US Judge Blocks Programs Letting 'Grand Theft Auto' Players 'Cheat' (reuters.com) 112
A federal judge has awarded Take-Two Interactive Software, the maker of the "Grand Theft Auto" series, a preliminary injunction to stop a Georgia man from selling programs that it said helps players cheat at the best-selling video game. From a report: Take-Two had accused David Zipperer of selling computer programs called Menyoo and Absolute that let users of the "Grand Theft Auto V" multiplayer feature Grand Theft Auto Online cheat by altering the game for their own benefit, or "griefing" other players by altering their game play without permission. U.S. District Judge Louis Stanton in Manhattan said Take-Two was likely to show that Zipperer infringed its "Grand Theft Auto V" copyright, and that his programs would cause irreparable harm to its sales and reputation by discouraging users from buying its video games.
Re: (Score:3)
Georgia the US state, not Georgia the country.
Re: (Score:2)
By stating that this is an illegal activity.
1. Offenders can be fined or impression.
2. Give software companies an other rule in the book to fight against.
3. Prevent legitimate business from doing such actions.
The issue at hand was if this action was illegal or not. Being in a gray areas some people would want to risk it more then if finally defined.
Re: (Score:2)
same way he is going to stop russian hacking in elections.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
I AM THE LAW
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
Just ban this filthy game (Score:1, Funny)
It teaches bad values. In these trying times, we need to rid ourselves of things that set bad examples.
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
You sound like this dumb bitch I know that voted for Trump.
Re: (Score:2)
You forgot to hit the Anonymous Coward button. Your misogyny is showing.
Re: (Score:2)
Can't even make a joke anymore!
It's a shame how far we've fallen.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
This is a little late guys... 4+ years late (Score:1)
GTA 5 is a pretty amazing game aside from the award winning bad UI (it literally got awards for being so bad). You can go anywhere, do anything you'd expect in a city. The sheer number of things to do is mind blowing.
However... it's taken them this long to act on the cheaters beyond simple bans. Proof being
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nvJ_haYDh_w (from 4 years ago)
feel free to look.
The game is virtually unplayable when hackers get in the game
EULAs ban anti-cheat (Score:1)
By cheating, you're infringing on their copyright. This is why you don't own games anymore, and just get a license to play it.
Re: (Score:2)
Very disappointing (Score:5, Insightful)
Both of these programs Menyoo and AbsoluteMenu are used in single player and have many legitimate and creative purposes.
The issue with people abusing these with hacked clients to break multiplayer rules on GTA's own servers shouldn't be able to prevent these 3rd party tools that have many legitimate and awesome uses from existing....
Also, a Publisher of video game software doesn't have any right to prevent people from altering the game or modifying their game playing experience for personal entertainment; Assuming the person doesn't use the game with an online service to cheat, but the recourse for cheating is to file suit against the person cheating on their service or ban them from their server -- not to prevent the distribution of tools.
Re: (Score:2)
Then the player doing the griefing is violating the terms of service of the online game, not the maker of tool. Online griefing is not within the scope of copyright law. The reality here is that it is easier for Take Two to go after one man that to go after the griefers. As always, one should fix the servers so that the hacks don't work, rather than sue the hacker.
Re:Very disappointing (Score:5, Insightful)
The maker of the tool could easily modify their tool to prevent it from being used online. But they won't do that, since that's why most people buy it. Intent is a major part of the law.
Re: (Score:2)
If the maker had a clue, online use would have been a "third-party mod" to the tool, easily googlable but totally not the maker's fault.
Re: (Score:2)
Don't be daft. You can prove intent without reading people's thoughts. People communicate their intentions to other people. You can take a legal activity (using copywritten material) and use it in legal ways (under fair use) and be found guilty of copyright infringement because you communicated to somebody else that your intent was to circumvent copyright law even if all your actions would have been legal under another intent.
Re: (Score:2)
https://www.rockstargames.com/... [rockstargames.com]
Under the Code Of Conduct section:
(7) you will not cheat or utilize any unauthorized robot, spider, or other program in connection with the Online Services;
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
That's what I said.
Let us be clear, it is not a TOS violation against the person who *made* the tool, but for the people *using* the tool. Now, if the person who made it also used it online, then they can get that one person for a TOS violation. But the only likely remedy the court can offer is to disconnect the person's GTA account, which Take Two can already do. So Take Two is going to argue that it is a copyright violation. Their hope will be to make him liable for everyone else's use of the tool. W
Re: (Score:2)
I believe the precedent is that in order for the cheat engine to work it must make a copy of elements of the game code in memory, and that's a violation of copyright.
