f13.net

From Slashdot (http://games.slashdot.org/story/10/08/15/046250/Blizzard-Sues-Private-Server-Company-Awarded-88M).

Uncontested so the legal fees were practically free at only 63k, 3 million more as the money made from the service and the rest of the 85 million or so is statutory damages - which is enough to build WoW 2.

It would be if they had a hope in hell of collecting that $88mil.

It's not really a freeshard if they made $3 million from it.

The version of the story I read said 3 million was a made up generous estimate from blizzard.

This is news how? Running an unauthorized copy of WoW as a commercial venture is fairly obvious lawyer-bait. And they didn't even bother contesting it.

I have some sympathy for "Ethical Piracy" if it's keeping an online game running when the copyright owner is no longer interested in doing so (for example a Hellgate server) but that is hardly a possible argument here.

and 88 million of that is Statutory damages not determined in any way by Blizzard?

I'm with Kageru here; I don't see how you can run a WoW Private Server for profit and not expect legal consequences.

Funny that Blizzard paid 63K to sue someone who never showed up in court and I imagine they'll never get a dime out of them.

Protection of copyright.  It's worth it to their interests and as a deterrent.

Yep. If they don't defend it with a suit, then their copyright can away as an assumed forfeiture. (So far as my understanding of copyright goes.) Which would be a very stupid thing to do.

It's the same reason Disney sues daycares that paint their characters on the wall and LucasArts tosses litigation at anything that even looks like a lightsaber.  They know it's horrible PR and the masses will pillory them for it, but they have to because if they don't then someone actually looking to illegitimately profit off their IP will seize that opportunity and run with it.

I believe that only applies for trademarks.

Blizzard doesn't really need a reason and most players are unlikely to notice or care and even less likely to sympathise much with the people who owned or played on it.

They wont see a dime of this money

That's correct.

I'd have more sympathy if they weren't trying to make money off it.

I don't support pirate servers, but christ, that's excessive damages.

What kind of statutory damages get up to 88 million? No wonder all US cases have crazy settlements.

The fact that the statutory damages are much, much higher than this ramshackle operation could ever pay is irrelevant. They're set like that because WoW is such a huge moneymaker, and they don't want to give the possibility later down the line of some more well funded group saying "Three million dollars? Lets do this!"

It was calculated as $200 per user and there were apparently 427,000 or so active accounts.

Court documents show 40k or so active users in one month which is in the same ballpark as many legitimate MMOs (that aren't WOW obviously).

Blizzard doesn't set the statutory damage amount, that is the penalty amount set by law.

FWIW $200 per 'work' is actually way down at the low end of the range for statutory damages for copyright infringement.

http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/html/uscode17/usc_sec_17_00000504----000-.html

One one side this was commercial server. - Make no mistake about it , some private wow servers make surprising amount of money. I dont remember all the details but there was scandal in emu community about some private server shard where some .. bitc.. ahem .. unscrupulous women... owned a shard and it was disclosed she made something in the tune of millions  of dollars ( scandal was about the part that she didnt pay developers/support staff who actually ran it)

But on the other hand  I always considered private wow servers a possbile holy grail of indy mmo gaming. WoW client is top notch and on servers side they achieved quality and stability on par with what blizzard provides ( I even played on  one for a while , but didnt want level/gear grind ).  Having solid client server for mmo is half the job.

Also now that I am thinking about legal implications, I am kinda puzzled how they were found liable for what their clients did . Because technically servers contain no single piece of code or copyrighted material from blizzard (aside maybe the artwork for their website)

The clients on the other hand  were the ones violating the EULA/whatever. Now assume someone makes a client which would work on emu servers, that client would not use single art piece  from WoW , it could we be very crude (heck it could be ascii based 2 text client! ) but you would advertise your server specifically made for it , and ability to play with original wow client would be just a feature you would in no way approve  :)

Btw they do make some crazy stuff with wow client, check out wow dota:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LJIjZwsdkxo

Go away.

In a thread elsewhere that was chalked up mostly to the sued guy/gal not bothering to show up in court. Supposedly that results in some very heavy-handed ruling to discourage this sort of behaviour.

No shit, captain obvious.

