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Blizzard Tries To Forbid Open Sourcing Glider
ruphus13 notes a new development in Blizzard's case against MDY, which we discussed last week. Blizzard, the maker of World of Warcraft, has now requested another injunction — to prevent the open sourcing of Glider code. Quoting: "Blizzard has asked the court for a relatively unconventional order prohibiting MDY from making the source code for its MMO Glider software available to the public, and prohibiting MDY from helping people develop other World of Warcraft automation software. Blizzard had previously asked the court to shut down MDY's WoW operations in its motion for summary judgment, but the court's summary judgment order did not address Blizzard's request. Blizzard's requests to prohibit open-source release of MDY's software and prohibit MDY's assistance in development of independent WoW bots are new to this motion — and seem likely to raise eyebrows in the open source and digital rights advocacy camps."
OOPS! we were hacked! our source code was stolen!
OMG!! It's all over pirate bay! sorry!
In other words, legally say "Blizzard.... Go To Hell."
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
This should be very amusing. Was there any indication that MDY intended to Open up Glider?
If the Glider software doesn't contain any copyright infringement (which MDY may be hard-pressed to prove - really, dunno), can Blizzard legally prevent them from Open Sourcing the software? It would seem to me that that's really not going to fly that well.
Informatus Technologicus
As I've delved into Diablo 2 once again (after watching the imho downright fantastic gameplay video of Diablo 3) over the last few days, I've seen with some amazement that some of the most widely used Battle.net cheats are actually licensed under the GNU GPL - there's even some kind of application framework for interacting with the game programmatically floating around on the web... :)
It's really interesting to see such development, because back in the days when I really was into all that gaming stuff, there was hardly ever a way to take a look how some trainer's/cheat's author does thing XY. Cool, in a way.
That said, I really, really despise cheating in multiplayer games.
:%s/Open Source/Free Software/g
YTARY!
Blizzard doesn't really doesn't really want th EFF to get involved in this fight. Ok, the EFF may not actively take part in such a fight, but the OpenSource community will. The enemy of my enemy...
Unfortunately, a lot of people will be stricken with, "The Enemy of my Enemy is... the maker of the game that I'm addicted to."
I feel a strange disturbance in the force... as if thousands of WoW-addicts/programmers cried out in pain, and were silenced.
it doesnt infringe on anyone's copyrights.
the STUPID, the OVERLY MORONIC argument blizzard is using is that the program 'modifies the wow software running in THE MEMORY'.
of course, that is trying to fool the old, senile court judges. everyone who has used computers a bit knows that when a program runs in memory, MANY aspects of it are modified on constant basis, and a few million times a second or more. windows kernel code modifies the wow software running in the memory, wow software ITSELF modifies itself in the memory, its memory footprint changes, it reads and writes data from disk, and to network and modifies itself accordingly.
a computer's memory is something too complicated for a lawyer to fathom. they shouldnt sweat it.
Read radical news here
This can not help Blizzard in any way what so ever.
A) Glider isn't exactly hard to create.
B) Makes Blizzard look like bullies..again.
C) Now there are several people who are going to create a clone.
D) It's impact on the game, emotional views aside, isn't really that great.
Stopping Glider is a bandage on a bigger issue they refuse to actually address, farming.
Now, farming isn't nearly as bad as everyone makes it out to be. In MMO's that allowed groups to control areas, it was horrible, but you can't really do that in WoW.
Here are some thing they could do:
1) Don't let anyone mine/pick anything that there skill level makes gray to them.
2) put some random drift into movement.
3) limit the price you can sell something for on the AH to 10 times what a vendor would pay
4) don't allow the transfer of more then 100GP a time. Maybe a one time unlimited amount per month.
All of these would be pretty trivial to implement.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
That's like saying everything at Miliw0rm is illegal. No, the software there can be used for illegal purposes, but in no way is the code it self illegal.
