Blizzard did not sue individual cheaters, true. However, in order to get the contributory and vicarious copyright infringement charges to stick, the cheating by each individual user must be considered illegal. If individual users cheating is not illegal, Blizzard can't really get MDY for anything more than a handful of violations.



While Glider does circumvent Warden, it does not violate the DMCA ban on cryptographic technology. That part of the ruling Blizzard lost, but at least they lost it for the right reason. The MDY defense of this was "the ban is on technology to violate effective control of access. Warden doesn't stop Glider, so it doesn't count as effective control of access." MDY's interpretation would make the law completely useless - if you can't breach the protection, there's no violation possible; if you CAN breach the protection, the law doesn't apply in the first place!



It has very much to do with the EULA. If you purchase a copy of software, you are allowed to make copies of it as necessary to run the software - loading the program into your computer's RAM. You would be allowed to make copies as an Owner, which is refered to as section 117 protection.

If, as is the case with WoW, you purchase a license to use the software, you are not allowed to make even the copies necessary to run the program, as you do not have protection under section 117. Where the EULA comes in is that the company will allow you to make such copies, as long as you agree to the terms they list in the EULA. If you lack both section 117 protection and the company's permission via an EULA, simply running the game is considered to make a copy in violation of the copyright.

This is where the argument comes in. Jonnan and others contend that the EULA cannot be enforced because the terms of the EULA are not specifically given to you at the time money exchanges hands. I contend, and several courts have agreed, that the two parts of the licensing transaction do not necessarily need to be simultaneous.



Perhaps a bit blunt, but essentially correct.

1. It is common knowledge that almost all software comes with an EULA. So there are no hidden terms, being intentionally naive and refusing to research them before purchasing the software is not an excuse. As it has been established it is quite easy to find them online before you buy. Any one who delves in to an area where the legalities are uncertain, it is their onus to research and know fully what they are getting them selves in to. If I buy a car and refuse to read the contracts and loan agreements.. Then It's my fault if I get screwed. When in doubt, error on the side of caution and walk away..

2. You are not forced to sign the EULA. But you must sign it to use the software. oddly cell phone companies like ATT have phones you can use only with their service. The Iphone for example. You must agree to the terms of the contract and use their service to get and use the IPhone. You can not sign the contract than say I don't agree with it but will pretend to to get the phone, then complain when you cant use it out side the agreement you signed. NEVER sign any thing you dont 100% agree to. A judge will laugh himself silly as well as any attorney, if you came in saying "I signed this contract to get some goods, but I really didn't want to sign it but did so willingly to obtain the item I desired" I wanna sue for them breaking my civil rights. You willingly agreed to the terms, your stuck.

3. You can at any time sign away your rights as long as there is no duress. Parents do it all the time during adoptions, custody cases, etc and they are legal.

4. If you sign an EULA or other contractual type of document you are bound by it. I doubt Blizzard sent thug's to folks home to force them. In almost all cases the EULA's are enforcible, any document signed, whether it be digital or paper or by word of mouth can be enforced. Anyone who willingly agrees to any binding contract and or agreement without making sure they know what they are agreeing to. I have some swamp land going real cheap.

1. It is common knowledge that EULA's have no standard. If they were standard, they would be enforcible. Such as a GNU license, it is a standard. Your car comes with the contracts given to you to read before purchase. Not after. The onus in reading a contract is upon the signatories, the onus on finding it is not. If you are going to make someone sign a contract to purchase a product, it has to be provided to them before sale, get over it.

2. I am forced, you said so yourself, you must sign it. You're forced to sign a contract before purchasing the Iphone. The key word in that last sentence is BEFORE.

3. I am being forced to sign away my rights to use a product I already own. How is that not duress? If you bought a car, went to drive it off the lot, and they forced you to sign a contract giving them ownership of your car before they opened the gate, would you also not consider that duress?

4. It's not willing, I can't use whatever it is I've already purchased. Reality doesn't change just because you've convinced yourself that returning an item after you've purchased it is an acceptable thing for the maker to require of you. This is why laws are written to start with, everyone doesn't behave reasonably.

I give up - I've posted the links, they plainly say what contracts aren't allowed to do, and people seem to prefer that somebody they don't like got screwed in contravention of the law rather than to consider that this is going to come back to bite them.

