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Judge's ruling that WoW bot violates DMCA is troubling (ars technica)
According to this ars technica article, Blizzard has won a court ruling that evading its "warden" software (which digs through users' computers in search of game-playing bots) constitutes a violation of the DMCA. "Blizzard argued, and Judge Campbell agreed, that when users violated the World of Warcraft EULA, they no longer had a license to play the game and were therefore guilty of copyright infringement. As Siy noted in a blog post last year, Blizzard's theory, if taken literally, would mean that violating any of the rules in the EULA and Terms of Service, such as choosing a screen name that didn't meet Blizzard's guidelines, would be an act of copyright infringement." Discouraging, perhaps, but it's worth thinking about how (whether) this differs from the enforcement of the conditions in free software licenses.
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Judge's ruling that WoW bot violates DMCA is troubling (ars technica) Posted Jan 30, 2009 19:01 UTC (Fri) by alextingle (guest, #20593) [Link]
EULAs and Terms of Service are fundamentally different from free software licences.
The GPL is a licence to *copy* software, make derivative works and distribute it to third parties. No licence is required to *use* the software.
EULAs purport to add extra conditions with which the owner of the software must comply before they may use their copy of the software. That looks a little bit like "performance rights" which is a part of copyright law that restricts public performance of copyrighted works. The difference being that performance writes are explicitly created by copyright law, whereas an EULA that says you can only run the software while wearing a red T-shirt (or whatever) is just a piece of paper.
Judge's ruling that WoW bot violates DMCA is troubling (ars technica) Posted Feb 2, 2009 11:10 UTC (Mon) by etienne_lorrain@yahoo.fr (guest, #38022) [Link]
> No licence is required to *use* the software.
IANAL, but that is the GPL itself which allows you to use the software, if you cannot/did not comply to its terms you cannot even use the software; you cannot use copyrighted work without agreement of the copyright owner.
Judge's ruling that WoW bot violates DMCA is troubling (ars technica) Posted Feb 2, 2009 11:36 UTC (Mon) by alextingle (guest, #20593) [Link]
> IANAL
Me neither.
> but that is the GPL itself which allows you to use the
I believe there are some jurisdictions that treat the "copying" of the program into RAM as a "copy" for copyright purposes, so in those places you might be right.
In general though, you need no licence or permission to use a copyrighted work. When you buy a book, you need nobody's permission to read it.
As I said before, the exception is "performance", which usually does require extra permission. The very presence of the explicit exception for performance strongly implies that other uses are not regulated.
Judge's ruling that WoW bot violates DMCA is troubling (ars technica) Posted Feb 2, 2009 12:06 UTC (Mon) by etienne_lorrain@yahoo.fr (guest, #38022) [Link]
> "copying" of the program into RAM
Well, I do not know why everybody stress this point, when most software require to be installed on the hard disk to run, and after HD installation you have another copy of the initial and uninstalled software.
Can't comment on your other points, still wonder what is "performance" of a software in legal terms...
Judge's ruling that WoW bot violates DMCA is troubling (ars technica) Posted Feb 3, 2009 1:20 UTC (Tue) by Arker (guest, #14205) [Link]
You're wrong.
This is a critical point where the big media companies have been waging a campaign to confuse people my entire life, and you've been confused just as they want you to be. But their wishes are not (yet) law.
You dont need a license to use a copyrighted work. Get away from computers and 'new media' for a moment and this should be very clear.
You buy (or are given, or whatever, let's just say you legimitately acquire) a print of your favourite painting. Do you need a license to view it? Of course not. It's yours. You only need a license if you wish to make and distribute more prints from it.
How about a book? Do you need a license to read it? Dont be ridiculous! Whether you bought it new or used or it was a gift or whatever, it's yours, you can read it without permission from anyone, without agreeing to any conditions. If I put a EULA on the first page of my book and you buy the book, you have no obligations to obey whatever conditions I print there, regardless of how often or how loud I claim otherwise. The only time you need to negotiate a license is if you want to print and distribute additional copies.
Unfortunately big media companies have got so many people so bamboozled at this point that the majority of the public really believes that you need a license to use software, and I've had several tell me in all seriousness that the same *should* apply to books!
