Because botting affects the economy (people use bots to farm items and gold so they can sell gold to players for real money), a lot of people are quite aware that this is happening and have been for as long as WoW's been live.

Your analogy is wrong, too.

For one thing, I hate having to search for a needle in a haystack, and so many news places simply aren't citing their sources, and it drives me CRAZY. Here are the proceedings, in case anybody is interested:

http://dockets.justia.com/docket/court-azdce/case_no-2:2006cv02555/case_id-322017/



Yes. To RAM. That's how the judge ruled.

The judge ruled that the purchaser is a licensee, not an owner, and therefore any violation of the EULA and TOU (Terms of Use) is a violation of copyright.

I take it you don't visit the auction house very much in WoW.



Because Blizzard doesn't play games. They make them. You'd have to sue individual employees, not the company. In addition, I don't think somebody kicking your ass is a violation of their EULA. Using bots, however, is.



Sorry, that's not the type of game WoW is. Their designers decided yes, there will be restrictions. Don't like them? Play another game. There are plenty of MMORPGs out there.



You're contradicting yourself now. Do you or do you not want to be able to do anything you please?

Sorry, but without clear rules, the game would be very frustrating to play and very low quality. I seriously doubt WoW would be so popular if they allowed the game to be a virtual anarchy.

Any tampering with code or copyrighted materials As per agreed by EULA, are actionable in a civil court. Uploading said materials for others to use falls under Illegal redistribution and should carry stiff fines. But should be restricted to Civil court And not fall under Criminal law.

If Michael used any portion of the game to create the bot then he was in full violation of Eula as well as copyright infringement .

If not then this should have fallen under breach of contract, and his access removed, and possibly sued for any damages incurred by the enforcement of the EULA, as well as for man hours spent fixing the damage done to the the game if any.

When you agree to a EULA you agree to all stipulations within the contract, that contract is legal and binding so if it states you will be held monetarily liable for any Expenses incurred during enforcement of the contract. You agreed to it.

Read your EULA's and TOS's carefully.

In this case I think they did it to not only remove him from the game but to make a point to other hackers /cheats. By taking him to court, they may have ended his career as a cheat developer. I imagine it will be hard to pay for net service as well as a PC etc,, when you are selling every thing off to pay off a huge law suit..


I say good for them. I for over a decade fought hackers and cheater/glitchers in games,it ruins the fun for all who Play games for skill with an even playing field as the rest of the players, when some bone head comes in with a hack and is invincible, or can run faster than the other player's or does 4x the amount of damage any one else can. etc..

IMO you have to be pretty bad off in the self esteem dept, to need to cheat at a game to feel better about your self. If being the best Cheat on the net is your life's biggest claim to fame. My condolences.

Actually, he was found in violation of contributory copyright infringement, along with a couple other things for these reasons:

-He was creating software that breaks the EULA, and therefore directly contributes to breaking the EULA.

-To make matters worse, he was profiting from this contribution to break the EULA. This added "vicarious infringement" to the list of charges. Don't ask me what it means, I'm not a lawyer.

He was also found to be directly violating the EULA, as creating the program required reverse engineering the Warden system. And in about a dozen other ways.

Vicarious infringement occurs where someone has a direct financial interest in the infringing actions being committed by another and has the ability to control it, even if they do not know that the infringement is taking place and do not directly take part in it.


Example: Someone gets to master status then sells off works made by others as his own, even with WC not knowing the works are stolen, WC can be held liable. WC would be guilty of Vicarious infringement.

Essentially benefiting for infringement and being in a position to stop it, even if you have no Idea it"s happening.

thank u Jafo.
though I think neutering could be a little severe.
maybe they should make him keep this quiet, and have him release an 'updated' version of his program that automatically bans anyone who trys 2 us it. maybe they should add a fine clause in the EULA. then they can take their loses out of anyone dumb enough to use that program. talk about sweet revenge...

as Zydor in 73:

we're not trying to protect the hacker/modder in any way. as u pointed out, to wrongs don't make a right. that doesn't make the 'direction it moves in' any more correct. the basic and underling technicality the judge apparently used opens the door to the logic that any owner of any copyrighted work could sue any user of their software simply for having more of the program than is needed to run it in the random access memory, at least if I understand correctly.

Not exactly. The ruling was that loading part of the game into RAM qualifies as copying, which is allowed as long as it is being done under compliance with the EULA. If the user is in violation of the EULA, that act of copying into RAM constitutes a copyright violation, as the user no longer has the company's permission to copy.

I think we're all arguing about the same thing. does anyone disagree w/ this:

the hacker/modder was wrong, legally and ethically
the judges call was BS
and blizzard was well within it's rights to sue/ seek compensation

anyone got a problem w/ that

Well in my over the top example that you apparently took seriously, Blizzard as a company provided a game that by its design automatically creates an uneven playing feild for someone that started out years after the game was released.  Now I don't really think they should be sued, however I think Blizzard sueing some one instead of banning them and anyone else using the bot is like taking a sledge hammer to a fly on your foot.  Totally uncalled for I am not ok with the precedent this sets.

Uh yeah and I take it you have actually surveyed the multimillion WOW users to see if they have actually even heard of this bot! My bet is the vast majority would have no clue what you are talking about if you asked them, and I would even go so far as to say few of the millions would truely care.

 

Okay, thanks for the clarification. Looks like there's more to it than I initially thought.



I'm not certain I understand this statement: "having more of the program than is needed to run it"

Can you clarify?

What IMHO has been demonstrated here is that yes, copyright law is sufficient enough to uphold a EULA. Whether you like it or not, you're not considered an "owner" of software, you're considered a "licensee."

If you would like software that is more akin to ownership, open source software may be an option. Of course it's still technically licensed, but open source licenses generally give users a lot more freedom to copy the software.

And yep I am sure WOW would cease to exist with out this over reaction.  Not that every other MMO ever created hasn't had to deal with and has maned up and dealt with it accordingly without some over the top lawsuit.

I have a problem with point #2. To the best of my knowledge, the decisions are technically correct, and in accord with existing law/precedent. Doesn't mean I necessarily agree with them, but I object to calling technically correct decisions BS.

Millions? no. But the briefs include a sampling of user complaints demonstrating knowledge of the bot and threats of (and presumably actual) account cancellation if the problem isn't addressed. While obviously they are not all included in the briefs verbatim, blizzard claims to have 400k+ customer complaints specifically referring to glider, and hundreds of thousands more that don't directly reference it.



My apologies, he is referencing an early post of mine, before I had a chance to read the entire case. Disregard it, as it doesn't actually apply.



No, but depending on how well you trust their numbers, they can claim tens of millions of dollars in direct and indirect damage. Certainly they can claim thousands of man-hours of programming on the Warden system went into combatting this bot. That doesn't count loss of income from cancelled and banned accounts, or the loss of content those man-hours could have been spent creating. Glider holds a singular place due to it's exceptional success, as well as the fact that WoW is one of (if not the) biggest MMO running.