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."
Take a stand! (Score:3, Interesting)
Except as a legal test, this is an irrelevant case (Score:5, Interesting)
Brilliant! (Score:2, Interesting)
way to protect your IP there Tecmo...
Clearly, this is a pathetic attempt to stir up a bit of froth for what is essentially a dog-shit game.
no-one will get sued, 14yr olds will break their xboxes trying to make the naked women do handstands.
Re:Ignore the speculation of the article (Score:4, Interesting)
This is just plain stupid. (Score:3, Interesting)
Lawsuit in response to online or offline hacks? (Score:2, Interesting)
Yes, developers can implement systems to combat online game cheating but to be honest, they shouldn't have to. Unfortunatly we live in a world where a good percentage of parents never successfully taught their children to grow up and stop acting like idiots. It's a shame that going after individual cheaters isn't viable and cost effective, like gun manufacturers, the people who release these codes shouldn't be held accountable for what people do with them.
Re:DMCA Violations (Score:2, Interesting)
So Valve and ID software must be idiots to make their engine so moddable? Of course not, the more mods available, the better the game sells.
If you buy an expensive game and are bored with it after a short time, you're not likely to buy the sequel, you're likely to go looking for a title with a little more longevity.
Re:Will mattel and EA sue next?? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Goodbye fair karma... (Score:2, Interesting)
The whole concept of intellectual "property" sucks. I had an idea - pay me. I'm glad I don't live in the US. But I wish the US would stop trying to impose its laws on other countries.
You can't copyright a story - only the particular words that you choose to describe that story. The order of those words also matters, since you can't claim the actual words as yours. And you can't patent an idea or a concept, only your particular application of it. And there is no way that you can enforce a law that says I can't take something apart (be it software or otherwise) to see how it works, so I wish the US would stop making unenforceable, ridiculous laws. What the law SHOULD do is prevent me from taking your software, altering it slightly, and rebranding it as MY software and making money off it. And that's ALL. How I choose to let MY computer execute YOUR code is my business not yours.
If reverse engineering something had always been "illegal" we would not have several types of car. What? You mean a Ford and a Nissan BOTH have FOUR wheels and a 1600cc engine and 4 doors and they both have spark plugs and use gas? Oh let's sue each other...they stole our idea...
But then I guess for economic purposes all that matters is that the money changes hands. Perhaps the US will be successful at having the first law-suit driven economy...
An Old Story from a Former Tecmo Game Hacker (Score:2, Interesting)
From 1999-2000, I was one of three hackers working furiously to uncover the inner workings of Monster Rancher 2, another game published by Tecmo. After the months of work, Tecmo made it very clear to us that they frowned upon our activities. I personally had a very cordial relationship with Tecmo's PR dept. through my Monster Rancher fansite, and though the PR department admitted that there were developers who appreciated our level of enthusiasm and work, the official company stance was quite the opposite as they were afraid that we would somehow reveal trade secrets to their competitors. Though we continued to actively post information about the game's internals on the monster-rancher.com message board (now defunct, as the domain has since been acquired by a competing site), Tecmo forbid us from posting similar information on their own message boards.
Some time after I had left the scene, I visited with the old board briefly to find out that the game hackers were now asked to not mention specific memory locations (you could refer to the "lifespan register", but not to "0x800B...."); I do not know what inspired this new policy, but knowing the site's owner and board administrator personally, I suspect that Tecmo's dissatisfaction of hacker activity had grown more vocal. Never once did we make or distribute new skins for monsters or any game modification other than altered save files, so our situation was a little different than that of www.ninjahacker.net, but this is indeed sad, and rather chilling that this could have happened to us had people been using the DMCA in such a manner at that time. In the past, Tecmo has had an amazingly good relationship with owners of fansites across the web, and domains like "monsterrancher.com" still remain in possession of the fans. Why they would sue fans for making game skins... I don't know. All that I can say is that for years, Tecmo as a corporate entity has never been happy with those of us who want to explore their products a bit more thoroughly.