Sorry y'all - but Willy, Jafo, you and yours are exactly the kind of sheep the corps want.

Jonnan

And I've posted several judicial ruling to illustrate that what you think the law says is not actually what it means. And I look at it more like a company I like not having to take it in the ass from people who think the law only applies to companies. People like you, and psychoak even more so, are the driving force behind the EULAs you despise so much.

This is you. Congratulations.

The sky is green. I know so because a couple judges say so!

What do you want me to say - you are correct - you can find a bad decision in every district, but those bad decisions will, in the wrong run, harm everyone. I've shown why I believe they're bad decisions, and you have chosen, rather than to consider the possibility that I might be right on the merits, that you would rather actively undermine *everyone's* rights, since, in the process, it screws with someone you don't like.

At the end of the day, you are fighting as hard as you can for a legal principle that fundamentally binds you to a contract you you don't get to see before you buy the product.

That's the principle you are fighting for - that you can be bound to a contract you did not see before you gave the store your money.

All the rest of this is bullshit. I don't believe that kind of a contract is legal, but if it *were* or *is* legal, I believe it would be fundamentally wrong,

You, for reasons I cannot fathom, believe it is fundamentally *right* for someone to be able to bind you to a contractual obligation without your being able to see it before buying the product. And you will fight for this thing that you believe is fundamentally right tooth and nail.

Why? Honestly - I can't say this without sounding insulting, but at this point - I think it's because you are a highly intelligent person, but nonetheless an idealistic fool.

Idealistic, because on some level, you don't believe this power is going to be abused in ways far worse than the problem you seem to think it resolves. A fool because your certainty is so great that you are happily granting this power with no checks and balances - indeed, actively refusing to consider the possibility of abuse, so as to avoid the question of what checks should be placed to prevent it.

There is not much I can do about that. I suspect you will be protected from the logical results of your idealism by others that will get this overturned, but I can't say I very much think you deserve to be protected.

Jonnan

How do you get that? I'm certainly not conforming to the majority opinion here, am I?



I don't see it that way. Licensing agreements are necessary to prevent abuses by consumers, as was the case here. Not printing the full EULA on the outside of the box is simply a practical consideration - if you had to stand around in the store reading the EULA before you could purchase a game, how many games would you buy? Of course, the print size necessary to fit the entire agreement on the box would require an electron microscope to read. Not to mention the onus this would put on the store, having to collect them and ship them to the manufacturer.

I think the alternative, as is in practice now, is a reasonable compromise. A full text for the consumer to read either online or in the box, a required active participation by the user to accept the agreement, and warning of the agreement on the box. While it doesn't give everything up front, the simple EULA warning tells you the most important fact - that you are buying a license, not a copy.



Jonnan, our opinions are a near mirror image.

You see no potential for your reading to be abused, either - this, despite that the discussion was started by such an abuse.

If you want me to say EULAs have the potential to be abused, fine. They have, and I'm sure they will be again. That's what courts are for.

I also belive the copyright laws can be abused by consumers to the detriment of people actually making things. Again, that's what courts are for. It would be better if copyright law had been written to explicitly include issues like this, but that's unlikely to ever happen. Ideally, it should be ammended or rewritten every 5 years or so to address new technological issues that pop up.

Fucking asshole. I hate my ISP, fuck. This is probably going to be less polite than it was the first time through, shit fucking satellite.

Ok, second time through.

This thread was started by no such thing. There was no abuse of copyright. You are specifically protected when reverse engineering for the purposes of creating compatible software. It's because there was no violation that the asshole cunt of a judge wrote such a despicable ruling. Blizzard wasn't even dumb enough to try to make the claim he gave them.

They might have had grounds for a suite though. He was, from Blizzard's point of view, costing them money by circumventing their cheat protection, and allowing customers, yet again by their point of view, to cheat them. They can and do ban people that violate the rules, and as a program with no purpose but to specifically circumvent their security, they had grounds to take him to court for the costs of fighting it at least. The judge could then have either laughed them out of court, or taken the guy to the cleaners for them. The very idea that he's in any way perpetrating copyright infringement by selling compatible software to work with another program is ludicrous. If you were at all honest you'd admit such.

