Blizzard Lawsuit
Blizzard Entertainment is trying to sue gaming fans for attempting to make a better version of its battle.net servers — namely, the now-closed sourceforge.net project, BnetD. This SourceForge project has a Mirror Site in the UK. The project may be under development by independent developers, but if so — I have no idea where the CVS can be found. If I find out, I’ll post it here right away. Feel free to leave comments.
Blizzard says that the software engineers are promoting illegal use of its software by providing this alternate server because the server does not check for a valid CD key. However, users of the BnetD server who have invalid CD keys and have yet managed to install Blizzard’s games before connecting have already broken the law long before connecting to the server. Blizzard refuses to let BnetD connect to its own servers to validate CD keys.
In short, the people at Blizzard are acting like little children saying “Mine, mine!” in regards to their software. Yes, they programmed it. Nobody else is trying to take credit for their work. However, as they try to establish their monopoly in the online gaming industry by destroying server-side competition, they are in essence admitting that they are a power-hungry company who can’t stand a little competition. Heaven forbid that their customers connect to an alternative server where their requests are actually taken care of and where the response time is fast.
C|Net News’ Declan McCullagh reports on the story at this link: Putting the DMCA on Trial
July 9th, 2005 at 10:38 pm
They are protecting their intellectual property, which is the right of any business or personal entity in the United States. In the present environment, there is rampant disrespect for IP in the digital space. People have the misguided illusion that it is their right to freely swap music, software, movies, and other IP. Development of server emulators for popular online games does encourage the illegal use of the game client - just look at Ultima Online, EverQuest, and Dark Age of Camelot emulators for evidence of this. It has nothing to do with Blizzard’s desire to build a monopoly (I don’t know what your definition of monopoly is, but Blizzard surely doesn’t have one), nor their desire to destroy competition - that’s rather delusional of you. Battle.net emulators are not competitors - other commercial online games are.
Some companies may choose not to exercise their right to enforce their EULAs. Blizzard has chosen to do so. At issue in this particular case is whether it is legal for Blizzard or any other software company to prohibit reverse engineering (which generally includes the act of packet sniffing) in a EULA. and, if so, whether the BnetD people violated said prohibition AND whether they violated the reverse enginerring clause of the Digital Millenium Copyright Act..
You really need to wake up. An alarming number of people share your disrespectful attitude. If such sentiment grows, the government will one day step in and make it tough on all of us. We already have the DMCA because of those idiots that pirate/share copyrighted materials. The law-abiding people of the world have no desire to be punished for the actions of morons.
July 10th, 2005 at 7:40 pm
Let’s look at some definitions first:
delusional — A false belief strongly held in spite of invalidating evidence
IP — Internet Protocol (but in this case, Mike means “intellectual property”)
Next, let’s look at the statement “you really need to wake up” — I was completely awake when writing my article on Blizzard’s lawsuit
Finally, let’s look at “disrespectful attitude” — this site exists for me to express MY opinions. This is a free country, and I can express any opinion I want. Unlike Mike, I’m not calling people names or claiming that they are something they are not (i.e. delusional). All companies are power-hungry, this is how business thrives in the United States. And I did not say that Blizzard held a monopoly, I said they were trying to establish one. Although not admitted, this is often another goal of companies. All companies hope to gain a larger client base, and when that client base becomes large enough to exclude competitors from accomplishing business goals, the company becomes a monopoly. That’s how it works.
I believe in intellectual property, and I believe in protecting it. However, intellectual property refers to patents that companies have over methods used in software, not in the software itself. Blizzard’s servers do NOT use the same exact method of decoding that BnetD uses. BnetD is simply a very good guess as to the way Blizzard’s servers operate in order to put Blizzard’s LEGALLY BOUGHT software to good use.
Unfortunately for Mike, packet sniffing is NOT reverse engineering. Packet sniffing is forward engineering. Taking packets from product A and sending them to product B is okay, as long as Blizzard owns product B. Taking packets from product A and sending them to product C is also fine, even if Blizzard does not happen to own product C.
If product C receives a packet from product A (product C being a router, another piece of hardware, or another program) and product C does not understand packet A, then product C has every right to try to understand that packet.
A packet is a method of communication in the channel of a common protocol. If a packet is sent from a sender, and received by a receiver, then the receiver has every right to try to understand the packet. If I am American, and you are Russian, then we could have difficulties understanding each other’s languages. However, it is okay for us to try to understand each other’s language in order to better communicate.
If product C wants to understand the language of product A in order to better forward communication, then product C has every right to do so. Computers are means of making work easier, and they are methods of communication. If one computer is to communicate with another, then it should be subject to the same laws that govern spoken languages — it is legal to try to speak another language, whether spoken, written, or a computer language.
As a software developer myself, I would consider it the highest form of compliment if someone made a server to interact with a client language I invented. It means that my server is popular enough (or buggy enough) to warrant changes or re-creations. It also means that my language will be more proliferate, as other clients may cost less than mine.
Blizzard should be spending its company’s profits on getting better staff to improve its servers’ functionality, as well as response time to its players. They should be using the profits to make new games, to study the BnetD server in order to improve their OWN software, and to please their users and/or their employees. Instead, they feel threatened by other software, and therefore they feel the need to do away with it. You don’t shoot a gun at someone unless you feel they are a threat. (So saith Florida state law).