This is the same argument as getting your five-year-old child to click the "I Agree" button for you. I don't think it matters whether you send a message to the window, get your kid to click it, push it with a ten meter cattleprod, or just use your finger, in all cases you have the intent to use the "I Agree" button, and through your actions, it actually happens.
On the other hand, there are multiple arguments Sunbelt could use to indicate that they never had to agree to the EULA to use the software. For example, a client might have had a computer infected with the software, and they gave the hard drive over to Sunbelt for further research; or Sunbelt purchased the detection information from a third-party research company (or, for that matter, found the information on Usenet or the web), meaning they never installed the software in the first place.
I do, however, think this is an important case in terms of EULA enforcement and what kinds of screwy non-copyright-oriented terms you can put into a license agreement. I really hope it goes to and through trial instead of ending in yet another out-of-court settlement that provides zero guidance to the public.
I had a mobo from Gigabyte with some bad caps a while back. The board had lasted a couple years, and at one point I ended up putting it in a machine to put in my lab on campus. I knew there was something wrong with the caps, because the tops of them had sort of bulged open, and a bit of the electrolyte had leaked out and crusted on them. But since the board seemed to work fine even in that condition, I didn't worry about it.
A few weeks later, I was unable to connect to the machine from home, so I went down to the lab to see what was up. One of my coworkers said that when he came in that morning, the machine was already off and there was a nasty burning smell in the air, so I popped open the case to see that one of the caps and several of the surrounding components had caught fire, leaving a nasty black residue. Apparently, the fire had gone all the way to the other side of the board. Some of the wire traces had lifted off of the back of the board, and there was a black smoky streak straight up from that spot to the top of the board.
Fortunately, the processor, memory, and other devices still work just fine.
Ah, yes, the infamous analysis written by Greg Hoglund, where he makes the outlandish claim that "OMGZ Blizz is scaning my computar for my pr0ns!!!1"
Right there in the description of his analysis, he talks about how it hashes all the strings it comes across, compares those hashes to a list of known cheat hashes, and only notifies Blizzard whether there's a match. It doesn't phone home with your personal info.
But he inserts his FUD into his story, because he and others were making money off of their WoW cheat software, and when they got caught by Warden and banned, they realized they were risking litigation from both Blizzard and their own customers by continuing to develop the software and charge for it, so they went open-source. He and others want Blizzard to be humiliated into turning off Warden so they can start selling their cheat software again.
Neuros may say they want an iPod killer, but they'd probably just be happy with a piece of the pie. With that in mind, open-sourcing their firmware is a stroke of genius. Someone will eventually craft firmware that causes the Neuros player to emulate an iPod, and Neuros won't have to devote man-hours or risk litigation. At that point, not only does Neuros get free iTunes operability with their player, but they also get a piece of the synergy associated with the tremendous amount of work that Apple has put into iTMS.
Neuros probably won't get outside a niche audience with this device because this bonus would require a firmware patch, but that niche is fairly large. It's the same niche that upgrades their computers with new graphics cards and processors, for example, and there are lots of those people out there. The only question is whether or not they already have an iPod.
In the 10th post in the thread you linked, someone is asking for an ISO image of the Sony disc so they can get infected with the DRM for free. Probably the most entertaining thing I'll read all day.
If you actually read the EULA, you can send back your game (as long as you haven't used the account key to create an account, in which case you would have acceded to the TOS anyway) directly to Blizzard for a full refund. You also agree that Blizzard can change the EULA or TOS at will, as long as they notify you (they make you agree to the TOS and EULA every time they patch the game, whether the agreement is updated or not, and the copy of the agreement on your computer only gets updated through the patch process, ensuring that you will be notified before the next time you play the game).
As for losing value in your purchase once you start using it, hell, once you drive a new car off the lot you can't expect to get your money back (excepting the lemon law, if your state has it). Why should WoW be any different? If you can even claim damages (which I suspect you can't) for canceling your contract early, it would be limited to the prorated amount of the unused subscription fee. It wouldn't invalidate the entire contract and thus allow you to cheat.
Ah, yes, coerced - because humans need World of Warcraft to survive, and it threatens your life or health when they withhold it if you refuse to agree not to cheat.
