Wowglider forced landing

[Numtini]

Well I'm not particularly surprised, but it looks like this is over. Blizzard won on summary judgement with the eula upheld and the somewhat dubious copyright infringement (copying parts of the client into memory) claim upheld. A couple of sites are reporting it.

One of the key decision seems to be a clear affirmation that a game company has the right to run their game as they see fit and that the bot program intentionally interferes with that. That to me is the real issue, not the odd legal mechanisms to get there.

[Merusk]

Not sure I agree on the Copyright infringement, but good to see the courts upheld the right of a company to determine how their game is run.  Even the EULA being upheld doesn't make me too annoyed.

[sam, an eggplant]

"Not sure you agree"? It's a parody of justice, and a twisting of both the intent and the letter of the law. I have a great deal of difficulty puzzling out how any sane person much less a judge could rule that a botting program was copyright infringement. I fully believe this judgement was made solely due to the distasteful nature of wowglider's business and will not hold up in appeals.

[Merusk]

Not sure I agree because I don't recall the details of it right off the top of my head.  Lawyers are tricksy like Hobbits. 

[KallDrexx]

Norton sued for copyright infringment for copying WoW into memory during virus checks.

News at 11.

[tmp]

I fully believe this judgement was made solely due to the distasteful nature of wowglider's business and will not hold up in appeals.

The judge probably got KS-ed one too many times by automated customer.

[Margalis]

Calling copying something into memory "copyright infringement" is laughably stupid.

[cevik]

Norton sued for copyright infringment for copying WoW into memory during virus checks.

News at 11.

Windows is the biggest copyright infringer of all.

[Murgos]

Norton sued for copyright infringment for copying WoW into memory during virus checks.

News at 11.

Windows is the biggest copyright infringer of all.

Not only are they illicitly copying instructions and data around in RAM willy-nilly but they also write it off into hard-disk, obviously for some nefarious reason. Heck, some of their OS's even take your private data and pad out disk blocks of entirely different programs with it!

Even worse they SUSPEND your programs from running whenever they feel like it, and then, to make matters even worse they give some of their own programs priority in execution!

Oh, yeah, class action?  Here we come!

[Mrbloodworth]

Calling copying something into memory "copyright infringement" is laughably stupid.

Yes, but imagine what the world (of warcraft) will be like if this was not the outcome of the case (or if it gets beat down in a appeals).

It would mean the opposite is true.

[tmp]

It would mean the opposite is true.

That's because the opposite is true.

[Lum]

I fully believe this judgement was made solely due to the distasteful nature of wowglider's business and will not hold up in appeals.

I agree. IANAL, and I don't think there will be any appeals, but I can't see this being used as precedent for anything.

I do think MDY was pretty ballsy for insisting they had a legal right to build a business model off of selling an exploit utility for someone else's game, and would have liked to see a ruling on better grounds (such as EULA infringement).

[sam, an eggplant]

I disagree with you there. I don't think this should be handled legislatively, and as a consumer I certainly don't want EULAs to hold up in court, not that they have in the past.

If game developers are concerned about botters, ban them. Yes that's difficult, yes it cuts into your profits, and yes it's a neverending arms race, but the government holds no responsibility to protect videogames from hackers. It's a game not a bank vault. They're magic swords, not trade secrets. Circle the wagons, protect yourself, and don't rely upon legislation to do it for you because next week some random chinaman or rooskie will code up another bot and then you'll be back at square one.

[Lum]

It's a game not a bank vault. They're magic swords, not trade secrets.

Actually, they are trade secrets, and it is a bank vault, as the ever-escalating number of keylogger injections on the Internet specifically targeting World of Warcraft accounts attest to.

Blizzard has one of the best records for exploit enforcement in the industry, but that doesn't mean they should ignore the pre-existing laws enforcing the rights to their intellectual property out of the kindness of their hearts.

(And given my day job I'm well aware of the impact of offshore botting.)

[sam, an eggplant]

Accounts and gold/items have value in real money because they can be resold, yes. This indirectly impacts the developers, support staff, and the bottom line because it encourages botting. But they're still bits and bytes with no intrinsic value and are not trade secrets.

Botters don't infringe upon IP. They don't steal it, or copy it, or rebrand it and sell it as their own original creation, or encourage others to do the same. Nothing like that. They're breaking your rules, plain and simple, and the proper and measured response to that is to ban their ass. Not sue.

And not just because it's ridiculous to do so, but because it will ultimately prove to be a waste of effort because again-- some random chinese or romanian dude will take up the flag.

