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Australian Federal Court Grants Publisher of GTA V Game Right To Search Homes of Five People Accused of Making Cheat Software (bbc.com)
The publisher of video game Grand Theft Auto V has been granted the right to search the homes of five people accused of making cheat software. From a report: The court order allowed Rockstar Games and its parent company, Take-Two Interactive, to search two properties in Melbourne, Australia, for evidence related to a cheat known as Infamous. The Australian federal court has also frozen the assets of the five, who have not yet filed a defence. The cheat went offline six months ago. It allowed players who paid about $40 to manipulate the gaming environment, generate virtual currency and use a "god mode" feature that makes players invincible.
Ah yes, Civil litigation and disclosure is a pain in the A...
Depending on what the lawsuit is about, this search may be well within bounds, legally anyway. I suspect that the making of money off of another's copyrighted software and selling customers "features" that where not generally available may have depressed the revenue of the game developer.
I figure that there are two questions that justify this discovery... 1. We need to know if they developed their "hack" using any copyrighted information or did they just reverse engineer it? 2. How many customers did they actually have and how much money did they collect from them?
Do note, that this is just discovery and both litigants are afforded large latitude in deciding what they want to obtain. As long as there is a plausible legal reason the search may turn up relevant information it will be allowed. Yes, this is a fishing expedition and yes it seems a bit draconian at times, but in the Civil Litigation world, it's how the rules are written.
So this ruling doesn't mean the "hackers" are somehow being unfairly treated by the courts. It's just civil law doing it's thing.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
Depending on what the lawsuit is about, this search may be well within bounds, legally anyway. I suspect that the making of money off of another's copyrighted software and selling customers "features" that where not generally available may have depressed the revenue of the game developer.
Rockstar's lawsuit in the USA based on copyright grounds was quickly kicked out of court (this type of thing isn't a copyright violation or crime here) and so they switched to charges of fraud and unauthorized access under the CFAA for violating their EULA.
Obviously Australia has different copyright laws than the US, so it's hard saying what grounds they are going with there, but it's quite possible there are also fraud charges involved along with copyright charges.
That might explain the extreme nature of the raiding.
As I mentioned in the US this isn't a copyright violation due to our first sale doctrine.
Once a legal license to a work is sold (IE you bought and didn't pirate the game) you are legally allowed to do anything you wish to that one copy, the only exception being making another copy of it to distribute.
You can sell it, modify it, destroy it, anything but duplicate it - and even that isn't a blanket rule.
You can make a copy that is explicitly allowed by a short list of exceptions, like a backup that you don't distribute, and a copy for time shifting (not sure how that applies to software if at all, but still)
This in essence makes what you would call "a single player game mod" 100% legal here.
The issue is "multiplayer" when using game servers you don't own.
Usage of such services is covered under a different non-copyright-related license (an EULA is one type of those) which if violated, the service is not required to service you anymore.
Some weird wording in our Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, a federal law here, in essence makes violating an EULA a federal crime and a fairly serious one.
Violating an EULA means you basically accessed a service fraudulently, with no rights to do so, and is partially retroactive if your access is revoked after the fact.
Think "hacking charges" from the press.
The US performs raids on suspects accused of CFAA violations all the time and has a ton of president set for it. Many do think it's used a bit heavy handed at times but still, there it is.
It wouldn't surprise me if Rockstar is using a similar legal argument in AU independent of any copyright violations claims AU law might also allow.