Blizzard Sues Starcraft II Cheat Creators 252
qubezz writes: "TorrentFreak reports that on Monday, Blizzard filed a lawsuit in US District court in California against the programmers behind the popular Starcraft II cheat 'ValiantChaos MapHack.' The complaint seeks relief from 'direct copyright infringement,' 'contributory copyright infringement,' 'vicarious copyright infringement,' 'trafficking in circumvention devices,' etc. The suit seeks the identity of the cheat's programmers, as it fishes for names of John Does 1-10, in addition to an injunction against the software (which remains on sale) and punitive damages. Blizzard claims losses from diminished user experiences, and also that 'when users of the Hacks download, install, and use the Hacks, they directly infringe Blizzard's copyright in StarCraft
II, including by creating unauthorized derivative works"."
Reverse engineering is legal (Score:2, Informative)
You appear not to know that reverse engineering is legal.
As long as they're not selling Blizzard's own code, there is no copyright issue in writing something that interacts with that code using knowledge gained from reverse-engineering.
It's precisely to allow such interoperation that reverse engineering is a protected activity.
open battlenet (Score:3, Informative)
Anyone remember open battlenet? Idiot judge in that case shut down the totally open-source, non-commerical open battle net server which allowed people to run their own private Startcraft/Warcraft servers on their own private networks. Sure it could allow people to play others without a valid serial number, but it opened up another very interesting legal question: can certain software be considered illegal?
Fuck Blizzard.
It's not cheaters killing SC2... (Score:4, Informative)
...It's Blizzard and their lack of willingness to properly balance the game.
Protoss has no repercussions for doing any of a dozen types of proxy or "all-in" openings.