Since neither of us is going to change our view, how about a change of direction - or at least a side discussion?

For our purposes, assume the EULA is here to stay. It will take an direct act of Congress to completely invalidate them, and I believe that highly unlikely.

Propose a mechanism for a consumer to read and agree to an EULA which would not violate any parts of contract law as you see it. It must also meet the following criteria:

A: It must have minimal impact on non-game consumers. Standing in line behind a guy reading an EULA at the checkout is not anyone's idea of fun.

B: It should not pose an undue burden on the retailer. Having your local box retailer be responsible for the paperwork of each customer is not an option. Maintaining a copy on file for customers to read on request would be allowable as a requirement.

C: Here's the tricky part. It MUST allow for third party transactions. If I want to give my brother a game for his birthday, I need to be able to. It's an END User License, not a Guy Paying For It license.

Online sales are not really a problem. Agreement before money changes hands is a simple matter of changing when the EULA comes up in the transaction to before the payment options come up. Perhaps a mandatory warning for people ordering a box online rather than a digital download, but that shouldn't be a huge issue either.

My proposed solution would be pretty much what exists now, with a few twists. First, as I alluded to in B, retailers should have a paper copy onhand for a customer with questions. Maybe a kiosk type system like what Target uses for wedding registries, so electronic versions could keep up with changing inventory. The problem I have with that is that it imposes a significant cost on the retailer to remain in the software sales buisiness, but it's almost unavoidable. Marginal stores might be forced to stop selling games by economics.

Second, an industry-wide standard warning label, much like what now exists on tobacco products. Mandated size, type face size, placement, etc. The full text obviously won't fit on the box, but that's what the first point addresses. An added bonus is that companies that DON'T use EULAs can use this as an advertising/selling point.

Third, the point at which the license becomes effective can't change. It's effective when you install, not when you buy it, or are handed the box, or any other point. The End User must be the one subject to the agreement, and realistically, it's pretty hard to breach an EULA without the game installed anyway. At least not in a way that would not simultaneously breach copyright protection even including section 117.

Despite what it may sound like, I fully agree the current system is not perfect. However, it is the system we currently have, whether anyone here thinks it's fair or ethical. But rather than taking your stance of all EULAs being wrong, I'd rather make a system that works in such a way that screws publishers and consumers to an equally minimal degree.

ZubaZ pops his head in . . reads a few paragraphs here and there . . sees no significant progress  . . and moves on.    

Yes - the entire purpose of the EULA is to prevent the law as written by our elected representatives from being applied in the manner it was expressly designed to be applied.

The fact that that does not scare the holy shit out of you is the precise reason I consider you to be a fool.

The EULA is expressly designed to extend the rights of the corporation at the expense of the right of the consumer, and for some reason you are okay with that - you *like* that.

It's like some sort of ethical masochism.

Jonnan

Sheeple. What's scary is that he's about a third of the population...



This is why you're retarded. If I design a car, and you design tires, I can't charge you for selling tires for my cars. It doesn't matter whether they work on other cars. It doesn't matter if you had to measure the wheel wells on my car. If I build an office chair with them pegged wheel bases, you can make better wheels to replace the crap that comes with it, my permission isn't necessary. You have a logic fault that has completely fucked your brain. Software isn't any different from any other product. It requires a fundamental lack of honesty to claim MS should have any claim on software written to work with theirs. Civilization doesn't work that way. It never has. If it did, the economy would grind to a halt. Beef companies would be taking hamburger helper to court!

You don't get to sue a guy making nuts and bolts just because they can replace the crap you use to put your own products together. How is this not obvious?

MDY isn't any different, just because Blizzard is pissing away money trying to counter bot users, doesn't mean the guy is liable for it. You don't get to sue locksmithing tool manufacturers for you needing an alarm. Security, especially entirely optional security to fix a probable non-existent issue, is a cost of existing. Blizzard doesn't have any more right to make us pay for their operating costs than any other company would. Since you're so pained by their loss, why don't you try remembering that they are making billions off WOW, and shut the fuck up about how costly MDY is.



