team'.

Your solo options? Grinding the battleground, or grinding for gold, but gold can't buy you any of the best items because you have to be in a raid-ready guild to get those.

I agree, a harder grind would be better, because at least then there would be more solo content. But Blizzard has really built the game around the 'end game' rather than trying to make it more dynamic. It took what? Two? Three days for people to hit level 70 after raising the cap? And then what? We're right back to where we started when the cap was at 60.

Re:If the game becomes tedious ...

[jeffasselin]

I used to find raiding very enjoyable, and it did require some farming to succeed, mostly in the later stages, but it was manageable.

The raid content, besides its other flaws in the expansion, now requires intensive farming for any kind of progress to occur. I can understand why some people would keep playing (to enjoy raiding) but be willing to pay real money to bypass the necessary side-activity which they do not enjoy.

Noone bothers to see what Warden Does

[Direwolf20]

Everyone complains about Warden, but noone knows really how it works. Heres the basic gist:

Warden uses something similiar to a HASH function to get information about the processes run on your computer. Warden sends the HASH home. The HASH is compared against a list of known hacking processes, like WoWGlider, and if theres a match, you're being very naughty!

Is that REALLY the end of the world? NO! Blizzard can NOT discern any information from a HASH.

Heres an MD5 HASH of a file on my desktop, what is it? Quick, get my personal informationz!

070A3B2AF0070DE30B1931B9F2590510

Re:Noone bothers to see what Warden Does

[nobuddy]

Your source? Any attempt I have seen to get info on what Warden is doing has been met with a stony silence.

Re:Noone bothers to see what Warden Does

[Anonymous Coward]

070A3B2AF0070DE30B1931B9F2590510
  ---                       --
  0A3 = Beastiality         05 = Washington State

I believe sir, that you may be in violation of the law?

Re:Noone bothers to see what Warden Does

[Anonymous Coward]

070A3B2AF0070DE30B1931B9F2590510

What! My mother is a saint!

Re:Noone bothers to see what Warden Does

[Anonymous Coward]

It may be true that no discernible information can be derived from the MD5 sum, but the point seems to be that Blizzard reserves the right to look at information on MY computer, but prohibits me from looking at THEIR information. A piece of software has no more right to look at my information than a person does. Blizzard wants all the protection rights while denying them to the users and using the EULA to justify this. They may just want to stop cheaters, but they are looking like the kettle calling the pot black here!

Re:Noone bothers to see what Warden Does

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't worry, blizzard allows it in the EULA. The EULA is holy, the eula covers it. If you do not like the EULA you should never have played the game in the first place.......

Re:Noone bothers to see what Warden Does

[Dachannien]

https://www.rootkit.com/newsread.php?newsid=369

Re:Noone bothers to see what Warden Does

[TheJasper]

The point is their program looks at info on my computer and sends something about it back to Blizzard. I have to assume that it is harmless and will remain that way. That aint right. They have no right to send info on my computer to themselves except as pertinent to the game. by pertinent I'm talking about the software and data directly related to the game. Thus no third party software or any data on my computer. Anything else is a violoation of my privacy. I don't care if they sent the first bit of every millionth byte. It's my data, stay out of it.

Re:Noone bothers to see what Warden Does

[hesaigo999ca]

The problem with this logic is that the computer you are using should only be used to play the game, as I am a developer and have a pretty good computer, and usually leave multi windows open that
again as a developer have unique abilties to do whatever i want....if I was perhaps busy working on cleaning up a work project using visual studio developer and also playing the game, then I guess I was a bad person because the fact that the hash sent back saw that I had the VS open capable of reading the stack etc... I would get banned....good thing I know about this now....
anyways, once I reach lvl 70 , and until they come out with their next expansion, I quit.

I play my games to unwind, not to get all tangled up in politics. I guess
I will go get the last Unreal .....

Re:Noone bothers to see what Warden Does

[Anonymous Coward]

On the PC, it receives three lists of checksums and compares them against the titles of open window handles on the current desktop, process names, and specific signatures matched against the contents of the first block of process memory of concurrent processes running under the same username. It also checks for processes running a debugger hook on the WoW process, and for TDI (network stack) hooks.

If there is no match, it simply gives an all-clear (which is not a constant packet, but which is calculated from the checksums somehow).

If there is a match, it uploads the unhashed details; date and time, active character and account and any other active accounts in other WoW instances, the window titles, process names, addresses of the signature match if present, the WoW servers being connected to, the WoW client version and locale, Windows username, IP address and MAC address of each network adapter, the language setting of Windows, a hash of the CPUID data, a hash of the Windows product key, the screen resolution and graphics card data returned by the 3D engine, a hash of the serial number of the Windows system disk and the full path from which WoW is being run.

The server determines what to do from there, and if the match is confirmed true. It can tell the client to exit, or not to exit, and it can give a localised warning.

I don't know about the Mac client, or even if the Mac client has (or needs?) a Warden.

Fine with me. Perfectly good anti-cheat.

Re:Noone bothers to see what Warden Does

[AP2k]

Even still, there have been cases where two obviously different files share the same MD5 hash: http://www.cits.rub.de/MD5Collisions/

Re:Noone bothers to see what Warden Does

[Anonymous Coward]

Easy.

One hundred and one anal adventures.avi

Re:Noone bothers to see what Warden Does

[thenextpresident]

again as a developer have unique abilties to do whatever i want....if I was perhaps busy working on cleaning up a work project using visual studio developer and also playing the game, then I guess I was a bad person because the fact that the hash sent back saw that I had the VS open capable of reading the stack etc... I would get banned....good thing I know about this now.... Did you even read what was posted? It compares the hash to a known list of bot programs and its ilk. Unless VS is suddenly a botting program, it's not gonna put up a red flag.

This is just another case of blowing shit out of proportion. I mean, seriously, try thinking logically for 2 seconds. It might help.

Re:Noone bothers to see what Warden Does

[Dachannien]

Does Warden use MD5, or was the grandparent poster just using that scheme as an example?

Re:Noone bothers to see what Warden Does

[xantho]

Well, if I already have the contents of all the files that I don't want you to have on your desktop, then I can take the MD5 of all of them and see if you do have bestiality porn in Washington State. Blizzard now has the ability to see what programs you have running alongside Warcraft because they have copies of all (a bunch) of these cheating programs and will check the hash of your executable against the ones that they have copies of to see if you're running them, if I'm to assume that what you've said above is correct.

Keep in mind that no single thing is likely to make people get pissed off en masse to put a stop to it, but every time you let a company go snooping on your system, and every time you let a company get away with this kind of hypocrisy in court, it makes it a little harder to put a stop to the snowball. So, yes, Blizzard getting a list of programs running on your PC is not the end of the world, but what if in the future Warden deletes the program without you knowing? Or what if the game decides that you're cheating and wrecks Windows, or sets off some WGA thing that accidentally invalidates your Windows license?

Or what if the government starts taxing WoW gold, and you get dragged into court for restraint of trade because you're making free gold by doing nothing when you should be a good little zombie moving and clicking on basilisks by the river? Sure, it probably won't happen, but it definitely won't happen if Blizzard isn't allowed to check or send that information back.

Re:Noone bothers to see what Warden Does

[demallien2]

A classic example of hashes is storing account passwords on a computer. In general, the computer doesn't store the password, it stores a hash of the password. When you enter the password, a hash is calculated, and compared against the hash already stored on the computer's drive. If they match, you have correctly entered the password. So how, as a malicious hacker, can I gain access to your account if I just have the hash of your password? Well, these days, hackers precalculate a massive library of password hashes, linked against the original passwords. When they find a match with the password on your harddrive, they know what the original password is. Generating the library takes some time, and running through the database takes some time too (a few hours generally), but within a day, your password is cracked.

In this case, a malicious company could precalculate the hashes of all processes that they might be interested in. They will be able to verify if the hashes of these programs were detected by Warden. Now, you can argue the toss about whether the knowledge of which processes are running on your computer are sensitive or not, but at the end of the day, the hash is not going to hide your data from expert eyes.

Re:Noone bothers to see what Warden Does

[Direwolf20]

Just an example. I don't know what hash function they use exactly, might even be proprietary.

Re:Noone bothers to see what Warden Does

[Anonymous Coward]

I think you got some numbers mixed up.

it says your mother is a stain. Whatever that means.

j/k

Re:Noone bothers to see what Warden Does

[Nasarius]

Hmm. I kinda doubt it's that simple. It's not hard to write a bit of assembly that tosses NOPs randomly around your code every time you run it (in memory and/or on disk), thus altering any hash. Or just alters a few bytes where an unused static variable is stored. If circumventing Warden was that easy, Blizzard would be screwed.

Re:Noone bothers to see what Warden Does

[Nasarius]

Or if you're selling one of these programs and don't know assembly, run your source through a randomized obfuscator for each copy you sell. This has the added benefit of Blizzard doing your copy protection for you: if one copy is leaked to the public by a customer, it'll get banned. Heh.

Re:Noone bothers to see what Warden Does

[geckofiend]

They have every right. You gave it to them when you clicked agree. Don't like it? Don't play.

Re:Noone bothers to see what Warden Does

[steelfood]

Agreed. What's to stop someone from releasing the source code to their cheating program? That way, all people would have to do is add their own text string into code somewhere, and the hash of the resulting binary would be completely different.

Re:Noone bothers to see what Warden Does

[Anonymous Coward]

So the key to a functional Glider is a launcher that recompiles a new executable with a random process handle, process name and signature every time you run it?

Re:Noone bothers to see what Warden Does

[Anonymous Coward]

Since hashes all have a finite number of digits as the end result, and they can hash any amount of data, there will always be collisions. The danger is being able to predict collisions.

Re:Noone bothers to see what Warden Does

[Anonymous Coward]

...Beastiality...

Don't worry, blizzard allows it in the EULA. The EULA is holy, the eula covers it.

Erm...

Re:Noone bothers to see what Warden Does

[nobuddy]

thank you.

Re:Noone bothers to see what Warden Does

[hesaigo999ca]

I thought I had read the artical stating that it would read hashes from known programs CAPABLE of reading the call stack etc.... I believe that VS is one of those such programs.
If flaming is all someone has to do all day long,
I guess they should go get themselevs a copy of WoW instead!

Re:Noone bothers to see what Warden Does

[hesaigo999ca]

I thought I had read the artical stating that it would read hashes from known programs CAPABLE of reading the call stack etc.... I believe that VS is one of those such programs.
If flaming is all someone has to do all day long,
I guess they should go get themselves a copy of WoW instead!

MOD PARENT UP

[dreamchaser]

I wish I had mod points left. Cheating has an adverse effect on the economies of MMOG's as well as potentially impacting others more directly than that (they pay a fee too, the ones who don't cheat, and their enjoyment can be hurt by asshats who do cheat). It *should* be a civil offense to cheat in an online game. Maybe a 'fine' of 48 hours with no net connection ;)

Then again that may be too harsh. I know people who play WoW, UO, SWG, etc., who would probably commit suicide if they were kept offline for two whole days...

Re:It's simple

[Gr8Apes]

Maybe so. But copyright doesn't apply here.

Here's a thought: what if I run WoW in a VM? We should be able to do that soon, the hardware and software are certainly getting to that point. Now that would impose a whole slew of issues to WoW, since they'd have no control outside of their sandbox. They really don't have that control now, honestly, but it's more work than most are willing to put in to make it happen.

The real answer is for Blizzard to make the game enjoyable to play, instead of rewarding "face time grinding".

Disclaimer: No, I don't play WoW, and never have. It didn't interest me in the least. I did play EQ, and tired of its mindless grind. None of the other MMOs seemed any different, not even Eve. I used to play and code for a mud (pre EQ, way way pre) which was quite a bit more fun as being an imp (GM would be the closest thing in MMOs these days) allowed you quite a bit of freedom and create spontaneous changes. Usually that was in concert with players - it gave them a new challenge or two, and kept things fresh. Things like surprise trap door mobs was one of my favorites.

Re:It's simple

[Dachannien]

I'd say that's a false dichotomy. You don't have to side with cheaters in order to oppose expansion of copyright.

There are other legal remedies for dealing with WOWGlider, including tortious contract interference for soliciting people to violate the game's TOS, which results both in lost revenue from banned players as well as lost revenue from players who quit out of disgust with rampant cheating. While the monetary damages from this may not be easily calculable, the real intent would be to get an injunction against the WOWGlider developers to force them to stop distributing the software. Then the developers are staring down the barrel of a contempt charge if they keep doing it.

Shooting their own foot...

[Alpha232]

If Blizzard wants to claim that reading the memory used by the application is a violation of their copyright, so be it... Then watch the mudslide of people who have written mods and go after Blizzard for their Warden application which, guess what.. reads the memory of other applications and whats more, sends it off to blizzard which is a more direct violation of copyright as they are making a copy rather than just changing some bits in memory.

Re:Shooting their own foot...

[Dachannien]

reads the memory of other applications and whats more, sends it off to blizzard

Not true. This is pure botter FUD.

Even one of the WOWGlider devs, when they wrote up their analysis of Warden, provided zero evidence that Warden sends back to Blizzard anything more than an indication that "this is the known hash key that Warden matched". All the processing is done on the client machine, and zero copyrightable, private, personally-identifying data is sent back to Blizzard as a result of this processing.

Re:Shooting their own foot...

[Communomancer]

Uhm, how do you think that they're calculating that hash key?

Re:Shooting their own foot...

[Anonymous Coward]

Too bad you don't know what you're talking about. First off mods are programmed in LUA and interpreted by wow.exe when they run. Second, although it's called 'Warden' it's not a separate process, it's a (downloaded on demand) piece of code that gets run as a function/object in the wow.exe process space itself. So all it does is read its own memory.
The warden code doesn't read your harddisk or other processes memory space. It does make a list of window titles, hashes those and compares those to known illegal hashes. It also checks if other processes have attached to the wow.exe process space. When it's all done it sends a 'YES/NO' reply to blizzard. Players sending a YES will be investigated further.

Re:Shooting their own foot...

[Dachannien]

As I said, they calculate the hash on the client machine. They do this so that they don't send any private info back to the server. If there's a match to the library of known hashes (the ones they calculate in the office by analyzing offending software), then they report that info back.

Re:Shooting their own foot...

[Communomancer]

But they only way they could calculate the hash for an application is by reading the memory that the application is using.

And therefore, by Blizzard's rationale, I could distribute an application with a EULA that says that you can only use this program so long as you don't allow any external programs to read this program's memory. If you allow other programs to read the memory, your license to use this program is revoked, and any further use of this program constitutes copyright infringement.

Then I could sue Blizzard for selling software (Warden) that profits off of infringing my copyright. See, because unless I allow them to infringe my copyright, they can't "protect their game from cheaters", which affects their profits.

Is this really necessary?

[Critical Facilities]

I don't play WoW (or any MMORPG for that matter) so maybe I'm out of touch here. Why should it be that Blizzard feels they have the right to sue someone (individual or company) for finding a way to "cheat" at their game? I guess I'm having a hard time reconciling how this is realistically going to affect them. I understand their argument that this could devalue the experience of playing the game and thus create an environment where less people want to play for fear of having to play against bots, but isn't that presuming a lot?

Who's to say that they don't make the choice to implement some type of Captcha or equivalent method for keeping this out of gameplay? Why not consider the possibility that someone (individual or company) might find a way to take advantage of these bots to their advantage as a sort of backlash? (like figuring out automated players' responses to various events and then exploiting that, thus making the prospect of using the Glider less attractive to those who would) I guess I'm wondering, isn't this an awfully rash lawsuit? I confess, I am no legal expert, but I really wonder if this thing has merit, and I think being able to PROVE that their revenue stream is going to be majorly impacted is going to be a stretch at best.

Re:Is this really necessary?

[Anonymous Coward]

"I don't play WoW (or any MMORPG for that matter) so maybe I'm out of touch here. Why should it be that Blizzard feels they have the right to sue someone (individual or company) for finding a way to "cheat" at their game?"

Because 8 million people pay for that game and expect it to be free of cheating. An MMORPG, especially one based on monthly membership fees, brings a new level of importance on the need for the game to be cheat-free.

I can understand why you might be stunned at actions like this if a company is defending some single player mindless FPS, but MMORPGs are a bit of a different realm.

Re:It's simple

[phasm42]

I don't like cheaters, but it's not the law's job to support Blizzard's business model.

Regardless....

[Himring]

No matter how the suit comes out (and I'm all for sticking to "the man") using a bot in an online game where other people are involved is cheating, and it kills the very nature of what the game should be all about for everyone: fun.

This is why I will never, ever, play another FPS, online ... that is, a current PC-based FPS. Xbox live? Sure. No cheating there (yet) and that's good.

I have admined many game servers (q1, q2, cs) and worked hard to stop cheating with all the tools (punk busters, etc.). I even ran an anti-cheating game site years ago (anyone remember slipgate central? no I didn't run that, but one of my little sites was listed).

I also did an write-up on the zbot in q2. I installed and used it. I pwned players effortlessly. It was disgusting. I ran around gathering health and power-ups and the bot did all the work while the whole server tried to kill me. It was sick fun, but it's lame.

Showeq was the first big exploit for mmorpgs. It was lame. With it, the punk could get any unique mob in a zone before anyone else. How is that fair? How was it fair for the people without a 2nd computer, or without linux knowledge to set it up?

This article may be all about the legal ins and outs of who has access to what in ram, but the bottom line is, cheaters blow. If you cheat you blow. You're feeding a primal part of the human psyche at the expense of others and undermining the entire event. When it all crumbles and dies, you are to blame.

Using a bot to lvl or farm in wow is lame. Don't do it. Let this guy's work die on the vine....

Re:Regardless....

[Cyberax]

You don't understand, cheating can be FUN.

One time I ran 5 bots on a local private Lineage server. It was very fun to setup them so they would interact with each other. It was kinda like programming.

Re:Regardless....

[Anonymous Coward]

But perhaps I don't enjoy playing 10 hours on end just to lvl up once. Perhaps I would rather just get right into the action. How I chouse to play is my business, and it dosen't affect you in an MMORPG. Your argument boils down to I did less work then you, therefor I don't deserve what I have; That's BS. As for fair, is it also fair that someone can have multiple acounts, or simply more time to play the game then you? If you don't like cheaters then don't assohiate with them in game, don't buy, barter, or traide with them; Simple as that.

Re:Regardless....

[Sanguis Mortuum]

Showeq was the first big exploit for mmorpgs Actually, people were using UOPlugin to exploit in UO over a year before EQ was even released...

Re:Regardless....

[atdt1991]

Actually, Xbox Live has had critical problems with cheating on their servers, specifically for Halo 2. Some cheats are of the simple "standbying" variety (person switches off their modem long enough to get an edge while everyone sits at a black screen), and others require uploading patched savegames or other hacked files. Despite the propoganda about the "banhammer" coming down on cheat0rz by bungie, anyone who has played Halo 2 online has run into cheaters. Between them and the swearing chilluns, the online random-player world isn't any fun these days.

Re:Regardless....

[Rogerborg]

Then you should know that it's utterly futile to ask or expect people not to exploit. The only - the only - solution is to design out the possibility of exploits. Any game that relies on the actioning entity's actions alone to determine an outcome is always exploitable. Always.

That's not very cheery news, but it's the way that it is, and I do wish everyone involved would skip the hair pulling and wailing and just accept it. You're always going to be playing catchup with the exploiters, and the more successful your game, the further behind you're going to be.

Re:Regardless....

[Das Modell]

This argument is horrible, it can be used to justify any immoral act you can think of. You're thinking that because you want to do something, you should be allowed to. Sorry, but no.

Is it also fair that someone can have multiple acounts, or simply more time to play the game then you?

Multiple accounts and spare time are perfectly legitimate and allowed, they're not cheating. Life isn't fair, some people have more time or more skill, doesn't mean you're allowed to break the rules and cheat. You're not allowed to break the law in real life because some people have high paying jobs than you. Maybe you should rethink your "waah waah it's not fair" attitude.

If you don't like cheaters then don't assohiate with them in game, don't buy, barter, or traide with them; Simple as that.

As everyone knows, avoiding cheaters in online games is just that simple.

Re:Regardless....

[Tink2000]

10 Hours to level up just once? You must be talking about EQ or AC.
It took me longer to install WoW, download all the patches, and set up the account than it took me to get to level 7, and I'm notorious for being slow (sue me, I explore a lot) in MMORPGs.

Re:Regardless....

[electrosoccertux]

Using a bot to lvl or farm in wow is lame. Don't do it. Let this guy's work die on the vine.... How about: wasting your life on something you've already done once is lame. Don't do it.

Blizzard just needs to let you create maxed or almost maxed characters if you already have a level 70 instead of forcing you to level through the same material over and over. If you could start a new character at level 50, that would give plenty of room to learn how to play the class. That's all they have to do to reign in the botting. You could make all the money you need from leveling alts to 70 and then doing the quests for gold.

Re:Regardless....

[C0rinthian]

Private server is different. You're not affecting other players in your own little world, and that isn't considered cheating.

The fact that you're running the server software illegally is another matter.

Re:Regardless....

[C0rinthian]

Xbox live? Sure. No cheating there (yet) and that's good. Excuse me.

HAHAHAHAHahahahaha....

Sorry, carry on.

Re:Regardless....

[fotbr]

No, WoW gets that way in the drag from around 30 to 50 ish. Maybe not quite to 10 hours, but if you're running solo quests and grinding its not uncommon for a level to take 6+ hours, longer if, as you say, you explore a lot.

It looks like 60-70 will also be that way. Yeah, its nice you can pull 40k - 50k XP/hour solo, but when you have 500,000+ XP to the next level, its going to take a while.

Re:Regardless....

[Tink2000]

Oh. Heh, I should have expected that.
Go ahead and say it... "ur a n00b".

Re:Regardless....

[Cyberax]

It was a server in university, we had about 1000 players online at any moment. I don't know what kind of server software they used, probably it was a pirated version. But we also had officially licensed shard of Ultima Online, so I'm not sure.

And if game can be affected by bot farming - then it's better to adjust game mechanics so it won't have a lot of effect.

Re:Regardless....

[Anonymous Coward]

Life isn't fair, some people have more time or more skill, doesn't mean you're allowed to break the rules and cheat.

<DevilAdvocate>
Training dogs for the blind is cheating. They can use their own eyes.
Subtitle news & films for the deaf is cheating. They can use their own ears.
Making law making sure that people on wheelchair can go in shop, public buldings & so on is cheating. They can use their own legs.
Yes life isn't fair...
Using bot because you don't have the time to grind is cheating. Take your time to grind.
</DevilAdvocate>

Yes, I play WoW. No, I don't use Bot.
I play WoW since the Beta. My highest character is 65 and leveling start to be very boring because I have not so much time to grind. For example, I have played 1 of my char "full time" during a week and always got the 200% XP bonus during this same week and got 3 levels (60->63). The worst grinding I have found is the reputation grind to get a plan or some receipt for a potion :( I am contemplating the fact to stop playing WoW because of this same kind of grinding become more and more prevalent with the new high-level quests.

Now, I start to think about canceling my account (or perhaps not), but in a more fun way. By not just playing the game, but by playing with the game. This by writing an IA who can play the game. If I am bad at it, Wizard will cancel my account it is fair play, and if I am not so bad at it, the bot will play WoW and I will play and have a lot of fun programming and extending my bot :)

Posted as anonymous for clear reasons :)

Re:Regardless....

[CaptnMArk]

It's even more fun changing the insta_weapon to gauntlet (much fun) and see the cheaters leave.

Re:Regardless....

[fotbr]

I don't have any room to talk.

It took me about 14 months to get my main character up to level 60. Levels 1-15 happened in a weekend of about 9 hours of play across three days. Going from 58-60 took me 4 weeks, and about 20 hours of play.

However, aside from some instances and inside alliance cities (I play horde -- fewer annoying kids), I've explored everywhere on the first two continents, and had a lot of fun doing it.

And yes, I'm one of those that finds it completely amusing to run around a low level alliance area while NOT flagged for PvP, and have a bunch of high level alliance toons following me around waiting for me to act like an alliance member and start ganking players 30+ levels lower than me. Even better when you can get a small group together to do it. They start thinking they're going to be attacked, but they don't.

Re:Regardless....

[CowTipperGore]

How about: wasting your life on something you've already done once is lame. Don't do it.

Blizzard just needs to let you create maxed or almost maxed characters if you already have a level 70 instead of forcing you to level through the same material over and over. If you could start a new character at level 50, that would give plenty of room to learn how to play the class. That's all they have to do to reign in the botting. You could make all the money you need from leveling alts to 70 and then doing the quests for gold.

Because most botters are level 23 alts? The vast majority of bots are high level characters (50+) that are used to farm gold or other resources that are sold for gold.

How about not wasting your life (and $15/month) on a game that you don't enjoy?

Re:Regardless....

[C0rinthian]

okay, clarification: the private server didn't affect any of NCSoft's paying customers. :P

Re:Regardless....

[Cyberax]

Why not? Let them catch me if they can :)

Games should not be designed so you need to kill 123954 boars to obtain SuperDuperSwordOfPower. Particularly, Lineage is unplayable without bots :)

Re:Regardless....

[C0rinthian]

I beta'ed LII for about 3 weeks. One of the worst games I've ever played. The idea of taming dragons and castle seiges sounded really cool, but the levelling was just atrocious.

Re:Regardless....

[Das Modell]

How exactly are you playing devil's advocate? Comparing blindless or deafness to being unwilling or unable to invest time in a video game is complete madness. A much better analogy would be robbing a bank because you don't have the time or ability to become wealthy through honest work.

Re:Regardless....

