Blizzard Sues Private Server Company, Awarded $88M

Cali Thalen writes "A private server company, Scapegaming (aka Alyson Reeves), was ordered to pay Blizzard Entertainment over $88 million in damages after losing a lawsuit that was concluded last week. Scapegaming was operating unauthorized World of Warcraft servers and using a micropayment system to collect money from the servers' user base, which according to the lawsuit amounted to just over $3 million. $85 million of that settlement was for statutory damages, and surprisingly only $63,000 in attorney's fees."

Comments

Anonymous Coward

[Anonymous Coward]

and the rich get richer

Re:Anonymous Coward

[Volante3192]

Erm, yes, actually. And this is exactly the sort of thing the law is intended to defend against.

Here we have a case of someone infringing Blizzard's work for the explicit case of making money off it without getting Blizzard's permission. You don't get a more clear cut case than that.

One can argue the statuatory damage claim is outlandish, and it'll likely be reduced on appeal (it always is...), but Alyson here is still going to be on the hook for a decent chunk if $3 mil was brought in.

Re:Anonymous Coward

[Sarten-X]

What I'm wondering is whether or not anything significant was actually copied. Was the private server just duplicating the game's protocol, or was the game world actually duplicated?

Looking through the information linked to in the summary, it looks like there was no actual debate on anything. The judgement was default.

Re:Anonymous Coward

[Gaygirlie]

Was the private server just duplicating the game's protocol, or was the game world actually duplicated?

Yes, they were using actual WoW data files, including player and enemy models, sound effects and all that. That is clearly infringing on copyrighted material.

Duplicating a protocol though is not wrong or illegal; it's not a file or bunch of data that could be copied and re-used. A protocol is a set of rules as to how to pass data along and thus anyone is free to implement an application or library that does pass data along following those rules. It'd be different if the protocol was patented but I doubt Blizzard has patented it; it's used only for WoW and it's not even efficient. They'd just not make money with it even if they published all the protocol details openly.

I hope this answers your question.

Re:Anonymous Coward

[Sarten-X]

I'm intimately aware that protocols can't be protected by copyright. I figured they were probably including files, though from TFA, that's never clear. Being a default judgement, it's altogether possible that the actual material being copied was never even looked at.

Patents also do not apply to protocols, since they must cover a specific mechanism, such as an algorithm. Now, if the protocol requires encryption or encoding using a patented algorithm, that's a problem.

Re:Anonymous Coward

[goodmanj]

What I'm wondering is whether or not anything significant was actually copied. Was the private server just duplicating the game's protocol, or was the game world actually duplicated?

WoW private servers generally do duplicate the game world found in Blizzard's game. Much of the graphical data is stored client-side, but all data about where things are and what they're doing is on the server. Many of them try to keep their server software as up-to-date a copy as possible, though some will allow you to do things which are not allowed in the real game.

There is zero question that this copyright violation: it's as open-and-shut a case of copyright violation as if you stole a copy of a Hollywood blockbuster from a movie studio, duped it, and sold tickets to see it in your backyard.

Re:Anonymous Coward

[citizenr]

Yes, they were using actual WoW data files, including player and enemy models, sound effects and all that

server executable doesnt use sound files, wow is so simple (no collision detection) that server side executable also doesnt use player models. Its all a chessboard from server executables perspective.

Re:Anonymous Coward

[Anonymous Coward]

Private servers require a user to have a copy of the full game in question. The "player and enemy models, sound effects, and all that" are handled by the client.

However, the private server generally has its own copy of the game data in order to maintain the state of the world, where things are supposed to respawn, etc.

I suppose it would be theoretically possible to create a server emulator which didn't use any of the original game's data files, but nobody as attempted it that I have seen.

Re:Anonymous Coward

[Drantin]

The WoW server doesn't need player or enemy models, it just needs to know a bunch of numbers out of a database, how to manipulate them, and the protocol for communicating with the clients (as well as miscellaneous other things also not related to the models or artwork). Regardless, charging users for things still a blatant violation of the EULA, regardless of your opinion on just running a private server. Both on the server side (the admins have probably played the game before, and likely run around in the server as well) and also on the client side, as they get to see the EULA on install of the application.

Re:Anonymous Coward

[Anonymous Coward]

Duplicating a protocol though is not wrong or illegal;

But it does breach the contract(s) possibly signed with Blizzard if it asserts the removal of rights including reverse engineering, maintaining or connecting to an unauthorized server (as Blizzard does claim); and a possible DMCA violation if claimed that access to a non-authorized server constitutes copyright protection circumvention (as Blizzard does claim).

EULAs & TOUs have been upheld in the past, so he's probably screwed on count #1 (if appealed). The second argument is new to me, so I don't know how that would pan out. This is what Blizzard has to say in their complaint (direct link):

Blizzard's Anti-Piracy Mechanisms
...
51. When the user runs the game client software, the game client displays a login screen in which the user must enter his or her unique account username and password. The client then sends information, including information derived from the username and password, to the server. If this information passes certain authentcation tests, the server allows the game client to enter the WoW gaming environment and access the copyrighted material resident on the server, as well as opening access to the copyrighted material on the game client.

52. As such, access to the copyrighted content on the game client is predicated on access to the authorized WoW server. In this way, the server "unlocks" the copyrighted information on the game client.

Re:Anonymous Coward

[adolf]

it's as open-and-shut a case of copyright violation as if you stole a copy of a Hollywood blockbuster from a movie studio, duped it, and sold tickets to see it in your backyard.

Feh.

There's nothing here to suggest that they've stolen anything.

It's more like they've bought a legitimate copy of a Hollywood movie, duped it (so what?), and sold tickets to see it in their back yard.

Only the last point has any bearing.

Re:Anonymous Coward

[Gaygirlie]

Well, true, sound effects are client-side, my bad. But server needs map data, quest data, stats of all items, enemies etc, world triggers, and atleast hitbox dimensions if not the whole model. That's still a lot of data and would take forever to replicate without using WoW's own data files.

Re:Anonymous Coward

[roman_mir]

that's a good thing, at least someone is enjoying life more

Re:Anonymous Coward

[Khyber]

And those data files would be installed upon EVERY COMPUTER WHICH HAD WoW INSTALLED. Which means a legitmately-bought game could have the server protocol emulated, and it wouldn't infringe because theoretically everybody has the same WoW-sanctioned and installed patches/updates. (of course, there are pirates/crackers as the exception, but this is given.)

I doubt ANYTHING is handled server-side besides coordinates and flagbits. Everything else, from physics to animation, is done client-side, from locally-installed files (local as in you initiate the download and installation, not a game server.) To stream such insane amounts of information with the limited bandwidth of our connection speeds pretty much prohibits this. If we had 100mbit solid connections, MAYBE.

Re:Anonymous Coward

[0123456]

It's more like they've bought a legitimate copy of a Hollywood movie, duped it (so what?), and sold tickets to see it in their back yard.

Surely it's more like they watched a Hollywood movie, then charged people to watch them reenact it in their back yard with their mates?

Re:Anonymous Coward

[Cyberllama]

No its definately all server-side, though cached client-side on occasion (which is how the server operators are able to get their hands on it).

If you've ever been playing WoW when the server goes down, you can keep running around cause the client doesn't time you out right away as its still waiting for the server to communicate with it. When you do this, if you keep running far enough in one direction you'll eventually just hit a place where the world 'ends' because you don't have the map data beyond that point.

Re:Anonymous Coward

[nedlohs]

I don't know (or care) about the details and whether this the claims are a stretch.

But assuming she is guilty as claimed then the damages better be more than the $3 mil brought in. Otherwise it's not a deterent, especially considering you won't always get caught.

Re:Anonymous Coward

[Seahawk]

Yes, they were using actual WoW data files, including player and enemy models, sound effects and all that. That is clearly infringing on copyrighted material.

If the server host had bought a copy of the game for each server, where is the copyright infringement? I know that there might be some EULA problems, if you live a place where those won't be laughed out of court, but I have a hard time seeing what is so bad here if the copy of the data files on the server is not pirated.

Re:Anonymous Coward

[PopeRatzo]

it's as open-and-shut a case of copyright violation as if you stole a copy of a Hollywood blockbuster from a movie studio, duped it, and sold tickets to see it in your backyard.

So then if they gave away the tickets to the screening in the back yard it would be OK?

Re:Anonymous Coward

[Rich0]

Surely it's more like they watched a Hollywood movie, then charged people to watch them reenact it in their back yard with their mates?

Surely it's more like they charged a bunch of people $1 each to arrange a movie night, and everybody bought their own tickets from a licensed distributor and showed up to the theater at the same time?

Re:Anonymous Coward

[alphatel]

Yes, they were using actual WoW data files, including player and enemy models, sound effects and all that.

It's easy enough to do this without exposing yourself to the same liability. Host the protocol only and let the player download models/sounds/maps elsewhere. The protocol can redirect all requests for this material to the player's models or a 3rd party IP while hosting only interactive features, timing, chat, etc.

Offload copyright infringement to the individual (who in many cases already has a Blizzard license), and you really haven't done anything except permit a set of IP addresses to interact in a very protocol-heavy chat room using a functional game client of their choosing.

Re:Anonymous Coward

[Gaygirlie]

I doubt ANYTHING is handled server-side besides coordinates and flagbits.

Actually, there's a lot of stuff the server still handles that clients don't. For example client doesn't calculate whether a hit lands or misses, nor does the client calculate damage done. There's been loads of scams sold to unsuspecting players that have modified the way the numbers are displayed so that it seems like you have 9 million points HP and what not and unsuspecting players have fallen for it, but as soon as they've actually engaged in combat they've dropped dead just as fast as before: server still holds the correct HP values. Note that the server still needs all stats on items etc to be able to calculate everything.

Movement, physics etc. is done in cooperation with the server: client does some of the work, server does some. It reduces the impact of latency somewhat, but it also means hacks that allow you to move faster or go underground are possible. For this the server still needs map data.

I did once try out setting up a private server of my own (though I was the only user) just out of curiosity and heck, it sure weighed several gigabytes in size even without texture data and sounds.

Re:Anonymous Coward

[shaitand]

WOW Emulation servers have built up databases of monster stats, xp tables, etc completely independant of the official game.

  Except in cases where these were reverse engineered but reverse engineering for interoperability with the client is a cut and dry case of fair use and there are a number of very high profile examples of this in practice such as wine and the samba project.

Re:Anonymous Coward

[shaitand]

The server admins aren't responsible for client violations of the EULA.

Re:Anonymous Coward

[shaitand]

Only if their mates are required to have voided local movie theater tickets for the same movie to watch. Then it fits.

Re:Anonymous Coward

[shaitand]

"There is zero question that this copyright violation:"

Only in your world. You do realize that reverse engineering for interoperability is actually a textbook case case of fair use? They can replicate anything they can sniff off the wire, including locs for the purpose of inter-operation with the client. This is no different than what is done with wine and samba.

To use a better analogy, this is like building your own theater from scratch (the server), buying a movie and watching it (their client used for reverse engineering), then re-enacting the movie as a play in their theater while requiring everyone to bring a voided ticket from an authorized distributor for said movie (the game client the end user is required to legally purchase before they can play on any server), and then selling popcorn at the performance (the micro-payments).

People mention the EULA forbids reverse engineering even if copyright allows it. That can be bypassed by installing sniffing software on another PC where your friend installs his game copy, agrees to the EULA, and plays it while you monitor the traffic from another PC or review the capture file after he is done. You haven't agreed to the EULA and he isn't reverse engineering. Problem solved and nobody broke the EULA or copyright.

Re:Anonymous Coward

[poetmatt]

This was an 8 month trial. Trials themselves usually take years. So the question is, what happened? I too see a default judgement for blizzard. So as usual, nothing big is happening here but plenty will upon appeal.

I'm guessing a lot of the questions asked on slashdot were not covered in the case, if it was that short.

Re:Anonymous Coward

[daveime]

Billy: Miss, miss, Johnny stole my toy.
Teacher : Johnny, give Billy his toy, and 12 identical toys as damages.
Billy : Can't I just have a clip around the ear and I'll learn my lesson ?
Teacher : Oh lord no, we can't DISCIPLE children in school. You and your crazy ideas.

You see, 30 years ago, the clip around the ear worked more often than not, and we had a generation that grew up with at least some moral values. Now the only way to scare someone against doing bad things is not just bankrupt them once, but bankrupt them 12 times over muhahahaaaaaa ...

Seriously, does it matter how much the award was ? After months of time and thousands in taxpayers money for judges, the court, all the ancilliary staff etc. wasted, the appeals court (after spending roughly the same amount of money again) will reduce the judgement to 27 dollars and 63 cents anyway.
   

Re:Anonymous Coward

[Lehk228]

the monster stats and behaviors are copyrighted, you can't reverse engineer a copyright work and claim it is not copyrighted anymore.

if a server operator gave the clients new map and monster packs just using the WoW engine that would be a lawful reverse engineered product.

however i am unaware of any servers that do that.

Re:Anonymous Coward

[shaitand]

Monster stats aren't even vaguely within the realm of qualifying for a copyright.

The actual AI code used to implement the behavior would qualify but the behavior of the monsters isn't new, creative, or unique certainly on the level required for a copyright.

You could probably copyright the whole as a compilation like a reference book but they wouldn't be infringing on that here. They reverse engineered the stats and behavior of the creatures, there isn't even any guarantee they got it right.

The map is in the client, the server just stores coordinates. Again, a set of coords that overlays the map wouldn't be unique or creative enough to qualify for copyright protection (unlike the map itself). Everything else, all the artwork (including the map) the cities, the monsters, etc are all included in the client, lawfully purchased by the end user.

Re:Anonymous Coward

[GreyWolf3000]

I wouldn't say it is simple.. the complexity of the game doesn't lie in the 3d engine, though.

Re:Anonymous Coward

[couchslug]

I for one am amazed at our reasonably-priced lawyer overlords!

Re:Anonymous Coward

[HybridJeff]

No, its more like they charged everyone $1 for the movie night, then they all showed up and paid $5 to the theater for parking and then they proceed to sneak into the movie without paying for the actual ticket.

Re:Anonymous Coward

[Zironic]

No it doesn't. Like with every other MMO in existence the client is available for free, it's the account that costs money.

Re:Anonymous Coward

[Anonymous Coward]

The way WoW's server/client model works, a lot of the data about how the game works is client side and your client simulates a lot of it without the server's interference except to get final resolution. You can make a surprisingly effective WoW server emulator just by telling the client whatever it wants to hear, with the server not actually doing anything. In my experience, the majority of players who would play on an emulated server are people who have never played "real" WoW, and often players who have not played any for-pay MMO. They play some betas or trials, and a bunch of really bad free MMO's. They're not used to good or sophisticated games so it doesn't bother them or they don't realize how dumbed down combat and such are on the emulated servers. Either that or they don't care about that and just like how overpowered or unbalanced their character can be when left to the devices of a 17 year old with zero game design experience.

