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Blizzard Wins Major Lawsuit Against Bot Developers

Posted by kdawson on from the gliding-off-into-the-sunset dept.

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."

3 of 838 comments (clear)

  1. I was once working for a company by zonky · · Score: 5, Interesting

    who was being sued in not that dis-similar situation by a well known RTS series publisher. One of the things we were being accused of was direct copyright infringement. Apparently, we had a copy of a file named EXACTLY THE SAME as they had on their CD. Setup.exe Never underestimate the stupidity of the courts/lawyers in technical matters.

  2. Re:But wait, there's more... by m.ducharme · · Score: 5, Interesting

    What makes the copy illegal is not that it was put in ram, but the way it was put there.

    Click on the WoW executable, windows sticks a copy in RAM; that's a legal copy, per the license agreement.

    Click on the Glider executable, glider calls the WoW executable, that's an unlicensed copy of WoW and hence is infringing.

    The specific copy of WoW in your RAM is illegal not because it's a copy, but because of how it got there.

    --
    Rule of Slashdot #0: You and people like you are not representative of the larger population. - A.C.
  3. Re:Wow... by schon · · Score: 5, Interesting

    you're guilty of copyright infringement simply by using the product that you paid to use. Quite the precedent.

    It's also completely and utterly wrong, according to copyright law.

    US Title 17, section 117 explicitly states that copying a program into RAM so you can use it is not an infringement.

    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

    The judge quite clearly erred in application of this statute. IIRC the law was amended specifically because of courts ruling that copying to RAM was infringement (which the judge apparently didn't understand.)

    This is pretty much a slam-dunk appeal.