Judge Rules WoW Bot Violates DMCA 498
An anonymous reader writes to tell us that Blizzard has added another victory in their campaign against World of Warcraft bots. A federal judge has ruled that not only did the Glider bot break the EULA, it can be classified as a circumvention device under the DMCA. "As we've noted before, Blizzard's legal arguments, which Judge David G. Campbell largely accepted, could have far-reaching and troubling implications for the software industry. Donnelly is not the most sympathetic defendant, and some users may cheer the demise of a software vendor that helps users break the rules of Blizzard's wildly popular role playing game. But the sweeping language of Judge Campbell's decision, combined with his equally troubling decision last summer, creates a lot of new uncertainty for software vendors seeking to enter software markets dominated by entrenched incumbents and achieve interoperability with legacy platforms."
Re:Hopefully there's a silver lining (Score:2, Informative)
I think he meant the in-game spamming more than the gold sellers themselves.
It's getting as bad as the spam folder in my gmail, with one small difference: there's no spam folder in WoW, only an easily bypassed filter.
Re:Blizzard is doing a lot of damage to the indust (Score:2, Informative)
That's why MS sells Retail licenses...
Part of the price break of the OEM license cost comes from the fact that it is non-transferable.
Re:Doesn't matter. (Score:5, Informative)
In other words, a tool that a) accesses elements of a copyrighted work b) evades protection mechanisms to do so violates the DMCA. Maybe the issue isn't with the judge, but with the law he's interpreting.
Re:Just goes to show you (Score:2, Informative)
But Donnelly is on the stand for, among other things, willfully allowing others to break their contractual agreement with Blizzard, Vivendi Games, Inc.
The courts could care less about whether or not Donnelly himself violated his contractual obligation with Blizzard/Vivendi, Nor whether Donnelly had actually installed Blizzards software at all.
Re:Hopefully there's a silver lining (Score:4, Informative)
Glider was a bot that would farm for you. It would move to areas, kill things, collect things off the body for you, even fish.
It's not just a spam bot, it's a full script that would play the game for you. Whether it's farming something, fishing to get your levels up, or mining, it was able to do it without your interaction.
Re:Doesn't matter. (Score:5, Informative)
DMCA, Wikipedia: "It criminalizes production and dissemination of technology, devices, or services intended to circumvent measures (commonly known as Digital Rights Management or DRM) that control access to copyrighted works and it also criminalizes the act of circumventing an access control, whether or not there is actual infringement of copyright itself."
Re:Doesn't matter. (Score:5, Informative)
I'm sorry, but you have this incorrect (at least, in my opinion)
Glider does not bypass warden. Glider is stealthy and is not detected by Warden. Warden still runs. Blizzard updates Warden to detect Glider and hauls out the banstick.
But either way, Glider is not a tool that "accesses elements of a copyrighted work". It is a tool which accesses elements of a copyrighted work that you, as the user/developer, have a legal license to access until such time that Blizzard revokes said license for violation of their terms of use.
In other words, Glider does not bypass protection mechanisms granting you the ability to access copyrighted work without a license. Glider breaks a civil contract, which upon discovery will cause the licensor (Blizzard) to revoke the license of the licensee (you). After that, you can no longer access elements of the copyrighted work.
Re:Hopefully there's a silver lining (Score:4, Informative)
Get up, walk out of the theatre, tell the manager, tell an usher, tell someone who looks important.
At the theatre I work at, we love to kick out the unruly lot that make the movies worse for everyone. Every time we walk in, they hush down, it's hard for us to know where the problems are. It's also a multiplex, with only one usher for many theatres, doing double duty, cleaning and checking the facilities.
So, do something about it. Honestly, having the balls to fix the problem is probably not their problem, more likely, they don't have anything substantive and don't want to interrupt the movie more severely than it already has been. Nothing distracts everyone in the theatre more than an argument in the seats. Make the theatre staff know it's a problem, and it'll probably be taken care of.
Re:Liability for the mortgage fiasco rests solely (Score:3, Informative)
None of the mortgages Freddie and Fannie cut were subprime. Freddie and Fannie are suffering because of what the big banks did in destabilizing the housing market. Freddie and Fannie would in all likely hood have been OK had it not been for the Subprime lending.
