Well I think that is where everyone fundamentally agrees, software is for some reason treated differently, but that is also where I think the agreement breaks down.  Myself as well as EFF and PK don't believe that software should be different.  They should have the same copyright protections no more and if they want an EULA that is fine but it shouldn't be allowed to run afoul of existing consumer protections.  I see no reason software needs to have more protections than any other copyrighted materials.  If I buy it I own it, I can then do what I want with it such as sell it, modify it, copy it, and so on within copyright law limits.

I agree and this is one of the primary reasons that I am dubious of some court rulings as I see what you are describing all the time.  Just cause it works doesn't mean I have to like it or agree with it!

I agree with you here, not a large fan of the DMCA but I don't disagree with this.

I don't see why standard copyright protection are not enough for software?  Also courts have not always upheld EULAs.  Oh I am looking at their point of view however I just don't buy that they need extra protections.

First, returning a product after a rejected EULA. Not a legitimate solution.

There are costs incurred in purchasing a fraudulent product, shipping if you buy it online, time spent, fuel expenditures. In my case, I'm looking at 8 bucks easy to "take" a game back. I will stop violating them and return objectionable EULA containing products when I am reimbursed in a proper fashion for such a violation. The exchange of legal tender is a binding contract, the restricting EULA is a breach of that contract, it's very simple. They violate mine, I violate theirs.

Second, extra protections being necessary, bullshit. Spelling out copyright for all the fucking retards that don't know they aren't allowed to copy and distribute it, sure.

Stardocks licensing agreements have no such thing in them. All restrictions are protected by copyright law. The only thing that could even be considered extra protection is the ban on reverse engineering, and to actually do something with the legal right to reverse engineer it would require breaking copyright law.

A termination clause so EA can shut off their activation server without patching it out of their games and fuck you over has nothing to do with protecting their software. It has to do with fucking you over.

If you steal laptops and bring them to *your* house, plug them into *your* electrical outlets, and connect them to *your* router, they are still stolen laptops, and you are still a thief.

Bringing something into your house, or in this case, transferring something to your computer, does not imply a transfer of ownership rights.



Two wrongs never make a right, and you don't fight fire with gasoline. You're just making another excuse for them to create their DRM, and you're just making the problem worse.

bots ftw!

Okay - I think you are indulging in incredibly sloppy thinking, and although I consider the reasons why it's sloppy very obvious, you keep going back to this over and over. So, obviously you honestly believe that simply accessing another program is a violation of the rights of that license holder.

So I'm going over this point-by-point. The issue is complex, and I'm splitting my post up, and including references.
There are two items here to be considered:

1) The question of copyright: Does Blizzard have any inherent right to keep another program from interacting with their program.
2) The question of the EULA (And TOS): Can (Well, yes according to this ruling, but I'm going to say why I think this is a bad ruling, and why I hope and believe it will be overturned upon review) a license holder prevent their customer from using a third-party program that does *not* violate their IP rights with that program, and if so, can they hold the third party programmer responsible.

This leaves the second argument, the EULA and the TOS.

There are enormous problems with these being utilized to stop glider, because these fall under Contract Law, a pretty specific and well understood area. Contract Law under the U.S. (save Lousiana) falls under the Uniform Comercial Code, which requires pretty stringent standards for a contract to be formed. Unlike Copyright law, it's pretty cut and dried - I am egotistical enough to believe I have a good understanding of copyright law, but I'm an educated layman. UCC otoh is a subject I aced - I *know* I have it down pretty well.

First of all, only four jurisdictions actually recognize EULA as enforcable contracts, two because of court decisions (7th and 8th districts - I, sadly, am in the seventh) and two as a matter of law (Maryland and Virginia, which signed on to UCITA). Most other jurisdictions have recognized the basic notion that an EULA fails to meet the basic standards of a contract. In all honesty, since they *do* fails to meet the basic standards of a contract, I think this will eventually become the norm, but the reason it's relevant here is because the Ninth circuit has, until now, *not* recognized the EULA as an enforcable contract.

Which is important, because the judge is claiming 'contributory infringement' because, in causing the EULA to be violated and ending the license, he is therefore contributing to his *clients* violating copyright, when they load their now unlicensed copy into memory and run it.

Now, in the 7th or 8th circuit, I fully believe this would stand up to appeal. But - in the ninth circuit, when you buy your software you own the software (with the usual copyright limitations, but no more or less than that) unless you are specifically buying a license giving you rights above and beyond those typical to copyright.

Now, that part is worth noting - because the case that he uses to say that you're not the owner of your software are cases where people where doing things that would *not* be legal normally without licenses. The Sheriff's department bought 4,000 licenses, and installed 6,000 copies - well, *yes* that's a license issue - it has never been legal for me to use Galactic Civilization on 6,000 computers!!! Well, not if they're not all in my house anyway - {G}. So based on *that* he's saying that the concept of owner under § 117. Limitations on exclusive rights: Computer programs means the original owner, and *you* are a licensee.

