Ruling In WoW Bot Case At Odds With Intention Of Copyright Law
from the very-troubling dept
When a judge ruled last summer that a World of Warcraft bot violated Blizzard's copyright, the ruling was already quite problematic in that it vastly expanded the scope of copyright law in terms of the power of an EULA to limit the activities of legitimate purchasers by use of copyright law. However, an additional ruling dealing with some of the other aspects in the case may be even worse. Tim Lee's writeup explains all the gory details, but just to highlight the key point: this ruling clearly goes well beyond the intention of copyright law and the DMCA specifically, in allowing a software company not to just limit the sale or copying of its program, but to limit how a legitimate copy is used outside of additional copying or selling.Of course, as we saw when the original ruling was made, there are some in the tech community who are willing to ignore the implications of this just because they don't like what the bot software did (i.e., helping people effectively cheat in the game). However, you need to look beyond what the software did to what these rulings actually mean, and it's quite problematic, and could represent a significant expansion of how copyright law can be used to remove all sorts of rights from individuals. The fact that this particular piece of software was used for questionable purposes is not the issue. The issue is that it was a twisted reading of copyright law that was used to stop it. Blizzard had a variety of options -- mainly technological -- to combat such a bot. To use copyright law is a problem we should all be concerned about.
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Filed Under: bots, copyright, world of warcraft
Companies: blizzard
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Rights
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Re: Rights
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Re: Re: Rights
Remind me again, which of my rights are U.S. soldiers fighting for in Iraq?
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Rights
Agreed. Please if you are going to say something RESEARCH IT, before you reply.
But anyway why are we talking about this when the article is about BLizzard and WoW....
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Rights
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Please educate yourself before you start spouting racist bullshit.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Rights
FYI, i am also athiest...
as they say dont judge a book by its cover.. :)
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Rights
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Re: Re: Re: Rights
The right to speak American (in other words, ENGLISH). If it were for all the troops in Iraq we'd all be speaking IRAQI right now! You must be some kind of Obama loving liber-crat if you have to be told that.
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Re: Re: Re: Rights
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Funny that you wouldn't that U.S. forces are currently fighting in Iraq.
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little off
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Re: little off
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Re: little off
Yes, but that doesn't mean they get to abuse copyright law to do so.
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Re:
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I wholeheartedly agree
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Re: I wholeheartedly agree
And to say that "rights" are only gained by "Bleeding" or "fighting" for them ignores 8 years of George Bush's presidency. 2 wars justified as "fighting for our rights" while he, Rove, and Cheney effectively worked to erode real constitutional rights via the Patriot Act, suspension of Habeas Corpus, etc. Come on guys. Its a fucking game. Don't play it if you can't be bothered to adhere to the rules Blizzard created for the use of its property.
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I do have to say that Blizzard have taken multiple steps to combat this problem over the years - mass account banning, increased daily quests, alternative epic loot sources, streamlining early content etc. Fact is there are both greedy people who want to cash in on Blizzard's success and lazy people with disposable incomes that can help make that possible.
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Blizzard's lawyers were probably looking for a legal way to stop this and since there is no specific law against it they had to use a "grey area" to take care of it.
" in allowing a software company not to just limit the sale or copying of its program, but to limit how a legitimate copy is used outside of additional copying or selling. "
Speaking of which, this happens all the time. When you go buy a DVD from the store you are not allowed to show it to a group of people (like a classroom for example) without permission. Only in this case they have no way of tracking it, this has been happening for a while and is nothing new.
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Re: “Hacking” Blizzard’s Website?
Daniel suggested:
The only people accessing Blizzard’s servers are their customers who legitimately purchased their product.
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Re:
Welcome to Techdirt. This must be your first time here. I will invite you to search around on this site for posts related to the "First Sale Doctrine" as well as "Fair Use". Then, compare them to the entertainment industry's *opinions* on the subject.
It does so happen that you have every right to do exactly what you believe you can't do, and for a couple of reasons. You can most certainly show your own personal copy of a DVD to a "group of people", especially in a classroom.
It is true that companies try to create limits "all the time", but they are not enforcable. I can create a license on a piece of software that you have to click through to use, or I can put a sticker on the outside of a DVD with terms and conditions, but that is not any sort of legal or moral contract in any sense of the word. It doesn't matter if I sell you a CD and say you can only listen to it on Tuesdays, or if Thomas Edison puts a EULA on his wax phonograph cylinders stipulating the minimum sale price (true fact), it doesn't mean you can't do it!
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Oh dear.. Blizzard is sliding down the scales of respect to EA level.. Since Bliz is being run by corporate lacky's nowadays this shouldn't have been that much of a surprise.. still makes me cry though..
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That may be the case with this particular application, however there are many cases where people have written viruses that target WoW to get people's account information. They then take these accounts and place bots or chineese farmers on them which then leads to spam, botting, gold buying, etc.. So no, thats not exactly true.
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Re: �Hacking� Blizzard�s Website?
Daniel wrote:
This particular application is the case we’re talking about.
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Re:
Yes, in this case it is exactly true. You, on the other hand...
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72 Virgins
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Off-Topic
Second. Blizzard has no right to exploit the copyright laws and sue a company that helps a lot of people break away from such an addicting game. Sounds like everyone that plays World of Warcraft needs to get together and sue the F**K out of blizzard for selling an overly addictive game. How many people that play wow religiously have a life? Do they even take showers, have sex, go on dates, see a movie, talk on the phone, turn in homework, go to school, go to work or just be a productive human?
I am a Telecommunications Service Technician. That means I repair and troubleshoot internet connections for a rather large cable isp company in Texas. I go to these peoples houses when their internet is down. When I do run into a person that plays World of Warcraft they have very messy houses with cokes and dishes piled up around their computers and they are just drooling over your F*n shoulder until I fix their problem and no sooner is the internet up they are logging into their account(as a test) This is HORRIBLE! Their kids could be running around the house with a chainsaw and they would know no difference. No Warcraft doesn't necessarily make crappy parents, but it sure as hell contributes to that fact!
With that said, I am a PROUD botter and I hold no shame in saying so. Would you pass up a robot to do your real life job for you if it meant you got to spend more time with your wife/ or g/f, kids, family, friends, clean yo crib, or just to watch TV if you still got paid the same to do so?
This is excactly what the bot does for us honest people. It FREEs us from a labor intensive game, that requires countless hours of doing the same boring things over and over just to get to the fun of the end game?
Blizzard needs to take a hard look at their claim and /facepalm.
;
//endrant
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re: botting
thats where this is headed :P
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Oceanic Server Disputes
I would thoughly welcome any comments in regards to your thoughts or alternatively areas of concern towards the company.
Regards
Mark
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Wow Botting
I am a soldier also.. any of you talking about the war who are not in the war or have not been to war.... go enlist, deploy, then come back and read what you wrote. You are all ignorant donkeys. Chop yourself in the neck.
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So what are the good ones
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They have had about a year in time to come up with a solution, but nothing. Ad-makers are much more annying and violating than bots, and bots that is uman-like was not annoying at all by the way, becouse they were not noticed ingame. Only the robot-like bots were annoying.
What I dont understand is why Blizzard is letting these ad-makers compromise the copyright of the ingame-environment in front of the paying players as they do (= much worse issue than bots), as if Blizzard wants to drag down their own company-name by terrorists and then demonstrate it to the players while not doing anything about it, nor writing about the problem or wanting to solve it so the players can read it. No respect to the paying players what so ever.
(Sorry for my bad English, I'm a Wow-player from a non-englishspeaking country).
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Wow blizzard really went after them
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