Furthermore, I see no abuse of any kind. Blizzard assumes that he is costing them money. Blizzard assumes that I'm going to buy their boring shit game, and play it for x months to reach the max level on a character. Blizzard is fucking retarded. Hell will freeze over before I bother to play WOW. I'm far from the only person on earth that considers MMORPG's the be interactive chat programs and horrifically boring grindfests. I would however, be slightly less unlikely to play it if I could skip the fucking grind.

The bots are designed for people like me, that don't want to kill rabbits and beetles for 20 fucking levels, and spend a month mining fish for gp's.

From Blizzard's halfass, half empty view, it's a colossal failure. From my point of view, the guy broadened their market, substantially based on the number of sales he's made. If they were honest, studied the problem, and educated themselves on the matter, they might have found an entirely different situation. They very likely got a massive subscriber increase from those bots they've been banning people for, and if they'd just left them the fuck alone, they'd have been making money off the venture, as opposed to losing money. The claims by other customers are just laughable. If you seriously feel cheated by someone else, who is effectively playing against no one, using another program to advance faster, you have issues. The immaturity and penile intellect of their customer base is not grounds for a law suite. They might want to market less to whiny emo bitch tits though.

Instead, they sued him for copyright infringement with no grounds, were told such, and then awarded anyway based on an even less substantial foundation.

First of all - sorry, it doesn't matter how you 'see it' - it matters what it is, objectively.

And, objectively, there's no way around the fact that what it 'is' is that someone has bought something that has a contract assigned to it.

They do not have the legal training to interpret that contract. If they had the legal training to interpret that contract, it would not matter because the actual contract is not within immediate view at the time of the sale.

And you believe that the law give insufficient protection to companies, and the 'convenience' of this to those companies overshadows any damage allowing companies to do this could do.

I think that's a fundamentally unethical point of view. If all corporate lawyers were upright, ethical people, it would *still* be unethical to expect laypeople to be bound to an agreement if they were missing *either* the chance to peruse the contract before buying the product *or* lacked the legal training to make an informed choice about the terms of that contract.

To insist that *both* of these things are subordinate to the 'convenience' of a large corporation because you feel that corporations are insufficiently protected by the law, in a world of sub-prime mortgages, Enron, and the corporate abuses that are documented everyday - I'm sorry Willy - that's not simply unconscionable - that's foolhardy.

I'm sorry if MDY rained on your parade. But if you feel somehow that the fact that MDY assisted some gamers in cheating is important consider this.

This point of view you have backed so definitively has been based in the fact that WoW has successfully blocked MDY from cheating, by successfully, legally, and in your mind ethically, stealing the title to every CD ever sold back from those to whom they sold them.

So, by all means, explain to me how the ability to steal the title to property already sold from the very people you sold it to is a lesser danger than the problem of cheating at a game.

Think about it.

Jonnan

So class action suit every single computer game seller for fraud, as they never told me that I wasn't actually getting anything at all from my purchase... I thought I was getting a CD and the right to play a game. But I guess I just got the right to play a game. I want my CD.

Wait a minute, though... does that mean if we break the CD, we've destroyed their property?

Certainly ONE of us is having trouble recognizing reality; you haven't convinced me that I'm the one having problems, though.

I'm not arguing that the current state of affairs is solely for the benefit of companies. An adverse ruling in this case or, any similar future case, would simply force some policy changes. If current EULA practices are disallowed, you set up two possibilities: all transactions moving online, where the EULA can be signed before purchase and download, or having to physically sign an EULA while in a store. Certainly the current set up is more convenient for the average consumer as well.

I enjoy how you list corporate abuses, but don't look at the consumer side. While unethical acts by individual consumers rarely make headlines, they add up faster than corporate abuses. Insurance fraud alone costs US companies tens of billions of dollars each year. You can't assume any given consumer is more ethical than the company he's buying from. It would be foolhardy and unconscionable to entrust the wellbeing of a multibillion dollar company to nothing more than the goodwill of millions of consumers. Only a relative handful need to be dishonest to royally screw a company.

The point of view you so vehemently back states that consumers can buy things which companies never intended to sell. If I'm not mistaken, consent is needed on BOTH sides to execute a contract. Or does that sort of protection only apply to consumers?