Please, kill this meme. Kill it dead. Before they finally get the law changed and take away the right to read.
Judge's ruling that WoW bot violates DMCA is troubling (ars technica) Posted Feb 4, 2009 4:24 UTC (Wed) by jamesh (guest, #1159) [Link] Just to play the devil's advocate, most of the books I have come with a licensing agreement like the following: Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher's prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser. So the condition is not binding in the USA but probably is in some other parts of the world. And I don't even need to make copies for the license to take effect.
Judge's ruling that WoW bot violates DMCA is troubling (ars technica) Posted Feb 5, 2009 10:37 UTC (Thu) by dark (subscriber, #8483) [Link]
Well... no such condition was imposed on me when I bought any book, so I
presume the publisher now has a beef with every bookstore I've ever frequented :)
Judge's ruling that WoW bot violates DMCA is troubling (ars technica) Posted Feb 5, 2009 22:20 UTC (Thu) by jhhaller (subscriber, #56103) [Link]
This condition really covers two cases:
1. When paperback books are unsold, the merchant cuts off the cover, and returns it for credit. They are supposed to dispose of the rest of the book, but some will sell it at a reduced price. This is selling the book with a different cover. In the US, a frequent notation is that if you bought the book without a cover, you have received stolen property.
2. When a book is lent by a library, the trade editions have weak bindings which fall apart under repeated reading. Library editions, at a higher price, have better bindings. This condition prevents libraries from rebinding the cheaper trade edition, avoiding the high price library edition. Possibly, the library editions allow rebinding.
This condition does not prevent the book from being lent or resold, just from being rebound without permission and then lent/resold.
Judge's ruling that WoW bot violates DMCA is troubling (ars technica) Posted Feb 7, 2009 7:59 UTC (Sat) by Arker (guest, #14205) [Link]
I've never heard of such a condition either, and I've lived a good portion of my life outside the US, as I am doing at the moment.
Furthermore I worked for some time for a university library, and I can assure you we could and did re-bind books with cheap bindings 5 days a week.
Judge's ruling that WoW bot violates DMCA is troubling (ars technica) Posted Feb 7, 2009 21:49 UTC (Sat) by giraffedata (subscriber, #1954) [Link] I have come with a licensing agreement like the following:Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher's prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser. Why do you call that a licensing agreement? It doesn't mention copyright or licensing anywhere. It's a contract of sale, so irrelevant to this thread. (There is controversy over whether it's a binding contract of sale, but again, not relevant to the question of whether you need a copyright license to run a program or the article about a judge's finding of copyright/DMCA violation).
Judge's ruling that WoW bot violates DMCA is troubling (ars technica) Posted Jan 30, 2009 19:10 UTC (Fri) by JoeBuck (subscriber, #2330) [Link] I don't understand the point of the last sentence. I know of no free software license that attempts to restrict what a user can do with the software on his/her own machine; the restrictions only kick in when distribution of that software occurs, or (in the case of the Affero license) when the work is made available for use by the public.You can link GPL code to proprietary code all you want, for example, you just can't distribute the result without infringing copyright.
Judge's ruling that WoW bot violates DMCA is troubling (ars technica) Posted Feb 7, 2009 21:55 UTC (Sat) by giraffedata (subscriber, #1954) [Link] I don't understand the point of the last sentence. I know of no free software license that attempts to restrict what a user can do with the software on his/her own machine; the restrictions only kick in when distribution of that software occurs, or (in the case of the Affero license) when the work is made available for use by the public. I understand it. Step back and take a broader view: it's about conditional copyright license. A free software license makes people do X by dangling permission to copy valuable software in front of them and making X a condition of that permission. That's what Blizzard does. In GPL, X is "give people your source code." With Blizzard, it's "Refrain from running bots."
