Blizzard did not sue individual cheaters, true. However, in order to get the contributory and vicarious copyright infringement charges to stick, the cheating by each individual user must be considered illegal. If individual users cheating is not illegal, Blizzard can't really get MDY for anything more than a handful of violations.



While Glider does circumvent Warden, it does not violate the DMCA ban on cryptographic technology. That part of the ruling Blizzard lost, but at least they lost it for the right reason. The MDY defense of this was "the ban is on technology to violate effective control of access. Warden doesn't stop Glider, so it doesn't count as effective control of access." MDY's interpretation would make the law completely useless - if you can't breach the protection, there's no violation possible; if you CAN breach the protection, the law doesn't apply in the first place!



It has very much to do with the EULA. If you purchase a copy of software, you are allowed to make copies of it as necessary to run the software - loading the program into your computer's RAM. You would be allowed to make copies as an Owner, which is refered to as section 117 protection.

If, as is the case with WoW, you purchase a license to use the software, you are not allowed to make even the copies necessary to run the program, as you do not have protection under section 117. Where the EULA comes in is that the company will allow you to make such copies, as long as you agree to the terms they list in the EULA. If you lack both section 117 protection and the company's permission via an EULA, simply running the game is considered to make a copy in violation of the copyright.

This is where the argument comes in. Jonnan and others contend that the EULA cannot be enforced because the terms of the EULA are not specifically given to you at the time money exchanges hands. I contend, and several courts have agreed, that the two parts of the licensing transaction do not necessarily need to be simultaneous.



Perhaps a bit blunt, but essentially correct.

1. It is common knowledge that EULA's have no standard. If they were standard, they would be enforcible. Such as a GNU license, it is a standard. Your car comes with the contracts given to you to read before purchase. Not after. The onus in reading a contract is upon the signatories, the onus on finding it is not. If you are going to make someone sign a contract to purchase a product, it has to be provided to them before sale, get over it.

2. I am forced, you said so yourself, you must sign it. You're forced to sign a contract before purchasing the Iphone. The key word in that last sentence is BEFORE.

3. I am being forced to sign away my rights to use a product I already own. How is that not duress? If you bought a car, went to drive it off the lot, and they forced you to sign a contract giving them ownership of your car before they opened the gate, would you also not consider that duress?

4. It's not willing, I can't use whatever it is I've already purchased. Reality doesn't change just because you've convinced yourself that returning an item after you've purchased it is an acceptable thing for the maker to require of you. This is why laws are written to start with, everyone doesn't behave reasonably.

And I've posted several judicial ruling to illustrate that what you think the law says is not actually what it means. And I look at it more like a company I like not having to take it in the ass from people who think the law only applies to companies. People like you, and psychoak even more so, are the driving force behind the EULAs you despise so much.

What do you want me to say - you are correct - you can find a bad decision in every district, but those bad decisions will, in the wrong run, harm everyone. I've shown why I believe they're bad decisions, and you have chosen, rather than to consider the possibility that I might be right on the merits, that you would rather actively undermine *everyone's* rights, since, in the process, it screws with someone you don't like.

At the end of the day, you are fighting as hard as you can for a legal principle that fundamentally binds you to a contract you you don't get to see before you buy the product.

That's the principle you are fighting for - that you can be bound to a contract you did not see before you gave the store your money.

All the rest of this is bullshit. I don't believe that kind of a contract is legal, but if it *were* or *is* legal, I believe it would be fundamentally wrong,

You, for reasons I cannot fathom, believe it is fundamentally *right* for someone to be able to bind you to a contractual obligation without your being able to see it before buying the product. And you will fight for this thing that you believe is fundamentally right tooth and nail.

Why? Honestly - I can't say this without sounding insulting, but at this point - I think it's because you are a highly intelligent person, but nonetheless an idealistic fool.

Idealistic, because on some level, you don't believe this power is going to be abused in ways far worse than the problem you seem to think it resolves. A fool because your certainty is so great that you are happily granting this power with no checks and balances - indeed, actively refusing to consider the possibility of abuse, so as to avoid the question of what checks should be placed to prevent it.

There is not much I can do about that. I suspect you will be protected from the logical results of your idealism by others that will get this overturned, but I can't say I very much think you deserve to be protected.

Jonnan

Fucking asshole. I hate my ISP, fuck. This is probably going to be less polite than it was the first time through, shit fucking satellite.

Ok, second time through.

This thread was started by no such thing. There was no abuse of copyright. You are specifically protected when reverse engineering for the purposes of creating compatible software. It's because there was no violation that the asshole cunt of a judge wrote such a despicable ruling. Blizzard wasn't even dumb enough to try to make the claim he gave them.

They might have had grounds for a suite though. He was, from Blizzard's point of view, costing them money by circumventing their cheat protection, and allowing customers, yet again by their point of view, to cheat them. They can and do ban people that violate the rules, and as a program with no purpose but to specifically circumvent their security, they had grounds to take him to court for the costs of fighting it at least. The judge could then have either laughed them out of court, or taken the guy to the cleaners for them. The very idea that he's in any way perpetrating copyright infringement by selling compatible software to work with another program is ludicrous. If you were at all honest you'd admit such.

Furthermore, I see no abuse of any kind. Blizzard assumes that he is costing them money. Blizzard assumes that I'm going to buy their boring shit game, and play it for x months to reach the max level on a character. Blizzard is fucking retarded. Hell will freeze over before I bother to play WOW. I'm far from the only person on earth that considers MMORPG's the be interactive chat programs and horrifically boring grindfests. I would however, be slightly less unlikely to play it if I could skip the fucking grind.

The bots are designed for people like me, that don't want to kill rabbits and beetles for 20 fucking levels, and spend a month mining fish for gp's.

From Blizzard's halfass, half empty view, it's a colossal failure. From my point of view, the guy broadened their market, substantially based on the number of sales he's made. If they were honest, studied the problem, and educated themselves on the matter, they might have found an entirely different situation. They very likely got a massive subscriber increase from those bots they've been banning people for, and if they'd just left them the fuck alone, they'd have been making money off the venture, as opposed to losing money. The claims by other customers are just laughable. If you seriously feel cheated by someone else, who is effectively playing against no one, using another program to advance faster, you have issues. The immaturity and penile intellect of their customer base is not grounds for a law suite. They might want to market less to whiny emo bitch tits though.

Instead, they sued him for copyright infringement with no grounds, were told such, and then awarded anyway based on an even less substantial foundation.

So class action suit every single computer game seller for fraud, as they never told me that I wasn't actually getting anything at all from my purchase... I thought I was getting a CD and the right to play a game. But I guess I just got the right to play a game. I want my CD.

Wait a minute, though... does that mean if we break the CD, we've destroyed their property?

Of course not. But you are asserting that a company needs this special protection to defend it from actions, and the only actions you supply here are things that are already illegal? Of course companies have rights too - but insurance fraud is *already* illegal, copying Intellectual Property is *already* illegal, et al.

So I kinda feel the onus is upon you to provide some example of abuse of a company by it's clients in some fashion that is
A) Not already illegal,
Can only be safely prevented by allowing a company to force consumers to accept contracts during the sale and
C) Is worse than any likely abuse of the right, assuming a lawyer that worked for Enron was hired by Electronic Arts.

I will grant for purposes of argument that a third party cheat program passes A and B - I don't think it is illegal under the law as written, and I doubt there's any way to prevent it other than an EULA (or Terms of service) clause.

But "Cheating at WoW" is so many levels below "Able to enforce Sales Contracts on Laymen without explaining the terms" - not even vaguely on the same scale - it's the difference between between someone stealing your lunch money and the Iraq war.

So, if you feel that there is a *need* for this right, you kinda need to come up with an example of a legal action that's not more easily stopped and is a lot worse than cheating. Cheating sucks, but allowing this as a response is like giving your kid a gun because someone someone took their lunch money.



My flabber is gasted!

Offer - Acceptance - Mutual Assent -

Willy, by offering an item for sale, you are fucking *MAKING AN OFFER*.

It's a standard sale offer Willy. If you want to offer me an item for sale under *NON-STandard* terms, it's a simple matter of including those terms, complete and in detail, in the god damn offer Willy.

If you make that offer *without* those detailed terms, and you take my money without having my having accepted those detailed terms, then

A Miracle happens - we have mutual assent . . . without those detailed terms.

Interestingly enough, it turns out - You can in fact make the offer *with* those terms, and I can accept, with those terms, and by amazing coincidence - we then establish mutual assent, *with* those terms.

However - Once you've taken my money it is TOO LATE to suddenly decide you intended to mention a few things.

We *already* have a contract, you said you wanted to sell it, I wanted to buy it and *YOU TOOK MY MONEY*.

We're done. No tag backs. Even if you had your fingers crossed, *IT STILL COUNTS*.