[MeanderingMind]

While designing your game to minimize the ability to cheat is a nice notion, I'm not sure it's one I can endorse in terms of outright game design (actual code is a different matter).

Quite simply, any number of interesting and fun concepts might be killed just because one could cheat or make bots. While I dislike cheaters, I think there are better ways to fight them than to ruin the game because of a small number of jerks.

Re:Regardless....

[MeanderingMind]

Training dogs for the blind is cheating. They can use their own eyes.
Subtitle news & films for the deaf is cheating. They can use their own ears.
Making law making sure that people on wheelchair can go in shop, public buldings & so on is cheating. They can use their own legs.
Yes life isn't fair...
Using bot because you don't have the time to grind is cheating. Take your time to grind.

The bot isn't the same as the others. Training dogs, ramps, and subtitles are required so that those with handicaps can have the same opportunities as everyone else. Whether they have the time or the will to pursue them is a different matter.

As a WoW player, you have all the same opportunities as everyone else. Your life may be structured in such a way that you do not want to commit as much of it to the game, but that is your choice.

It may not seem fair to the 9-5 adults who have to care for families, but the opportunity is there. It may require more of you that you're willing to give, but that doesn't mean you couldn't possibly do it. If that's a problem and interferes with your enjoyment of the game, you might want to find a different game to play.

Now, I start to think about canceling my account (or perhaps not), but in a more fun way. By not just playing the game, but by playing with the game. This by writing an IA who can play the game. If I am bad at it, Wizard will cancel my account it is fair play, and if I am not so bad at it, the bot will play WoW and I will play and have a lot of fun programming and extending my bot :)

The problem is your bot is fun at the expense of others. Both casual and hardcore players are hurt by bots like yours. They mess up the economy, interfere with other people's playing, and only serve to greater emphasize the importance of time invested. This causes players to stop playing, Blizzard to cancel accounts, and generally creates hassle on all sides that only serves one person.

Programming the bot might be a fun experiment, and something I can understand wanting to try. However, actually using it or distributing it I can not endorse.

Re:Regardless....

[Skuld-Chan]

Xbox live? Sure. No cheating there (yet) and that's good.

About a year ago I was watching a friend play counter-strike on the Xbox - it was a pain in the arse to play, but it had a global rating system. Right at the top with the most kills and 100% accuracy was a player called "xboxhacker" - and I'm not making this up.

Re:Regardless....

[e03179]

Xbox live? Sure. No cheating there (yet) and that's good.

I guess you haven't played many FPS's on XBOX Live (you make no mention of it). HALO 2 on XBOX Live could have been one of the most exploited FPS's in history (certainly on XBOX Live). This lead to Bungie.net shutting down their online leaderboards (which were glorious and well-liked). When I was playing HALO 2 a lot, I played against an exploiter at least one game per night. People cheated by modifying gamesaves and by tampering with their connection to the game server. I've played many FPS's on PC, but there was more cheating in H2 for XBOX Live than any PC game that I played.

Re:Regardless....

[Anonymous Coward]

Perhaps blizzard should take a quick peek at http://www.guildwars.com/? It has pretty much what you suggested.

Re:Regardless....

[toddestan]

No, in a multiplayer game your actions do affect others. If you want to just get right into the action, then play a single player game and cheat to your heart's delight. Otherwise, if you don't want to play by the rules in a multiplayer game, then don't play at all. Simple as that.

Re:Regardless....

[StikyPad]

wasting your life on something you've already done once is lame. Don't do it.

But I'm starving!

Anonymous Reader eh?

[pslam]

I'm guessing it's that asshole author of the WoWGlider bot, actually. Quite an evident bias and quite blatant half-truths in that summary. It's the same for every anti-Blizzard story that comes out about WoW - usually it's the virtual gold industry posting anonymous stories about how great they are and how Blizzard is being heavy handed on their poor, innocent selves. Rubbish.

He's ruining the game so he can make some profit out of it. I have absolutely no sympathy whatsoever, even if what Blizzard is doing is dubious. He certainly doesn't have clean hands himself.

Re:It's simple

[morgan_greywolf]

There's a LOT of confusion about the DMCA is about. The DMCA is makes it illegal for people to circumvent copy protection -- whether we're talking about encryption, or license managers, or dongles, etc. Basically any means of electronic protection from violation of copyright laws. The DMCA is not designed the prevent people from circumventing cheating mechanisms unless those cheating mechanisms involve making unauthorized copies of the software. Which WoWGlide does not do.

Re:It's simple

[Ephemeriis]

Agreed. I'm paying Blizzard a monthly fee for an enjoyable gaming experience. I do this to relax and have fun in the evening. Some people have cable TV, some go to the movies, some go to the theater...I play WoW. And I want my money's worth. I don't want my game experience ruined because some guy bought a program that lets him cheat.

I don't know if anyone remembers trying to play Diablo (the first one) multi-player. It was fun for the first week or two, and then the cheats started showing up. Hacks and cheats that allowed you to kill people in town. Duplication bugs that gave you limitless wealth. It soon stopped being fun.

Diablo II offered both an open (peer-to-peer) multi-player mode and a closed (housed on Blizzard's Battle.net servers) multi-player mode - I played the closed version. Because the open version showed the same kind of cheats and hacks that the first Diablo did.

I have no problem with people cheating and hacking on their own time. If it's a single-player game they can IDDQD all they want. But if I'm playing a multi-player game I want a relatively level playing field. I want to know that they have just as much a chance of dying as I do. It's no fun when everyone gets headshots all the time and can't be killed.

Re:It's simple

[Anonymous Coward]

If a company made a device that would allow people to cheat at a casino, do you think the casino would have to live with it?

There are laws specifically dealing with cheating devices and casinos. This case seems more akin to a device for cheating at Backgammon. Such a device may be unethical, but it isn't illegal.

Re:DOA

[voice_of_all_reason]

It doesn't have to hold up in a court of law if no one challenges it. How many teenagers do you think have enough saved to bankroll a lawsuit on Blizzard?

Re:It's simple

[91degrees]

I'm not quite sure what your point here is. People have paid for the game, and expected certain reasonable rights to control of their computer to remain.

Re:It's simple

[SatanicPuppy]

Oh whatever. A lot of people get enjoyment out of the game already...in those terms its a great success; you'll never be able to make it so exquisitely enjoyable that no one will want to cheat.

The whole idea that cheaters are a game flaw is absurd; if a game has goals, there are people who will want to take a shortcut. They'll do it for greed, they'll do it because they're lazy, and they'll do it because they want recognition that they haven't earned.

What's the solution? To have a game with no goals? It'd be like Tetris but you couldn't have a score, because then people might want to cheat for a higher score. Couldn't even have levels, because people might want to cheat to say they got to a higher level!

That is where the world seems to be headed.

[aussersterne]

How long before the individual owns nothing, though everything is owned? How long before it is a legal fact that all "ownership" (even of the very air we breathe) is exercised by corporations rather than individuals or publics?

The way things are going, we will soon see legal battles between all kinds of financial interests:

"We own that story, he wrote it using our software."

"But he was using our hardware."

"Yes, but he was sitting on our chair."

"Ah, but he was sitting inside our building."

"True, but he had eaten our food that morning."

"Yes, and he was working beneath our light bulb."

"Ahhhhh, but he was breathing our air..."

Judge: "Divide the profits from its sale evenly amongst yourselves."

Writer: "But what about me? I don't even want it sold. I wrote it and I should get to control it..."

All: "Bwahahaha, you fool! Do you think you would be anything if it weren't for us? Everything you do is the result of what we have given you!"

Re:That is where the world seems to be headed.

[dcollins]

"We own that story, he wrote it using our software."

Actually, a few years back I designed a city with SimCity (original), exported the file to a big image, and took it to a Kinko's to print out as a big poster. The job was refused with the staff claiming it was a copyright violation of the game makers, because they owned all of the images involved. (Even though the game itself includes an "Export" function to do precisely this.)

Now, this was mostly because the attendant was a big fat f*** trying to get out of doing any work (it was the 3rd job in a row I saw him refuse for some frickin' reason), but still...

Re:That is where the world seems to be headed.

[isaac]

How long before the individual owns nothing, though everything is owned? How long before it is a legal fact that all "ownership" (even of the very air we breathe) is exercised by corporations rather than individuals or publics?

These legal tactics are older than the hills. Books in the USA once had EULAs (until SCOTUS decided Bobbs-Merrill Co. v. Straus establishing the doctrine of first sale). Proponents of so-called unbundled rights have had mixed results in recent years - DMCA passed, UCC Article 2B/UCITA mostly failed.

Defending common-sensical notions like "putting money down on the counter and walking out with a box constitutes a sale of a product" and "contract terms not visible at time of sale are unenforceable" is bound to be an eternal battle because some businesses will always be lobbying against them in the hopes of making money. There is no endgame where individuals win once and for all, nor where all consumer protections are finally repealed - the pendulum is bound to swing back and forth in response to competing pressures.

-Isaac

Re:That is where the world seems to be headed.

[cheekyboy]

Time to set aside 3hrs and watch

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-133421584 9118868577&q=corporations

and http://video.google.com/videosearch?q=corporations

Yes, many corporations can be evil, due to hiring complete ass holes that have no friends.

Re:That is where the world seems to be headed.

[Hausenwulf]

It's not a question of ownership at all. You are using a service. If you don't abide by the terms of the service, your service is terminated. That's how things work for the players. For the company making WoWGlider, it's a different story. I think Blizzard is probably using the wrong legal argument to go after the enabling company, but that's how lawsuits work. You shotgun everything you can think of and hope a few pellets hit the target.

Somebody's got a greataxe to grind, apparently

[Dachannien]

This is quite possible the most biased article summary EVAR, unapologetic in its support for activity that is, simply put, cheating. Folks should be reminded of a past case of allegations of wrongdoing against Blizzard, namely the Warden software which is supposed to detect third-party hack programs. The allegations of Warden being spyware were put forth by folks involved with the development of WOWGlider, though the conflict of interest was somewhat concealed behind all the misinformation of what Warden actually did.

Warden temporarily cut off a revenue stream for the Glider developers (note that they've resumed charging $25 for it now), and that revenue stream - and much more - is now at risk with this lawsuit. Take this article with a block of salt because of that. It's in the interest of the Glider developers to engage in an(other) anonymous campaign to sully Blizzard's reputation further in an effort to make Blizzard back off on their lawsuit.

You can also compare it to the case of the Starforce developers, who sold a product proven to be nefarious, and who engaged in a smear campaign against those who exposed their product for what it is.

Re:Somebody's got a greataxe to grind, apparently

[DCBoland]

Just because you don't like cheating doesnt mean the creators of cheat software can be slapped with lawsuits based on 'copyright infringement'. If I buy a book, read it, then scribble a part out and rewrite it, can I be sued for copyright infringement?

This isn't good vs. evil or a question of "is cheating ok?", this is just another company abusing copyright law to get their way.

Re:Somebody's got a greataxe to grind, apparently

[Dachannien]

The article summary doesn't stop there, though, which makes this more than just an argument about abuse of copyright. It goes the extra mile to spread FUD about what Warden does, without making even a passing mention to the fact that using Glider violates the World of Warcraft terms of service because it's a cheat program.

A friend of Mine.

[elzurawka]

If Blizzard does not want people using bots/mods, then they should put it in the EULA, and if anyone violates that, handle is accordingly. I don't see how this is in any way copyright infringement.

A good friend of mine is "addicted" to this game. He has been playing for over a year now, and has leveled up 2 characters to level 70. So he wants to make a third character, but he doesn't want to play through all the lower missions. So he uses a bot, to gather some experience. If it wasnt for the bot, he probably wouldn't be playing anymore.

If he was to be charged with this "crime", his defence would be

"Yo...wtf?"
"The defense rests"

And any real judge would say "Good point, Case dismissed"

Instead of playing, he watches his bot play...is he paying them? yes. is he interfering with other peoples play? no., so wtf?

Blizzard should stfu, and be happy they are getting his money every month. WoW is a cash cow, and they are just trying to milk it to the Max...those bastards...

Re:A friend of Mine.

[Ihlosi]

If Blizzard does not want people using bots/mods, then they should put it in the EULA, and if anyone violates that, handle is accordingly.

It's already in there, don't worry. Apparently, Blizzard is just looking for a bigger stick to wave at potentian cheaters.

A good friend of mine is "addicted" to this game. He has been playing for over a year now, and has leveled up 2 characters to level 70.

Only ?

So he uses a bot, to gather some experience. If it wasnt for the bot, he probably wouldn't be playing anymore.

If he finds the game tedious, why doesn't he play something that's actually fun ? I dunno, but seeing "Level 70" on the screen doesn't really sound like fun. So he wants to make a third character, but he doesn't want to play through all the lower missions.

I doubt he's seen all of them with just two characters.

is he interfering with other peoples play? no., so wtf?

Heck yes he is. Maybe some legit players want to farm, too. Having to compete against dozens of farm-bots in addition to the Chinese farmers sucks big time.

WoW is a cash cow, and they are just trying to milk it to the Max...those bastards...

If they were trying to milk anything, they'd have the game mechanics set up so that having a second account with a buffbot (which is different from a real active bot, because its only purpose is to be parked in a safe spot) is a must, and be running an items-for-cash service.

Right now, Blizzard is far from being in the "milking" phase, in contrast to some other MMOs.

Re:A friend of Mine.

[The Warlock]

Um. You don't know how an EULA works, do you?

If there is a clause in an EULA, and you violate it, you lose your right to use the copyrighted software. If you continue to use the software, you are committing (you guessed it) copyright violation. This is true legally even if they don't immediately ban you.

If you don't like it, then stop playing. (or tell your "good friend" to stop playing; you know, whatever).

Re:A friend of Mine.

[Smid]

Yes, he is interfering with other peoples play.

He is devaluing the time they take to level their own characters. His automated creature is taking drops etc from real players.

The investment of Wow is time spent. You devalue that investment. You might not agree with this idea, but its what Blizz puts forward in the world.

Re:A friend of Mine.

[Zader]

If it wasnt for the bot, he probably wouldn't be playing anymore. And this is exactly the way it should be, and a good reason to come down hard on the bot clients. Good riddance.

Instead of playing, he watches his bot play...is he paying them? yes. is he interfering with other peoples play? no., so wtf? Actually, he is interfering with other peoples games. First of all, it's a decidedly unfair advantage to auto-level on a PvP server. One of the reasons that I got disgusted with the game in the extreme was all the speed hacks and autoleveling hacks. In one area alone, I killed the same bot over 20 times (PvP server), took screenshots, and reported the player in question - only to see them again 2 nights later, in a slightly different spot - 10 levels higher than I was. That's supposed to be fair? Please.

Even if it's a PVE server, he's still tying up an area where a real player might be trying to gain experience or faction. Are you saying it's fair for a 50 something character to compete against level 60+ bots faction-grinding in, say, the plaguelands fields? Been there, done that too - which is why I don't waste money on Blizzard games now. The only way I'd be back is if they start banning the cheaters.

Blizzard should stfu, and be happy they are getting his money every month. WoW is a cash cow, and they are just trying to milk it to the Max...those bastards... It's a business. And the good players are leaving due to the inability to enforce the no-bot and client hacks. They will lose players in droves when the newer games come out. (And don't bother saying they won't ... look at Asheron's Call, EverQuest, Dark Age of Camelot, etc.).

However, Blizzard trying to play the DMCA card is out of line. Frankly they should be liberal with the banstick, and spend a lot more time on detecting cheaters and locking accounts. Even associating themselves with the DMCA is most likely publicity that they really didn't want.

Re:A friend of Mine.

[gleffler]

This might apply if EULAs actually had any sort of bearing or any legal grounds to bind you to them, but contracts of adhesion are unenforceable with respect to software (see Klocek v. Gateway.)

By reading this post, you hereby agree to pay me ten billion dollars. Paypal it to the address above.

What? You don't agree to that? Oh, then you don't have a 'license' to read my post. But you've already read it. You're in quite a conundrum now, aren't you?

Re:A friend of Mine.

[Pofy]

>If you continue to use the software, you are committing (you guessed it) copyright violation.

In many countries this is not true. It would not be a copyright violation since you would not need a separate lience to run software you have legaly aquired, the law allready gives that permission.

Re:A friend of Mine.

[Anonymous Coward]

No, because this is a public venue, and you neither own any part of it nor do you constitute any level of ownership over this arena.

Learn 2 logic.

Re:A friend of Mine.

[gleffler]

I don't?

All trademarks and copyrights on this page are owned by their respective owners. Comments are owned by the Poster. The Rest © 1997-2007 OSTG.

Looks like I own my comments.

Learn 2 Read.

Wise words

[b0z0n3]

"He who gives up freedom for safety deserves neither" --Benjamin franklin

Re:Wise words

[Anonymous Coward]

Shut up you stupid clown

Re:It's simple

[phasm42]

Two points:

1. Gambling is regulated by the state. A better example would be something like chess. The chess club could kick you out or fine you if you wanted to stay, but unless you signed a legally binding contract, they couldn't go any further.
2. If it was any other EULA (possibly even other clauses of WoW's), you probably wouldn't give a rat's ass about it.

Re:It's simple

[Ihlosi]

This case seems more akin to a device for cheating at Backgammon.

In backgammon, you can usually take measures against people who cheat (anything from a good kickin' where it hurts to not playing with them anymore). In WoW, you don't have that option.

Bots vs. anti-virus

[s_p_oneil]

Anti-virus software is a special case. It has always been against the law to reverse engineer software protected by copyrights. Yet anti-virus writers are allowed to reverse engineer viruses and malware. Why? Because viruses themselves are illegal, and therefore can't be defended in court by a copyright. That would be like person A calling the police because person B stole his crack.

If these bots are accessing memory inside WoW while it is running, then someone has reverse engineered WoW, and that is against the law. WoW is not a virus, and it is protected by copyright laws. This isn't about expanding copyright law. This has been illegal since before many Slashdot readers were born.

Re:Bots vs. anti-virus

[b0z0n3]

That would be like person A calling the police because person B stole his crack.
Some people just aren't that smart. Go check
http://boards.cannabis.com/current-events/94780-ma n-calls-911-report-stolen-marijuana.html

Re:Bots vs. anti-virus

[unclepoole]

Uh, dude. Reverse engineering is not illegal, at least in the United States. What's illegal is copying and distributing nontrivial parts of the source or binary of a program, hence "copy"right. Reverse engineering is figuring out how a program (or any other technology) works and doing something with that information. Including writing your own implementation that does the exact same thing. Companies don't like others reverse engineering their stuff, and many EULAs forbid it. Legality of EULAs aside, I'm pretty sure that can't be enforced in the USA due to laws that expressly permit reverse engineering.

The DMCA does introduce some issues since circumvention of a copy protection device becomes a crime, but that didn't happen here. Patents can also create huge problems for reverse engineering, but that doesn't apply here.

Case study: http://www.winehq.com/

If reverse engineering were illegal, don't you think Microsoft would come down on them like a ton of bricks?

Re:Bots vs. anti-virus

[Anonymous Coward]

Reverse engineering was not actually illegal until the Digital Millennium CopyRight Act. There are still provisions for reverse engineering that are still legal. Reverse engineering is how we have our computers today. The IBM BIOS was reversed and studied to find out how it worked. A list of specifications was made from that and given to a programming team that created a compatible BIOS.

Re:Bots vs. anti-virus

[s_p_oneil]

From your link: "Wine does not require Microsoft Windows, as it is a completely free alternative implementation of the Windows API consisting of 100% non-Microsoft code."

Wine is an alternative implementation of the well-documented Windows API. The Wine developers should not have to reverse engineer anything. All they had to do was take the public documentation, and write their own code to implement the documented functions. It's more complicated than that, but it did not require reverse engineering.

That is exactly how the BIOS for the first x86 clone was developed. The first x86 clone was created very carefully, and the process was documented extensively to prove that no reverse engineering took place. If they hadn't documented it so well, Intel would've sued their asses off, and Intel would've won.

Re:Bots vs. anti-virus

[Anonymous Coward]

Technically spyware/virus writers own the copyrights to their software. They just release it as public domain :)

Re:Bots vs. anti-virus

[sqlrob]

What're you talking about? It was used with very, very strict reverse engineering practices. One looks at code, writes spec. Another writes from the spec. That *IS* reverse engineering.

If WINE hasn't done reverse engineering (or depended on it), how are undocumented functions implemented in there, and they are?

Re:Bots vs. anti-virus

[Relic of the Future]

Your lack of understanding of legal concepts is astounding. I find it terrifying that you've been moded up more than once. You, sir, are part of the problem with intellectual property in the U.S. and the world.

Re:Bots vs. anti-virus

[trianglman]

Actually, the "Do not disassemble" clauses (or reverse engineer) overstep the bounds of copyright. If I purchase a product, it is mine to do with as I please. Copyright, patents, etc. only come into effect if I in turn try to sell the same product (a copy) or a product that does the same thing and uses some of the code (patent infringement). Court rulings have revoked the power of this clause and technically they don't actually mean anything.

A good article on EULAs overstepping their legal authority is on the EFF website. #3 is the pertinent part to this discussion.

Re:Bots vs. anti-virus

[s_p_oneil]

I understand that they're not breaking copyright laws if they don't actually copy part of the program. Are patent laws the only laws that would protect you from someone using reverse engineering to copy functionality and make a derivative product? What about trade secret laws, or other laws I'm unaware of?

Let's say a company like Comcast reverse engineers a product like Joost so they can block or interfere with its traffic. Comcast wants to provide its own Internet TV app, and it's not hard to believe that they would want to trip up their competitors. What laws would protect companies in cases like this? Is it only laws against trusts, monopolies, and non-competetive practices?

What if someone hacked Joost to come up with their own client and made it free (or ad-free if you assume that Joost is going to be free), ant cut into Joost's revenue stream? Would the creators of Joost have no legal recourse for this without a patent of the network protocol?

Re:Bots vs. anti-virus

[trianglman]

In the first case anti-trust laws would stop Comcast cold. The second example is completely covered by patent law, and I already covered such a circumstance. I lost the link to the court case, but do not disassemble clauses in EULAs have already been ruled to have no bearing and cannot be enforced (at least in the jurisdiction it was tried, and it serves as very strong precedent for cases in other jurisdictions). (finally remembered the Wikipedia article with the relevant court case - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First-sale_doctrine#C ase_law )

Re:Bots vs. anti-virus

[Anonymous Coward]

well-documented windows API??

you're being sarcastic right?

Re:Bots vs. anti-virus

[s_p_oneil]

Thanks for clearing that up. Too bad there's not a mod for "stuck foot in mouth". There's still a good bit of gray area there (as there always seems to be with legal issues). Regarding the first case:

1) What if company A reverse engineered Joost to create a product that blocks employees from watching Internet TV at work?

2) What if company A sold it to other companies that wanted to do the same thing?

3) What if Comcast bought it and decided to use it to block their employees?

4) What if Comcast then decided to use it to block their customers? Would Comcast be the only company in trouble, or would this be a gray area that could bury company A in litigation until it went bankrupt?

5) Ok, I'm going out on a limb here just for the hell of it. ;-) What if the only way to block Joost is to DoS the Joost servers when you detect a client connection (in an attempt to force the Joost servers to blacklist your IP)? It's kind of like that box that spammed the spammers. I believe that recent US insider trading laws require all publicly-traded companies to monitor or block all electronic communications made by their employees from the office. If that got shot down, assume for the sake of argument that it didn't. Kazaa, Skype, and I suspect Joost, all act like a virus on your network, going out of their way to avoid detection and circumvent blocking measures. Since the author to such lengths to make it impossible to comply with that insider trading law, what options are open to these companies that are effectively breaking the law if they don't find a way to block it?

Re:Bots vs. anti-virus

[unclepoole]

Exactly. Another case study of this would be the NTFS filesystem drivers for Linux. Unlike the Windows API, both the NTFS binary specification and the NTFS filesystem algorithms do not have official public documentation. Yet there are multiple NTFS drivers for Linux. The developers of these drivers had to observe an NTFS partition, and even profile and trace the actions of programs on the binary state of the filesystem, and developed their own specs of what they thought NTFS did. This is a rather remarkable feat of reverse engineering that Microsoft cannot legally do anything about.

The PC BIOS case is probably the textbook example of reverse engineering done correctly. The main place where reverse engineering can fail is in copyright violations of the implementations. Developing and publishing the specification - which is the hardest part! - is completely legal. However, if you take anything from the original implementation and use it in the new implementation, the new implementation is considered a derived work and cannot legally be distributed without violating copyright. There are some gray areas where things can be problematic, particularly if source code was visible to anyone doing the reverse engineering, so the safest route is to follow "clean room" procedures as described by the parent. Strictly speaking, that shouldn't be necessary, but it is used to ensure that there can be no question that your implementation is legal.

As I mentioned in my previous post, patents can throw a monkey wrench into things though. Patented algorithms are still patented even if you develop your own completely independent implementation. This is why the GIF image format, despite having a well-known specification, could not legally be reverse engineered until recently because it depended on a patented algorithm.

Re:Bots vs. anti-virus

[trianglman]

1-3 its called a corporate firewall (or proxy or gateway). Those are designed to monitor internet traffic and filter some out. If a company made a whole new program based just on what they can reverse engineer to fight one program, I personally would sit back and laugh at the fools. Their punishment is to deal with the code monstrosity that they birthed.

As far as 4 goes, if Comcast took what is a legal piece of software and used it in the way you describe to get an unfair advantage for a given market, that is anti-trust, and they would have to pay some heavy fines and stop what they are doing. (at least as long as the net is kept neutral)

DoS, no matter the reason, is illegal for completely unrelated reasons. That doesn't stop the 'vigilantes' (if you will) from using it to fight spammers or in your example, but if you are caught you should face the consequences.

