I have a problem with the statement "the judges call was BS."



A sledge hammer? Blizzard asked for summary rulings. They don't want to drag this on any more than necessary.

And they have banned the software and users of it. Repeatedly. Problem is, the author just keeps changing it to circumvent their ban system. And they asked him out of court to stop creating the software. If the bot author had said "okay, I'll stop" a long time ago, none of this would be happening.

This is certainly no "fly." This is a determined and unrelenting cheater who is helping other cheaters.



Not myself directly, but Dr. Castronova, an expert witness in the case, claimed to have spoken to thousands of players (Filing 71, page 11). In addition, over 400,000 players petitioned complaints to Blizzard about botters (Filing 40, page 36).

In addition, it doesn't matter. Fighting bots costs money, whether the general WoW population is aware of the efforts or not.

Blizzard supplied the following as losses for the case:
-Real money trading associated with bots.

-The costs associated with Game Masters dealing with complaints about bots, and the extra burden of manually searching for bots.

-The costs associated with creating automated detection of bots. In fact, Blizzard is complaining that this particular bot creates the most work for their programmers.

I'd rather have those programmers working on improving the game. And I'm sure they'd agree. But they have to do it, otherwise the game would be unplayable.

-Normally, it would take some time to level a character in WoW. A bot makes it go faster - much faster. Blizzard did some calculations, and the difference between the times it takes to level with and without bots was calculated as lost subscription time.

as someone was saying earlier in the forum (assuming they are correct) the bot has to load the game into RAM (as any program does), and the judge apparently used this as the reason for calling it copyright infringement.

I know that's a poor explanation, but do read the last 2 pages worth of posts.

well thank you everyone for clarifying what we're arguing about.

what exactly was the judges logic for deciding that this is copyright infringement. can someone post that part of the case on the forum?

He did indeed use this as the reason. But not necessarily that the bot did the loading - it doesn't matter what loaded the game: Even if the OS loaded the game into memory, it's considered copying.



You answered your own question .



http://docs.justia.com/cases/federal/district-courts/arizona/azdce/2:2006cv02555/322017/82/

Page 16 especially.

here's another thought

the guy created a service to ease repetitive tasks, he invested time and effort and wants some money in return as compensation. The same every closed source software developer wants.

Of course if you bought that service you may ask yourself why do you pay for a game so a bot can play it for you. If the game is too much grind and you don't enjoy it, cancel your subscription, delete it and sell your account.
What? You may not sell your account because the MMORPG mafia says so? Well too bad I'll do it anyway.
Related if you for instance read SOE's Everquest 2 EULA, it says that everything you do inside the game is SOE property, every tell every piece of text you write is SOE's property. Your characters all items everything is SOE's property. Ingame protests are forbidden, mentioning of other games is forbidden, criticising the game is forbidden. A true dictatorship and people are paying for it.
Then there are people like BigDogBigFeet you say "Yes that's the law and everyone who dares question the law is evil and a terrorist" or something along those lines.

WIllythemailboy, you dont have any idea what you are talking abouth. Seen any lawyer-tv-shows lately which make you think you actually know something eh? or did you just copy/paste from some website? A judge dont have to abide by any other courts ruling unless its the supreme courts ruling. He is obliged to look at the law himself and see what it actually says. If you actually take the time to look into this you will see countless times where some lawyer have brough up some previous ruling and the judge have decided that it was not according to the law and ruled otherwise.

And as to your great faith in the "president" and "congress". Maybe you should take a closer look at the people who sits there before sprouting your great faith in them. Its not like bush is known for his great intellectual capacity.

And as for the bull you wrote abouth federal courts usually not beeing involved in criminal stuff, its wrong, pluss if this gets illegalized, it WILL go to a different court in the future, a court who deals with criminal charges. And thats what this is abouth. Next time you got something stupid to say keep your mouth shut, your only looking like a retard. I dont feel the need to bring lot of stupid arguments into this because i KNOW how the law works, something you obviously dont. If your thinking abouth typing more silly stuff you dont know anything abouth DROP IT.

Lets try to stay civil here and keep politics out of it.

Malanthor - unless you can show proof you hold a law degree, your authority on the legal system is no greater than mine. I do very occasionally watch police and legal shows, but mostly to laugh at the blatant, obvious errors they make. I about died laughing when one showed a cop smelling chloroform on a rag several days after use.

Precedents are not set in stone. All courts need to abide by rulings from higher courts - a circuit judge must apply precedents from his immediate appellate court as well as the supreme court. Often precedents are sought from farther afield, but in that case they are not binding. In the ruling, the judge assesses not just the law, but how previous precedents either do or do not apply.

Politics never even entered into my part of the discussion. I don't know whether this particular judge was appointed by Bush or not. It doesn't really matter. For all I know (or care) this guy was appointed by Clinton, possibly even Bush Sr. The point is that the guy got through the process without anyone objecting he was unqualified. That makes his opinion on the matter far more authoratative than yours or mine.

