[Infowarrior] - WoW, DMCA, and WTF?

[Richard Forno]

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080507-blizzard-attempt-to-kill-wow-bot-bad-news-for-copyright-law.html

Blizzard attempt to kill WoW bot bad news for copyright law
By Ben Kuchera


World of WarCraft is a game made of many parts: resource gathering,  
combat, item-creation... and some of those parts are more fun than  
others. A company called MDY wanted to help with the dull bits of the  
game, and maybe assist gold farmers a little bit, by releasing a  
program called Glider that allows your character to continue  
collecting gold and leveling while you're not at your computer. In  
2006, Blizzard and Vivendi showed up at an MDY employee's home and  
threatened legal action against the company, claiming Glider violates  
the Terms of Service of World of Warcraft as well as the Digital  
Millennium Copyright Act. MDY then sued to establish its right to sell  
its software, causing Blizzard to file its own suit to stop MDY from  
selling the program. The issue is whether or not Glider is breaking  
any laws, and Blizzard is hoping that by stretching the boundaries of  
what constitutes copyright infringement, it can get MDY shut down. If  
Blizzard succeeds, it could set a very dangerous precedent.

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By scrolling through the EULA and clicking okay, you agree, and can  
then play the game. Here's where Blizzard's logic gets slippery. To  
play the game, certain parts of the code have to loaded into your  
computer's RAM. In effect, Blizzard says you're making a copy of the  
game. Since Glider breaks the EULA, you no longer have a license to  
make that copy in your system's RAM, and now you're infringing on  
Blizzard's copyright.

So you see, any program which creates a "copy" of itself in your  
system's RAM—and that's every program on your computer—makes you  
guilty of copyright infringement unless you have a license allowing  
you to do so. Public Knowledge, a DC-based public interest group  
defending the rights of users in "the emerging digital culture" has  
filed an amicus brief with the court explaining why these claims are  
so preposterous. PK's arguments are sound and easy to understand.  
"Defendant Blizzard insists that users of its software must rely upon  
a license from Blizzard to make RAM copies, and users infringe  
copyright when they use the software in a way not permitted by the  
license agreement," the amicus stated. "But the license agreement  
cannot govern users' rights to make RAM copies, because that right is  
already reserved to users under 17 U.S.C. § 117. Therefore, Blizzard  
cannot claim any infringement of its copyrights based upon the  
creation of RAM copies..."