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Blizzard Lawyers Visit Creator of WoW Glider
Posted by
Zonk
on Sat Nov 18, 2006 04:55 PM
from the playing-with-fire dept.
from the playing-with-fire dept.
Rick Hamell writes "On October 25th, Blizzard/Vivendi payed a personal visit to Michael Donnelly, creator of WoW Glider and accused him of violating the DMCA. Their demands were unclear, but come in the wake of recent player bannings for using bots in the popular MMORPG. It looks like he's going to fight it, but I think it'll be an interesting case if it ever reaches the courts." From the post: "The visitors from Vivendi / Blizzard made demands of Michael and stated that if the demands were not met that they would file a complaint in court if he did not meet them. I asked Michael what the demands were. He was unable to comment at the time to the exact details. But I do know they handed him a copy to very briefly 'Look at'. He was not given a copy. I think I could make a good guess and say that they asked for Glider to be shut down and if they feel that they have been harmed they may have asked for a financial settlement."
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Blizzard Officially Files Against WoW Glider 179 comments
Marcus Eikenberry writes "Blizzard and Vivendi today filed against MDY
Industries, the makers of the 'WoW Glider' software. Glider allows World of Warcraft players to 'play' while away from the keyboard; the software moves the player's avatar along a set path, following a complex set of instructions dictated in advance. Blizzard is seeking injunctive relief and money damages against MDY. What that means is they want him to stop the production of WoW Glider and they want him to pay them damages. Blizzard believes that Glider infringes on their intellectual property. They believe Glider allows players to cheat, giving them an unfair advantage and that they believe Glider encourages Blizzard customers to breach their contracts for playing the game. Last they claim that Glider is designed to circumvent copyright protections."
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Taking the bull by the horns, so to speak- (Score:4, Insightful)
Sure, it's an independent software developer, who cares? He's charging money for a program that explicitly violates the TOS that a user agrees to when signing up for World of Warcraft.
It's just one bot program out of many, but maybe the others will get the picture and GTFO also. I'm tired of trying to play legitimately, having bots always stealing my kills.
Re:Taking the bull by the horns, so to speak- (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm all for shutting this guy down (I play WoW and hate bots, too), but I don't want shutting him down to clog our already congested legal system.
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Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
The TOS is a contract. It's strength or weakness is for a judge to decide. But protecting the integrity of a service with 7.5 million paying subscribers sounds to me like a perfectly good reason for going to court.
Re:Taking the bull by the horns, so to speak- (Score:5, Insightful)
Selling a program that has no use other than violating the TOS may be actionable as tortious interference with a contract or something along those lines, but I fail to see how copyright is involved here. What copyrighted work is copied by the bot? Similarly, I don't see how it violates the DMCA.
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Re:Taking the bull by the horns, so to speak- (Score:4, Funny)
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Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Taking the bull by the horns, so to speak- (Score:4, Interesting)
adhesion contract
A class as large as the WoW player-base could roll that contract aside and claim damages (actual and punative) for loss of in game wealth and resources including their characters. Oh.. did I mention that Blizzard tends not to return your cash when they ban you half-way through a six-month subscription? This suit is almost inevitable.. once some lawyer gets banned and desides to form the class (on a health 10-30% commission of course).
-GiH
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Re:Taking the bull by the horns, so to speak- (Score:4, Funny)
It clearly states, that by allowing their software to be installed on this computer, that they agree to the following terms.
#1 All EULAs are null and void.
#2 They WILL be held accountable if their software causes a problem.
#3 I can do whatever the hell I want with their software once it's installed on MY computer.
#4 They can NOT install anything *extra* without my explicit permission.
4a) Any attempts to do so will result in fines no less than 1 Million USD, and no more than (whatever they have in liquid assets)
#5 Any updates or changes to the software's EULA must be approved by me before they can be sent out to anyone else.
I'm currently sitting at around 4.5 billion in fines. I'm waiting until I hit the "Trillion Dollar" mark, before I move forward with my lawsuits for SPIA violations.
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Re:Taking the bull by the horns, so to speak- (Score:4, Funny)
If he has tortious interference, he should probably go see a Doctor ASAP, not a lawyer. That shit is itchy as hell.
