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Blizzard Relents: Admits That It's Okay To Sell A Book About World Of Warcraft

from the oh,-you-mean-the-law-was-on-your-side? dept

Fri, Jun 9th 2006 1:01pm — Mike Masnick

Greg Beck, the attorney for Public Citizen who handled this case, writes in to let us know that Blizzard, makers of World of Warcraft have settled their case with the maker of a guide to the game. If you'll remember, the guidebook's author felt the need to sue Blizzard after they kept demanding eBay shut down auctions of the guidebook, despite the fact that there was nothing infringing in the book. Blizzard would issue DMCA takedown notices, which eBay would comply with. The author, Brian Kopp, would file a counterclaim which Blizzard would ignore. eBay would rightfully put the item back up... only to have Blizzard quickly hit them with another takedown notice. In this manner, they kept the book from being sold repeatedly, despite having no actual legal basis to do so. In the settlement, Blizzard agreed to stop sending such takedown notices, and Kopp agrees... um... to keep the book as it is now.

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8 Comments

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bmac (profile), 9 Jun 2006 @ 1:55pm

Blizzard
Do they get their practices from the RIAA or MPAA? Or are they just sore losers because they didn't get to market with the hints book before Kopp?

Free market economy--ain't it a b!+ch!!
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Anonymous Coward, 9 Jun 2006 @ 2:12pm

"Kopp agrees... um... to keep the book as it is now."

I thought he agreed to remove links to cheat sites.
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Anonymous Coward, 9 Jun 2006 @ 10:34pm

If blizzard was smart they would just cancel Kopps account(s) and anyone with a similiar name on a credit card for that zip code, and then change every thing in the hint book in their next patch. Problem solved.
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Moogle, 10 Jun 2006 @ 5:03am

#3 AC: Yeah, except for when the next hint book comes out, and they change around the system again, everyone gets pissed off and quits for the 101 other MMOs. Blizzard gets left with a dead goose and no gold in sight.

#2 AC: I hadn't heard that he had cheat site links. That makes me feel a whole lot more sympathetic to Blizzard. They can't possibly fix every exploit, there are probably too many small ones and any big ones are likely flaws inherint to the design. They can't do much about random websites, but someone profiting from selling hard copy of exploits or instructions on how to find them helps their players more than the equivalent ammount of labor invested in bug fixes.

Their tactics are still slimeball, but I'm getting pretty jaded to that from reading Techdirt daily. :)
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Moogle, 10 Jun 2006 @ 5:07am

Brain fart
"They can't do much about random websites, but someone profiting from selling hard copy of exploits or instructions on how to find them helps their players more than the equivalent ammount of labor invested in bug fixes."

I meant for that to say something along the lines of: Someone profiting from selling hard copy [...] can actually be stopped, and doing so helps their players [...]

I obviously need more sleep.
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BlackCow, 10 Jun 2006 @ 1:00pm

meh
meh, WoW. If I played that (knowing me) my life would probaly be consumed into it, I try to stay away from MMOs. I wasted en entire summer playing there, and that wasent even a game, it was just a chatting MMO. So ill stick with my first persons shooters.
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Brad, 10 Jun 2006 @ 3:28pm

Re: meh
Get lost in games much?

Six of one, half-dozen of the other.
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Anonymous Coward, 12 Jun 2006 @ 8:10am

The problem with the book was that there was too much inconsistency, every patch someting changes and it would make the book less and less accurate. After expansions, most guidebooks are useless. I can see Blizzards point of view, the book will be inaccurate in 6 months and people will get confused about how something works. Books about MMOs should not be, leave it to discussion forums and active fansites.
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