I presume you do realize Blizzard's banning abilities only extend to WoW and that they can't actually ban you from real life?
The software was found not to violate any copyrights. It's not illegal. It only violates Blizzard's terms of service. They're free to ban your account for using the bot, but that's all.
Your mind is clear / The things that you fear / Will fade with how much you / Believe what you hear
Care to show me how this software is illegal?
It violates the TOS of another software product. That doesn't make the software illegal. I could write in my TOS that you must not run it on Windows, does that make Windows illegal? I kinda doubt it.
It violates the TOS of Blizzard to use the software in combination with WoW, which may void your license. But "illegal"? At least be correct with the terms you use, it's not like there's any lack of term confusion in the vicinity of copyrights, we don't need more people contributing to it.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
IANAL, but I think the case is that it's not criminally illegal, but it does offer a basis to file a claim under contract law. If I recall correctly, it is something along the lines of a 3rd party willfully affecting a breach of contract.
Because they want to stop someone from publishing a way to fuck over most players of their games?
Yup, how evil of them.
Sure, you can ban bots and you can void licenses when you catch someone, but bottom line: People won't stop as long as two criterions are not matched
1. The game is interesting enough to be played instead of botted.
2. The game is complicated enough to make botting pointless.
Why do people bot? Two reasons. First, they're goldfarmers and want to make as much gold as possible without having to do it themselves. And second, some parts of the game are just boring tedium nobody wants to do but has to.
So what all comes down is time sinks. People want to avoid time sinks. They don't want to sit in one spot and farm the same crapmobs for hours to get their $number $item for $quest. That's boring and tedious. They don't want to farm $mob for gold to buy their mount, that's boring and tedious.
Give people what they want to play and you have no problem with bots. Simple as that. When you have a problem with people botting through your game, all it says is that you installed something in the game that should keep the people occupied but they generally hate to do it (aka time sink).
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
It's not what they did, it's how they did it. It's a damn shame that they chose to use the insane 'copyright on RAM contents' argument. They did have a reasonably legitimate complaint, since (as I understand it, at least) glider causes problems on their servers which they have authority over. Trying to tell people what they can and can't do with their own game installations on their own machines is an absolute joke, but trying to set terms for what people are allowed to do on a communal service with its own rules is fair enough.
To fulfil Slashdot tradition and make a somewhat clunky and inappropriate car analogy: I can attach rockets to my car and blast along at 300mph on my own land and it's none of the manufacturer's damn business. If I then paid them to take it on their test track which had a rule saying "No rocket cars" they'd be well within their rights to kick me out.
It's bnetd all over again. \o/
No, my rights and yours are universal. The government is involved because we create a government to protect our rights.
This "Conservative" ideology that "our rights apply only to protection from the government" is just wrong. The Constitution specifies, among other protected rights, that we cannot be slaves - prohibiting not just the government from owning slaves. The Constitution of course instructs the government to protect us from robbery, murder and all kinds of other deprivations of our rights.
Our rights are inalienable. Not just inalienable by the government, but by anyone. We create governments to protect us from that alienation, even while the governments we create are themselves not empowered, and often explicitly prohibited to be sure there's no confusion, to deprive us of those rights. But are created with the power to protect our rights.
--
make install -not war
If they don't want people to automate their games, maybe they should make their games less repetitive... instead of suing and banning people.
Surely, the development costs would be comparable to lawyer costs.
Buckle your ROFL belt, we're in for some LOLs.
I don't see what all the fuss is about ... the source code for Glider is 9 bits:
- # -
- - #
# # #
It's really complicated. Whether by design or not, contract law is astoundingly complex and sometimes borderline irrational.
The basic point when it comes to 3rd party contract interference is intent. If you make a product or provide a service with the explicit intent of causing a breach of contract, the affected party can file a lawsuit claiming damages or requesting other court intervention.
I will buy more things, I like that they try to get rid of cheaters and people abusing the game for profit. Those people just destroy the game for all others.
