Blizzard against open-sourcing Glider code
by Zach Yonzon 
Aug 2nd 2008 at 2:00PM
Blizzard's case against MDY has already sparked some debate, and this latest request may catch the attention of open source and digital rights advocates. Blizzard has always taken a hardline stance against users of the program, even banning countless users back in May. Automation is clearly against the EULA, so players who flirt with bot programs such as MMO Glider should proceed at their own risk. A complete coverage of the case between Blizzard and MDY can be found over at Virtually Blind.
Filed under: Cheats, Blizzard, News items
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
Mix Aug 2nd 2008 2:17PM
Go bliz
Volomon Aug 3rd 2008 2:17AM
There not going to have ANY luck preventing it from being open source, Blizzard screwed up big time. Instead of a handful of people using a bot program their going to have 10x that number when it hits open source along with the increased lack of control they will have against multiple developers of the program.
They can easily put that code up as a example or teaching reference.
They can no prevent or circumvent the freedoms of individuals for the protection of anything.
Faar Aug 2nd 2008 9:21PM
Wowglider wasn't used by a mere handful, but rather by tens of thousands of players. That's why Blizzard takes this thing very seriously.
Tinious Aug 3rd 2008 8:02AM
You are very confused about Intellectual Property law. You need to go do some research on Derivative Works, the art of "Performing" and understand what is and is not Copyrightable.
Declaring something as a "Teaching Reference" absolutely would not apply here.
Volomon Aug 4th 2008 7:41PM
If that was flat out true than why would WoW have to bother with a "special" injunction to "attempt" to prevent that?
ScytheNoire Aug 2nd 2008 2:49PM
Those who followed this know that Blizzard used copyright law, which, none of this should apply to. But since EULA's don't hold up in court, they had to go with copyright law, which courts are still listening to, for now.
Law is going to change, copyright and patent law will hopefully take a major hit.
But Blizzard didn't win it's lawsuit based on it's EULA, it cheated and had to use copyright, which the entire case has nothing to do with. Copyright shouldn't even be in consideration here.
Kaljin Aug 2nd 2008 3:14PM
So its bad they cheated with a Copyright lawsuit when a Document stating that bots are against rules is NOT considered meaningful in court? Your logic is idiotic, until the U.S. Court System stops acting retarded, people need to exploit its stupidity and try their best to win when their main document is meaningless.
Mihn Aug 2nd 2008 3:18PM
I would like to know where you were in the courtroom arguing that point, cause if you are so right, then shouldn't Blizzard have lost?
Guess you should have been on Gliders side then arguing for them.
ScytheNoire Aug 2nd 2008 4:35PM
It's not my fault that MDY doesn't have good lawyers.
Is what MDY doing wrong? Yes.
Is it illegal? Highly questionable.
Based on EULA, it doesn't hold up in court.
But Blizzard argued that MDY made use of Blizzard's source code, thus, copyright infringement.
Because what MDY was dong was morally wrong, and they were making a profit off the work of others (i.e. Blizzard's code), the court slapped them down.
It wasn't really a copyright issue, but it's the only way Blizzard had a chance to win.
JDM Aug 2nd 2008 5:35PM
They used copyright infringement because the program copied the part of WoW which was in memory in order to do its deed.
Tinious Aug 3rd 2008 7:55AM
@SN - You are not a lawyer and have a very weak understanding of Intellecual Property law. The first statement is a complement. The second statement is not meant to be an insult. But really, I'm sorry - but you're wrong - copyright law absolutely applies here.
EULA's are fundamentally linked with Copyright law, as they state what a user can and can't do.
Pinwiz Aug 2nd 2008 2:57PM
God, Blizzard just wants to make the situation worse for them. If they hadn't taken this step, it wouldn't spread as fast as it's going to.
crsh Aug 2nd 2008 3:37PM
Just like the court case, it's understandable why Blizzard is trying to break Glider and its users, but their lawyers are taking a very slippery approach to the issue. I'm not sure why they can't be satisfied with banning players who use it, it shouldn't be that hard to detect (but may require extra expenses such as additional staff and what not); perhaps monitoring 10 million subscribers is too much, aka they are a victim of their own success.
Dimebagg Aug 2nd 2008 3:56PM
I agree with blizzard, but they're STILL getting money from accounts even if they ARE gliding.