Either way, they made money off of Blizzard's game data files and more importantly their good reputation. It'd be a bit like if Disney sold some pieces of old rides at auction, and I bought them all up, left the Disney logos on them and built a theme park right next door called "Free Disney World" and instead charged people per-ride instead of just an entrance fee. I'd be abusing their trademarks/copyrights and good name to name a buck with a generally inferior product.

Re:Anonymous Coward

[sabernet]

Nonsense. There was a tool years ago called "WOWMapView" which allowed you to, completely offline, fly through the map without any clipping. It was an awesome way to see how it was built as well as see things which were not part of world proper(GM Island, the skeleton from the boss in WC3, a developer map that had the words "Chow is my Love Monkey" written in the grass and even a prototype for a map that would later be in the Burning Crusade. No PCs or NPCs, but the entire world geometry was laid bare.

Re:Anonymous Coward

[spaanoft]

Wait...

so... Johnny is supposed to be giving the toy back... but it's Billy who wants a smack to his head?

Re:Anonymous Coward

[Jarik C-Bol]

i think that your disney analogy is about the most accurate one so far for this particular discussion.

Re:Anonymous Coward

[Imrik]

$20 for an account with one month of play plus the client, if you just want the client, it's available on the WoW home page.

Re:Anonymous Coward

[morari]

Wouldn't the data files all be on the customer's WoW disc though? Just because they're pointing their game at a different server doesn't mean much.

Re:Anonymous Coward

[Teancum]

Raw statistics such as the "stats" of monsters aren't within the realm of copyright, but more complex behavior like AI models can be.

Still, the point is that those running these alternate servers aren't really being careful with copyright and tend to play fast and loose with "intellectual property" in all of its various flavors. I'm quite certain that most of these guys setting up these servers aren't doing a "clean room" design and have certainly looked at decompiled/disassembled code at one point or another and have made other mistakes that taint the copyright status of these servers.

If they've done a clean room design from a raw specification and otherwise all original content on the server side, there might be much less of a case. When the judge sees that there were numerous problems and that those involved didn't take copyright seriously, no wonder there have been outcomes like this.

Re:Anonymous Coward

[fishbowl]

>You see, 30 years ago, the clip around the ear worked more often than not

It's the occasional vision or hearing loss that did them in. There's not any good defense if someone wants to call it assault and battery. If there are witnesses, well, there are witnesses to the assault. If there are no witnesses, it's a tough spot explaining why you take children in private to beat them.

If you think there will be bad consequences if you do something on the street or in the grocery store to some random child, doing that same thing to a child in a school where you are a teacher should carry at least those consequences.

What do you think will happen if you go to the zoo or the mall, pick some child at random, and give him that "clip around the ear?" (Where I live, I could use lethal force to stop you.)

Still think teachers should be allowed to assault kids? A teacher who hit my kid would go to prison.

Re:Anonymous Coward

[Teancum]

The question is more how careful those operating these servers were careful with copyright questions when they were creating the servers in the first place. Most of those in the "alternate server community" don't really take issues of copyright very seriously and only pay lip-service to even dealing with reverse engineering in any proper sense of the term. The groups tend to have other "software piracy" attitudes, slogans, and remarks on boards that shows a reckless disregard to the law.

All it takes is to show some of that to a judge where it is a bunch of kids that are being rebels and not taking the law seriously to essentially throw the case to the plaintiff in situations like this. Even if many or even most of what they were doing was perfectly legal, skipping steps like trying to come up with a specification and having people implement that specification in a "clean room" are all very important. Perhaps these kids are getting a lesson as to why those very careful steps are done by companies who try to reverse engineer products legally. Even then, sometimes experienced companies make mistakes or encounter a judge who was ragged on by his wife (or husband) and in a sour mood simply decided to rule for the plaintiff anyway. Yes, it happens.

If this group was very careful about a clean-room design, simply monitored network traffic and then had a "virgin" team (somebody who had never played or used Blizzard's software at all) create and implement the design based upon the specification document derived from monitoring that network traffic.... they might have a much more clear-cut case about legal reverse engineering. Somehow I seriously doubt any of that happened, including even a more modest method outlined here about reverse engineering the traffic alone.

Re:Anonymous Coward

[fishbowl]

Certainly player assets are managed server-side. If not, can I hack myself into all Legendaries?

Re:Anonymous Coward

[Entropius]

Ah, now I understand. It took a car analogy; thanks.

Re:Anonymous Coward

[Skuld-Chan]

I was told by someone at Blizzcon no less that the only thing the in WoW that is handled on the client is terrain data (and the physical graphics/sound files themselves). There are some client side hacks that fool the user (more than anything) into thinking they have super powers, but the client can't say to the server this player has a billion hit points or that a boss is now dead or that you have items and achievements you didn't earn. The client can tell the server that I've randomly teleported to another location - but they likely flag players who move without using an api. WoW doesn't appear to do move validation (probably to prevent rubber banding so I can see why they chose the path they did)

The way bosses work, the way the game determines how much health/spellpower/hit/haste etc you have, when you jump off something high how much health you have when you land, statistics, and how much you get hit for by enemies etc - all handled on the server. Whether you can walk forward, fall off a cliff or not walk through walls - client. You can write terrain hacks to go places your not supposed to be in the game - and the server will let you do this.

And if you've ever played around with a 3rd party server you'd see I'm right - about the only thing that is 100% accurate on those is moving/flying. Everything else is a horribly implemented deviation from the original game. Most all bosses just stand there and do hardly anything and some dungeons have no bosses. All the player abilities don't work properly (as blizzard intended).

Re:Anonymous Coward

[Skuld-Chan]

Surely it's more like they watched a Hollywood movie, then charged people to watch them reenact it in their back yard with their mates?

With exact copies of the actors/scenes/lines who made the original movie.

Re:Anonymous Coward

[Entropius]

Whether someone wants to charge money for something has no bearing on whether someone else is allowed to give it away for free. If I make a business of selling prints of the Mona Lisa outside the Louvre, I can't complain when someone else starts making them and handing them to tourists for free.

This guy's actions might have been technically illegal based on other factors, but what Blizzard charges money for isn't the issue. I can violate the Ubuntu Foundation's copyright just as easily and in the same ways as I can violate the RIAA's -- copy their stuff without a license to do so (or, in the Ubuntu case, without following the terms of the license distributed with the software).

Re:Anonymous Coward

[loufoque]

Yes, they were using actual WoW data files, including player and enemy models, sound effects and all that. That is clearly infringing on copyrighted material.

No they didn't. That data only lies on the client, not on the server.
The only thing they did is reverse engineer the network protocol, to interoperate their server with the Blizzard World of Warcraft client, which is actually explicitly allowed by the law in some countries as long as the intent is to provide compatibility. In the US, reverse engineering is restricted by the DMCA, but I don't see how it applies here.

Why they lost is beyond me. Extremely bad lawyers? Or maybe the summary is just bad and we're lacking what the actual offense is.

Re:Anonymous Coward

[Zironic]

"This guy's actions might have been technically illegal based on other factors, but what Blizzard charges money for isn't the issue. I can violate the Ubuntu Foundation's copyright just as easily and in the same ways as I can violate the RIAA's -- copy their stuff without a license to do so (or, in the Ubuntu case, without following the terms of the license distributed with the software)."

The reason that copyright licenses exist is that the very act of running a piece of software requires making a copy, using the software to run on other peoples servers without paying blizzard is a clear violation of the agreement you accepted when you downloaded and installed the client, the creators of the emulated server in addition to violating the agreement themselves as part of their reverse engineering would also be guilty of the fun crime of aiding and abetting copyright infringement.

"Whether someone wants to charge money for something has no bearing on whether someone else is allowed to give it away for free. If I make a business of selling prints of the Mona Lisa outside the Louvre, I can't complain when someone else starts making them and handing them to tourists for free."
It does because you're affecting their business in a way that no judge in the world would agree is fair use.

Re:Anonymous Coward

[trsteinmetz]

Doesn't anyone remember bnetd, the battle.net emulator that Blizzard C&Ded and sued into oblivion? It's obvious that Blizzard doesn't give a damn about interoperability or protocol compatibility. Just another greedy company making some spare change on the legal side. Nothing to see here, move along.

Re:Anonymous Coward

[LingNoi]

Yes, they were using actual WoW data files, including player and enemy models, sound effects and all that. That is clearly infringing on copyrighted material.

No dude that's the client, but don't let facts get in your way of being modded "informative", lol..

Re:Anonymous Coward

[LingNoi]

You're assuming the server admins agreed to the EULA. You're assuming a EULA is exactly the same legally as a contract.

The copyright is already installed on the users hard drive and Blizzard can say whatever they want to say. No one would agree with that line of reasoning, otherwise I'm no longer pirating games or movies if I never run or watch them since I'm not accessing the copyrighted material. You can't have it both ways.

Re:Anonymous Coward

[jalefkowit]

Surely it's more like they watched a Hollywood movie, then charged people to watch them reenact it in their back yard with their mates?

That sounds familiar...

Re:Anonymous Coward

[Drantin]

Wasn't trying to imply that they were, just that they were guilty of violating the EULA as well as the server admins.

Re:Anonymous Coward

[jon3k]

Wrong. I've got the original retail boxes for both Burning Crusader and Lich King on a bookshelf behind me right now.

Re:Anonymous Coward

[jon3k]

That's "vanilla" warcraft. You can't get to outlands or northrend unless you purchase the expansions.

Re:Anonymous Coward

[Khyber]

I bet you could find older games where some of those behaviors were already performed.

Copyrighting a behavior - please.

Re:Anonymous Coward

[Khyber]

You must not be playing on a good private server, then, as I've seen much better than what WoW does.

Also, no, much more is handled client-side - otherwise you'd not need to download gigs of information, you'd get it all streamed or remotely-rendered and displayed to you in a VT.

Actually do some deep-packet inspection, you'll see what WoW servers do/do not do.

And with that tiny amount of bandwidth that USA broadband users have, there isn't MUCH that can be handled server-side without the client first giving data to the server.

Talk to the creator of the client/server game model - John Carmack. There are current (mostly corporate) technical limitations that prevent this from happening mostly server-side as you'd think.

Re:Anonymous Coward

[Zironic]

Are you stupid or something?

http://www.wow-europe.com/en/downloads/client/index.html

The only thing of value inside of those retail boxes is the CD key which allows you to make your account, what you paid for is that CD-key(and to some extent the paper and plastic to make up the boxes) not the client.

Re:Anonymous Coward

[dreampod]

Raw statistics such as the "stats" of monsters aren't within the realm of copyright, but more complex behavior like AI models can be.

Not necessarily correct.

While copyright doesn't cover 'facts' which the 'stats' would definitely fall under, it does cover any "creative spark" or exercise of the requisite "skill and judgement" in how that information is organised and presented. In this particular situation changing how the 'stats' were organised would render the system inoperable without rewriting the code used to request and process them in a different way (which again would require a 'clean' reverse engineering').

Ultimately the 'private' servers had no hope of wining this one legally. They were profitting off not only off the programming itself but also their trademark, their (copyrighted) storyline, and diluted the market for the original. Ultimately about as open and closed a case as ever existed in copyright law.

Re:Anonymous Coward

[dreampod]

Not the behaviour itself but the algorithm that generates that behaviour. Theoretically they could reverse engineer the behaviour but the burden of proof to prove it was done with no prior knowledge of the algorithm (in a 'clean' environment) is extremely high when there is secondary evidence that they are duplicating someone elses work.

Re:Anonymous Coward

[Rich0]

Hmm, I've since learned that WoW doesn't charge for its client, only for the service. I haven't seen any postings indicating that the offender actually distributed any content - just the protocol data.

If that is all the case, then this would be like a movie theater that offers free movies, but you have to pay $20 to park there. Then, this guy opens a lot down the street with $2 parking and people walk to the theater...

Re:Anonymous Coward

[dreampod]

However the admins would then have to prove how they were able to reverse engineer the server without using the client. Which given the general improbability of such an action would constitute a fairly significant burden of proof.

Re:Anonymous Coward

[Raineer]

Only in your world. You do realize that reverse engineering for interoperability is actually a textbook case case of fair use?

I didn't know "fair use" included charging people monetarily to view the portion you are supposedly "fairly using". Also fair use does not stipulate you can use 100% of the source.

Re:Anonymous Coward

[Sparr0]

All of those files are on the client computer. The third party server doesn't send them to anyone (it doesn't even HAVE them. the server doesn't need or want to know what the model of a Murloc looks like, or how it's textured).

Is there any info available publicly on what, exactly, the copyright infringement in question was here?

Re:Anonymous Coward

[black3d]

This is the only correct post so far. The only thing handled by the client is movement, and some mob positioning estimation (ie, if the last thing another player was doing was walking forward, your client continues walking them forward until it receives different information - yay for teleporting). Absolutely everything else is server-side. For so many people discussing this topic, it's amazing how many have no clue what they're talking about at all.

Also, while "monster stats" are not copyrightable on their own, taking a dump of the entire database of "monster stats" and copying them IS a copyright breach. Maintaining a website showing stat information (eg, WoWhead) is fair use. Using that information to duplicate server function is a breach. Folks need to stop interpreting the law as "how I see it.." and start thinking about how courts see it.

Re:Anonymous Coward

[Anachragnome]

"Actually, there's a lot of stuff the server still handles that clients don't."

In layman's terms, the server makes the decisions (die rolls, npc AI, etc), the client comprises the mechanics required to express those decisions to the user.

This is for a very good reason. Given too much control via the client, users invariably exploit these controls/decision making processes.

Not long ago, a game called Darkfall Online came out. It was a 3D rendered emulation of the mechanics of Ultima Online...and they made the exact same mistake that UO developers did--they put too much of the game client-side. Before Darkfall Online even released there were "trainers" and other hacks available for the game, all involving packet replacement--packets that represented decisions that should have been made on the server, out of harm's way.

Also a good reason to beta test with in-house testers. Many of the beta testers were actually compiling data to build those very same hacks.

Re:Anonymous Coward

[daveime]

Well said Sir, this was exactly the point I was trying to get across.

But of course, you'll always get the Liberal handwringers who don't want to discipline the little darlings, mustn't have physical contact, we must think of the children. Assholes.

If they'd thought a little more about the children, they'd realise that kids moral boundary system is related to how much their parents let them get away with, and the disciplinary system applied while they are in their formative years.

They learn the same way any mammal does, in an almost Pavlovian fashion.

Traditional value system building.
Can I do X ? I don't know. Try doing X and see what happens. Mother tells me in a loud voice "NO". I cannot do X. X is bad.

1990+ value system building.
Can I do X ? I don't know. Try doing X and see what happens. Mother tells me fuck all, because Mother is not even here. And even if she was here, she never shouts or smacks me because she's scared I'd sue her for mental or physical abuse. X might be bad, X might be good, I don't give a fuck because no one told me it was wrong or gave me any negative feedback when I did it.

