sidz used our news submit to tell us that three men have
been found guilty of bypassing anti-piracy controls by developing their own
software to play Blizzard's games online. The software that caused the
controversy had the downside of allowing pirates games to play online which
isn't possible via Blizzard's own service. This software caused the legal
problems for the three men.
They three men could have
used Blizzard's free Battle.net service but decided not to after developing
their own software. The software that they developed had many more features and
improvements over Blizzard's own software. The software named BnetD allowed
people to setup their own servers which are where the problems
arose.
Though the three men
owned the original games and weren't out to make a profit or purposely break the
Anti-piracy protection on Battle.net, the US federal appeals court backed the
previous lower courts ruling that they broke the DMCA (Digital Millennium
Copyright Act) and the software's licence agreements. The men were
also barred from distrusting their software.
Blizzard
had applauded the earlier decision by the lower courts saying
that there was no question what they did was illegal. They
said to create software that emulated their servers and allowed their games
to be played on them was illegal. The company founder said they had worked
hard to provide a free and safe environment on their Battle.net service and that
this ruling shows that they are correct in maintaining the integrity of their
service.
The Electronic Frontier
Foundation (EFF) who defended the trio in the courts said this would dampen the
market for add-ons to games as well as force users to use only the game
developers own add-ons. The EFF said this limited competition which could offer
new benefits and features to users. The EFF will decide whether to appeal after
speaking to its clients.
|  Three
men illegally bypassed anti-piracy controls when they developed free
technology to let computer users play some games against each other online
without using the gamemaker's own system, a US federal appeals court has
ruled. Attorneys for Tim Jung, Ross Combs and Rob Crittenden had argued
that the trio engaged in allowable "fair use" because they had legally
bought the games and were not profiting from the bypass technology, called
BnetD.
Although the trio could
have used Blizzard Entertainment's Battle.net game service free, they
found it frustrating and preferred the dozens of additional features
available through the BnetD technology they had developed, their lawyers
said. Blizzard claimed BnetD, which the trio also distributed to others
over the internet, disabled controls meant to ensure that players used a
non-pirated copy of the game. Last week's ruling by a
three-judge panel of the 8th US Circuit Court of Appeals here upholds a
lower court's finding that the trio violated the 1998 Digital Millennium
Copyright Act as well as software licence agreements by helping people
bypass Blizzard's system for playing multiplayer games like Diablo and
StarCraft online. Blizzard, which did not
return messages seeking comment, had lauded the earlier ruling last
October by US District Judge Charles Shaw for "sending a clear message
that creating unauthorised servers which emulate Blizzard's Battle.net
servers is without question illegal." "We
have worked hard to provide gamers with a free, safe, secure, reliable
environment on Battle.net, and this ruling is a strong validation that we
are justified in protecting and ensuring the integrity of our game
service," said Mike Morhaime, Blizzard's president and
co-founder. The Electronic Frontier
Foundation, a San Francisco-based civil liberties group which helped
represent the trio, said the ruling could dampen the market for
performance-enhancing innovations called "add-ons" and limit the consumer
to whatever the manufacturer of the purchased item decides to
provide."This ruling threatens competition to offer new services, new
features," said Jason Schultz, an attorney for EFF. Schultz said the
foundation would talk to his clients before deciding whether to
appeal. |
Source: TheAge