Subprime was all through the major banks cutting their own mortgages and avoiding the government system and it's rules. Subprime is what destroyed the economy, the idea that you can lend that much money to someone that under no circumstance can they possibly make the payments after the ARM adjusts. The Bank's knowingly lent these huge amounts of money with knowledge that once the ARM adjusted all those subprimes would turn into foreclosures. Management acted to get their piece of the pie while they could then get out. Much of the major banks Management should be sued for what they did and bankrupted.
Re:Hopefully there's a silver lining (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Doesn't matter. (Score:5, Informative)
17 USC 1201
(2) No person shall manufacture, import, offer to the public, provide, or otherwise traffic in any technology, product, service, device, component, or part thereof, that--
(A) is primarily designed or produced for the purpose of circumventing a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title;
(B) has only limited commercially significant purpose or use other than to circumvent a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title; or
(C) is marketed by that person or another acting in concert with that person with that person's knowledge for use in circumventing a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title.
Warden controls access to the online portion of WoW (a copyrighted work) by checking to see if cheat programs are running and refusing access to WoW if it detects any. Glider is such a program that has, in the past, been blocked by Warden. Glider was updated to circumvent this access control.
The ruling, if you bother to take the time to read it, explains all of this stuff. Maybe you don't like the law, but it was at least properly applied here.
Trial order january 28 (Score:2, Informative)
IT IS ORDERED:
DATED this 28th day of January, 2009.
Which means the judge awarded everything to Blizzard and asked MDY for a memo explaining why they should stay in business while they fight the case. After reading the judge order it's safe to say there is little chance that the judge allows MDY to remain on business after february 13.
Re:Doesn't matter. (Score:3, Informative)
I haven't read this new ruling, but I read the last one - and he clearly understood everything perfectly well.
Re:It's a *dumb* game, that's why this problem exi (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Hopefully there's a silver lining (Score:5, Informative)
Some items are only dropped in one or two areas, which are easily covered by a couple of accounts running glider.
Update from Glider forums (Score:4, Informative)
The judge just ruled and, unfortunately, it did not go much our way. He pretty much awarded everything to Blizzard again.
Here's a link to the order: http://www.mmoglider.com/Legal/trialorder_jan28.pdf [mmoglider.com]
What this means for Glider customers The judge asked us to file a memo by February 13th on why we should be allowed to continue to sell Glider through the appeal process.
I'm not sure why he asked for that, since I don't think he's going to start listening to us now. So we'll file it and see, but it seems very likely that he will rule against us. Then we'll go up to the 9th circuit and try to get a stay, similar to how the Napster case went.
If all goes badly, Glider could be shut down as early as mid-February. So keep your fingers crossed.
That's from 01/28/2009
Re:Bot if You Want (Score:3, Informative)
Actually, they ARE kicking off the botting users. There are occasional massive bans that scoop up large amounts of botters. Google around a bit and you'll find out about it.
Re:Hopefully there's a silver lining (Score:5, Informative)
However, there are regularly "Chinese gold farmers" out there doing this manually, where someone hires legions of very, very low-paid people to sit and do this all day, wherein the "pit boss" usually turns around and sells the gold via spammers. This isn't allowed as again, it upsets the economy and selling gold for real money is against the ToS. It's also led to a huge amount of account hacking and compromises, which prompted Blizzard to make mails to every in-game character and a logon notice regarding keeping your account safe and not buying gold. I'm not sure what measures Blizzard has taken against gold farmers such as this though. I have noticed, however, the amount of level 1 characters with the name "sjduerlks" (etc) running into the capital cities to shout about gold selling and power-leveling services.
Re:Doesn't matter. (Score:2, Informative)
What Warden does protect access to is the actual protocol commands being sent back and forth across the wire between the game client and game servers. This protocol content cannot possibly be protected by copyright, as it is a) required in the due use of the copyright work (in this case, the client) much in the same way that copying a program to your RAM is a right you have by copyright law, and b) initiated by the user, and as such is held as IP by the user if it is held by anyone at all.