I had a smack around the ear when I was a kid, once when I'd seriously fucked up ... and surprisingly enough I didn't fuck up any further before becoming a normal adult human male with no hearing difficulties whatsoever !

As you said so succinctly, the parent is exactly what is wrong with todays world. I only hope to god, he or she is not actually a real parent. Some people should not be let into the gene pool, even at the shallow end.

Re:Anonymous Coward

[daveime]

Maybe Billy is into SM ?

Look, I messed it up, alright ? Can you forgive me ?

Re:Anonymous Coward

[Peach Rings]

That's a pretty tenuous argument. What exactly is being copyrighted? It's not like a patent application where you can describe steps and give diagrams, copyright only applies to actual text or pictures not descriptions of them.

Re:Anonymous Coward

[Peach Rings]

Our legal system is so screwed up. It's legal to waste vast amounts of time and money to clean-room it, but doing the obvious and practical thing of looking at the trivially-available object code is unspeakable evil punishable by $85 million in statutory damages.

Re:Anonymous Coward

[Peach Rings]

Nobody's legally responsible for violations of Blizzard's EULA, it's an internal matter. A counter strike server can't sue you for friendly fire even though it's against the server rules that you accept through the MOTD ok button.

Re:Anonymous Coward

[Peach Rings]

Would you need a copy for every server? What if you use the same drive image for every server, or even the same volume for every server (physically mirrored on lots of drives of course)? What if every server is just virtual running on the same processor, or running on an 8-processor box?

The software licensing situation for servers is hopeless, there's no way it's encoded in law.

Re:Anonymous Coward

[shaitand]

AFAIK a clean room design with a spec is only needed if you are reversing the actual source code or binary.

If you reverse from the network protocol alone you couldn't be inspired by the source.

Since Blizzard is the only entity known to have the server binaries or source it would be impossible for anyone else to be inspired by the original code. The network protocol really is no more than a specification itself.

Re:Anonymous Coward

[shaitand]

"but the burden of proof to prove it was done with no prior knowledge of the algorithm"

I tend to disagree since the only one with either binary or source for anything they implemented is Blizzard. Blizzard has never released their server application in binary or source form so there is no possibility of an emulator having been inspired by it.

The only code they can review is the client, they don't need a clean room for this since they aren't implementing a client and thus fall afoul of its copyright by doing so. Aside from that they can only review the network traffic which is effectively nothing more than a specification.
 

Re:Anonymous Coward

[shaitand]

I still don't understand what people think they need to 'clean room'.

The only code that could be reversed is the client and they didn't implement a client. They implemented a server and Blizzard has never released the server. No binary, no object code, nothing to clean-room.

The only thing they could review is the client (which can be reversed for interoperability without a clean room as long as they are coding the counterpart and not its own functionality) and the network communication which is fair game.

Re:Anonymous Coward

[shaitand]

Wrong, the account with one month of play is free. The client and its accompanying key code requires a purchase.

But even if it didn't, if Blizzard is giving away clients for free that is their problem, the server emulator operator certainly isn't responsible for that.

Re:Anonymous Coward

[shaitand]

"The reason that copyright licenses exist is that the very act of running a piece of software requires making a copy"

That was a bullshit argument when Blizzard made it the first time. No license is required to use a piece of legally acquired software.

Additionally, copyright law explicitly allows making a copy of any legally acquired work.

The creators of the server emulator don't need to break the EULA. Only the guy playing the game needs to agree to the EULA, the guy sniffing his packets and debugging his client but not playing his game has no need to agree to the EULA.

"aiding and abetting copyright infringement"

They performed a perfectly legal reverse engineering of the server functionality. They of all people have every reason to believe the same could be done with the client using original artwork. They aren't doing anything that requires a client to violate copyright, that is on the client.

Re:Anonymous Coward

[LingNoi]

After reading more about this case I'd say that's the one thing they're not guilty of. The admin downloaded the GPL server or something similar and ran it. They could easily deny that claim.

You'd be better off arguing that they connect to the server using the client. What annoys me about this types of cases is that it's never clear where the legal line is with server emulators?

Is it ok to run a third party server with none of the original WoW data? It should be, even if Blizzard doesn't like it.

Re:Anonymous Coward

[Cyberllama]

I'm sorry I didn't think this through all the way.

What I said is true of instances and battlegrounds. It's not true of world maps.

The "world ends here" effect only happens inside instanced areas.

Re:Anonymous Coward

[nedlohs]

We aren't talking about children, who we know aren't very good at considering consequences and possibly haven't been taught the very morals we expect them to keep.

We are talking about adults making hopefully rational decisions.

If some crime will bring me $5 million in profits, and I have a 25% of chance of getting caught and the punishment is just to hand over the profits, the rational thing would be to go for those profits and hope for the 75% case.

yes people should just not do what is wrong, but people are jerks. Plus of course often the "system"'s views on what is wrong don't match the individual's views so relying on people being good and moral just doesn't cut it.

This is why corporate America does so much shit, they know the chances of getting caught aren't very high. And if they are caught the punishment is usually a public statement for the SEC saying they don't admit any wrong doing but they are paying back 10% of what they gained because they are nice.

Again, relying on the morals of other people to get them to do what is right isn't very successful. And this has been going on just fine when children were clipped around the ear at school for looking at the teacher with the wrong tone of voice.

Re:Anonymous Coward

[Teancum]

The reason for clean-rooming software has to do with legally keeping away from having the implementer "accidentally" including some bits of the original software algorithms into source code of whatever it is that you are working on. This doesn't necessarily involve even looking at the original source code but can involve decompiled or even dis-assembled software too.

By doing a clean room implementation, you are legally protecting yourself in a substantial way and making sure that there is no excuse for a lawsuit to happen, where you can present the specification documents and "prove" the clean-room implementation as strictly meeting the interoperability requirements as specified in the law. Essentially, you can snowball the court with documentation that you are trying to do it the right way... and lawyers love a flood of paperwork in that regard too if you are trying to use it for defense purposes.

If you want to play fast and loose with copyright law, don't be too surprised if that kind of behavior eventually catches up to you and bites you in the end. Those living on the knife's edge of copyright law tend not to really know where the line between legal and illegal really is at, and far too often end up having legal proceedings that go against them. What happened here with this private server group is precisely that kind of problem. That they were making money off of the effort only compounded the problem.

Re:Anonymous Coward

[Teancum]

I agree that context of information tends to be even more important, and the "whole picture" in terms of these virtual worlds and how they are organized is a big deal. There is some creativity there, and that can and should be copyrighted at some point along the line.

Some of the blame for this sort of rests on the way that Blizzard has organized the game, where a significant part of the game is purchased in the form of client software that only loosely depends on the server itself for actual information clues. Other MMORPGs tend to supply more data from the server in terms of graphics and statistical data for the creatures involved, where the case is much more cut and dried.

I am not really familiar with this particular server and their practices, but my experience with other "private server" hacker groups is one where they really don't take copyright seriously at all even for elements that would be trivial to tweak and change in terms of original content. If they were merely using the game engine itself and presenting a whole new "world" of original content, the private server groups would have much more in their favor.

What I find sad is that with the effort that some of these groups have put into reverse engineering some of these servers, they could have even developed their own game from scratch that would have been completely unencumbered with any kind of copyright issue at all. It could have even been "like" World of Warcraft but doing something new and different. In the vain effort to be lazy and not put that little bit of extra effort, they get slapped by a court and now have to pay.

Re:Anonymous Coward

[shnull]

as long as the main idea is 'because they made money and didnt pay blizzard' i think i kinda agree, but it remains outlandish. Nice warning, keep your warez free :)

Re:Anonymous Coward

[shnull]

a private wow server is nothing but a database. The player uses the original client (the client contains all the graphics, character and mob models, sfx and so on) The private server software (as far as i know) is developed by few hakzor teams who know their bits and bytes pretty well. Thus : the player is actually the one who gets to decide wether he/she infringes copyright or not. You can download any wow-iso anywhere, just like you can download anything else anywhere. You just install wow from your cds/dvds like you would when you pay blizz and connect to their servers but before you start it up you edit one (maybe two) configuration files so the program connects to a different ip. The software used for the server however is (that's what they claim) not a copy of what blizzard is running on their wowhardwarefarm so, i guess it's a bit of a twilight zone. People charging money for warez however ... i can see how that is bound to go wrong. I don't know how i know all this, perhaps i used to spend too much time on shady irc channels

Re:Anonymous Coward

[Acaeris]

The server doesn't even have a copy of the world map. Just some collision data so it can make occasional checks on a players location to make sure they are not out of bounds. It does however contain all the spawn points for enemies, npcs and some doodads (some are static and only the sparkle effect is controlled server side) and buildings (used for phasing purposes).

Stats are handled server side, as are all combat and spell actions (Mage Blink being another thing that uses the server's collision detection rather than the client's)

However, as of the Cataclysm installer, if you are playing while not completely installed a server does send you the data required for any model or map chunk requested specifically by the client (because it doesn't have a local copy) so any future public servers would have to break the streaming installer as the request would still be sent to the Blizzard servers. Which likely wont respond due to not using a valid account.

Re:Anonymous Coward

[shaitand]

how is this a flame?

Re:Anonymous Coward

[shaitand]

You realize your comment adds absolutely nothing to the conversation?

Re:Anonymous Coward

[shaitand]

"The reason for clean-rooming software has to do with legally keeping away from having the implementer "accidentally" including some bits of the original software algorithms into source code of whatever it is that you are working on. This doesn't necessarily involve even looking at the original source code but can involve decompiled or even dis-assembled software too."

I know the reason for a clean room implementation. THEY DIDN'T HAVE THE SERVER TO DECOMPILE OR DISASSEMBLE OR REVIEW IN ANY FASHION.

It would literally be impossible for them to accidentally implement any such algorithms.

This non-sensible and it is being spread around like wildfire among a community who should know better. It is impossible to accidentally incorporate Apache web server IP by disassembling Firefox. The client and the server are separate and distinct pieces, you can't infringe on one if you've only seen the other.

Re:Anonymous Coward

[Rakarra]

The initial client costs a certain amount of money as well. Once you've bought that client you can redownload it for free from Blizzard's web servers.

Re:Anonymous Coward

[Teancum]

They did have software that was written by that company. Do you mean to say that not one of the developers of this server ever played a single game of World of Warcraft, that they never once even peeked at the disassembled/decompiled source code involved with the client software?

The analogy with Firefox and Apache is a poor one as that is software already written according to a published specification and both are open source projects. If the example here was something like Internet Explorer and that software was using a custom encrypted protocol for hyperlinked data that did not use HTTP/HTML but was some custom server software written by Microsoft, yes the analogy would fit better. In that case, the reverse engineering clean room would also apply, and you would have to be equally careful. Arguably even more careful given the sue-happy nature of Microsoft.

It doesn't matter that they didn't have direct access to the server to decompile or disassemble the server software itself. The fact that these developers used software written by that company (Blizzard) and were thus "contaminated" by the source code on a proprietary protocol is the problem.

It still gets back to the point that those involved here were playing fast and loose with copyright and simply didn't give a damn about the law in the first place. That came out in court, where arguments precisely like this one were made to a judge where those involved displayed a blatant defiance to the law or any need for special protections because it was a reverse engineering effort. That made those involved appear as common hackers and tainted the case right from the beginning. Act like that, and don't be to surprised that a judge will slap you down even if your argument is 100% correct in terms of a strict interpretation of the law. Appearances do matter in situations like that, and the issue of a clean room is also in part to keep up appearances even if the effort isn't strictly needed. If you haven't shown that you are trying to be careful about copyright, the presumption is that you aren't being careful at all.

Re:Blizzard?

[Anonymous Coward]

God knows Blizzard did not mind private servers before this (because they sucked).

What? Remember Blizzard v. bnetd?

Re:Blizzard?

[MartijnL]

They probably still don't mind just as long as the host doesn't start a commercial business out of it. And in this case, whichever way you look at it, $ 3 million is well beyond the "hobby" stage.

Who runs an illegal game server with a real name?

[assemblerex]

They should be suing Bobafett (resident of rwanda), i.e. John Doe.
QQ Alyson Reeves?

Re:Blizzard?

[ScytheBlade1]

Oh they cared before. Remember BnetD?

That was WAY before Activision. They report their income on different balance sheets; the only effective change in Blizzard mindset was the part where they went public.

Activision has nothing to do with anything they've done recently, and anyone who says otherwise is blaming something they don't like on a company of convinence.

Re:Blizzard?

[notanother1]

seriously? hobby is not in this dudes vocab, this is a mission, if you earn 3 mill making a 'farm', you're doin great, fuck the man!!

Re:Blizzard?

[Aliotroph]

Oh they did indeed mind them. There were the guys who got shut down for cloning Battle.net (for either Starcraft or Diablo II purposes iirc) and they made sure to shut down the server being run by my brother and his friends. Vivendi Universal isn't a nicer company than Activision.

Re:Who runs an illegal game server with a real nam

[Volante3192]

Somewhere along the chain, you have to pay for the hosting. Plus if you're getting money, there's another paper trail.

Private servers are garbage anyways

[ekaoxide]

Why anyone would pay micro-payments towards a private server is beyond me. If you have ever wasted precious minutes of your life attempting to play on one you will soon see why it's just worth it to fork over 10-15 bucks a month for the real deal.

Re:Private servers are garbage anyways

[Kitkoan]

Why anyone would pay micro-payments towards a private server is beyond me. If you have ever wasted precious minutes of your life attempting to play on one you will soon see why it's just worth it to fork over 10-15 bucks a month for the real deal.

People pay money because of what you can parts of the games whole you can alter. Remove level caps, allow learning more then 2 core skill sets and then the real "fun" mode when you die, you can stay dead. Like Diablo 2 online's Hardcore mode.

Services on that private server?

[Allnighte]

Does anyone know what that private server was giving when you paid them?

I can understand playing on private servers if it's free, but if you're going to pay money to play on a private server, why not just pay Blizzard and play on official servers? Usually the private servers are a little behind on content anyway.

Re:Services on that private server?

[Kenja]

Often they include things like +10,000 strength items and the like. Its the same reason people cheat at any game.

Re:Services on that private server?

[eexaa]

imaginary +1 for you, for remembering the whole story.

Re:Services on that private server?

[Korin43]

I can think of two things:
- It was probably cheaper. Real WoW is $15/month, if they were offering it for significantly less that might attract people.
- Leveling is usually much faster on private servers.

I'm not sure how they convinced so many people that theirs was better than all of the free ones though.

Hmmm

[ZDRuX]

I don't think there's really a way to turn it around and make excuses for the hosting company. I'm generally in favor of the small guys doing their own thing, even using someone's code - but in this case, it was purley for profit and not for fun any sort of personal enjoyment.

I do have a problem with the damages awarded though... I mean - How in the world did they come up with this figure?

Re:Hmmm

[Volante3192]

Get the outlandish number out during trial, reduced on appeal. It'll probably go down to $30 mil, losses + statuatory damages. (With corporations, at least , the magic multiplyer is 9 I think. So if they cause $10 mil in damages, the most the statuatory can be is $90.)

