Tecmo Sues Game Hackers Under DMCA 352
blueZhift writes "This Reuters report on CNet states that Tecmo has filed a federal lawsuit in Chicago under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act accusing the site owners and perhaps some users of game hacking site www.ninjahacker.net (now offline) of knowingly infringing on their game software. This should be another interesting test of the DMCA and just how far it can be pushed to restrict what end users can do with/to their software purchases. This might ultimately affect the legality of cheat devices like the Game Shark and even the mere sharing of cheats or exploits."
Cheats? (Score:3, Insightful)
Another reason (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:DMCA Violations (Score:5, Insightful)
The difference here is that they appear to be filing a suit against a hacking group that modified the actual program code of their games.
This to me is an incredible abuse of the DMCA. Hacking a game is like modifying anything else you've bought. It's not like game hackers generally distribute the developer's code, just a set of instructions for modifying the code that is already sitting on other people's consoles or PCs.
IMO this is the equivalent of a car manufacturer suing the makers of nitrous oxide systems or aftermarket body kits.
I'm not even sure why they care anyway - when I had more free time, hacking games was in some ways more fun for me than actually playing them. I extended the play time of Soul Reaver to something like 500 hours because of my extensive hacking of the PC version, for example.
Re:Another reason (Score:5, Insightful)
Sorry, but most open source games are just not very good. The ones that are fun, are almost without exception the ones that are just ripoff versions of commercial software.
Have fun with your open source games; I like to play games with production value, which (unfortunately) limits me to commercial software. There are small commercial houses that produce cool stuff (Introversion, ChronicLogic), but even they are closed-source and commercial.
Enjoy FrozenBubble while I go play Metroid Prime. Enjoy TuxRacer while I get down to Galactic Civilizations II. And we won't even start with MMOs.
Hold on a sec... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:I hate cheaters anyway (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Sit back down. (Score:3, Insightful)
This might ultimately affect the legality of cheat devices like the Game Shark and even the mere sharing of cheats or exploits.
The other article might not make upsurd claims like that, but this one does!
No, but you did a great job of it :) (Score:2, Insightful)
You just said you can do whatever the etc. you want with your car. Next you say that you can't endanger other people with it.
What if I -want- to endanger other people with it ?
Oh shit. I can't. Rather, it's against the law.
That's the whole point - you CAN'T do whatever you want with your car, as there are set limits within the law within which you have to operate - or risk the consequences.
And no - naked skins on your own x-box won't endanger anyone*. That's why the DMCA is being invoked here, and not e.g. reckless driving. Any more than that state troopers would call upon the DMCA when you're speeding.
* Tecmo obviously argues that it hurts their public image, for one, so that's open to intepretation.
Re:DMCA Violations (Score:3, Insightful)
Hello? This seems like exactly the reason software publishers/developers would want people to be prohibited from hacking their games - they'd much rather you buy the game and finish it in a month (or even less) so that you're jacked up and ready to buy the next one.
That doesn't make them [morally] right, of course, but from a business point of view it makes perfect sense.
Re:Sit back down. (Score:2, Insightful)
I.e. you can't drive your car at 200MPh - that is to say, you can. But it's against the law.
You can't mod your car with a spoiler that's twice the width of your car - that is to say, you can. But it's against the law. At least driving on public roads with one is.
both of these are 100% legal acts. I can remove all the emissions equipment, upgrade a yugo to 1500 horsepower and even remove all the seatbelts and there is nothing that anyone can do to me.
at least until I attempt to drive that car on a public roadway where it will put other people at risk, but I certianly can drive it at the local racetrack or deagstrip. Thousands of people do this every single day.
the laws telling you you can not make extreme modifications to your car, hooking up 60,000 volts to your doorknobs in your home, placing landmines in your yard to take care of the neighbors pesky cat, and modifying your telephone ringer so that it produces 208 decibles are not anywhere remotely the same thing you are talking about.
Those are things that violate SAFETY and other public laws that affect other citizens. they fall under the premise that you are doing harm to others by allowing you to use these things in a public place. (ok the landmines are probably illegal everywhere)
there is NOTHING done to a software package except for copyright violation that harms anyone in any way possible.
if I change the characters in a game from green to blue the company that made it does not suffer financial loss, they do not have a developer drop dead, and they most certianly benefit from my tinkering.
this issue is that Techmo writes utter crap games. the only way they can sell them is to introduce boobs and soft core porn. In any other instance their games suck horribly and would not sell at all.
they know this, and they are full of shit simply trying to get publicity at someone elses expense.
Re:Wonder who made those cheats in the first place (Score:5, Insightful)
Apparantly they had to reverse engineer the games to make these skins and therefore they are being sued under the cover of the DMCA (natch).
Personally I think it's a bitch that modifying something that you've paid for, to add value to it so that others are more likely to want to pay for it in the future is seen as a suable offence by TECMO. Bioware, Id, Valve and others make it as easy as possible to make mods since the community efforts can add considerable value to the product at zero cost to the developers.
Counterstrike anyone?
Re:Sit back down. (Score:5, Insightful)
Of course you can drive your car at 200mph.. On a closed track.
Just like having a massive spoiler is perfectly legal, unless you go out on the public road.
There's (obviously) a big difference between "What you may do with your property" and "How you may use your property in the public area".
Making a massive spoiler and selling it is perfectly legal.