Judge's ruling that WoW bot violates DMCA is troubling (ars technica) Posted Jan 30, 2009 22:44 UTC (Fri) by lutchann (subscriber, #8872) [Link] Blizzard argued, and Judge Campbell agreed, that when users violated the World of Warcraft EULA, they no longer had a license to play the game and were therefore guilty of copyright infringement.So let me get this straight...in the JMRI case, the district court found that unauthorized distribution and modification of open source software must be treated as a contract violation, subject only to remedies available in contract disputes, but in this case, the court found that violation of the Blizz EULA (which is undeniably a contract) is a criminal matter? Unreal. The JMRI ruling was overturned on appeal, and hopefully this ruling will be too. This has a chilling similarity to the Lori Drew case, where the court found that violating the MySpace TOS constituted computer fraud, subject to criminal penalties. It seems we're rapidly going the way of allowing corporations to define criminal law...
Reversed on appeal. Posted Jan 31, 2009 0:53 UTC (Sat) by dmarti (subscriber, #11625) [Link] That US District Court ruling was turned around by the US Federal Circuit Court of Appeals on August 13, 2008. "The Appeals Court, instead, said that failure to hold to the conditions meant that the license simply did not exist; distributing free software in a manner contrary to its license is copyright infringement, not breach of contract." The WoW users explicitly accepted the EULA. If you accept a EULA voluntarily, you're enlisting on the opposite side from software freedom. (Not that people should be forced to accept EULAs in order to go to school, petition their government, or otherwise exercise their rights, but voluntarily accept a EULA to play a game and I don't have a deep enough reserve of sympathy for you to get any. Sorry)
Reversed on appeal. Posted Jan 31, 2009 1:12 UTC (Sat) by dlang (✭ supporter ✭, #313) [Link]
the big issue here is that violating the EULA (a private agreement that may or may not be valid between you and the company) is now a criminal matter (if the DMCA is truely invoked)
normally if you violate a contract the worst that can happen is that they can sue you.
if it's a criminal matter very different rules apply
Reversed on appeal. Posted Jan 31, 2009 19:04 UTC (Sat) by tialaramex (subscriber, #21167) [Link]
If you violate a contract /and that's all/ the worst that can normally happen is that you get sued, correct.
However, if you do something which is criminal, but you claim in court that you had a contract which made it legal, then if the court doesn't buy your explanation you can go to jail.
Connecting to the WoW servers without permission, for example, is illegal. Just the same as if you tried to get into the LWN servers by guessing our esteemed editor's password - guessing right wouldn't make it legal. Ordinary WoW players have permission to connect, the people developing and using Glider do not, even though they're using Blizzard's own client to do so - in fact especially because of that since the client EULA expressly forbids this too, as do the terms of service for the WoW subscription service.
The people behind Glider aren't even surprised about any of this. The court seems to have concluded that even the company exists solely in the hope that it would shield its founders from liabilty for their wrong-doing - not a legitimate purpose for a company, and thus it "pierced the corporate veil" eliminating that shield.
I don't like the DMCA, I'd be happy to see it (and clones elsewhere) massively revised or eliminated, but if there was a good use to put it to, shutting down companies that ruin people's fun by allowing others to cheat (and Glider is cheating, whatever its makers say) isn't a bad start.
Reversed on appeal. Posted Jan 31, 2009 23:37 UTC (Sat) by dlang (✭ supporter ✭, #313) [Link]
so if a website has a EULA that says that you must use IE to connect to it, that would make it a criminal act to use firefox to connect to that website?
what about microsoft saying that it's illegal to connect to a microsoft server unless you use a microsoft OS? that would make Samba Illegal, killl the projects trying to make it possible to talk to an exchange server from linux, and go a long way to protect their monopoly. they can even justify it by saying that it's not fair to other users because the linux software may not do things right and may interfere with 'legitimate users'
there's a big difference between guessing/breaking someone's password and choosing to use a different client software to connect to a service that you are authorized to access (and in this case paying for), just with a different client. especially when you are authenticating with your own userid and password.
MMOG vendors need to protect their users from cheating by designing their systems so that they don't trust the clients and only send the clients things that the clients are allowed to know.
that won't stop auto-play 'cheats' like glider, but the fix for that problem is to not have games where large stretches of times need to be spent doing repetitive tasks. some players like that, but a very large number don't, and the fact that this gives rise to offshore services that will play your character for you, and things like Glider is an indication of a problem in the game that should be fixed in the game, not by trying to outlaw 'unapproved' clients.