Still, there's documentation that this person's on the hook for an absolute bare minimum of $3+ mil... Consider the rest of it an idiot tax. Seriously, you're charging for a server running a Blizzard game? And you don't expect to get caught/convicted?! What's the financial equivalent of a Darwin Award? The Lehman Award?

Re:Hmmm

[EvilIdler]

I thought that sum was rather modest. Remember all the RIAA cases? THOSE were excessive.

Re:Hmmm

[Zephiris]

They're called statutory damages for a reason. It's precalculated by a statute (hence the name) or a law. Given that the lawyer's fees were so low...likely Blizzard wasn't considering asking for so much (especially given likely inability to repay such an amount), but was given little to no say in it, given that it was a DEFAULT judgement (defendant never responded despite being served/summoned), and hence not argued "in trial".

It was a lengthy, boring series of motions that was never once contested.

Re:Hmmm

[Cylix]

If I were going to do something like this I would assume I would get caught.

Now, if I managed to bring it to a rather fruitful set of earnings I might do one of two things. Attempt to work within the structure of the law to minimize damages to myself or blatantly work outside the law and optimize for monetary gain. Perhaps, there was yet a third view point in that the scenario ended with a friendly take down. Though that would just be rather unrealistic optimism.

Whatever the outcome I would assume it was clear from the beginning. Face the consequences or take the money and run.

Re:Hmmm

[Anonymous Coward]

Npe. It's not punitive damages. It's statutory damages. There's a difference.

Re:Hmmm

[KDR_11k]

I wonder if the default judgment was reached precisely because the server operator was busy shoveling the money out of the country and leaving.

Re:Hmmm

[91degrees]

Really? |I'm not sure what the hosting company did wrong.

I can't see what they "copied". They provided an alternative service for people who legitimately bought copies of WoW. Disallowing use of private servers sounds like Microsoft disallowing difference search engines for Internet Explorer.

Re:Hmmm

[Golden_Rider]

Private servers do not NEED you to buy a copy of the game. You can just download the client from the Blizzard website without paying anything (since you are supposed to also buy an account for WoW, and the client is useless without an account) and then use that client to play on a private server. So the "I already paid for the game, I can play on whatever server I want" excuse does not work. I would not be surprised if 99% of the players on the private servers never actually paid for the game. Blizzard has every right in the world to sue private server operators who allow people to play Blizzard's game without paying Blizzard.

Re:Hmmm

[Golden_Rider]

Really? |I'm not sure what the hosting company did wrong.

I can't see what they "copied". They provided an alternative service for people who legitimately bought copies of WoW. Disallowing use of private servers sounds like Microsoft disallowing difference search engines for Internet Explorer.

Nope, they provided a service for everybody, even people who never ever bought WoW. You can download the client from Blizzard's ftp site - what you need to play on Blizzard's servers is an account. So what the hosting company did was allow people to play WoW without ever having paid Blizzard for the game, and they even made money out of it.

Re:Hmmm

[mqduck]

I don't think there's really a way to turn it around and make excuses for the hosting company.

Really? Let me give it a shot.

Before the expansion packs came out, the original game cost somewhere around $40-$50 (if memory serves me). Each expansion, if you bought them when they were new, cost something like $40. I already paid Blizzard $110-$120 for the software (theoretically -- I've only paid about $80 for WoW software, personally). Blizzard is the one that decided that the software and the servers you subscribe to are two separate products, so they can kiss my ass if they want to stop me from getting that service from someone else.

How'd I do?

Re:Hmmm

[Wildclaw]

Really? |I'm not sure what the hosting company did wrong.

They challenged a lawful evil company in a country where laws are bought. Not a good idea.

Re:Hmmm

[Charliemopps]

I'd think the people playing of those servers would argue there was some enjoyment involved. Private servers are a product that Blizzard does not offer. The product this company was selling couldn't be bought from blizzard yet they won purely based on copyright. I wish MMO companies would learn from this and maybe licenses private servers. People like to create their own worlds and be in control of them. There's no reason not to let them.

Re:Hmmm

[roystgnr]

Nope, they provided a service for everybody, even people who never ever bought WoW. You can download the client from Blizzard's ftp site - what you need to play on Blizzard's servers is an account.

I see. So the only way for 91degrees' analogy to be completely, 100% accurate would be if Microsoft allowed free downloads of Internet Explorer, but they did make money from search traffic?

Re:Hmmm

[LingNoi]

Downloading the client from Blizzard's site is legitimately getting the game. In respect to the GPs post he's still correct and it is the client runners that are breaking Blizzard's EULA, etc which the server operators have no involvement in.

Re:Hmmm

[russotto]

Private servers do not NEED you to buy a copy of the game. You can just download the client from the Blizzard website without paying anything (since you are supposed to also buy an account for WoW, and the client is useless without an account) and then use that client to play on a private server. So the "I already paid for the game, I can play on whatever server I want" excuse does not work.

The "I already received a copy of the game from the legitimate copyright holder" "excuse" still applies, however.

However, in practice Blizzard won this one when the EFF surrendered in Blizzard v. bnetd.

Re:Hmmm

[Devout_IPUite]

People pay for accounts and account upgrades. Those are NOT the client. The client is free. If you download the client but you don't have an account, you can't do anything. It's not like they check your CD key to install the client. They check your CD key to create an account.

Re:Blizzard?

[Zephiris]

The difference here seems to be that they were explicitly soliciting money for in-game stuff, rather than accepting donations purely to offset hosting costs. (Eg, most private servers aren't going to be needing 3 million dollars just to host it.)

Some of the language that Activision/Blizzard uses in the briefs are unnerving (such as 'unauthorized client' and 'you must be connected to blizz servers onlien to patch, not use blizz-provided offline patcher files').

If you also RTFA, it was a default judgment, meaning scapegaming was served, and chose not to respond at any point during the whole proceedings.

Re:Moon Crickets

[ScytheBlade1]

Activision is not a private company.

http://www.google.com/finance?q=activision

cheap lawyer!

[ILuvRamen]

WOW! I know it's an open and shut case from the get go but with a company that big, usually $60,000 will barely get you a random word generator with text to speech representing you. For a quarter mil, you might even be able to get the disembodied voice that lives in my GPS to represent you. Somehow it always costs about a million for a supposedly "respectable" lawyer to even show up in court. What a joke. Oh well, at least they got around that this time somehow.

Re:cheap lawyer!

[Rallion]

Do staff lawyers' salaries count towards that figure? It seems like they wouldn't.

Re:cheap lawyer!

[91degrees]

It wasn't defended, so they basically charged $60000 for submitting the brief.

Actually that's a bit unfair. They didn't know this was going to be uncontested so they had to make sure all the evidence was checked out and in order, and research appropriate case law. Still seems like a fair whack of cash though.

Re:cheap lawyer!

[nenya]

The big firms, and Sonnenschein as one, charge upwards of $600 an hour for their services, so this amounts to between one and two weeks of billable hours. For what they did, which really wasn't much, that sounds about right.

Re:cheap lawyer!

[Bigjeff5]

...but with a company that big, usually $60,000 will barely get you a random word generator with text to speech representing you.

That's actually pretty expensive, considering they did absolutely nothing.

Scapegaming never answered the subpoena nor bothered to showed, a third grader could have beaten them. It was basically just filing motions to move the case along in light of the fact that Scapegaming didn't bother to show up. It did, and Blizzard was awarded compensatory damages (the $3 million) and punative statory damages ($85 million).

Re:Blizzard?

[Zaphod The 42nd]

Uh, wrong. Blizzard absolutely does mind private servers, and the EULA has always stated that they are against the terms, on top of the fact that it is actually copyright infringement.

I'll be the first to say that blizzard suing the Glider people and claiming that "copying the software into ram is making a copy and counts as copyright infringement."

And I even have a private server of my own. I think it should fall under fair use, if I want to use the software I purchased a licence for but don't want to pay to subscribe to their servers, a local host function is necessary. They don't offer one, which is unfortunate.

However, as soon as you start charging money to run your server, well, that changes the mood completely. Fair use goes out the window. This company was making millions off of blizzard's success, and had this coming.

Normally

[KarlIsNotMyName]

Normally I don't feel that copyright infringement is a big deal, or automatically a bad thing, especially when it breaks down artificial limitations and restrictions.

But profiting from other people's work, work that you have no rights to, is just wrong.

Doesn't seem to be any details on what the microtransactions were for here, but apparently they were selling in-game items for real money. I find that disgusting even when it's legit. Ruins the value of actually playing the game.

Re:Normally

[Anonymous Coward]

Well as a founding memeber of scapegaming which back in the day was WowScape lol. They would use microtransactions to automatically level, or special gear that would give you advantage was well as mounts and much more....

But yeah I know back then when it first started they were making a couple grand a month in profits, which they originally turned into server improvements, but then they started pocketing it as profits got higher... and I can easily see them making way bigger profits... I know back then they had a 4000 person player base when i got fucked over... Think if each of those were paying on average 10-20 bucks and except some percent of growth, I know way back when instant lvl 70 (bc) + the epic fixings was a 250dollar package that people actually bought.

DEFAULT JUDGEMENT

[carigis]

there was only $63,000 is attorneys fees because it was a default judgement and they did not have to present a case in front of the court. Likey the person will claim they were never served and demand there day in court. the judge will overturn the default judgement and the case will start over... or she will declare bankruptcy and the judgement will be discharged.. but maybe they will recover some of the 3 million

Re:DEFAULT JUDGEMENT

[crankyspice]

there was only $63,000 is attorneys fees because it was a default judgement and they did not have to present a case in front of the court. Likey the person will claim they were never served and demand there day in court.

There was only $63,600 in attorney fees because that's what they're capped at, per C.D. Cal. Local Rule 55-3 in a default judgment ($5,600 plus 2% of the amount over $100,000; they used the PayPal amount of $3,000,000 (rounded)): http://www.cacd.uscourts.gov/CACD/LocRules.nsf/a224d2a6f8771599882567cc005e9d79/0d9758b2da11901188256dc5005973fd?OpenDocument&Highlight=0,55-3

The defendant was served, personally, by a P.I. / process server, who swore an affidavit.

Re:DEFAULT JUDGEMENT

[carigis]

process servers are a dime a dozen.. they are known to frequently use the throw in the gutter in the front of the house and check the box that the person was served method.. A judge will generally side with the person who did not get to have there case heard if they dispute it and say they do not live at the address an had moved..and the process server "served" the wrong person...or some other lame excuse default judgments are pretty easy to get vacated,

Re:DEFAULT JUDGEMENT

[Talizorah]

I disagree that Blizzard's legal team did not present a case. If they had not presented evidence of damages, and such a compelling argument against the egregious nature of the infringement, then the court would not have awarded Blizzard $88M from a server company that only reaped $3M in profits.

Alyson Reeves could claim that she was never served, but that doesn't mean that a judge would immediately set aside the judgement against her. The motion to vacate the judgement would need to be timely and she would still need to prove that she was not served. It is unlikely that she was not served, and it is even more unlikely that she would be able to prove that she was not served if she actually was served.

There is nothing to indicate that any grounds exist to set aside the judgement, so any assumption (or assertion) that it will get set aside is extremely premature. Personally, I have greater faith in our justice system, if not the defendant's own sense of self-preservation. If the debt is dischargeable in a bankruptcy, then Alyson Reeves has nothing to gain from expending even more resources in an attempt to prove a negative just to start over a case where she already knows the outcome.

Re:DEFAULT JUDGEMENT

[arbiter1]

in default judgments it don't matter if you have the evidence to prove a thing. the other side was served papers to be in court on day x, they don't show up its then other side wins default judgment.

Re:DEFAULT JUDGEMENT

[Talizorah]

I think you have been misinformed as to how the legal process of judgement by court works, because the reality is not nearly as simple as you describe. What an unjust system it would be if it actually were! Thankfully, civil procedure exists.

This was a federal court case and Blizzard was required to submit evidence of damages so that the court could determine the amount to award. That evidence, which includes everything from declarations to expert testimony, can be seen in the court docket. If this had been a case involving a contract or similar issue where an award amount had already been determined, then it might have been more simple. But it was not.

Courts do not randomly award sums of $88M because someone failed to respond to a complaint. Blizzard was awarded $88M because they proved those were their damages with evidence. There might be cases where you "do not need evidence to prove a thing," but this was certainly not one of them.

I used to play on that one.

[Anonymous Coward]

Played on it a long time ago when it was still known as WoWScape. It was the whole reason I actually started playing on retail, me and a good portion of my friends. Blizzard would have lost out on thousands of dollars from me and my friends if it wasn't for them.

Scapegaming actually was good enough that it got me (Feral druid), my best friend (Rogue), his roommate (Resto shaman), his roommates friends (Enhance shaman), their wife (Arms Warrior), neighbor down the road (Ret Paladin), Another friend (rogue), step brother (Rogue), another friend (Mage), and a few others. WoWScape actually got enough friends playing retail that we could host our own personal raids if we wanted.

Since then, all of us left. Scapegaming brought Blizzard a lot of business, but The Wrath of the Lich King ran them off. Only way I can tolerate WoW anymore is if I find an old TBC server now. Lasted till just before ICC was released on retail, but I just can't stand it anymore, it just isn't fun. Was fun back in the day raiding Kara, SSC, and the Eye just playing around, talking shit in Vent and having fun while half of them were wasted and still able to hold their own. Then 3.0 had to come and ruin it.

I honestly wonder about how much did Scapegaming make blizzard compared to how much it cost them. Wouldn't be surprised if it did them more good than harm. And don't try and mention the trail accounts on WoW, they capped you at level 10 and a bunch of other stuff, none of my friends were willing to try it like that. Actually downloaded the software off the internet months before we ever thought about registering a retail account.

Re:I used to play on that one.

[Derosian]

"Since then, all of us left. Scapegaming brought Blizzard a lot of business, but The Wrath of the Lich King ran them off. Only way I can tolerate WoW anymore is if I find an old TBC server now. Lasted till just before ICC was released on retail, but I just can't stand it anymore, it just isn't fun. Was fun back in the day raiding Kara, SSC, and the Eye just playing around, talking shit in Vent and having fun while half of them were wasted and still able to hold their own. Then 3.0 had to come and ruin it."

All my friends are leaving WoW. Cataclysm is running them off. Only way I can tolerate WoW anymore is if I don't pay attention to the Cataclysm stuff. It just isn't fun anymore. Was fun back in the day raiding Naxx, Ulduar, and ToC just playing around, talking shit in Vent and having fun while half of them were wasted still able to hold their own. Now this Cataclysm is gonna come along and ruin it.

Or maybe I'm just tired of playing WoW, yeah that could be it...

Re:I used to play on that one.

[Devout_IPUite]

As the expansions came out the content generally gets more 'accessible'. People who like doing things others can't don't enjoy new expansions as much, casuals enjoy expansions more. Blizzard realized casuals are a bigger group.