In short, by asserting ownership of an item you did not and could not have legally purchased, you are the one stealing.

Jythier - technically, yes.

Of course not. But you are asserting that a company needs this special protection to defend it from actions, and the only actions you supply here are things that are already illegal? Of course companies have rights too - but insurance fraud is *already* illegal, copying Intellectual Property is *already* illegal, et al.

So I kinda feel the onus is upon you to provide some example of abuse of a company by it's clients in some fashion that is
A) Not already illegal,
Can only be safely prevented by allowing a company to force consumers to accept contracts during the sale and
C) Is worse than any likely abuse of the right, assuming a lawyer that worked for Enron was hired by Electronic Arts.

I will grant for purposes of argument that a third party cheat program passes A and B - I don't think it is illegal under the law as written, and I doubt there's any way to prevent it other than an EULA (or Terms of service) clause.

But "Cheating at WoW" is so many levels below "Able to enforce Sales Contracts on Laymen without explaining the terms" - not even vaguely on the same scale - it's the difference between between someone stealing your lunch money and the Iraq war.

So, if you feel that there is a *need* for this right, you kinda need to come up with an example of a legal action that's not more easily stopped and is a lot worse than cheating. Cheating sucks, but allowing this as a response is like giving your kid a gun because someone someone took their lunch money.



My flabber is gasted!

Offer - Acceptance - Mutual Assent -

Willy, by offering an item for sale, you are fucking *MAKING AN OFFER*.

It's a standard sale offer Willy. If you want to offer me an item for sale under *NON-STandard* terms, it's a simple matter of including those terms, complete and in detail, in the god damn offer Willy.

If you make that offer *without* those detailed terms, and you take my money without having my having accepted those detailed terms, then

A Miracle happens - we have mutual assent . . . without those detailed terms.

Interestingly enough, it turns out - You can in fact make the offer *with* those terms, and I can accept, with those terms, and by amazing coincidence - we then establish mutual assent, *with* those terms.

However - Once you've taken my money it is TOO LATE to suddenly decide you intended to mention a few things.

We *already* have a contract, you said you wanted to sell it, I wanted to buy it and *YOU TOOK MY MONEY*.

We're done. No tag backs. Even if you had your fingers crossed, *IT STILL COUNTS*.



§ 117. Limitations on exclusive rights: Computer programs
Here - Willy - I have pasted the links to the parts of copyright law that debunk this two or three times now. You are no longer getting 'credit' for being willfully ignorant - at this point you're lying.

Because Copyright law says, quite explicitly, that I *CAN* buy a copy of a CD with software on it, that I own the physical copy of that CD, and I have the right as the owner of that CD to make copies of the software for the *SOLE* purpose of using the software or making a backup.

That's not a right to the owner's intellectual property, it's a "Limitation on the exclusive rights" of the copyright owner. So I'm not "asserting ownership of an item you did not and could not have legally purchased" - I'm asserting ownership of an item - The Physical CD, that the law quite explicitly anticipated that I would be the genuine owner of.

Only you Willy could sit there and claim that asserting ownership of something you fucking *bought* was stealing.

Jonnan

You're still arguing an empty point with no foundation.

This idiotic industry standard is pointless. The software is already protected from infringement by copyright. Fraud is already prohibited by fraud laws. Stardock EULA's don't even say anything of merit. They have a ban on reverse engineering that is counter to copyright law. The rest of their "protections" are already fucking protected. The ban on reverse engineering violates anti-competition concepts and is specifically permitted in copyright law to protect competing companies. Microsoft, and others, have been slapped big time for concealing and preventing others from writing compatible programs in the past.

Most EULA's are written to fuck competitors, not consumers. Don't you even realize that?

If I go out, buy a copy of MS Word, make copies, and distribute them, I'm fucked. End of story. Why am I fucked? I violated copyright law. The EULA doesn't even factor.

If I go out and buy a copy of MS Word, find it's dictionary lacking, reverse engineer it, and write a better one that can subvert and replace the one it uses, I can sell it. The EULA says I can't. Reverse engineering is in violation of the EULA. Reverse engineering is specifically protected for that very thing, creating compatible software.