There are three problems with that, two of them major.
1) This doesn't match ninth circuit precedent - but precedent is overturned all the time at this level. I've already said I think this will be overturned, so obviously I'm okay with that.
2) Click on the link and read it again. The name of the statute itself - "Limitations on exclusive rights". If you are not the owner of a program, why does the owner of a program need for there to be a limitation on the exclusive right of the owner, in order to copy the program, which is an exclusive right . . . of the owner? That's what the Judge said here - that the owner referred to in a limitation of the exclusive rights of the copyright owner was . . .the copyright owner. That doesn't even make *sense*.
3) But you agreed to the EULA when you bought the box?! There's a problem with this here - there is a provision in the UCC for standard Boiler plate contracts, and it's important. Boilerplate contracts are enforcable - between 'merchants'.


You and I are not, for the purposes of this conversation, merchants. We are consumers - and consumers are *specifically* excepted from these kind of licenses under the UCC. When I order 4,000 licenses for a department, I'm a merchant - when I order one copy for personal use, I'm a consumer.

So, there are three mistakes in this decision, and the judge *had* to commit all three of them to come out with a judgement of contributory infringement - and it wasn't even advanced by Blizzard. He came up with this ON HIS OWN!

So - the words 'activist judge' get thrown around a lot, all too often it translates as "Judge I don't Agree With", but I really don't think that's the case here. The judge went to a *LOT* of work to come up with this decision, and work backwards to rationalize it, and I think if the programmer appeals there is a *very* good chance of this being overturned.

Jonnan

Sorry but I don't want ot give legislators any more time to bend me over.  I don't like it!

I don't think the law is out of date on this one though - I think the judge made a bad decision and I hope to hell it's overturned because it's a lousy precedent, but the actual law is pretty clear.

"Unfair advantage" really *isn't* self explanatory because, however a big a dick cheaters and those who cater to cheater might be, there's no legal basis for suing him. Would you consider it worth suing him if he taught you the 'trick' to getting a pinball game to keep giving you new balls? There is a quantitative difference obviously, but not a qualitative one.

Now, if a law is passed making it illegal to cater to cheaters in a gaming arena, narrowly tailored - then go for it. I think it's a bad idea, but I'm not so attached to that opinion that I couldn't take a wait and see approach to it.

But this *is* judicial activism - I concede, I spent a ridiculous amount of time researching everything specifically to make sure I was actually right and could give the reasons why and the links to back it up, but at the end of the day - he was working really hard to get a guilty verdict out of this. Maybe the Judge is a WoW junkie himself and just wanted to shut this program down, but if not, then he was going to a *lot* of work to get a guilty verdict that overturns key consumer protections - I think it's reasonable to have a certain degree of paranoia as to why it was worth that much effort.

Jonnan

Well i cannot argue about US Law since i am neither are lawyer nor a inhabtiant of the usa.

But as far as i understood the article the bot program itself copied files of the wow program into the ram.



So it DID reproduce copyright protected material.

I have no idea in which quantity or quality it does so.

Also i dont argue that this may be a bad ruling.

Still i think that the dev of the bot program should be held responsible for creating a program that is *exclusivly*(since you cannot even use it in any other way) used to gain an unfair advantages in an competive pay to play game.

Just like if someone created a computer virus, he is not innocent because he did not installed it on a computer himself but sold it to someone else who used it.

And no, you cannot compare mmorpgs to cars or bots to toolkits(which do have a legal use).

Windows copies programs in part or whole. Every time you move a file, it copies it. Temporary copies have been legally protected for a long time because they are a necessary function of every day use, this ruling throws that out.

Besides, your "copyright infringement" while using the bot is being attributed to the bot maker. Blizzard didn't sue the users. The designer has been held accountable for the copying done by his product users.

This unfair advantage stuff is bullshit too. You are effectively playing against a computer in WOW, leveling is not a competition against the other players. Your lack of reason implies that by playing more than average, someone is given an advantage over the other players. It's a joke, an argument not even worthy of the straw man label.

Well, *I* do - because I think this is a bad decision that's going to end up biting consumers in the backside. It took *work* for the judge to misinterpret the law this badly, and that, to me, indicates there is an ideological thing going on beneath the surface somewhere.

When Ideologues are sure they're not doing anything wrong, they tend to be open about what they're trying to do - when they try to hide stuff behind a facade, then they're pretty sure that people wouldn't agree if they thought it through.

So, I think *you* are going to care down the line just what you lost with this at some point.


No one here has argued that it's 'Fair'. I wouldn't even argue that 'Life is unfair, get over it' - it's cheating, everyone here knows it's cheating. I think the guy is kinda scuzzy myself.

Do you *want* to live in a world where 'kinda scuzzy' is a valid legal term for a lawsuit? "Ladies and Gentleman of the Jury - What you need to decide is whether a 'Reasonable Man' would find my client scuzzy, and I say a reasonable man would not."

There are neither civil nor criminal 'scuzziness' penalties, and the law doesn't match up for this case.


The problem here is that - no, he's not.

He has not *touched* Blizzards property. If he had, it would be *direct* copyright infringement, not *contributory* infringement.

Let's be clear - when you say this is a good ruling, you are arguing that a company can withdraw your legal right to use their software, based on other actions that you do that are themselves *legal*.

If there had been no EULA, then everything would have been legal, even with this decision. Nothing in this decision says that what glider did was illegal.

This decision says that, point by point:
1) Blizzards customer paid for Blizzard software.

True

2) Blizzards EULA says that their customers are not allowed to use this *legal* program.

This is false, because as consumers (not merchants) Blizzards customers are specifically not bound by this kind of "industry Standard" aggreement under the Uniform Commercial Code.

3) In using this program, they violate the EULA, which ends the license for the software they paid for.

This is false because the Copyright acts specifically exempts 'owners' of software from requiring a license to use the software by copying it into the memory of the computer. It is obvious from the context of the statute that this refers to consumers, because *if* it referred to copyright owners, it would be pointless.

4) The customer used Blizzard Software *anyway*, thereby infringing upon Blizzards copyright.

This would be true IN THIS CASE, if and only if both steps two *and* step three were true!

5) By selling a program whose use, while itself legal, violated the EULA, MDY *contributed* to the violation of Blizzards exclusive copyrights.

THIS IS IMPORTANT! If the customer has infringed upon blizzards copyright, then this is true. It would be true if, for instance, the customer were using software that was sold for the purpose of forging license keys for a program so the customer could use it illegally, or any of a dozen other ways that someone *could* actually violate blizzards copyright. It just doesn't apply here because for the customer to be violating Blizzards copyright, Step four must be true, which requires *both* step two *and* step three to be true.

6) By Contributing to this infringement, MDY is liable for all profits plus punitive damages.

I'm fine with this - if he *had* contributed to infringing Blizzards IP, he would owe these damages.

Lets make this clear:

If you accept this decision as good legal decisionmaking you are accepting that, in the ninth circuit:

A) If you accept an End User License Agreement when installing software, you are completely bound to not do any *otherwise legal action* that the EULA forbids.

If Microsoft puts a paragraph in Words that says you are not allowed to criticize Microsoft, and you use Word, they can sue *you* (for infringement) and *the place you criticized them at* (for contributory infringement). If you use free software on the internet, and it says you are bound to not contribute to the Republican Party, that is a valid interpretation of this decision, and they can sue the GOP for punitive damages.

Would they win? Probably not - this will have to be pared back at some point, but how that's going to happen is anyone guess if this decision stands for the moment. Will you be allowed to do other things, but not use prescribed software? Will you not be allowed to use software that interacts with the original program? Will the whole thing be overturned? The point is that Glider, in and of itself, is perfectly legal - this decision *requires* the fact that Blizzards customers used Glider in contravention of the EULA.

Any software you have *ever* used that has a license that does not *specifically* include the right to copy the software from hard disk to memory, means the copyright owner of that software can sue *you*. Legally. Because you don't own the software, you only have a license for it, despite the *specific* fact that the copyright act allows you to do so.

Part A) could be argued out - UCC (Like all the 'Uniform' Codes) actually varies from state to state depending on the exact language the state legislature adopted - it's possible a state might not have adopted the consumer protections and so on. Part ? That's just dumb.

LOL! That's the worst personal attack I've seen yet. Maybe I should frame it and put it on a wall .

The fact that you're resorting to personal attacks and name calling tells me plenty about how this argument is going.

. . . and if you feel my style of argument is taking something out of context, feel free to point it out and restate the thesis of your argument.



The EULA isn't legally binding, but copyright law is. Without the EULA you can't create copies, period. Without the EULA, all you have is a nice coaster for your coffee because you can't install the software because that's copying it.

If you take out the EULA as legally binding, what you have left is a product that is even more useless to you, because you're not allowed to copy it at all.



All this over a smiley face? Wow. Relax, it wasn't an intentional omission. The lack of copying the smiley face is simply because of how my browser handles copy and paste operations. It's rather incapable of copying a graphic into a text field.

Seriously, though, relax a bit. There's no reason to be angry at me, I'm just presenting my personal opinions. I know I'm not a lawyer, and I know you aren't either, so we're both a bit ignorant about how the law works.

In any case, it did appear you were trying to use your sarcasm as some sort of argument, because you followed it up with the second sentence which stated that the "other" statement was somehow absurd, which weakly implies your first statement, although it was intended sarcastically, was somehow supposed to be some sort of argument. I apologize if I had misunderstood the connection between your two sentences.