I shouldn't really have to explain this, but the law kindof has a vested interest in preventing people from breaking the law.

The sentence, ,made your statement read like you believed that the damages were high because WoW was involved.   Sorry I misunderstood your oh so obvious point that the fact that wow was involved had no bearing on the amount of punitive damages assessed.

Calm down.

I don't really see why there are so many people uncomfortable with the $88m damages.

It was theft. Most forms of theft involve long jail sentences when you get caught. Steal $3m in any other way than online and the repercussions are going to be far more severe than losing your credit cards.

I don't think you should read anything into the damages.  Defendant didn't show.  The judge basically just gave Blizzard whatever they wanted minus the patently ridiculous stuff.

I think it's ridiculous by definition really. 88 million never changed hands and nobody will ever pay 88 million damages. So what's the point of the verdict?

The same point as multiple consecutive life sentences on murderers.   If things are resolved/ reduced through the appeals process it'll still hurt.

Makes sense, but what a terrible reason. Aren't damages supposed to be based on actual harm done, and not as some arcane vehicle for punishment?

This is a civil case, not a criminal one.  The rules are a bit different.

Depends on how you steal that $3m.

To scare other people into not doing the same thing. That's what statutory damages are for. Not everyone who is wronged will actually sue, fewer will win. Statutory damages are there to assure that paying real damages doesn't just become a "cost of doing business."

$88m is not unreasonable.

These clowns created a copy of WoW offering a rival cheaper service. The regular version of WoW makes far more than $88m per year so $88m could be viewed as cheap for running your own commercial WoW service.

The damages were assessed at $200 per player. When I played WoW I bought the box, 2 expansions and subbed for 4 years. Approximately 3*$50 for boxes plus 4 years - 3 free months = 45 *$15 worth of subs. In other words I paid about $825 to play WoW. Paying $200 for each player who played the ripoff instead of the legit version is cheap.

WoW depends upon it's reputation for sales, player retention, and attracting new customers via positive word of mouth. By running a game less well than Blizzard, by giving these "WoW players" less satisfaction Blizzard may lose future sales of all of its products. If people left this freeshard thinking WoW is crap because the customer service never picks up the phone that adversely affects Blizzard's reputation.

Finally the game was basically run as a scam. It sold epics under the guise of allowing players to make donations. These were not really donations at all but cash shop purchases. Selling epics to rich players is always something Blizzard has resisted because it makes for a crap game experience for 95% of the players. That crap game experience may be what players on this freeshard leave thinking WoW is about. Especially since it may not have been obvious to players who weren't interested in the cash shop that they would get schooled unless they "donated".

Maybe if it's a real business getting sued, and not some WoW scammers. In this case I think the pertinent question is, does this punishment make it impossible for them to ever become productive members of society again. In Finland getting slapped with a such damages would mean, and has meant, that the person is never again able to achieve a reasonable living standard as a law abiding citizen, thanks to income garnishmet or whatever it's called. Making them in effect either permanent welfare recipients or career criminals.  

Well probably more like 25-30% but as long as you agree it isn't 100%, what about the leftovers?

I just don't get how you can restrict the way people play so much via the EULA and TOS and also claim people who disagree as damages via lost sub revenue in all these cases. 

I'd bet even money every single one of the people who use private servers A) knows it isn't the real thing and B) either does, won't or can't have an official account.  If that's true, there are no actual damages. 

Just doesn't seem realistic to only have one or two flavors and if you don't like it don't eat ice cream.

Yeah, It's not like they're using an existing brand's power and marketing to sell their inferior knockoff product of the same name.  :awesome_for_real:

It seems to me that the main strands linking the arguments against this settlement are:
 - "I should be able to play MY game any way I choose after I'VE paid for the client"
 - sympathy for the difficulty the respondent will have coping with the damages.

There are two ways to consider the first point - legal and ethical. Legally there are tons of things you only buy part of. I saw Predators in the cinema but even though I've paid for it I don't have the right to download it off the internet. I paid to get into London Zoo but I don't actually own any of the animals as a result. Even if there were no EULA paying to access WoW doesn't mean you own WoW. There really is no substance for the claims that the ruling in this case doesn't make legal sense, it's a perfectly normal and rational civil judgment.

