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US Judge Blocks Programs Letting 'Grand Theft Auto' Players 'Cheat' (reuters.com)
A federal judge has awarded Take-Two Interactive Software, the maker of the "Grand Theft Auto" series, a preliminary injunction to stop a Georgia man from selling programs that it said helps players cheat at the best-selling video game. From a report: Take-Two had accused David Zipperer of selling computer programs called Menyoo and Absolute that let users of the "Grand Theft Auto V" multiplayer feature Grand Theft Auto Online cheat by altering the game for their own benefit, or "griefing" other players by altering their game play without permission. U.S. District Judge Louis Stanton in Manhattan said Take-Two was likely to show that Zipperer infringed its "Grand Theft Auto V" copyright, and that his programs would cause irreparable harm to its sales and reputation by discouraging users from buying its video games.
Exactly. Killing your prostitute after you pay her is flagrant disregard for a fair capitalist society. Add a feature where you can haggle the price instead of murder, and I'll have no objections.
Both of these programs Menyoo and AbsoluteMenu are used in single player and have many legitimate and creative purposes.
The issue with people abusing these with hacked clients to break multiplayer rules on GTA's own servers shouldn't be able to prevent these 3rd party tools that have many legitimate and awesome uses from existing....
Also, a Publisher of video game software doesn't have any right to prevent people from altering the game or modifying their game playing experience for personal entertainment; Assuming the person doesn't use the game with an online service to cheat, but the recourse for cheating is to file suit against the person cheating on their service or ban them from their server -- not to prevent the distribution of tools.
It's an entirely different situation and impact on the producer of the software when what an individual does with the 3rd party product affects other purchasers of the software who don't use it. Especially if it affects them in negative ways that may cause them to consider terminating their consumer relationship with that producer.
"Old man yells at systemd"
Makes no difference. This is the tech equivalent of making it illegal to sell horns that play "La Cucaracha" that are designed to magnetically mount to rental cars because it would cause irreparable harm to the reputation of the rental car company if cars with Hertz license plate brackets sounded like Mexican ice cream trucks (*) or whatever.
* Any implication that Mexican ice cream trucks actually play La Cucaracha is entirely unintentional, just so we're clear.
Correct. And to the extent that they can use technical measures to detect abuse and ban people who use these hacks, that is well within their right.
However, a legal bright line is crossed when they attempt to use copyright as a means of regulating what you can do with hardware that you own, or as a means of regulating the sale of products that merely enable the user to modify a copyrighted work. Even in the prior cases, the copyrighted work was licensed, not sold, and the fact that the newer games use the company's servers does not change the fundamental nature of the argument in any meaningful way, because it does not change the fundamental nature of the act in question (the user modifying a game) or the technology in question (a device that helps the user do so) in any meaningful way.
What the company might be able to do is allow the technology to be sold, then sue the seller for damage to their reputation under the computer fraud and abuse act. This is, of course, entirely orthogonal to the copyright issue, which is settled law.
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Hacks shouldn't happen in online games. The server should do all the checks and take all the decisions. If a hacked client can ruin other clients' games, then the online game is severely ill-designed.