Judge Grudgingly Awards $3.6 Million In DRM Circumvention Case

Fluffeh writes "The case involves an online game, MapleStory, and some people who set up an alternate server, UMaple, allowing users to play the game with the official game client, but without logging into the official MapleStory servers. In this case, the people behind UMaple apparently ignored the lawsuit, leading to a default judgment. Although annoyed with MapleStory (The Judge knocked down a request for $68,764.23 — in profits made by UMaple — down to just $398.98), the law states a minimum of $200 per infringement. Multiply that by 17,938 users of UMaple... and you get $3.6 million. In fact, it sounds like the court would very much like to decrease the amount, but notes that 'nevertheless, the court is powerless to deviate from the DMCA's statutory minimum.' Eric Goldman also has some further op-ed and information regarding the case and judgement."

Comments

Seems partly justified

[mehrotra.akash]

UMaple users can play MapleStory (using the MapleStory client software) without ever touching MapleStory's servers. UMaple then solicits "donations" that lead to enhanced privileges in the UMaple environment.

In this case some penalty does seem justified
UMaple was after all making money from software written by MapleStory, without their permission

Re:Seems partly justified

[mehrotra.akash]

There is absolutely no reason to believe that the money people donated to UMaple would have otherwise been spent with MapleStory.

I'm not talking about a potential loss of revenue for MapleStory, I'm talking about the gain in revenue for UMaple
Kind of like the difference between downloading a movie off TPB and selling copies of the movie for a profit
And, yeah, the penalty does seem excessive.As I said, "partly" justified

Re:Seems partly justified

[Lucky_Norseman]

"minimum of $200 per infringement" why is the $200 multiplied by the number of clients? Its the server that they claim is infringing, why not just $200 per server?

Re:Seems partly justified

[AngryDeuce]

Just another example of why mandatory minimum sentences make absolutely zero sense in any way, whether financial or in the way of jail time.

Re:Seems partly justified

[leonardluen]

of course i am not a lawyer...but i think a good lawyer could get the amount reduced. They would argue that there was only 1 infringement, not 17k. they only made 1 copy on their server and so should only owe $200, they did not make a copy for each user that connected, which the fine amounts to.

Re:Seems partly justified

[TheCRAIGGERS]

If it were collectible, it would be quite noteworthy as one of the biggest anti-circumvention awards of all time. But, it's not collectible.

The linked op-ed doesn't say why.

This is pure conjecture on my part, but my assumption is that the creators and the servers it runs on live outside the US, which is also the reason they ignored the lawsuit. Just like TPB happily ignoring (and proudly displaying) all the various nastygrams sent from US lawyers over the years.

Re:Seems partly justified

[geekoid]

Not true.

Someone getting a copy for free that they otherwise wouldn't have bought is not a lost sale.
Someone getting a copy for free that they otherwise would have bought IS a lost sale.
Someone getting a copy for free that they otherwise wouldn't have bought, and then they buy it, is a sale gained.

17938 infringements or just 1?

[c_g_hills]

I don't see how they work out that it is 17938 infringements when they only set up one server, so they have only infringed once.

Re:17938 infringements or just 1?

[tomhath]

FTA:

17 USC 1203 sets a statutory damages minimum of $200 per act of circumvention. UMaples' client, the "UMaple Launcher," allegedly bypassed the access controls in MapleStory's client software. UMaple had 17,938 users.

I suppose one could argue what "act of circumvention" means. But apparently it doesn't mean 17K users avoiding payment to the rightful owner of the software is just one act.

Re:17938 infringements or just 1?

[Megane]

I don't see how they work out that it is 17938 infringements when they only set up one server, so they have only infringed once.

That would probably because that was the argument from the only side that showed up.

Re:Is this similiar to the Battle.net case?

[NotQuiteInsane]

You're thinking about Bnetd -- Blizzard sued the dev team under the terms of the DMCA. As I recall, the main issue was that they'd created a Battle.net emulator which didn't implement CD key checking -- Blizzard refused to allow Bnetd to validate CD keys against Battle.net (citing security and piracy fears), and proceeded to send a DMCA takedown to the Bnetd project's ISP.

Blizzard then sued the Bnetd developers and their ISP (in addition to the takedown request), alleging copyright infringement, trademark infringement, breaking the Battle.net and several Blizzard games' EULAs *and* several DMCA violations to boot. The EFF defended the dev team, but Blizzard still won the lawsuit, the Bnetd.org domain, and a judgment against the original developers.

Proof positive that Blizzard were definitely in the "evil" category long before the Activision merger.

(However this didn't stop the GPL'd source code of the Bnetd project ending up on many, *many* servers worldwide... far out of reach of the DMCA restrictions)

(Disclaimer: any opinions presented herein are my own, and not necessarily those of any other entity)

Here is the DRM circumvention.

[PSVMOrnot]

The server is not the issue here, or at least not the main one.

The part that is landing UMaple with the $3.6 million fine is that in order to make the official MapleStory client look to UMaple's server instead they had to write a little launcher app (UMaple Launcher) which would presumably do something like an in-memory edit to change the server address the client used. Possibly with a modification to some sort of handshaking protocol.

It's the technological equivalent of ignoring a 'do not enter' sign, rather than the actual bypassing of security, but sadly it still seems to count.

This launcher is the part that is being used by the 17K users, and so where the court is getting the 17K counts of infringement from.

Re:Here is the DRM circumvention.

[sandytaru]

That is actually pretty common. I use a modified launcher for my MMORPG, which then allows me access to third party plugins. Since the group that made the launcher has not solicited donations, and all the play still occurs on the main servers so we still pay the original licensing fees and monthly fees to the actual company producing the game, they haven't gone after the group that made the circumventing launcher just yet.

The judge, had the power to dismiss it.

[Lumpy]

But he chose not to.

The real reason the judge was annoyed

[MasterPatricko]

Instead, Plaintiff merely submitted 252 raw pages of documents obtained through discovery without so much as a summary of the information contained in those documents or an explanation to the Court how any of the line items contained therein directly relate to Kumar’s UMaple activities.

Seems to me that's the real reason the judge wasn't feeling like awarding any more damages, not some kind of protest against the DMCA or statutory damages.