Re:Bots vs. anti-virus

[s_p_oneil]

"1-3 its called a corporate firewall (or proxy or gateway) ... If a company made a whole new program based just on what they can reverse engineer to fight one program, I personally would sit back and laugh at the fools."

You didn't answer the question, though the answer seems apparent, but that statement is dead wrong. To its users, the best thing about Skype is that it "just works" no matter where you install it. It doesn't matter how draconian the firewall policy is, Skype gets through in less than a second. Skype can even connect from PC's cut off from the Internet entirely, though it takes a minute or so to scan your LAN for other Skype clients to relay traffic through. See http://blog.tmcnet.com/blog/tom-keating/skype/bloc k-skype.asp for more details.

That blog article lists 3 companies for you to laugh at (there are other companies doing it as well), along with a number of reasons you'd be the fool for laughing. This one lists even more: http://blogs.zdnet.com/ip-telephony/?p=984. EADS, a European defense agency, has reverse engineered Skype and explained a lot about it. They explained a number of ways in which Skype is a security risk. They even told hackers how to reverse engineer it, which means it could already be some hacker's faithful servant. If so, I doubt he will act like Richard Pryor in Superman 3. ;-)

Re:Bots vs. anti-virus

[s_p_oneil]

I wanted to add one more thing to forestall a wasted argument. I am aware that a number of firewalls claim to detect and block Skype, but I tried Pix and Checkpoint a while ago, and neither worked as advertised to block Skype. I haven't tested them recently, and they may have improved their detection/blocking scheme since then. However, Skype may also change their protocol at any time, so the point is moot. It doesn't change the core argument, or the core question.

So don't play it until they change

[nightsweat]

You don't have to play WoW. Really. You lived without it before and you'll live without it after. Politely tell Blizzard why you are leaving them, and then leave.

If you're not willing to do that, this obviously isn't THAT important to you.

Re:So don't play it until they change

[punkr0x]

That's a very short-sighted answer, if cheaters come along and make a mockery of something you've worked hard on, you should quit until they get bored or someone does something about it? If everyone who doesn't use the glider program quits, then blizzard's only customers are the cheaters, and they are forced to cater to them and allow further cheating.

Re:So don't play it until they change

[nightsweat]

Playing a game is not equal to "work". Really. Plus, if I understand it right, this is a program that helps cheat at the game. That's certainly not "work" as I understand it.

Hoorah, I'm 143rd level, I must be cool in the eyes of my peers. Nevermind I cheated like a demon to get here.

Re:So don't play it until they change

[kinglink]

Dear god man, by that logic I don't need music, or movies. How dare you fill my head with that nonsense!

Re:So don't play it until they change

[Hatta]

Exactly. Remember there's no spyware in nethack. No cheating either.

Re:So don't play it until they change

[punkr0x]

Have you ever played those games? It's a lot of work. Unless you cheat. If I understand your original post correctly, you told the honest gamers to quit until they get rid of the cheaters, rather than griping about it. That won't fix the game for the people who enjoy it.

Re:So don't play it until they change

[Anonymous Coward]

Politely tell Blizzard why you are leaving them, and then leave.

I did, before WoW was ever released.

http://www-personal.umich.edu/~adbisaro/blizzard.h tml

They will not get a dime from me until I'm convinced they've changed their ways.

Re:So don't play it until they change

[Anonymous Coward]

Lots of people put 'work' into their games. 'Work' is a statement of how much energy you put into accomplishing an end result, not some random meaning of value that implies an output of social value, or intrinsic value to another person. How I spend my downtime is important to me, and it's worth seeing how this plays out. By your logic, we should also just stop scanning our machines for viruses, spyware, and hell, why even use the internet? It's just full of hate-filled smartasses who act like they know everything, anyway.

Re:It's simple

[Dachannien]

That's kind of a vague statement - care to elucidate?

WOW != Athletics

[ady1]

There are people who would commit suicide if they don't get heroin. Doesn't make it sound any cooler.

Also it isn't like the drug test at all. The drug test is conducted before the event and only once. They don't require the athlete to reveal the detail of their bank accounts and drug purchase history nor does they attach a mobile testing lab to them through out the sporting event to make sure that they don't cheat.

Re:WOW != Athletics

[ATMAvatar]

nor [do] they attach a mobile testing lab to them [throughout] the sporting event to make sure that they don't cheat.

If a quarterback were to break huddle to shoot up some steroids right there on the field, it wouldn't take a mobile testing lab to determine he was cheating.

Re:WOW != Athletics

[dharbee]

"The drug test is conducted before the event and only once."

No. Many sports test before and after the event (boxing for example) and while I'm not intimately familiar with the Tour de France, I recall hearing that tests are conducted throughout the event, sometimes testing the same person multiple times.

"They don't require the athlete to reveal the detail of their bank accounts..."

Neither does Blizzard. You choose to do that as one of the conditions to play the game.

Re:WOW != Athletics

[Profane MuthaFucka]

Oh tell me I'm a little bitch. I am wanking furiously now. I notice that you do NOTHING but go around posting little ant-fucker comments about the tiniest little details of some posting.

That's just what I love. Tell me that my tiny little penis doesn't even get the job done. I am getting erect, and little bits of cum are dribbling out of my cock hole now.

Re:Bots vs. anti-virus - probably wrong

[JetScootr]

Antivirus companies have contracts with M$ and other companies that allow them to do this (for a fee, I guess). This is what being a "M$ partner" means - an organized cabal that shares secrets and non-litigation covenants to provide a single "interactive TV set" appliance to "consumers" (instead of "computers" to "customers").

Re:It's simple

[AcidLacedPenguiN]

okay the chess example is better.

I think you read me as a blizzard fanboy, which is not the case. This would be my mentality for any online game, and especially online games where this form of cheating can be a way to make money. If people want to cheat in a single player game, (or in a multiplayer game where everyone has agreed to allowing the cheats) its fine with me. I always maintain that if I meet a cheater I will destroy them, and their computer. I look forward to the day that I bludgeon someone to within an inch of their life's end with their own aimbot laden PC.

Re:It's simple

[phasm42]

In backgammon, you can usually take measures against people who cheat (anything from a good kickin' where it hurts to not playing with them anymore). In WoW, you don't have that option.

Well they could, oh, I don't know, terminate their account. Nah, that wouldn't work.

Seriously, there's no reason to get the law involved and set bad legal precedent.

Re:It's simple

[The Warlock]

Such applications violate their EULA, it's as simple as that. If you don't like it, don't play WoW.

No data is sent....

[gweihir]

What the warden does, is to scan for a set of signatures. It then sents back whether it found a signature. No data locally found is sent. Especially in the EU this would be criminal anyways and would subject the people responsible to fines and possible prison time. The signature method is pretty reliable and very likely legal, because it can only be used to find whether specific, already known data is present on a system. The EULA also states something to this effect.

Sometimes singantures can be mis-detected. The one case I know is people running WoW under Linux.

So to re-iterate: Nobodys privacy is invaded. Get the facts straight before posting.

Re:No data is sent....

[Notquitecajun]

It's not quite a gray area, but I can see how this can easily be used for other purposes by other companies (Windows Genuine Advantage, anyone?)

Besides which, WoW is pretty good at self-policing...when I got off back in December, it wasn't hard when you found a 'bot to either A)Exploit it for your own nefarious uses (letting it kill stuff for you but you get credit for da loot) or B) just report the thing to admins.

I don't think that such monitoring is completely bad, but the next step beyond what is currently going on is probably a step too far, and Blizz needs to be pretty careful on going further with cracking down on cheating. It's also a bit of their own fault for making an engine that is so easy to mod from the outside, which they seem to be liking less and less, but is more and more needed for advanced gameplay at times.

Re:It's simple

[Ihlosi]

Well they could, oh, I don't know, terminate their account. Nah, that wouldn't work.

Why should I be forced to stop playing any game I like (poker, backgammon, WoW) in order to avoid cheaters ? This does not make sense. At all.

Cheaters == terrorists?

[dabadab]

It is a really interesting theory you propose: those who cheat in a game should be subject to a different set of laws than others.
I know that in the USA it's a popular opinion in certain circles that suspects of terrorism should be stripped of all of their rights, but to extend it to cheaters is something really new.

Seriously: a groundless lawsuit is a groundless lawsuit even when the defendant is a slimeball. In the USA's precedent based-system this is even more important since the precedent set by this lawsuit will apply to non-slimeballs, too.

MISQUOTE

[Notquitecajun]

"Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety." And keep it in context...which isn't this debate.

Re:MISQUOTE

[b0z0n3]

Well, I disagree. I feel that if you allow Blizzard to snoop around your RAM because you don't want others to cheat, you're accepting another kind of Patriot Act (May GWB take a long walk on a short pier). And regarding the accuracy of the quote, you're quite right...

Re:MISQUOTE

[Anonymous Coward]

it was misquoted, but you (like many others) are pathetically blind to what is really going on if you think it has no bearing on all of this.

Which is why I'm against railings...

[Anonymous Coward]

Which is why I'm against railings, I want the _freedom_ to go over the edge!
 
Seriously, I'm getting damn tired of that quote. It's probably taken out of contexts as well.

It's easy, let capitalism handle it

[mlwmohawk]

If you don't like their actions, refuse to buy their products, let them know why you won't buy their products. Wake up sheeple, entertainment is not worth the loss of rights. RIAA, MPAA, et. al. would have no money or power were you not to give it to them.

This is like deep linking

[hey!]

or even better, pulling out content from another site and putting it a frame within your site without permission.

At issue here is somebody (not the user but the vendor) making a derivative work incorporating the copyright holder's protected work. Arguably it would be better if this were allowed in some cases, but that's not a question for the courts.

The issue of RAM is a red herring. It is the side effect of the fact that the law doesn't really recognize a fundamental right of an author to his published works, but instead gives him a proxy: the ability to control copying. Otherwise, you could argue that the consumer is getting one thing from party A and another thing from party B, and putting them together, which is is right. You have to technically show that some kind of copying is going on.

This doesn't prevent anti-virus, which is almost certainly fair use.

It's looks more than a bit arbitrary and artificial because it is. But if you step back and look at the effect, it is not unreasonable. Nobody can make an unauthorized derivative work, but people still have control over their systems.

An example of Blizzard abuse

[BlueTrin]

While browsing some game reviews I found a link to this. When I read it, I found it pretty shocking, basically the guy was banned because he was pressing a macro on his keyboard with his fingers while watching TV.

I have no idea if this is true but at that time I was pretty sad for the guy. On the other hand, he lost the WoW addiction. :)

The most funny part is that he could have avoided the ban if he didn't say he was watching TV while pressing the keys of his G15 ...

Pot Vs. Kettle

[AnyThingButWindows]

"role of their Warden software, which actively scans users' RAM, CPU, and storage devices (and potentially sensitive data) and sends information back to Blizzard to be processed."

http://www.panix.com/~eck/computer-fraud-act.html

Section 1030. Fraud and related activity in connection with computers
(a) Whoever- (2) intentionally accesses a computer without authorization or exceeds authorized access, and thereby obtains-- (C) information from any protected computer if the conduct involved an interstate or foreign communication;

That pretty much sums it up in a snap. Hopefully some government official doesn't install it on government equipment.
(B) information from any department or agency of the United States; or

Re:Pot Vs. Kettle

[Rustitobuck]

As you log in, you are given some text to read, and than you click Accept. The text includes this:

5. Consent to Monitor. WHEN RUNNING, THE GAME MAY MONITOR YOUR COMPUTER'S RANDOM ACCESS MEMORY (RAM) FOR UNAUTHORIZED THIRD PARTY PROGRAMS RUNNING CONCURRENTLY WITH THE GAME... http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/legal/eula.html

That constitutes authorization.

Re:Pot Vs. Kettle

[Anonymous Coward]

"That pretty much sums it up in a snap. Hopefully some government official doesn't install it on government equipment.
(B) information from any department or agency of the United States; or"

???????????

Re:Pot Vs. Kettle

[C0rinthian]

Then the asshat installing it on a government computer is liable, not blizzard.

A very personal point of view...

[CharonX]

When the "Warden" sofware got its first publicity I was among the sceptics - why should we give Blizzard the right and ability to sniff around in our computers.
I have started playing WoW a while ago, and now I have an answer: Because a significant number of people is willing to greedily cheat and spoil the fun for the rest of the players. And they are quite numerous, despite the Warden software - just imagine how many cheaters and bots there would be if the draconic punishment of being banned was not coupled with a high likelyhood of detection via the warden.
No matter where or when I log on I usually "meet" at least one cheater or bot per day. People who seem to run in predictable patters and do not respond to any meaningful interaction, and are still in the same area when you return from extended questing. Add to that number the countless gold-sellers who will whisper, yell and spam the chat with they annoying offers. No I don't want to buy your gold or powerleveling services, I hope your PC melts down into a puddle. And this is with the "Warden" software. I do not think I would want to play WoW in a warden-free environment, where "L0L0L0L, L00K aT m3, ImA lEeT hAXX0R!1!1!1!!" mindset of people run free and undisturbed.

Re:A very personal point of view...

[Ihlosi]

I do not think I would want to play WoW in a warden-free environment,

I would ... if they had enough GMs and were actually willing to ban reported cheaters after a short investigation of their behavior.

Warden just keeps the really really stupid ones from cheating.

Re:A very personal point of view...

[CharonX]

True enough, but how many GMs would you then need? 1 per 100? To catch cheaters you need a quick response time, having your ticket idle even for a minute is usually long enough to allow the cheater finish whatever he is doing (kill you in PVP with 99999 damage attacks etc.) and return to being a "normal" users.
Also remember that those GM will have to deal with a flood of Support tickets, since people will use Bots and cheats if the punishment is unlikely. And of course even more peeps will be wrongly suspected of cheating if they behave "oddly".

Re:A very personal point of view...

[Ihlosi]

To catch cheaters you need a quick response time,

Not really. All those hunters using teleport hacks in Dire Maul are doing this for hours on end. I'd settle for a GM looking into this after 30 minutes or even an hours, waiting for the guy to use a teleport hack (couple of minutes), and frickin' kick/ban him right on the spot as soon as he teleports again.

Look at the bright side...

[HerculesMO]

At least their games are fun.

Re:DOA

[Gramie2]

Funny how the apostrophe in your post slipped from "wont" on the second line down to "right's" on the first line! :-)

And I'm sure that "Slaves" is jealous of "Customer's" having a gaudy, frivolous extra apostrophe.

Re:It's simple

[SatanicPuppy]

I won't play an online game that has a lot of cheating. I just won't do it...Lot of people mentioned Diablo I, and that's a good example of a game whose online play was completely ruined by cheating.

So I approve of things like Warden that make sure the game code's not being tampered with...It's the price you pay to play a game that's not overrun with hacks. And I don't have any problem with draconian EULA's enforcing that policy.

Seems like, in this situation, it would be easier to just use the monitoring software they already have in place to shut the game down in the presence of a bot. You'll never keep ahead of the bleeding edge, but you'll keep ahead of the vast majority of users.

Take2, anyone?

[ObiWanStevobi]

Well, although it may be your right to manipulate your own RAM however you see fit, don't forget that if you manipulate the game to show a nipple or sexually suggestive positions, it is your parent's/crusader group's right to sue Blizzard for everything they're worth. Faced with the fact that Blizzard will be held liable for everything everyone else does to their game, what choice do they have but to pursue any messed up agressive ways of getting you to stop?

One can only reasonably assume that using such software would be your right. However, one would also reasonably assume that you are responsible for any modifications you make to game. I'm just saying that legal responsibilities surrounding software and computers are really fucked up. If I was a game manufacturer, I'd be scared to death of modders now that I've found out that the company can be liable for what they do. Thank you lawyers, crusaders, and politicians!

Also, you can at least say they are taking a pro-active, even if they overstepped here, approach to cheating. Cheaters wreck the game for everyone.

Re:Take2, anyone?

[CowTipperGore]

Well, although it may be your right to manipulate your own RAM however you see fit, don't forget that if you manipulate the game to show a nipple or sexually suggestive positions, it is your parent's/crusader group's right to sue Blizzard for everything they're worth. Faced with the fact that Blizzard will be held liable for everything everyone else does to their game, what choice do they have but to pursue any messed up agressive ways of getting you to stop?

One can only reasonably assume that using such software would be your right. However, one would also reasonably assume that you are responsible for any modifications you make to game. I'm just saying that legal responsibilities surrounding software and computers are really fucked up. If I was a game manufacturer, I'd be scared to death of modders now that I've found out that the company can be liable for what they do. Thank you lawyers, crusaders, and politicians!

I hope someone out there gets to metamoderate the folks who called this "interesting".

These two situations aren't even in the same ballpark. Take 2 included adult content in their game but disabled easy access to it. They were sued because they didn't disclose this content when getting their ESRB rating. Had Take 2 revealed the content enabled by the Hot Coffee mod, they would not have gotten an M rating and they wouldn't have sold a fraction of number of units they did. This suit wasn't about people adding nipples to the game - the sex minigame was included but undocumented. The suit was about business practices, fair competition, and the game ratings system.

Also, you can at least say they are taking a pro-active, even if they overstepped here, approach to cheating. Cheaters wreck the game for everyone. While I don't like Blizzard's secrecy about Warden and its snooping, I do applaud efforts to control cheating. However, they overstepped by attacking the guy who made botting software. There is no legitimate copyright claim here.

Re:Take2, anyone?

[Anonymous Coward]

No he isn't talking about Hot Coffee. He's talking about Oblivion (also published by Take2, http://www.2kgames.com/index.php?p=games&title=obl ivion&platform=PC) which did get hit by this. Someone altered the models to let them appear nude, and as a result the game's rating was changed. All this on a game that came with an editor and encouraged modding. http://biz.gamedaily.com/industry/feature/?id=1260 4 for an old link to this story.

Re:Take2, anyone?

[CowTipperGore]

No he isn't talking about Hot Coffee. He's talking about Oblivion (also published by Take2, http://www.2kgames.com/index.php?p=games&title=obl ivion&platform=PC) which did get hit by this. Someone altered the models to let them appear nude, and as a result the game's rating was changed. All this on a game that came with an editor and encouraged modding. http://biz.gamedaily.com/industry/feature/?id=1260 4 for an old link to this story. Perhaps so. His post was so vague and full of misinformation it was tough to guess where in reality he might be pointing.

Even if you are correct, the facts here don't help him either. Like the example I cited, this was content included in the game but not accessible by normal means of game play. A modder did not create these art files and include them with their mod - they used what was already in the game. And, no one was sued for all they were worth - they simply had to change their ESRB rating to reflect was actually included with the game. Where is the problem here?

Challenge to the community

[Shoten]

(I know, it's a bit long, but give it a try.)

Okay, so here's how I see it all unfolding. Blizzard comes out with World of Warcraft, which immediately becomes a hugely successful MMORPG. And not only is it hugely successful, it happens to come into being at the same time that the real-world economy starts interfacing directly with the virtual economy of the MMO world. As a result, there are services that offer gold for cash, leveling services, etc...all of which incur unintended (and even destabilizing) economic effects on the virtual world. A rough analogy would be if people could sell their souls for sudden wealth or fame here, in a very literal sense of the world; something not of this world is being traded in return for something of this world, and giving those people a leg up over everyone else.

So, Blizzard has to figure out how to fix this. Obviously, they've done things to make it harder to goldfarm, in some respects. Fishing, which is an obvious activity that requires little input, is made harder to automate based on the requirement that you click on the fishing lure (which lands in a random location in front of you every time) when and only when it has a fish on it (which happens at a random interval after the time you cast the lure, or not at all). Combat is set so that if you're at a higher level than the thing you're killing, you get less credit for it; if there's such a difference that it's a ridiculously easy kill, you get nothing at all for your trouble.

But still, there are ways that something watching variables in memory could help a cheater. All you have to do is watch for the change in a variable, or the triggering of a function, when the fishing lure makes that splashy noise, and read (direct from RAM) the coordinates where the lure is, and you can have a piece of software click on it for you. I'm something of a WoW noob, so I'm sure there are other ways as well, including manipulation involving mining, auction house market manipulation, etc. Heck, if you had computers work together in concert, you could have a whole group of low-level characters team up on one larger-level NPC and kill it for a big bounty in both XP (for sale as a leveling service) and silver/gold (for sale as gold). The reason the maximum party size that can do quests/gain XP is 5 is just this, and it's not at all hard to imagine circumventing it by coordinating the systems to work together, where one online character is human-operated and the others just follow him automatically, attacking whatever attacks him.

So, Blizzard has a problem to fight. Since pretty much all of these techniques require a lot of manpower (which adds significantly to the labor cost of the goldfarming/leveling service and eats the profit) or reading variables from RAM, Blizzard decides to prohibit this tactic. But it's the same old situation in computer security, when it comes to things with tangible economic gain in the real world; the bad guys will evolve at least as fast as the good guys. So there needs to be a way to gather intel, to find out what the latest tricks are which are being used. And so Blizzard has Warden.

Now, a lot of people get up in arms about private corporations and privacy, and rightly so. There are numerous companies that maintain databases of our information, selling it to whoever wants it. Even worse, the organization that can harm us the most by invading privacy...our government...has been purchasing that information, conveniently skirting around the limits placed on them by law. But Blizzard isn't keeping a database of our personal information. We may happen to be doing online banking while WoW is idling in the background, but they're not culling/recording that information. And unlike the metaphor used in the article on Warden, no human being will ever see it. It's more like the person behind me at the checkout, or the cashier, being able to see my credit card when I take it out of my wallet to swipe it. I don't have a problem with that; I'm one of millions of people who d

Re:Challenge to the community

[CowTipperGore]

So...why don't we help them out? Can anyone here come up with another way to attack the situation, besides declaring memory access of the WoW client "copyright violation?" It really isn't complicated - go after the cheaters and eliminate (or significantly reduce) the market for WoWGlider. I haven't played in a few months but I doubt that things have changed drastically since - known bots are allowed to operate for weeks or months without interruption. When you make enough money to cover your purchase of the bot software, a new account every few months, and still clear a nice profit on eBay gold, people will abuse the system.

Many of us started policing zones as best we could (which was easier on PvP servers) by sharing lists of bots and spending our spare time killing the botting characters. I ended many nights by getting my 10 HKs per player in Felwood, repeatedly killing the same bots that I reported each night for weeks.

How about a Live CD and use the DMCA

[goombah99]

put the game on a live CD they user must boot off of to play. Encrypt it. Claim DMCA violations if any attempts to reverse engineer. Not in a fascist sue-your-ass way, but just in a banning your MAC address for life kind of way. You might not be happy with this but it seems like a fairly effective solution that moves it away from the grey area of memory co-resident. software.

Re:How about a Live CD and use the DMCA

[Anonymous Coward]

Its very simple to change your MAC address and not much harder to change your IP so all they could really do is ban the CD key

Re:How about a Live CD and use the DMCA

[Opportunist]

And how do you plan to implement game patches, which are pretty much mandatory for MMORPGs that tend to grow and expand, aside of the ever popular game balance adjustments?

Re:How about a Live CD and use the DMCA

[FooAtWFU]

MAC addresses are not visible to the Internet in general (and when you are connecting to Blizzard's servers in specific). You connect to the Internet using IP (OSI layer 3, the Network layer). MAC addresses are only visible to your Ethernet (/token ring/802.11/etc) connection (OSI layer 2, the Data Link layer). Banning an IP is the best you can accomplish at the network level, and IP addresses these days are notorious for being a little evasive (ever heard of DHCP?) - you can't single out Just One User on the Internet.

Re:How about a Live CD and use the DMCA

[admdrew]

Erm, sure, a MAC isn't broadcast to the internet, but it wouldn't be too difficult for the WoW client software to send your MAC upon logging in and check it against 'banned MACs' on their end.

They don't have to ban you from connecting to the server at the network layer, just simply need to refuse to allow your client to *stay* connected to the server in order to play.

Re:How about a Live CD and use the DMCA

[Anonymous Coward]

Never mind the fact the most NICs these days allow you to change the MAC address on them, the game comes on 5 CDs.

Why would they take the time to keep track of MACs when you already need a username/pass to play?

Re:How about a Live CD and use the DMCA

[goombah99]

I'd implement them the same way LiveCDs do. for example an "eggdrop" tarball on the local disk filesystem root that contains custimizations. Would not be hard to include signed patches too.

Re:How about a Live CD and use the DMCA

[Danga]

Not in a fascist sue-your-ass way, but just in a banning your MAC address for life kind of way.

Banning a MAC is not really going to help since MAC addresses are easily modified. Since you need to login everytime you play WoW I would have to say banning the account would be more effective. Sure, the person could maybe go setup another account (or have someone else do it for them) but after getting banned a few times they hopefully would just quit doing whatever is getting them banned because it is too much of a hassle to keep setting up new accounts.

Re:How about a Live CD and use the DMCA

[canajin56]

Thats pretty much nonsense. They already ban your credit card for life if they catch you. The only reason to change contract violations into DMCA violations is so that you can sue cheaters and people who post cheats for millions of dollars. Here is how the cheats work: The guys who make it read the game's memory, and they find the memory locations that various variables such as the player struct, and the array of mob structs, happen to be in, and they figure out all the components of the struct. Then they find pointers that point to or near said structs, and then the find pointers to those, until they reach pointer variables that are static. They code up a bot that uses these fixed pointers to find the dynamic pointers to find the structs they want, and their bot can now read your position and the position of other players and monsters, as well as all of their statuses, etc. Now you can write java/other scripts that use your code to read the variables that are running on the game.

