Blizzard vs. Glider Battle Resumes Next Week 384
trawg writes "You paid for it, you have the DVD in your drive and the box on the floor next to your desk, but do you own the game? That's the question the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals will rule on next week in the case between Blizzard, publisher of World of Warcraft, and MDY, publisher of the Glider bot. The Glider bot plays World of Warcraft for you, but Blizzard frowns on this, saying it voids the license agreement — you don't own the game, you only have a license to use it, and bots like Glider invalidate the license. The EFF has a good summary of the case as well. The case is due to be resumed on Monday."
Re:Still waiting for... (Score:5, Informative)
Still waiting for a Nethack bot that can ascend.
And this is the reason why people still play Rogue, and will be tapping away at Nethack and Dwarf Fortress long after WoW is gone.
I am not trying to claim that these games will ever be as "successful" (read: profitable) as World of Warcraft, but I would say they far more closely approach video-games-as-art.
Re:Still waiting for... (Score:3, Informative)
Better bots than glider can heal on raids more efficiently than a human (player, not character race) healer, interrupt in PVP more effectively than a human, travel while the human is AFK, etc.
Comment removed (Score:0, Informative)
Re:Funny (Score:3, Informative)
According to Wikipedia, Glider makes a copy of the WoW client (as opposed to just running on top of the client), so the software itself does infringe on the license.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glider_(bot) [wikipedia.org]
Re:Blaming someone else for your own decisions (Score:3, Informative)
The most bizarre thing about this lawsuit is that Blizzard is suing MDY for lost revenue, because Blizzard chose to ban players. Blizzard didn't have to ban those players. They could have taken away their money and levels and allow them to continue playing. Blizzard made a choice. It's completely ridiculous that they blame that choice on someone else.
It might have made sense if MDY was sued by its customers who got themselves banned for using an MDY product. That I would understand. Blizzard suing MDY is completely retarded.
Blizzard didn't sue them for lost revenue (as I was able to see.) Blizzard obtained a judgement against MDY copyright infringement, and inducement to violate a contract.
Re:Blizzard is not completely guilty (Score:5, Informative)
Exactly. I'm perfectly fine with them banning bots. What's stupid is that they sue another company over the revenue lost because Blizzard chose to ban bots. They didn't have to do that. Their decision.
No, they sued over copyright infringement and inducement to violate terms of a contract.
Nowhere did they claim any damages for lost revenue.
Re:I am not going to hold my breath... (Score:4, Informative)
It might have been reasonable if they'd argued that, but they didn't. Their case is entirely about your local copy of the client. They have argued (successfully) that if you do not follow their license terms then the act of copying it to RAM [publicknowledge.org] is a copyright violation.
Perhaps we could stick to discussing what they have argued, not what they haven't?
Re:I am not going to hold my breath... (Score:5, Informative)
It might have been reasonable if they'd argued that, but they didn't. Their case is entirely about your local copy of the client. They have argued (successfully) that if you do not follow their license terms then the act of copying it to RAM [publicknowledge.org] is a copyright violation.
Perhaps we could stick to discussing what they have argued, not what they haven't?
You are correct that they argued about a local copy of the client, however you fail to acknowledge that Count I is "Tortious Interference With Contract"
It is not the ONLY thing that they argued. As for their copyright argument, they asserted that Glider produces an unauthorized copy of the program into memory in order to disable and/or defeat Warden. Such a copy they argue is not authorized.
It's difficult for MDY to argue that making their altered copy of the program is necessary for play... especially when such play is directly a violation of the contract to play said game.
Re:Don't tell us what programs we can and can't ru (Score:2, Informative)
I mean ostensibly I can see how the Glide bot could be considered 'legal' in and of itself, I am of the firm belief that if you buy a game you can use (or abuse if you so desire) it any way you want.
Now in the case of WoW the EULA is not just for the game (which you own, or ought to anyhow) but also for the servers (which are owned by Blizzard). So seems to be that it is entirely fair that Blizzard can dictate what you can and cannot do on their servers, if they decide that they do not want a bot running on their servers then a they are in the clear when they ban the user of said bot.
I mean it is fairly commonplace for people who run multiplayer notepad servers (excuse me I mean 'IRC servers) to say that they do not want unauthorized bots on their servers and most FPS games implement anti-cheating and systems and will ban people who cheat.
So Blizzard are not so much telling you what you can or cannot run on your computer as much as they are telling you what you can and cannot use on their servers.
Re:Blaming someone else for your own decisions (Score:4, Informative)
That would have been bizarre if they'd done it, but they didn't [virtuallyblind.com].
Since you made me read the whole Counterclaim, claim 49.
MDY’s sale of WoWGlider has caused Blizzard great harm in the direct loss of
revenue from terminated users, the loss of subscription revenue from WoWGlider users availing
themselves of the cheat, and from the severe damage to the goodwill of the non-cheating
population of WoW users.
Re:Blizzard is not completely guilty (Score:4, Informative)
1) Farming resources: resources spawns at nodes in a first come, first serve basis.
2) AH sniping: I don't think they've fixed this issue yet (they didn't the last time I played.) Bots do it better naturally.
3) PvP: Bots have better reflexes. Speedhacks also allows much faster travel, an obvious advantage in battles where travelling is an issue.
I think that answers your 3 questions.
Re:Blizzard is not completely guilty (Score:3, Informative)
Exactly. I'm perfectly fine with them banning bots. What's stupid is that they sue another company over the revenue lost because Blizzard chose to ban bots. They didn't have to do that. Their decision.
No, they sued over copyright infringement and inducement to violate terms of a contract.
Nowhere did they claim any damages for lost revenue.
I'm going to take the high road, and point out Claim 49 of the counter claim. They did.
It's also part of their pray for relief F.
Re:I am not going to hold my breath... (Score:5, Informative)
Fair enough on the tortuous interference, but that's small beer compared to the ownership and copyright issues.
MDY shouldn't have to make any argument regarding whether the RAM copy is "authorized" or not, since Title 117 disallows copyright claims against the owner [copyright.gov].
Note carefully that Blizzard's argument isn't against Title 117, it's that their EULA means that the purchaser doesn't "own" the copy that they bought, and so the enjoys no Title 117 protection. That's the significant precedent here.
Re:Blaming someone else for your own decisions (Score:4, Informative)
Count 49 is an assertion of facts, not a claim for relief.
They successfully claimed: Tortious Interference With Contract; Contributory Copyright Infringement; Vicarious Copyright Infringement.
They failed in their claims of: Violation of the Digital Millennium; Trademark Infringement; Unfair Competition (where they claimed to have been damaged but couldn't prove any damages); Unjust Enrichment (where they did attempt to claim lost revenues, but only because - they said, but could not prove - people capped and left, not because Blizzard chose to ban them, as the GP asserted).
So, OK, little from column A, little from column B. The core issue remains that of ownership and Title 117; just about everything else is a distraction.
If I had to call it, I've have given them claim 4, the DMCA violation, since that's the more pertinent legislation.
Re:Funny (Score:3, Informative)
It is the people that run glider that are violating that copyright, not the people that authored glider.
If anything, the authors would be in violation of the DMCA and not copyright, right?
Re:Funny (Score:3, Informative)
Right, because the Digital Millenium Copyright Act is not about copyright.
Violating the DMCA (with its anti-circumvention rules) is not the same as violating copyright. Seriously... you are grasping here.
Re:To stop botting and farming... make a better ga (Score:1, Informative)
You are wrong here. The whole purpose of glider is greed. The purpose of any bot in the game is greed. The player wants something and doesn't want to work for it - be it gold, honor, experience/leveling, etc. Some can be attributed to laziness. A lil bit can be getting around a repetitive thing, sure, but there are choices.
Gold farmers farm gold using bots/scripts so they make gold faster so they can sell it to people too lazy to earn it themselves.
Obviously you have no idea how MMO economies work - if every player were allowed to have unlimited/superfast earned amounts of money, the inflation would be enormous, raising prices, causing players to look to buying money anyways so they can purchase the highly-inflated items.
To a smaller extent, the earlier argument about the end-user breaking the EULA is correct. However, the way Glider works (and why you don't see Blizzard going after other script engines - like AutoHotKey) is because of how Glider actively injects into the system in memory, changing the client, to evade the Warden security system. Which is copyright infringement to an extent (no one has a license to distribute an application that changes the WoW client) - and is why Blizzard went after Glider. Sure, user accounts are banned, and people here won't complain about that much.
Re:Wider implications? (Score:5, Informative)
If the only argument is that because World of Warcraft is heavily dependent upon server-side interactions, that there is a leasing of the software to interact with that code.
Except this is not the argument. The issue is that Blizzard claims that no one EVER owns a program "purchased" from them. They argue that any user of any licensed software product is forever bound by the terms of the license in every way.
Many people (myself included) believe that the purchase of a game or other software product is an actual sale (with all applicable first-sale doctrine rights). That is the issue at hand, do you purchase the program or are you renting the program (any program, even something with no network or server attributes)? This is by the way, even in the FIRST LINE of the summary on EFF's site.
From the EFF's summary:
When you buy World of Warcraft (WoW) in a retail box, do you own the copy of the software you bought? That's the critical legal question facing the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in a pending appeal in MDY v. Blizzard, and the question that Public Knowledge took on in an excellent amicus brief filed with the court earlier this week.
If you own your software, you have the right to resell it and the right to make copies and adaptations as necessary to use it. If you don't, well, then you face a possible copyright lawsuit for transgressing any limitations the vendor puts in the license agreement.