§ 117. Limitations on exclusive rights: Computer programs
Here - Willy - I have pasted the links to the parts of copyright law that debunk this two or three times now. You are no longer getting 'credit' for being willfully ignorant - at this point you're lying.

Because Copyright law says, quite explicitly, that I *CAN* buy a copy of a CD with software on it, that I own the physical copy of that CD, and I have the right as the owner of that CD to make copies of the software for the *SOLE* purpose of using the software or making a backup.

That's not a right to the owner's intellectual property, it's a "Limitation on the exclusive rights" of the copyright owner. So I'm not "asserting ownership of an item you did not and could not have legally purchased" - I'm asserting ownership of an item - The Physical CD, that the law quite explicitly anticipated that I would be the genuine owner of.

Only you Willy could sit there and claim that asserting ownership of something you fucking *bought* was stealing.

Jonnan

I'm glad you recognise A and B. They are the critical points. For all practical purposes, C is unobtainable by any legal means (lightspeed joke   ). But if we use a more reasonable standard, the MDY case is sufficient to illustrate the point.

Assuming consumers have 117 protection, Glider would be allowable as a derivative work. While individual Glider users could be removed from blizzard's servers due to TOS violations, Blizzard would lack any legal means of shutting MDY down in terms of further development of the bot. Blizzard would be forced to continue its current level of security countermeasures, GM employment, etc. Even more, Blizzard suffers considerable customer satisfaction damage, which leads to paying customers leaving. In MDY's case, it would literally be cheaper for Blizzard to pay the guy what he's making off Glider to stop making it. I simply don't see why they should have to.

Is this worse than possible abuses? By itself, it is arguable. I'll give you that. But how many similar attacks is the EULA deterring? Computer software is the only medium I know of where copyright violations can affect legitimate consumers AFTER the transaction. If I buy a book, there is no conceivable way anyone can violate the publisher's copyright that affects the copy I'm holding. Clearly, in this case a violation can affect my use of the software after I have a copy.



That terms are applied to the transaction is printed on the box. If you don't know what those terms are, believe those terms would be detrimental to your interests, or simply believe terms shouldnt' apply, DON'T BUY THE PRODUCT. Software is not a necessity of life, and no one is holding a gun to your head.

This same logic applies to all sorts of transactions, as was pointed out in the Zeidenberg case. Airline tickets have all sorts of terms, conditions, and possible extra charges that are not disclosed when money changes hands. So do most entertainment venue tickets, like theaters or amusement parks. Are you saying that once a person pays for tickets like this, they have an undeniable right to attend the event, regardless of their compliance with venue rules?



You can post links to section 117 until your keyboard wears out, it won't change the fact that SECTION 117 DOESN'T APPLY. Sure, you CAN buy a disc and be covered by 117, but the entire point of an EULA is to deny you standing as Owner for expressly that purpose. Physical possession does not constitute ownership. Just because the law says you CAN BUY a copy does not mean you in fact HAVE BOUGHT a copy.

psychoak - more realistically, EULAs are intended to prevent consumers from becoming competitors. A legitimate competitor would be producing a similar but imdependant product. And no, a competitor cannot RE a program that directly competes with their own. You cannot RE the MS spellcheck and put it in your own word processing program. Compatability does not mean functionally identical, it means both programs work simultaneously without adversely affecting the computer, or that input/output from one program can be used in another, such as using Word to compose an email then copying that text into a copmetitor's email program to send it.

In your spellcheck example, your program would need to pass a fairly simple test. Is it a standalone product? If it works with multiple word processing programs, the RE would probably be legally allowable for compatability. If it works only on Word, it would be considered a derivative work much like Glider was. MS might still allow you to sell it, but they'd want a share



That does seem a bit extreme, but you haven't DONE anything about it. Sue. Right fucking now. If you can't give me a docket number in the next week, I'll assume your lawyer laughed you out of his office.

Do you honestly think some customers wouldn't sue when a game made in 1992 no longer works on operating systems currently being produced? It's an excape mechanism for a game that is costing EA a game more to support than they are making from it. It's hardly unique, either. From the WoW EULA:

ZubaZ pops his head in . . reads a few paragraphs here and there . . sees no significant progress  . . and moves on.    

Sheeple. What's scary is that he's about a third of the population...



