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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."
Oh god, don't let the RIAA find out about this.
Look on the bright side. If loading software in memory to run it is now illegal, then it's now illegal to run Windows.
Exactly. look at how big the modding comunity is. Are we going to be busted for copyrights if the modder doesn't cut a check or get approval from the owner? What about add-ons for programs? There are plenty that add functions to MS Office,various media players,etc, does this mean only add-ons that cut a check to the owner or are approved get to be used?
And folks wonder why America is going to crap. Instead of coming up with new ideas and innovating we just pass more and more draconian laws to try to put the genie back in the bottle. I hate to tell Bliz,but the horse has left the barn,the fat lady has sung,etc. If I was this bot making company I would just reincorporate in Vanuatu and tell them to get stuffed. But since I am not,I will do the only thing I can. I bought Warcaft 1 & 3,as well as Diablo & D2. I hope Blizzard enjoyed it,because that is the last red cent they are getting from me. I strongly suggest that everyone spread the word and if the D3 launch falls well below expectations maybe a corporation will think twice before trying to kill the mosquito(bots) with a tank shell(copyrights). But as always this is my 02c,YMMV
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
See my post at: http://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=273917&cid=20289001
Where I said:
Your statistics are correct, however there is some additional information that should be considered.
The 9th Circuit Court processed (the courts say "terminated") 13,424 cases in 2006. That's right, over thirteen thousand. Out of thirteen thousand, 22 cases were heard by the Supreme Court, and 19 were reversed. That is not a bad record.
Data here http://www.uscourts.gov/cgi-bin/cmsa2006.pl (choose 9th Circuit) and here http://www.uscourts.gov/judbususc/judbus.html (choose 2006).
Also, note that the appeals process is designed to overturn incorrect decisions. For an example of this, see the statistics at this http://web.mit.edu/keithw/www/statestats.html page. Note the percentages of cases that are reversed or vacated for all courts.
The percentage of overturned cases should be higher for the Supreme Court, as they get to decide whether to review cases or not. This means they will mainly choose cases where they think they need to correct a bad decision, clarify a law, etc. So, having a high percentage of cases overturned by the Supreme Court means that the Supreme Court is doing its job well, not that the other courts are doing a bad job.