At no point did you modify their code in memory or on disk. In fact, at no point did you read from a single file. All the encryption in the world on the data files won't change the fact that this program is just reading variables from memory. You can't encrypt all the variables in memory, it just wouldn't work. Replacing "X = X + 1;" with "X = Encrypt(Decrypt(X,key)+1,key);" seems like a catastrophic amount of overhead to be adding to every one of millions of lines of code, just so you can use the DMCA on somebody who makes cheats...and even then you'd then have to argue that the position of the player is your creative work, and the encryption was protecting it from being copied.

WAKE UP!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

I have to agree.

In the US, consumers are turning into slaves. I have gotten to the point, that anytime I see the word consumer, I
automagially read it as the word slave. It seems that the consumer instructions make more sense that way.

I bought a bag of grass seed the other day and it had a EULA on the stiching to the seed. The eula stated
"NOTICE TO CONSUMER" By opening this seed product you waive your rights to a jury trial and agree to arbitation
at the consumers expense in these states and areas...

1. We do not own real estate anymore. Ownership of land is the basis of freedom. IF anyone/corporation can prove that they
can provide more revenue then they can get the land.

2. One can not live life without credit. Try doing it and maintain an upper middle class life style. Even those who have money still
needs to have credit to have affordable insurance, and to use certain services. Credit is required to do almost everything.

3. One can not do anything without permission or being required to explain their selfs to the authorities. This is getting worse every day.

Yes, I know that a bunch of you out there will not agree with this, but I am willing to bet that those who do not agree are under the age
of 25 and have not establised a career/home yet.

Credit is now required for existence in our society. Go watch Brazil (the dark version) and get an idea where we are heading.

Re:WAKE UP!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

In the US, consumers are turning into slaves. Could you be any more clueless? Who is forcing you to consume anything you don't want to? You have the freedom to consume what you want. You're just mad because you have to take responsibility for your poor consumer choices after the fact.

Re:WAKE UP!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

..Could you be any more clueless? Who is forcing you to consume anything you don't want to? You have the freedom to consume what you want. You're just mad because you ..have to take responsibility for your poor consumer choices after the fact.

Ummmm... You have to consume to exist.

Unless you grow your own food, cook your own, produce your own energy, make everything that you use, you consume.

Somehow I doubt that you are in that category.

The problem is that the producers are forcing inferior products and/or insane terms in order to use their product.

Sure you have a choice, unless that product is gasoline, electricity, natural gas, mass media, and so on.

You may think that you have a choice but you do not.

Gasoline - unless you live in a couple of large cities in the US you have to consume some form of oil to exist.

Electricity - Lets see, how many choices do I have for electrical sources. Here in ST. Louis City - 1. Anything else beside Ameren UE is illegal. It is illegal to use the other monolpoly - Laclede Gas to power your home. Alternative electical like solar and wind is against code.

Natural Gas - Only one choice - Propane is illegal in quantities larger that 20lb tanks.

Mass Media - Very limited choices. I do not watch TV so it is not a big deal for me.

With the exception of mass media, you have to have all of the above to exist in the United States.

Crap Article

[Jack Sombra]

An overly broad, alarmist and shrill summary using probably the worst possible example out there

Let's get a few things straight

WoW Glider was specifically designed to break the rules of WOW (rules put in place to make the game fair and thus enjoyable to everybody)

The makers of WoW glider were making money by selling this bot tool, or more accurately they were making money by screwing up wow and other "players" enjoyment, enjoyment they paid blizzard for

Blizzard are trying to use any possible means in the courts to get them to stop as they refused to stop otherwise

There are many arguments/debates against MMO ToC's, the spy tools the makers use to police their games and the rights of the users but to try to start a debate using the WoW glider case as a launch pad for your argument is just pretty much guaranteeing you lose from the get go as wow glider case is pretty much indefensible for any "legal" player of MMO's

Re:Crap Article

[Anonymous Coward]

First off, I'm a WoW fan. Been at it a year+ and spend a good deal of time online when i'm not working. I hate bot spam. I have, however, bought gold a long while ago as I was working on my first toon.

That said, I can see why blizzard is freaking out. A Big Corporation (tm) can't possibly move as fast as a small team (or an individual) of developers. It wouldn't be a major feat to stay ahead of warden checks and hash updates. If bots become prevalant and blizzard can't remove them...well...you can expect WoW to die off.

They're sueing to protect their business in a fashion very similar to the RIAA. The big difference is they're looking for a loophole to try to make glider 'illegal' while the RIAA, arguably, is the 'victim' of copyright violations on a regular basis.

Their TOS is not LAW. There is a fair amount of legal precedent that makes click-through's difficult, if not impossible, to truly enforce in court. Besides that, the author of Glider isn't trying to play WOW. He is selling a piece of software that works in conjunction with blizzard's software. Yes, it makes the software work for an unintended purpose. Tough noogies.

There is no legal precedent that I can think of that requires you to use something - be it software or a physical item - for it's intended purpose. Honda wants to sue me because I turned my prius into a gas-guzzling drag car? Or into a mobile flowerbed? Or into an electricity generator for a third world country? Erm....no. Does microsoft get to sue me when I got windows to boot on a MAC? You can bet they didn't intend that. How about when I use a compilier to make a virus? Or a copy of software xyz to look for bugs to exploit?

You can't sue (and win - hopefully) because someone doesn't play nice and do what you wanted them to. In the case of physical property, it's mine and i'll do what i want. In the case of IP, it's mine to use (fair use) and i'll do what i want that doesn't involve re-distribution of any part of your software.

C'mon - if they rule that you can't write software to work with another app then the whole software industry is doomed. It doesn't matter if it's "good" software like excel plug-ins or "bad" software like game cheats. If you go down this road, who decides what's good or bad? The origional software company? God, don't open that can of worms - give the power of law to individual companies? Great.

Re:Crap Article

[MeanderingMind]

I have to disagree with the RIAA comparison. Blizzard would have to be going after the individual players responsible for botting rather than the root of the actual program for that to be a fair analogy.

That and they aren't being extortionists. They're trying to shut down the program first and foremost.

Vote with your money

[dekkerdreyer]

If you don't like it, don't play. Blizzard gets away with this because people pay money to keep playing the game. Thus, they're voting, with their money, to keep these kinds of activities alive. It's their software, and you enter into all kinds of agreements by using it.

So I repeat; If you don't like it, don't play. ... and take a shower since you're getting up anyways.

Re:Vote with your money

[C0rinthian]

This is an interesting case, in that most players of WoW will completely back what Blizzard is trying to accomplish. We don't like bots, and we don't like the people that make them. We support Blizzard trying to shut Glide down, because it's only purpose is to detract from the game we pay to play.

However, many of us will disagree on the specifics of Blizzards case. (Copyright infringement) That part is what most of us debate. We agree with the ends, but are discussing the legitimacy of the means.

Blankety blank

[dino213b]

Quoting an existing software description:

"_________ sits passively and waits for ______________ packets
to pass by on the ethernet card. It rebuilds the data stream and
displays useful information about the data being sent between
client and server."

So, nearly a hardware-isolated implementation (think ethereal). What's Blizzard going to do when there is no programmatic link between WoW client, their server and cheating utility? Who or what will be scapegoated?

Gold farming

[jlebrech]

They should also monitor any unusual gold transfers thru the postal system in which players have never met.

For example I could send gold to another Guild member, an IRL friend (which i might have to prove i am), or someone ive been in a dungeon with. or any alt character.
Those would be ok, but any "random" movements should be questioned.

Or what about havin a virtual customs office when those kind of transactions occur, and have the customs office in level 50+ zones.
Obviously if you are receiving over 50 gold you should have the appropriate level to use that much gold anyway.

Then...

[EddyPearson]

Then don't play it. Its a fucking silly game anyway.

A fine line to tread

[Krinsath]

On the one hand, I do dislike invasions of privacy...even if privacy is not a concept that's technically enshrined by law as much as it is by public perception. If I want to run programs X, Y and Z on my own machine, that's my business and Blizzard has no intrinsic right to view it.

On the other, however, I can acknowledge that the rules change in a social setting. I would scream bloody murder if someone just randomly opened my laptop bag and started rummaging through it on the street, but at the same time I think nothing of letting the TSA rummage through it (and every other bag I have) when I fly. WoW is not a standalone experience and your actions do have an impact on others. Using WoWGlider is without a doubt a negative thing for the game even if it allows people who find the game "too boring" to advance. Do I think airplane security vs. in-game cheating are equivalent? No, I'm pointing out that when other people are impacted by your actions and choices, it adds a different dimension to privacy. You have to surrender a bit of privacy to be a part of a social experience or situation. You want total privacy, you stay within the walls of your own home and communicate with nothing.

As far as the case itself, I can see what they're going for with it. They're saying that a program sold to cheat at and wholly dependent on their copyrighted application is infringement...someone is making money off of their efforts, and that's what copyrights are supposed to protect. If I made something that was wholly dependent on someone else's technology and didn't give them their due, I'd expect a similar lawsuit. If he can prove that you could use WoWGlider to cheat at more than just WoW though, he might have a defense.

So you have cheaters and people who abuse privacy. While I don't consider either moral, at least I can see circumstances that privacy needs to take a backseat. Cheating though, I'm not sure I've ever come across a situation where that's moral and ok.

Re:Bots vs. anti-virus - probably wrong

[s_p_oneil]

Although I'm positive Microsoft makes pacts with other companies to screw other companies (and consumers), that's a load of crap.

Distributing a virus is against the law, which means a virus you distribute can't be protected by law, which makes it legal to reverse engineer them (which is often necessary to fight them). It's got nothing to do with Microsoft. You can reverse engineer Unix or Mac viruses to your heart's content.

An appropriate punishment

[Demena]

might be putting the experience meter into reverse.

Re:An appropriate punishment

[SatanicPuppy]

Yea. I've played games that dealt with botting that way...Where they reset you to zero on whatever you were botting.

Frankly I'm fine with that. It's not like it's costing 'em anything; time spent watching a bot level for you doesn't count.

Is this really a surprise?

[Marsala]

So, like... did you not read the EULA they force you to agree to every time there's an update?

The one that basically says, "You're paying us a monthly fee for a license to access the game, but in reality we own your characters, all the gold they have, and all their equipment". They told you up front that you have no rights and that they'll come after you (at worst) or shut down your account (at best) if you do anything they don't like. If you don't like it, stop giving them money.

Summary Incorrect

[fleck_99_99]

At risk of being repetitive here, the issue at hand is not that accessing WoW in RAM is a violation of copyright. The argument Blizzard is presenting is that:

- Loading WoW into RAM is creation of a copy.
- Your right as a user to create this RAM copy is pursuant to the ToS and EULA.
- Using cheating software violates the ToS/EULA.
- Therefore, a user no longer has the right to create the RAM copy of WoW while running WoWGlider.

Therefore, the DMCA/copyright slant is:
- WoWGlider is a tool that is defeating The Warden access control scheme with the sole use of creating a copy of WoW that infringes upon Blizzard's copyright.

This may or may not be a valid claim; the status of RAM copies of software is not entirely settled, but tends towards "it can be an infringing copy."

All of this would probably not have led to a lawsuit, except for the fact that WoWGlider is sold, for real money. Blizzard is trying to both destroy that particular cheating mechanism, and attach all of the profits made from it -- assuming the behavior is in fact ruled to be infringing.

Re:Summary Incorrect

[Todd Knarr]

Unfortunately for Blizzard, points 2 and 4 fail because of USC Title 17 Section 117 paragraph 117(a)(1). Since my right to make that copy in RAM as an essential step in running the program comes from copyright law itself, I don't have to depend on Blizzard's EULA for that right. So if Blizzard takes away that right under the EULA, I still have that right via Title 17.

That said, WoWGlider is still a violation of the ToS and EULA, and Blizzard probably does have a cause of action against the authors where the only purpose of their creation is to induce Blizzard's customers to breach their contracts with Blizzard. I don't think the WoWGlider authors have any defense against that, given that you can't make WoW interact with anything except Blizzard's servers.

Re:Summary Incorrect

[0xdeadbeef]

lol wut?

If your ownership of the copy is no longer legitimate, you aren't entitled to make additional copies for any reason.

Though I think the tortious interference claim is the one he can't possibly wiggle out off.

Re:Summary Incorrect

[Todd Knarr]

Except that I don't depend on the EULA or ToS for ownership of my copy. I depend on the Uniform Commercial Code, which gave me ownership of that copy when I forked over my cash and the store handed me my copy. This is the case for any mass-market retail consumer transaction. If you live in one of the two states that implemented the UCITA this may not be the case, but in the other 48 the UCC controls the transaction in the absence of any other contract at the time of the sale. I wasn't required to agree to the EULA at the time of the sale, so it's terms are irrelevant to ownership of the copy. And no, the term in the EULA that says I'm only receiving a license isn't relevant either, since that's not part of the UCC's terms and I didn't agree to any other terms at the time of sale.

Now, the EULA does become relevant when I connect to Blizzard's servers, since I'm required to agree to it before I'm allowed to connect. But that's tied to the use of their servers, not ownership of the copy of the software. And that's why I think Blizzard's on solid grounds for an "inducement to breach contract" suit: WoWGlider can't be used for anything at all except to breach the EULA and violate the ToS, the authors of WoWGlider can't reasonably not know this, and they market it to people specifically for that purpose. There's no need to resort to tortured misreadings of copyright law.

Re:Summary Incorrect

[0xdeadbeef]

Congratulations, you have established your ownership of a plastic disc. Maybe you'd like to mount it on your wall as art? Or perhaps listen to it in a CD player? I hear they also make great drink coasters.

Based on this document and other articles, it seems Blizzard is claiming is that the manipulation of the WoW executable is vicarious and contributory infringement. Contributory is obvious, since Glider enables the user to bypass Warden and violate the EULA, and thus all subsequent executions are unauthorized, and vicarious, because Glider-boy himself does not have authorization to copy the memory footprint of the executable, and since he can revoke the license keys of Glider, he has direct control of that program. (I'm not sure how this makes him responsible for its use, but hey, no harm in trying everything to see what sticks).

None of these copies are necessary for authorized execution of the software.

Re:Summary Incorrect

[Anonymous Coward]

And More...
Page 9: 16-20

Turbine opened pandora's box with Asheron's Call

[Shivetya]

when one of their own developers, and eventually it became policy, stated that ATTENDED combat macroing would be permitted in Asheron's Call.

They fully acknowledged that people were using bots. They even went so far as to define how and when they can be used. Now some of these provided good services to players, like bots that could make portals on demand and trade bots. Others were simply camped in locations and fought mobs 24x7. Some individuals ran as many as a dozen of these bots locking up entire dungeons to themselves.

I believed there was a collective groan from the industry the day Turbine did this. Since then bots have cursed games openly more and more as too many left AC or the debate about it in AC as being entitled to play the game however they wanted. (even if it meant not actually playing the game)

Re:It's simple

[GuyverDH]

And if I as a player have NEVER clicked agree on their EULA?
I have a cat which loves to play with this *mouse* that I can dangle in front of it. All it does is *you guessed it - does a click* when it's hit.

So, if they'd care to enforce the EULA with my cat, they are more than welcome to. However, my cat will have to pay for his own lawyer.

Add to that, the fact, that on the side of my computer, in bold print, sits a sign stating the SPLA, the Software Providers License Agreement. It basically states that any software that allows itself to be installed on this computer, declares their own EULA to be null and void. If they do not like this SPLA, they need to prevent their software from installing. Failure to prevent the software from installing implies full compliance with this SPLA.

Block user rights?

[rob1980]

You mean they're going to block your right to cancel your subscription if you don't like how they run their service? Oh, the humanity!

Blizzard RIAA?

[DeadCatX2]

Yes, cheating is bad. Boo cheaters.

So is piracy. Boo pirates.

Are cheaters bad enough to wield shakey claims of copyright infringement around? Do you understand the precedent that would be set if Blizzard's copyright claims held?

We brand the RIAA for wanting to use copyright to stamp out piracy. But, here, because Blizzard's draconic anti-cheating measures actually benefit a bunch of posters, so they don't want to brand Blizzard for using copyright to stop cheating.

I don't play WoW. If some judge's ruling with Blizzard and a WoW cheat developer sets a precedent that affects my life, I am going to be pretty pissed off.

what???... doesn't anyone see the obvious....

[waltrome]

"Blizzard is arguing that using any programs in conjunction with the World of Warcraft constitutes copyright violation" well... running it on any operating system would constitute a violation!!!! they are out of their minds!!!!

Elaboration?

[UbuntuDupe]

Remember all the crap the creators of the first x86 clone had to go through to prove that they hadn't reverse engineered it?

Can someone elaborate for the ignorant: aren't you supposed to prove that you *did* reverse engineer it, not that you didn't? Since the copyright only covers duplication of code, not duplication of functionality?

Re:Elaboration?

[s_p_oneil]

You can't call me ignorant until you've won the argument. I'm not claiming I've won, but I didn't call you ignorant either.

Everything I've read and seen on the subject claimed that the developers had to treat the x86 BIOS as a black box (black box means they can't see anything going on inside it). They could only see the inputs and outputs, and had to come up with their own logic to ensure that they got the correct outputs to go with each set of inputs. This is NOT reverse engineering. Reverse engineering is opening up the box, examining the machine code inside it, and doing something with that information.

It may not be copyright law that protects software from reverse engineering. Perhaps it is trade secret law. I am not a lawyer, but I am a software developer, and I do know that reverse engineering software (or even hardware) can get you into big trouble.

Re:Elaboration?

[UbuntuDupe]

You can't call me ignorant until you've won the argument. I'm not claiming I've won, but I didn't call you ignorant either.

Chill out: I wasn't calling you ignorant; I was calling myself (and others with the same confusion as me) ignorant.

Everything I've read and seen on the subject claimed that the developers had to treat the x86 BIOS as a black box (black box means they can't see anything going on inside it). They could only see the inputs and outputs, and had to come up with their own logic to ensure that they got the correct outputs to go with each set of inputs. This is NOT reverse engineering. Reverse engineering is opening up the box, examining the machine code inside it, and doing something with that information.

Alright, then I'm mistaken: I didn't know that looking at copyrighted code in your possession could constitute infringement, and I thought (based on the literal etymology) "reverse engineering" could refer to any attempt to reconstruct the object without the original specification.

Re:Elaboration?

[2short]

You are entirely correct. I'm not sure how to elaborate except by mocking the original poster, but I'll give it a try:

The creators of the first non-IBM PC BIOS had one team decompiling/inspecting/reverse engineering the code and writing up documents describing how it worked. Then a toatlly seperate team that never saw the original wrote a functional replacement based on those specs. This was carefully documented so they could prove they weren't copying the code, just duplicating the functionality. Similar procedures have been used in other less famous cases.

Of course, the people Blizard is complaining about certainly aren't copying the code, as they aren't even trying to make a replacement. They are trying to make their code interoperate with Blizzards, which is clearly protected, despite the undesirability of that interoperation to many.

Blizzard is probably trying to enforce some EULA deal where the right to copy the software (by installing and/or running it) is only granted if you "agree" not to reverse-engineer it. I find that legally dubious, and I'm only guessing that's the deal, because that would bring the story into the ballpark where a really flexible-minded lawyer might advance the theory with a straight face. Claiming copyright violation for looking at RAM and not copying anything is not in that ballpark.

Re:Elaboration?

[Anonymous Coward]

"You can't call me ignorant until you've won the argument. I'm not claiming I've won, but I didn't call you ignorant either."

He was calling himself ignorant. Man...

Re:Elaboration?

[NormalVisual]

The creators of the first non-IBM PC BIOS had one team decompiling/inspecting/reverse engineering the code and writing up documents describing how it worked.

Almost right. Decompiling wasn't necessary as the full x86 assembly source code for the BIOS was listed in the technical reference manual that was available to anyone for quite some time, and the comments were very complete so there wasn't any real work needed to figure out how it worked - it was just a matter of the Phoenix team writing up a functional spec that someone else would write code to.

We're in total agreement that Blizzard is completely overstepping their bounds, and WoWGlider wouldn't even exist if there was actually more real gameplay in WoW instead of having to rely so much on mindless grinding for character progression. Interestingly, as I read the EULA it's a violation for me to use my Logitech G11 keyboard, as it effectively gives me an additional 54 keys and provides the ability to generate single-key macros far beyond what the native WoW interface provides, thus allowing me to "...MODIFY OR HACK THE GAME INTERFACE, ENVIRONMENT, AND/OR EXPERIENCE IN ANY WAY NOT EXPRESSLY AUTHORIZED BY BLIZZARD..." (yes, they use caps there). It also seems that it'd be against the EULA for me to have Wireshark/Ethereal up when I was playing (I occasionally play a bit during the wait for code to compile), as that allows me to "...intercept, emulate or redirect the communication protocols used by Blizzard in any way, including without limitation through protocol emulation, tunneling, packet sniffing, modifying or adding components to the Game, use of a utility program or any other techniques now known or hereafter developed, for any purpose..."

Blizzard needs to understand that the machines WoW runs on, *don't* belong to them.

Re:Elaboration?

[2short]

"I didn't know that looking at copyrighted code in your possession could constitute infringement"

It can't. You cannot infringe on copyright except by copying something. You may not have called the other poster ignorant, but I will. He continues to be wrong about what Phoenix (the BIOS guys) did and why. One of their two teams absolutely opened up the "box", read the source code, etc. Those guys could have then gone and written their own BIOS without directly copying anything, and it would not have been infringement. But it would have been impossible to *prove* they didn't copy the code just by remembering it. So instead they wrote up their own detailed description of what the thing did, and passed that off to an entirely seperate team that wrote the new code.

Re:Elaboration?

[MeanderingMind]

While I agree that Blizzard is overstepping their bounds, I disagree that the existence of WoWGlider is purely due to the "grind". Partially perhaps, but I'd agrue that even were WoW in every way near-perfect and a work of art we would still have WoWGlider for the same reason there are services for upping your gamer score on Xbox Live.

There is a significant gamer population who only sees the end reward, and want it insantly. They don't enjoy actually playing the game, only the bragging rights. They, more than anyone else, are the ones using this tool. They want to be able to show off their high level characters because it isn't easy to get, while at the same time having an easy time of doing it.

Re:Elaboration?

[Sparr0]

If you want to duplicate the functionality, you have to treat it as a black box. If you want to make a different product that interoperates with it, then you are explicitly allowed to reverse engineer it.

USC 17 1201 (f) Reverse Engineering. - (1) Notwithstanding the provisions of subsection (a)(1)(A)[the 'DMCA' clause that forbids circumventing technological access control measures], a person who has lawfully obtained the right to use a copy of a computer program may circumvent a technological measure that effectively controls access to a particular portion of that program for the sole purpose of identifying and analyzing those elements of the program that are necessary to achieve interoperability of an independently created computer program with other programs, and that have not previously been readily available to the person engaging in the circumvention, to the extent any such acts of identification and analysis do not constitute infringement under this title.

Re:Elaboration?

[Anonymous Coward]

...intercept, emulate or redirect the communication protocols used by Blizzard in any way, including without limitation through protocol emulation, tunneling, packet sniffing, modifying or adding components to the Game, use of a utility program or any other techniques now known or hereafter developed, for any purpose...

... Umm, so I'm not allowed to NAT my packets? (Since that redirects packets from them to my public IP to the actual machine running the client)

Re:Elaboration?

[Onan]

You're correct that the burden of proof is still on the accuser. But keep in mind that the bar is much lower for civil cases than criminal cases. Criminal law requires the "beyond a reasonable doubt" level of proof of which you may be thinking: that it's an absolute certainty that the accused did commit the crime.

Civil suits generally require merely "a preponderance of the evidence". In other words, that it seems more likely that the accusation is true than that it's untrue. So the argument for proving reverse engineering could be as simple as, "It took our world-class engineers years to create this product, and this other group claims to have reimplimented it over three months in their spare time. It's much less likely that they're all savants than that they're just lying, and stole our stuff."

(I'm not suggesting that this is necessarily a good or valid argument, just that it could conceivably be enough to satisfy the lower bar of proof required by a civil suit.)

Re:Elaboration?

[Anonymous Coward]

They could only see the inputs and outputs, and had to come up with their own logic to ensure that they got the correct outputs to go with each set of inputs. This is NOT reverse engineering.

That's exactly what reverse engineering is.

Re:Elaboration?

[glitchvern]

Blizzard is probably trying to enforce some EULA deal where the right to copy the software (by installing and/or running it) is only granted if you "agree" not to reverse-engineer it. I find that legally dubious

Unfortunately, in Blizzard v. BNETD the federal district court for the Eastern District of Missouri didn't find it legally dubious. The Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the district courts opinion. EULA's are legally binding contracts in which you can waive your fair-use rights including the right to reverse-engineering. I am not sure whether that case established a need to agree to the EULA to copy the software into ram, but it is binding once you agree to it. Crazy but true.

Reverse engineering is perfectly legal!

[biscon]

Reverse engineering has always been illegal? wtf are you smoking dude?

Customers Asked For This

[thenextpresident]

What people are failing to realize is that a large number of customers have been asking for this very thing from Blizzard. For Blizzard to go after these types of sites/programs and to shut them down.

Re:It's simple

[Gr8Apes]

Actually, there's an entire slew of things that can be done to create a game wherein cheating becomes somewhat counterproductive. The thing is, it's "hard" to do so.

There's a number of issues in these games already that decrease the "fun". For instance, why are all magic users reduced to basically tender versions of slice and dicers? Don't think so? Try soloing anything without kiting and see how long you last. In the original concept of RPGs, mages were pretty much the most powerful creatures out there (for players, anyways) but were potentially extremely vulnerable. A mage could kill you instantly if they were powerful enough, but they could only do so a limited number of times in a timespan, as they expended their "energy". This left them extremely vulnerable to even a novice thief. Even at full strength, a cunning or lucky swordsman could kill a mage.