Personally I disagree but I'm not a judge in a US court.
Re: (Score:2)
in order for the cheat engine to work it must make a copy of elements of the game code in memory, and that's a violation of copyright
In order for the original PROGRAM to start up; an image of the elements of the game code are made in memory --
However, this is ephemeral in that the same process occurs in your brain when you read a book: an image of the author's text will
have been made in your memory; cheat code won't have changed that process at all.
An ephemeral image of something is not a copy eve
Re: (Score:2)
None of which is material to a US court of law.
Re: (Score:2)
To what extent is 17 USC 117(a) (copying as an essential step in use) "material to a US court of law"?
Re: (Score:2)
Go and read the court cases on the matter, where the lawyers will provide a thorough explanation and the judge may even offer an interpretation too.
I'm going by settled cases, not a law that clearly didn't apply in them.
Re: (Score:2)
1998 called, they want their DMCA back.
If words like ephemeral meant ANYTHING to copyright the DMCA would never have passed because DVD makers would not have been scared of getting sued into oblivion for making partial temporary "copies" in memory of movies while playing them.
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
Theoretically, you can't design such software without testing on a real server. In practice, it would still be hard to prove.
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
To be fair, these kinds of mods will (and do) still exist. Just don't attempt to sell them and not expect to run into the same legal troubles.
Re: (Score:2)
They compete against cheats sold by the company. They basically sell game funny money to buy a competitive advantage and degame the game, basically in real world game terms in game cheats to give substantial advantge. The question is whether or not this is fair or unfair. The company is selling a game. The company is selling cheats, it claims are legal. Other companies sell cheats, more competitive cheats. Is not the user entitled to choose the most competitive cheats, once they have bought the game. That w
I'm not entirely sure the courts should care (Score:3)
I'm aware the dynamics change with micro transactions & online play, but let's put it another way: Does Microsoft have a right to ban you from using Greasemonkey with office 365 because they might want to sell you a plugin that does what you used to with a Greasemonkey script?
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
It's an entirely different situation and impact on the producer of the software when what an individual does with the 3rd party product affects other purchasers of the software who don't use it. Especially if it affects them in negative ways that may cause them to consider terminating their consumer relationship with that producer.
Re: (Score:2)
There is no monthly fee for GTA Online.
Just a shitty game full of griefers that puts you off playing anyway.
Re: (Score:2)
> Just a shitty game full of griefers that puts you off
> playing anyway.
If fairness though, you just described pretty much *every* online game since Blizzard took away private LAN play amongst closed groups of friends, and forced everyone onto battle.net.
There are way too many assholes amongst the general unfiltered public for online gamine to be enjoyable; even without cheating clients in play. These days, I judge games almost entirely by their single-player experience; with only the rare exceptions
Re: (Score:2)
Re:I'm not entirely sure the courts should care (Score:4, Informative)
The court's not sure it should care. It's a preliminary injunction, until the case is complete. Which means the judge was convinced (to some level) that Take-Two could win the case and that it would suffer "irreparable harm" (in driving people off the online game) while the case happened.
Now, I have no idea if Take-Two is liable for damages the injunction causes if they lose the case.
Re:I'm not entirely sure the courts should care (Score:5, Insightful)
Makes no difference. This is the tech equivalent of making it illegal to sell horns that play "La Cucaracha" that are designed to magnetically mount to rental cars because it would cause irreparable harm to the reputation of the rental car company if cars with Hertz license plate brackets sounded like Mexican ice cream trucks (*) or whatever.
* Any implication that Mexican ice cream trucks actually play La Cucaracha is entirely unintentional, just so we're clear.
Correct. And to the extent that they can use technical measures to detect abuse and ban people who use these hacks, that is well within their right.
However, a legal bright line is crossed when they attempt to use copyright as a means of regulating what you can do with hardware that you own, or as a means of regulating the sale of products that merely enable the user to modify a copyrighted work. Even in the prior cases, the copyrighted work was licensed, not sold, and the fact that the newer games use the company's servers does not change the fundamental nature of the argument in any meaningful way, because it does not change the fundamental nature of the act in question (the user modifying a game) or the technology in question (a device that helps the user do so) in any meaningful way.
What the company might be able to do is allow the technology to be sold, then sue the seller for damage to their reputation under the computer fraud and abuse act. This is, of course, entirely orthogonal to the copyright issue, which is settled law.
