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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."
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.
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.
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.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
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.
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
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.
... that is, a current PC-based FPS. Xbox live? Sure. No cheating there (yet) and that's good.
This is why I will never, ever, play another FPS, online
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....
"All great things are simple & expressed in a single word: freedom, justice, honor, duty, mercy, hope." --Churchill
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!"
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
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.
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.
the major advances in civilization are processes which all but wreck the societies in which they occur - A.N. White
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.
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
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.
Real life is overrated.
(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
For your security, this post has been encrypted with ROT-13, twice.
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.
Fanatically anti-fanatical
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.
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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?
Apology to Ubuntu forum.
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.
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.
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.
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.
I never said I was smart, I just said I was smarter than you
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.
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.
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.
"Blizzard Seeks to Block User Rights, Privacy"
Now that's not a leading headline. Thanks for telling me what to think, Slashdot!
"Sufferin' succotash."
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.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.