Just in case the above is too subtle, I'm discussing the intentional nerfing of characters in MMOs so they are "balanced". I don't want balanced characters. I want characters that play uniquely and have unique abilities. A fighter should be able to plow through enemies, that's what they do. Thieves/assassins should be able to sneak in and steal or assassinate a target. But these games are explicitly setup to prevent this behavior, all in the goal of creating "balanced" play. Their definition of balanced is wrong IMNSHO and creates a relatively boring game. I think Gygax created a much more balanced game, even as it allowed unbalanced play.

Re:It's simple

[C0rinthian]

Umm, they could enforce the EULA by terminating your account. Thats it. Who gives a fuck who/what clicked the button?

Are YOU going to take them to court just to reinstate a $15/mo account? Good luck with that cat defense.

Y'all are missing something

[Gorm the DBA]

Vivendi/Blizzard is claiming that the WowGlider program accesses their servers in an unauthorized fashion, and imitates their intellectual property to do so. They aren't claiming the right to tell you what you can and can't run on your PC willy-nilly. They are claiming the right to tell you what software environment they want connecting to their servers. Much like your boss requires you to have or not have certain programs running when you access their VPN (at least mine does, and if your IT department is at all security conscious it does as well)

WoW allows mods, hell, it encourages them. However, any mod that makes it so you can "play the game" without being at your PC is explicitly forbidden. They've banned users of fishing bots before. You're supposed to be playing the game by sitting at your computer, and actively killing things. Yes, it's a time sink. All recreation is. If you're not having fun with it, go and do something else.

Glider bots/farmer bots do harm those who aren't using them. They consume server resources, making the game less responsive for everyone. They tag rare mobs, denying that kill and the resulting loot to "honest" players. They mine rare resources, again denying them to "honest" players. And the effects they have on the marketplace are demonstrable. For example, about a year ago, a botter discovered a speed/teleportation hack that made it possible to farm 16-slot bags (the largest bag in the game at the time). Instantly, the auction house price on those dropped from 30-40 gold to 5 gold. And there was no longer any market for any smaller size bag, which made it difficult for aspiring tailors to sell product (their bags). Similar hacks were found for other items.

Ban em all, find the people running them, and execute kill -9's on them. I don't mean their process, I mean them.

Re:Y'all are missing something

[Anonymous Coward]

*sigh* I am both an addicted wow player and have dabbled in botting before.

Glider bots really don't hurt anyone who isnt using them. They take up the spot that I paid for and was going to use but instead decided that I would rather be outside then lvl between 10-20.

You have to assign what mobs you have to kill since each has a unique identifier and if you didnt it would try to kill npcs so unless you program it in to kill a rare mob it isnt happening.

They mine resources that if I was there I would probably mine since I had to create the path that the bot traveled and picked a path that maximized found resources which I do when I actually play the game.

The effects of this are very apparent. A computer program reached self awareness and realized how to teleport/speed hack. Suddenly the prices on the Ace card that was found in Dire maul off the prince dropped in price from 500g to 50g. *sarcasm*

Seriously you need to figure out what botting is, ie you set a path in the form of a loop which you normally run selecting certain types of mobs to kill and then leave your computer from what being a chinese farmer is, ie find bugs and exploits to maximize your gold profit per hour.

Re:Y'all are missing something

[Gorm the DBA]

You're wrong.

Your botting harmed me (well, maybe not me specifically, unless you were on my server at the given time). It certainly harmed Blizzard.

Blizzard set up WoW servers to handle a certain number of people online at a given moment, lets say a server can handle 2000 players online at once.

Blizzard accounts for servers based on an estimate of how long a given account would be on at a time. Let's say four hours in a sitting is their estimate.

So, they believe they can have one server for every (2000*6) = 12,000 accounts.

You, by sitting online for 24 hours a day, take up the resources of 6 accounts. This leads directly to more lag, queues, and an unbalanced economy.

Your unattended bot that is clearing a given area takes mobs away from other players who may need them for quests, XP, or drops.

Your actions harmed others. Deal with it.

I'm a level 70 mage

[Demena]

And I earned every point since I mostly solo. I did't mind the levelling grind too much but it is now, not pre-70 that I would really want to use a more programable interface if not a bot. I have most of my skills maxed, cooking, fishing, tailoring nearly there with engineering. Even have unarmed up. I haven't minded grinding most of that.

But at 70, as a solo player the needs for materials you have to farm is enormous. Farming the motes and leather and.... that you need to make stuff is only possible if you play one hell of a lot and that play could not be more boring. Nothing new, no challenges. It is enough to make you want to stop playing, and indeed my hours have dropped (no loss there I suppose) and I may eventually give up the subscription. Simply because I want to spend the hours playing or helping other players rather than spend endless mindless hours grinding 30 primals of water (300 of a 0.15%drop) to make a single item.

There are good arguments on both sides of the 'bot case but the support for 'bots is not just desire to cheat, it is also about desire to play.

When you throw in the privacy violations, well it is too much. Blizzard cannot guarantee that a rogue employee or two will not access and use data improperly. That is enough for me to want Warden banned let alone Blizzard losing the case.

My two cents...

[FredDC]

Personally, I play WoW on a separate windows machine which doesn't have any important and/or personal information stored on it. I only use it for playing games and such. I am pretty sure that Blizzard's Warden is not the worst privacy invading application on there, but because I know this I don't use it for anything important!

I also have a separate box which runs linux on which I keep my important and/or personal information, which can't be accessed except by me. And I don't use that machine for anything else, so I keep the risk at a minimum.

In fact, if Blizzard can ban cheaters from the game by using Warden, well... Hurray! If they start using it to collect important and personal information from the machine they won't find any on mine 'cause it's simply not there.

The bottom line, don't rely on others to respect your privacy and such, make sure you protect it yourself!

Re:DOA

[Goobermunch]

Fortunately, Blizzard isn't suing teenagers, they're suing a company that produces a piece of software, which it sells to permit said teenagers to cheat.

If you're going to go to war against a company like Blizzard, you should make sure you've paid your lawyers' retainer first. I have no pity for the folks that produce WoWGlider. They've brought this on themselves.

--AC

Re:It's simple

[ivan256]

I'd say that's a false dichotomy. You don't have to side with cheaters in order to oppose expansion of copyright.

You're right, and I fully support any technological or self-contained countermeasures that Blizzard wishes to impose. I was just pointing out the absurdity of the original poster's absolutism.

Sad

[ildon]

It's sad that people can't just either play and enjoy the game the way it's intended or simply not play. That they have to cheat, and then when Blizzard tries to protect the integrity of their game, come up with bullshit like this to try and justify their cheating. It's just a game. If you really feel you have to cheat at it, you should simply not play, because it defeats the purpose of the game. You destroy the experience not only for yourself, but you cheapen it for those around you.

It's one thing to cheat, but then to turn around and try to morally justify it like this, is just pathetic. This has nothing to do with software freedom. Blizzard is simply using the tools before them to try and protect the integrity of their game.

Re:Sad

[CowTipperGore]

It's sad that people can't just either play and enjoy the game the way it's intended or simply not play. That they have to cheat, and then when Blizzard tries to protect the integrity of their game, come up with bullshit like this to try and justify their cheating. It's just a game. If you really feel you have to cheat at it, you should simply not play, because it defeats the purpose of the game. You destroy the experience not only for yourself, but you cheapen it for those around you. I agree 110% with everything but the bolded portion.

It's one thing to cheat, but then to turn around and try to morally justify it like this, is just pathetic. This has nothing to do with software freedom. Blizzard is simply using the tools before them to try and protect the integrity of their game. This case isn't about players who cheated and were caught - Blizzard is going after the person who wrote the botting software. While I can see why they would want to do this, they are stretching the DMCA well past even its evil intentions.

Re:Sad

[ildon]

Whether you agree with Blizzard's methods or not, the person who submitted this article, and most of the people supporting it, are just people who cheat/bot or write cheats/bots who are worried that they may actually have retribution for their actions. That's really what I was describing as "sad". At least if you're going to do something, have the guts to admit you're doing it, instead of hiding behind alternate reasoning to justify it.

If you believe you have some right to cheat, just come out and say it. Don't try to mask it as some invasion of privacy or exploitation of the law to get other people behind you, even if both of those were true. Or at LEAST don't use crap that was debunked two years ago as "evidence" to support you.

Sure, cheating is bad

[Dan Stephans II]

But cheating is not the focus of why this is very scary. I'll stipulate that a) cheating in MMORPGs or any multiplayer game is bad and b) Blizzard's EULA specifically restricts cheating and they have every right to ban you.

That said, they are attempting to completely redefine how copyright works and if they are successful it will have a serious effect across the industry. They've realized that there is pretty much no way they can effectively scan users systems (which if you agree to the EULA you've agreed to) so they are attempting this legal approach which is based on dubious legal theory. If they win your ability to do pretty much anything with the software you've installed on your system (like run it) can be tangled with "protection mechanisms" that further restrict your rights to use the software. The DMCA is being abused here and THIS is the thing the OP has a problem with.

FTR, I played WoW when it first came out but their EULA was so far reaching and invasive that I cancelled my accounts after two months. With this latest effort by Blizzard to redefine copyright law I will not be buying another of their products, even if they lose this case.

Re:It's simple

[phasm42]

You imply that cheating at WoW causes Blizzard to lose money due to people being upset with cheaters and quitting. I agree this is possible. But like any clickthrough EULA, I don't think there's anything legally binding there. If they want to cheat, and the game allows them to cheat, then that's all there is to it. They're within their rights to ban them or close down their accounts, but the developers of cheating software have not done anything illegal. I particularly disagree with this bit:

tortious contract interference for soliciting people to violate the game's TOS

The developers of the cheating software are not developing the software for the sole purpose of destroying Blizzard -- the developers make money. Even if the developers didn't make money, they could claim it as a springboard to further business. Because it's not solely done for malice, but is done as a business should disqualify this from being a tort. Thus, using the law this way would simply be using the law to support your business model. Instead, they just kick-ban cheaters -- no law required.

Re:It's simple

[westlake]

Preventing cheating in an online game is not a cause worthy of limiting access to general purpose computing for.

World of Warcraft is not general purpose computing.

It is a game - and games have rules. It is a subscription service - sold under a contract of service.

If players cannot be protected from the cheat on the PC platform, developers like Blizzard will move exclusively to the tightly controlled console platform. So much for the gamer-geek's "general purpose computer."

anti-virus software working with RAM?

[Daverd]

Apparently accessing the copy of the game client in RAM using another program infringes upon their rights. Under that logic, users do not even have the right to use anti-virus software in the event that the game becomes infected.

This logic is only correct if your anti-virus software is loading the game into RAM, then modifying the copied version. I'd think that any decent anti-virus software would modify the copy of the binary that's on your hard drive.

Re:It's simple

[Ihlosi]

Because it's not solely done for malice,

So malice is okay as long as you're also making money with it ?

Re:It's simple

[phasm42]

Although I don't like things like Warden (seems kinda invasive), Blizzard is perfectly within their rights to require its use to play their game. Don't like it? Don't play.

Swarms of bots devouring everything

[Echo5ive]

Have you seen what happened when there's lots of bots around?

There's a quest in Stranglethorn Vale where you need gorilla fangs to complete a quest. When I did it it took me about two hours when it should have taken 30 minutes - since there were eight bots there running around killing all the gorillas. They didn't care about the quest, they were just interested in the experience points from farming gorillas 24/7.

THAT is how bots destroy for other players.

What about mental RAM?

[BerkeleyBull]

One of the issues here has to do with whether copies of WOW that exist only in RAM are violating copyright.

So I hear a song on the radio and it gets stuck in my head. One of two possible scenarios occurs to me:

1) The RIAA sues me for making unauthorized copies of their product and violating copyright.

2) I sue the RIAA for invasion of privacy.

BB

But you don't have the right

[Samari711]

to distribute the derivative work you've just created, which is why Blizzard is suing (among other reasons). The logic Blizzard is using is almost exactly the same logic that the FSF uses in the GPL when it comes to linking. WoWglider is useless without WoW. It has specific knowledge of what WoW.exe looks like in memory and feeds it input based on the state of the game. Anti-Virus software applies the same generic algorithm to wow.exe as it does to firefox.exe.

Re:It's simple

[phasm42]

You seem to have misread my comment. The account being terminated would be the cheater's account, not the person avoiding cheaters.

Here's a lie...

[Afecks]

When a player's investment of personal time and effort building a character can be replicated by others in a fraction of the time through automated software

Bullmotherfuckingshit! You mean to tell me that a bot some how magically speeds the game up? Just because a bot can do something longer than a human can does not change the speed at which time moves.

Then Blizzard goes on and on about protecting the value of WoW. That's good and all but that's not what copyrights are for. While profit loss may seem like a crime to those corporate sharks, trust me it isn't. Build a better game instead of suing others because they did it for you.

Re:Here's a lie...

[Ihlosi]

You mean to tell me that a bot some how magically speeds the game up? Just because a bot can do something longer than a human can does not change the speed at which time moves.

So if a bot plays seven days, 24 hours a day, it does not reach Level 60/70 faster than a human player who plays for 3 hours a day ? Because that's what you're saying.

Re:Here's a lie...

[Afecks]

No, I'm saying time moves the same for both the bot and the human. It's a simple concept.

If Blizzard is implying that it's cheating because a bot doesn't need rest, then why isn't it cheating when some people have to work 8 hours a day and others can play WoW all day long? That's a real selective rule there. Want to know why? Because they pulled it out of their ass.

Re:Here's a lie...

[MeanderingMind]

They aren't implying that at all.

Bots are considered cheating because they allow players to bypass game content. They exempt players from the rules of the game. Everyone has to deal with the time investment required to advance, except people who bot. That is unfair, and against EULA.

Re:It's simple

[SatanicPuppy]

Do you even play Wow? Characters are balanced over all in that there is no super amazing, best character ever, but individual characters have individual strengths.

At any rate, this has nothing to do with cheating.

Re:It's simple

[phasm42]

If I run a business that competes with some asshole running a business across the street, and I run a sale both to gain business and because I hate that guy, then yeah.

In WowGlider's case, I think this is irrelevant -- I don't think there's any feelings of malice against Blizzard here.

What this boils down to....

[Churla]

Blizzard knows they can ban botters because they are violating the AUP of the game which they agree to. The problem is the ones who do this to farm gold and resale (which is also against the AUP) consider this just a speedbump and accepted/expected cost of doing business. They buy a new CD key, gen a new account, and GBTW.

Blizzard wants to (or at least wants to LOOK like they want to if you listed to the conspiracy theorists) stop botting/gold farming from happening all together. The problem is they have no real way to go after the people doing it. IANAL, but the AUP and TOS are civil agreements, if you break them you're in breach of contract (depending on which Judge they get) but they can't jail you, or bring any real punishment beyond some punitive damages. They want a way to jail people for it. Which brings them to going after those who make the tools.

This looks to be a pretty flimsy case, but something that even if it's a no chance proposal they have to do in order to look like they're doing SOMETHING about it. It boils down to if you can use some type of addon component to optimize the operation of another product you purchased, and if not are the manufacturers of the addon legally liable for it's use?

To get some of the standard cliched comparisons out of the way...
Does a car manufacturer get to sue a NO2 after market company for making it's cars exceed the intended specs and usage? No. Can they void the warranty on the car? yes.

Does DirectTV get to have me thrown in jail because I pop open my TIVO and add a second hard drive to it to increase storage then patch the OS to allow for net access? No. Can they void the warranty on my Tivo and chose to disconnect my service? Yes.

One of the few good things about Trusted Computing

[AnonymousDivinity]

This is one of the few *good* things about Trusted Computing - the ability to "prove" that one is running a binary remotely, unmodified, and without interference. Not only can this stop cheaters (and possibly some viruses), but it could help distributed computation projects succeed without major risks of "result poisoning."

Maybe TC wouldn't be so bad if it worked in a separate logical "partition" of system resources - RAM, HD, etc. With proper encryption, it could be made *very* difficult to crack and could allow home users to run programs that *must* not be interfered with.

what do the teenagers have to do with it?

[Anonymous Coward]

you obviously have no idea how many adults play wow. this may be the root of the issue, actually, as the adults get bored with the "oh, i only need to kill 2,728 more of these before i level again" grinding (this is not exaggeration, and is actually a lowball figure). with this in mind, i can understand the mentality of a botter. it's against ToS and the EULA, and i would never do it, but i can understand.

then again, you could argue that if you're bored, you should find something else to do. if your entertainment dollar is not entertaining you, take your dollar somewhere else. if you got bored at a strip club, and started beating people up, what would your life expectancy be? if you got bored at the video arcade and started walking around kicking people in the shins, how long would you anticipate being allowed on the premises? if you got bored while driving and started speeding, would you be surprised when you got a ticket?

botting is cheating. this is not in doubt. this is not a gray area.

but this is also not the issue at hand. the issue at hand is that blizzard wants to make it illegal for software to look at other software running on the same machine. the base absurdity of this is quite simple, really. if they succeed, they should immediately be hit by a class-action suit for their warden software for the exact same things they are accusing wowglider of doing. if MY software can't read YOUR software's memory space, then what is YOUR software doing looking at MY software?!

they must get that hash somewhere...

completely aside, i find that wow is the best entertainment value for my dollar. my wife and i play together instead of going to movies. $30(15/month*2 people) instead of $25 per 2-hour movie. combine the cost savings of playing wow vs. watching only 2 movies per month, and then count up the 4 hours of movie for $50 vs the staggering average of 160 hours per month that we play WoW.

each.

Re:what do the teenagers have to do with it?

[MeanderingMind]

I have some understanding the mentality of a botter, but I think it's rather silly.

So we have an adult who doesn't enjoy the primary gameplay of WoW. Grinding, questing, the very fabric of the game bores them. If this were a board game, a TV show, or a book they'd simply drop it and find something else to do. That's the reasonable thing to do, if your entertainment isn't entertaining be rid of it.

Instead, they invest more time and money in and cheat.

This analysis is obviously too logical, but from that standpoint I'll repeat that the whole thing is rather silly.

Re:what do the teenagers have to do with it?

[AuMatar]

Because they like some other part of the game, such as PvP. They enjoy those aspects of the game enough to be worth spending the time and effort to get around the parts they dislike. Its no different in real life- I love owning my own house, but I still pay for a maid to come in once a month to clean it, and for someone else to mow the lawn.

Re:what do the teenagers have to do with it?

[Anonymous Coward]

You can always skip ahead while reading a book. Sheeesh, am I the only one who does this?

Re:It's simple

[Ihlosi]

Do you even play Wow? Characters are balanced over all in that there is no super amazing, best character ever, but individual characters have individual strengths.

Play a rogue, mage, warlock or hunter (especially in PvP), and then try a priest or warrior.

Why they are taking this position

[RaigetheFury]

Let me be clear in this. I'm involved heavily in banning people that "cheat" the system, "hack" the game, or try to sell me gold for US$$. Why do you play the game if you instantly want a lvl 70 character. What's the point? The fact that it takes time to get to 70 instantly means that you have better skilled players at higher levels. You want an easy game go play diablo 2.

Blizzard isn't really after you guys though. It's after all the botters that farm gold and sell it for $$. It's after the people who use the speed hacks. I have mods that instantly tell me (http://wow-en.curse-gaming.com/downloads/details/ 4150/spamsentry-anti-goldspam/). Two clicks and GM's don't. They LOVE IT. On average if get 15 a DAY and I play at most for 6 hours if at all.

It's a huge war and people are making profit off of things that diberately violate the EULA, and makes the game shitty for those of us who follow the rules. Nothing pisses me off more than watching some guy attack me and when he's about to die he zooms off at ungodly speed.

WoW has embraced the mod community like EQ2 should have. At the same time they are trying to defend everyone and while this case is stupid on their part because they won't win from the point they are taking. They are making it clear they aren't taking it lying down.

Hell they banned what 110,000 chinese farmer accounts now?

You have to look at the problems they face

1) They cannot ban IP's. You can use anonymous proxies
2) You cannot ban anonymous proxies as some of us use them without knowing
3) You cannot ban ISP's because they'll switch.
4) You cannot ban subnets because like #1... they can spoof their IP
5) Because of the above, you cannot ban "chinese" players from playing on US servers as it wouldn't stop the problem, only innocent people.
6) You cannot just ban accounts that spam out websites because many times they are compromised accounts. They spam on average 1000 people. If 1... and I mean 1 person buys gold out of that thousand... they made their money back.
7) You cannot set a server side filtering system for messages because that would be a tremendous resource hog.

So far the only solutions are client side mods. Like the one I listed above. I never see the message. Only a quick warning and it doesn't even affect my /reply. Couldn't ask for more.

They are fighting a very difficult war and are fighting it well. While this battle may be a lost cause it opens the door for legal action in the future and costs the defendent money. I wouldn't say RIAA tactics, but close to it done with good morality based decisions.

Sadly, they have to act like this...

[Anonymous Coward]

Once upon a time, Blizzard released Diablo, and created Battle.net for online multiplayer gaming. And it was hacked. Hacked to the point that everyone stopped bothering to play it.

Then Blizzard released Diablo 2, and created blizarrd server-based "Realms", in an attempt to avoid saving the character data locally. The idea was to create a hack-free environment, to add playing value to the game. But, people are smart, so it was hacked. Dupes and such now abound, making it far less interesting to play.

I don't think blizzard has the "right" to dictate whats on my computer. But I do think they have a reasonable commercial interest in protecting the integrity of their game. I'm sure the gold farmers would love a hack that lets them make endless gold to sell. The EULA is draconian, but part of why its like that is the hacks that they are constantly fighting off.

And unfortunately, the cheaters do sometimes win.

The solution:

[Ihlosi]

Require some sort of deposit (I dunno, $50 ?).

You get it back when you terminate your account. You don't if you get banned for cheating or some other breach of the EULA.

Additional advantage: It would keep some of the whiny teenager off the servers.

Maybe create a bunch of servers without this requirement, just for them.

Another approach: WHY are people cheating?

[Opportunist]

Let's look at it this way: Why are people cheating? Why are they using those programs? Generally, I've run across a lot of cheaters, and there are generally 3 kinds of cheaters.

First the "I wanna win" cheater. You find that kind usually in shooters, using aimbots, wallhacks and other tools to balance their lack of skill. Now, a cheat like that would be of little use in MMORPGs. Your toon hits or misses based on some mathematical probabilities, not your aim. At best, it could be used as some kind of "radar" to find some mobs faster, which is (unless we're talking PvP here) more something that I'll discuss with the third kind.

Then there's the item and money grabber. The person using bots to get money or items. Which basically is quite pointless in WoW, because any item you could farm alone is pretty much worthless in the long run. At best, this would be interesting for plat farmers, but not for "normal" players who'd actually like to play the game.

Which gets us to group 3, which is IMO also the group using glidebot mostly: The "get me outta the grind hell and let me finally play the game" players. And that is not only the player's fault. If a game only offers you interesting and sensible content after 2-3 months of mindless grinding, I wonder if it's worth playing.

So the suit of Blizzard is understandable: That bot "costs" them 20-30 bucks per toon a player levels, since that much longer they'd play without Blizzard having to offer them any new bones to chew on.

Re:Another approach: WHY are people cheating?

[wilsonthecat]

Or alternatively (to 3), they would have just given up and quit a long time ago, the bot has increased the amount of time they've kept playing.

Personally I think if Blizzard invested some more of its developer's time thinking up new AI or ways of interacting with monsters they might avoid this. Instead the world is one large copy+paste job and so the fact another piece of software can play the game is testament to how simplistic the game actually is. If you played the recent expansion you can see this in full effect with the new dungeons and the quest content. The graphics are nice but no innovation has actually taken place.

Re:Another approach: WHY are people cheating?

[lostboy2]

If a game only offers you interesting and sensible content after 2-3 months of mindless grinding, I wonder if it's worth playing.

For what it's worth, I like grinding.

Granted, I'm a complete, utter, total n00b, having only started playing about a month ago. So, I might change my mind in a year or so, after I've been there and done that with everything. But for now, everything is new and novel enough that I don't mind a lot of the things that other people seem to find tedious (with one exception being having to run around from place to place repeatedly).

In fact, as odd as it sounds, if it weren't for (what I think people are referring to as) the grind, I'd probably stop playing. The thing is, I generally suck at video games -- my reflexes are slow and I haven't mastered the keystroke combinations. That's probably because I don't play many games and don't own any consoles. Nevertheless, that means that it takes me awhile to figure out the controls and power combinations. This is what I use the grind for. Quest to kill 30+ quillboars? Great, I can try out some new tactics or that spell I just learned. If I was expected to know how to use every skill or spell immediately, I'd get my a$$ handed to me more often than I already do. And that wouldn't be any fun.

As it is, I've gotten one character to level 35; another to level 22, a third to level 12 and a fourth (just starting) to level 9. All in a little over one month, and I haven't found that boring at all.

If the problem is that this gets really tedious after having done it X number of times with Y number of characters, then one solution is for Blizzard to create new content so that the lower levels are just as new and novel to you as they are to me.

Along those lines, was Burning Crusade fun for long-time WoWers?

Re:Another approach: WHY are people cheating?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, but only because I had 4 real life friends around town to play with. The scripting and dialog in some of the fights later in BC is just great. I still laugh every time the leatherworker in Shattrath Lower Ciy threatens the fruit vendor. I HAVE CRUSHED AN APPLE FRUIT VENDOR! REST ASSURED IT WILL NOT BE THE LAST!

Re:Another approach: WHY are people cheating?