Re:I used to play on that one.

[ildon]

There are plenty of hardcore raiders who raid because the raid game is fun, and not because they have an inferiority complex. Those ones stick around, but could hardly be considered "casual".

Re:I used to play on that one.

[Aboroth]

I don't think it is an "inferiority complex". Some people just like to work hard and get rewarded for it. I enjoy having higher DPS because I did my research and wasted time on the training dummies fine-tuning my rotation. I like it when getting near the "peak" DPS is only achievable from hard work and dedication (maybe you might call it obsession, but whatever). It is a lot of work for a little bit of gain in performance, but that is how it always works. What sucks is that they are adjusting that "peak" on the performance curve so that is lower and more smoothed out. Which means, you don't have to work as hard to get near-perfect performance.

I had a crappy dead-end job, where it didn't matter how hard I worked, so WoW was a great escape for me. I enjoy hard work, and climbing to the top through that hard work plus dedication. However when I see less and less benefit to doing that, what's the point? Luckily I got out of the crappy job I had and now am somewhere where hard work and dedication mean something, and I don't need WoW anymore.

Re:I used to play on that one.

[Idiomatick]

Holds true as well. It isn't that you are getting bored of the game it is that the game is getting worse. The game has gotten easier every patch since release (seriously!).

These days you can solo the majority of the instances on the level you are supposed to be in a group of 5. You can TWO man a handful of the current level 80 10/25 man bosses (re naxx and other low tier dungeons). The only reason you will ever die in a raid these days is if someone intentionally screws you over (re. healer leaving), there is lag/DCs or if someone is borderline retarded (doesn't know what clockwise means).

If you look at the old 40 man dungeons today, at release they were hard enough that some were near impossible (v1.9 c'thun). Now you can do them at the same level with maybe 15-20 people?

Re:I used to play on that one.

[bidule]

Blizzard realized casuals are a bigger group.

There were elite ogres in Alterac Mountain, it was great fun challenging yourself against those mobs. They could have left a few dangerous spots on the map, where casual players had to wait a few more levels before entering.

You used to be able to take quests that were red or orange, because of the level limitation all WotLK quests are green.

This is catering to "cry mommy" casual who don't even have 10y old skills. And I'm talking from experience, looking at my son levelling his toons.

They lost me when they removed all challenges for good players, but they didn't.

Re:I used to play on that one.

[DiEx-15]

Played on it a long time ago when it was still known as WoWScape. It was the whole reason I actually started playing on retail, me and a good portion of my friends. Blizzard would have lost out on thousands of dollars from me and my friends if it wasn't for them.

Scapegaming actually was good enough that it got me (Feral druid), my best friend (Rogue), his roommate (Resto shaman), his roommates friends (Enhance shaman), their wife (Arms Warrior), neighbor down the road (Ret Paladin), Another friend (rogue), step brother (Rogue), another friend (Mage), and a few others. WoWScape actually got enough friends playing retail that we could host our own personal raids if we wanted.

Since then, all of us left. Scapegaming brought Blizzard a lot of business, but The Wrath of the Lich King ran them off. Only way I can tolerate WoW anymore is if I find an old TBC server now. Lasted till just before ICC was released on retail, but I just can't stand it anymore, it just isn't fun. Was fun back in the day raiding Kara, SSC, and the Eye just playing around, talking shit in Vent and having fun while half of them were wasted and still able to hold their own. Then 3.0 had to come and ruin it.

I honestly wonder about how much did Scapegaming make blizzard compared to how much it cost them. Wouldn't be surprised if it did them more good than harm. And don't try and mention the trail accounts on WoW, they capped you at level 10 and a bunch of other stuff, none of my friends were willing to try it like that. Actually downloaded the software off the internet months before we ever thought about registering a retail account.

It probably didn't help or hurt Blizzard as much as you think. Truth be told, most of the people that play WoW are not aware of F2P servers and my cat has more computer savvy then them. My guess is that for every one account that this brought in, 10 more were oblivious to this. So really, I highly doubt this did any noteworthy business or harm to Blizzard.

Secondly, WoW is a MMORPG. So everything you and your friends and family did on this service will remain hidden from the world or normal players of the game... Now it is gone forever with this service going offline. All that time and energy you and your friends did on this service is now lost to the world. Granted, you and your friends got to experience the game in an unique way and you got practice. However, you and your friends could have gotten it had you tried the demo and/or purchased it.

Yes, I am going to "mention the trail accounts on WoW, they capped you at level 10 and a bunch of other stuff, none of my friends were willing to try it like that."... Here is the deal: Getting to level 10 isn't an easy feat in WoW. When I played the demo, I wasn't even at level 7 when I went and got the full version. I didn't get anywhere near the 1 or 10 gold cap they had... Heck, I wasn't even in a profession yet, or tried PvM, or a Raid, or even 1% of exploring the world. What I am saying is: By the time you hit whatever caps or restrictions they have, you should have a good idea whether or not you want to continue. This whole "me and my friends weren't willing to try it with restrictions" is nothing more than an excuse to validate playing a legitimate game on an illegitimate service.

I am no fan of Blizzard and I quit playing long before the first expansion came out. However, I am no fan of people who do things like Scapegaming. It is not hurting Blizzard in anyway and is cheating yourself out of the full blown experience a game has.

Re:I used to play on that one.

[h7]

When I recently installed the game on trial to see how things have progressed I found I was not missing anything. The whole sense of community is gone. The cities are freakin deserted and the starter areas are deserted too. The dungeons are just assembled at random and people are teleported in and out of groups. It was a ghastly experience and for the first time I wondered- why should I waste my time on this shit. I now have a few characters including a lev 60 one that died and fell off a cliff into the next zone. I couldn't be bothered to find the spirit, just quit instead.

Re:I used to play on that one.

[Derosian]

Way to belittle what I consider accomplishments, we've wiped a number of times in ICC with the buff at 20%. We still haven't completely downed ICC, but weve gotten all the way to sindragosa with the buff where it is.

Re:I used to play on that one.

[Idiomatick]

If you think of it like stepmania or any timing game it is pretty easy. You pretty much have one button to press every 1-1.5seconds depending on gear. Better still you can spam buttons so you don't need timing. So it is more like hitting a button within 1.5seconds taking away the timing needed. If you l2 play your class (re. spend 10minutes at elitistjerks) and learn what your optimal rotation is then choosing which button to press isn't too tough since almost all classes work on an attack priority list. After that it is just moving out of fire/goo/acid and hitting the correct target.

The only thing outside of a raid that you do is make sure you repair and have potions/flasks on you and equip w/e the best gear your spreadsheet tells you to. I suppose making sure your lag isn't horrible is good too.

Doing just that when I'm dpsing I on average hit 150% what people in similar gear do. Last night I flat out doubled the dps of someone with better gear than me in one of the top raiding guilds on my terrible server (with 390ping).

Sidenote: Skill in wow is dealing with people, making them stick together and gathering a group that isn't terrible. If you are harsh and toss people that are really bad (re 4k dps in icc) people start to notice that your groups succeed.

Sidesidenote: PVP is still hard since it scales to your skill level. Good at arena and you face other good players. Good at BGs and you can face the whole enemy team if you want to. Buuut blizzard's unending upward spiral of gear has made fights last about 2seconds unless you have like 1k resilience. And stuns are horribly broken (they take away any need for skill since there is NOTHING your opponent can to to avoid death after they've used their trinket... so you can just use your stun/kill rotation).

Re:I used to play on that one.

[Rakarra]

There are plenty of hardcore raiders who raid because the raid game is fun, and not because they have an inferiority complex. Those ones stick around, but could hardly be considered "casual".

Yet they were still less than 4% of the total player base (at the end of vanilla). I remember Blizzard representatives lamented that 96% of their player base never got to see Naxxramas, a dungeon that they had put a huge amount of time designing, tuning, and testing. It's one of the reasons it was brought back as the starter dungeon for Wrath.

Re:I used to play on that one.

[Rakarra]

Holds true as well. It isn't that you are getting bored of the game it is that the game is getting worse. The game has gotten easier every patch since release (seriously!).

These days you can solo the majority of the instances on the level you are supposed to be in a group of 5. You can TWO man a handful of the current level 80 10/25 man bosses (re naxx and other low tier dungeons). The only reason you will ever die in a raid these days is if someone intentionally screws you over (re. healer leaving), there is lag/DCs or if someone is borderline retarded (doesn't know what clockwise means).

If you look at the old 40 man dungeons today, at release they were hard enough that some were near impossible (v1.9 c'thun). Now you can do them at the same level with maybe 15-20 people?

There are still "difficult" achievements in WoW raiding, they're called hard/heroic modes. Designers decided they wanted a way for most people to be able to see the content while still providing difficult end-game raiding challenges.

The downside is that it's not easy to get excited about hard-mode content that you've already cleared on normal mode.

Re:I used to play on that one.

[balbus000]

Knowingly breaking the law will have consequences despite the fact that good might come from it or that you don't agree with the law.

All I heard was

[Anonymous Coward]

Nuclear lawsuit detected.

Re:Who runs an illegal game server with a real nam

[RsG]

The problem starts when you want to withdraw money to a bank to get cash - or buy something online which requires shipping.

Or do pretty much anything else with it. Really, try and find a way to actually use money garnered anonymously without leaving a trail for the courts to find.

Breaking a paper trail is damn difficult, and moreover tends to run into laws and agencies regarding money laundering. So if the people mentioned in the article had done so, they'd go from being pursued by Blizzard's lawyers to being pursued by the FBI, IRS or other TLAgency. Not really much of an improvement...

Re:Blizzard?

[carigis]

Im sure they are against them.. but only bother suing profiteers

Re:WoW Server Software?

[Anonymous Coward]

What I'm amazed is they got the server software in the first place. I guess the client software can be reversed engineered to point the client to the private server, but getting the inhouse server software is gotta be tough thing to do?

WoW server emulators have been around for years. The guy built nothing, he was most likely using an open source software like Mangos.

Actually, in short, this guy made 3 millions while doing no work at all. He was using blizzard's and mango's work,
His only benefit is that he managed to market it. Much like Apple. They steal and sell crap, but marketing is the key to become rich.

Re:WoW Server Software?

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, back then, the beta server software was released and the Mangos and other people reverse engineered that and all.

But none of that actually included the scripts to how things actually ran. All the instances and mobs AIs and all they, they had to redo themselves as do all the newer private servers that are out. That is why most private servers have brain dead instances where everything is just tank and spank and even the caster mobs will sit there and try and whack you with their staff instead of actually trying to cast.

Scapegaming was just the first one to actually get big enough to get noticed by them back in the day. And to be honest, they were already on their way out a long time before this, the operator actually got greedy and tried screwing over thoughs helping her and tried throwing in all this extra gear for cash that couldn't be matched in game and players just left after that point. Don't mind players paying to get level ups or decent gear, but when they can pay for something that can not be matched, the server typically isn't one worth playing for most people.

Re:Blizzard?

[mysidia]

They minded that because the developers were stupid enough to call the product "bnetd" and refer to Blzzard's trademarked name battle net...

Re:Blizzard?

[Velorium]

Someone needs to put you in charge of fair use laws.

Re:Moon Crickets

[therealobsideus]

Um, the AC above ScytheBlade1 said, "Blizzard or Activision are also private companies so your suggested headline wouldn't tell us very much." So... what?

Re:Blizzard?

[KDR_11k]

Blizzard and Activision still act independently of each other. All the shit that came after the merger was done by Blizzard itself, not some Activision overlords that went in and told them what to do.

Re:Who runs an illegal game server with a real nam

[KDR_11k]

A properly done money laundering scheme wouldn't be traced that easily but I don't think money laundering usually takes its money from online services.

Re:Blizzard?

[Zaphod The 42nd]

Haha, meant to say that: I'll be the first to say that blizzard suing glider people... is a huge stretch and that copying into ram is not the intent at all.

REALMLIST

[VortexCortex]

.WTF !?

You just edit this text file and it points WoW at a different server.

Just happens that WoW net traffic isn't encrypted and therefore people have reverse engineered the protocol and created their own servers.

Not really any different than any other reverse engineering I've heard of.
Is it copyright infringing if they made their own server software that mimics the client / server protocol?

Is it legal to ask for payment to connect to my web server?
Is it still legal if my server can speak the reverse engineered WoW protocol?
Is it common knowledge that Judges are ignorant of the technology they are asked to provide judgment over?

If you answered "no" to one of these questions you have been qualified as next in line for judicial appointment.

Re:REALMLIST

[DurendalMac]

Is it smart to make these comments without reading the article?

If you answered "no" to that question, then you probably don't realize that Scapegaming never even showed up in court, which means Blizzard got a default judgement. They could've argued those points in court and perhaps won, but if you don't even bother making the court appointment, then you can't really bitch that the judge is ignorant for following a pretty goddamned clear procedure.

Re:REALMLIST

[Urkki]

.WTF !?

You just edit this text file and it points WoW at a different server.

Just happens that WoW net traffic isn't encrypted and therefore people have reverse engineered the protocol and created their own servers.

Not really any different than any other reverse engineering I've heard of.
Is it copyright infringing if they made their own server software that mimics the client / server protocol?

Is it legal to ask for payment to connect to my web server?
Is it still legal if my server can speak the reverse engineered WoW protocol?
Is it common knowledge that Judges are ignorant of the technology they are asked to provide judgment over?

If you answered "no" to one of these questions you have been qualified as next in line for judicial appointment.

Are you sure their servers did not distribute any material with Blizzard's copyright?
Models? Textures? Maps? Texts? Raid data?

Re:REALMLIST

[julesh]

if you don't even bother making the court appointment, then you can't really bitch that the judge is ignorant for following a pretty goddamned clear procedure.

Who bitched about the judge? I'm bitching about Blizzard's lawyers for even filing the claim.

Re:REALMLIST

[Rallion]

Look at the WoW server like a website, and the client like a web browser. It's a very apt comparison.

So, the private server companies are making their own websites! Obviously, there's nothing wrong with making a website.

There is, however, something wrong with copying another website in its entirety, or even with minor changes. That's what the private servers do. It's not really about the protocol.

At least, I assume this is what the lawyers would say if anybody showed up to argue with them.

Re:REALMLIST

[julesh]

Are you sure their servers did not distribute any material with Blizzard's copyright?
Models? Textures? Maps?

I'm not an expert on this, having never actually touched WOW, but with most MMOs these are distributed with the client, the server only sends out identifiers to reference the data the client already has.

Texts? Raid data?

As these (typically) reside on the server, I'm not sure how the defendant in this case would have acquired them. From what I've seen of such things before, chances are the server in question ran custom-build raids that had little in common with the official Blizzard ones other than (due to the restrictions imposed by the client) using locations and creatures that Blizzard designed.

Re:REALMLIST

[Urkki]

Are you sure their servers did not distribute any material with Blizzard's copyright?
Models? Textures? Maps?

I'm not an expert on this, having never actually touched WOW, but with most MMOs these are distributed with the client, the server only sends out identifiers to reference the data the client already has.

