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Blizzard Wins Major Lawsuit Against Bot Developers
Captain Kirk writes "World of Warcraft owners Blizzard have won their case against the programmer who wrote Glider, Michael Donnelly. (We discussed the case here when it was filed.) Blizzard won on two arguments: first, that if a game is loaded into RAM, that can be considered an unauthorized copy of the game and as such a breach of copyright; second, that selling Glider was interfering with Blizzard's contractual relationship with its customers. The net effect? If you buy a game, you transfer rights to the game developer that they can sue you for."
While I can certainly understand blizzard's desire to control the bots, I really wish they hadn't won this case on copyright law. I'm afraid of the consequences if the RIAA get's their hands on this decision and can use it as a precedent.
doesn't every program get "loaded into RAM" at least partially at some point?
if a game is loaded into RAM, that can be considered an unauthorized copy of the game and as such a breach of copyright
Since the game must be loaded into RAM in order to play, how is it determined that this particular copy is unauthorized?
selling Glider was interfering with Blizzard's contractual relationship with its customers.
This one I could buy, but honestly, isn't that between the customers and Blizzard?
Ah, well. Expect a "Generic MMO Glider" in the near future, that will in theory work with any MMO, but just so happens to be perfectly matched to WoW. Just like the "Generic MMO Servers", which, when given a particular (contraband!) MySQL dump, and a few files off the install disks, just so happen to make an excellent WoW server.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
I'm worried someone will use this to attack reverse-engineered servers for MMO's, trainers (the legitimate ones, that is, the ones for games you play by yourself or cheat consensually with friends), cracks or many other technically useful ways of manipulating existing software.
I don't see the meaning to their 'copyright infringement' by being loaded into memory. Routers don't infringe copyrights when they buffer packets, people don't infringe copyrights by remembering what happened in a story (even reading the story in a bookstore).
I hate bots as much as anyone else, but this is a bullshit way to deal with the problem.
"Most people, I think, don't even know what a rootkit is, so why should they care about it?"
I was under the impression that loading a program into RAM in order to execute it was fair use, or otherwise a legal copy (since the program needs to be loaded into RAM to run).
Is the argument that the loading into RAM is not playing the game, and thus not authorized, when it's a bot, not a human, that's "playing the game"?
I get the impression that this case is sufficiently at odds with other decisions that there is plenty of ground for appeal.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
That's actually a reasonable position. I am not sure if it is a correct one, but it is reasonable. WoW is a subscription game with a contract and 3rd parties who interfere with that service could be sued with that position. I am not sure what damages are really done to Blizzard however. Regardless of said interference, what damages occur to Blizzard if any or to the consumer? I dunno.
Now here is where it gets ridiculous. Ludicrous. They have gone PLAID . Technically if I took my music CD, put it into a player and "copied" the information off it into "memory" I have infringed upon somebody's copyrights? Has the player, and indirectly, the manufacturer infringed upon somebody's copyrights?
To anybody that has even the most basic understanding of how technology works, that sounds downright RETARDED.
We desperately need some judges in this country that have an understanding of technology to prevent software companies like Blizzard from abusing their "intelligence". This is no different than fooling Corky out of his candy bar. Blizzard should be ashamed of themselves for espousing a position they clearly know is wrong. They are software developers for CHRIST'S SAKE!
You cannot possibly enjoy a peice of software WITHOUT loading it into memory in the first place. That is an intrinsic property of running code or "software".
Is playing some sheet music, that was legally purchased, copyright infringment by the mere act of strumming the guitar?
The whole argument is just plain lunacy. The WoW subscribers paid for the software, they pay for their subscription. They pay for Glider (or it's free, I dunno) as well. The developer of Glider is not performing copyright infringment. That is just ridiculous.
There is no legal, ethical, moral, or intelligent argument against somebody loading up multiple copies of the game inside their computer's memory.
Pathetic.