[Opportunist]

Well, given the amount of people who're still "enjoying" the treadmill, I'd wager that the number of people quitting would be smaller than the number of months "lost" because people skipped over the boring parts.

And yes, with innovative quests and dungeons, you can make a game a lot more interesting and make instances interesting even at lower levels. People would want to play them instead of getting past it as fast as they can. People even turn off "xp from kills" in EQ2 so they don't grow too fast past the quests.

Tells you something.

Re:It's simple

[ivan256]

Sorry, but if I can't read and write to whatever memory I want on my computer whenever I want, it's not a general purpose computer. Blizzard has to find a way to prevent cheating *without* limiting that ability through draconian laws.

Furthermore, if people *do* figure out how to cheat, the only remedy that Blizzard should have against those people is to ban them from the game. They shouldn't be allowed security through legal intimidation. If cheating loses them revenue, it's not the fault of the cheater; it's the fault of their security hole.

Re:Turbine opened pandora's box with Asheron's Cal

[illegalcortex]

Bots were old news by the time AC came along. They had been used on MUDs for years before that. And it was much easier to create a bot for a MUD considering the limited input/output mechanism.

Shouldn't less people be playing

[GregPK]

WOW, has literally changed our society. I see so many people addicted to the game and investing hundereds and hundereds of dollars into it. I wouldn't be suprised if it dropped the national IQ by 15 points and medical expenses for people with butt blisters from playing it so much. I think its time for people to realize the extent of what WOW is doing to thier lives. I've seen it breakup relationships and even prevent them from starting. People just don't leave the damn computer. Save the people, End the WOW.

Re:Shouldn't less people be playing

[Raxxon]

Change WoW for EQ or UO or MUD/MUCK or IRC... WoW is not the 'evil' that people want to claim it is. If you look hard enough you can find a way to claim that everything is bad.

Re:It's simple

[thousandinone]

"If they win, then any attempt to analyze and modify a running program would constitute copyright violation" Interestingly enough, that would also make Blizzards anti-cheating mechanisms illegal.

Not against the law...

[Anonymous Coward]

Think on it... if reverse engineering were forbidden by law, no EULA would need to forbid it. Flat out, reverse engineering is not against the law except wherein one violates the specific clauses of the DMCA (or equivalently inane law).

Blizzards right on this one.

[Nysco]

The point isn't so much that it's a violation of copyright, but it is a direct violation of the TOU and EULA. WoW is a fantastically engineered game, but keeping the game fun and balanced means that they have to keep out all of the bots and trainer programs. The glidebot does the grind part of the game for you. But the grind is part of the game. If you don't want to sit through that part, you shouldn't be playing WoW in the first place. The bot enables users to level faster than people who actually play the game the way it was intended to be played, by actually sitting at your keyboard. To bring my rant to an end...Blizzard is trying to stop any bots that play the game for you, and for VERY good reasons. I don't care if it's copyright or not, Blizzard stated that intent in their EULA and the glidebot should be grounded.

Missing the point

[saintory]

Fascinating which stories get us to really think and respond.

It would appear to me that Blizzard believes that users of WoWGlider are violating the EULA and TOU. That much seems to be agreed upon. Is it getting out of control enough that they decide the best course of action is to attack the source? This maybe why they went after MDY instead of against each person individually, as they have been doing.

Take, for example, scaling up. Say you increase the number of players from 8 Million to maybe double that, you have to take into consideration the percentages of people using a specific piece of software, like WoWGlider. If it's just 1% (bear with me here), we're talking about from 80,000 users using this to 160,000. How much time, effort and money does it take then to shut down 160,000 users? If it's anything but a linear cost then it could have an impact on the revenue generated from WoW, due to an impact on the economy within WoW and the loss of gameplay entertainment.

Even if 80,000 reprimands and punishments are doable, can you see now how it's easier to go after the source than 160,000 different accounts?

My question is, after analyzing the laws available to them and the wording of the EULA and TOU, how did they come up with this? There must be much better tactics than this. I believe they should've spent more time thinking this out before pouncing, if going after the source of the cheating is what they are really after. This would seem like quite a shortcut, and one that may backfire.

Stop wasting your time

[__aailob1448]

Telling people not to cheat because it's lame is tantamount to telling thieves not to steal because "it's wrong".

They know it harms other people and they do NOT care. No amount of words is going to change that and there is no point bothering. Cheating is a fundamental part of human nature. Maybe it's a good thing. A small amount of cheaters forces the rest of us to create protections, increase security, be more vigilant and "arm up". It makes us as a society more resilient and better prepared just as germs made us develop an immune system.

Diversity is vital to the survival of a species as anyone who's taken a biology course knows. Some of that diversity means cheaters, psychopaths, rapists and lawyers. They are a necessary evil and their contributions are vital to the very survival of the human race. They day everybody stops cheating, we should all be scared, very scared.

In conclusion, we really should be thanking cheaters for their invaluable services.

And right after we thank them, we should hang them. Afterall, if they got caught, they're weak and deserve to die.

Re:Stop wasting your time

[Anonymous Coward]

I need to consider your point of view because I've been getting pretty pissed off about how stuffed the world is, and always has been.

Reverse engineering is not illegal.

[gillbates]

Reverse engineering is not illegal.

It may be a violation of the terms of the EULA, but it is not illegal, and it is not a violation of copyright, or the DMCA. (Standard Disclaimer: IANAL).

Furthermore, I would argue that a computer owner cannot legally be stopped from looking at their own machine. For example, what if WoW was being used (surrepetitiously) to traffic child porn? Would the WoW EULA be a legal defense for the owner of the computer? That he was contractually prevented from looking at his own system, therefore he can't be liable for whatever the police find on his computer?

I don't think these arguments would hold sway in a court of law. While Blizzard does have a right to ensure that people don't use their computers to cheat, they don't have a right to prevent a user from looking at their own machine, or modifying the contents thereof.

Really, the problem is the manner in which Blizzard designed their game. Had it been built using a secure architecture from the outset, these drastic measures wouldn't be necessary. Yes, cheaters suck. But, had Blizzard followed the simple mantra, never trust the client, they wouldn't be in this fix and we could all get on with gameplay without the attendant invasion of privacy.

What next? Am I going to setup a special PC just for gaming, and use another one for all of my other, private business? As part of my work, I deal with my employer's private, confidential information. I cannot have a software program peeking in on me from time to time; it would be a breach of my duty to safeguard my employer's data.

Blizzard needs to understand that users expect their machines to be private. If their program invades this privacy, my only option is to refrain from buying it. I'll have to play other games, which would be a shame.

Oh thank heavens

[Anonymous Coward]

"I think Blizzard would let this particular circumstance slide"

Oh how nice of them. Is there any other thing they'll let me do with my computer? Or is there someone I should check with first?

That's awfully white of them to let me do that! My goodness gracious!

Re:It's simple

[SatanicPuppy]

Shadow priest? Fury warrior? Balance or Feral Druid? Enhance or Elemental Shammy? Even the Retrib Pally can be nasty, and that's fun to watch because no one ever expects the pally to be able to unleash the whoopass.

My main's a druid, and every now and again I respec back to Balance just so I can repeatedly rape rogues and other ranged types. Best spec against mages is feral...Frost nova is worthless against a druid, and blink is no better if you've got charge.

The four classes you talk about are all good pvp classes...Warriors are extremely solid in pvp if they're specced correctly, and shadow priests are pretty damn tough as well. But both of those classes are flat godlike in pve, where the other 4 are all interchangable.

I've even seen pvp spec pallies who kick ass.

But there is a certain type of person who infests the forums, and is absolutely convinced that all the people who beat them in pvp are just playing an unbeatable pvp class, and it's nothing to do with them.

Any class, with a good spec and good gear can be competitive in pvp or pve if the person running it is good. If you're a hybrid or a support class, you shouldn't expect to always rule the 1v1, because that's not your role.

Re:It's simple

[Anonymous Coward]

I think the main issue is that WowGlider is nothing without World of Warcraft. It doesn't work with an open standard interface. It can't 'do' anything on it's own. It's a parasite.

If I wrote a program (virus?) that allowed you to rig a political election. Should I be allowed to market and sell this? How long do you think it would stand up in court?

whoppies big deal

[cheekyboy]

Ok, its only a game.

Let everyone do it, then they ban everyone, where is there revenue? gone, down the toilet, really smart move.

Thats democracy for you.

Who cares what people do, if Blizzard gets a monthly fee.

Stop BEING GOD. Enjoy your revenue before you are toast.

Re:whoppies big deal

[spun]

I don't quite know where to start here.

Let everyone do it, then they ban everyone, where is there revenue? gone, down the toilet, really smart move.

Not everyone wants to do it. More people want other people not to do it than actually want to do it. If they let everyone who wants to cheat, then the much larger group of non-cheaters will leave.

Thats democracy for you.

No, that's the free market for you. Democracy is a political system, the free market is an economic system. If it were a democracy though, I guarantee you the majority would vote to ban cheaters, too.

Who cares what people do, if Blizzard gets a monthly fee.

They want their monthly revenue, and they are in a much better position than you to determine what it's going to take to keep it. Like banning cheaters.

Stop BEING GOD. Enjoy your revenue before you are toast.

They aren't BEING GOD. They are BEING OWNERS.

Re:whoppies big deal

[clesters]

I agree, If people don't like it, don't play. People who use these bots screw up the economy of the game. Prices in the auction house skyrocket and people who play the game normally can never make enough gold to compete. Never mind the fact that you get a whole lot of high level characters running around that don't know what they are doing.

thank you...

[way2trivial]

you 'splained the issue better than most here.. at least now I get it (and agree with you)

that was concise, and you deserve mod points.. I'm sitting here trying to split the hairs and figure this out.

Blizzard is using copyright laws when they should be using terms of use rules... perfect.. thank you.

Re:thank you...

[ajakk]

Their terms of use is a contract that is granting you the rights to use their copyrighted product. The reason that Blizzard can impose terms of use is because of their legal rights in their product. Thus, when you violate their terms of use, you lose any rights you have to use their product. Thus, they can sue you for copyright infringement.

Re:thank you...

[drinkypoo]

Their terms of use is a contract that is granting you the rights to use their copyrighted product.

No, it is not. It's not a contract, because I didn't sign it and I didn't have the ability to see it before I purchased the product.

The instantiation of the product which I purchased is covered by first sale law. I have a legal right to resell it.

As a copyrighted work it is also controlled by the DMCA, which protects my right to reverse engineering for the purposes of interoperability, which is precisely what has gone on here.

Re:thank you...

[Tantor12]

BUT.. Blizzard gives you 30 days to return the product for a full refund if you decide not to agree with the terms of the EULA/TOS. And in the BNet case, the state court and US court of appeals determined that Blizzard EULA constitutes a valid enforcable contract.

Re:thank you...

[drinkypoo]

And in the BNet case, the state court and US court of appeals determined that Blizzard EULA constitutes a valid enforcable contract.

That is kind of true. As per an EFF press release (biased source, but not given to lying) "The court held that the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) prohibited the reverse engineering needed to create the program and that "click-wrap" and "browse-wrap" licenses are enforceable to prevent reverse engineering."

The fact is that the DMCA contains text intended to protect reverse engineering: "Notwithstanding the provisions of subsection (a)(1)(A), a person who has lawfully obtained the right to use a copy of a computer program may circumvent a technological measure that effectively controls access to a particular portion of that program for the sole purpose of identifying and analyzing those elements of the program that are necessary to achieve interoperability of an independently created computer program with other programs, and that have not previously been readily available to the person engaging in the circumvention, to the extent any such acts of identification and analysis do not constitute infringement under this title." The act goes on to say specifically that you may utilize technological means to defeat such protections, and that you may disseminate information gained through reverse engineering for the purposes of interoperability.

In other words, the judge acted in direct contravention of the DMCA in delivering that decision. It is plainly and simply a bad decision, and you don't even have to be a lawyer to understand the DMCA sufficiently to make that analysis.

Using the DMCA to prevent distribution of a tool to strip CSS is an example of proper application of the law (as bad as the law is, this is something the DMCA is for.) Using it to prevent reverse engineering for the purpose of interoperability is precisely the opposite of what was intended to happen, and the judge should be stripped of his robes. Period.

Re:thank you...

[Tantor12]

"obtained the right to use a copy of a computer program" They never obtained the right to use the copy of the computer program in the first place so the judge ruled correctly... and in the BNet case, they reverse engineered the software specifically to circumvent the use of a CD key that Blizzard was using to validate that users were using legal copies of their client. Now the problem with the WoWGlider case is that WoWGlider loads a secondary copy of the client into its own memory space so that it can limit what Blizzards copyright validation / cheat protection program does on the host computer.. And then there is the issue of whether or not WoWGlider is a legitimate use of the reverse engineering provisions of DMCA.. is it beneficial or detrimental which is what the court will probabily pay the most attention to.

Re:thank you...

[drinkypoo]

"obtained the right to use a copy of a computer program" They never obtained the right to use the copy of the computer program in the first place so the judge ruled correctly...

I don't recall there ever being a claim that they were using an illegally acquired copy of the software. Are you arguing that the EULA prohibits transfer? Because first sale law explicitly protects it.

and in the BNet case, they reverse engineered the software specifically to circumvent the use of a CD key that Blizzard was using to validate that users were using legal copies of their client.

That is necessary for the purposes of interoperability, because the free server cannot reasonably verify these keys, because Blizzard does not provide that functionality.

Re:thank you...

[Tantor12]

Right of first sale never applies because you never actually purchased the software... you only purchase a license to use it under explicit terms (held up in court). And if you didnt know this when you purchased it, the installation tells you and you are able to return the box for up to 30 days for a full refund.

"Unusual Gold Transfers"?

[tweak4]

But there are so many situations that could trigger a false positive... Back in my EQ days, it was fairly common for uber-level characters that were leaving the game to dump their treasures on random low-level characters.
When I first started WoW, I joined up on a server where some guys I work with already had level 60 (max at the time) characters. I told them my toon's name, and they sent me a healthy chunk of gold. Likewise, after I hit 60, a friend of mine started on the same server, and I passed a sizable chunk of gold on to him. It may not be within the "spirit" of the game, but it's certainly not against any of the rules.
You even said that sending gold to alts is ok - how about alts on other accounts? There are quite a few people that multi-box. What about guild mules/banks?
The point is, there is no way to set up black & white logic that could trap gold transfers and decide which are legit and which are not- there are just too many other factors.

Re:"Unusual Gold Transfers"?

[jlebrech]

Maybe a postage limit could apply, so you would have to open the trade screen to give above say 10 gold.

Usually if your friend joins, you would meet up anyway so it wouldnt be much of a be deal.

If i was quiting the game there would be no way i would give all my gold to anyone below level 30. Theres too much risk of them not liking the game and quiting and them not passing it on.

Re:It's simple

[General Wesc]

Cheating software is not a sale across the street from your competitor. Cheating software is selling 'Shoplifting from my Competitor for Dummies'. Or, if you object to the 'cheating=stealing comparison, a guide for sneaking into the cinema across the street from yours. When I hold a sale, it might hurt your business, but what I sell are not tools for illegally hurting your business.

What this comes down to is trusting the client.

[pcx]

What this all boils down to is that Blizzard wants to be able to trust the client and since that's impossible to do, they want to legislate trust, which is also impossible. Really, what it boils down to is that Blizzard, an otherwise bright and savvy company, is being the epitome of stupid by trying to do something which can't be done. Never trust the client, in games, in finance, on the web, anywhere. Sure that means extra work for your servers but if you want to run a game, a website, anything, the server simply can't trust the client and if you can't code for that well then you just friggin fail.

You'd think Blizzard, with all their Battlenet experience would have figured this all out by the time they sat down to write the very first line of WoW.

Re:What this comes down to is trusting the client.

[Rallion]

AFAIK, the WoW servers DON'T trust the client. This isn't about fraudulent data being sent. It's just about what exactly is controlling the client, which is, both in practice and in theory, impossible to determine. You might be able to write advanced analysis software that could guess, but it really would only be guessing.

Re:It's simple

[General Wesc]

If cheating loses them revenue, it's not the fault of the cheater

That is possibly the dumbest, most irresponsible thing I've ever heard, and there's been some stiff competition these past few years.

it's the fault of their security hole.

Blame is a non-competitive. If ten people get together to murder someone, do they each only get one tenth the normal sentence?

No, it's allowed by the purchase

[Anonymous Coward]

Any copying required for the use of the product is covered by the purchase of said product.

An ephemeral copy (as in RAM, not stored) is not a copy as far as copyright laws are concerned.

Check your laws.

Re:No, it's allowed by the purchase

[Ihlosi]

An ephemeral copy (as in RAM, not stored) is not a copy as far as copyright laws are concerned.

Hm, I think I need 8 GB of battery-buffered RAM for my music collection ...

Re:No, it's allowed by the purchase

[KiahZero]

Check yours.

MAI Systems Corp. v. Peak Computer, Inc., 991 F.2d 511 (9th Cir. 1993). This case, and the subsequent amendment of the US Code, has prompted a whole bunch of linguistic and legal fun regarding whether software users are purchasers or licensees, and what constitutes an "intended use." Regardless, a copy in RAM is considered sufficiently "fixed" to constitute a "copy" under the meaning of the term in federal law.

Windows Installer

[Anonymous Coward]

Is it then copyright infringement to use windows installer to unpackage the game or to run the game inside Windows? Do I have to kill explorer.exe before playing? Am I allowed to talk with people on a Team Speak or Ventrilo client while I am playing with them?

What BS.

Re:It's simple

[Anonymous Coward]

You obviously don't know how to play a priest or a warrior. Warriors are one of the strongest classes in PvP and every top arena group includes at least one warrior. My group has been ranked in the top 10 3vs3 and 5vs5 arena groups since competitive arena matches came out and we always bring a warrior and occasionally bring a priest. In fact, every team that doesn't get steamrolled in the first 20 seconds has a warrior. Sure, priests and warriors might not be the strongest one on one PvP class, but in group PvP they're practically essential.

Even in one on one PvP, both warriors and priests can be very strong. Most people just don't realize this as they're either terrible players or they simply don't have the right gear or spec to compete. Both priests and warriors are very gear and spec dependent in one on one PvP.

Re:It's simple

[Anonymous Coward]

I can see the forcoming future.....

iptables module:
mod_md5rbelongtome

descr: Deny's outgoing packets that contain certain md5hash's from being sent from your computer to blizzards network.... cheater.

Admin rights

[simm1701]

My biggest issue with WoW now is that it is impossible to run it as a non priveleged user!!

It used to be that you could set the ACL equiv of chmod -R a+rw on the WoW install directory (to allow the patch to run and install) but otherwise could play the game as a normal user.

Now (unless I am very much mistaken) due to the warden software the game insists on running as an Admin.

Why may I ask should a game need root on my box just so my wife can play a computer game?????

Re:Admin rights

[Skuld-Chan]

I run wow as a non unprivileged user - all you need actually is read/write access to the game folder.

Re:Admin rights

[simm1701]

Hmmm...

I suspect my wife has reinstalled things to the wrong place then - bloody women - I really shouldn't let her even know the admin password (even though it is her pc)

Re:It's simple

[phasm42]

WowGlider is neither illegal nor stealing from Blizzard.

Who would be left?

[tkrotchko]

"It would keep some of the whiny teenager off the servers."

They don't want to kill off the business....

Hmmm

[Vexor]

I love Blizzard's games, let's face it they know how to make a good one. Unfortunatly some of their practices are more then questionable. I'm all for anticheating and whatnot. A handful of cheaters can really ruin a game (Counterstrike...) but overstating their claims is only going to catch them a lot of flak. And even more pissed off gamers. I wonder how they'll handle the other slashdot discussion about china limiting gaming to 3hours. If 3rd party programs issued by the Chinese Government blocking their game from running I've no doubt they'll consider that a violation of the EULA too.

Hold on there little bear

[Austerity Empowers]

So while at one point arguing accessing RAM copies of their game client is wrong (copyright violation!), their own software is accessing OTHER programs in RAM and sending information about them back to blizzard.

I think the logical thing to do here is to allow Blizzard to succeed, and then bankrupt itself under it's own stupidity.

This is actually a copyright issue, despite ...

[AdebisiTheGamer]

Despite what is continually repeated above, the case can easily be made by Blizzard that this bot product is a derivative work, and therefor Blizzard owns the copyright on the bot program, not the creator. You may not agree with that assessment, but you must agree it is certainly a legally valid arguement that likely should be decided in court if the parties cannot reach a settlement on their own.

Re:This is actually a copyright issue, despite ...

[Todd Knarr]

Somewhat wrong. Blizzard does not own the copyright on derivative works, unless they meet some fairly stringent criteria for containing no original work other than Blizzard's. Derivative or not, infringing or not, the copyright on anything not written by Blizzard still belongs to the author. What the author cannot do, simply, is distribute the portion of the derivative work belonging to Blizzard without Blizzard's permission.

This has already been settled in the area of photography.

Re:It's simple

[ivan256]

There is a big difference between loss of revenue and murder.

It is the government's job to protect against murder, while the government has no business protecting profits.

Blizard's remedies to cheating should be limited to what they have direct power to enforce.

I'm sorry if cheaters spoil your fun, but there are two parties involved in that cheating, and you're only paying one of them to prevent it.

Blizzard will lose

[sofla]

Blizzard really doesn't have much of a case. The copyright infringement and DMCA is bunk, unless they manage to show that WoWGlider enables people to make unauthorized copies of WoW. Seeing as how last time I checked, WoW was a free download, I really doubt there's this sort of infringement going on.

As for the "bot destroys economy" argument. Well, I might be sympathetic to them if they also went after the gold farmers. But they don't. Or, if they didn't have a history of allowing bots like this in their games ( remember D2's Pindlebot? ). Or if they didn't design the game in such a way that it encourages and rewards farming. I think its very telling that they don't have an issue with people grinding over and over again to earn items to sell for real money, and destroy the in-game economy that way. Instead, their complaint is that the bot allows you to farm and profit without being chained to the computer. The bot still has to take the same in-game actions that a player would, so they aren't losing any subscription revenue.

The only possible valid claim Blizzard has are the violations of the EULA and TOS. Which MDY claims are unenforceable. I'm interested to see what, if anything, comes from that. MDY did not itself violate EULA or TOS, but provides a program the use of which constitutes a violation. Given that the "Tortuous Interference with Contract" seems to require that Blizzard prove "that MDY acted with improper means and motive, without economic justification, and that MDY damaged the defendants", I doubt they will win that either. I think the damages will be especially difficult to prove.

Leading headline

[Overly Critical Guy]

"Blizzard Seeks to Block User Rights, Privacy"

Now that's not a leading headline. Thanks for telling me what to think, Slashdot!

I could care less, cheating ruins the game

[Anonymous Coward]

I honestly could care less if they get all up in my system. Its a price im willing to pay to keep cheating out of the game, rampant cheating will kill the game. If you wanna cheat or dont want blizz all up in your business pick another game.

Re:But you don't have the right

[SL Baur]

WoWglider is useless without WoW. No one is disputing that.

It has specific knowledge of what WoW.exe looks like in memory and feeds it input based on the state of the game. That is incorrect, but don't bother to read the article before making stupid comments. The WoWGlider uses only published interfaces both from Blizzard on the WoW side and Microsoft on the bootstrap loader side. At least that is what they are claiming in court. Think of WoWGlider as an Expect application for WoW.

Re:It's simple

[Anonymous Coward]

If they win, then any attempt to analyze and modify a running program would constitute copyright violation. If that were the case, they would be winning a law suit that would ban the use of their own software that is used to detect such programs.

Re:It's simple

[Anonymous Coward]

It totally is too.

Buy Them, Then Make It A Feature

[ncog]

There is no way they will win a case on the basis that in-memory modification of their code is a legal violation.

This reminds me of a story. Years ago, I was involved in the development of a software product called Recalc+. The purpose of the product was to launch the user's copy of Lotus 1-2-3 and then dynamically patch 1-2-3's math routines in memory to implement code that talked to the 8087 numeric co-processor. Depending on the math function being calculated, the performance speedup was 2x to 30x. We started selling 8087 co-processor chips as bundled add-ons to the software. You'd pay $99 for Recalc+ and $300 for the chip needed to use it.

At that time unbeknownst to us, Lotus was working on an update to 1-2-3 in which a significant part of the upgrade appeal was going to be that it would support the 8087 chip directly. However, we were already selling a relatively low cost add-on that did this already. They knew they had no legal right to stop us (and keep in mind we're talking about the instigators of the "Look and Feel" lawsuits here) so they decided to make it harder for us to have our product work. They began to regularly recompile Lotus 1-2-3 so that their math routines would load into different memory locations. They did this to defeat the auto-patcher code in Recalc+. We started to find this out because customers would complain that their copy of Recalc+ wasn't working. After a little detective work, we determined that they were re-mastering Lotus 1-2-3 on a regular basis and putting different compiled builds into the market! We began to scour the country for copies of Lotus 1-2-3 with different file date stamps on the software and recompiled Recalc+ so that it would be able to detect which of the dozens of builds of Lotus 1-2-3 was installed on the customer's computer.

This cat and mouse game played out until Lotus acquired the company.

(As an interesting side note, we directly sold so many 8087 chips that we drove Intel's price down from $300 to about $100 in a matter of months.)

Re:It's simple

[Bastard of Subhumani]

the government has no business protecting profits

So if someone steals from my shop (this reduces my profits) - he can't be arrested?

OT: Sig

[IpalindromeI]

Your sig:
BSD code is free code to be used in software.
GPL code is code to be used in free software.