Texts? Raid data?

As these (typically) reside on the server, I'm not sure how the defendant in this case would have acquired them. From what I've seen of such things before, chances are the server in question ran custom-build raids that had little in common with the official Blizzard ones other than (due to the restrictions imposed by the client) using locations and creatures that Blizzard designed.

So, then there's an additional question. If you make a raid that uses Blizzard's stuff (monsters, textures etc), is the raid derivative work under the copyright law, even if the stuff you actually distribute doesn't contain copies of Blizzard's stuff, but depends on the client already having copies?

This is an issue that applies to a lot of digital data (for example, just about any map/level for any game with level editor available), so there must be legal precedent, if the copyright law itself isn't clear on this.

Re:REALMLIST

[DurendalMac]

Is it common knowledge that Judges are ignorant of the technology they are asked to provide judgment over?

I think GP did, actually.

Re:REALMLIST

[Entropius]

People distribute things all the time that rely on the recipient already having some piece of copyrighted data. RiffTrax, or Windows software.

Re:REALMLIST

[Urkki]

People distribute things all the time that rely on the recipient already having some piece of copyrighted data. RiffTrax, or Windows software.

Yeah, but there the relevant license allows that.

A case in point, GPL libraries rely on copyright giving right to say what can linked against it and what can't. If no license was required, then there would be no difference between GPL and LGPL libraries. And I haven't read anybody arguing that non-GPL-compatible software is allowed to link against a dynamic GPL library, though I don't know if that has actually been tested in court.

Re:REALMLIST

[julesh]

A case in point, GPL libraries rely on copyright giving right to say what can linked against it and what can't. If no license was required, then there would be no difference between GPL and LGPL libraries. And I haven't read anybody arguing that non-GPL-compatible software is allowed to link against a dynamic GPL library, though I don't know if that has actually been tested in court.

When you link against a library, even dynamically, details from it are copied into your resulting executable, e.g. names of functions, layouts of data structures, etc. This is enough to justify your linked program (and also probably your source code) being a derivitive work of the original GPL code and therefore requiring permission from the GPL code's authors to distribute.

There are obvious cases where this does not apply. One interesting one is where the GPL'd code is written to implement a preexisting API, an example being MySQL's JDBC connector. MySQL's copyright owners assert that you must either comply with the GPL or get a licence from them to use this library, but as the copyright in the parts of the code that would actually be copied from that library actually belong to Sun[1], it seems unlikely they could get away with this claim.

[1]: OK, Oracle now. Who also own MySQL. But assume this hadn't happened, and we don't actually live in bizarro-world for a moment.

Re:REALMLIST

[Urkki]

When you link against a library, even dynamically, details from it are copied into your resulting executable, e.g. names of functions, layouts of data structures, etc. This is enough to justify your linked program (and also probably your source code) being a derivitive work of the original GPL code and therefore requiring permission from the GPL code's authors to distribute.

Indeed. But as far as I can see, combining an application binary in memory with GPL library is no different from combining a WoW raid data files in memory with Blizzard's game data.

Logically, if one needs a license, then both need a license. GPL explicitly gives the user right to do just about anything for purposes of using the software, but has conditions for distributing the binary or any other derived work. Whatever the relevant WoW license given by Blizzard says, I'd guess "draconian" wouldn't probably be an exaggeration.

Re:REALMLIST

[julesh]

Indeed. But as far as I can see, combining an application binary in memory with GPL library is no different from combining a WoW raid data files in memory with Blizzard's game data.

The point isn't the combining in memory -- what causes the GPL-library-using software to come under the scope of the GPL is that distributing its binary will include parts of the GPL library.

Logically, if one needs a license, then both need a license.

Not really, no. Doing so in memory is different in two important ways:

- it is done by (or at least at the request of) the end user, rather than the software distributor
- it is much more likely to fall into one of the various exemptions to copyright law: it is a temporary copy, thus transformative in nature, and is done (typically) not for commercial gain. It is also only done by somebody who already possesses a (presumably legitimate) copy of the game, and therefore is unlikely to have any effect on Blizzard's future revenue from exploiting this copyright. Because of these facts, it is almost certainly fair use. There may or may not be other exemptions that apply (e.g. making temporary copies in order to use digital media where there is no way to use it without making such copies -- I believe this is an exemption is some jurisdictions, although clearly not all).

Blizzard Sues

[ScrewMaster]

That's all the headline you need.

Re:Blizzard?

[DurendalMac]

I still have a hard time believing that a lot of the recent changes to WoW for the worse don't have Bobby Kotick's grimy little fingerprints all over them.

UOGamers

[Kethinov]

So does this precedent put other popular private servers for other popular MMORPGs in danger too, like the UOGamers private server of Ultima Online? (http://uogamers.com)

Re:UOGamers

[ildon]

Only if they start making money off of their users, and if EA starts caring for some reason.

Re:UOGamers

[LingNoi]

Doesn't the UO emulators have their own GPL 3D client too?

So basically EA would be suing people for running their own server / client which has nothing to do with EA or UO.. uhh.. how exactly are they suppose to do that?

Re:Blizzard?

[Lord Kano]

Im sure they are against them.. but only bother suing profiteers

You are mistaken.

LK

Sad day for everyone

[Journey72]

Sad day, I used to play one of the Scapegaming servers, and if it wasn’t for this “free trial” I would have never switched to Blizzard’s servers, which is what many people did, the others on the servers would have never paid $15 a month to play it, so I don’t think blizzard ever really lost as much as they thought they did, and they probably actually gained money from private servers like these.

Re:Blizzard?

[Vaphell]

i hope you are kidding. Why was a simple change of name not sufficient then?
What they did mind was bnetd ignoring cd key checks and the fact that bnetd was a direct competition to their platform. If blizzard wanted, they could implement some cdkey authorization scheme for external servers and require all to use it, but they chose to kill the project entirely.

Re:Blizzard?

[Rallion]

This is something I never understood. How exactly does Blizzard "require" completely independent parties to do anything?

Interesting

[maroberts]

Blizzard charge for the client, plus separate subscription fees to hook up to their servers. There is a clear separation of the money you pay for the client, and the money you pay to access Blizzards servers. The client is typically bought or downloaded and therefore once you've bought it you are free to use it as you wish, provided you don't distribute copies.

In theory, there should be nothing unlawful against hooking up to a different server as there is a clear separation here. The protocol can and has been reverse engineered The only question is whether any of Blizzards proprietary data is held on the server and "distributed" to the clients.

Presumably, the in-game items are not transferable from a private server to Blizzards server, so no issues there either.

This judgement was not defended, so the question arises as to whether it would be possible to mount a defence so as to make non-Blizzard servers legitimate?

Re:Interesting

[Golden_Rider]

Blizzard charge for the client, plus separate subscription fees to hook up to their servers. There is a clear separation of the money you pay for the client, and the money you pay to access Blizzards servers. The client is typically bought or downloaded and therefore once you've bought it you are free to use it as you wish, provided you don't distribute copies.

In theory, there should be nothing unlawful against hooking up to a different server as there is a clear separation here. The protocol can and has been reverse engineered The only question is whether any of Blizzards proprietary data is held on the server and "distributed" to the clients.

Presumably, the in-game items are not transferable from a private server to Blizzards server, so no issues there either.

This judgement was not defended, so the question arises as to whether it would be possible to mount a defence so as to make non-Blizzard servers legitimate?

The client is free, but when you download it, you agree (license agreement) to only use it to connect to official Blizzard servers. So there is no "I paid for it, I can do whatever I want with it".

To be honest, I can't really stand all this "private server operators aren't doing anything wrong!" crap anymore. It's just BS. I can understand it for games like Starcraft 1, Diablo 1 and 2 and others which you buy once and then the connection even to the official servers is free. You are doing Blizzard no harm when you make a server emulator for those (apart from less players on the official servers, which maybe makes them less attractive), and to play on those private servers, you need to have bought the game anyway (or you are using pirated copies, and that's a whole different problem). But for WoW and other games like e.g. Lineage 2, the clients are free and the company makes money via the monthly subscription. It is so blatantly obvious that it CANNOT be OK to provide free servers for those, common sense tells you that, you are hurting the company if people download the FREE clients from the company website and then turn around and play on private servers - maybe even paying the private server admins for in-game stuff. I just want to /facepalm every time I read those "it's not illegal to reverse engineer, blah blah" comments - how can it be ok to act as a direct competition to a company, by offering exactly the product they created and which they are selling? It does not matter if the server code is not exactly the same, if a player can just download the free client which is intended for the official servers, point it to a private server and then play WoW without paying Blizzard, that's just wrong. "Thanks for creating WoW, Blizzard, but we'll play it for free - by the way, when will you give us the next expansion?"

Re:Interesting

[Rallion]

I don't think that's technically how they look at it. It seems more like you pay to set up an account to play on the servers. You can download the whole client for free from Blizzard, even without a WoW subscription.

Some of the data that the servers use, however, is not in that client. Obviously, all the art and sound assets are included in the client, as is the gameworld's terrain, but most of the actual gameplay-related data is provided by the server.

Re:Interesting

[pitje]

you MUST be kidding, right? Right?

RIGHT?

Re:Interesting

[kangsterizer]

Oh a Blizzard employee!

Re:Interesting

[Anonymous Coward]

but you already bought WoW, you just aren't choosing to keep a subscription to blizzards servers going.

i see where it monkey wrenches their very profitable business model but a business model is not a civil right and expecting the US government to enforce your business model at gunpoint is unethical and downright evil.

fuck blizzard

Re:Interesting

[Kneo24]

There is a client people pay for that has all of the content. There's also a client people do not pay for which limits the amount of content they can consume. Even if you try the free one, you're still required to pay in full for it and then access to their servers if you want more.

Furthermore, why should it be an obligation to pay to play on their servers? People pay for $60 games that have little to no content to $60 games that have a shit fuck ton of content. In both of those type of games there's no subscription or obligations to keep forking over money. And yet expansions are still made for those games.

Re:Interesting

[ildon]

Even if you pretend the EULA/TOS don't exist (which explicitly state that you only have license to use the client with Blizzard's servers), Scapegaming still used WoW's name, branding, characters, graphics, etc. to advertise their servers. That alone is probably enough to justify copyright/trademark infringement just from their webpage. Add in the fact that they made a few million dollars from this infringement, and you have a legit case regardless if you believe people should be allowed to run private servers or not.

Re:Interesting

[ildon]

No. You can download the WoW client for free without paying for it. If someone won't cough up the $15 a month what the hell makes you think they'll pay $50 for a game box?

And it doesn't have to be a "civil right" to get paid to make it the right thing morally and ethically to pay for a product or service. Plus this is a civil case anyway, there are no guns involved. You're either an idiot or trolling. Or both.

Re:Interesting

[Golden_Rider]

There is a client people pay for that has all of the content. There's also a client people do not pay for which limits the amount of content they can consume.

No. You can download the FULL, unrestricted client for free. Because that is what you do when you buy the game online without getting the DVD. Why should the client be restricted? The restrictions come from your account. There is an official download page for it, for example here: http://www.wow-europe.com/en/downloads/client/

Just scroll down, click e.g. on the "English - PC" button, and you get the bittorrent downloader for the full client.

That's the way World of Warcraft (and most other MMORPG) work, download the client for free, pay via monthly subscription. If you buy the game box in a shop, you get in addition to the client one month's game time on the official server, that's what you pay for. But you can also just download the client and then register (and pay for) an account on the Blizzard website.

Or you can download the client and pay Blizzard f all, and play on a private server.

Re:Interesting

[Golden_Rider]

but you already bought WoW, you just aren't choosing to keep a subscription to blizzards servers going.

Go here

http://www.wow-europe.com/en/downloads/client/

download client. Go play on a private server (after modifying the client so it points to a private server instead of the official ones). Pay nothing to Blizzard. And that's what most likely most private server players do. Why should they pay for the box (which only costs money because it includes one free month of play time), when they can get the client for free.

Re:Interesting

[loufoque]

Scapegaming still used WoW's name, branding, characters, graphics, etc. to advertise their servers. That alone is probably enough to justify copyright/trademark infringement just from their webpage.

No it isn't, or any fan or game site would be committing infringement.
Also, copyright and trademark infringements are different things, and the offense in question is copyright infringement.

Re:Interesting

[LingNoi]

ScapeGaming may have used Blizzard's other data server side but arguing that they're guilty of copyright infringement on the client side is silly. In that situation they're only guilty of having a port open that the client can connect to.

If that kind of thinking was popular you could take anyone to court for trademark / copyright infringement because app xyz can connect to your apache box via port 80. Totally stupid line of thinking and no I don't think them making money off it makes them guilty, using Blizzard's data serverside makes them guilty. Duplicating NPC, quest, item data makes them guilty.

Making money and clients connecting to their address doesn't make them guilty.

Re:Interesting

[Kneo24]

Then why are people constantly paying $60 for the new content that's released every few years? If it's all free...

But it's not. The free client is already restricted by content alone and what you can do with the content.

Re:Interesting

[vux984]

The client is free, but when you download it, you agree (license agreement) to only use it to connect to official Blizzard servers. So there is no "I paid for it, I can do whatever I want with it".

It wasn't free when I bought it.

Besides, if the CLIENT is violating the EULA then your issue is with the CLIENT. At most you can sue people who use private servers for violating your EULA. What exactly have you got on the people who run them?

It does not matter if the server code is not exactly the same, if a player can just download the free client which is intended for the official servers, point it to a private server and then play WoW without paying Blizzard, that's just wrong.

Amen brother! My cell phone was free so it would be totally wrong for me to EVER use it on a different network right?

Oh wait... my cell phone provider covered their ass pretty intelligently... to get the phone for free I have to sign a 3 year contract. I can unlock my phone and point it at another network if I want but then I have to either keep paying for my contract, or buy it out... or wait to expire. However it goes down my cellular provider gets the phone paid for.

Maybe blizzard should have a business model that actually makes sense. Give the client away with a 1 year subscription. Then if the client points it at another network 2 days later, who gives a shit?

"Thanks for creating WoW, Blizzard, but we'll play it for free - by the way, when will you give us the next expansion?"

"give"? I had to pay for the expansions over and above my subscription, as they came out, or I didn't get to play them.

Re:Interesting

[Kalriath]

Yes it is trademark infringement, as you cannot use their trademark in the same field (online gaming) without a license. Fan sites are not in the same field. Besides, most games (including this one) have a page on their website with official fan site kits, which also include a license to use their trademark anyway (subject to restrictions).

Re:Blizzard?

