World of Warcraft Bot Maker Suffers Crushing Defeat
- Thread starter Andy Chalk
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Athinira said:Except that part 3 of the paragraph in question specifically says that the rights this paragraph grants you CANNOT be waived by agreement. So the law trumps anything Blizzard writes in their EULA or ToS in that regard, which still makes it very pertinent to my original post.albino boo said:
I would suggest reading and understanding danish law (which i can hardly blame you for not doing, since they don't have official english translations - i assume you're from the United States - and are hardly that interesting given that we're a small country) before going on about what is or isn't relevant to my example.
Edit: also, even though I've already mentioned this in an earlier post, in Denmark you need to be able to prove actual damage in order to be able to make a financial claim in a civil suit in addition to proving that there has been a breach of copyright to begin with - which as already stated isn't the case. Simply pointing to breach of parts of the EULA/ToS (which the law in this case invalidates anyway) isn't going to award you anything.
Small but rather important point Danish law does not invalidate the EULA and TOS. The contract is not unfair and doesn't ask you commit and illegal act. Its is perfectly legal to paint your house purple but in the sales agreement its states you can't paint your house purple you are guilty of breaching that contract. As stated before they can not profit from breaching contract so there is no need to prove damages. Furthermore the Danish parliament can change the law as much as it likes but due to the primacy of EU law any case will decided under EU law and not Danish law. The law will struck down by Danish courts. The only reason why is hasn't because large corporations don't really care about what the law is in small EU member states with populations less than a major city. If this was French, German or English law it would have already been challenged. if necessary, all the way to the Europa court.
Botting is a serious issue in games. I don't buy the "play the game as you want to" argument because with a bot, you aren't playing. You're running a program to do it for you. And I have no sympathy for assjacks who actually sell this shit to people. Good for Blizz.
3rd party programs are fine as long as they don't affect actual gameplay. UI is not the same as having an auto-scripted rotation that does your dps for you. BTW botting and macro's are NOT the same thing.
3rd party programs are fine as long as they don't affect actual gameplay. UI is not the same as having an auto-scripted rotation that does your dps for you. BTW botting and macro's are NOT the same thing.
This makes me wonder, if Blizzard was promised part of the revenue from bot sales would they still be attempting to settle the issue in court?
And not allowing a decent company to make money off giving people the power to grief others...Sean951 said:
Seriously, cheaters in multiplayer games can fuck off. I don't even get pissed off at them, I just wonder why they do it and how they could possibly find it fun? I did something unfair once in Dark Souls (no cheating, just not the most honorable action in PvP) and I felt so dirty, I just stood there the rest of the fight and let the guy kill me.
...except if there are laws that says that the right to repaint your house can't be waived by agreement. In that case, the law invalidates that part of the agreement.albino boo said:
This might not be the case with houses, but it is the case here. If you look at an earlier post of mine, i actually translated the entire paragraph to english for someone else. Feel free to go read it.
Yes you can, because if the law declares parts of the contract invalid, then there has been no breach of contract.albino boo said:
And yes, even if you had been in breach of contract, you still need to be able to prove damages to get a distinct economic compensation.
...except that this shows that you don't understand how the European Union worksalbino boo said:
With the exception of some major laws, most EU laws (including copyright laws) aren't really laws, but rather directives that member states are obliged to enact in their national laws (they typically get a deadline to do so). So in short, EU simply dictates some terms about how national laws are written. The directive in question here is called the Infosec Directive [http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=CELEX:32001L0029:EN:HTML], and simply dictates a couple of requirements that member states has to apply in their national copyright laws.
