Blizzard going to the courts again?

[Occhidiangela]

I had my doubts about Blizzard in this case until I read his site.

It looks like an infomercial, but more importantly, he basically states right out that he uses copyrighted material.  His claim is that it is protected under fair use for educational purposes, but the problem is

1. He is intending to profit off of this, which isn't quite "educational"
2. Fair use for "educational purposes" is limited to doing research on the copyrighted material, which this is obviously not.


I personally think that a company should be able to control "guides" to an extent, though it is a touchy issue.  It only gets more touchy for MMOs as they change and people may want what isn't given.  The people that write the guides may not even know what people want.

The other side of the issue is that this would prevent something like a how-to for Word if it contained a picture of the GUI.  However, the biggest deal in my mind is that this person intends to profit.
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This is a tough one to predict. His initial assertion, if I understand his filing, looks defeatable due to the "clean hands" issue. Public Citizen's comments do not stress the "education" angle. If he goes back to brick and mortar, rather than using PayPal in the interim, he can continue to earn revenue, but his stream will probably be reduced due to the convenience of PayPal for online business transactions.

Check or Money Order would still be viable, if his product is good.

A number of "unofficial biographies" have been published on a number of public persons, and they have generally withstood challenges vis a vis the rights of being published and sold for a profit. That might be a more productive line to take.

Occhi