Ethically I think there's more valid room for debate. If you believe that Intellectual Property Rights are stifling and excessive there's a lot of material to support your view. In particular I'd cite the character in Neal Stephenson's The Diamond Age a work of sci fi in which the future's most successful businessman is a patent troll. (There are tons of real examples too).

I do think however you can't just let everyone steal everything or else no one gets paid for creating art, games, movies or novels. Sure, a lot would be created by amateurs but I think that hundreds of people collaborating on a project wouldn't happen in a world where anything you put out there gets undercut by unauthorised versions within minutes.

As for sympathy I guess many of the young gamers identify with someone doing something kinda dodgy on the internet. Who here hasn't crossed an IP line? Even visiting a webpage could be deemed intellectual property violation - by coming here our computers have copied (cached) F13 without permission. But remember too that games companies are trying to make money in a recession on luxury goods. If people can access the games illegally and free instead of paying it's going to hurt the industry a lot. Look at the record industry. If you're honest and pay for your games do you really want freeloaders to reduce the amount of new games in the years ahead with their piracy?

I think the most interesting thing about the whole thing is they had 427,000 active users. Doesn't that make them the second most popular MMO behind legitimate WoW?

No. There are (or were) MMORPGs in China with over 1 million PCU (which means a lot more "active users").

This is true. But preventing you from connecting to another server which provided as similar service would be illegal.


With regards to the legal issues:(IANAL, but have done research into the legal issues relating to these matters)

If, as "Dark_MadMax" claimed there was no copyrighted code on the server,  then there is no liability on the part of the server owners.  EULA violations are not copyright violations and do not require bypassing copyright protection methods. This means that there is no copyright violation(nothing was copied) or DMCA violations. All violations are violations of the EULA contract and the most damage that can be done is that the contract is revoked by Blizzard for the person who connects.

Whether or not Blizzard can compel the server operators to disclose information which would allow Blizzard to revoke those contracts I am unsure on. For the most part as well, Blizzard, even if they do know who violated the EULA, only has the ability to revoke access to their servers based on the violation(by law they can compel the individuals to remove the software, but this is not feasible).

There is however, contention on whether or not EULA's which only allow access are legal. For instance, the music industry has long argued and attempted to "license" the music that was sold to the general public by way of records, tapes, and CDs. That is to say they claimed that they could restrict reselling and own copying since the CD owner did not own the music. This did not hold up, while the owner of the CD does not own the right to reproduce it for any reason, they do, explicitly, regardless of any license on the CD, own the copy they purchased.

Whether or not the possibly fallacious idea of "If you do not accept the EULA you can return it for a full refund" would negate that principle is another issue. If it does not, then there is little to no legal backing to the idea that EULA's are binding in the sense that the individual does not own the copy they purcahsed.

And if that is the case, then freeshards(or pay shards), which are explicitly legal if they do not contain copyrighted information and do not use a Blizzard trademark (since they neither violate copyright or trademark law, and patent law would not protect them from competition due to method differences even if it did apply).

So what could cause such a result from this case?

A: They really did copy Blizzard.

B: Blizzard brought information relating to it and no one on the other side showed up to show how that information was false(how in the world would the judge be able to evaluate it?)

_________________

With regards to the size of the damages. Punitive damages are supposed to be relative to the financial status of the organization or individual who has violated. The idea is that the amount can be set to a level that is painful for any person or organization. If there was an appeal (which i doubt, since the defendant didn't even show up) it is likely to be reduced severely once the financial status of the defendant is made more clear as the punishment would likely violate the "excessive fines", or "cruel" section of the 8th Amendment.

Maybe not exactly that but I think you do have that right via the first sale doctrine.

These laws were created for other types of media and are difficult to apply to application service providers, much less MMOs.

I do not think anybody is disputing that wholesale copying has occurred.  I certainly wouldn't as a defense.  Either that or a really nice job of reverse engineering, which amounts to the same thing. 

The question is further downstream.  This particular private server, and most private servers, are built to cater to a wholly different market than the official servers do.  The potential that Blizzard has to bring servers to serve this other market actually sways this case in their favor, ironically.

If you have 3 million in income and 427,000 customers, then you're a real business.

