Blizzard Wins Legal Battle Against WoW Bot Company 285
New submitter gamersunited writes with news of Blizzard Entertainment's defeat of another company that created bot software to automate World of Warcraft characters. Ceiling Fan Software faces a judgment of $7 million, and must disable any active licenses for the software. They're also forbidden from transferring or open-sourcing the bot software, and from facilitating its continued use in any way. The court order (PDF) follows more than two years of legal wrangling. Blizzard won a similar judgment a few years ago against another bot company called MDY Industries, which created the popular Glider bot.
We beat them because the EU has no DMCA (Score:5, Informative)
Blizzard sued my company in Germany and we are still trading. The reason is that Americans can't avoid the broad restrictions of the DMCA while Europeans are able to work within existing copyright and trademark law. The DMCA is simply a way of closing creative American companies so the business is done from overseas.
Re:Bottable == boring IMO (Score:3, Informative)
The bots aren't necessarily playing the game in the way a human would. They're more likely doing some monotonous activity that can be used to get gold or items or whatever.
Re: forbidden from transferring or open-sourcing? (Score:4, Informative)
Corporate personhood does not shield employers or employees from legal liability pertaining to their own actions. It simply shields investors from liability beyond their investment.
Point in case, Jeffrey Skilling is currently serving a 24 year prison sentence for actions that he took as the CEO of Enron.
Re:Bad analogy is bad (Score:5, Informative)
I haven't read the TOS of WoW, but I doubt there is any clause that says anything like "by agreeing to this, you also give us rights to anything you create which might be related to the service we offer."
I'm pretty sure it says precisely that. Or at least 'You agree to only interact with our software in approved ways". Which, for a multiplayer game, seems like a pretty reasonable restriction.