By this same reasoning, Fiddler's capability to read the content of SSL-encoded HTTP messages that were initiated by the user violates copyright law; it is an exterior client that accesses communicated data that is expressly protected (in this case, in the form of encryption).
If Glider were designed to access game art (which is quite strongly copyrighted), and Warden were designed to stop it from doing so, then Glider subsequently redesigned to circumvent Warden, THEN the statue applies.
Re:Doesn't matter. (Score:3, Informative)
Hard to argue that it just "remained undetected" when they actively had to change the software so that Warden could no longer detect it.
In addition, the court found that MDY had repeatedly advertised that their software circumvented protections.
Re:Hopefully there's a silver lining (Score:2, Informative)
Heh, I don't think WoW's gameplay is quite as precarious as your post might imply. It's pretty much not possible* for a guild to totally shut down an entire zone and farm it to death. As the mobs respawn randomly, eventually one of them is going to spawn near to a competing player, at which point they can easily tag the mob first, which means they're the only one that gains experience from it, and only they have looting rights. It's not significantly different to how any newly released zone will be immediately overwhelmed by players flocking to see it. It can be pretty hard to find enough mobs to complete your quests or whatever, but you're guaranteed to finish eventually, because it simply isn't possible to deny you your kills (except in cross-faction PvP where one side has a large advantage in numbers, which wouldn't ordinarily happen on most servers, and even then there are PvE servers for those that prefer to quest in safety).
*Ok, so maybe it might be possible if you had an extremely large guild and you actually managed to effectively coordinate them somehow, but by that stage you'll find that the bigger problem is the cripplingly low frame rate from having to draw several hundred characters at once, if you have a low-end system.
Re:Hopefully there's a silver lining (Score:3, Informative)
That 70% seems pretty much willing to deal with the spam.
I've probably seen as much gold spam *total* since they added the insta-report button than I used to see in a day.
I recall being disappointed that that was all they could come up with when it was first introduced, but it has done an amazingly good job.
Re:Hopefully there's a silver lining (Score:5, Informative)
Prt 2 Org 1g?
Prt = Portal (A Mage-class player can create portals [thottbot.com] for other players to use)
2 = to
Org = Orgrimmar (a major city)
1g = 1 gold (currency)
In this case a player is requesting a mage to teleport them to another city, and is willing to pay 1 gold. (Since the latest patch, most portals usually go for 2-5g... sometimes I even get 10g on the Eonar server.)
Tbl plz.
tbl = Table (A Mage-class player can create refreshment tables [thottbot.com] for other players)
plz = Please
A party member is asking a mage to create a table that they can use for food that replenishes health and mana.
Ned 1g.
Ned = Need
1g = 1 gold (currency)
Someone needs money. Usually you'll see this from the lower players asking higher players for money.
Can u rn me thru RFC? 10s
rn = run (a process where a higher-level character parties with a lower level character and then proceeds to do a low-level quest or dungeon so that the low-level character can complete a quest or get an item without doing any work)
RFC = Ragefire Chasm (a dungeon for a group of low level characters)
10s = 10 silver (currency... 1g = 100s)
A low level character is asking a presumably higher level character to do the dungeon for them, and is willing to pay 10s. (10s is nowhere near the price anyone would pay for a run. Hell, you'll pick up a few gold in the dungeon...)
Now you know, and can be nerdy like us. Just like us... Just like us... Just like us...
Re:Doesn't matter. (Score:2, Informative)
Full court order is viewable here: http://www.mmoglider.com/Legal/trialorder_jan28.pdf [mmoglider.com]
Contract law isn't the problem here (Score:3, Informative)
The problem with your argument is that contract law isn't what is the problem here. By breaking the terms of the ToS, under their contract with him Blizzard can only cut off his service and keep his money. They can't fine him $150,000 "per act of infringement", as is the case with the DMCA. If you read the article, they're moving beyond contract law and saying violating the terms of service makes you a copyright infringer, subject to copyright law:
Re:Hopefully there's a silver lining (Score:2, Informative)
Nope - the fish can still escape you. In the racial starter areas the fish are quite easy to find and you won't lose many there after skill 30 or so.
Also - you still need to get the books and teachers to raise your profession level.