What's important here, however, is that the EU directives typically only acts as a form of minimal requirements to a member states copyright laws. The member state is free to enact it's own copyright laws beyond that, and unless one of those laws happens to be in direct conflict with a european law, then the law still takes full effect. So unless you can prove that our special paragraph somehow conflicts with european law (hint: it doesn't. There is nothing in european law that contradicts national law creating reasonable exceptions to copyright), then the EU courts aren't going to act on it
)Also, why you think the size of the country matters is beyond me. This case is a matter of internet property, and the internet has no boundries. Blizzard would probably sue a bot-making company within their legal reach, no matter which country it was based in. The appropriate question is whether or not said company can afford a lawsuit or simply just shuts down at the mere threat of one - we've seen that before
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Oh I'm well aware of how they were intended to be used. I just never found it all that efficient to use them on my own time and felt that if I was online 24/7 (Since when I was playing WoW I was playing an awful lot.) that it would likely get me banned anyway with nothing to show for it, I just watched Movies on my second screen while farming my materials/etc/etc. But as one commenter mentioned, RuneScape would be nothing without it's bots. Despite what "legitimate" players(Like myself at the time I'll admit) will say, Bots allowed the free-economy to be just that, free. People were able to bot en masse to aquire raw materials that would otherwise take hours/days/weeks to amass enough to raise your skill level to a decent amount-Blacksmithing in my day took over 10,000 bars to max out, which in itself took something like 30,000 adamantite ores and 15,000 coal. (Which to break it down would take in excess of 60 hours to mine completely.) Though today they've, I'm told, made things more streamlined and straight forward. Bots, in their own way, help the games economy run in a manner that's more fair to all. Even if it raises the "cheaters" to a level that they didn't "earn".weirdguy said:
So can somebody explain this to me? A guy makes a bot and sells it. Blizzard/Activision doesn't like that so they sue them. What are they suing for? It hurts the in game economy, but that has nothing directly to do with Blizzard/Activision's bottom line. It's cheating for sure, but when could you get sued for cheating? I'm not defending Ceiling Fan, I just don't really understand what Blizz was awarded money for (Not including compensation for legal fees)
Uhm, what? Which addons "raided for you"? If you're talking about DBM, it's merely an addon that alerts you when specific boss mechanics are coming or happening nothing more. You still have to control your character yourself.Schmeiser said:
Yeah, I'm not against cheating. I do it myself occasionally. But never in an online environment, not even in co-operative games. When with or against other players, I want to play on a level playing field.
When you bot in online games, you actively poison other player's experience. The number of times some botting douche has taken mining nodes from right in front of me can only be counted on my fingers if I do it in tens. They take my farm, my mats, and then inflate the AH market even more by feeding the gold sellers with the free money they got while they slept.
I don't have any delusions that this will stop botting, but it'll hopefully at least reduce it for now. It's something.
When you bot in online games, you actively poison other player's experience. The number of times some botting douche has taken mining nodes from right in front of me can only be counted on my fingers if I do it in tens. They take my farm, my mats, and then inflate the AH market even more by feeding the gold sellers with the free money they got while they slept.
I don't have any delusions that this will stop botting, but it'll hopefully at least reduce it for now. It's something.
While I feel it is horrible that a small group of developers gets completely stomped into the ground like this, Blizzard operated completely correctly. Bots in a multiplayer game like WoW only hurt the game and enable far more nefarious purposes than is implied in "being able to play the game as the customers please". I also fundamentally disagree with the assertion that a breach of EULA should be a legal matter.
I wish this could have been settled out of court. I wish they didn't have to pay 7 million dollars. I wish this wouldn't set a precedent for a legal practice I don't agree with. But these people, 'hackers', will continue existing and Blizzard needs to set some kind of example as a warning to others.
EDIT: I'd also like to add that I think it is fundamentally criminal that they charged money for these bots. I fully understand that coding work went into them and that that coding work needs to be paid for, but that is exactly like a hacker selling a virus. The program is already doing wrong. The fact you want to profit from that makes you greedy in my opinion.
I wish this could have been settled out of court. I wish they didn't have to pay 7 million dollars. I wish this wouldn't set a precedent for a legal practice I don't agree with. But these people, 'hackers', will continue existing and Blizzard needs to set some kind of example as a warning to others.
EDIT: I'd also like to add that I think it is fundamentally criminal that they charged money for these bots. I fully understand that coding work went into them and that that coding work needs to be paid for, but that is exactly like a hacker selling a virus. The program is already doing wrong. The fact you want to profit from that makes you greedy in my opinion.
I don't particular like WoW or most MMO's, but I do understand that these bots violate the spirit of the game, disrupt the virtual economy, & break the terms of use contract that's signed with an account.J Tyran said:
All that accepted as fact, why exactly is Blizzard owed $7,000,000.00? Real-money trading is against the rules as well, so seeing as nothing contained within the game has intrinsic/legitimate value, what damages were incurred?
Banning accounts, sure; but a seven-figure ruling? I've yet to hear anyone reasonably explain for this
I still remember the days where I would literally see those level 1 newbies run out of the starter zone, straight into Stormwind, spam their bile, then inexplicably suicide. Then when that didn't work, they resorted to using 20+ characters, somehow hacked them to make them float in the air and made them fall on the ground in such a manner that their corpses spelled weblinks on the ground.ffs-dontcare said: