Court Upholds Blizzard's Anti-Bot DMCA Claim, Denies Copyright Infringement 143
An anonymous reader writes "The Ninth Circuit reversed a $6.5 million judgment for Blizzard against MDY Industries, saying that making bots is not copyright infringement. The bad news for MDY? The court found that they did violate DMCA Section 1201(a)(2) (PDF), which prohibits trafficking in products that circumvent technologies designed to control access to copyright-protected works."
Crack down on spam already. (Score:5, Interesting)
You can't have a non password protected public game without them constantly entering and advertising websites to buy items. (which should also be illegal)
To say nothing of the bots that autorun the game and hunt for items killing the damn economy fffffffff....
I would have gone with "interfering with computer" (Score:4, Interesting)
As Blizzard I would have gone with a case about improper access and interfering with the operation of computer system. The game clients are authorized to access and interact with the servers, the bots are an unauthorized access mechanism to the game servers. Simple plain and shut and clearly puts the bot runners in with the people that do destructive access to systems.
-- and not enough characters to put "with a computer" in the title :(
Perhaps it's only me.... (Score:5, Interesting)
I am not sure if it's because of the advent of modern media, with its up-to-the-second news cycles that maybe only makes this seem true, but it really seems to me that our government is becoming more and more openly aggressive in showing that corporations are in complete control of our system.
Some may think that this story is not related. It is. In a world where corporation control everything, laws like the DMCA are able to pass. I just can't imagine something like that happening 30 years ago, but perhaps it's just because they didnt have the tech which gave them the need.
More and more, it seems you own nothing you buy.
People complain sure, but no one does anything about. What can we do? Sure, I vote with my pocket book, since that's the only votes that actually matter anymore.
Many it's time to go all French on our government? Maybe it's time to say, fuck no, the RIAA does not control our lives. Fuck no, the MIAA does not control our legal system. Fuck no, the government does not get to say that we look at on the Internet.
Then again, perhaps not. Better just to wait until it's too late.
There is a famous saying in Russia; Until thunder strikes, a man won't cross himself. Nice to see we have something in common.
Re:DMCA is useful? (Score:4, Interesting)
do you even have a remote clue what you're talking about?
they're saying that wowglider broke encryption via running a scripting bot that has nothing to do with it.
This is blizzard's "we're protecting our business model via lawsuit" argument.
so it's a bad precedent, which a lot of people lose on from this.
Re:Perhaps it's only me.... (Score:5, Interesting)
It may be a huge contributor to the world economy, but it's a huge drain on the domestic economy, if you can't stop other countries from becoming free riders on it. China has no reason to pay for American IP when they can just take it and not pay. We can't do the same to them, because they make actual physical products. If things continue as they are, the unidirectional money flow is going to destroy the US.