[UnSub]

but I can't see this being used as precedent for anything.

Really?

Really??

[slog]

Accounts and gold/items have value in real money because they can be resold, yes. This indirectly impacts the developers, support staff, and the bottom line because it encourages botting. But they're still bits and bytes with no intrinsic value and are not trade secrets.

I'm going to stop you right there.  You just wrote that 99% of the internet is worthless because its not a trade secret.  It's just bits and bytes.

[pants]

Yeah, the 'its just bits and bytes' is a bad way to go.  Your bank account is just bits and bytes, so I'm sure you dont mind if I hop in and shuffle a few 1s and 0s around now, do you?

[Abagadro]

The decision is not based upon the act of copying it from the hard-drive to the RAM creating an infringement. It is the copying from the hard-drive to the RAM in contravention of the EULA and TOS (i.e. the client in the RAM is now mixed with an EULA-violating program and usage) that results in exceeding the limited license Blizzard granted to you in the first place to have a copy of the game. It is that nexus of a copying in contravention of the limited license that is considered the infringement.  It's an interesting decision and seems pretty logically sound from a copyright point of view if you buy the enforceability of the EULA/TOS. I have problems with that on an adhesion contract basis, but once you get over that hump the copyright claim is relatively straight forward.

Direct Link to the decision in .pdf

On a side note, I had a piece of a case that I believe was in front of this same Judge Campbell where a guy claimed to have patented the process of internet commerce and sued every merchant payment processing company that ever did business on the web for billions.   

I left my firm before it really went anywhere so don't know what has happened to it.

[sam, an eggplant]

What, are we in kindergarten? Don't be silly. I'm referring to laws protecting objects (or data) with intrinsic value. Loot in videogames don't qualify as they have no intrinsic value, they only have value on auction sites in direct contravention of the videogame's rules. Maybe I'm being a luddite, and splitting hairs. I admit the possibility. Hell, US dollars could be argued to have no intrinsic value since we're off the gold standard, and I'm sure someone was just about to hit reply and post that. But what it comes down to is that I just don't see this as being something appropriate for the government to legislate.

[Lum]

I think it's entirely appropriate for legal action as long as it's using the more obvious argument that the bot seller is a third party interferer in the first party's EULA. Of course IANAL and there's people here who are, so you should probably listen to them instead. I'm just trying to make a living off this stuff.

Of course an MMO vendor should also use enforcement of in-game rules to try to stop botting and other exploits. An MMO vendor should use every legal recourse, as long as it's cost effective to do so. Hiring "enough GMs to stop exploiting" may be theoretically possible, but quickly becomes cost prohibitive. Blizzard has thousands of in-game customer support people, and clearly that's not enough. Should they hire hundreds of thousands? Are you willing to pay the monthly fees that would entail?

[Abagadro]

I think it's entirely appropriate for legal action as long as it's using the more obvious argument that the bot seller is a third party interferer in the first party's EULA.

That's more or less what the ruling was based upon but they needed to go the vicarious/contributory copyright and tortious interference route because the bot maker didn't have a direct contractual/license relationship with Blizzard (what is known as privity).

[Kitsune]

As much as I want botters to be run through a giant cheese grater, I am dead set against this ruling.  Giving validity to the absurdity of EULAs and to the utterly recockulous argument that copying something into RAM is copyright infringement is absolutely terrifying.  Next up: Console makers sue Action Replay.  Malware makers sue anti-spyware makers.

[Abagadro]

he utterly recockulous argument that copying something into RAM is copyright infringement

That wasn't the ruling.

[tmp]

As much as I want botters to be run through a giant cheese grater, I am dead set against this ruling.  Giving validity to the absurdity of EULAs and to the utterly recockulous argument that copying something into RAM is copyright infringement is absolutely terrifying.

That linked .pdf gives some insight into the whole thing. Copying data into RAM isn't considered copyright infringement per se, but rather an act of creating data copy which in itself is neutral activity -- if granted by license from copyright holder, it's certainly legal. Copyright infringment apparently (and quite logically) happens if this act is performed without permission from the copyright holder, and in case of WoW this permission is limited in scope and requires conformity with all the petty EULA bits, that including prohibition of bot-driven gameplay. So technically someone who is running a bot is breaking that EULA, and as such no longer permitted to create copy of game data in RAM (or whatever other place). So when they do that, that's infringement.

They did sort of glide over the whole validity of EULA itself thing no questions asked, though, for whatever reason.

