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Blizzard vs. Glider Battle Resumes Next Week
trawg writes "You paid for it, you have the DVD in your drive and the box on the floor next to your desk, but do you own the game? That's the question the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals will rule on next week in the case between Blizzard, publisher of World of Warcraft, and MDY, publisher of the Glider bot. The Glider bot plays World of Warcraft for you, but Blizzard frowns on this, saying it voids the license agreement — you don't own the game, you only have a license to use it, and bots like Glider invalidate the license. The EFF has a good summary of the case as well. The case is due to be resumed on Monday."
Still waiting for a Nethack bot that can ascend.
I'm really enjoying living in the Future, I have to say. When I was young, I never imagined a trial over the right to have a computer play a game for you... Just wouldn't have made sense to my eight year old videogame-loving brain.
Does this case have much wider implications (as summary hints at) for the software licensing at large?
I haven't read the article yet, but it seems so.
.. waiting for them to overturn this ruling. the bottom line is that blizzard has all the resources they need to fluff this case up as some kind of crime against humanity and the loss of freedom for every man woman and child in america when the bottom line is they are fighting to poison themselves for the long haul. I must say that as a consumer I HATE when any company wants me to pay for something I wont own. my first thought is always "if you dont want me to own your products, I wont buy them." They will learn this lesson eventually along with the "if we dont make things work easily, the pirates will" lesson after billions wasted and a soured market turns around and bites them in the ass.
You've to realize that this game is a service provided not for a single person, but for everyone who is in one the game. Blizzard has crafted a meticulous balance to ensure that people will continue paying to play for the game and be happy, and this balance greatly requires that people don't get to use shortcuts which bypasses aspects of the game which Blizzard deems as crucial for balance. For that alone I can understand why Blizzard would want to prevent bots.
The case opening brief makes for interesting reading.
There's one curious omission though (as near as I can tell, I only skimmed it). Ongoing payments.
Although the brief does mention that the game is available for retail purchase, or download, it makes no mention that an online account that requires an ongoing service charge is required in order to play. I suspect that Blizzard could argue that while the Glider author may not be circumventing the game client itself, it's making an illegal copy of the data stream for which the gamers pays an ongoing fee.
That said, I believe Blizzard is in the wrong on this one by going the legal route. I believe they have every right to modify their Warden software to scan for and ban accounts which use glider and other bot programs. They're just worried about losing revenue by banning customers, rather than by going directly to the source.
N.
"Nothing strengthens authority so much as silence." - Charles de Gaulle
I still find it amusing that Blizzard is going after the makers of Glider, when the license violation is on the part of each player using it.
Sure, maybe Glider is infringing on some trademark or copyright, but the company making it did not facilitate the user in violating the license any more than the authors of libpcap facilitated someone running ShowEQ and violating Sony's license. The route Blizzard seems to be going ends up at, "The user violated our license, and so we want them to pay the next 20 years of subscription fees while we also cancel their account. After all, they would have paid us anyways." which is patently, and I hope legally, ridiculous. Nothing at all shows that these users would have continued playing if they did not have access to a program like Glider, in fact I recall back in the peek of EQ people quitting when seq or mq or any of the other programs got defeated. If they just got banned, they bought other accounts.
If Blizzard is really egotistical enough to claim, in a court of law, that the user would play if only they had played by our rules, than let them sue the user. Better yet, let them track down which users are not only still playing, but purchased new accounts to do so. Then lets hope the judge laughs them out of the court room.
If you're needing a bot to play for you its time to give up the game.
Even though wow is a shadow of its former self.
Be you Admins? nay, we are but lusers!
I'm glad Blizzard was able to shut down MDY and go a long way towards interrupting Glider and it's ilk. But I'm afraid Blizzard's lawyers are being too smart for everyone's good. The legal tactic has been successful in achieving this goal. And I'm not sure that there's a more effective way to go about it. However, the legal ramifications are startling.
Perhaps I'm missing something here, but isn't the summary a bit misleading? It's not ownership of the copy of the game you've bought that's being contested; it's the right to play it on Blizzard's own servers. Now, admittedly, the game isn't much use if you can't connect to those servers, but it's not as if you didn't know that when you bought the game.
However, Blizzard is not talking about going into anybody's home and taking away their physical copy of the game, or requiring them to delete it from their hard drive. People like to say that piracy isn't theft because it doesn't deprive the rights-holder of their original copy of the software. Ok, I can buy that. It doesn't mean that piracy isn't A Bad Thing (TM), but I can agree that it isn't theft. So by the same token, Blizzard isn't contesting anybody's ownership of the game - just the right to play it on Blizzard servers.
