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Judge Rules WoW Bot Violates DMCA
An anonymous reader writes to tell us that Blizzard has added another victory in their campaign against World of Warcraft bots. A federal judge has ruled that not only did the Glider bot break the EULA, it can be classified as a circumvention device under the DMCA. "As we've noted before, Blizzard's legal arguments, which Judge David G. Campbell largely accepted, could have far-reaching and troubling implications for the software industry. Donnelly is not the most sympathetic defendant, and some users may cheer the demise of a software vendor that helps users break the rules of Blizzard's wildly popular role playing game. But the sweeping language of Judge Campbell's decision, combined with his equally troubling decision last summer, creates a lot of new uncertainty for software vendors seeking to enter software markets dominated by entrenched incumbents and achieve interoperability with legacy platforms."
Strangely, though, those who perpetrated the recent Mortgage fiasco which resulted in the current recession are not personally responsible for the actions of their firms. I find it strange that CEOs incur personal liability for their firm's actions only when the victim is another corporation.
The society for a thought-free internet welcomes you.
I pay for my movie tickets but that doesn't give me the right to harass others.
I wish more people felt that way.
I have multiple reasons why I have rarely or never been inside of a movie theater for the last five years or so, but the inconsiderate actions of the other customers is one of the biggest. I should preface this by saying that I am talking about R-rated movies that do not permit children, so the people I am describing are supposedly adults. From the "restless leg syndrome" individual who won't stop tapping the back of your seat, to the cellphone users who refuse to go outside if they absolutely must take a call, to the fact that I've never seen an establishment that had the balls to eject the small minority who have no respect for everyone else, I feel like they should pay me for the experience, not the other way around. Considering how many other methods there are to enjoy whatever movies I want in an environment that I can control, movie theaters have completely lost their appeal for me.
It's not really the movie theater and I realize that. It's just that theaters are enclosed environments which demand that you pay attention, and the immature, inconsiderate, ADD, "I'm the only person who exists" chronological adults who are really just overgrown children aren't terribly compatible with that atmosphere. I think these are the same folks who would only care about the immediate convenience of having more gold in WoW and would not care about the principle of never buying anything from a spammer for any reason.
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
To this judge, that line isn't so clear. The judge's radical invention (for which he deserves a patent ;-) is this: "dynamic nonliteral elements" (fancy talk for the whole experience of the game, consisting of not just Blizzard's code and Blizzard's game data, but also Blizzard's server responses, and the users' actions) has copyright protection. And since Warden limits access to Blizzard's server's responses, then Warden limits access to the "dynamic nonliteral elements" and bypassing Warden is a DMCA violation.
The WoW code is copyrighted: reasonable.
The game data (e.g. graphics and sound) is copyrighted: reasonable.
The user-generated events are copyrighted (and by Blizzard?): wacked out.
The server responses are copyrighted: iffy, as they are not creative works (and you don't even want to think about whether those responses are also shaped by the users' collective inputs -- which noncreative but copyrightable work is a derived work of which?).
The sum of all the previous things run through a function (the Wow code) to become an overall experience, is copyrighted (and by Blizzard): wow!
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
> So Blizzard shouldn't be able to set the terms of use for a _service_ they provide?
They have every right to. The problem with these cases is just how obscenely far the laws are being stretched. It's setting precedents that could potentially have devastating consequences.
If Blizzard says "thou shall now use a bot", then fine. If a person uses a bot then they have violated Blizzard's terms of service, allowing Blizzard to do what the terms allow. This usually means disconnecting them, but could, in principal, include a fine of $1 million. (Of course, if that were the case they'd almost certainly require a notarized signature, not just a "I Agree" checkbox.)
In this case, Blizzard was unable to detect Glider, and was therefore unable to take recourse against it's users. That's where the road should end. They should either update their cheat detection or give up.
HOWEVER, they went to the courts. They said that because Glider breaks their ToS, the _company_ should be held liable. And because the ToS/EULA is broken, the copying of the program into RAM to operate is a violation of copyright. AND that the people behind Glider should be held responsible for this infringement. They won. As a result, we have the precedents:
1) Copying a program into RAM is not fair use.
2) A company can be held liable if someone breaches a contract with your product.
And now, we get the following:
3) A program which reads/interoperates a with another outside the ToS/EULA is considered a DMCA circumvention device, and the author is _CRIMINALLY_ liable.
All three of these rulings are beyond ridiculous. This one, however, takes the cake as now it's a criminal offense. It's essentially saying that writing an unauthorized plugin, addon, or even operating system can get you thrown in jail.
To highlight:
Windows Vista Home (or any that aren't Ultimate) state in their EULA that they may not be run under a VM. If I were to install it under VMWare server, by these points above, VMWare could be sued out of business and the CEO should go to jail.
Thanks, Blizzard.