Reversed on appeal. Posted Feb 2, 2009 8:35 UTC (Mon) by michaeljt (subscriber, #39183) [Link]
> what about microsoft saying that it's illegal to connect to a microsoft server unless you use a microsoft OS? that would make Samba Illegal, killl the projects trying to make it possible to talk to an exchange server from linux, and go a long way to protect their monopoly. they can even justify it by saying that it's not fair to other users because the linux software may not do things right and may interfere with 'legitimate users'
Are you talking about servers owned and run by Microsoft, or any servers running Microsofts software? I think that only the first is comparable to the situation under discussion, and at that probably only if you had to click through a page first presenting you with the terms.
Reversed on appeal. Posted Feb 2, 2009 9:36 UTC (Mon) by dlang (✭ supporter ✭, #313) [Link]
even with your restrictions, do you think that microsoft should be able declare that it's illegal to access their website unless you use IE?
what about your bank (which for years only supported IE) making the use of alternate browsers illegal rather than just unsupported.
while we're at it, what if they say that you are only allowed to use their website if you start at the main page and follow their links? and that getting a page that's not linked to in their main page is hacking their site?
companies have tried to make exactly these claims before, and the general result has been that they don't have that sort of control over how other people access their site.
Reversed on appeal. Posted Feb 1, 2009 20:36 UTC (Sun) by lutchann (subscriber, #8872) [Link] If you violate a contract /and that's all/ the worst that can normally happen is that you get sued, correct.However, if you do something which is criminal, but you claim in court that you had a contract which made it legal, then if the court doesn't buy your explanation you can go to jail. Not really...if that were the case, Hertz could have me arrested for auto theft the minute I drove their rental car on a dirt road, thereby violating the rental contract. Breach of contract doesn't mean the contract just vanishes, as much as EULAs might insist that this is the case. It just means that the injured party is entitled to compensation for damages. The people behind Glider aren't even surprised about any of this. The court seems to have concluded that even the company exists solely in the hope that it would shield its founders from liabilty for their wrong-doing - not a legitimate purpose for a company, and thus it "pierced the corporate veil" eliminating that shield. Well, sure. They clearly agreed to the EULA with the intention to violate it. Entering a contract in bad faith is a good step toward losing the corporate liability shield.
Reversed on appeal. Posted Feb 2, 2009 12:47 UTC (Mon) by dcoutts (guest, #5387) [Link]
In general I buy your line of argument but the example you use doesn't quite work. You driving on a dirt road is not itself illegal. So if the rental contract evaporates then you're left in a position that is not illegal. The parent poster was making the argument that the default position was illegal in absence of a contract giving explicit grants/authorisation.
Reversed on appeal. Posted Feb 2, 2009 15:37 UTC (Mon) by lutchann (subscriber, #8872) [Link]
My driving on a dirt road is not illegal, but my driving the rental company's car without their permission is illegal. So if the rental agreement purports to disappear as soon as I violate its restrictions, suddenly I would be driving a car for which I had no authorization to use, making it "stolen". No court would buy that argument, but somehow in the Glider case the court has determined that as soon as the EULA was violated, the end user was in the same legal position as if they had stolen the game in the first place.
Reversed on appeal. Posted Feb 2, 2009 15:45 UTC (Mon) by lutchann (subscriber, #8872) [Link]
Not sure if this was clear from my original post, but nearly all rental car contracts (at least here in the US) prohibit driving the car on any dirt road. If you drove the car on a dirt road anyway, you would be in violation of the rental car contract. The question is whether the court could be convinced that such a contract violation could trigger criminal liability. In the Glider case, the answer is apparently yes.
Reversed on appeal. Posted Jan 31, 2009 2:58 UTC (Sat) by lutchann (subscriber, #8872) [Link]
Ideology aside, EULAs and service agreements are impossible to avoid if you live in the modern world, so it's in everyone's interest to see that the vendors who use these agreements aren't given disproportionate powers of enforcement or punishment.
