DRM Circumvention May Be Legal, European Union Court Rules

[Drejer43]

this is all legal hogwash i dont understand anything of
But eh corperation lost so it's all good right?

 

[A-D.]

Its actually a legal thing rather than a practice thing. For example you buy a EA game, or a Ubisoft game, and their EULA says you bought a service that they can terminate whenever, the usual legal bollocks. This is void. The EULA doesnt apply to the EU, in fact it only, if at all, applies to the US. Which means if for example you got games on Steam and Steam were to ban you from playing them, i.e. you got no access to your library of games or ability to play them, just for the sake of argument assume this happened, you can actually sue them and win because the games in your library are yours and Steam can not legally take away your access to them, even if "its a service" is in their ToS and EULA and so forth.

would that also extend to VAC banned players? they are essentially banning you from multiplayer part of the game and for some games its the most important part of the package. all it takes is one crazy mod with ban power in a signle server to ban you from all servers, so false bans is very much possible.

Actually no, if you get banned from one server by some moderator or admin, thats not VAC. VAC means Valve Anti-Cheat, essentially its a automated system that detects if you run online games with trainers or something similar that is essentially giving you an edge over other people. Suppose it depends on the game though whether a mod could affect only you, or everyone. If you had a super-megapowers mod for some game, and you are host, everyone would get the benefit therefore it isnt exactly cheating because its still the same rules for everyone. Now if you had a program that gives you infinite health in a multiplayer game, thats cheating and VAC detects that, but it doesnt ban you from all servers, just all Servers which run VAC.

And no, there is no legal protection for this, you cant sue valve cause you cheated in a game and got banned from official servers. However if you made your own server with a cheat module running, so everyone has the cheats is a grey area there and whatever happens VAC wouldnt ban you. It basicly depends on whether this is serverside or clientside, clientside stuff is detected by VAC.

 

[Strazdas]

Actually no, if you get banned from one server by some moderator or admin, thats not VAC. VAC means Valve Anti-Cheat, essentially its a automated system that detects if you run online games with trainers or something similar that is essentially giving you an edge over other people. Suppose it depends on the game though whether a mod could affect only you, or everyone. If you had a super-megapowers mod for some game, and you are host, everyone would get the benefit therefore it isnt exactly cheating because its still the same rules for everyone. Now if you had a program that gives you infinite health in a multiplayer game, thats cheating and VAC detects that, but it doesnt ban you from all servers, just all Servers which run VAC.

And no, there is no legal protection for this, you cant sue valve cause you cheated in a game and got banned from official servers. However if you made your own server with a cheat module running, so everyone has the cheats is a grey area there and whatever happens VAC wouldnt ban you. It basicly depends on whether this is serverside or clientside, clientside stuff is detected by VAC.

I see. and one more question, how about those games where you get VAC banned by cheating in toher games. I know its a legacy mode, only applies to some of Valve own games, but you can get banned in one game and not be able to join in another one. I guess it still doesnt offer any legal protection there. Not that i ever intend to cheat anyway. My one and only attempt to cheat in multiplayer actually resulted in me getting banned within 15 minutes and i decided against it since. Still false positives do happen, especially with human element involved (i once got banned for not agreeing when mod said their server is best out there).

 

[DarkhoIlow]

I don't know if I read this right, but the EU rules imply that as long as you purchased the game and wish to get rid of the intrusive DRM you can because what you bought is yours right? So for example you could use a crack (if you'd wish) to bypass the DRM.

Was I on the ball with that one or read it wrong? Regardless, it's good to see EU have some decent rules for once.

 

[MrFalconfly]

I don't know if I read this right, but the EU rules imply that as long as you purchased the game and wish to get rid of the intrusive DRM you can because what you bought is yours right? So for example you could use a crack (if you'd wish) to bypass the DRM.

Was I on the ball with that one or read it wrong? Regardless, it's good to see EU have some decent rules for once.

That'd be pretty much correct.

Now all we need is to get the US and Japan to accept these consumer rights (forcibly if necessary).

 

[DjinnFor]

Finally, common sense might be making a come back.

Common sense in IP law is a "one step forward, two steps back" situation.