Re: (Score:2)
Agreed. But the fact that it annoys other people still doesn't make it a copyright law issue. It's a combination of a contract law issue and a technical issue.
More to the point, it isn't an issue for the person creating the hacking tools, period, because those people likely aren't the ones bound by that contract. Rather it's an issue for the griefers who are using the tools in ways that are
Re: (Score:2)
On this side of the pond, it's the CFAA.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
You've got to admit that such a device would be funny as heck.
But it really isn't equivalent to forcing other people's cars to play the tune. Rather, it is equivalent to allowing you, as the driver of the car, to force other nearby drivers to *listen* to the tune. The fact that their cars are
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
You should be right, except a combination of the DMCA + EULAs completely reversed all that. You can thank Blizzard over and over again for their part of it:
Blizzard -vs- Glider [slashdot.org]
Blizzard -vs- Ceiling software [slashdot.org]
Blizzard again [slashdot.org]
Blizzard again, this time it's Overwatch [slashdot.org]
I hate cheaters too. But Blizzard and their lawyers are the biggest cheaters of all. They would happily take away rights from their own families if it meant they could make a buck.
Re: I'm not entirely sure the courts should care (Score:2)
That's terrible. Why wouldn't you want your online game overrun with gold farming bots and other assorted cheating griefers. Any players that don't like it should cry moar and play Care Bears Online.
Re: (Score:2)
Clearly you don't understand the conversation. No one in this thread is arguing that gold farming bots or griefing should be permitted. The argument is that the courts are applying the wrong section of law (copyright, instead of terms-of-service contract violations), and the consequence is that they are taking away legitimate tools from the white hat hacking community and the broader software development community. The courts are broadening copyright to the point where fair use is being eluded. It is af
I'm torn (Score:1)
Irony (Score:2)
Take-Two had accused David Zipperer of selling computer programs called Menyoo and Absolute that let users of the "Grand Theft Auto V" multiplayer feature Grand Theft Auto Online cheat...[f]or "griefing" other players by altering their game play without permission
So someone is getting in trouble for hijacking other players (game sessions) in a game called Grand Theft Auto?
Re: (Score:3)
Oh man, and get a load of this, people play games in which they get shot don't actually want to get shot in real life! HYPOCRITE MUCH, AMIRITE
Something (Score:2)
that line of thinking can be used to lock out repa (Score:2)
that line of thinking can be used to lock out repair at non dealer shops.
With copyright bs, and that can would cause irreparable harm to its sales and reputation by discouraging users from buying service and repair at dealer.
Copyright (Score:1)
Not this doesn't include things like modding or cheating in a single player game. The problem is that this is being done with devices not owned by the user - game servers, other players games. And this guy is distributing that software enabling it. Regardless of whether you love or hate this particular game - it's not the only gam
Re: (Score:1)
I did discount mod tools as being illegal. If you bought the game, and installed it on your own computer - you are completely free to do whatever you want with it as long as it only affects your game on your computer.
David's tools step over the line though - they are technically 'modding' tools, but the fact that it works online crosses a pretty specific line.
You don't just magically get to change someth
To paraphrase Shaggy 2 Dope of the ICP (Score:2)
Fucking Copyrights, how do they work? [youtube.com]
I imagine this phrase goes through Judge Stanton's head at the start of every IP case.
Sounds good (Score:2)
I think it's a bit of a waste of court resources to be forced to deal with cheaters in video games.
But whatever, cheating in online games ruins the game for everyone, so I'm all for courts putting their foot down on this. I know in my own case, I pretty much don't play any online games anymore, because of griefing, cheating and generally barbaric manners.
Enforcing this ruling could be problematic though. It's notoriously difficult to take anything off the internet.
GTA5 has no server side validation? How lame (Score:4, Insightful)
Hacks shouldn't happen in online games. The server should do all the checks and take all the decisions. If a hacked client can ruin other clients' games, then the online game is severely ill-designed.
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:1)
Honestly, them barring David from selling his tool, isn't going to stop anyone from hacking GTA - this isn't even a temporary victory, there's plenty of alternative tools available just a google search away. One even makes you Darth Vader so you can "make others suffer, while you stay safe" ap
Re: (Score:2)
If a hacked client can ruin other clients' games, then the online game is severely ill-designed.
If only it were that simple. Yes, many games are poorly designed. No, even the best designs will have issues with ill-behaved clients.
Too little Too late (Score:2)
Grand Cheat Loading V FTL