Reversed on appeal. Posted Jan 31, 2009 15:11 UTC (Sat) by epa (subscriber, #39769) [Link]
I doubt that even 1% of WoW users could tell you what the EULA says. We are all conditioned to mindlessly click through the pages of meaningless legal verbiage our computers present us with regularly. It is a bit of a stretch to say they explicitly accepted anything. They didn't even read it, let alone sign it.
Reversed on appeal. Posted Feb 2, 2009 18:48 UTC (Mon) by dvdeug (subscriber, #10998) [Link]
The objections to EULAs are two-fold; first, in the specific case of software licenses, you usually buy the product before you read the license. Once you read the license, there's no effective way to get your money back and no way to use the program without hitting okay. (Given that WoW is part service, I don't know how this applies here.)
Secondly, in theory, a contract is an agreement between two people, sitting down as equals, in complete understanding of the terms. That's actually done when two companies meet to discuss terms on some project, and when I rented my apartment, I at least dealt with someone capable of making changes and who expected me to read the contracts. But our society is filled with contracts that you're handed by someone who doesn't expect you to really read them and doesn't have the right to make changes, and who may in fact have no real understanding of them at all. EULAs are in some ways the most odious of them all, as they're on routine purchases with no further contact with the company--EULAs are either gratuitous or obnoxious--and there's absolutely no possibility of negotiation or explanation of the terms.
Judge's ruling that WoW bot violates DMCA is troubling (ars technica) Posted Jan 31, 2009 10:53 UTC (Sat) by muwlgr (guest, #35359) [Link]
I remember also this 'bnetd' project.
Of course, to protect its money, Blizzard would stifle a lot of entities putting it in trouble.
EULA vs US copyright §117 Posted Feb 1, 2009 4:03 UTC (Sun) by pjm (subscriber, #2080) [Link] Far more troubling to me is this judge's decision in mid-2008 that section 117 of the US copyright act (which allows use of a legal copy of software) didn't apply in that case, apparently on the grounds that the use in question was forbidden by the EULA for the software. My previous understanding was that yes, the loading of software into the RAM creates a copy under the Copyright Act, but it's explicitly allowed by §117 (so long as it was a legal copy of the software to begin with, and this loading was performed by the owner of this copy), so needs no additional license, and that any EULA is a matter for contract law rather than copyright law when it comes to use of a legal copy of software by the owner of that copy. Anyone care to comment on this?
EULA vs US copyright §117 Posted Feb 1, 2009 19:49 UTC (Sun) by tbrownaw (guest, #45457) [Link] I thought that was why EULAs always say that their software is "licensed" instead of "sold" -- precisely so that the company can evade that part of the law by arguing that you don't own your copy, you just have a license to use it (in only exactly whatever ways they say you can).
EULA vs US copyright §117 Posted Feb 1, 2009 21:27 UTC (Sun) by dlang (✭ supporter ✭, #313) [Link]
they claim that, but in every case I've ever heard of involving EULA and chrinkwrap software the courts have (eventually) upheld the 'first sale' principal (that once you buy something it's yours, and that purchasing the software is a sale, not a contract)
for an online service like WoW this may be slightly different, although the fact that you cannot read the terms of service before you buy the package in the store (and the stores will not accept returns on opened boxes) is a blow to that. the thing in the companies favor is the fact that when you sign up online they do give you a large page of legaleese to click through.
the other issue that comes to mind is the interoperability issue. things that are requiered for interoperability cannot be covered by copyright (see the lexmark printer cartridge lawsuit for a case where the exact binary program was deemed not copywritable becouse they looked for it explicitly when deciding if they would use an ink cartridge or not)
Judge's ruling that WoW bot violates DMCA is troubling (ars technica) Posted Jun 19, 2009 8:30 UTC (Fri) by gayshy (guest, #59205) [Link]
A complete nuts! Why don't they give us freedom to do whatever we want to do with our accounts, we paid for it... grrr. You can't also sell your account if you want to since it's a eula violation too but after reading this article at http://www.articlesbase.com/computer-games-articles/so-wh...
I think we have a right to do so ;P
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