You're not coerced. You're given a choice. "Don't cheat, and be able to play WoW" or "Don't play WoW". There's no coercion there, any more than "No shirt, no shoes, no service" coerces you into covering your shame before you go to McDonald's.
The point is that the FCC had not been granted power by Congress to regulate these devices. That was the only reason that the court overruled the FCC. A Broadcast Flag law - as in, a bill passed by Congress - would undoubtedly reverse this by granting that power to the FCC.
Maybe, but do you really think that Blizzard is putting resources into reconstructing strings from hashes when the value of the recovered data will in almost all cases be negligible?
One rumor on the official message board (not linked because it's already about to collapse under increased usage) is that TTWO is postponing Oblivion so they'll have a game release during 1Q 2006 to make the books look better. They already warned on earnings for the rest of 2005 and 2006, and several of their other titles have been delayed as well, so any manipulation of release dates to even out revenues quarter-by-quarter is probably on the table. It's interesting that this news arrives from TTWO during a conference call and not from the developer, Bethesda Softworks.
Some are suggesting that Bethesda will try to drop TTWO as publisher (they did just fine by themselves with Morrowind) because the game is pretty much ready for release.
However, these are just rumors. The last word from Bethesda was apparently October 13, when Peter Hines, a Bethesda marketing VP, said that Oblivion would be ready for the holidays.
Does anyone have more insight into whether these rumors might be true?
1. Not very. They use cryptographic hashes, and the chances of an accidental hash collision (i.e., you're not trying to cause one) are negligible (depending on the size of the hash, of course). The rumor is also that Blizzard doesn't ban based solely on the outcome of the scan, but has a GM monitor you in-game to determine what action should be taken.
2. No, Warden only runs while WoW is running.
3. Yes. There is a default version of Warden that is part of the patched version of the game. When you run WoW, Blizzard can push another version of Warden to your machine that exists in memory only while you are playing the game. When you uninstall WoW, the basic Warden software is deleted along with it.
4. You can still use a proxy to monitor what data is sent across the connection, and such a proxy (as long as it doesn't try to alter any data) is pretty much undetectable. Blizzard has made general statements about their monitoring, but they haven't given any specifics on what is transmitted. The cheat authors, however, have been fairly verbose about what Warden does. (See http://www.wowsharp.net/forums/viewtopic.php?t=702 4).
5. Hard to say. Warden is polymorphic, and a new version can be pushed from the server at arbitrary times while you play, so it's fairly slippery. It's tough enough to beat that the WoW!Sharp developers decided that continued development and sales of their software was too risky, after they got caught. I suspect that Warden faces the same set of challenges that virus scanning programs face. At the same time, the cheat authors, because their game accounts are on the line when they test their software, could potentially get socked for $50 every time they get caught - and while a little cheating here or there doesn't damage the game too much, Blizzard only has to nail the cheat developers once in order to ban them. (And Blizzard can always take extra steps to try to prevent them from resubscribing.)
That would probably prove wildly unpopular with the players.
SOE has set up certain servers in EQ2 where they charge a small fee (of RL cash) to serve as an escrow for player-to-player transactions that cross the virtual/real border. I'm not sure how popular those servers are, as I don't play EQ2. But even SOE, which has managed to make a buck off of practically everything conceivable in MMOGs, hasn't started just outright selling gold (or, otherwise, progress in-game) yet. Something about maintaining the integrity of the game or whatever.
Slashdot Mirror
It was Dutch, actually.
http://www.webwereld.nl/articles/38285
And, of course, the best part of ESB:
Lucas didn't direct.
This is the same argument as getting your five-year-old child to click the "I Agree" button for you. I don't think it matters whether you send a message to the window, get your kid to click it, push it with a ten meter cattleprod, or just use your finger, in all cases you have the intent to use the "I Agree" button, and through your actions, it actually happens.
On the other hand, there are multiple arguments Sunbelt could use to indicate that they never had to agree to the EULA to use the software. For example, a client might have had a computer infected with the software, and they gave the hard drive over to Sunbelt for further research; or Sunbelt purchased the detection information from a third-party research company (or, for that matter, found the information on Usenet or the web), meaning they never installed the software in the first place.