Even Stardock takes copyright law and shoves it up your ass when you buy their products, and I like the bastards a lot. They're the least brainwashed idiots in an industry that has gone completely insane. I'm not saying Stardock is an evil corporation bent on taking over the world, but I am saying you have shit for brains. It's not even necessary to say they're doing it to prevent competition. Everyone else has been doing it too, it's so pervasive that it's accepted as normal and even required by idiots like you.

EA is already violating their customers rights with fraudulent practices. Their current EULA's specifically cover them. They can, at any time, cut support and demand their customers cease use of their products. It's written in black and white. They are setting up their games with activation requirements that facilitate the enforcing of such occurrences. This isn't some fictional maybe in the distant future. It's their current practice, already set into motion, legally covered, and previously executed on multiple occasions.

Reality is very clear, and quite apparent for anyone that chooses to look. EULA's are not a necessary evil required to protect corporations from disreputable customers. Copyright law already does that. The only legitimate uses for EULA's in consumer software are to fuck you over.

Edit: Anything repetitive that was already ground into hamburger by Jonnan isn't my fault, he posted while I was typing.

I'm glad you recognise A and B. They are the critical points. For all practical purposes, C is unobtainable by any legal means (lightspeed joke   ). But if we use a more reasonable standard, the MDY case is sufficient to illustrate the point.

Assuming consumers have 117 protection, Glider would be allowable as a derivative work. While individual Glider users could be removed from blizzard's servers due to TOS violations, Blizzard would lack any legal means of shutting MDY down in terms of further development of the bot. Blizzard would be forced to continue its current level of security countermeasures, GM employment, etc. Even more, Blizzard suffers considerable customer satisfaction damage, which leads to paying customers leaving. In MDY's case, it would literally be cheaper for Blizzard to pay the guy what he's making off Glider to stop making it. I simply don't see why they should have to.

Is this worse than possible abuses? By itself, it is arguable. I'll give you that. But how many similar attacks is the EULA deterring? Computer software is the only medium I know of where copyright violations can affect legitimate consumers AFTER the transaction. If I buy a book, there is no conceivable way anyone can violate the publisher's copyright that affects the copy I'm holding. Clearly, in this case a violation can affect my use of the software after I have a copy.



That terms are applied to the transaction is printed on the box. If you don't know what those terms are, believe those terms would be detrimental to your interests, or simply believe terms shouldnt' apply, DON'T BUY THE PRODUCT. Software is not a necessity of life, and no one is holding a gun to your head.

This same logic applies to all sorts of transactions, as was pointed out in the Zeidenberg case. Airline tickets have all sorts of terms, conditions, and possible extra charges that are not disclosed when money changes hands. So do most entertainment venue tickets, like theaters or amusement parks. Are you saying that once a person pays for tickets like this, they have an undeniable right to attend the event, regardless of their compliance with venue rules?



You can post links to section 117 until your keyboard wears out, it won't change the fact that SECTION 117 DOESN'T APPLY. Sure, you CAN buy a disc and be covered by 117, but the entire point of an EULA is to deny you standing as Owner for expressly that purpose. Physical possession does not constitute ownership. Just because the law says you CAN BUY a copy does not mean you in fact HAVE BOUGHT a copy.

psychoak - more realistically, EULAs are intended to prevent consumers from becoming competitors. A legitimate competitor would be producing a similar but imdependant product. And no, a competitor cannot RE a program that directly competes with their own. You cannot RE the MS spellcheck and put it in your own word processing program. Compatability does not mean functionally identical, it means both programs work simultaneously without adversely affecting the computer, or that input/output from one program can be used in another, such as using Word to compose an email then copying that text into a copmetitor's email program to send it.

In your spellcheck example, your program would need to pass a fairly simple test. Is it a standalone product? If it works with multiple word processing programs, the RE would probably be legally allowable for compatability. If it works only on Word, it would be considered a derivative work much like Glider was. MS might still allow you to sell it, but they'd want a share



That does seem a bit extreme, but you haven't DONE anything about it. Sue. Right fucking now. If you can't give me a docket number in the next week, I'll assume your lawyer laughed you out of his office.

Do you honestly think some customers wouldn't sue when a game made in 1992 no longer works on operating systems currently being produced? It's an excape mechanism for a game that is costing EA a game more to support than they are making from it. It's hardly unique, either. From the WoW EULA: