Slashdot Mirror
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."
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:
Bogtha Bogtha Bogtha
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).
Slashdot: where don knuth is an idiot because he cant grasp the awesome power of php
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.
"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.