If you'll note, I said federal courts are involved in criminal cases only in specific circumstances. Most federal court cases involving criminals are actually appeals based on the criminal's rights being violated. And you're wrong in assuming this ruling will result in changes in criminal courts. The precedents set will only apply in civil cases of a similar nature. No part of this case actually applies to criminal law.

I'm all for civility, but the thread is political by dint of the original subject. The laws being discussed are made by elected officials and the judge in question was appointed by one and confirmed by *a majority* of 100 others.



I haven't taught civics for a few years now, but I believe WTMB is basically correct about how precedents work and that most criminal cases orginate in state and local courts. But IMO, he has put at least a toe over the civility line, unless perhaps he is a credentialed lawyer and is sparing us the lengthy legalese that might "prove" the imbecility of the judge in question.

Mind you, I'm all for hurling the bile and thunder in a truly private setting, especially if you are ranting about any US president since the early republic. We really need to adjust our expectations for the office ASAP; the framers didn't wage a long war and an even longer constitutional debate just to have us end up with a series of monarchs who can reign no more than 10 years.

I thought that line would make it clear enough, but apparently not. I do not hold, and do not ever intend to hold, a legal degree. I do, however, consider myself a amateur with a better-than-average understanding of the legal system and the government in general.

And on the contrary, I am asking for proof of the imbecility of said judge, myself. I spent most of last night reading through the proceedings of that case, and didn't find any substantive errors in the rulings. The ruling against Bilzzard concerning their DMCA claim was spot-on. While I think the bot violates the spirit of DMCA, it does not violate the letter of the law.

44RS said:




And Jafo quite rightly replied:


I was out of town for a few days, so I missed this gem, but this is just appallingly sick and disturbing. I mean, I couldn't quite believe what I was reading. If I saw something like this, not only would I complain to the company, but I'd probably never play another online game for the rest of my life. Sorry for the OT.

Anyway, I agree that this is a clear violation of the ToS, and both the programmer and users of Glider are and should be subjection to account termination for this reason. I have no problem with Blizzard taking this action against anyone it detects using the software; after all, WoW is its game and it can do what it wants with it.

I also agree with kryo that this doesn't seem to make any sense as a copyright violation. If I can make a physical backup copy of a game I have a license for--legally--why can't I have a "copy" in my computer's memory? And, if I can't, what exactly is the point of buying a license? So I can rotate the shiny side of the CD in my hand and marvel at the reflected light patterns on my ceiling?

On the other hand, and I know this isn't a popular opinion in this thread, I don't see the harm this causes other players. I'm not a WoW player, but I honestly don't see how someone else using a bot hurts my enjoyment of the game. So I have a level 30 character and he has a level 60 character? I have a level 10 monk in Guild Wars, and if other people are cheating to become level 20, I'll neither know nor care.

I've seen the arguments about gold-farming and the economy being unbalanced, but this seems a bit simplistic to me. First, if you're buying fake money with real money, you're probably also violating the ToS, so why should I care about that? Second, are there really that many people using Glider that it could unbalance the economy in WoW? How many millions of players of World of Warcraft are out there?

My tuppence.

Yeah the last thing you want to say in any of these threads is that copyright is broken and that copyright holders shouldn't have the rights to stomp all over their perspective and current customers.  Thank goodness copyright for the most part covers things I can live without.

Under normal playing conditions, the copying is covered as necessary for the program to function - allowed by both EULA and general copyright. This ruling doesn't affect that.



I haven't played WoW, but I have played other MMOs and grinding pretty much all works the same. Enemies can be killed off in an area, depleting the stock of enemies in that area until the game spawns new enemies over time. One of the problems with Glider is that it allows one character to continuously kill every enemy in that area almost as soon as it spawns, denying those enemies to legitimate players. In some cases, killing specific enemies in specific areas is part of the requirement to progress in the game. Legitimate players are prevented from progressing by the actions of the bot. One of the customer complaints referenced in the case speaks of an incident where one bot-controlled character monopolized an area in this manner 24 hours a day for more than a week.

WIllythemailboy said:



Okay, but how is what Glider does different from holding a copy in RAM, as it relates to copyright law?



Hmm. Well, that certainly appears to be a legitimate complaint. However, I don't think Guild Wars works this way. It's my understanding that whenever a player/character leaves a "common" area (a town, outpost, city, et cetera), (s)he is spawned into an instanced version of the world area his/her character is travelling to or through, as the case may be, except for special quests that encourage the formation of multiplayer parties (whose slots can be filled with computer players, if, like me, you prefer soloing).

Physically, not at all.

Legally, by using Glider you've violated the EULA. Thus Blizzad has the right to terminate your ability to use the WoW program, as you are no longer in compliance with the terms necessary to avoid breaking their copyright on that program.