Hacking a game and distributing the hack should also be perfectly legal. (in a sane world)
It becomes more complicated if you use a hack in a multiplayer game, which is a service with rules. Break those rules and you can lose the right to use the service. (makes sense)
Getting sued for altering your own property in your own home is an abuse of the justice system.
Re:Hold on a sec... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Sit back down. (Score:3, Insightful)
Here you're completely wrong. You can modify the car, and it's not even against the law to do it. There's a whole series of motor sport events that let people doing this compete with each other.
The only thing that you may not do, is drive your modified car on public roads without having your car recertified by the authorites.
Your analogy is good, only the conclusions you reach from it are wrong.
Re:Sit back down. (Score:5, Insightful)
Next time make a skin where they wear spacesuits.
Console games... (Score:5, Insightful)
I have a few hundred megs of Maps for games like Unreal Tournament, Doom 3, Red Faction, Starcraft, etc, etc, etc. that were created by fans. I have a friend who is really into Morrowind, which is over 3 years old, and mods that offer nudity, god mode, extra locations, extra equipment, skins, and anything else some fan has the imagination and inclination to produce. He has been playing this game off and on for 3 years... I'm still playing Neverwinter Nights.
And for the game companies: attack your customers at your peril... We don't care about IP, we don't care whether you are too puritanical for nude skins, or whatever. A new game is a toy to us that will be used as we see fit. If you want to clamp down, many people simply won't buy from you. I sure as hell won't. And furthermore this makes me feel like I have made the right decision in avoiding the console market altogether.
Re:DMCA Violations (Score:3, Insightful)
Team Ninja made a blatently sexist load of shite where the main aim of the game is to win the money required to buy the skimpiest bikini for the digital women they spent so much time accurately recreating the chest-bouncing physics for.
However, because they like to have some semblance of decency about what they do for a living, you never actually get to see anything, and they've got plausible deniability that it's really all about the volleyball.
A bunch of fans decided that this was a silly copout, and 'fixed' that problem, thereby making them look as much a part of the dirty mac brigade as some had accused them of in advance. They found this offensive, and want to stop such things.
Given how practically every female main character seems to attract 3rd-party nude patches, and their advertising campaign being entirely based around "Look, Girls!!!", it's hard to believe they didn't see it coming.
Re:Another reason (Score:5, Insightful)
How the parent got modded as Insightful is beyond me. OK, the proprietary software = bad idea is popular on /. but that post is just daft.
People, educated and otherwise, play games primarily to play the game. A very small subset like tinkering with them, hence the mod community for games, which is big, but very small compared to the total number of people playing games.
I'm a coder, I write software for a living, but when I come home a play a game to unwind, I want to play a game. Generally I don't want to hack and tinker.
I followed the WorldForge link, the status of the games listed was In Development, Deprecated, Planned, Future, Status is unknown. None actually listed as finished.
Also, giving the quality of proprietary games vs free (as in speech) ones, I'm amazed at them being called "proprietary crap". Sure, some are crap, but all the really good games are proprietary too (although some have been copied by free versions). Not just good because of graphics either, but game play.
If your principles really don't let you run any proprietary software, fair enough. But don't pretend that for the main purpose of games, playing them, free software offers much yet, and it certainly isn't close to the proprietary stuff.
Re:Another reason (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:DMCA Violations (Score:2, Insightful)
I can't understand why they don't embrace the hackers/modders. All they do is piss people off, which is arguably (but not necessarily demonstrably) bad for business.
The other theory is that this new paradigm includes a revenue stream from litigation.
Re:Another reason (Score:5, Insightful)
Amazingly, most of the commercial games that are fun are just ripoff versions of commercial software as well. :)
Re:DMCA Violations (Score:3, Insightful)
Consumers tend to believe that when you buy a game, a book, a car, for that matter any item where you plonk down money and take something away in your hands, that you have bought a product and are allowed to do anything you want with said product within some limitations. Copyright and patent law both restrict these rights somewhat, but they don't in and of themselves change the fact that you should be able to modify your own legally purchased chunk item in anyway you want.
Producers(at least in the digital media world) tend to believe that when you pay your $XX the only physical product you get is the cd itself and you only get a license for the software on it. If this is true, they have the right to tell you not to do anything to what they have. The DMCA gives some credence to the latter view, but as the DMCA is either reviled or ignored by pretty well the entire population over which it holds sway this is probably not an ideal solution.
Generally the people have to decide through their representatives which view they like(evidence seems to suggest that it is the former) and then deal with whatever consequences may arise therefrom. If it really does drive the producers out of business then people will either have to voluntarily revise their opinions or else live without these goods, but it seems unlikely that this will happen. You cannot create law to convince people of something they do not believe to be true, no matter how much you may want to.
Re:No, but you did a great job of it :) (Score:2, Insightful)
You are trying to compare one case (being able to modify something) with a completely different case (being able to infringe on someone else's rights).
But tell me, how are YOUR rights affected when I mod a computer game on my computer, in my house? How are they affected if I give out a program (a proprietary program no less, that is protected under copyright law) so that others can do this easily too? Does this damage you in any way? If it does, you have to prove damages...
Re:Wonder who made those cheats in the first place (Score:3, Insightful)
Fair Use (Score:3, Insightful)
True enough. On the other hand, if someone chooses to highlight/underline/cross-out passages of the copy of your book that they own, they are well within their rights. And if someone found some typos or grammatical mistakes in your work, or even had some suggestions for an alternate ending, they can legally post such things online. All of these cases are much more germane to the topic than your example.