[Discussioni] Fwd: Re: [fsl-discuss] bnetd.org - Was: Treaties and Domestic Law

[Stefano Maffulli]

ecco svelato l'arcano

ciao

----------  Forwarded Message  ----------

Subject: Re: [fsl-discuss] bnetd.org - Was: Treaties and Domestic Law
Date: Thu, 21 Feb 2002 20:02:22 -0800 (PST)
From: Gabe Wachob <gwachob a wachob.com>
To: "M. Drew Streib" <dtype a dtype.org>
Cc: <fsl-discuss a alt.org>

After reading the info at bnetd.org, its clear what the issue is - in
fact, bnetd does not do do a "CD-KEY" check (in fact, the specs on how to
do that are probably "proprietary" so this, in combination with
anti-circumvention rules means that effectively Blizzard can extend their
copyright to prevent anybody from making "compatible" servers!). And it
appears that someone else has taken the bnetd code and added to it to do
the actual circumvention (not the bnetd people). In short, bnetd is not
the ones doing the circumvention, but because the code is GPL, somehow
bnetd is violating DMCA because they wrote code that *could be extended*
to be a circumvention device? Thats pretty scary.

	-Gabe

On Thu, 21 Feb 2002, Gabe Wachob wrote:
> On Thu, 21 Feb 2002, M. Drew Streib wrote:
> > Their "crime" was creating software that was capable of running a
> > gaming server similar to Blizzard's Blizzard.net, catering to software
> > such as Starcraft and Diablo.
> >
> > This case is distinctly different than the RIAA DMCA cases. Frankly,
> > I'm a little confused as to what the alleged copyright violation is,
> > since the games are legally owned by their respective owners, and no
> > data other than the instances of games travel through the game servers.
> > (And some chat around the games.)
>
> Are you sure that Blizzard isn't just selling you a license? This might
> then be a UCITA+DMCA double backslap! The copyright infringement might be
> contributory infringement of the license of the game to the "purchaser"
> (in that the license may prevent the licensee from using any network
> servers except BlizzardNet)
>
> 	-Gabe