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Re: (Score:3, Informative)
I agree that a suit for tortious interference isn't likely to make much money, but it seems like a better legal theory than copyright. I'm not sure that the DMCA anti-circumvention provisions are applicable here. The DMCA only forbids circumvention of measures taken to protect copyrighted material. Even if the bot bypasses security measures, it isn't doing so for the purpose of violating copyright. The bot does not, for example, extract the images from the game. Furthermore, the DMCA expressly permits reve
Re:Taking the bull by the horns, so to speak- (Score:4, Interesting)
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Won't someone please think of the bots? (Score:5, Funny)
Or are you too afraid you'll be replaced? Too afraid you might have to try a little harder playing against someone a little bit better than you?
Fight for machine rights!
Bots (Score:5, Insightful)
I think it says a lot about WoW (Score:4, Insightful)
Description? (Score:4, Informative)
Some of us here (me included) are interested in legal issues but don't play WoW. A better summary would have included a description of the program, so that those of us who don't keep up with this niche have to fish around through links.
From the (admittedly linked) WoW Glider Homepage. "WoW Glider is a tool that plays your World of Warcraft character for you, the way you want it. It grinds, it loots, it skins, it heals, it even farms soul shards... without you."
I don't need the karma, but Glider FAQ [wowglider.com]
-T
The bot gave itself away.. (Score:4, Funny)
Given how popular bots are... (Score:4, Interesting)
I don't play MMO's as I don't have time, and I can't really see the point in paying money to Blizzard so my bot can play (It's bad enough having to support my brother), but I think it would be pretty cool to have a game where I can write a bot in perl (or your favourite scripting language) and have it compete against other bots to master the game. The server would need to enforce state, as it seems to be the big problem with a lot of these MMO's that they trust the client. The client says hey, I've just picked up this uber item and moved to the top of this dungeon instantly, and the server says, ok, here you are.
The game would need to have complex economics, and somewhat complex combat/raiding/whatever in order to make ai difficult enough that it was a challenge.
It would probably best suit the space genre as it is more plausible that a space craft/robot/??? operates autonomously, than a Paladin/Wizard/Grue.
Also it would be great for people like me who can't be bothered sitting in front of a computer for hours on end playing MMO, when there's better things to do (like sitting in front of a computer for hours on end playing FPS).
Meh, maybe I'll make something, can't be that hard anyway...
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Funniest are the morons who whine how their other accounts got banned too - stuff like 'I only glided on one (farming) account, they wtfpwned my main account too!!!' (duh, TOS says Blizzard can nuke all your accounts if you violate it)
Anyway, WOWGlider dev is a lowlife who profits from runing the game for those who actually belive in playing by the rul
Re:Pwned (Score:5, Funny)
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Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I'll take False Generalizations for $200, Alex. I believe that this guy should be put out of business, but not because of the DMCA.
Re:I Call Shenanigans (Score:5, Informative)
What if a bug ends up in the program that does DDoS a WoW server? What if it DDoS a WoW zone? What if it denies a legitimate user from completing a quest or working on a tradeskill or something because it consumes all the resources as soon as they become available, faster than a player can react? How do you know for sure it isn't keylogging people or copying their account info? How do you know that they haven't found a way to dupe items and are using it to dupe to give the item to one of their own bots so they can sell it?
But since when is creating a "cheat" for a game, againist the law?
I've never played WoW... that said, depending on how Glider works, it could involve intercepting and decrypting an encrypted stream and that could be a violation of the good old DMCA.
dude doesn't charge money for it does he?
Even though he does charge for it, it doesn't really matter. AFAIK, they aren't distributing any Blizzard copyrighted code so its not a fair use case. Further, if I give away free tshirts that I pressed with the Nike swoosh on them and take a loss on it, Nike can still sue me for violating their trademark.
does Major League Baseball punish him and the companies that make those products?
Ben-gay, Tylenol, etc have legal and non-performing enhancing uses and aren't banned in the various substance abuse policies by any sporting group that I know of. Glider serves one purpose, which is to interact with a server, against its terms of service, to enhance the play above what the terms of service allows.
do the major sport companies go after the steroid manufacturers?
See BALCO and Victor Conte for an example.
it's bullshit. I'm sure they'll pull something out of their ass saying his usage of the WoW client to reverse engineer some kind of program has violated their Copyrights yadda yadda yadda but in terms of fair use, assuming he wasn't making profit off of WoW Glider, I think he could get away with it. WoW Players feel free to mod me down , I don't condone cheating in such a manner but at the same time Blizzard has been real asshatery in the last two years abou cheating (Warden, anybody?).
