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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."
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.
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
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.
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
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.
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.
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).
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(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.
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
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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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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.
The ______ Agenda
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.
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.
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.
People who think they know everything are a great annoyance to those of us who do.
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.
Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows
"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.
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