This assertion, if true, means that every single user of the software commits copyright infringement, as it _MUST_ be loaded into ram to simply execute normally.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
"the loaded-into-RAM-equals-copy argument is absolutely dumb"
Actually, there's no doubt whatsoever that being loaded into RAM would constitute a copy, but it's ludicrous to call such a copy unauthorized as it is _required_ even to just utilize the software as it was intended.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
That any time you load up a website viewing pictures that you don't hold a license to, you're "copying illegal content into your RAM", right?
This handcuff-like licensing bullshit has to stop. And stop soon. Pretty soon it's going to be illegal to look at or listen to anything, anywhere, at any time, with the way things are going...
There are mountains to cross for those that are willing.
No, most of the time, copies that you make of the program aren't "...in excess of a license."
Agree or disagree, fine - but the meat of this discussion isn't "programs are copied on execution," but "...in excess of license."
Or it could be that whenever you play the game you load at least part of it into RAM. And if you want a super-fast gaming rig, you use RAM as HD space, loading WoW fully onto there would give you a massive speed boost.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
and since a program's sole ultimate purpose is to "be run," and it must be in RAM to do so, it's a severe indictment of the judicial system that putting a (legitimate copy) of a program into RAM isn't a very simple case of "fair use."
In point of fact, as far as copyright, it is the only use.
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
Much more importantly, you're guilty of copyright infringement simply by using the product that you paid to use. Quite the precedent. It's all this nonsense about per-device licensing, except in some sort of insane micromanagement level (which I suppose is to be expected from a company that's developed as many RTS games as Blizzard). This could very well outdo the RIAA in their quest to banish everyone from listening to music while simultaneously charging everyone for every song a dozen times.
This kind of bullshit really makes me want to avoid D3 (as if not losing four years of my life wasn't reason enough).
How are sites slashdotted when nobody reads TFAs?
But that's how it will be interpreted. It doesn't matter anymore on what a court case means, but rather what it says. The USA has had a long history of interpreting various court rulings different ways to prosecute/defend and to push an agenda.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
You're misapprehending what the EULA is: by definition, it is a license to use the software (EULA = End User License Agreement). If you conform with the EULA, the 'copying into RAM' is allowed because you are doing it with permission. If you violate the EULA, the copying is not allowed and is therefore a violation of copyright.
I can't think of a very good analogy off the top of my head, but it's something like hiring someone to build a fence on your property. As long as they come on your property to build the fence, they're not trespassing. If they invite all their friends over and throw a wild kegger, they've exceeded the limited license you granted them and are now trespassing.
Not saying I agree with the court's decision -- in fact, I think allowing software companies to claim that you only purchase a 'license' as opposed to the software itself is a crock of shit -- but it does make sense if you look at it in the proper context.
The bigotry of the nonbeliever is for me nearly as funny as the bigotry of the believer. - Albert Einstein
exactly now it is possible to site this case and say anyone who runs your program by loading it into ram is violating copyright, and thus should pay you extra.
Given how long the RIAA extortion scheme has been going on by the time the mess is cleaned up it will be too late.
i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
Did ya bother to read the ruling? Of course not. I can tell by how strong your opinion is.
The judge said there is a distinction between copying while adhering to a license and copying that is not protected because the purpose was not within the terms of the license.
The license says the end user playing the game is licensed. The license does not grant copying rights to some game mod toolkit, according to the court. The user is not just loading the game and playing it in this circumstance.
Sure, there are a lot of complexities to copyright and contract law that raise all kinds of questions about this ruling, and frankly, I expect it will be heavily modified or perhaps rejected by other courts. But calling the judge retarded and the ruling lunacy says more about you than anything. You would be a lot more credible if you made some kind of intelligent argument related to the specific issues in the case. Perhaps you could quote specific excerpts from the ruling you disagreed with.
But since this is Slashdot, a place for drive-by commentary by pseudo intellectuals who shoot from the hip to support the group think agenda, I suspect you wont.