As I said, profit has absolutely nothing to do with it and irregardless, your assumption about not charging for it is false. I hate the DMCA as much as the next guy but its very possible he violated it to create his program. Someone might argue that WoW players may have standing to sue him and his clients (possibly Blizzard depending on if their disclaimer forbids it and stands up) for using a program which interferes with the ability of non-infringing players to enjoy the game. Finally, if you read the article and/or the filing, it is MDY preemptively suing Blizzard to try to seek a judgment that they aren't breaking the law, not Blizzard suing MDY at this point.
Just a tip... before you try to expose something for idiotic, you might want to actually read whats going on first or else you risk exposing yourself. Then again, this is Slashdot.
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Not illegal to read RAM + control mouse/keyboard (Score:4, Informative)
Nothing. But then Blizzard/Vivendi wouldn't be so utterly stupid to try to sue him for cheating in a video game. The worst they could do is ban him from it, which I'm sure they've already done.
However, they might try to sue him for interfering in some way with their software. That would be incredibly hard to do though, since he does not modify anything nor copy anything over which Blizzard have copyright. (Copyright is a protection on works, and not on dynamically created in-core data, under any circumstances.) And he has not stolen any commercial secrets either, as long as he didn't go dumpster diving around the back of Blizzard labs. Reverse engineering for interoperability is certainly perfectly legal, and that's what Glider does, interoperate with WoW.
What's more, he has not circumvented any DMCA protection device either, since he is merely reading system memory which is not protected but in the clear. And it's his own machine's (or user's machine's) memory, so clearly he (or the user) has every right to read it.
Finally, he uses that information to drive the user's keyboard and mouse. Well, I'd like to see anyone challange his right to do that.
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Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re:No sympathy for WoWGlider's author (Score:5, Informative)
They could get him under Section 1201 (a); "No person shall circumvent a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title."
The game's Lua subsystem allows for macroing and automation of game elements, but also disallows access to the automation of a number of other elements of the game as well. As such, WoWGlider circumvents the Lua subsystem's prohibition of access to said game elements (such as commands allowing automation of movement and so on)
I myself use a number of scripts utilising the Lua subsystem, some of which automate quite complex series' of actions. The system is more flexible than it is given credit for.
I'm also curious...Did you ever play Ultima Online? The botting scenario got so bad with that game in the end that at times it was impossible to tell who was a live player at the keyboard and who wasn't. It wrecked the game, from the point of view of being multiplayer...if you're going to play something on your own with a heap of AI running around, that by definition isn't a multiplayer game...it's single player.
Would you like all macro programs, even ones that aren't used for cheating in games, to be illegal? Because this is how they all work.
You're keeping your argument centred on macro programs in general terms, rather than talking about WoWGlider specifically, because I think you know that that is the only area where you've got a solid argument. It probably couldn't *quite* be classified as a straw man...but it's close.
There are two points here:-
a) WoWGlider is being used exclusively to perform action/s that Blizzard are opposed to. Macroing itself *is* allowed within the game via the Lua subsystem; I myself use a number of scripts within this system, some of which perform quite complex series of actions.
b) Use of *any* programs which run outside WoW and interact with it are specifically prohibited in the Terms of Service. What that means is that it doesn't in fact matter what WoWGlider does; as a third party program it is in violation of the ToS.
The bottom line quite simply is this:- Blizzard own and run the server network that WoW is hosted on. Any offline establishment (restaurants, gaming houses and so on) on the planet has the ability to set its' own house rules with regards to dress, behaviour, and sometimes other things, and generally also has bouncers to enforce said rules. The only reason why there's a difference to that in this case in your and other people's heads is because the WoW client runs on your local machine.
Following on from that analogy, though...if you have a problem with the house rules of a given establishment, go somewhere else. There are that many other both open and closed source games around (both on and offline, and single and multiplayer) that it should not be a problem.
I think the major problem here is the attitude (perpetuated, as usual, by Richard Stallman) that says that purely because you're handing over money, any given vendor is both legally and morally obligated to give you whatever you want. They are not. They are obligated to give you exactly what has been negotiated by you and them; no more, and no less. Blizzard's ToS is very specific as to what you are being given in exchange for your money, as well as outlining what your remedy is if you're unhappy with that; to walk away, after which you're entirely free to either play a game produced by someone else, join a FOSS project creating a game which may have a scenario more to your liking, or start a project to do so. Blizzard do not (and could not) try to forbid you from playing a competing game if you are unhappy with their terms.
Yet another common a
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