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bdpf:
This is copied from zdnet about blizzards lawsuit agaianst non Blizzarrd servers.

 :s513:   Sorry if this of topic

bdpf

Blizzard wins lawsuit on video game hacking
By Declan McCullagh, CNET News.com
Published on ZDNet News: September 2, 2005, 4:47 AM PT

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A federal appeals court has ruled that computer programmers do not have the right to reverse-engineer Blizzard Entertainment's video games to improve their playability.

The 8th Circuit Court of Appeals in St. Louis ruled Thursday that federal law--specifically, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act--disallows players from altering Blizzard games to link with servers other than the company's official Battle.net site.

Affected games published by Blizzard, a division of Vivendi Universal, include titles in its "Diablo," "Starcraft" and "Warcraft" lines.

In a 3-0 decision, the court upheld a trial judge's ruling from October, concluding the programmers' "circumvention in this case constitutes infringement."

The DMCA broadly restricts circumventing, or bypassing, antipiracy measures. Blizzard had included such measures to tie its games to the Battle.net site and detect pirated copies.

The defendants in the case, Ross Combs and Rob Crittenden, reverse-engineered the Blizzard protocol using tools like "tcpdump" to listen to the software's communications with a game server. Eventually, their "bnetd" project let Blizzard games connect with unofficial servers, yielding benefits like faster response times.

The 8th Circuit also cited a contractual agreement that Combs and Crittenden OK'd when installing Blizzard software. That agreement prohibits reverse-engineering.

godemperor:
Very Interesting.

It's a good thing the U.S. Federal Couts' Jurisdiction does not include the International Jurisdication.

ChaosEmpire:
yepp, and this is the only reason why we can still play ce...

bdpf:


Yep, But where does it leave thos in the GOOD OLD USA??? ;)

Is it legal for use to play on-line CE??? ;)

Here is some more on the bro-haw.... :s513:

Court KOs Online Game Bypass Program

By JIM SUHR
ST. LOUIS (AP) - 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 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 Inc.'s Battle.net game service for 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 that 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.

Thursday's ruling by a three-judge panel of the 8th U.S. 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 license agreements by helping people bypass Blizzard's system for playing multiplayer games like Diablo and StarCraft online.

The defendants were barred from further distributing the technology.

Combs and Crittenden are identified in the ruling as computer programmers, and Jung was listed as a systems administrator who also heads Internet Gateway, an Internet service provider based in the suburb of St. Peters.

According to the ruling, the Battle.net service has nearly 12 million active users who spend more than 2.1 million hours online per day.

Blizzard, which did not return messages Friday seeking comment, had lauded the earlier ruling last October by U.S. District Judge Charles Shaw for ``sending a clear message that creating unauthorized 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 that 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.


09/02/05 21:25

© Copyright The Associated Press. All rights reserved. The information contained In this news report may not be published, broadcast or otherwise distributed without the prior written authority of The Associated Press.

Will Grumpy Blizzard come after the users of CE now??

bdpf    :s513:

Shinlos:
Yes it's legal 4 u cuz u dont host the server.

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