DirtyPriest Aug 2nd 2008 5:20PM
The logic here is that if there are enough botters to deteriorate the games quality which makes you lose legitamate customers and if the balance falls that you lose more legit players than you gain in botters; you are losing money. It's Blizzard has a commitment to quality even if they aren't losing money.
I remember someone saying that if Blizzard persues this through court they take several risks 1) if they lose, it sets a precedent and basically opens the flood gates 2) If they win, the developer sends the source code all over the Internet and basically opens the flood gates. Kinda funny that may be true.
It's a lose-lose situation unless they can prevent the source code legally from being released. But how exactly do you enforce that?
Anyway, this is just another case where the law is lagging behind technology.
Tuhljin Aug 2nd 2008 5:31PM
"If I can't make money off of it, I'll just do as much damage to you as I possibly can!"
Just more evidence that the creators of Glider are, in fact, scumbags, as those of us with any sense knew all along (and those of us with no sense still won't see, undoubtedly).
JDM Aug 2nd 2008 5:46PM
Is it me, or were there never any threats or even thoughts of releasing it as opensource? From the sounds of it, Blizzard is just covering possible outcomes rather than responding to them. I don't think this is shocking news at all, merely expected.
Eisengel Aug 2nd 2008 11:28PM
The U.S. legal system is built mostly on checks and balances. To combat the exclusivity of Copyright, there are Fair Use exemptions that specifically allow the purchaser of a product certain rights. Using material for educational purposes is a specific exemption of Copyright in the Fair Use codes. If MDY were to put their code under an open source license and post it for educational use in say, debugging interactive applications, it would be protected. Blizzard is trying to cut them off before they have time to do that with this action.
Blizzard's actions are actually legally nearly criminal. I'm not saying that MDY is composed of wonderful loving and caring people, sure they acted in bad faith, but Blizzard is trying to push decisions that are against the specific letter of the law and are using a loophole in Title 17 opened by the DCMA (which has language in it that directly contradicts U.S. Title 17) and exploited constantly by the MPAA for use in prosecuting people who download mp3s.
This entire digital media copyright prosecution is an immense overreaction by pretty much everyone involved. In 2004 Harvard Business School and UNC Chapel Hill collaborated in a study to assess exactly how much damage illegal file sharing does to corporate record sales. They monitored a very large section of the traffic on the Internet for a while. The first sentence of their conclusion is: "We find that file sharing has no statistically significant effect on purchases of the average album in our sample." [F. Olberhozer, et al. 2004] In fact, at one point they state that the effect of file sharing on album sales is approximately the same as rounding error when calculating sales. I encourage you to skim the paper yourself (or at least the conclusion):
http://www.unc.edu/~cigar/papers/FileSharing_March2004.pdf
This entire mess is patently ridiculous. What is the most-pirated piece of software on the planet? Windows. Is Bill Gates still incredibly rich? It seems that Microsoft got along just fine with people pirating their OS, in fact Microsoft even allowed pirated versions of Windows to use the Automatic Updates. I'm no fanboy of Microsoft, but at least they acted intelligently.
Blizzard's reaction is rather disproportionate to the amount of damage done. It would be as if you saw your neighbor reading your newspaper, so you creep up behind him and bash in his head with a brick, so that he couldn't use the information he stole from you.
Zanny Aug 2nd 2008 9:26PM
But that just shows the flaw in the legal system regarding the ability of individuals to make programs like glider and be unstoppable in their use of it. Its blizzards game and they should maintain the right to do whatever they want with it, and glider was exclusively used on blizzard code.
Zach Aug 2nd 2008 11:32PM
"his entire mess is patently ridiculous. What is the most-pirated piece of software on the planet? Windows. Is Bill Gates still incredibly rich? It seems that Microsoft got along just fine with people pirating their OS, in fact Microsoft even allowed pirated versions of Windows to use the Automatic Updates. I'm no fanboy of Microsoft, but at least they acted intelligently.
Blizzard's reaction is rather disproportionate to the amount of damage done. It would be as if you saw your neighbor reading your newspaper, so you creep up behind him and bash in his head with a brick, so that he couldn't use the information he stole from you."
You think this is about MONEY?!?
The people who use MMO Glider are all paying, playing accounts! This is less about money than it is about making the game FAIR for everyone else. Blizzard isn't doing this because of greed, it's doing it out of a sense of fair play and keeping a balanced game environment!
You can pirate Windows all you like, what you do with it doesn't affect anyone else directly. But people using MMO Glider in the game creates an impact on the playing community. Blizzard BANNED paying customers. It's about fair play.