I do, however, think this is an important case in terms of EULA enforcement and what kinds of screwy non-copyright-oriented terms you can put into a license agreement. I really hope it goes to and through trial instead of ending in yet another out-of-court settlement that provides zero guidance to the public.
Tony Blair: Fezzik, tear his arms off.
lorcha: Oh, you mean this encryption key.
I had a mobo from Gigabyte with some bad caps a while back. The board had lasted a couple years, and at one point I ended up putting it in a machine to put in my lab on campus. I knew there was something wrong with the caps, because the tops of them had sort of bulged open, and a bit of the electrolyte had leaked out and crusted on them. But since the board seemed to work fine even in that condition, I didn't worry about it.
A few weeks later, I was unable to connect to the machine from home, so I went down to the lab to see what was up. One of my coworkers said that when he came in that morning, the machine was already off and there was a nasty burning smell in the air, so I popped open the case to see that one of the caps and several of the surrounding components had caught fire, leaving a nasty black residue. Apparently, the fire had gone all the way to the other side of the board. Some of the wire traces had lifted off of the back of the board, and there was a black smoky streak straight up from that spot to the top of the board.
Fortunately, the processor, memory, and other devices still work just fine.
None of them are up to the challenge of the 1x1 cube!
Actually, they opted not to print the rather lengthy list of results, because it was a 6.4 billion way tie at 0.0 seconds.
Seriously, nobody, including name-your-favourite-government-agency, is brute forcing a 256-bit AES key. Not in 90 days. Not in 90 years.
0x00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000 00003039? That's the kind of encryption key an idiot would have on his luggage!
Complete simple tasks that people do better than computers.
I wonder if serving web pages counts as such a task. Because their computers sure are doing a crappy job of it at the moment.
Insightful instead of funny moderation, plus a snippety comment bashing you for bashing Copernicus?
/.'s lost its sense of humor.
It's almost like
Ah, yes, the infamous analysis written by Greg Hoglund, where he makes the outlandish claim that "OMGZ Blizz is scaning my computar for my pr0ns!!!1"
Right there in the description of his analysis, he talks about how it hashes all the strings it comes across, compares those hashes to a list of known cheat hashes, and only notifies Blizzard whether there's a match. It doesn't phone home with your personal info.
But he inserts his FUD into his story, because he and others were making money off of their WoW cheat software, and when they got caught by Warden and banned, they realized they were risking litigation from both Blizzard and their own customers by continuing to develop the software and charge for it, so they went open-source. He and others want Blizzard to be humiliated into turning off Warden so they can start selling their cheat software again.
It's not spyware.
Neuros may say they want an iPod killer, but they'd probably just be happy with a piece of the pie. With that in mind, open-sourcing their firmware is a stroke of genius. Someone will eventually craft firmware that causes the Neuros player to emulate an iPod, and Neuros won't have to devote man-hours or risk litigation. At that point, not only does Neuros get free iTunes operability with their player, but they also get a piece of the synergy associated with the tremendous amount of work that Apple has put into iTMS.
Neuros probably won't get outside a niche audience with this device because this bonus would require a firmware patch, but that niche is fairly large. It's the same niche that upgrades their computers with new graphics cards and processors, for example, and there are lots of those people out there. The only question is whether or not they already have an iPod.
In the 10th post in the thread you linked, someone is asking for an ISO image of the Sony disc so they can get infected with the DRM for free. Probably the most entertaining thing I'll read all day.
the avant-garde, intellectual sort of film that Lucas keeps saying it is.
Darth Vader: Nooooooooooooooo!!
If you actually read the EULA, you can send back your game (as long as you haven't used the account key to create an account, in which case you would have acceded to the TOS anyway) directly to Blizzard for a full refund. You also agree that Blizzard can change the EULA or TOS at will, as long as they notify you (they make you agree to the TOS and EULA every time they patch the game, whether the agreement is updated or not, and the copy of the agreement on your computer only gets updated through the patch process, ensuring that you will be notified before the next time you play the game).
As for losing value in your purchase once you start using it, hell, once you drive a new car off the lot you can't expect to get your money back (excepting the lemon law, if your state has it). Why should WoW be any different? If you can even claim damages (which I suspect you can't) for canceling your contract early, it would be limited to the prorated amount of the unused subscription fee. It wouldn't invalidate the entire contract and thus allow you to cheat.
Like I said, no coercion.
You're not being deprived of property when you make the agreement because you have no (relevant) property before you make the agreement.
Ah, yes, coerced - because humans need World of Warcraft to survive, and it threatens your life or health when they withhold it if you refuse to agree not to cheat.
You're not coerced. You're given a choice. "Don't cheat, and be able to play WoW" or "Don't play WoW". There's no coercion there, any more than "No shirt, no shoes, no service" coerces you into covering your shame before you go to McDonald's.
The point is that the FCC had not been granted power by Congress to regulate these devices. That was the only reason that the court overruled the FCC. A Broadcast Flag law - as in, a bill passed by Congress - would undoubtedly reverse this by granting that power to the FCC.
Maybe, but do you really think that Blizzard is putting resources into reconstructing strings from hashes when the value of the recovered data will in almost all cases be negligible?
One rumor on the official message board (not linked because it's already about to collapse under increased usage) is that TTWO is postponing Oblivion so they'll have a game release during 1Q 2006 to make the books look better. They already warned on earnings for the rest of 2005 and 2006, and several of their other titles have been delayed as well, so any manipulation of release dates to even out revenues quarter-by-quarter is probably on the table. It's interesting that this news arrives from TTWO during a conference call and not from the developer, Bethesda Softworks.
Some are suggesting that Bethesda will try to drop TTWO as publisher (they did just fine by themselves with Morrowind) because the game is pretty much ready for release.
However, these are just rumors. The last word from Bethesda was apparently October 13, when Peter Hines, a Bethesda marketing VP, said that Oblivion would be ready for the holidays.
Does anyone have more insight into whether these rumors might be true?
1. Not very. They use cryptographic hashes, and the chances of an accidental hash collision (i.e., you're not trying to cause one) are negligible (depending on the size of the hash, of course). The rumor is also that Blizzard doesn't ban based solely on the outcome of the scan, but has a GM monitor you in-game to determine what action should be taken.
2 4).
2. No, Warden only runs while WoW is running.
3. Yes. There is a default version of Warden that is part of the patched version of the game. When you run WoW, Blizzard can push another version of Warden to your machine that exists in memory only while you are playing the game. When you uninstall WoW, the basic Warden software is deleted along with it.
4. You can still use a proxy to monitor what data is sent across the connection, and such a proxy (as long as it doesn't try to alter any data) is pretty much undetectable. Blizzard has made general statements about their monitoring, but they haven't given any specifics on what is transmitted. The cheat authors, however, have been fairly verbose about what Warden does. (See http://www.wowsharp.net/forums/viewtopic.php?t=70
5. Hard to say. Warden is polymorphic, and a new version can be pushed from the server at arbitrary times while you play, so it's fairly slippery. It's tough enough to beat that the WoW!Sharp developers decided that continued development and sales of their software was too risky, after they got caught. I suspect that Warden faces the same set of challenges that virus scanning programs face. At the same time, the cheat authors, because their game accounts are on the line when they test their software, could potentially get socked for $50 every time they get caught - and while a little cheating here or there doesn't damage the game too much, Blizzard only has to nail the cheat developers once in order to ban them. (And Blizzard can always take extra steps to try to prevent them from resubscribing.)
That would probably prove wildly unpopular with the players.
SOE has set up certain servers in EQ2 where they charge a small fee (of RL cash) to serve as an escrow for player-to-player transactions that cross the virtual/real border. I'm not sure how popular those servers are, as I don't play EQ2. But even SOE, which has managed to make a buck off of practically everything conceivable in MMOGs, hasn't started just outright selling gold (or, otherwise, progress in-game) yet. Something about maintaining the integrity of the game or whatever.
Er, actually, it's in the Terms of Service, section 13A. Sorry for any confusion :)
Some more insight into how Warden works (and how it caught the WoW!Sharp developers) is available here.
You might be interested in this game then.
and there is nothing morally wrong with using them
You agree not to cheat. Then you cheat anyway. What's not immoral about that?