This is why you're retarded. If I design a car, and you design tires, I can't charge you for selling tires for my cars. It doesn't matter whether they work on other cars. It doesn't matter if you had to measure the wheel wells on my car. If I build an office chair with them pegged wheel bases, you can make better wheels to replace the crap that comes with it, my permission isn't necessary. You have a logic fault that has completely fucked your brain. Software isn't any different from any other product. It requires a fundamental lack of honesty to claim MS should have any claim on software written to work with theirs. Civilization doesn't work that way. It never has. If it did, the economy would grind to a halt. Beef companies would be taking hamburger helper to court!

You don't get to sue a guy making nuts and bolts just because they can replace the crap you use to put your own products together. How is this not obvious?

MDY isn't any different, just because Blizzard is pissing away money trying to counter bot users, doesn't mean the guy is liable for it. You don't get to sue locksmithing tool manufacturers for you needing an alarm. Security, especially entirely optional security to fix a probable non-existent issue, is a cost of existing. Blizzard doesn't have any more right to make us pay for their operating costs than any other company would. Since you're so pained by their loss, why don't you try remembering that they are making billions off WOW, and shut the fuck up about how costly MDY is.



Yeah, right. I'm going to buy a game, wait for EA to rescind my right to use it, and then take them to court. You do understand the concepts involved right? They actually have to succeed in fucking me over before I have standing to take them to court. Then I have to spend an inordinate amount of time and money pissing around with them over a $50 game, just so I can get a termination clause ruled on. If I get an idiot judge, it's all for naught. I'd be better off hitting up small claims court, which would still require that they fuck me over first, and I'd still have to waste more time than a game is worth. If I lose, I then have the asshole judge to contend with, instead of an idiot corporation run by scum sucking twats that couldn't find their way out of a paper bag and would never find out I was still using their software in the first place. My brain isn't dribbling out my ass.

Your justification by absurdity is equally invalid. That WOW EULA's also come with such a termination clause is just more proof that you're oblivious and we're already fucked. Bad behavior is not a justification. One company doesn't get to fuck me over just because another company is, and they aren't excused in it simply because you equate frivolous lawsuits by morons with active disenfranchisement of their customers.

When Spore hits retail, millions will buy it without ever seeing the EULA. Millions of defrauded users down the road, at the whim of EA.

Your attempt to redirect the argument to a "Which appendage would you be ok with EA hacking off and feeding to you" discussion is thus closed; they can have my balls when they cut them off my rotting corpse.

OK, guys...

Beating one's heads together and disagreeing is well and good [and futile] but avoid the personal attacks.

There's no place for them here...

Jafo - I don't particularly mind. In a debate, a personal attack is an admission of failure, anyway   



The same can be said of the SUV class passenger vehicle. What's your point?

psychoak - you're missing the point. In no way does selling after market parts affect the actual market for the original product. Nor does it affect customers using the original parts. But a customer using Glider CAN affect a player not using it - in fact, they can make parts of the game nearly unplayable. To use your example, the effect of Glider would be the same as if the aftermarket tires I was making somehow reduced the tread life of your original tires on other cars, cars that had never used my tires at all. Under those circumstances, yes you would probably be able to sue.

To the second part - you are coming dangerously close to my point. In order for EA to screw you, you have to actively choose to drop your pants and bend over. There is no reason you need to buy their products, so if you don't like their EULA, don't. It's that simple. I also appreciate how you say that a $50 game isn't worth going to court over, but didn't consider this a valid reason when I pointed it out as why Blizzard wasn't suing individual Glider users. Irony, much?



But, as I mentioned several times now - as did the 7th Circuit - other industries do. Concert promoters do. Amusement park owners do. Airlines do.



Need I remind you of various OTHER things that were allowed under English common law? Such fun things like debtors prison, child labor, oppression of various minorities, etc. Law evolves, deal with it. Not to mention that today's consumer is considerably more educated than a 17th century British peasant. Certainly the literacy rate has gone up.

English common law also suffers a severe technology disconnect. There was no concern of long distance communication - all contracts were made face to face, between individuals. Do you honestly expect a Blizzard representative to hang out in every retail store on the off chance a customer will come in to ask questions?

Your position is coming dangerously close to declaring illegal all contracts made using electronic means.



Hey, I'm not the one using nursery rhymes in my argument.

The world is not black and white. Many areas of law, including this one of course, are a delicate balance of mutually-exclusive rights in a zero-sum environment. There is no way to give consumers rights without stripping them from merchants, and vice versa. By giving consumers the rights you think they have, you would be setting up no-win situations for companies; where legitimate consumers can have legally actionable compalints against the company and the company lacks any means of addressing those complaints.

If a store gets robbed every night despite increasingly upgraded locks and security devices, perhaps it's time to shut down the guy selling burglar tools right next to the store. Or even better, if paying customers are leaving your theater due to disruptive experiences, it's time to crack down on the guy selling air horns in the lobby.

Bodyless, reading comprehension.

To design a program that subverts and replaces an aspect of another program, you have to know what inputs and outputs to capture and replace. In the case I gave, you would need to neutralize the built in dictionary and replace it with your own. That would require going in and finding out the format and access methods so that you could make it compatible. Since Microsoft's dictionary is fucking pathetic, truly, this is an entirely reasonable desire, and a more than functional end result. Replacing it with the full Oxfords for instance would vastly decrease the unknown words that are actual words.



Ignoring your engrish, have you paid any attention at all to the context of the arguments? MDY isn't a competitor to Blizzard. A competitor would be someone else hosting WOW servers. MDY is offering an enhancement for WOW, much like Stardock does for Windows. He isn't competing with Blizzard, he's helping to sell more copies and subscriptions for Blizzard by expanding their user base to those not interested in grinding.



It's called COPYRIGHT LAW. Yes, my five year old friend, it's already illegal to make endless copies. Even Willy isn't claiming such nonsense, and he's fucking nuts.

Educate thyself heathen! You don't even need to go anywhere, Jonnan has already posted oodles on it.

Jafo, eat me.

Willy, yet again!

A personal attack is not an admission of failure. A baseless and unfounded personal attack is either humor or an admission of failure. Humor should be appropriately identified by idiotic smiley faces. Statements of facts are neither, and indicative of the minimal intelligence required to notice and mention them. Besides, at this point shredding you is so boring and pointless that I have to occupy myself somehow. It's either that or try baiting our wonderful Stardock employee into banning me in a more serious manner.

Having just bought an airline ticket a couple days ago, the judge is an idiot. Airlines do no such thing. There are FAA regulations, which are law and required knowledge. Ignorance of the law is not an excuse, remember? Terms of use separate from FAA regulations are posted. Luggage charges, fuel surcharges, seating arrangements, etcetera etcetera. Just because some moron says something doesn't make it true. A concert doesn't have to put down that you're not allowed to scream fire in a crowded room, it's illegal. They do have to let you know if you're not allowed to bring food, cell phones, etcetera etcetera. Restrictions on your use are required, by law, to be posted at points of sale. Morons shouldn't be on benches for this reason. I think I've already stated that the judge is a fucking idiot, repetition is rather boring yes?



Please do explain how MDY is affecting other customers. Exactly what does a character being played by a computer do to the other players? Perhaps they're jealous because they aren't leveling as fast? Is penis envy a valid complaint too? It's a fucking MMORPG, you play against the server, and if on a PVP server, against other LIKE LEVEL players. How the hell can the bot possibly be a problem? Bots aren't irritating pricks asking for cybersex every thirty seconds, kill stealing shits that run around getting the last hit in, or fucktards that aggro packs of high level critters and drag them into newbie zones. Maybe the customers are discouraged from playing because they can't get a rise out of the bots when they pull lame shit like the above?

Maybe Blizzard was confused and meant to say their server had to cover more usage because people were actually playing the game more than they expected. If Blizzard really does think their customers are only playing two hours a week on average, they're banning all the people that actually like MMORPG's. Even I played vastly more than that, just getting my money's worth out of it required I bore myself far more often.



Irony is what you stick up your ass before posting. I put effort into educating myself because the law is no longer reliable. The fact that a practice is illegal, fraudulent, and by rights should end certain companies, doesn't mean I have interest in being fucked over just to see if the legal system wants to take themselves seriously for once and put a stop to it. If it's not worth suing the people actually cheating them, then Blizzard has a problem. I don't care. The law doesn't care. There are all kinds of things you can sue over that simply aren't worth it. The reason they aren't worth it is irrelevant. It's not worth suing the commissioner for not fixing a culvert in a local road. It's not worth suing the county to get AC in the poll place. It's not worth suing my ISP for violating their service policy and providing me with a substandard connection. There are plenty of things I could sue for that aren't worth it. I could probably sue you for mental anguish because your idiocy is causing me psychological damage. I could spend my entire life suing people for itty bitty faults with less cause than necessary for it to actually be worth my time, while still legally valid. Just as it is in my case, Blizzard is deserving of no special protections that violate other peoples rights simply because it's not worth it to them.