If, for example, there is a cheat to get free gold while you are not logged on - that is obviously a cheat, and you don't really have a leg to stand on.
Mine is Good
What if you have more than one license?
Not a Twitter sockpuppet... but I wish I was.
In point of fact, this is basically the same principle the GPL is founded on -- violate the terms of the license and you're committing copyright infringement. Not exact, but similar.
The key word here is an "unauthorized" copy, not any copy in RAM.
The judgment says that a copy to RAM is "unauthorized" when it is loaded alongside other code that creates an experience outside the scope of the World of Warcraft license (EULA and TOU). You're creating an unlicensed derivative work when you use such code. If you're running bots, turning WoW into nothing more than a fancy screensaver that farms resources, you're outside the scope of the TOU. Period.
This is breach of license, folks. It's explicitly forbidden in the TOU and EULA.
The court has simply ruled that if you are running a bot program, the limited license granted to the user by Blizzard forbids you to load or keep the program in RAM.
This is not the same as forbidding any copyrighted work to be loaded into RAM for licensed uses. You already have purchased a license to play your music, so if you load it into RAM to do so, you're legal. All the common legal precedents and arguments in favor of transferring it to a different device to listen to it also apply. You are allowed to listen to your music.
This ruling regarding "copy to RAM" is very narrow in scope, and was made in order to determine that WoWGlider itself is illegal to sell because it has no purpose other than to abet license violation, i.e.: It's only useful purpose is to violate the TOU, and there is no way to keep it from violating the TOU when used.
Therefore, it had to be established that loading the program with the express intent to violate the TOU or license agreement is an infringement.
I think it is, and I think it even makes sense. If you're violating your agreement, you're violating your agreement. No one should be able to sell a program whose sole purpose is breach of contract, or infringement!
So no one's going to be sued for loading WoW into RAM for any licensed purpose, but it's a necessary step towards the determination that the bot software cannot be sold.
The guy deserved what he got. He'll be lucky if damages aren't awarded, but at the very least the injunction against the sale of the program seems completely grounded in common sense and law.
There's really nothing to see here. Just people who read "copy into RAM violates copyright" and either a) misunderstood, or b) have an agenda against copyright law in general, and are being sensational and more than a bit dishonest.
--
Toro
Abusing the law to stop cheaters in your little virtual world because it's irritating you is not acceptable to me. I don't play it, so I don't care about the problem like you obviously do. I only care about how this will affect things that matter.
They ran into a judge who happened to be a casual WoW player.
Tsunami -- You can't bring a good wave down!
The enforcement of the GPL is not predicated on the idea that executing a program is the defacto creation of a copy.
This ruling is stupid, because it could lead to all sorts of infringements based on technicalities - and "technical" belongs in that word.
We now have an entire can of worms open - for example, when the program is executing and makes a copy of the stack, I now have 2 copies of certain parts, both in RAM. I quite possibly have one copy in main memory, and another copy in a disk buffer RAM cache. I may have those two copies, and a third copy of part loaded into the processor's cache. The code from RAM is being copied into the cpu for execution. When I run low on RAM, part of the program is moved back onto ANOTHER copy on the disk in the form of virtual memory. How many copies are we up to now?
This "convict you of copyright infringement using some nuance about how computers work" is insane.
Anything your computer does in the process of executing anything you get as a program should be considered fair use, as it is clearly for your personal enjoyment.
I completely sympathize with Blizzard's motives; the desire to keep WoW "clean" is a great one, and I think virtual/mmo gaming has a huge future, and some day, we'll all be joking about how ridiculously small WoW was as a game. That having been said, these things seem to have a way of snowballing. First it was shrink wrap licenses, and before long, there were shrink-wrapped textbooks showing up. First, Blizzard sues over this... the next thing you know, the RIAA is successfully proving in court that ripping a CD is copyright infringement, because format-shifting is legal, sure, but a computer putting the bits into RAM in order to format-shift them is illegal.