[Vaphell]

look what they did to the custom map scene. They created that incredibly powerful editor that dwarfs anything that was done before but they pretty much killed it with ridiculous restrictions. Warcraft 3 thrived on map making, i suspect that half the people owning wc3 never bothered to play ladder matches.

http://eu.battle.net/sc2/en/forum/
look at popular topics section:
- Allow authors to cross-realm publish
yup, people can't publish their maps globally, they do it on their server only

- A short rant on SC2 and general censorship
list of censored words is very long and includes such words as suicide - if by any chance you want to write 'banelings suicide attack' somewhere in your map or words like bullshit that can be found in the single player, the map can be even banned. No idea if the words that are filtered out in other places like black, white trans(port), (g)rape cause problems but i think they do

- Want "Custom Game"? Go back to WC3 or SC1.
says all - despite primitive editors you enjoy more fun and freedom in the realm of custom games. You have the control over the rules and players that join and you, also you can name your game to broadcast rules (people playing dota add a lot of codes to the game name so people know what they join) or desired skill level. People have none of that in sc2 and maps are sorted by populatity (self perpetuating scheme, new maps can't get high enough to get noticed by more than a handful of people, good luck autofilling all player slots in a reasonable time)

- The new Custom Game system? (What is wrong with it)
other problems - without lan developing multiplayer scenarios is a chore after all debugging is all about running a map, finding a problem, trying to fix it, running a map again, wash rinse repeat. To do that you need to use bnet which adds considerable amount of time to the development process, testing from the editor level is not sufficient in all but the simpliest cases

- The Real Problem with Custom Maps

5 out of 10 most popular threads on the forum touch mapmaking/publishing alone. It shows how messed up it became thanks to the control freaks in actiblizz

Re:Blizzard?

[Vaphell]

with frivolous lawsuits of course :)

Re:Blizzard?

[mysidia]

Because when they saw the name 'bnetd' and blizzard name and imagery, the lawyers immediately saw an opportunity to justify their existence.

Once the thousand pound gorilla sees you and decides to sit on you, you are not going to change its mind by donning camouflage at that point.

If such an obvious name hadn't been chosen, it's doubtful Blizzard spidering for anyone using their protected names would have become aware of their existence, let alone pursued anything.

Remember, there were other similar programs which had been forked from bnetd, and were designed for Warcraft III play, with hacked WC3 beta copies?

Remember how blizzard pursued bnetd, but not the forks around at that time which were actually more blatant and being actively used by pirates (unlike bnetd which was used by legitimate players and didn't actively encourage piracy or distribute license hacks), but the forks just had a more obscure name, and nothing happened to them?

Re:Owned by Jewavision

[pspahn]

Interesting viewpoint. It appears as though you may not be happy with most things, and I would suggest you disconnect your computer from the rest of the world immediately. At the very least, hire a psychiatrist.

Re:Blizzard?

[Vaphell]

the episodic nature of sc2 strangely fits the activision doctrine of 'milk the franchise for at least $100M every year till it runs into the ground spectacularly'. 3 installments of sc2 were supposed to allow for a more epic feel but my experience with Wings of Liberty is the opposite. Story is watered down very badly, 2/3 of all missions are nothing but fillers, not to mention a considerable number of retcons that kill the continuity for old time sc1 fans.

Re:Who runs an illegal game server with a real nam

[Fjandr]

Nope, I wouldn't imagine anyone with two brain cells would use an online service to (attempt to) launder money. That's what bars, restaurants, and other businesses where lots of cash is exchanged and there are lots of "perishable" items that can be lost, destroyed, misdirected, etc. are for.

Re:Blizzard?

[coastwalker]

talking of which $88M is a joke of a penalty for an infringer that earned $3M out of its activities. Who can take a society seriously that behaves in this manner, its like Monty Python threatening to stamp on all the bits after they have hacked you to death with a sword. Why is money dealt with in this childish emotional way instead of in an analytic and realistic way? Its not as if the remaining $85M were translated into years in prison for example. What a sad society.

Re:Blizzard?

[Aim Here]

Thing is, there's a bnetd-derived server running now, called iCCup which is the server of choice for almost anyone playing Starcraft (BroodWar, not 2) these days. Not only does it ignore CD checks but iCCup will offer you a chopped-down copy of Starcraft to play on, if you look hard enough. There doesn't seem to be any great rush from Blizzard to stomp it off the net, either.

Blizzard seems to be ambivalent about iCCup. It has called it a "pirate server", but it has also linked to ongoing iCCup tournaments from the battlenet homepage, which is probably because it has realised that the vast majority of people still playing BroodWar (legitimately as well as otherwise) much prefer iCCup to battlenet, to the extent that if you don't know your iCCup ranking, you really can't call yourself a Starcraft player.

Likely, that's because iCCup has a functioning ladder system, and the admins do keep iCCup relatively free of cheats, and the worst of the foulmouthed little brats you get playing online games, unlike battlenet, which is a cesspool in comparison. The "pirate server" offers, for free, a better service than the one that Starcraft players generally paid for, and Blizzard has realised that allowing overt (if discreet) piracy is a small price to pay for keeping a functioning community centred around some of their products.

Re:Blizzard?

[mysidia]

The bnetd developers had the game, which they reverse engineered, which meant they had agreed to the EULA which prohibits reverse engineering.

According to the court's summary judgement, the developers were bound by the EULA, which they were in breach of.

The developer's argued that "CD Keys" are not an anti-piracy measure, and 'battle.net' was not a valid trademark. Probably these arguments were a bit reaching... if CD Keys are not an anti-piracy measure, then what is their purpose?

On appeal... BNETD was ruled a circumvention tool based on Blizzard's argument.

Developers argued EULA is overriden by the DMCA interoperability exception.

They failed to convince the court of the applicability of the exception to their situation.

Re:Blizzard?

[Vaphell]

lol, imagine the unrecoverable loss of loyalty among the sc fans if blizzard tried to do anything with iccup. That would be a PR suicide and they wouldn't sell a single copy of any game to the hardcore sc players, ever. I remember how people on sc portals reacted when that explicit 'iccup is a pirate server' talk happened. Everybody felt offended to the bone.

Re:Blizzard?

[ShakaUVM]

I was in ACM at UCSD with Mark Baysinger. If he made Bnetd because of how hard it was to connect when at our LAN parties, it had a fully legitimate purpose.

His only real failure was not having a couple million lying around in his pocket to counter Blizzard's lawyers.

Silly, poor college students.

Re:Moon Crickets

[TheRaven64]

Before replying to a post saying no one said something, you should really read the post that it is in reply to. And, for future reference, calling someone a douche when you are wrong just makes you look even more like an idiot.

Re:Blizzard?

[Cillian]

If the penalty was the same as the reward, there would be no.disincentive - if you get caught, you just give the money back, if not, you keep it. Since theres a chance you won't get caught, that makes it statistically a net gain to do it.

Re:Blizzard?

[PopeRatzo]

Why is money dealt with in this childish emotional way instead of in an analytic and realistic way?

Because it's under the control of the ones that have it.

It is a sad society, Coastwalker, and coming apart before our eyes.

Re:Are you serious?

[Rich0]

Except that your computer software doesn't need World of Warcraft to run. A pretty big difference.

The summary is light on details. Citation please?

Are they actually distributing the WoW software (client-side)? Or, are they just letting people who bought the client in the store connect to somebody else's servers without paying $x per month to Blizard or whatever?

If they don't distribute anything, then they aren't violating copyright, period. If people are using pirated clients to connect to the service, then perhaps whoever distributed those clients violated copyright.

Re:Blizzard?

[Artifakt]

Put another way, why can't the average Joe get 88/3rds in punitive damages? Why does the average person wining a suit face a cap of triple damages, even after he or she has been required to prove that there's more than simple negligence involved, but some entities don't? What makes them special under law?

Re:Blizzard?

[shaitand]

There doesn't need to be a disincentive. That only applies to criminal actions.

Its no different than if you sue a previous landlord for your deposit back on an apartment. The most you can get is the cost of the damages (the deposit) + the legal fees to recover it. It isn't like they fine the landlord extra for being wrong about owing you the deposit.

Two issues

[roguegramma]

There are probably two issues with running private servers of an MMORPG:

1) Your server will have to hold a copy of the data(the map, ..) of the official servers, thereby violating some copyright. Unless you create your own maps and content, but people will hate it.

2) The license to the client will probably allow you to only use official servers.

There are situations and setups where you might work around this, but I have the feeling that it hasn't been worked around both in ultima online and WoW private servers.

Re:EULA wasn't needed to run the game

[The Only Druid]

You might want to familiarize yourself with American law. In the US, the judge IS the court. They're synonymous. "The Court" is the finder of law, which is ALWAYS the judge (or, in appellate courts, the panel of judges). The jury is only ever a finder of fact.

Please sue these Blizzard

[Ilgaz]

I try to be nice and keep on reporting phishes regarding WoW for weeks now, it has become kinda absurd as they are actually buying domains which contains their trademark and serving phishes for days.

Look at the live phishes (means, please don't go to them) right now, which are "online".

http://www.phishtank.com/target_search.php?target_id=88&valid=All&active=y&Search=Search

These are the WoW phishing pages. Some very known hosting companies (not some garage guys) are also being used. I think if Blizzard spends time/money to use one of them, admins will magically start caring.

BTW WoW is the only game which has its own category next to banks on phishtank, this seems to be a huge, organized thing. The pattern is always the same and some real advanced tricks are being used, it is not some "lets hack guys images directory and put a cgi to it" thing.

Re:Please sue these Blizzard

[ildon]

They're registered in China with fake names and addresses. Which do you think is easier to shut down? Instead, Blizzard seems to try to focus on user education and handing out authenticators to stop the phishing.

Re:Blizzard?

[Vaphell]

-_-
many other things too. I'll put spoiler tags just in case
Not that anybody will bother to read the text below

*** SPOILER ***

1. near the end of Broodwar, when Kerrigan screwed everyobody and killed Fenix, Raynor explicitly said

I'll see you dead for this, Kerrigan! For Fenix, and all the others who got caught between you and your mad quest for power!

In fact Fenix, supposedly Raynor's homie, is not mentioned even once in SC2, nor on the 'what happened so far' website for newcomers. It's clear. Fenix was too much of an obstacle for the SC2's happy end love story so he got retconned out of existence.
Imagine playing all sc games in a continuous streak. End of brood war - Raynor vows reverge, 1 hr later you start SC2 - he sighs looking at Kerrigan's pic. wtf?!

2. Kerrigan and Mengsk were depicted in SC1 as extremely intelligent, manipulative persons. In SC2 they appear to be dumb like bricks and very primitive. Kerrigan does nothing witty nor particularly villainous all game and is only good at running head first into the wall and spewing cringeworthy stereotypical one-liners. Mengsk got very similar treatment.

3. Retcon with Tassadar's ghost (o.m.g.) that changes the whole lore of the Overmind - from a bad guy that has only one desire (to spread and assimilate all species) to an enslaved sorta-good guy who wanted to break his 'people' free. It's a 180 degree turn

imo these are the 3 biggest flaws lore-wise. There are also other problems - incoherent story with no focus with a sudden change of context out of nowhere for the last 3 missions, deus ex machina as a final plot device, repeating warcraft story all over (great external threat that will unite all), numerous plotholes.

Re:Are you serious?

[Devout_IPUite]

The client is a free download from Blizzard. You'd have to be incredibly daft to redistribute something when a simple hyperlink would do.

Re:EULA wasn't needed to run the game

[mysidia]

EULA wasn't needed to run the game

Blizzard's installer required you to click 'Accept' to the EULA in order to install the software. Blizzard argued that this meant installing the software requires acceptance of the EULA, and the court upheld Blizzard's position.

That is, because the EULA was shrink-wrapped, it's a contract, and people who install and run the software are bound by it.

But the cdkey was not being made available (this WOULD have required copyright license) and it doesn't stop you pirating the game, nor is bnetd's actions enabling piracy.

The algorithm for verifying CD Keys was not made available, because it's an anti-piracy measure, and Blizzard believes (or says) its security requires secrecy of the algorithm and any cryptographic material required to verify CD Keys.

If you want to argue the use and verification of CD Keys are not an anti-piracy measure, you will lose.

Unique CD Keys are required to install the software. Unique CD keys have the stated purpose of deterring casual copying -- you cannot make and give a copy of the friend to a game without sharing your CD key. Battle.net servers implement CD KEY verification prior to allowing access to multiplayer mode.

Since the software is a primarily multiplayer game, multiplayer play is extremely popular, and the type of gameplay done most often by most people, so control of access to multiplayer mode effectively protects the work and deters people from making casual copies.

"They failed to convince the court of the applicability of the exception to their situation. "

You mean the judge. See above.

You are drawing a distinction where there is none in the real world. If the judge cannot even be convinced of something, then it generally follows that the court cannot be convinced.

"On appeal... BNETD was ruled a circumvention tool based on Blizzard's argument. "

Which argument is complete bollocks, but they had money and are important.

Maybe so, but noone's yet to provide a convincing reason why it is "complete bollocks".

Blizzard may be wrong, but they were pretty persuasive, and they convinced the court (which is what matters)

Re:Blizzard?

[mysidia]

That's interesting and further evidence that Blizzard had some specific beef with bnetd, that they decided to prosecute them to the full extent of the law over.

It may have had to do with the fact that there was Warcraft III Beta support slated for bnetd, and there were servers (outside of the US) running a fork of bnetd, and allowing players using the Warcraft III beta to connect to.

This would mean that Blizzard no longer controlled those Beta clients.... they couldn't disable them by simply locking them out of battle net when the Beta was over.

Someone who was using their code rattled Blizzard's cage too much, which perhaps provoked a response and a need to make an example out of someone...

Re:Are you serious?

[Rich0]

Didn't know that. Well, then what did they do wrong? What did they redistribute that was copyrighted? Certainly the protocol cannot be copyrighted.

Now, if they scraped downloaded content off of the Blizzard servers and then hosted that for their own clients, that would be a violation.

Re:Blizzard?

[Kelbear]

It's not restricted to criminal actions, disincentive judgements can occur in civil suits as well. (The burden of proof is relaxed in civil court as opposed to criminal)

There's compensatory damage (as you described, for compensation), and beyond that is punitive damage (for punishment). Punitive damages are harder to get because it's mostly restricted to intentional damage.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intentional_tort

Re:Blizzard?

[Cheerio Boy]

What they did mind was bnetd ignoring cd key checks and the fact that bnetd was a direct competition to their platform.

While that last part is true the first part is dubious because the bnetd team literally _begged_ them for a way to do cd key checks. They sent repeated correspondence both by email and snail mail and Vivendi ignored them then attacked them when someone else cracked Warcraft and used bnetd to support those clients.

This recent action shows me that I am still quite justified in not buying any Blizzard products due to their company policies and actions.

Did anyone RTFA?

[rickb928]

It looks like:

- Alyson never responded to any service, complaint, or judgement. Default. MAYBE Scapegaming gets an appeal of the judgement, but that will require showing that multiple services were deficient. Good luck with that.

- Blizzard's counsel repeatedly failed. Insufficient service, missed deadlines, one dismissal for failure to prosecute. I think $63k is overpaying them.

- A judge recused themselves. Interesting, must have had stock or played in their free time...?

- This has been going on for nearly a year. Seems that Blizzard could have wrapped this up in 3 months had they been diligent.

