[WOW] Glider author lawsuit

[Darvain]

BBC NEWS | Technology | Legal battle over Warcraft 'bot'

[Twobit Whore]

Blizzard has said the tool infringes copyright because it copies the game into RAM in order to avoid detection by anti-cheat software.

Thanks for letting us know Blizz.

[Wilfan]

Has anyone links to the actual legal summaries or other filled papers or even transcripts (if they exists at all)? That BBC piece is crap, but you can't expect any better from journalists.

[Surreal]

Originally Posted by Wilfan

Has anyone links to the actual legal summaries or other filled papers or even transcripts (if they exists at all)? That BBC piece is crap, but you can't expect any better from journalists.

Glider Forums

There is a .pdf there with the details

[Wilfan]

Direct link for those like me who get scared by forum registration. There's also an open directory with other documents pertaining to the case.

[Daerath]

Originally Posted by Darvain

BBC NEWS | Technology | Legal battle over Warcraft 'bot'

Welcome to two years ago. The complaint was filed October 25 2006.

The only marginally newsworthy part is that this issue may still be working its way through the legal system.

[Jait]

We'll see what happens, but my guess is Blizzard has no case here. EULA's aren't as binding as the software companies would have you believe. You can write any contract you want, but it's only binding when it's legality is in line with the laws of the country of origin. And most of the EULA's just flat out aren't. It may even end up as being a landmark for MMO's in general, as they'll finally realize what every other US Corporation learned from 1890-1920.

Imagine a U.S. where if you own a Ford car you could only buy Ford gasoline, Ford approved filters, Ford tires, Ford approved "Air" for the tires, and god forbid you put a "Generic" tree shaped air-sweetener in the car. That voids the warranty!

I'm sure Ford, Chevy and the rest would've loved to make you sign a EULAgreement to this. They tried, oh did they try. Now that MMO's have hit the mainstream and are a success, their moronic self-enforced "rules and conditions" will finally face real scrutiny in cases like this.

Maybe one of you E-Lawyers can fill us in on the actual precedences, and not my half-assed ones. But I really think this is just the beginning of 3rd party lawsuits to bring them in line with the rest of the working world.

[Goliath]

This has been going on forever. Personally I don't like botters but I hope Blizzard goes down in flames with the lawsuit. It's past due EULA's and large gaming companies stop thinking of themselves as Gods and Tribunals that can do whatever they please because they put a bunch of words in front of the login screen that you're supposed to agree to if you want to even play. Beyond the fact that that the EULA isn't on the box of the game in stores and once you buy it you can't return it no matter what, if I don't agree to the EULA I can't play their video game that I just gave them money for w/o knowing about the EULA and now can't return, the EULA's are just flat out ridiculous. The most annoying/infuriating thing is the not sharing accounts/selling/trading them, whatever. They should never ever be the companies property, that's outrageous. It's the equivalent of photoshop slapping an EULA whenever you go to create something that says anything you create within the program belongs to Adobe and not you and you can't sell it or share it or let anyone else modify it.

[Daerath]

Originally Posted by Goliath

Beyond the fact that that the EULA isn't on the box of the game in stores and once you buy it you can't return it no matter what, if I don't agree to the EULA I can't play their video game that I just gave them money for w/o knowing about the EULA and now can't return, the EULA's are just flat out ridiculous.

I agree with you 100%. However I do believe that software EULA have been upheld by the US court system.

I suspect the lawyer's response to your very valid point is that you can always review the EULA on the company's website prior to purchasing their product. You need a computer to use the product, and the target audience is computer savvy enough to use a web browser, so there is no need to display the EULA on the box for potential customers to review.

The most annoying/infuriating thing is the not sharing accounts/selling/trading them, whatever. They should never ever be the companies property, that's outrageous. It's the equivalent of photoshop slapping an EULA whenever you go to create something that says anything you create within the program belongs to Adobe and not you and you can't sell it or share it or let anyone else modify it.

That would qualify as intellectual property and you would retain rights. Plus, it wouldn't surprise me if there was an EULA for those applications stating that anything you create is yours.

[findar]

any smart business will just wreck them financially until they can no longer afford to continue the case then drop it. thats how law works in america.

[Itzena]

Originally Posted by Daerath

I agree with you 100%. However I do believe that software EULA have been upheld by the US court system.

And to elaborate further, Blizzard's own EULAs have legal precedent.
See: bnetd.

Also, here's a slightly less biased source than the cheater's own forums: MDY v Blizzard: Place Your Bets « Broken Toys

[brekk]

Originally Posted by Itzena

And to elaborate further, Blizzard's own EULAs have legal precedent.
See: bnetd.

Also, here's a slightly less biased source than the cheater's own forums: MDY v Blizzard: Place Your Bets « Broken Toys

that different, that case was about a company allowing people to play games of WC without paying for legit copies and still connect to others online.

People paying for glider still pay their normal monthly fee for WoW, for them to have a case they have to prove the detriment to the game botting causes. And that the damages lose them money.

[Twobit Whore]

They could easily prove that botting is a detriment to the game and costs them money. How much money may be debatable but the simple fact a botting character plays 24/7 uses more bandwidth than a normal human is a start. Then they have that little questionaire when you cancel and every sub that puts 'bots' as a reason is more.

It may not be much in the grand scheme of things but it's certainly enough to start a case and get it into court.

[Kheldin]

When they ban a botting farmer, they just gain themselves a new subscription fee and a new box sale. That's a net increase in revenue stream for them, which can be assured given by the fact that blizzard spends about 0 hours a week dealing with botters. The only argument they may have is dealing with the 5000/week bot petitions that people send in to CSR's who are unable to easily sift through bullshit, but that's a problem with Blizzards business customer service model moreso than anything else.

If they want to stifle the problem they pay one person to do nothing but deal with botters, which is a trivial task for anyone with an IQ above room temperature.

Unless they can annotate that the time spent by CSR's to determine who is a botter accrues to a higher cost than a new box sale + subscription fee, they can't directly prove that it has lost them money, and they have burden of proof in this case if I'm not mistaken.

Furthermore, the effect on the economies for the servers can also be traced to blizzards blunders. There were a large amount of botters that were banned in May 2006 (tens of thousands of botters taht month per blizzard press release) which times it near the end of AQ40 and start of Naxx. This time also correlates to when blizzard make consumables required in some capacity for end-AQ40, and for most all of Naxx. Gold farmers were presently herbing the bullshit out of zones and flooding the market after blizzard changed flasks mid-BWL and then had to tune content for consumables. When they banned the farmers, they then banned the supply-stream for consumables, and they also removed 3 million+ gold from servers at the same time of the bot bans, which stifled the market and made costs become exceedingly high for alchemy flasks and pots (sup dreamfoil).

This market attrition then pointed itself directly at high-end guilds and for many players who were tired of the bullshit that was c'thun, and the design decision by blizzard that raiding should require you to farm 2-4 hours/day to raid for 4-5 hours/day led to more loss of accounts and player burnout than anything else I've seen in all my years of MMO's except GoD-era EQ1. If they want to trace loss of money, that's where it happened. More people on my friends list burned out within 3 months of that mass farmer banning than anywhere in the rest of my time in WoW. Blizzard didn't fix the consumable problem until several months into TBC if memory serves.

The existance of a bot program was inevitable given the excessive grind that players had to do to enjoy the game. Unless you had aspherger's you were spooning your eyeballs out with a rusty spoon while reluctantly looking for some more dreamfoil and black lotus to supply your guild with the means to attempt to progress each night.

[Malakriss]

The copyright and security circumvention is definitely the right angle for Blizzard to go, since service based gaming is not a tradable commodity with fair use rights like music or movies. Hacking SC/WC3, Account Automation for WoW/EQ/EVE, Modding an Xbox, or tampering with TV provider's STB all falls under the same category IMHO.

Virtual currency sales are more likely to be legalized than botting.