Yeah, right. I'm going to buy a game, wait for EA to rescind my right to use it, and then take them to court. You do understand the concepts involved right? They actually have to succeed in fucking me over before I have standing to take them to court. Then I have to spend an inordinate amount of time and money pissing around with them over a $50 game, just so I can get a termination clause ruled on. If I get an idiot judge, it's all for naught. I'd be better off hitting up small claims court, which would still require that they fuck me over first, and I'd still have to waste more time than a game is worth. If I lose, I then have the asshole judge to contend with, instead of an idiot corporation run by scum sucking twats that couldn't find their way out of a paper bag and would never find out I was still using their software in the first place. My brain isn't dribbling out my ass.

Your justification by absurdity is equally invalid. That WOW EULA's also come with such a termination clause is just more proof that you're oblivious and we're already fucked. Bad behavior is not a justification. One company doesn't get to fuck me over just because another company is, and they aren't excused in it simply because you equate frivolous lawsuits by morons with active disenfranchisement of their customers.

When Spore hits retail, millions will buy it without ever seeing the EULA. Millions of defrauded users down the road, at the whim of EA.

Your attempt to redirect the argument to a "Which appendage would you be ok with EA hacking off and feeding to you" discussion is thus closed; they can have my balls when they cut them off my rotting corpse.

Willy - No. You are going to so much effort to stay willfully ignorant about this.

As clearly as I can make it. When your apartment manager has you initial 'here' 'here' 'here' and sign Here, that is UCC 2 contract law.

When your Bank has you go through 100 pages of mortgage documentation, initialing *every* page, before finally signing at the end, that is UCC 2 contract law.

For the love of god, when your *plumber* has you sign off three places showing you're aware of what he did - *that* is UCC 2 contract law.

What you are asking for with software companies Willy is a special right no one else has. The book store doesn't have it, the music store doesn't have it, nor the butcher, the baker, or the candlestick maker.

The way, quite explicitly, UCC 2 decided to handle contracts is that you had three categories.

Contracts between merchants, where everyone knew the general gist beforehand.
Contracts between merchants and consumers, where the merchant walks you through the contract, holding your hand as necessary.
And the rest of the time, where the consumer is deliberately and by design shielded from having to understand contract law, by being flat out made immune.

That's not an accident Willy. That is the deliberate design, signed into law in 47 states, as pulled from precedent out of English common law going back hundreds of years. If the contract wasn't important enough to the merchant for him to sit down with you and hold your hand as you asked questions - it must not have been that fucking important!!!

There's no way to make a consumer quickly and easily aware of a contract so they're bound by it - because the UCC committee, which meets every few years, decided that if it was that important, the merchant would do their homework and live up to their responsibilities.

Quit trying to rationalize some special rules for Blizzard or EA as if holding them to the same damn rules every other business has to live up to is some onerous chore that's asking too much of them.

Grow the hell up for gods sake.

Jonnan

OK, guys...

Beating one's heads together and disagreeing is well and good [and futile] but avoid the personal attacks.

There's no place for them here...

Joke Answer: Sure there is - I had this form and just filled them in.

That said:

With apologies - I'm very frustrated with the argument that Software Companies have some deep need for a use of contract law that is explicitly designed to *not* be able to do that.

If every other business in the world can sell their product to consumers without requiring a contract *unless* it's important enough for them to sit down and explain the contract to the consumer, it's vaguely possible that the inability to do business like everyone else on the planet is because software companies have entitlement issues.

Jonnan

Jafo - I don't particularly mind. In a debate, a personal attack is an admission of failure, anyway   



The same can be said of the SUV class passenger vehicle. What's your point?

psychoak - you're missing the point. In no way does selling after market parts affect the actual market for the original product. Nor does it affect customers using the original parts. But a customer using Glider CAN affect a player not using it - in fact, they can make parts of the game nearly unplayable. To use your example, the effect of Glider would be the same as if the aftermarket tires I was making somehow reduced the tread life of your original tires on other cars, cars that had never used my tires at all. Under those circumstances, yes you would probably be able to sue.

To the second part - you are coming dangerously close to my point. In order for EA to screw you, you have to actively choose to drop your pants and bend over. There is no reason you need to buy their products, so if you don't like their EULA, don't. It's that simple. I also appreciate how you say that a $50 game isn't worth going to court over, but didn't consider this a valid reason when I pointed it out as why Blizzard wasn't suing individual Glider users. Irony, much?