Wow. Overall, a good case study in how long you can string out a suit by doing NOTHING. I'm surprised the judge let them reinstate.

Oh well, expect this to result in no money, siezure, and no more Scapegaming. Alyson will probably change her name, change the server names on the new hoster, and Blizzard will play whack-a-mole chasing her around. Funny.

Re:Blizzard?

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe if you used your brain and read the rest of the comment, you could piece an answer together.

With the right lawyer this could have turned out?

[bussdriver]

Could this case be an example of DCMA's loophole for compatibility?
Should they be allowed to stop competing services from talking to their software?
You BUY the software and then have a monthly service fee you are tied to - but you can not switch-- sure they do not have to open it up, but how can they legally stop some 3rd party from competing for that service?
They can make money from the software alone, which has been the case for most software for decades; allowing reverse engineered competition would mean their business model would account for the situation and they could continue.

MICROSOFT's filesharing HAD a business model around making you pay for microsoft file servers - they could have argued that other SMB software interferes with their business model back before antitrust or possibly even today and shut down all 3rd party services providing SMB services or make them pay a huge license fee. Windows server is still making MS money even though file, email, calendar, etc. alternatives who are fairly compatible exist. They didn't seem to want to take on this battle but Blizzard is and they are winning. What happens when others try to use Blizzard to create their own legally protected little monopolies?

Think of how many people like classic games and think about all the modern games and how impossible it will be to ever go back and play them when not only the emulation environment is massive but ALSO the online server based community is mandatory and possibly a (limited existanse) DRM keyserver... You get sued for pulling all that off for some small die hard community using abandoned software.

Re:Blizzard?

[Jordan ez]

A surprisingly coherent and cogent discussion. I expected a flame war, but really, it's a pretty good discussion. I doubt Blizzard will do anything about it, but I'm still impressed.

Re:Blizzard?

[Teancum]

What makes a difference here is that the entertainment companies got ahold of Representative Sonny Bono with the "Copyright Extension Term Act" and subsequently with additional legislation in the form of the "Digital Millennium Copyright Act". In both cases, rather than considering the needs of mere ordinary mortals, some insanely high penalties were enaced for copyright violations.

It isn't as if you haven't been warned. If you have ever popped a movie into a VCR, DVD, Blue-ray or other medium and have seen the "FBI warning" (a similar Interpol warning also sometimes shows up depending on where you live), it clearly states that infringing copyright can give you a penalty of "up to $250,000". That is per incident.... and part of what figured into this judgment.

If you don't want to see this kind of punitive damage, make sure you let your elected representatives know how you feel about this kind of penalty and to encourage them to scale it back legislatively. Good luck with that though.... most congress critters won't care and there certainly isn't a huge outcry from the general public to scale that kind of thing back either. Perhaps you can get a popular movement about the issue going, but that is going to take some real leadership and a whole lot of work.

Harder for companies to do

[Sycraft-fu]

Also, most competent law offices hire a good process server, sometimes a sheriff's deputy, to serve notice and log that fact. You can't then say "Uhhh but I didn't get it."

I'd say you are tired of WoW

[Sycraft-fu]

Nothing wrong with that, I've gotten tired of it several times. Just stop playing it. If you feel like playing again later, come back. It doesn't have to be some epic decision or involve drama, just shut down your account, and if you want turn it back on later. Interest in games can wax and wane, in particular if you've played for a long time.

Generally the people I see who complain about a new expansion just need a break. Things are going to change and many people don't like change. So they get angry about it, rather than considering if actually it might be fun. Just take a break. Also one problem Blizzard does have for sure given their long expansion cycles and ridiculous gear scaling rates is that there isn't a tons to do before a new expansion comes out. No problem, just stop playing then. Cancel your account and wait until the expansion hits and then reactive. Or don't, if you've found another game you like better.

It needn't be a big deal.

Re:Moon Crickets

[ScytheBlade1]

Click the link, read the company name. "Activision" is no longer a company, "Blizzard" is no longer a company, but "Activision Blizzard" is.

When Activision and Blizzard merged, because Activision was a public company, Blizzard effectively went public.

Re:Blizzard?

[Surt]

There doesn't need to be a disincentive. That only applies to criminal actions.

Its no different than if you sue a previous landlord for your deposit back on an apartment. The most you can get is the cost of the damages (the deposit) + the legal fees to recover it. It isn't like they fine the landlord extra for being wrong about owing you the deposit.

Are you kidding? Why bother having civil laws against anything if you're not going to have any disincentives for violating them?

Re:Blizzard?

[LingNoi]

and you think punitive damages should be awarded in cases that have summery judgements like this one? It's not even clear exactly what they're being punished for which makes that whole concept ridiculous.

Either way it's even more stupid because the guilty party will simply file for bankruptcy and not have to pay the extra 80 some million anyway.

Re:Blizzard?

[LingNoi]

How is it copyright infringement to make your own server that sends network packets to a specific port. Please answer this otherwise stop posting everywhere that it's a copyright infringement.

However, as soon as you start charging money to run your server, well, that changes the mood completely.

How does it change things? Because before they were just taking away their customers and now their taking their ex-customers money? Makes no sense at all.

Blizzard have a case against these guys but not for any of the reasons you mentioned so far.

Re:Who runs an illegal game server with a real nam

[LingNoi]

So you make sure you're not a resident of the US and if you are you get someone else to do it. Open a bank account in country x and use that to make and receive payments. A VISA card in any country is just as good as in the US.

Re:WoW Server Software?

[LingNoi]

They didn't use Blizzard's server software. People have reverse engineered the server and made their own open source versions.

Re:WoW Server Software?

[ivucica]

Apple flamebait? Hardly worth my time, so try with something better. It's hypereasy to spit something you used for probably less than a day.

Re:Blizzard?

[ScytheBlade1]

Region locks

Just like WoW, with a net benefit in terms of latency. I don't want to hit the ladder button and get get a minimum of 400ms+ of latency (but I would like to be able to at least join a custom game with them).

"connectivity" with social networking sites

Given the SC2 playerbase, there are more people who have a facebook account than otherwise. I hate it personally, but generally speaking, it wasn't a stupid decision on their part.

no chat/clans/channels

All of which are coming in a future patch..

a single character name

While I do wish they had an option to reset your account and generate a new name, I really only see this as a positive change. A massive cut down on trolling, and bans meaning something.

Not that it matters much, SC2 ladder is compromised already due to rampant maphacking.

Sure there are indeed maphacks already, but calling their usage rampant is a bit of a stretch. Blizzard has never instantly banned people for "hacking." It comes in waves, like you know, these banning sprees of 7,700, 350,000, and then 320,000.




Just to reiterate:

Activision has nothing to do with anything they've done recently, and anyone who says otherwise is blaming something they don't like on a company of convinence.

Re:Blizzard?

[jon3k]

That's wait jail is for. Normally the company is incorporated and they liquidate it and dissolve the company. Great. What deterrent is that? Unless you can "pierce the corporate veil" and hold the owner of the company personally liable what have you really done? They got to live for a few years making great money. If they live in a homestead state you can't touch that. If they're smart they've hidden a lot more money that the government won't be able to find. Put people in JAIL. That's what it's for.

Re:Blizzard?

[jon3k]

Because Blizzard has really good lawyers? Welcome to America.

"human error causes roughly 70% of the problems"

[Nyckname]

Does that mean I need to quit using the old line "To err is human; to really fowl things up requires a computer"?

Re:With the right lawyer this could have turned ou

[Bigjeff5]

Any lawyer would have been a start.

Scapegaming didn't bother to show up, that's why Blizzard received a default judgment.

Like they say, you must be in it to win it.

Re:"human error causes roughly 70% of the problems

[JockTroll]

To fowl thinks up you need a duck.

Business Method == Personal Problem

[cmholm]

It's too bad Ms. Reeves didn't elect to mount a defense, so that the case could be tried on its merits. If Blizzard elects to distribute a networked game client for free, and users elect not to connect to Blizzard's servers, that sounds like Blizzard's problem, not the 3rd party server admins. Unless Reeves was cut-and-pasting Blizzard's graphics, text, etc, and was referencing "World of Warcraft" without a trademark disclaimer, or was running a purloined copy of Blizzard's server software, I'm not sure where copyright infringement comes into play.

The client EULA applies to the users, not the server admin. Even if the EULA forbid running a server, the admin isn't a party to the contract.

I initially assumed that Blizzard was suing on the basis of the Blizzard v. bnetd, but Blizzard's pages on the subject don't make that clear, and I'm too cheap to pay rfcexpress.com or PACER to find out.

Re:Blizzard?

[LordLucless]

And also because Starcraft/Broodwar sales are now so low as to be insignificant. iCCup is providing Blizzard's network service for them, and not really costing them anything. bnetd was "too soon" - the titles it supported were still selling well, and at a high price.

Re:Blizzard?

[Lord Kano]

If he made Bnetd because of how hard it was to connect when at our LAN parties, it had a fully legitimate purpose.

Even if it was made with commercial aspirations, as long as he didn't steal anything from Blizzard, it's fully legitimate.

As much as I hate to stoop to the car metaphor again, if GM started to sue people who made aftermarket accessories for their vehicles, they'd be laughed out of court.

LK

Re:Are you serious?

[Kalriath]

They allowed users to circumvent the anti-piracy functionality, by not requiring a battle.net account to log in.

Re:Blizzard?

[ShakaUVM]

IIRC from reading the verdict on it, the judge ruled against him because he thought it was used only for piracy.

>>if GM started to sue people who made aftermarket accessories for their vehicles, they'd be laughed out of court.

Presumably they'd have better lawyers than a 20-something college student.

Re:Blizzard?

[shaitand]

In the case of a civil suit you haven't broken a 'civil law' if you break the law that is criminal, if you break a contract that is civil.

The closest thing to 'civil laws' I know of are the way certain traffic citations are enforced by states. For example, toll violations. The argument is that you owe the state. Essentially the state legislature passes a law saying you'll be punished if you do X, but they code into the law that it is a civil offense.

States do this so they can try to avoid the expense of actual due process and proving these offenses. This is of questionable constitutionality, if the state mandates behavior and punishes your for violating that behavior then it is a criminal matter and you are entitled to a criminal burden of proof, miranda rights, etc. Generally, you can demand your case be tried in criminal rather than civil traffic court. They usually advise you of this right in fine print and coupled with a threat of potential consequences if you go this route.

IANAL, this is just my experience from fighting, and beating, a legislated 'civil' toll violation citation issue as a result of camera snapshot. In civil court my only option would have been to plea bargin, in criminal court it was tossed out since it was a long way from meeting the burden of proof.

Re:Bullshit.

[Cyberllama]

All the models, textures, sounds, etc are stored client side. Items, some maps (but not all I guess), triggers, scripts, etc are stored server-side. Any time a new patch comes out, the new items can't be seen until the servers come up because they get "data mined" by sending API requests to the servers using random itemids. The graphics for the new items are in the client files, but the numbers that make the item what it is -- those are all server side. There are lots of advantages to having this stuff server-side, such as the ability to hotfix the game without a client patch. Blizzard has mentioned in the past they they hotfix several items a week, the ability to do that alone is probably a huge driving factor in the way they've set up the game.

Re:Blizzard?

[mqduck]

Thanks for the hostility; I love you too.

Anyway, what I was hoping for was more information, further than what the last paragraph described. It mentioned an absence of "foulmouthed little brats", which is pretty self-explanitory. It also mentioned a "functioning ladder system" -- and like I asked, did Bnet break since last I met it?

I was hoping for, you know, a link or something. Google didn't find me anything more than a technical description. I apologize for not being clear, and thus deserving of your wrath and Troll mods.

Re:Bullshit.

[goonerw]

Any time a new patch comes out, the new items can't be seen until the servers come up because they get "data mined" by sending API requests to the servers using random itemids.

Requesting an item id that the realm has not "seen" since coming back online from maintenance/restart will likely result in your client being forcefully disconnected. It's one way Blizzard stop data mining in that fashion.

88M damages for 3M revenue?

[DarthVain]

Why not award 12 Kajillion dollars? It has about the same chances of actually getting paid.

Decisions like this are stupid.

Re:Are you serious?

[Rich0]

Did they defeat an anti-piracy function, or did they simply not independently implement it?

Also - what is being pirated? I read elsewhere on the site that Blizzard lets the client be downloaded for free - so doing so is not piracy if you get it from them.

How WE can cash in on copyright judgements...

[mykos]

Blizzard gave away every single copy of the game that everyone using private servers had.

They pirated nothing. They did, however, violate their Terms of Use.

This gives me an idea for a business...I'm going to create content, give it away (explicitly stating that nobody is allowed to use it except for posting on my own website), and demand a cool $80,000,000 from every person I catch using it.

Re:Are you serious?

[Kalriath]

Blizzard lets you get the client for free, but their anti-piracy measures on it are that you need an account on battle.net to play (i.e. Blizzard can guarantee that you bought the game because you entered the CD key to activate it).

Don't assume that just because the client is freely downloadable, that you can use it however you like. The best analogy I can think of is a shareware application - you can download it free, often the shareware and full versions are the same binary. But reverse engineering it to accept any old CD-key or using a keygen is illegal. Blizzard's stance would be that using ScapeGaming servers (or bnetd) would be akin to using a keygen.

Avatar

[Ilgaz]

Lets say someone sets up a website actually streaming Avatar movie in full length to users, do you think nobody will go after them?

WoW is actually Avatar sized, in terms of market value, the actual economy of it beating countries, a brand worth millions alone.

If users could be educated, there wasn't a problem like phishing anyway, from the beginning. I can tell you that they are under attack, the amount of phishes reported (and remember, that is community powered site) went rocket high lately.

If they don't care about their brand (I doubt), they should at least care about their users. Look what happened after MS sued the hell out of phishers.

Re:Blizzard?

[balbus000]

I don't have a copy of the game on this computer, but it is pretty trivial to go to the WoW settings file and add a line that says you have agreed with the EULA which will prevent it from appearing when the game launches. Something along the lines of EULAaccepted=1 in a config file. (There's actually 2 agreements every time you patch, I don't remember what the other is.) I wonder if doing this would protect you from the terms of the EULA in a lawsuit like this.

Re:Blizzard?

[mysidia]

This is similar to the argument about a pet clicking the mouse which causes the Accept button to be toggled.

That way of arguing you didn't accept the EULA but still had the software might not have been tested fully in court.

However, the court could find you were aware of the EULA existing, you were aware of the developer's requirement the EULA be accepted to use the software, then your means of circumventing presentation of the EULA doesn't excuse you from the terms of the EULA.

It's kind of like taking a shrink wrapped box that has a seal which says "By breaking this seal you accept the agreement....." And instead of breaking the seal, you take a pair of scissors and cut a new hole in the package, to remove the media without damaging the seal.

Re:Blizzard?

[Firstoni]

No they minded bnetd because it allowed the pirating of Warcraft 3 (and the beta as well)