As a former WoW player (quit cold-turkey 6 weeks ago due to needing my life back) I'm supportive of Blizzard. Stuff like Glider just ruins the experience for legitimate players and I'm glad they take steps to guard against that.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I don't mind EULAs being tested, if it's tested in an environment which gives a non-clear advantage to the EULA enforcer. It would be a very bad day if EULAs are deemed enforceable, just because of this case.
You paid for it, you have the DVD in your drive and the box on the floor next to your desk, but do you own the game?
Yes you do. ...but do you also have the server in your room?
You can add any bot or cheat you want to the game, as long as you don't connect it to the official server.
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The most bizarre thing about this lawsuit is that Blizzard is suing MDY for lost revenue, because Blizzard chose to ban players. Blizzard didn't have to ban those players. They could have taken away their money and levels and allow them to continue playing. Blizzard made a choice. It's completely ridiculous that they blame that choice on someone else.
It might have made sense if MDY was sued by its customers who got themselves banned for using an MDY product. That I would understand. Blizzard suing MDY is completely retarded.
Hoping for a so-so verdict here. The court should allow anyone to modify software they've purchased in any way they wish.
However, the court should allow Blizzard to block connections from any modified software they detect (just like Apache disconnects clients which violate the HTTP protocol).
However, their should be recourse for false-positives to get their money back.
-- 'The' Lord and Master Bitman On High, Master Of All
If your game can be successfully "played" by a bot in this day and age, then it's a pretty bad game.
Back to the question of why do so many people want to play a game that effectively makes them a bot?
I'll choose Microsoft for an example, although this sort of boilerplate is fairly standard. I quote from the license terms for Microsoft Office:
And many other restrictions.
So Microsoft can (successfully, in the Central District of California) sue you for copyright infringement the moment you load Office into RAM after: fixing their product for them; using it for any purpose that is "against the law" (which law?); borrowing it from anyone; buying a 2nd hand copy.
You think that's ridiculous? The U.S. District Court for the Central District of California doesn't think so. They think that the EULA gives Microsoft exactly that right.
This is not hyperbole or speculation; this is now established case law in that District (pending appeal).
You don't think Microsoft would ever exercise this power? OK, pick a different name then. Adobe. Apple. SCO. Choose your poison.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
Whether you own the software or not, you're still bound by the terms of service to connect to their network and use their servers.
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
I mean ostensibly I can see how the Glide bot could be considered 'legal' in and of itself, I am of the firm belief that if you buy a game you can use (or abuse if you so desire) it any way you want.
Now in the case of WoW the EULA is not just for the game (which you own, or ought to anyhow) but also for the servers (which are owned by Blizzard). So seems to be that it is entirely fair that Blizzard can dictate what you can and cannot do on their servers, if they decide that they do not want a bot running on their servers then a they are in the clear when they ban the user of said bot.
I mean it is fairly commonplace for people who run multiplayer notepad servers (excuse me I mean 'IRC servers) to say that they do not want unauthorized bots on their servers and most FPS games implement anti-cheating and systems and will ban people who cheat.
So Blizzard are not so much telling you what you can or cannot run on your computer as much as they are telling you what you can and cannot use on their servers.
Admit nothing. Deny Everything. Make Counter-accusations.
You own the Car, but not the race track. In order to race on the track you are not allowed to use any device that drives for you.
If you are going to do that, they will not let you race with the other racers. But by all means take your modded car and race it in your own backyard, see how far that gets you.
The questionable thing here is that the race track owners are going after the manufacturer of the device, and not the racer at fault.
This is much like how Hollywood goes after ISPs instead of individual file sharers. Blizzard is enforcing its ToS, simple.
Keeping in mind that the person who click the "I agree" button and installed the game is not the one playing but rather a collection of scripts and programs, will anyone ever try and sort if a bot can be considered a person for the purpose of upholding legally binding agreements between game publishers and gamers? Skynet would be scary in PvP, is all I'm saying.
The reason why bots and gold farming exist is because the game is flawed. If sections of the game are not overly long, boring, and repetitive, there won't be a demand for services to skip that part of the game or play it for you.
Stop designing games that waste the players' time without providing fun. If you want to keep people as subscribers design your game to have replay value instead of long travel times or grinding.
If they didn't sell the client, just the service, this wouldn't really be an issue, would it?
This is a sig. It is like every other sig in the world, except that it is mine, and it is different.
It would be one thing if WoW wasn't a game where you joined the world with millions of other players. If you are playing offline, do whatever the hell you want with the game you bought. However, my gameplay suffers when others violate the terms of agreement and flood the game with bots.
So yes, you do own the CD and you can do whatever you want with it...as long as you stay off of my server.
You are wrong here. The whole purpose of glider is greed. The purpose of any bot in the game is greed. The player wants something and doesn't want to work for it - be it gold, honor, experience/leveling, etc. Some can be attributed to laziness. A lil bit can be getting around a repetitive thing, sure, but there are choices.
Gold farmers farm gold using bots/scripts so they make gold faster so they can sell it to people too lazy to earn it themselves.
Obviously you have no idea how MMO economies work - if every player were allowed to have unlimited/superfast earned amounts of money, the inflation would be enormous, raising prices, causing players to look to buying money anyways so they can purchase the highly-inflated items.
To a smaller extent, the earlier argument about the end-user breaking the EULA is correct. However, the way Glider works (and why you don't see Blizzard going after other script engines - like AutoHotKey) is because of how Glider actively injects into the system in memory, changing the client, to evade the Warden security system. Which is copyright infringement to an extent (no one has a license to distribute an application that changes the WoW client) - and is why Blizzard went after Glider. Sure, user accounts are banned, and people here won't complain about that much.
Press 'ENTER' to win the game.
Games are fun the first time. Then you play it again, knowing whats ahead and suddenly the previously fun early part become overly long and boring. The only way to fix this would be that each time the player start a new game, it a completly new and unpexpected adventure. Good games try to do that, but soon you run out of new senario and it become boring again. The game is not the problem, it the human nature. Peoples are lazy, that all.
this sounds like apple vs psystar and others where the they try take control of what you do with software / hardware that you own.
Lexmark tried to pull shit like this to lock out 3rd party ink and lost.
apple vs psystar apple won round 1 but there are appeals and this case may impact apple vs psystar.
garage door openers tried to lock out 3rd party remotes and lost.
adobe and M$ tried to lock out resale useing stuff like this and lost under the rule of first sale.
Grinding is a waste of time.
:) The cool thing about it was that my little pets were running around the dungeons, fighting, eating when hungry, heading to the well when thirsty and resting when tired, etc while I was free to code away and work and do other more practical tasks.
;) Had fun playing with my pet GIR from the Invader Zim cartoon series :)
I once wrote several bots in Javascript for a MUD to get around horrible time-wasting grinding. The funny thing was that bots were illegal in that MUD and I got around it by having my bots notify me with audio cues on the different events happening in the MUD so I could take over manually when the admins started to suspect I was botting. Got away with it... hybrid cyborg chatbots can pass turing tests
Oh, btw: how to get away with botting more: roleplay that your character is a bot!
Also, question: Who is more robot-like? The person who does meaningless repetitive motions for hours or days at a time (grinding) or the person who sets a bot to grind, thus freeing himself to do other things and enjoy more of life?
From Wikipedia, origin of the word robot: The word robota means literally "work", "labor" or "serf labor", and figuratively "drudgery" or "hard work" in Czech and many Slavic languages.
So who is the real robot here? It's the people who waste their time meaninglessly grinding especially when it's no longer enjoyable.
http://www.object404.com
If it ascends, would that restrict it from interfering with actions on the mortal plane, train or automobile? :P
There is no right to feel safe thru security vaudeville at the expense of everyone's freedom, privacy and tax money.
This guy made a crapton of money off of Blizzard's game without giving anything back, in a manner that was questionably illegal, and unquestionably immoral.
Even then, Blizzard gives him a chance to bow out honorably, and he essentially spits in their face and makes funny faces at them while saying "neener neener neener, I'm gonna continue selling it and you can't stop me." If I was Blizzard I would have sued him too if I thought I could get away with it.
Running Glider was one of the most entertaining things I did while playing. Glider comes with default behavior for every class, but you can develop your own in C#. I ended up writing some code for my druid to be a "Healbot", basically causing my character to run around and heal nearby allies.
It was quite simple - it would search for nearby players and try to stay in the middle of everyone. It would throw heals over time on anyone within range that was slightly injured, and cast big heals on people taking a lot of damage. I used it to farm honor in the PVP battlegrounds. After letting it run for hours, I'd take a look at the chat log and see lots of tells from people thanking me (it) for heals. Never once saw a comment calling it out as a bot. The mod I used to queue battlegrounds took screenshots of the match results, and many times my bot was #1 on healing (often by a large margin).
It was fun tweaking all the settings, by the time I maxed out on honor the code was pretty robust. I ended up modifying it a bit to follow around specific people (awesome for power leveling).
IANAL, but this is how I understand it.
What the EFF article seems to overlook is how 117 is worded and how Glider actually works.
The relevant part of 117 states
From my understanding, Glider makes an additional copy of World of Warcraft in memory. Said copy is not used "for archival purposes only" nor is the copy "an essential copy in the utilization of the computer program in conjunction with a machine." In order to legally make an additional copy without a license granting you permission to make it, it has to be one of these two. Glider's copy is neither.
GLaDOS for President 2016! "Well here we are again. It's always such a pleasure." -- GLaDOS, 2011
Hmmm, just cant seem to find the energy to rebut.
There is no right to feel safe thru security vaudeville at the expense of everyone's freedom, privacy and tax money.
Allowing people to have an advantage by using 'bots to play the game for them has long been a bane of MMORPGs. Yes, it is stupid that people run a program to play the game for them, but keep in mind that legitimate players have to compete with these 'bot players for resources (e.g. crafting materials), and they really shouldn't have to.
I think u=you mean:
Press 'Uninstall' to win the game.'
The only way to win is not to play.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
save that for it's own court case!
"I HATE when [entity] wants me to pay for something I wont own."
Like, perhaps, a girlfriend/wife does with a certain renewable resource?
If sections of the game are not overly long, boring, and repetitive, there won't be a demand for services to skip that part of the game or play it for you.
Bullshit. If that were at all true, people wouldn't bother cheating in first person shooters.
The bottom line is that no matter what the game, as soon as it becomes multiplayer, there will be assholes who will do whatever it takes to be "better" than the rest. Even if the game is conceptually a "cooperative" game where there's absolutely nothing to "win." (Hell, it doesn't even have to be multiplayer - there are competitive assholes who will cheat to prove their superiority at single player games!)
For some people, it may be about "skipping the boring parts," but for others, it's about being "better" than everyone else. And those people will use whatever advantage they can get. It's not about "fun" for them, it's about winning.
You are in a maze of twisty little relative jumps, all alike.
By extension, does this mean that walk-throughs also violate the license agreement?
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
I think EULAs are a major underlying problem here. In my view, in order for an agreement to be binding, it would need to be presented as part of the sales transaction. Imagine if you bought a new car, had it delivered, and then the first time you turned the key a screen with a EULA popped up claiming that in order to use the car you had to agree to drive in a certain way. I don't think that would fly very well. To me, clicking "agree" or "accept" on a EULA window is just one of the standard steps for installing software; I never read them and I don't consider clicking "accept" to be an act of accepting it. There is also the matter that there is no way to prove who clicked on the EULA, and we know that no one ever installs software for anyone else, right?
Was the idea that software is owner by the buyer not already decided in the Autodesk decision? Regardless, Blizzard does not have to provide access to their servers for those that violate the ToU/ToS/EULA. Bilzzard is wrong in that the customer does not own the software they are purchasing, but they might be sort of right in that we do not own their servers.
The fact of the matter is that this bot make no difference to the game. No one gives a shit about leveling content; it is all about the "end game" content. Blizzard seems to understand this with the increase in speed of leveling(less experience to reach certain levels and in-game clothing that increases experience given for killing and questing). Even with all of this, at some point, leveling from level one will push possible customers away from this game.
The closer the maximum level reaches 100, less new customers will start playing and more current customers will shy away from starting new customers and that will reduce some customers longevity. I am guessing Blizzard will do something to combat this, but it is time to stop it with the immediate account removal(well, immediate bannings) for people that use bots. Blizzard claims that will do anything "up to" permanent account suspension, but Blizzard always gives out their harshest punishment for actions like this by their customers.
I would like to add that it is not the place of any company to punish their customers. If a customer breaks the law, then government is there to step in and provide corrective action. For the minors out there, parents are there, unless they commit a serious crime, then it is up to government. When a non-government entity provides corrective action, there is no oversight as there is with government. Gaming companies "punishing" customers is sort of a small issue, but where does it end?
Do car companies get to come in and take away cars when customers are caught breaking speed limits? Do gun manufacturers get to take away guns from civilians and law enforcement when said guns are "misused" in their eyes? Will pharmaceutical companies take away medication if some patients take more pills than they were supposed to, even one time?
Due to Blizzard's arrogance, in believing that they can dictate what software people can create and sell, I hope they lose big. Blizzard's attorneys have played "fast and loose" with the law and they need to pay.
I rented out my pig sty with the TOC that no one can take a dump in it. The guy who rented purchased pigs. The pig seller while inducing the buyer to get bacon was also inducing him to violate my TOC. Therefore, I want to sue the pig seller.
Playing a MMO is time consumption, not time investment. If you watch a two hour movie, the movie will end after two hours, you cannot pay another $10 to make it last longer. Nor is it like you can complain that Babylon 5 ends after five seasons with the argument that you have paid for the DVD sets and therefore demand a sixth season (no, Rangers does not count).
Games are entertainment products. Some "entrepreneurs" (eupheism) have found ways of monetizing that time investment, but by and large you do not get any more out of a MMO subscription that you get from television watching.
i'm surprised no company, especially one with a subscription service, has ever snuck a "you must never unsubscribe or uninstall our software or use a competitor's software" clause into their eulas. they'd get away with it too.
...
you don't own the game, you only have a license to use it, and bots like Glider invalidate the license.
Don't you mean violate the license? Typically violating a license's terms terminates your license, but if the license is invalidated, wouldn't that mean it is no longer binding?
Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?