But, as I mentioned several times now - as did the 7th Circuit - other industries do. Concert promoters do. Amusement park owners do. Airlines do.



Need I remind you of various OTHER things that were allowed under English common law? Such fun things like debtors prison, child labor, oppression of various minorities, etc. Law evolves, deal with it. Not to mention that today's consumer is considerably more educated than a 17th century British peasant. Certainly the literacy rate has gone up.

English common law also suffers a severe technology disconnect. There was no concern of long distance communication - all contracts were made face to face, between individuals. Do you honestly expect a Blizzard representative to hang out in every retail store on the off chance a customer will come in to ask questions?

Your position is coming dangerously close to declaring illegal all contracts made using electronic means.



Hey, I'm not the one using nursery rhymes in my argument.

The world is not black and white. Many areas of law, including this one of course, are a delicate balance of mutually-exclusive rights in a zero-sum environment. There is no way to give consumers rights without stripping them from merchants, and vice versa. By giving consumers the rights you think they have, you would be setting up no-win situations for companies; where legitimate consumers can have legally actionable compalints against the company and the company lacks any means of addressing those complaints.

If a store gets robbed every night despite increasingly upgraded locks and security devices, perhaps it's time to shut down the guy selling burglar tools right next to the store. Or even better, if paying customers are leaving your theater due to disruptive experiences, it's time to crack down on the guy selling air horns in the lobby.

psychoak, you need to rethink what reverse engeneering means.
It allows you to view the source code (or at least something similar to it) and copy it to use in your programs. Which does violate copyright law.
But since you cant track that, they dont allow you do reverse engeneer at all.

ALSO, if you are making a competionor product, a program with a similar use, it does not need to be compatible, beyond not crashing each other, with the original product. Since hardly anone will use both at the same time or for the same task.
If your product does have another use that the original program, it is not competing with it.

ALSO, if one can make a product that you are competing with without your source code why should you be in need to view theirs?



Then I am not a competioner.



If you can give a practical alternative to that without creating holes by which people can make endless legal copies or other bs, something could change. Else EULAs will stay a necessarity.

Bodyless, reading comprehension.

To design a program that subverts and replaces an aspect of another program, you have to know what inputs and outputs to capture and replace. In the case I gave, you would need to neutralize the built in dictionary and replace it with your own. That would require going in and finding out the format and access methods so that you could make it compatible. Since Microsoft's dictionary is fucking pathetic, truly, this is an entirely reasonable desire, and a more than functional end result. Replacing it with the full Oxfords for instance would vastly decrease the unknown words that are actual words.



Ignoring your engrish, have you paid any attention at all to the context of the arguments? MDY isn't a competitor to Blizzard. A competitor would be someone else hosting WOW servers. MDY is offering an enhancement for WOW, much like Stardock does for Windows. He isn't competing with Blizzard, he's helping to sell more copies and subscriptions for Blizzard by expanding their user base to those not interested in grinding.



It's called COPYRIGHT LAW. Yes, my five year old friend, it's already illegal to make endless copies. Even Willy isn't claiming such nonsense, and he's fucking nuts.

Educate thyself heathen! You don't even need to go anywhere, Jonnan has already posted oodles on it.

Jafo, eat me.

Willy, yet again!

A personal attack is not an admission of failure. A baseless and unfounded personal attack is either humor or an admission of failure. Humor should be appropriately identified by idiotic smiley faces. Statements of facts are neither, and indicative of the minimal intelligence required to notice and mention them. Besides, at this point shredding you is so boring and pointless that I have to occupy myself somehow. It's either that or try baiting our wonderful Stardock employee into banning me in a more serious manner.

Having just bought an airline ticket a couple days ago, the judge is an idiot. Airlines do no such thing. There are FAA regulations, which are law and required knowledge. Ignorance of the law is not an excuse, remember? Terms of use separate from FAA regulations are posted. Luggage charges, fuel surcharges, seating arrangements, etcetera etcetera. Just because some moron says something doesn't make it true. A concert doesn't have to put down that you're not allowed to scream fire in a crowded room, it's illegal. They do have to let you know if you're not allowed to bring food, cell phones, etcetera etcetera. Restrictions on your use are required, by law, to be posted at points of sale. Morons shouldn't be on benches for this reason. I think I've already stated that the judge is a fucking idiot, repetition is rather boring yes?



Please do explain how MDY is affecting other customers. Exactly what does a character being played by a computer do to the other players? Perhaps they're jealous because they aren't leveling as fast? Is penis envy a valid complaint too? It's a fucking MMORPG, you play against the server, and if on a PVP server, against other LIKE LEVEL players. How the hell can the bot possibly be a problem? Bots aren't irritating pricks asking for cybersex every thirty seconds, kill stealing shits that run around getting the last hit in, or fucktards that aggro packs of high level critters and drag them into newbie zones. Maybe the customers are discouraged from playing because they can't get a rise out of the bots when they pull lame shit like the above?

Maybe Blizzard was confused and meant to say their server had to cover more usage because people were actually playing the game more than they expected. If Blizzard really does think their customers are only playing two hours a week on average, they're banning all the people that actually like MMORPG's. Even I played vastly more than that, just getting my money's worth out of it required I bore myself far more often.



Irony is what you stick up your ass before posting. I put effort into educating myself because the law is no longer reliable. The fact that a practice is illegal, fraudulent, and by rights should end certain companies, doesn't mean I have interest in being fucked over just to see if the legal system wants to take themselves seriously for once and put a stop to it. If it's not worth suing the people actually cheating them, then Blizzard has a problem. I don't care. The law doesn't care. There are all kinds of things you can sue over that simply aren't worth it. The reason they aren't worth it is irrelevant. It's not worth suing the commissioner for not fixing a culvert in a local road. It's not worth suing the county to get AC in the poll place. It's not worth suing my ISP for violating their service policy and providing me with a substandard connection. There are plenty of things I could sue for that aren't worth it. I could probably sue you for mental anguish because your idiocy is causing me psychological damage. I could spend my entire life suing people for itty bitty faults with less cause than necessary for it to actually be worth my time, while still legally valid. Just as it is in my case, Blizzard is deserving of no special protections that violate other peoples rights simply because it's not worth it to them.

Having just attempted to purchase an airline ticket online, there was no mention of any sort of conditions or terms at all before they started asking for payment information. Certainly not in a form an ignorant consumer (which you and Jonnan insist everyone must be assumed to be) couldn't possibly miss. There was no hand-holding, polite person having me initial various paragraphs that Jonnan thinks are necessary to form any sort of contract. Therefore I am forced to assume that, had I purchased tickets, those tickets would be limited only by FAA regulations. Sound familiar?



Why, oh why, then, did MDY sue Blizzard for anticompetitive practices? That IS how the lausuit started. They were laughed out of court, but they did sue for it.

Someone running an alternate server for WoW would undeniably be infringing the copyright - running the server takes programming not found on the game disc. Not even you would think that buying a game disc gives you rights to the server programming. A competitor would be someone running an independant MMORPG, such as Sony is with Final Fantasy XI.



Yes, you are generally playing against the server, but the actions of other players affect the world in ways that affect you. Had you read the customer complaints Blizzard sited in the case, you'd know this. When a Glider-controlled character is farming an area, either for salable items or for specific enemy kills, those kills deplete the supply of enemies for other players to attack. Certain parts of the game require a player to kill x many of a specific enemy, or collect a specified number of a rare drop item from a specific enemy. If a few Glider-bots are farming that area, it is difficult, sometimes impossible, for a human player to compete for the necessary enemies. The bot doesn't eat or sleep, never goes AFK to use the bathroom, and can respond faster and more accurately than a human to a newly spawned enemy. The effect is that human players are essentially blocked from completing this part of the game. This blockage can go on for days at a time from only one or two Glider users. Do you begin to see the problem?

If it was only a speed leveling mechanism, I doubt blizzard would care as much. Certainly the customers not using Glider wouldn't care as much, because they could move forward in the game independant of the bots.



This is yet one more example of the built-in bias against companies in our legal system. Blizzard suing 100,000 individuals for $150 each (assuming the price of the game and several months playing time) could never be a winnable case for them. Suing for losses plus court costs is allowed, but that would raise each of the 100,000 suits to the tens of thousands of dollars each. Any jury likely to award the $150 is unlikely to give Blizzard $20,000 for court costs for one person breaking an EULA on a $50 game. Even if blizzard won all of the cases and but only got court costs in some, they would lose money on the case. Why sue to begin with?

The option available to consumers in this case is the class-action suit. There is no legal mirror image to this - there is no way for a company to roll many complaints into one suit, which could be won or lost ONCE, incur court costs ONCE. I wonder how a case naming 100,000 codefendants would work. Each one is entitled to separate council, separate hearings, etc. The end result is that a company which is cheated by thousands of its customers has no practical legal recourse but to sue the entity making those thousands of cheats possible. They're lucky to be able to pin it on one offender, and you think they shouldn't be allowed to.

You, and Jonnan to a slightly lesser extent, have a common customer-centric view of commerce, where corporations are simply faceless piles of money, intent on making themselves even bigger piles of money. You have no concern whatsoever that corporations face physical limitations which simply cannot fit into your narrow view of "anything that denies a customer whatever he wants is wrong".

Built in bias against companies in our legal system???

If the police arrest two people fighting on the street, and the police pull the 400 pound 6'5" boxer off of the 5'10 170 pound teenager, do you consider this an evidence of 'bias' against large people?

If the that gets shot with a BB gun shoots back with a machine gun, is the attempted murder charge a result of 'bias' against gun owners?

My god Willy's right - there is a built in bias towards the powerful not being allowed to overreact.

Sorry jafo - I'm back to 'Grow up Willy'

Point of sale is point of sale, not point where you fill out your credit card information. If you actually go to the page where you confirm your purchase, they list details that you need to know before purchase to cover their ass. I think you under-estimate the level to which the FAA regulates them as well, you're probably assuming a great many things would be shown that aren't. The correlation between a ticket and a product is a poor example as well. Tickets aren't even covered under the same set of rules, but since you haven't grasped the context previously I'm not sure it matters.



You create a product that works with someone else's product. They block your product from working. It's the very definition of an anti-competitive practice. You don't have to be competing to suffer from anti-competitive reactions. That they were laughed out of court shows a bias against MDY. Blizzard is in violation of the law by actively preventing other companies products from functioning. Instead of punishing Blizzard for violating the law, MDY is punished for copyright infringement that isn't copyright infringement, and isn't perpetrated by them to start with.



Yes and no. If someone copies the server code to run it, yes. If someone designs it from scratch based on the inputs and outputs required by the client, and doesn't need to copy their code, no. Blocking the creation of third party servers designed without their own source code is also anti-competitive. Creating a product, selling it, and then actively preventing the creation of competing services to go with that product, would get anyone but a software company taken apart by the government for doing so. Yeah, MMORPG's violate anti-trust laws. Chew on that one eh? If they had patents, as games should, there wouldn't be a problem there, but what can you do...



Ok, so Blizzards servers are inadequate, over populated, monsters needed for quests are too rare, and a guy with a bot can single handedly doom the experience for thousands! Maybe I'm just dumb, but I still don't see how this is MDY's problem. If Blizzard doesn't have the facilities to deal with the demand, Blizzard needs to increase their facilities, not reduce demand by banning people that use their service 24/7. Way to get rid of their best customers. I know too many people that play MMO's for this shit to fly. Blizzard has a problem, Blizzard wants to make someone else fix the problem. People that leave because a bot killed all the creatures in a zone are leaving because Blizzard's service sucks. Piss and moan all you want about it being unfair, there's nothing here with even the semblance of illegality on the part of MDY, they did nothing wrong. Blizzard on the other hand is violating laws left and right and gets a pass on it.

Your logic is broken.



Your being a moron doesn't make me biased against companies. Class action lawsuits work both ways. A hundred thousand people can nail Blizzard independently, in small claims court, and cost them a fucking fortune just to send someone out to show up for it. Class action suits are not customer-centric. The blade cuts both ways, costs fighting that many suites would bankrupt the company even if they won them all. They'd never be able to afford to get that far. Certain asshole groups regularly shut down businesses they don't agree with by doing just that. They sue them repeatedly on various issues until they run out of money. You can't not have heard of all the environmental group lawsuits over sheer idiocy. The joys of tax exempt extortion.

You do know Blizzard could take their customers to small claims court yes? The numbers are small after all. Blizzard wouldn't need to get a few thousand dollars out of them then, and Blizzard wouldn't have a jury trial to contend with either, just a judge. Blizzard doesn't want to take them to small claims court because Blizzard would be eaten alive in the backlash, and life as we know it would end for the major software companies. The reason they don't is because they would piss off enough people to scare the shit out of congress, and wake the fucking judges up along with them. Blizzard doesn't take advantage of their legal options because Blizzard is fucking people over and can't afford to have that much press. They go after another company because companies screwing other companies aren't news worthy, and no one will give a shit.

Weapons dont kill people, people do...and the laws allowing anyone to own as many weapons they like.



Sorry i didnt knew that i had to be a native english speaker to have a right to say my opinion.



The Copyright does not grant the user the right to connect to any server.
It does not grant the user to create a character on a server.
Neither does it grant you the right to play a character on any servers.
You may run the game...but that does not mean truly playing it.


One could just sell a "mmorpg" without any servers to play on. And you could not sue anyone for not being able to play it.

And even if you could create and play a character, nothing stops one from giving it names like "psychoak is #####" since there are no rules stopping you from doing so.
But since that would be illegal, you could sue the one creating such characters AND the company running the server for not stoping him/her from doing so.
That could get quite costly...

So you NEED an EULA which grants the user certain rights while reserving certain rights to the company and also enforcing certain rules.

You may also want to make some experiences with mmorpgs before saying anything silly like bots would boost sales of a game.

Read the postings and become familiar with the case.

In order -

Consumer buys World of Warcraft client on CD.

Consumer owns World of Warcraft CD.
Consumer now has the right to run that program in accordance to it's standard uses, as per federal copyright law.

Consumer installs WoW client.
As part of the install process, consumer is forced to accept an EULA he was not allowed to peruse prior to installation.
Either this EULA is part of the sales contract, in which case it fails to meet UCC2 muster because as a consumer the consumer is not bound by this type of modification to a contract
Or this is a separate contract, which means that it fails to meet the standards of a contract at all because the consumer has received no consideration in exchange for agreeing to it.
In either case, both of these arguments are ignored by Willy and the judge in this case (as well as those in the 7th and 8th circuit. These arguments have been accepted by the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th, 6th, 10th, and 11th circuits. Not applicable in Louisiana (French Law presides) or either Virginia or Maryland(Accepted UCITA).) who decides that the EULA applies.

The EULA has a provision stating that the Consumer does not own the CD and only has a license to use the software while withing the provisions of the EULA. Note - not that they don't own the program, which is exactly the case under U.S. Copyright Law, but that the physical medium carrying the program is owned by Blizzard Software, in direct contradiction with U.S. Copyright law.

Client pays for downloads, and installs Glider.
Glider is a perfectly legal program which in no way in and of itself infringes upon the intellectual property of Blizzard.

Upon running Glider, the license for WoW client is revoked.
Under U.S. Copyright law, this has no effect since the Consumer would normally still own the media, and the mere act of owning the media is sufficient to allow the Consumer to use the software in the standard method.
However, because the EULA specifies that the title for the CD has reverted back to Glider, the judge rules that the media no longer belongs to the consumer.
Therefore, by running the program, the consumer is therefore liable for copyright infringement as soon as the program has copied itself into memory.

Because the Glider program was what initiated the revocation of the license, the company that wrote that program, a program that is and of itself infringed Blizzard in no way, is liable for contributory infringement.
Because the person who bought the CD ran the software - *not* connected to the server, but initiated copying the software to memory.

So - a consumer was held to an EULA despite having had no chance to peruse it.
That EULA deprived that consumer of his property by changing title to it back to Blizzard after Blizzard had accepted his money.
By writing into the EULA a class of legal software that Blizzard had issues with, a third party company writing a perfectly legal program was sued into bankruptcy.

Willythemailboy spent 14 pages insisting this was a *good* thing, while 13,732 lawyers throughout the software industry were rescued from drowning in their own drool and Bill Gates was found hitting his head against a desk mutlitple times going "Shit - we just had to say 'Don't Load Netscape.' in the license? What about 'Don't buy an Ipod.'? 'No GPL programs allowed.'? 'All your base belong to us'?"

Is there any particular portion of that you disagree with Willy?