Although it makes the structure nice, using "free code" for the BSD case muddles the meaning. It would be more accurate to say:
BSD code is code to be freely used in software.
GPL code is code to be used in free software.

Oh please. You don't HAVE to grind

[Moraelin]

Oh please. I've yet to see any level range or class on WoW that _needs_ to grind at any point. (Outside what used to be the level 60 end-game grind. More about that one later.) Invariably there's some "but I really wanna have everything" type that's creating an imaginary grind trap for himself.

Grind... what? XP? Take it from first hand experience, there are plenty of quests and instances to get you from level 1 to 70. I can't say any of my characters ever had to start mindlessly grinding NPCs for XP.

The ones who grind there, are simply grinding because of their own "I _must_ get to level 70 _fast_" delusions. A lot of people seem to have this crazy idea that the game starts at level 70 (or previously 60), and that everything before it must be skipped as fast as possible. Guess what? That's wrong. Levels 1 to 69 are the actual game. Level 70 is where the game _ends_. That's it. You finished it. You've seen all the content. Go out, do something else, or start a new char.

So all these people who try to skip levels 1 to 69 are really skipping the whole goddamn game and content they've bought. Whether by getting power-levelled or by spending hundreds of hours mindlessly slaughtering wolves and boars, that's what it is: skipping the actual story, quests, everything that was the actual game on that DVD.

That's all that such bots do: allow you to skip the actual game. Congrats. You're now level 70, you skipped the "grind", except there's no more game for you to actually play at that point. That "grind" was the actual game, or rather a piss-poor substitute for it. You just bought a game for your bot to play. I hope you liked that bot a lot, at least, because it had the fun you were supposed to have.

And blaming it on Blizzard just takes brain-damage to whole new levels. Blizzard sure as heck didn't force them to skip 99% of the content in the game.

Grinding for money or equipment? Again, sure as heck noone forced them to. It _is_ possible to play the game without buying a new set of blue-quality equipment every 2 levels. Replacing a sword with one that does 1 DPS more won't really make you T3H UB3R-W4RR10R. Replacing a +10 int robe with a +11 int one won't make you the uber-mage.

Stick with that equipment until the upgrade is really worth the cost. Don't think in terms of "is a +11 int robe worth 10 gold." Think in terms of "do I want to pay 10 gold for a 1 point increase over what I already have?" You'll find your expenses might actually go down a helluva lot.

In fact, if you really want to, you can get to level 70 without using anything more than drops and quest rewards.

Again, people just create that illusionary trap in their own mind, and get stuck in it. They end up enacting a bad case of consumerism in an online world. They think there's some _duty_ to keep up with the Joneses, when most of the time noone will give a damn about whether your robe is 1 point weaker than the Joneses' robes. Cue farming for gold, or buying gold, just to blow it at the AH on stuff they don't even really need.

Again: not because Blizzard somehow forced them to grind, but because of something that exists only in their own head.

The exception to both, as I was saying, was the crap level 60 endgame grind. Guess what? That was after the game had actually ended. It wasn't the meat of the game, it was one last dry bone for people who didn't know when to quit. The actual game had pretty much ended, the content was over, you had already done the quests and seen the zones. All that remained was doing the same pointless raid again and again, just so you can pay Blizzard for another month.

Skipping (by grind, PL, or bot) the levels 1 to 59 just to get stuck into the MC grind was one of the most idiotic things one could do. It was akin to having a bot finish Oblivion for you, just so you can view the endgame credits again and again for 6 months straight. That stupid.

Re:Oh please. You don't HAVE to grind

[NeutronCowboy]

I take it you play on a regular server? Because on a PVP server, being level 70 and well-geared is basically a requirement for enjoying content. Anything less (certainly anything less than being 5 levels above the highest-level mob in an area) opens you up to some ugly ganking. As such - getting to high levels quickly is certainly a requirement on a PVP server.

Re:Oh please. You don't HAVE to grind

[Anonymous Coward]

Guess what? That's wrong. Levels 1 to 69 are the actual game. Level 70 is where the game _ends_.

There is an abundance of content in WoW that can only be played with a level 70 character. There are level 70 instances, arena battles, and of course the time consuming raids. I've played my current character more at max level than it took me to get there.

I'm not saying that there isn't good content before level 70. There's just a lot of really good stuff after you get there.

Re:Oh please. You don't HAVE to grind

[brkello]

I sort of agree with you, but not really. It is true that you don't have to grind to get to level 70. You don't have to grind gold to pay for your equipment and can just do quests. But there is some truth to the game beginning at 70. Before, your main progression was to complete quest to get item and xp so you can level. When you hit 70, though, this is where you have to grind to get all of your equipment. You grind out rep, instances, raids, PvP, Arena...all of it is very repetitive. Do you have to grind? Well, no, you can quit or start a new character...but to progress after 70 it is a grind. Some people find that grind fun...other don't. Simple as that.

Re:Oh please. You don't HAVE to grind

[Moraelin]

It's also not the kind of grind that a bot will automate. Which is the kind of grind I was talking about. I can see a bot automating the grinding boars and wolves to level-up, but I honestly don't think it's that trivial to write a bot to work in a 25-man instance.

From what I can tell from outside, most of these bots are trivial affairs. E.g., you can tell a bot hunter because the pet is leading, so to speak. The pet is set on aggressive, and the bot just does a "target pet, assist, attack, loot" routine ad nauseam.

It's not some really clever AI, it's just a simple loop that even partially relies on the WoW AI. Put it in a situation where it might have to deal with the unexpected (e.g., for the most trivial example: a wipe), or make informed decisions (e.g., whether or not it's your turn to need on that), and it might just fly off the hook. Or get you kicked for ninja looting.

Re:Oh please. You don't HAVE to grind

[Opportunist]

Actually true. But for me two things made the grind preferable: Low level quests are boring and repetitive (invariably of the kind "Bring A to B", "Slay X mobs" and "Slay mobs X so they drop Y and bring Z of Y back to me"). And by the time you finally got around to get that number slayed, delivered or whatever, the quest reward turns out to be 'grey' because you had to slay so many mobs, had so many auto-aggros on your way or simply didn't want to bother wasting 2 hours to travel to B and went there when I was there anyway.

In a nutshell, quests in WoW keep you from leveling up. They don't help you on your way, they take you off track.

And there is no additional benefit from the quests besides quest rewards and money. Both of which can be made more easily and faster by simple grinding.

That's the problem I have with quests in WoW. They are pointless.

Re:Oh please. You don't HAVE to grind

[Jinglehopper]

This is patently wrong. The precise reason that WOW is so successful is that it does not force its players to grind in order to level. You can level from 1-70 purely by questing, which was not possible (I've been told) in EQ, UO and the other MMOs.

The quest types may be repetitive, but to me that doesn't make them any less fun. Each quest in WOW has distinctive storytelling value and deep characterization. You're not just killing rats in teh basement because the shopowner wants you to. You're killing Spore Giants because their food supply is being stolen by a new migration of Ogres into the area, or you're collecting reagents to create a new undead plague which may or may not piss off your new allies. In short, the quests build the world. Skipping them to grind is like saying I'd rather play an FPS. Why don't you go do that and get off my server?

Plus, the scenario you describe, having items be grey because you've leveled up too much, isn't even possible. Item quality doesn't degrade with the player's level, only quests and mobs do.

Re:It's simple

[praksys]

This is not gross abuse of the law. Copyright law broadly assumes that owners can attach contractual terms to the sale of copies, and contract law broadly assumes that people can make whatever contracts they like. There are of course lots of large and small exceptions to these default positions in copyright and contract law, but most of those are the result of cases where competition, or the public good, are harmed by specific types of contracts. In this case it is hard to see what the harm is supposed to be.

If the contract said that users could not have another MMORPG installed on the same machine then the harm to competition would be obvious. If they hid a clause in the fine print saying "you owe us your first born child if you cheat" then the harm would be obvious. But in this case there is a clear public benefit from including terms that prevent players from using bots, so my guess is that the courts will look at this contract and say it's just fine. And that won't be an expansion of copyright - it will just be the default position of both copyright and contract law.

Screwing the economy...

[Anonymous Coward]

Bots, when not expressedly allowed, are a nuisance. In Blizzard's case it's pretty clear: the intent of their EULA is to make it fair for fair players. In don't play WoW, but I think this is completely normal. And people resorting to lawerish-gibberish to spit out their fallacies to defend bots are part of the problem. This is not what Blizzard wants, this is not what most players want. Most players wants fun and fairness.

In Diablo 2 you had some person using several computers to log all their bots, to automatically find objects (when it wasn't downright stealing objects on the ground using cheats in public games... Btw this is what compelled the WoW developers to try to implement an "fair loot"). Truth is: the Internet is full of lowlifes who will abuse anything they can. Fight them. All those f*cktard stealing objects in D2 now have it deep in the arse with the way WoW implements the loot. Keep it like this. The situation is obviously not perfect yet, but it's getting better.

For the bots, Blizzards could use captcha when a player may be a bot... Or just even randomly. You could have some tolerance to failed captchas. But a people failing systematically would then be flagged as a bot.

Upon noticing that some player is a bot, I'd do something very "simple": place it in a forked instance of the world. A fake server that doesn't influence the real one. That way someone using a bot would never be 100% sure it hasn't been detected as a bot. Sure after a short amount of time it could notice, but who cares... As long as it is pissing them off a little bit, it's good.

Sure, the lowlifes could find ways around this, but all in all it is getting harder for them to break havoc (the bot problem in WoW is nowhere near as serious as the stealing/killing [in hardcore, yuk]/objects duping in Diablo 2.

So, good luck Blizzard. Keep fighting these lowlifes. Make the intent even clearer. Put the emphasis on the fact that the game is meant to be fun to humans and that bots aren't welcome.

As a Player

[johnashby]

As a player I can appreciate efforts to prevent cheating in the game. But I have to say that gliders don't bother me much. The fact is that Bliizard has designed WoW to require huge amounts of farming...experience, materials, and gold. Things that should be fairly basic and not too expensive, such as a flying mount that doesn't go slower than your land-based mount, cost a ridiculous amount of money. Since there are so many other things in the endgame that can take up time, their dedication to these hamster wheels is frustrating. The game is so very good that it overcomes these things. It's just that most players struggle with the economic aspects of the game because they are based around how much time you can dedicate to miindlessly killing/mining/pulling weeds.

In essence, a glider program takes the games only limitless resource...respawning mobs...and allows players to bypass the artificial barrier of time needed to acquire basic resources. Then they can actually spend their game time PLAYING the game. For people like me that work for a living, this would be invaluable.

I do not use these programs, but I can sympathize with their use. The people that hate them the most are the hardcore 14-hour-a-day players who currently dominate the game economies. They rightfully see these applications as allowing more casual players to compete with them for materials and money. So long as the bots are used for those pruposes, I think they would be fine...but even better would be if Blizzard would allow for professions to be profitable, or maybe add interest to the bank...something that would give players another way to earn money besides going out and digging ditches.

And as a final note, I do not particularly like the use of the bots to level characters. Far too many players lack even basic playskill if they do gain every level the hard way. I won't begrudge them doing so, but it's sad for them and everyone else in a group with them. And the worst of all: doing your grind where the mobs you are killing are quest targets for other players. That's the most egregious thing of all.

User rights

[Anonymous Coward]

It seems impossible that blizzard has the power to block user rights. The fact that users will not be allowed to run anti virus software on blizzard products / WoW goes against users' protection rights. Now the countless numbers of people who play WoW daily will all be vulnerable during game play.

Blizzard -- bigger privacy threat than SOE

[Anonymous Coward]

Its ironic how Blizzard can get away with having a program that scans other programs and other protected parts of the OS, uploading anything it considers "interesting". It can (though there has been no claims that it has) riffle through memory to pull out PGP keys, login credentials, and anything else it wants.

This is something that most spyware authors would have to clean their shorts to have access to.

Then, Blizzard turns around and sues a third party company for tromping on their memory image.

If this were ANY other company, they would be sued into the ground, but thanks to the mindless fanbois, Blizz will come off unscathed.

Exile. Excommunication. Australia.

[Catharsis]

Exile has long been the most powerful tool a society can level against its citizens. The community you are a part of defines your experience in an MMO as in reality. Taking that away from a person can be a fate worse than death. In fact, Socrates chose death over exile from his beloved Athens.

World of Warcraft already bans cheaters, you might say. That works, but I think Blizzard can do better.

Instead of banning cheaters, farmers, and botters, offer them all a non-negotiable, free, one-way character transfer to a ghetto server. Think of it as Australia. This way, Blizzard still gets their monthly money, and botters can keep botting all you like, but suddenly their ill-gotten gains are not worth anything on eBay and everybody else there is a botter or shit-disturber.

Let the botters have their fun, I say. There is a certain joy in writing scripts. In my MUDding days, we used to write little scripts for all kinds of things, like navigating common routes or automating potion drinking and the like. Sure, it was frowned upon, but everybody did it anyway. So why not let these people play how they like -- just let them do it with others like them.

Perhaps the best part, from Blizzards point of view, would be that this server would be ideal for monitoring the development of new cheats and hacks. GMs could quietly monitor, log, and prepare responses to new hacks in the "snake-pit" and then trap cheaters on all the other servers.

So I say: let the cheaters play their game, and let the rest of us play ours. We can all be (mostly) happy.

-pvh

Er. Explain that again?

[stonecypher]

Blizzard is arguing that using any programs in conjunction with the World of Warcraft constitutes copyright violation. Apparently accessing the copy of the game client in RAM using another program infringes upon their rights. Under that logic, users do not even have the right to use anti-virus software in the event that the game becomes infected.

Er. How do you figure?

1. Blizzard's concern is using third party software to affect the game in play. This is to stop cheaters, people using game hacks, and so on. An anti-virus app wouldn't have any effect there.
2. If the game is infected by a virus, the user is not the one altering the game.
3. If antivirus is going after the virus, then the product isn't what Blizzard sold you.
4. These things still have to be willingly imposed. Blizzard hasn't shot anyone down for antivirus yet.
5. Under what interpretation of an antivirus program does the AV app "access" other apps in RAM? Or do you think a heuristic scan counts?

Input automation is our personal choice

[Morgaine]

It's not Blizzard's business to tell us how we are permitted to generate keystroke events on our private machines.

If we want to generate them by pressing keyboard buttons, fine, but if instead we want to use our machines' powerful capabilities to generate them for us, that's also fine. They're our computers, not Blizzard's, and their attempt to limit our use of computing resources is extremely blinkered.

If Blizzard want to apply controls, they should do so on their servers. Our machines are not theirs to control. What's more, try telling a disabled person that they can't use input automation to enable them to play the game.

The "cheating" arguments are entirely irrelevant. By that ridiculous logic, anyone who has a faster computer, a clearer monitor or a faster network than others is also "cheating", and the ever-changing evolution and progress of equipment stops dead.

Modern computers are automation engines. Live with it, Blizzard --- you can't sweep back the tide. Input automation is here to stay.

Re:Input automation is our personal choice

[CowTipperGore]

Translation: "I can't win fairly so I cheat and try to justify it. My e-peen hurts."

It's not Blizzard's business to tell us how we are permitted to generate keystroke events on our private machines.

If we want to generate them by pressing keyboard buttons, fine, but if instead we want to use our machines' powerful capabilities to generate them for us, that's also fine. They're our computers, not Blizzard's, and their attempt to limit our use of computing resources is extremely blinkered.

Simple fix - don't buy the game and stop sending them $15 every month. A game that is multiplayer ONLY and competitive requires ground rules and some means of enforcement.

If Blizzard want to apply controls, they should do so on their servers. Our machines are not theirs to control. Then get their software off it. When you clicked through that EULA, you agreed to these terms.

The "cheating" arguments are entirely irrelevant. Your need to put cheating in quotes only confirms my translation above.

By that ridiculous logic, anyone who has a faster computer, a clearer monitor or a faster network than others is also "cheating", and the ever-changing evolution and progress of equipment stops dead. I'm amazed that you managed to spell logic, given your lack of familiarity with it. When a game allows for differences such as connection speeds and computer specs, playing on a DS3 isn't cheating. OTOH, when a game clearly prohibits using botting software to automate gameplay, doing so clearly is cheating.

I'm sorry that you aren't good at this game or coping with that fact.

Re:Input automation is our personal choice

[Anonymous Coward]

The funny thing is, you didn't address a single one of the parent's points, but merely attacked the poster personally at each quote.

In terms of rational discussion, it seems you haven't grasped the basic concept.

If we were renting hardware from a games manufacturer as a delivery vehicle for their games, a restriction on what we can do with the hardware would be proper. In respect of our own personal PCs, it is not proper, and you can't fudge around that basic point regardless of any gaming issues that stem from it.

Perhaps *YOU* have handed over the rights to your hardware to Blizzard, but most of us have not. And we're going to use our hardware to the fullest extent possible.

And if you don't like it, tough. You certainly can't do anything about it.

Re:Input automation is our personal choice

[I!heartU]

Despite what you think should happen people are making money on what is actually happening.

Re:Input automation is our personal choice

[CowTipperGore]

The funny thing is, you didn't address a single one of the parent's points, but merely attacked the poster personally at each quote.

In terms of rational discussion, it seems you haven't grasped the basic concept.

Sure I did. I just didn't give the answer you like.

If we were renting hardware from a games manufacturer as a delivery vehicle for their games, a restriction on what we can do with the hardware would be proper. In respect of our own personal PCs, it is not proper, and you can't fudge around that basic point regardless of any gaming issues that stem from it. Perhaps *YOU* have handed over the rights to your hardware to Blizzard, but most of us have not. And we're going to use our hardware to the fullest extent possible. These restrictions are valid only if you decide to pay for Blizzard's product (not once, but continue to pay an additional cost every month), install it on your own personal PC, and play the game. When you do, you agree to some basic ground rules.

Playing any competitive game requires that everyone agrees to basic ground rules. If you don't like them, create your own game or don't play.

And if you don't like it, tough. You certainly can't do anything about it. I most certainly can and I have. I quit sending Blizzard my money every month and told them why. They can now decide whether the loss of me and others who expect the enforcement of basic rules are worth more to them than cheaters like you. Thus far Blizzard has decided that the appearance of caring is good enough for the average player, so they undertake some basic anti-cheating measures (like occasional bans of large numbers of accounts).

new kernel lvl iptables module: mod_md5rbelongtome

[Anonymous Coward]

Check out the new coming iptables epic module!

[mod_md5rbelongtome]

Set bonuses:
+1337 Intellect
+Privacy

Effect: Enchants your packets with +Privacy by denying outgoing packets that contain certain md5hash's from being sent from your computer to blizzards network.... cheater.

onload effect: lsmod will list this module and it will appear purple in the loaded modules listing.

Ok, no

[brkello]

It just seems like everyone on here is missing the point (or at least the ones that have been modded up are). Blizzard isn't doing this to protect itself or increase its profits or anything like that. Blizzard is doing this to protect its players. While they may not be able to win this legally, people shouldn't be angry at them for doing it.

How are they helping their players? WoW Gilder's ONLY purpose is to violate Blizzard's ToS. It doesn't have some other positive use like P2P software which can be used for both legal and illegal purposes (yes, I know the ToS is not law...but hang on). WoW Gilder is profiting off of people who buy their software and the players who use it are getting banned. Many players obviously get upset that they are banned because they didn't understand what they are doing is wrong. So all WoW Gilder is doing is hurting people. Yes, it is a person's choice to do something...but if an object is out there that is only going to hurt your customers and has no benefit, you are going to try to do something to protect them.

I understand and agree with Slashdot's view about the DMCA and copyright laws. But at a certain point you have to look at the real issue here. WoW Gilder's only purpose is to profit off of lazy players at the detriment to the people who use it and others on that server. I applaud that Blizzard is trying to protect its players from WoW Gilder even though they probably are not doing it the right way. I understand Slashdot's objection to the lawsuit...I just feel that the company is trying to do the right thing here. Really, they should just write something in their software that allows them to detect WoW Gilder better and start doing mass bannings. If they are more agressive with their bannings, WoW Gilder will die just because people would be too afraid to use it.

Re:It's simple

[asdfghjklqwertyuiop]

This is not gross abuse of the law. Copyright law broadly assumes that owners can attach contractual terms to the sale of copies, and contract law broadly assumes that people can make whatever contracts they like.

And you are broadly assuming that the people being sued here entered in to a contract with Blizzard.

so my guess is that the courts will look at this contract and say it's just fine.

Sure, maybe the contract between blizzard and a cheater (whatever one must agree to to play WoW), but Blizzard isn't suing a cheater.

Re:It's simple

[asdfghjklqwertyuiop]

World of Warcraft is not general purpose computing.

Sure it is. "General purpose computing" by definition encompasses games.

But that's not the point. If Blizzard gets their way here it will set a precedent which will have negative effects on far more than cheating in their games.

Re:WoW Glider is awesome, Taco is a faggot, FP

[Praedon]

This may very well be the reason why Blizzard started to ban but lifted said ban for the users who used Cedega to run WoW on Linux... It all makes perfect sense now. I wonder what problems they had with Warden while all that was going on.

I have one thing, and one thing only to say.

[DarkkOne]

If you don't agree to let them do this to you, don't click 'I agree' to the EULA. Seriously, it's that simple: You, as the player, give thim that right by agreeing to the EULA. You have no right to play the game, and your various rights only protect you if you do not voluntarily waive them. That's why you have the right to remain silent but if you don't they get to use what you say. And that's why Blizzard gets to protect their software if you create and use an account.

Re:I have one thing, and one thing only to say.

[Anonymous Coward]

So, if Blizzard had in the EULA a clause stating that all assets one has are signed over to them, you will still hit accept?

No contract can enforce illegal terms, and Blizzard is treading close to breaking computer trespass laws already.

WoW is just like meth... people will give up anything to play, even legal rights.

Re:I have one thing, and one thing only to say.

[DarkkOne]

No, if it said I would have to give them everything I own, I wouldn't click accept. Seriously, you have no "right" to play the game. If you don't like their terms, stand up and walk away, or convince them to change it, but don't talk about rights.

Re:It's simple

[praksys]

[blockquote]And you are broadly assuming that the people being sued here entered in to a contract with Blizzard.[/blockquote]
Where did I assume that? When you try to point out a hidden, and presumably false, assumption in an argument you need to show that the argument does in fact depend on the assumption, and that the assumption is in fact false.

Copyright and contract law both allow for cases against third parties that help or encourage people to violate copyright or breech contract. Again there are lots of exceptions, but I don't think any of them apply in this case.

Re:It's simple

[Dachannien]

Maybe I have my terminology wrong, but there's certainly some wrong being done by Glider's developers against Blizzard through interference with the contract between Blizzard and its players.

Blizzard and the player have a contract (whether you like it or not, some EULAs and clickthrough agreements have been upheld by the courts) in which, among other things, the player agrees not to use third party programs to cheat (paraphrased). A third party develops and sells a program to the player. They induce the player to cheat, which breaches the contract.

There doesn't have to be malice involved, merely intent to cause a breach of the contract. Blizzard may be able to claim intent since the Glider developers demonstrate continued efforts to cause Glider to evade the Warden software. They aren't merely selling software that happens to be usable to cheat at WoW - they're developing software specifically and solely for that purpose.

There doesn't even have to be intent, although that's a different tort. Blizzard could assert that the third party was negligent in selling the software because it was obvious that people using the software would use it to cheat (and breach their contract with Blizzard). It's a different tort, but there's still some potential for injunctive remedy to be granted here, all without resorting to copyright claims.

I ANAL, but this stuff also hasn't been tested in court AFAIK, so it will be interesting to see what happens in this case, since tortious interference is one of the things the Glider developers have sought a declaratory judgment on.

Full?

[Anonymous Coward]

the full x86 assembly source code for the BIOS was listed in the technical reference manual

... uhhh, not quite... the listing was missing a few things, enough to prevent someone from writing a full BIOS using just that code...

Re:Full?

[NormalVisual]

Such as?

Re:It's simple

[ivan256]

Here come the bad analogies.

Prosecuting theft is *not* protecting profits. It's protecting assets.

Re:It's simple

[ivan256]

There is a difference between violation of a contract (copyright license) and violation of copyright. You are talking about one, and the article summary is talking about the other.

Re:Turbine opened pandora's box with Asheron's Cal

[stewartjm]

Asheron's call is the only monthly fee MMORPG I've ever played, mainly because of their policy on client side modifications. What happens on my machine is no ones business but my own. And cheating/automation in an on-line game is nowhere near an important enough issue to think otherwise.

If you want to stop automation, make games that don't reward it. Every multiplayer game since the dawn of time that rewarded automation had automation developed for it. BBS door games(Trade Wars), MUDs, Net Trek, etc. It's not a new problem, and furthermore it is not a solveable problem, outside of administering turing tests/captchas. And even those have their limits, not to mention they're really annoying.

Turbine was the only "large" MMORPG developer to admit there was nothing they could do about it, and act accordingly. Every other developer seems to try to employ a reality distortion field and pretend the problem away as they continue to develop grind fests that make millions of dollars for gold farmers.

Re:It's simple

[asdfghjklqwertyuiop]

Where did I assume that?

"This is not gross abuse of the law."

The only way this wouldn't be a gross abuse of the law would be if Blizzard were actually suing the people that violated a contract with them, rather than this assault on computing to try and stop all cheaters.

Then again, I suppose it is the DMCA itself that is the gross abuse here.

Re:It's simple

[General Wesc]

You're doing stuff on Blizzard's servers that they expressly prohibit you from doing. If I say you can come into my house so long as you don't play loud music, and then you come into my house and play loud music, you'll get in trouble. People have a right to dictate what is done on their computers. This principle doesn't magic away when the computer is a server. Unlike the players, Blizzard never agreed to revoke control over their own machines.

Re:It's simple

[MeanderingMind]

But like any clickthrough EULA, I don't think there's anything legally binding there.

If you ever work at a large corporation you'll have to think more deeply about this.

IANAL, but I've been subject to endless ethics classes, videos etc here at my "new hire" job. Very consistantly they remind us that we can get ourselves and our company in a lot of trouble by accepting EULAs irresponsibly. If I were to produce software on a tool with a statement in its EULA that forbade producing that kind of software, I could be responsible for a forced recall on an new product. Chances are I wouldn't keep my job.

At the very least EULAs are a contract, the violation of which has consequences.

The developers of the cheating software are not developing the software for the sole purpose of destroying Blizzard -- the developers make money.

That doesn't address the problem that was brought up. The sole purpose of the software is not "destroying Blizzard". The sole purpose is, however, a direct violation of WoW's EULA. There is nothing else this software is usable for. That it makes money for its developers is irrelevant.

Question is how do they use it

[koutkeu]

I have been playing wow since early beta, and from my experience the problem is not that they have some anti-cheats program scanning your computer.
Cheating is in human nature, and every decent multiplayer game today offers some options to prevent cheaters from destroying your gaming experience.
What is considered cheating also depends on the game:
In games like starwars galaxies scripting was allowed, and you could actually do some annoying time sinking tasks while you were watching tv. In Eve-online your character is somewhat improving while you are offline. In wow however, the amount of time spent online doing stupid repetitive farming in order to gear up, get faction, get keyed, so you can attent (and be usefull) a semi-decent guild raid, is just beyond a normal person capacity. A normal person with a familly and a job, cant afford to play 5-6 hours a day, 7 days a week. While this doesnt excuse cheating it sure motivates it, since wow targets casual players, who will soon find out that it doesnt support their style of play.
Now the problem arise when blizzard's spyware flags you as cheater. Their customer support will not provide you any reason, proof, or even details about the event. I've seen people get banned for beeing hacked and striped due to an exploit of animated cursor http://kotaku.com/gaming/bbc/cursor-hackers-hit-wo w-249911.php and unless you have some way of getting the public attention http://kotaku.com/gaming/wow/wow-+-alls-well-that- ends-well-248352.php it can take 3 or more weeks to even get feedback from blizzard, come on, how hard is it to lookup logs? back in EQ1 a gm could do it on the spot.
Anyways, all this to say anti-cheats are fine, as long as they use it to resolve issues, but not just to ban users based on a automated process, without giving any customer support.

koutkeu http://www.theclawguild.com/

As far as I read it

[Anonymous Coward]

that isn't anything other than *precedent*.

It isn't actual law.

Re:As far as I read it

[KiahZero]

You're hilarious... intentionally or unintentionally.

Precedent is law. Yes, "actual law."

Re:It's simple

[General Wesc]

There is a big difference between loss of revenue and murder.

That's completely irrelevant. The point is simply that blame is non-competitive. Blame is always non-competitive.

It is the government's job to protect against murder, while the government has no business protecting profits.

I'm not saying it's their job to protect profits. What they do does protect profits, but so does banning shoplifting. (I know I shouldn't use such an analogy because now a hundred idiots are going to pop up to point out that WoWGlider isn't stealings. It isn't. I'm not saying it is.) The government has a responsibility to protect a lot of rights. I have more rights than just a right to not be murdered. I have a right to control how my property is used, and one rule Blizzard has made regarding their property is that when playing on their server, you may not use the WoWGlider. This isn't about loss of revenue; this is about basic property rights.

Look at it this way: If I say I'll let you use my computer so long as you don't use it to read Shakespearean plays, then when you use my computer to read Shakespearean plays, you're violating my rights. Even if I don't find out about it. It doesn't matter why I don't want you using it for that. Maybe I hate Shakespeare and want all knowledge of his works to die out. Maybe I jut like making arbitrary rules. Doesn't matter. So long as you're using my computer, you have to follow my rules, however stupid they may be. When you play WoW, you're using their computers, and if they want to say 'You can't name your character "Rosencrantz" or "Guildenstern" then you can't.' And if they say 'You can't use WoWGlider to control your character, you can't. Whether doing so hurts them financially is completely irrelevant.

Re:Turbine opened pandora's box with Asheron's Cal

[MeanderingMind]

I remember trying PvP in a MUD, before I was systematically wiped out by a bot. The instant it entered the room I was under attack, and it instantly followed me when I ran like crazy. It then vendored all my stuff.

I stuck to regular characters and duels after that.

Re:It's simple

[phasm42]

Blizzard is perfectly within their rights to boot you off their server, just as you can kick me out of your house. But suing my friend who wanted me to turn the volume up is not your right.

Re:It's simple

[ivan256]

What they do does protect profits, but so does banning shoplifting.

It protects profits indirectly. Giving a company additional copyrights to protect their bottom line is direct. (I broke your analogy anyway, without using the example you gave.) A more apt analogy, though less obvious, would be banning derogatory comments about the store's merchandise to other customers.

I have a right to control how my property is used, and one rule Blizzard has made regarding their property is that when playing on their server, you may not use the WoWGlider.

How does that have anything to do with copyright? You are correct. They can contractually disallow the use of this tool on their servers, but using it is not a copyright violation.

This isn't about loss of revenue; this is about basic property rights.

No matter how you look at this, that's a total load of crap. This has nothing, nothing to do with property rights.

Look at it this way: If I say I'll let you use my computer so long as you don't use it to read Shakespearean plays, then when you use my computer to read Shakespearean plays, you're violating my rights.

No, if I agree, than I'm violating your contract. Not your rights.

ANY information?

[Anonymous Coward]

> NO! Blizzard can NOT discern any information from a HASH.

If they cannot discern any information, they wouldn't bother sending it back, now, would they? It's true--they can't reverse the hash--but they can certainly compare it to a library of known hashes for any files they have a copy of or are interested in.

You know, things like the executables of other games you might play, not to mention the obvious cheat programs. And if it DOES think you're cheating, as someone else posted, it sends ALL kinds of crap back to Blizzard, unhashed--including email addresses, chats, etc.

So they way you put that is just plain wrong. While hashes are not reversible, they CAN be used to invade privacy. And the Warden is the #1 reason I'll never play WoW. I don't plan to run a bot, but that doesn't mean I allow spyware on my machine. Before that, I was seriously contemplating opening an account.

WOW players, bots, what's the difference?

[subl33t]

Really, what is the difference?
They spend how many hours a week killing things to get to a higher level so they can kill different things.
WTF does Blizzard care as long as they get their monthly fee? They could just setup a bot friendly server/land/domain whatever.

OK WOWbots, mod me down, suckers.

Re:DOA

[KevMar]

that is exactly what they are doing. Blizzard is fighting a loosing battle with wow glider and has to resort to other methods.

WoWSharp fell becuase Blizzard out smarted them. This time Blizzard is getting outsmarted and I threatning leagal fees. If the lawsuit is for more than there profit, then what do you think wow glider will do.

the WoWSharp saga was a fun one to fallow. I saw one of there developers write up what went down in the last moments.

Re:It's simple

[praksys]

Eh? The case pretty obviously involves both copyright and contract and I pretty obviously discussed both. When you "read" my comment did you actually make it to the end of the second sentence?

Another example of attacking the source

[cdrguru]

A problem that anyone using the Internet sees is that the endpoints (or the users) are just too distributed to be able to reach effectively. Because of the anonymous nature of much of what goes on, people are encouraged to do questionable or illegal things with the knowledge that it is just too distributed to ever get caught. They are at the endpoints.

So, the thinking goes that the right way to deal with this is to attack the source or the single point of contact. This means going after the supplier, the target web site or the source rather than trying to individually go after users or abusers.

If you have 100,000 machines trying a brute force attack on a bank login screen it only makes sense to change the login screen rather than trying to track down 100,000 people trying to rob the bank. If you have a server distributing a copy of AutoCAD and 10,000 people download it you don't try to sue the downloaders - you go after the owner of the server. Similarly, if you have a program whose function is to disrupt a game, a web site or whatever you don't try to go after the thousands or tens of thousands of people that are trying to use it, you go after the supplier. It is the only hope, because you just aren't going to be able to get to all the users.

Of course, the tactics vary somewhat but for the most part this is where things have evolved to. Blizzard in this case can (a) learn to live with cheaters and bots, (b) try to evolve their code so that it is impervious to this kind of thing, or (c) go after the supplier with enough resolve that other people think twice about doing this. Obviously, they are doing (c) and I would say most people would agree that (a) is the same as shutting down and saying it was nice while it lasted. Nobody really wants that, not even the cheaters.

Long term does attacking the source work? It doesn't seem to. The environment we are leading up towards would be roving bands of ninja warriors rented out to corporations for attacks on their rivals. Because legal action doesn't really cut it these days. You set up an operation with very low paid people in Romania or Russia and can pretty much get away with anything. Laws that have been in existance for a very long time, such as those making fraud, extortion and robbery crimes do not seem to apply everywhere the Internet reaches.

So how do you attack the source when the source is like The Pirate Bay? Legally, they are fine in their country and can laugh at laws elsewhere. Same thing with DDoS attacks from Russia - it's not a crime there to put online casinos out of business so they just have to pay their protection fees to keep from getting shut down.

No, while it is an obvious strategy today attacking the source long term is going to fail to have any real impact. Roving bands of ninja warriors might, though. Or figuring out a distributed electronic attack against the endpoints. Who knows? Maybe there is a secret instruction sequence that makes the processor burn up in a puff of smoke.

I used to cheat

[enjahova]

You are absolutely right, in fact you are more right than you think. Blizzard not only saw this coming, they have been evolving their game production to deal with this very issue.

Look at the progression of their games. First came Diablo I. Everything was controlled clientside, who could blame them in the Nineties when everybody who even had internet had dialup. So of course, hacking was a mater of changing data stored on your PC.

Then came Diablo II. Most of the important data for multiplayer gaming was stored on the servers. Hacking became much more interesting. Instead of changing values on your computer, you had to find ways to trick the server into changing the values. This is how most "dupes" were made (duplicating items). But another kind of hacking came about, botting. When its to hard to get something for nothing, you do the next best thing, automate the work to get something. Since D2 had a relatively simple interface there were programs that just involved scripting mouseclicks! The more interesting hacks were those that injected themself into D2's memory space and could call relevant functions. You could have an extremely efficient and 100% accurate method for getting around, killing monsters and picking up items.

Blizzard no doubt learned a lot from this. As anybody who has thought a little bit about cryptology will know, you're doomed if you can't trust the receiver of a message. So what is the answer? Make the person playing, and their client computer NOT be the receiver, make them the sender!
It works like this, as a client I tell the server what I want to do, the server then decides if this is valid, and then it tells me what it did. At no point am I as the client trusted in my actions. If this is carried out fully then all clients will be equal. Of course it is a monumental task to make such a large codebase be that safe, and exploits pop up. I believe this is where Blizzard is trying to go.

So lets say WoW gets to this point. You can no longer gain an unnatural advantage through your client. The only way you can gain an advantage is by spending more time, or spending it more efficiently. Spending time more efficiently is how many players come out on top, but spending more time on a process that can't be made more efficient just SCREAMS for a bot. Now, I know cheaters are unpopular here, but I wish to propose this question:

What happens when a WoW bot passes the turing test? Lets eliminate chatting, just the game functions. What if you make a bot, whether you have it access WoW's memory space or you have some super computer vision + automatic keyboard? At that point the method of botting becomes irrelevant.

So what do we have? We have imagined the ideal technological (and possible) scenario where cheating can only be done by automating. In this ideal scenario, copyright and memory access is irrelevant, because the way that the input is given to the server is irrelevant. In fact, in Diablo2 we had a primitive client written from scratch! The same could be done for WoW. So now that the DMCA can no longer be applied, can people really argue that we should use it?

In other words, if Blizzard really used all the technical means at its disposal it wouldn't need the law.

Just because cheaters piss you off, don't go screaming for legislation. Take it from a former cheater and pirate, banned accounts and broken copyright laws don't affect the WORST offenders, the ones responsible for most of your misery. The only way to really get rid of them is to remove the incentives.

Re:It's simple

[praksys]

There's nothing new or abusive about the idea of contributory infringement or interference with a contract. The only thing you can use this bot for is cheating and neither Blizzard nor the vast majority of their customers want cheats around. If WoWGlider had any legitimate use then it would be a different story.

Most of the shock and horror reactions to this story revolve around "what if" cases like Blizzard objecting to people using anti-virus software, or windows, or downloading porn while they play, or whatever. In most of those cases the courts probably would decide that such restrictions are anti-competitive, or not in the public interest, or sufficiently weird that a click-wrap license would not be sufficient to obtain consent.

Re:It's simple

[Anonymous Coward]

MUDs were insane fun. MUME was one of my favorites, and may even still be running (mume.pvv.org 3737) Multi Users in Middle Earth was a very complete very dedicated source of active Tolkein content in a hardcore PvP environment. None better in the day. I haven't played it since the late 80s, but last I checked it was still running.

Re:It's simple

[asdfghjklqwertyuiop]

There's nothing new or abusive about the idea of contributory infringement or interference with a contract.

Well, since wowglider isn't copying or providing a way to copy Blizzard's software, this can't be contributory copyright infringement. wowglider isn't "interfering" with the ToS contract between blizzard and the subscriber - the subscribers are breaking the contract by their own free will.

But that's not really the "shock and horror" about this... the horror is the simple concept of a software company trying to gain the right to tell other people (who have no contracts with blizzard) what kind of software they can and cannot create. The whole issue of cheating between blizzard and the subscriber. The guilty party is here is the cheater.

It is unfortunate that people produce software for cheating, but it would be far more unfortunate if Blizzard gained right to tell people what they could and could not create. I see it kind of like the right of neo-NAZI groups to produce and distribute racist literature. It is unfortunate that they do, but that's just one of the side effects of an absolute (or nearly and sadly decreasingly so) right to free speech. I'll take the hate speech over any slippery slopes into censorship.

Um.

[dan5981]

What if Blizzard actually loses? WoWGlider for all?

Could Blizzard keep banning people who used it?

Could the guy keep selling it legally?

I guess crowbars are legal, but breaking into a house isn't...

WOW Emulator

[BillGatesLoveChild]

Blizzard is probably real worried that someone will do something like this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EQEmu

Terrible is those $ub$cription$ were to dry up, eh? I'm not sure if this is real though:

http://web.archive.org/web/20050323031230/http://w owressources.free.fr/tutorial_wad_en.php
http://digg.com/gaming_news/Create_your_own_privat e_World_of_Warcraft_server_

Re:WOW Emulator

[Todd Knarr]

Possibly, but the Wiki entry notes the big reason SOE and Blizzard won't have to worry about EQEmu anytime soon: content. The draw of EQ and WoW isn't the game engine underneath the servers. It's the artwork, quest storylines, items, all the content that those engines manipulate. Coding the engine's the easy part, creating all that content is hard, time-consuming and resource-intensive. And frankly there aren't that many people who're truly good at it.

Re:WOW Emulator

[BillGatesLoveChild]

Writing a server is nothing to sneeze at either, especially without specs! Eve Online has an emulator but after much work (years?), all the developer can do is fly between planets. :( Forget massive space battles. A team tried to do a Star Wars Galaxy emulator, but it never got past the bickering stage. :( Besides EQEMU, nothing. Guess everyone else who decides to do write does it commercially. It'd be easier (and far more profitable) to write from scratch..

Funny that with the huge interest in MMPOGs there's been little open source / hobbyist activity. There are plenty of DMs/3d artists/DnD players who could provide material. Guess most people would rather be playing them that writing them. EQ is considered old hat these days, but maybe when the word gets around?

There is *some* content for EQ EMu:
http://www.shardsofdalaya.com/
http://www.projecteq.net/

Or you can just pay Blizzard their monthly fee and beat up teenagers. :)

Do they know what copyright is?

[cybrangl]

Copyright is applied to TANGIBLE medium. Once a story or idea is written or put into movie form etc. it can be copyrighted. Insisting that you have copyright to ideas, text or data that has not yet been written, or written by MY computer is simply reaching. Their program and ONLY the program is copyrightable. That is even without going into the difference about what text is original enough to be granted copyright status. I doubt very much a string on numbers and letters generated by a machine is considered an original idea.

Re:DOA

[Anonymous Coward]

http://spellbound.sourceforge.net/

Re:DOA

[Anonymous Coward]

Thanks for that link.

It would help me more if I used firefox.

Re:It's simple

[General Wesc]

No matter how you look at this, that's a total load of crap. This has nothing, nothing to do with property rights.

You're right. Blizzard's nutty copyright claim is not about property rights. (Well, I guess copyright is about IP rights.) But I'm not trying to defend their copyright claims. I merely posted to object to the claim that cheaters are blameless because cheating was technically possible, that if there's a bug, it's okay to exploit it because the bug holds any and all blame. My even bringing up WoWGlider was probably a mistake since it makes it sound like I'm being on-topic and siding with Blizzard. I don't mean to do that. I'm saying it is wrong to use WoWGlider because you agree not to when you access their gaming servers--not for copyright reasons.

No, if I agree, than I'm violating your contract. Not your rights.

I think that if you freely enter into a contract with me, then your breaking that contract violates my rights. If not, why is violating a contract wrong? It is wrong, isn't it? Your original post seems to suggest that it's not, because I didn't implement perfect security to prevent you from reading Shakespearean plays. You're not to blame, only my poor security is?

Re:It's simple

[Anonymous Coward]

Coming from someone that doesn't play online games, I imagine.

Layman's interpretation

[Gabriel_503]

Let's look at this from a layman's perspective. Say, hypothetically, you have a camera pointed at the monitor that used image recognition software to control a robotic hand gripped around a joystick. Well, this is obviously not copyright infringement because the game software is being used as it was intended to be used. The only possible argument you could make is that the game isn't actually being played by the account holder, which isn't against the EULA either, and again isn't copyright infringement.

Isn't this comparable to a software which "looks" at the data in memory, does not change or modify it, and issues commands to the game in the same way you use your keyboard to do the same?

I really don't see how this case could possible hold water as a copyright infringement case, besides getting a smooth talking lawyer to confuse and dazzle a judge into making uneducated decisions. But from my perspective, it's a much simpler debate.

I understand Blizzard wanting to keep the game fair and balanced, but I'm afraid they're just going to have to put in the effort to make that buck instead of falling back on the legal system in this one.

Bad Move Blizzard. Source Code Never Dies.

[Anonymous Coward]

Legal theory aside, suing the crap out of a lone hacker doesn't seem like a smart business decision for Blizzard to make. Assume that they succeed in using their legal muscle to crush the life out of this small, one man software shop. Let's even presume that the court awards Blizzard the intellectual property rights to Michael Donnelly's balls.

Do they really think that the source code just go away? Not a chance. Somehow, certainly not through legal channels, the source code will wind up online. Oh Blizzard, what hath thou wrought? Does nobody over there read the news?

Note to Blizzard: This is just one guy in his house. Why don't you just quietly pay him to go away and never come back? You should be riding a wave of euphoria and untold riches right now. Why risk it all by showing off your Big Evil Corporate Death Husk?

I am at the point...

[SupremoMan]

I am at a point in my WoW playing where I would welcome a ban with open arms.

Re:It's simple

[Anonymous Coward]

Cheating in WoW is one thing. Setting precident that hurts consumers is another.

It's not Blizzard's fault that some borked judicial system favors precedents over common sense.

Re:It's simple

[Bastard of Subhumani]

I'd ask for a refund on that MBA if I were you.

Re:It's simple

[GuyverDH]

A) It was a joke
B) If it wasn't, then yes - I would probably take them on and win. EULAS have been thrown out before, and in the state that I live in, it's a criminal offense to install/hide spyware with other software, period. And warden definitely matches the criteria for spyware.

Re:It's simple

[praksys]

Contributory infringement covers a lot more besides helping with the copying part of making an unauthorized copy. It can also involve providing a way to add or remove content in a way that would resu8lt in an unauthorized derivative work, and so on. Also, interference with a contract doesn't require coercion. Just offering someone an incentive to break a contract is enough.

In both cases it's the fact that WoWGlider is specific to WoW that is likely to get them into trouble. If they made a general purpose artificial agent that could play games like WoW, including some that allow bots, then they would be OK. If WoWGlider had been made solely for academic purposes (just to see if it would work etc) it would probably be OK as well. The problem is that WoWGlider has no legitimate uses and the makers are encouraging people to use it for illegitimate purposes.

The incentive for bots and farming

[Anonymous Coward]

People make bots and farm for real-world profit. Other people are willing to pay real-world money for what the botters and farmers have to offer. So, if you want to get rid of bots and farmers, you have to offer the same things they offer at a better price. Blizzard should allow people to purchase end-game characters, equipment, and in-game money. That move would destroy the market for bots and farmers and they would cease to exist. It even makes sense to do this from another perspective: some people don't want to play through the beginning content, all they want is the end-game content. If Blizzard allowed people to buy the end-game, they would not only make more money, they would also cleanse the early-game content from undesirable elements and effects due to bots and farming.

Re:It's simple

[C0rinthian]

Since it's disclosed in the license agreement you see when you install the game, is it still considered spyware? You are informed of it's presence and choose to continue installing/playing the game. It's not obfuscated. In fact it's in BOLD CAPS I believe.

But if it is a CRIMINAL offense, why havn't you reported them to the local authorities? Aren't you an accomplice to this CRIMINAL act if you fail to?

Re:It's simple

[ivan256]

I'll think about it.

Good luck suing me when I "steal" your customers.

Re:It's simple

[GuyverDH]

Really? The SPYWARE installation is disclosed pre-installation on my original Collector's edition? WOW - how prophetic of them.

I haven't re-installed WoW in over a year and a half, and no longer play.

Re:It's simple

[C0rinthian]

From the EULA

5. Consent to Monitor. WHEN RUNNING, THE GAME MAY MONITOR YOUR COMPUTER'S RANDOM ACCESS MEMORY (RAM) FOR UNAUTHORIZED THIRD PARTY PROGRAMS RUNNING CONCURRENTLY WITH THE GAME. AN UNAUTHORIZED THIRD PARTY PROGRAM AS USED HEREIN SHALL BE DEFINED AS ANY THIRD PARTY SOFTWARE, INCLUDING WITHOUT LIMITATION ANY ADDON, MOD, HACK, TRAINER, OR CHEAT, THAT IN BLIZZARD'S SOLE DETERMINATION: (i) ENABLES OR FACILITATES CHEATING OF ANY TYPE; (ii) ALLOWS USERS TO MODIFY OR HACK THE GAME INTERFACE, ENVIRONMENT, AND/OR EXPERIENCE IN ANY WAY NOT EXPRESSLY AUTHORIZED BY BLIZZARD; OR (iii) INTERCEPTS, MINES, OR OTHERWISE COLLECTS INFORMATION FROM OR THROUGH THE GAME. IN THE EVENT THAT THE GAME DETECTS AN UNAUTHORIZED THIRD PARTY PROGRAM, THE GAME MAY (a) COMMUNICATE INFORMATION BACK TO BLIZZARD, INCLUDING WITHOUT LIMITATION YOUR ACCOUNT NAME, DETAILS ABOUT THE UNAUTHORIZED THIRD PARTY PROGRAM DETECTED, AND THE TIME AND DATE THE UNAUTHORIZED THIRD PARTY PROGRAM WAS DETECTED; AND/OR (b) EXERCISE ANY OR ALL OF ITS RIGHTS UNDER THIS AGREEMENT, WITH OR WITHOUT PRIOR NOTICE TO THE USER

Re:It's simple

[asdfghjklqwertyuiop]

You may be right after all... Blizzard may have some legal ground in this assault. I'm hardly a lawyer...

It will certainly be sad day when a software company may control what software other people create. Or at least another step in that direction...

Re: Oh for crying out loud!

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh for crying out loud, it's *not* about power, it's about convenience.

You drive a car because you want to get somewhere today, not next week.

You use an Ipod because you want to listen to music on the bus or in your car, instead of being tethered to the living room.

You use a bot because you want to play the 100 odd hours of genuinely good content buried in the thousands of hours of grinding.

Yes, but...

[Moraelin]

Well, to each their own, but... then why would using a bot make it any better? Since that's what we're talking about.

1. If, to you, quests are more boring than grinding, _and_ you don't like grinding either (if you'd rather use a bot to do the grinding for you), then why play the game at all? It's not like there's much else in the game. Wouldn't it be more productive to find a game you actually like?

2. It's not like anything changes fundamentally at level 70. You're still killing mobs for loot, only now in a raid instance. If it was boring enough to use a bot before, then why isn't it still boring at level 70?

3. Ok, maybe you just have something for instances. Then it's not like there weren't instances before, if that's what floats your boat. You can start doing the Deadmines repeatedly from level 17, then move on to the Stockades, then Gnomeregan (bit of a kick in the nuts with a bad team, but, hey, it's an instance), then move on to RFK and SM, then Uldaman and ZF, and so on. (God knows that's largely what my Holy Priest did.)

Ok, so you have to get to level 17 first, but it's actually possible to get to level 17 that in 3 days. You don't have to skip to level 70 to start doing it.

DOn't cHeat

[Anonymous Coward]

.. there is no real argument other than the fact WOW Glider is a way of being unfair and a cheaters tool for something others PAY for to play... GG Blizzard has every right to do what they are doing.. this is a BS statement.

Re:It's simple

[AcidLacedPenguiN]

nothing is stopping them from creating another account. . . on top of that, it takes no time at all to get back to the point at which they were caught cheating.

Re:It's simple

[GuyverDH]

Mine always *ALWAYS* shows a blank EULA.