I doubt blizzard do this for themself as much as for their costumers (which if there was lots of cheaters and people grinding for profit would not have been future costumers and therefor would affect Blizzard themself to.)
It's the people who run patched games which suck.
WoW isn't a first person shooter or something, its not like people are using aimbots. This program basically boils down to a computerized game playing monkey.
This is a terrible analogy (another /. tradition of complaining about bad analogies).
What they did was slap rockets on their own car, and put it on a communcal network of highways. This is what annoyed everyone.
Then Blizzard put a stop to it with a cop with a radar gun.
So then MDY built a little transparent-ish wall around the cop that was stationed on their part of the communal network , and this is what the lawsuit is about. The radar gun only reads 0, not registering an offense, no matter how fast the rockets are going at any given time.
Still a terrible analogy, but closer than yours.
Blizzard is stance on that Glider contains copyrighted and protected property. One can't declare something open source if one doesn't own it to begin with.
Of course all of this maneuvering hinges on whether or not Glider did their work cleanly. I personally don't favor this approach where it seems to be easier just to continually combat the thing better technology.
(from a presentation based upon a textbook)
Intentional Interference with Contractual Relations
A tort that arises when a third party induces a contracting party to breach the contract with another party.
The following elements must be shown:
- A valid, enforceable contract between the contracting parties.
- Third-party knowledge of this contract.
- Third-party inducement to breach the contract.
Only because the rockets are designed specifically for use with (only function on?) cars that will only ever be used in the No Rocket Cars Allowed Test Track.
How are sites slashdotted when nobody reads TFAs?
Farming may have been an issue initially with the game, and people profiting from the game, without Blizzard getting their share of it. However, since Burning Crusades, people who play at 70 can "grind" up gold easily...
Blizzard has to address the real underlining issue, keeping the game interesting and challenging. The reason you would use glide is because you are tired of "grinding and questing" the same things over and over, killing the same mobs over and over, either for a new character or for a glimpse of some "better gear" (which is the biggest farce of the game). The user has already done it once why make it the same painful process over and over, it's an absolute turn off...
Curiosity... can you justify your argument in any practical way? If a bot plays 10 hours while I'm at work, and a college kid on break plays 10 hours while I'm at work, we both wind up in the same place at the same time. Neither of us has an advantage.
WoW leveling requires exactly zero skill, same with resource acquisition. Since leveling and resource acquisition in WoW is a matter of time expenditure - by design, mind you - why does it matter whether or not a player puts in that time, or a bot does?
Weird slashbug #455
Blizzard absolutely have a right to control what happens on their servers. Notice though that this injunction is not about their servers. It's about what code is released on the internet - which Blizzard doesn't own.
It's within their right to say "you can't use that code on our servers" - and they have a right to enforce that rule however they please (delete violating accounts or whatever). However, it's clearly not within their right to say "you can't use that code anywhere, or even have it, or even look at it."
The difference is that your bot can be tapping a node for 24h/24h. I've had problems with bots doing that previously, and I've had to report them to be able to complete part of the quests.
Yes, that was a small server, so almost no one else than the bots in the zone, thus a very slow respawn rate. That was a PITA.
In the midst of all this frothing-at-the-mouth has anyone ever actually bothered reading Blizzard's response as to why the concerns of Public Knowledge really don't apply to games like WoW (Games which you must connect to centralized servers only after agreeing to a plethora of EULA and ToU agreements and cannot access any game content otherwise). This case if you examine it deep enough obviously has no ramifications beyond preventing further hijacking of entertainment service providers such as Blizzard through World of Warcraft.
Can anyone give a single example of how this narrow ruling can possibly have a chilling effect on peoples "right" to do anything other than ruin an online community by violating agreement after agreement to effectively ruin a (game) market through unchecked greed? I bet you can't.
As per the response Blizzard filed to Public Knowledge's concerns:
"We invented personal computing." - Bill Gates
I would argue that Glider is hacking a computer network. Bear with me here.
The tool manipulates a secured line of communication between a client and a server to get a desired set of results and hides the fact that it is doing so. You could call it SQL injection, replay-attack, man in the middle, etc. It is the same thing as hacking a shared network.
A different example. Do you mind if I write software to run on my ATM that when it connects to a bank just manipulates a little data. Maybe transfers some additional money into my account? That is what a Botting-program does to an online game. It takes cpu and resources from the common pool and transfers it to the hacker allowing them to accomplish goals while the user is working or sleeping.
Now you could counter argue that Glider is only interacting with the Wow client in the same way that a user would. But that only works if they were actually interacting with the client and not disabling security and doing things not allowed by the client.
Because the rules of the game say you must be the one playing not some automated system.
The 9million people who subscribed to the game agreed to such rules and the majority of them play the game fairly.
So what makes you so special or gives you the right to be above the rules that you agreed to?
If you don't like the game or its rules dont play, don't be a self centered asshole who thinks hes above everyone else.
The real problem is the fact that World of Warcraft (and every MMO released to date) is designed with such shoddy gameplay mechanics that people would rather have a computer play most of the game for them. The problem isn't that some people automate their characters, the problem is that a large percentage of the game is so mind-numbingly boring and repetitive that people would go to any length to avoid it and just play the good stuff. Is there anything wrong with this? Absolutely not, these developers (again, this applies to ALL MMOs) need to learn to design games that are fun the entire time you're playing them.
Put it another way, consider what would be the case if WoW were a single player game. The immediate conclusion everybody would draw was that the gameplay is substandard, because they are so tempted to automate it. Make it multiplayer and all of a sudden this is different? No. What's really going on here? Blizzard puts as many artificual, tedious roadblocks as they can get away with into the game, and the reason they do so is to extend the duration of their subscriptions as long as possible. When somebody decides to automate the process, Blizzard isn't protecting their player base, they're protecting their profit margins. They're saying, "You'll play this game OUR way so we can milk you for as much money as possible." So I say to Blizzard, cure the disease, not the symptom. Make a game that people don't want to have a computer play most of it for them and you won't have these problems.
Can't figure out how to make a game that's both fun and takes a long time to get tired of? Hire some actually talented game designers. We know you can take a design somebody else came up with and polish the mechanics to to a shiny gleam (see: every Blizzard game to date). Now's the time to innovate.
WoW is not all that repetitive, especially considering that the idea is to spend many months playing it between content updates.
There are LOTS of things Blizzard does to make WoW a lot less of a grind, big one being daily quests, if you don't know why daily quests prevent the grind, then you don't know WoW well enough to be commenting.
Blizzard also does lots of other things to prevent the grind:
- Rested XP, while you are logged out, you earn "rest", when you log back in, you earn double XP per mob kill until your rest runs out.
- When Blizzard introduced Arenas (a competive PvP system), they made it so that consumables such as potions or elixirs cannot be used at all. While this is partly due to balancing issues, it also means that people don't end up farming gold/mats for these potions, because while they can be a huge competitive advantage, they are also a huge money/materials sink when you are using a lot of them.
- In their upcoming expansion, they are limiting the amount of consumables that can be used by players in certain conditions. For example, you will only be able to use 1 single potion for a boss fight, this will mean that people wont end up blowing lots of potions on a single boss fight. Another example being that you won't be affected by more than one set of Drums at a time, this is also good as right now the top raiding guilds had lots of their members abandon a profession and take up Leatherworking instead. And all this just to get the most possible "power" for their raid group. When you aren't levelling at the same time, getting a profession from 0 to max is exceptionally time and/or money intensive.
Personally, what I get most out of WoW is the social connection, I tend to use VoIP a lot with my family and friends who also play. WoW is just a place we hang out, it's like a sports bar or something. WoW for me is something I can do to pass the time between work, going out or sleeping. When I am at home and not playing WoW or sleeping, I do other things like read, watch TV, program.
I think it's more like a court telling a thief that he can't publish a book on how to pick locks, even though he might have been using his 'knowledge' to commit illegal acts, it could be usefull learning material for a locksmith doing something completely legal.
Inter Arma Enim Silent Leges
> If a game had no grind, players would lose interest quickly
That is incorrect.
Guild Wars is an example of an online game that has (almost) no grind, and yet is massively popular (millions), and growing.
And GW has (almost) no bots, since there is almost no boring grinding for bots to replace. As a result, the only reason left to run bots in GW is for farming for drops, but it's very rarely done.
So no, you're wrong. WoW (and EverQuest and others) did not need to be designed as time sinks, but they were, simply because that extends the companies' monthly revenues. And now Blizzard deserves to be overrun with Glider-type bots, because the grinding problem is of their own design and making.
The need for grinding is a sign of a very badly designed game. Repetition has no redeeming aspects at all.
"The question of whether machines can think is no more interesting than [] whether submarines can swim" - Dijkstra
Because an honest player puts actual effort into resource acquisition, while someone who uses a bot is able to beat the honest player without expending the same amount of effort.
This frustrates the honest player and rewards the bot user.
If you don't have the time to play a game by its rules, then go find a different game to play.
These comments are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of my employer or colleagues...
I've seen macroing from the Ultima Online days and I've seen Glider use from the more modern World of Warcraft. They are nowhere near the same thing nor are they anywhere near the same realm of ease of use. You really are sounding like you've never seen just how easy Glider makes it to play your character without ever actually playing your character. Take a look at how things work.
"We invented personal computing." - Bill Gates
Be happy, Blizzard just gave you your life back!
Reduce, reuse, cycle
Have you ever noticed that whenever someone starts a post saying that an analogy is bad, they then try to add more convolutions to that same analogy as if that will improve it?
Why, that kind of analogy is just like when someone puts a rocket on their neighbor's car and doesn't tell the neighbor, then fires it up when the neighbor leaves for work in the morning.
Yep, just like it. :D
I don't play WoW because I generally get bored with it after about a month, so this doesn't really affect me one way or the other. Your response, however, seems mostly based on emotion. I'm looking for pragmatic reasons to not allow botting.
Yes, the rules are a legitimate reason to reject bots, but they're not really a practical reason. I'm looking for a clear explanation of what the difference is between getting to L60/70 in 10 days with a bot, or 10 days hitting the keys yourself. Neither person person gains an advantage, and to play the instances - the meat of the game, really - they're going to have to kick the bot off and take control anyway.
So, really, what's the difference?
Weird slashbug #455
If you actually played WoW, you would understand the reasons against botting. However you don't, but it doesn't seems to stop you from trolling for comments...
This is another example of your lack of understanding. WoW has PvP servers. Within these servers, Players can attack other players. Asshats use a bot to get to the highest level possible and then proceed to attack lower level characters for their own amusement. This harassment slows down the legitimate player.
Of course nothing prevents a level 70 from being an asshat, but at least without bots you would have a lower number of dedicated asshats...
These comments are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of my employer or colleagues...
Really now, what this is about (at least to some of us) is that what right does Blizzard's EULA give them to control what happens to the source code of SOMEONE ELSE'S IP. Yes, the code is used to "cheat" in a video game, but even if Blizzard has the best intentions of their customers at heart, those of us who know this country, and this industry are concerned of where it can lead. Precedent will be set and anyone will use the case to try and gag other peoples software on this premise. Blizzard should not be able to use their copyright claim to trample others copyright. If they do, others will most definitely follow.
first, it's OSS scripting that interacts with blizzard's "entertainment" code.
Then, it's OSS scripting that interacts with major microsoft apps, or reads the latest "MS ONLY" format.
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
From my experience as a MMO designer, battling automated play is actually a huge design problem.
I am a professional programmer, and I would say that it is more than that. I would say that it is fundamentally impossible to prevent botting on remote clients without a client being completely locked down with DRM. And as Microsoft has already discovered, that is a hard sell.
You have the same fundamental problem that media creators do: You have to give people information, but prevent them from using it in ways you don't approve of. This problem will not go away any time soon.
The simpler problem of stopping WoW botting is easy. People bot in WoW because 'the grind' to level or gain faction rep is long and boring. Change the game so that people aren't rewarded for sinking so much time into the game. Problem solved.
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
The MMO Asheron's Call, a contemporary of better-known Everquest, has had a framework like this for years, known as Decal.
Interestingly, the developers of asheron's call (Turbine) chose to embrace the 3rd party development community. As a result, players have used the framework to extend and improve the game client; many community improvements have eventually been rolled into the official client (e.g., showing the health/mana of your party members in a single panel, and allegiance-wide chat). Turbine even went as far as to hire several of the top decal plugin developers.
This has lead to a fairly unique game, with player-run bots running unattended trades, offering trade-skill services, and help new players with magical enhancements.
Of course, with all the positive contributions that enhance gameplay, there have been negative ones as well. Combat macroing became commonplace, allowing characters to advance without human intervention; at first this was more or less endorsed by Turbine, but a few years ago they finally ruled against running combat macros while away from the keyboard. To enforce this, they started giving basic Turing tests to players that were suspected of violating this rule.
It's been an interesting experiment. I definitely respect Turbine for *not* taking the Blizzard route, and banning players by the tens of thousands, and suing third party developers. Their philosophy that it's the developer's responsibility for creating exploitable bugs, and not the players' fault for exploiting them is certainly player friendly.
But at the end of the day, it's hard to say if it was all for the better, as the game slowly fades into obscurity, with subscription numbers a tenth of what they were at the game's peak. Those of us who played during the game's heyday certainly enjoyed the ride, but blizzard's aggressive anti-cheating stance may be necessary to building a billion-dollar a year revenue stream.
The fact that the software is called "WoW Glider" and that it is marketed and designed specifically for the sole purpose cheating in WoW carries it safely over the line from "making available" to "inducement to breach the contract."
Don't bring firearms into this, it's a completely different ballpark. They have other legitimate uses.
IAANAL, but is a breach of TOS the same as a breach of contract? That is, is a usage license the same as a contract?
EULAs are very sticky. Most of the issues stem from whether software is "licensed or sold," or from the fact that the consumer has little recourse if he or she does not accept the license ("No returns on opened software")
Terms of Service contracts, the type which you agree to prior to the exchange of funds or use of the service, are more cut and dry. Unless a clause is unconscionable, it is just as binding as any other contract.
To make things even more complicated and hard to research, many lawyer types and media outlets do not distinguish between the two of these, or the sometimes confusing terms "clickwrap license," "browserwrap license," "shrinkwrap license," etc.
More interesting reading.
You know, I always thought that the RIAA and MPAA would destroy
the software industry. I figured that they would push through
laws that suited them and to hell with everyone else. I figured
that they would create laws that burden everyone else that does
something with a microprocessor. I figured that million dollar
Oracle databases would eventually be burdened down with anti-piracy
nonsense to prevent pirates from using old IBMs or Suns.
I didn't think it would be the likes of Blizzard to trash the
industry with really stupid laws or heinously egregious precedents.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Here is the key part I recommend looking at:
The Court accordingly will grant summary judgment in favor of Blizzard with respect to liability on the contributory and vicarious copyright infringement claims in Counts II and III.
(emphasis added)
Not contributory means "helped them do it." So they are liable because they helped people violate copyright law, according to the ruling.
What right does Blizzard have?
The right against Tortious Interference.
I'm a lawyer, but not yours. I wouldn't represent someone who thinks taking legal advice from Slashdot is a good idea.