Whatever happened to BnetD?

[Snorelax]

Here we go again.  :)

My OPINION (note: Bolty's opinion does not represent official stance of the Lurker Lounge and you will not be banned for disagreeing with him, a.k.a. "the standard disclaimer" that he wishes he didn't have to say) is that BNetD was a good thing, which was used for bad purposes (i.e. the Warcraft III beta problem).  The moment BNetD was used to circumvent Blizzard's Warcraft III beta program, it was doomed.  And it deserved it.  Blizzard spends a huge amount of money on the hype machines that are their betas, and BNetD trashed that.

Peer-to-peer software is along the same lines - great software that's misused, and the RIAA has every right to crack down on it.  But that's a whole 'nother can of worms, and I should keep this thread on topic.  :)

-Bolty

Technically it wasn't the BNetD team that did it, IIRC, but someone that took the code and adapted it to work with the Warcraft III beta

[DeeBye]

At the time, the BNetD people asked Blizzard for their key-checking system, or at least a way to direct BNetD logins to Blizzard's verification servers, but as I understand it Blizzard not only did not cooperate, they never replied to the requests at all.

Can you blame them? If I were Blizzard, I'd never respond to that request either.

The CD-Key check is there to ensure that people aren't playing on B.net with pirated copies. Giving away the algorithms to this CD-key check is akin to giving away the combination to their bank vault. It's a ludicrous idea.

I've never heard that they asked for a way to redirect logins, but I'm not surprised Blizzard didn't accomadate them. Blizzard is a for-profit company, and providing a service to a potential not-for-profit competitor doesn't make a whole lot of business sense.

Don't get me wrong, though, I like the idea of BnetD. In general, I love Open Source projects.

But I can also see this from Blizzard's side. They are obliged to vigorously protect their copyright. They are not obliged to provide services to people trying to "copy" ("clone"? "emulate"? choose your own verb) the copyrighted material, nor should they be.

I can see this from both sides of the fence, and to me the view from Blizzard's side looks a lot clearer.


-DeeBye

[aurikan]

Can you blame them? If I were Blizzard, I'd never respond to that request either.

I agree, and don't blame them a bit for withholding the information. I don't blame them for refusing to do deferred checks as well. What I don't really agree with them is their contention that they can deny any competition for matchmaking services by (1) refusing to accomodate 3rd parties with a cd key validation method and then (2) suing them for not having a cd key validation method.

It seems to me the're trying to have their cake and eat it too. IMO, they shouldn't be able to have it both ways. But the judiciary has yet to decide.

[DeeBye]

What I don't really agree with them is their contention that they can deny any competition for matchmaking services by (1) refusing to accomodate 3rd parties with a cd key validation method and then (2) suing them for not having a cd key validation method.

They aren't denying anyone any competition. They are vigorously protecting their copyright, as is expected of them. They saw a potential threat to their financial interests, and took legal action. If it creates a no-win situation for the BnetD team, it's their problem -- not Blizzard's.

It seems to me the're trying to have their cake and eat it too.

They own the copyright to the "cake". They are allowed under (current US) law to do with it as they please. They can both have it and eat it, at their leisure.


I'm not a huge fan of digital copyright law, but I can't fault companies for using it to protect their interests. I'd do the same in their shoes.


-DeeBye

[aurikan]

You've got to reflect upon what the intention of copyright is before you can make such sweeping pronouncements. In the constitution, the establishment of copyright is to grant content creators limited monopolies over their creations, to encourage innovation.

By finding in favour of Blizzard, the court would essentially be establishing that through proprietary access controls, they can lock up peripheral markets in which they would normally have to compete. It is legal to reverse engineer the Diablo matchmaking (bnet) protocol in order to create an interoperable matchmaking service, even if that service competes with bnet.

However, since the access control would be impossible to implement, and they would legally have to implement it in order to compete legally, obviously they would not be able to compete.

So, what has the establishment of copyright in this case done? It has suppressed innovation, instead of encouraging it, as nobody can compete for the matchmaking services for Blizzard games. And I, for one, would welcome competition: bnet has many easy-to-fix problems (for example, bans don't stick, you can't ban people without them entering the channel, color hacking channels, etc.) which I'm sure a rivalry for market share would take care of.

So, in my humble opinion, if the law finds that Blizzard/VU can lock up this market, then the law is wrong.

[Jarulf]

>They are vigorously protecting their copyright, as is expected of them. They saw a potential threat to their financial interests, and took
>legal action.

Ehh, that is two different thing. The only copyright issue here is their claim that bnetd contain copied code. Just because you have a financial threat doesn't mean there is a copyright issue or that you have any case.

>They own the copyright to the "cake".

You don't get copyright to a thing such as a match making service such as bnet. You do get copyright on things such as code used to run it. But it is two very different things.


Someone mentioned the ToU for bnet. Assuming it is a completely OK and valid "contract" and otherwise legal, valid and such, it is still of quite minor interest or none at all. Playing on bnetd (or even programming/providing bnetd) doesn't require you to use the bnet at the same time. Hence, the easy solution to use bnetd foe example, despite bnet's ToU not allowing it, would of course be to not agree to the ToU for bnet. Simple as that. As for the actual validity and other aspects of the ToU, that is another story were I can tell my opinion some other time :)

Finally note that the case as someone said, also include TM issues as well as some interesting EULA/ToU breaches claimed by Blizzard. That is for me one of the most interesting parts of the case.

For interested peopoe, check out the link given at the start of the thread, and read what is there, it is quite informative although a bit legal language at time. Finally, if I understand it correctly, those people lived in USA and hence we have to look at all this from a perspective of US laws. Still, it would be interesting to ponder over differences if this project had been done (or moves to) another country.