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Originally Posted by Twobit Whore  It will set a precedent, and while this ruling may not hold sway in other jurisdictions it will be brought up as citation for the next judge in said district to consider.
It's a very risky move, on that you are right. If Blizzard loses this could help botters and goldfarmers and hackers and cheaters gain a foothold in the MMO gamespace. On the flip side, if Blizz wins it would give them and other developers some legal recourse in fighting them and hitting the cheaters hard with fines, restitutions and more.
Of course none of that will matter when the 3rd party peoples operate outside of the U.S. |
The danger is that it sets a very dumb precedent technologically. Saying that copying a program installed on your computer legitimately into the RAM is copyright infringement is a very bad thing for developers. It gives them pretty much zero ability to work with things and extend them. Look at Windower, for Final Fantasy XI. For years, there was not an option to run FFXI in windowed mode. Windower would launch the program in windowed mode. But if Blizzard wins this case, that would be copyright infringement - but all it was launch the game with a very slight modification.
You still need WoW installed to run Glider. All Glider does is launch WoW, and send commands to it. But the copying into the ram - all it does is launch WoW. It doesn't just create a WoW process inside itself and leave you with just the glider window - it launches WoW, and injects a DLL so that it can send in commands.
But what Blizzard is suing for is simply launching WoW. That's it.
It's not simply a matter of Blizzard vs. cheaters, it's a matter of a ridiculous lawsuit being used against cheaters, that while it would have short term benefit, would long term harm developers of all kinds.
Edit: Also, being outside the US isn't any safety. The US has a long history of arresting people for doing things perfectly legal in their country when they step foot in the US. DeCSS author, anyone? Guy writes a DVD decryption program in whatever country he lives in, later on goes to the US for vacation, gets arrested at the airport - even though he had done nothing illegal in his home country where the action took place!