[sam, an eggplant]

Hiring "enough GMs to stop exploiting" may be theoretically possible, but quickly becomes cost prohibitive. Blizzard has thousands of in-game customer support people, and clearly that's not enough. Should they hire hundreds of thousands? Are you willing to pay the monthly fees that would entail?

You say that like it's the only possible alternative. We've actually discussed this before, not sure if it was here or on another forum, but my answer remains the same-- behavior tracking and data mining. It's 2008; hardware is cheap, people are expensive. Even in bangalore.

[robusticus]

Anybody else notice some of the companies listed in the precendent cases included companies that aren't really around any more?  MAI Systems?  Never heard of 'em.  But I have heard of Wall Data and if that company is setting 9th circuit software IP precedent we might as well all hang it up right now.

If you can prop up your bad design in court why would anyone make anything other than a Shiny Diku?  Unless it, like mob XYZ coordinates and gold pieces are the sole property of Blizzard (long history of making shiny clones for the mass market).  If this ruling stands it curtails the natural market forces of innovation and investment for the industry in general.  But that's ok, we like Diku.  Alot.

Pressing Fast Forward on your DVD is copyright infringement, now, eh?  Becaue they're gonna put it in the EULA for the DVD?

[UnSub]

Of course an MMO vendor should also use enforcement of in-game rules to try to stop botting and other exploits. An MMO vendor should use every legal recourse, as long as it's cost effective to do so. Hiring "enough GMs to stop exploiting" may be theoretically possible, but quickly becomes cost prohibitive. Blizzard has thousands of in-game customer support people, and clearly that's not enough. Should they hire hundreds of thousands? Are you willing to pay the monthly fees that would entail?

If a third party is meeting demand for your game, look at what demand they are meeting and offer the same services.

WoWGlider allowed players to bot their characters to where they wanted to be. If WoW offered the same service - instant powerleveling for $2 per level, say - that was officially sanctioned while also cracking down on the competition, there would not be the same problem.

Alternatively, how much would it have cost for Blizzard to buy this program and release their own, more beneficial-to-WoW version? Draconian enforcement isn't the only way to deal with these kind of issues.

[rk47]

Sounds like a stray bullet just caught a perpetrator of crime. Case closed. If you spray n pray long enough you might get lucky and get a head shot in this sort of slippery case. Especially if you have unlimited ammo.

[Ironwood]

What ?

[Falconeer]

If a third party is meeting demand for your game, look at what demand they are meeting and offer the same services.

WoWGlider allowed players to bot their characters to where they wanted to be. If WoW offered the same service - instant powerleveling for $2 per level, say - that was officially sanctioned while also cracking down on the competition, there would not be the same problem.

Alternatively, how much would it have cost for Blizzard to buy this program and release their own, more beneficial-to-WoW version? Draconian enforcement isn't the only way to deal with these kind of issues.

Do you have an idea of how many "pure souls" would quit WoW on the spot if something like that should ever happen? On the contrary, same pure souls are so happy that the Blizzard Tank steamrolled what they see as cheaters and cheat producing companies. That's the reason why Blizz sued in the first place, not because they felt "hurt" in their pride/copyright by the bots. If selling bots or levels could earn Blizz more money than forbidding it, they would have followed your suggestion ages ago.

[Merusk]

he utterly recockulous argument that copying something into RAM is copyright infringement

That wasn't the ruling.

Thanks for clearing that up, Abo, and not making me look like such a raging idiot.    This is why I said I wasn't sure on the CR issue.  I'm not a lawyer, and I hadn't read the details of the ruling, so I wasn't about to go off half-cocked without doing so AND seeing the opinions of actual legal eagles.

Like I said above, lawyers are tricksy, like Hobbits.  A ruling usually applies to a very strict set of circumstances, not the blanket interpretation the internet likes to apply.

[dusematic]

Another classic example of Abagadro coming in and dominating with a clear synopsis of the issue, and everyone else ignoring him and continuing to rabble rabble rabble. 

[HaemishM]

If game developers are concerned about botters, ban them. Yes that's difficult, yes it cuts into your profits, and yes it's a neverending arms race, but the government holds no responsibility to protect videogames from hackers.

If there is credit card or other personal information available that hackers can potentially get their hands on through a video game, the government sure as fuck has a responsibility to protect videogames from hackers.

[sam, an eggplant]

Sorry, I meant to write botters, not hackers. Of course actual hacking is illegal.