LGJ: Blizzard, Cheating and Copyright Infringement
Mark Methenitis contributes Law of the Game on Joystiq ("LGJ"), a column on legal issues as they relate to video games:
Everyone else is talking about the Supreme Court, but I'm going to hold off on any further commentary until we have an actual decision to analyze. Instead, I want to bring your attention back to a suit filed by Blizzard in California, Blizzard v. VanKuipers, Simpson, and John Does 1-10 (aka the GameThreat.net case). This case seems to be the sequel of sorts to the "Glider" case from the not too distant past (Blizzard v. MDY Industries). In short, that case was about a World of WarCraft "autopilot" program called Glider. Glider circumvented Warden (the WoW cheat protection software). The short version of the result from that case is that MDY Industries, the maker of Glider, was held liable for contributory and vicarious copyright infringement for putting out Glider, which violated WoW's End User License Agreement and Terms of Service. The opinion also upheld Blizzard's right to sue over issues that diminished the player experience.
That brings us to the GameThreat.net case. Some of this should sound pretty familiar. GameThreat.net put out a series of StarCraft 2 hacks and cheats, which worked in multiplayer. These programs were available very shortly after the launch of StarCraft 2, and that, of course, irritated Blizzard, which sent a cease and desist of some sort. While it may have initially appeared the two were in compliance, Blizzard discovered they have re-distributed their source code to others, who have continued to make it available. As a result, Blizzard is suing on basically the same premise as Glider<. As is often the case, the ideas here present a bit of a double-edged sword.
Everyone else is talking about the Supreme Court, but I'm going to hold off on any further commentary until we have an actual decision to analyze. Instead, I want to bring your attention back to a suit filed by Blizzard in California, Blizzard v. VanKuipers, Simpson, and John Does 1-10 (aka the GameThreat.net case). This case seems to be the sequel of sorts to the "Glider" case from the not too distant past (Blizzard v. MDY Industries). In short, that case was about a World of WarCraft "autopilot" program called Glider. Glider circumvented Warden (the WoW cheat protection software). The short version of the result from that case is that MDY Industries, the maker of Glider, was held liable for contributory and vicarious copyright infringement for putting out Glider, which violated WoW's End User License Agreement and Terms of Service. The opinion also upheld Blizzard's right to sue over issues that diminished the player experience.
That brings us to the GameThreat.net case. Some of this should sound pretty familiar. GameThreat.net put out a series of StarCraft 2 hacks and cheats, which worked in multiplayer. These programs were available very shortly after the launch of StarCraft 2, and that, of course, irritated Blizzard, which sent a cease and desist of some sort. While it may have initially appeared the two were in compliance, Blizzard discovered they have re-distributed their source code to others, who have continued to make it available. As a result, Blizzard is suing on basically the same premise as Glider<. As is often the case, the ideas here present a bit of a double-edged sword.
