09-22-2003, 10:38 PM
I totally agree with you WarLocke: if I were the judge, I would contend that the good faith effort by the BnetD devs to work with Blizzard in order to implement the access control mechanism fulfills the obligations of the 3rd party to Blizzard under the DMCA. I'm not the judge, however, and US judges have lately shown quite the propensity to disagree with my logic. We'll have to wait and see.
Aside to Bolty: You've hit the nail on the head here. What we have is software that enables people to do Bad Things, be it mass copying of copyrighted media, or circumvent access controls a la using BnetD with a pirated copy of a Blizzard game. However, I would opine that the people the law should target for such naughtiness are the people engaging in the act: the people running WC3Beta pirate servers, the people running WC3Beta pirate client software, the people distributing the WC3Beta pirate software, the people downloading copyright material without permission, and people uploading copyright material without verifying the destination has permission to possess the material. What's wrong is the people's actions, not the technology that makes it feasible.
Aside to Bolty: You've hit the nail on the head here. What we have is software that enables people to do Bad Things, be it mass copying of copyrighted media, or circumvent access controls a la using BnetD with a pirated copy of a Blizzard game. However, I would opine that the people the law should target for such naughtiness are the people engaging in the act: the people running WC3Beta pirate servers, the people running WC3Beta pirate client software, the people distributing the WC3Beta pirate software, the people downloading copyright material without permission, and people uploading copyright material without verifying the destination has permission to possess the material. What's wrong is the people's actions, not the technology that makes it feasible.