The breadth of this is stunning. Do Firefox or ad blockers and other privacy protecting, free software also interfere with a user's M$ contract (EULA)? How about software that replaces software when you buy a new computer? This can be interpreted in a way that threatens your control over your computer and other's ability to help you do that.
That's not quite how the ruling worked. Making a copy of something to RAM in and of itself is not considered copyright infringement. Doing so without agreeing to the terms of the End User License Agreement is.
In order for your plan to work, you would have to create an EULA that stated that making any sort of copy of the program is illegal, including copies in RAM. However, since by default YOUR program is the one doing the copying, even something like that wouldn't work. You have to rely on users making their own copy in RAM using their own tools, and the average user would not know how to do so. Sorry, but your 'worst case scenario' predatory loophole is pretty short sighted.
I'm the guy with the unpopular opinion
If you purchase something, you own it and as an owner you can do what you like with it. This is a natural freedom that exists so long as property and ownership have meaning. When someone purchases a copy of software, they may not have the legal right to redistribute it in any form, but if they purchase property, they own property. Services are not the same thing, and the right to use a service in a way that is not agreed upon is an abuse against the person providing the service.
In the case of a EULA, or at least some EULAs, the terminology is intentionally abused to imply that a purchase of property, regardless of service provided, does not give actual ownership. The intent of the EULA in this case is to provide something that is purchased (as property) but treated as a service.
It is wrong to sell property and then try to enforce its use as if it were a service and it is also wrong to agree to purchase a product with the understanding that it will be treated as a service then disregard that understanding, particularly when it is explicitly stated that you must agree to it in order to use the product.
When both parties have done something that they should not have done, the first being the seller of the software and the second being the purchaser of the software, then nobody can be said to be morally right. When both parties are morally wrong, the case should be dismissed or both parties should be punished.
The injustice of the enforcement in this case is highlighted by the lack of the court to provide a reasonable identification of exactly what wrong had been committed. I read the article and it is clear to me that the court decided to hold the buyer and user of the software to be infringing on the rights of the seller, but calling a copy of software in RAM to be improper use clearly crosses the line into using words rather than the merit of an idea as the basis of the decision. Perhaps a clear minded judge will be called upon to reconsider this judgment and clarify that while a copy of the software was being misused according to previous agreements, it is the breaking of an agreement by the people involved rather than the method of using a computer which is wrong. If such a judge were to choose to rule that "the use by Guilder was in violation of the clear intent of the agreement made between Guilder and Blizzard" then I will still believe it is ultimately unjust, but at least believe it is a reasonable application of contract law. As the current judgment stands, words, and therefore the moral codes of the laws they represent, are misapplied.
I use the terms "person" and "you" for clarity, feel free to substitute person/entity/persons/entities as you feel the need.
B) Eliminate all the stupid users. This is frowned upon by society.
Did you even read your own quote?
and that it is used in no other manner
That's the crux of it, right there.
How we know is more important than what we know.
So people can stop saying "EULAs have never been held up in court?"
Put identity in the browser.
You are allowed by the license to use one copy at a time.
Yeah, but which copy goes in RAM, which copy goes in the L2 cache, which copy goes in the L1 cache, and which copy gets loaded into the microcode decode logic?
Not to mention the game is probably copied onto the hard disk in a couple places (install and swap).
I thought other courts have said that "loading software into RAM" is an essential part of using it (not even an affirmative fair use defense, but simply a normal use).
I have karma to burn, so here's for a counterpoint:
I like it that they fight bots. As a player, bots make the game less enjoyable for me. While I think games should be built without grinding, bots provide other players with an unfair advantage, in a competitive sense. I've seen many games in which bots have destroyed the in-game economy. Where, for example, you can forget about crafting the way it was intended, because only the top 1% of craftable items sell at all, since there are so many on the market that nobody would buy anything less.
You could argue that if everyone would use bots, the playing field would be level as well. Yes, it would. It would also remove the main reason for actually playing the game, when most of it is automated. You see, maybe I would like to enjoy being just a mid-level crafter and still be able to sell my stuff? Lots of us who have jobs and wives and a real life don't have any ambitions of slugging it out with the 16-hours-a-day gamers in the top-tier PvP areas. We're quite happy with the game below level 50 (or whatever the max is), as weird as that concept might appear to some hardcore gamers who apparently consider the first 49 levels to be some kind of tutorial and a challenge to get through as quickly as possible.
But being able to enjoy gameplay at level 10 means that the stuff you can make there has to have value - for you or for others. That works when the level 20 people have better things to do with their time, and would, for example, pay the level 10s for harvesting, farming or crafting the low-level ressources they need for their level 20 stuff. If bots allow them to automatically harvest during their off time, the interplay between various levels vanishes.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
Yes how dare those evil bastards go as far as legal action to keep their game free of cheaters so that the other 10 million players can enjoy the game more!
I would have thought the point of playing a game is to play the game - in person. I haven't followed this is any detail, but to me it seems that somebody has developed a tool to circumvent the "play" part of the game; if you are playing alone on a computer at home or somewhere, one could say that this is no problem, as the only one that is cheated at the end of the day is yourself. But when you are many players together, having a few players that cheat and thereby dominate the entire thing, ruining the game for everybody else - that is an entirely different matter. For one thing, everybody else will feel they have wasted their money and the company that expected to earn money on hosting the game will lose business on it.
This, as far as I can see, is the essence of the matter - whether or not laws and contracts reflect this, I don't know, but it is why we are not allowed to cheat in any game. In a way this is also a very good illustration of the collision between "freedom" and "fairness" - I mean why should we not be allowed to cheat? Why is doping illegal in all competition sports? Why can I not, if I play chess, just ram my queen right through five rows of the opponent's defence and knock the king down? Not being allowed these things, having to follow rules, is a limitation of my freedom. In this case the freedom of one company to make money out of helping people cheat in WoW is being limited - and as far as I can see this is entirely appropriate.
Now, I'm sitting here with a strange feeling, writing this - I mean why on Earth should it be necessary to even put these things into words? But on the other hand, from the comments I see people making, and from the fact that there is even a market for a way to cheat in something as inconsequential as WoW, it seems that this is far from clear to a lot of people. And we wonder why society seems to be falling apart.
So what? VM/Wine users will be sued, too?
And if it's not against the EULA of MMOGlider to be loaded by Warden, you can bet it will be by tomorrow.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
But that's still rather worrying - it means that copying something you have bought into RAM or onto an mp3 player is illegal, unless the software/CD does that itself.
However, unless Blizzard and their lawyers are completely brain-dead, there will be some sort of presentation of the Terms of Service when you connect to their servers that requires you to explicitly agree to abide by the ToS before you can log into the game. Any rights you may have to the physical copy of the software are separate from the license you are granted to use that software connected to Blizzard's servers. The ToS for connecting to the servers would, I expect, also specify what you are and are not permitted to do with the client software when used to connect to the servers, and the use Glider makes of the Warden software would therefore be in violation of the ToS.
Under the doctrine of first sale, you own the copy of the software that you bought -- but as soon as you use that software to connect to servers operated by the company, they can put clauses in the ToS that you must agree to if you want to play the game. The ToS could specify that the end-user is required to put the software box in a glass case and genuflect toward it three times before logging in, and until the customers actually read the ToS and get sufficiently bent out of shape over it to pressure the company to remove such asshattery, they're agreeing to do so every time they click the 'I Accept' button to get past the ToS and log into the game servers, and can be prosecuted for failing to comply.
What if you have more than one license?
That's called quad-boxing. It's been determined that if you run the copy on a separate box (or virtual machine in some cases), then it's allowed.