Also, they will likely declare bankruptcy and discharge the debt. There would be consequences, but they did effectively make 3 million dollars from stealing someone elses work.

Re: "I saw Predator's in theaters..."

False Analogy. The proper one is "I purcahsed the disk to the movie Predator, what do you mean I can only watch it once and only watch it at my house?"

I.E. With WoW and with a disk, the parent company is creating a copy for you. They are not simply allowing you to access a copy. When you take control of that copy, either via download, or via disk, you own that copy via first sale doctrine. (I.E. if the parent company cannot prohibit you from reselling it they can also not forcefully remove the copy from your possession).*

Note: The ability to resell does not imply the ability to connect to the servers. This is probably the main reason that game companies create gated access multiplayer(I.E. MMO's and Steam). It gives them the ability to diminish (in part or in full) the value of a resale copy

*Note: Steam gets away with this because the copies that they create are hard limited to be played when connected to the internet through Steam. Though i would be willing to bet that if you did sue you would obtain the right to resell the game. Though i doubt Valve would be required to honor such sale and they would not be required to use any of their bandwidth to facilitate the transfer.

RE: "Can these people be productive members of society again?"

It depends on whether or not the company was an LLC or sole proprietorship and how the judgment is assigned to the two parties to the case. It also depends on how lenient the bankruptcy courts are with regards to court imposed debts. I doubt the company was created as an LLC as that may shield the owner from original litigation. (I.E. Blizzard would be able to sue the the company, but not the owner or CEO of the company, which makes the specific name of the person sued unlikely to be in the court documents, which it is.). I don't know enough about court imposed debts and bankruptcy law of California (where I assume this person is located, since, iirc Texas would have been a better location to sue in terms of winning copyright cases) to comment on whether or not this person is totally screwed(in debt for more or less the rest of their life) or just kinda screwed(has the totality of their assets wiped out)

Best case scenario for the owner is that the company and only the company is entirely wiped out. Dividends and income payed by the company are not recoverable. Worst case is that the owner has their entire asset base wiped out including their home and is in debt for the rest of their life.

Wrong wrong wrong and wrong (I think I got them all).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bnetd

You didn't read that, or the case did you?

1) That only holds in California(since the relevant law is California copyright law) if the creators of the server accept the EULA that says that they will not reverse engineer the product. (specifically a section of the relevant State Law must protect the rights of the copyright holders from having their product reverse engineered for specific purpose which covers the purposes that the violation is broken for, as a general protection would be preempting the Federal law which grants that explicit right)

2) That they indeed do reverse engineer the product

3) The status of the clients is indeed irrelevant to the issue.

4) None of the work provides access to a copyrighted work. (I.E. this does not allow people to make new copies or use unauthorized copies).  The court found in the BNetD case(incorrectly too, since you can get a CDkey by way of purchase in the same way you can get a printer by purchase as in the relevant case cited) that there must be a non-freely accessible authentication method.

WoW does not use a CD key to authenticate the game. Rather it uses an account. (The fact that you need a CD key to make an account is irrelevant since anyone can check with Blizzard to ensure an account exists)

5) The main problem with BNetD was trademark infringement and not copyright. So long as they do not claim to be Blizzard or sufficiently wipe the server of trademarks(which should not be difficult) they're pretty clear.


This doesn't even get into the issues of material or commercial difference (I.E. are the free servers significantly different than the original? if they are then its not a violation) or fair use(though such a defense would probably require significant changes to the game which would void the DMCA violation).

I did but apparently you didn't.

Wrong. The BnetD case was filed in a *District* court. It had nothing to do with state law.

For the rest of the stuff I'll just quote the EFF's summation of the case:

And the *District* court upheld the ruling because they said that the *federal* statute did not overrule the state statute whereas in other situations it did such as a Louisiana case

As for the EFFs summary, the court said that it was a violation specifically because it was not a competing service but a copied service.

I'm not even sure what point you are trying to make anymore.

If you read the final judgment in this case the statutory damages were calculated by estimating the number of violations of DMCA Section 1201 -- i.e. the number of times anti-circumvention products or services were provided by the defendant. In other words this case *is* about copyrights not EULAs.