As you may know, Sulake has been increasing theirs control towards retro servers, they’ve been very rude with hotel owners and prosecuted developers too. However there is something Sulake does not want you to know, and it is what they have copyright on.
When you access their website you will notice their copyright holder on the bottom of the website: “© 2004 - 2013 Sulake Corporation Oy. HABBO is a registered trademark of Sulake Corporation Oy in the European Union, the USA, Japan, the People's Republic of China and various other jurisdictions. All rights reserved.” As you can read, they claim to have copyright on their material, and it’s true. When you receive a DMCA they never tell you what they really have rights on, and if you ask them, they say they cannot tell you (Yes, it’s funny because it’s supposed they HAVE TO tell you what rights you are infringing) or also they say, according to some game’s owners I’ve asked, they have the whole idea registered. This is the biggest lie in the world; I will quote directly from U.S. Copyright Office - What Does Copyright Protect? (FAQ) : “Copyright does not protect facts, ideas, systems, or methods of operation, although it may protect the way these things are expressed.” Let’s talk now about their copyrights, you can find them here: WebVoyage Titles .
Hey, Hey, but they have registered the client code, so they have rights on it, which is their Achilles heel then? It’s basically a diplomatic problem, copyright law is from the United States as well as the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, what means in first place that if your website is not hosted in the U.S.A. you really don’t have to answer to the DMCA’S if they don’t send the equivalent request for the country of your hosting provider (I will quote The Pirate Bay case here: The Pirate Bay Pulls No Punches Responding To Takedown Requests | WebProNews)
Well but the best has not come yet, the whole copyright law does not apply at all in the following countries according to Circular 38a of the U.S. Copyright Office, as of January 2010; Afghanistan, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Iran, Iraq, San Marino and Turkmenistan. (Just draw your own conclusions).
Well, you now know what Sulake never wanted you to know. And this is the real reason of why WoW, Mu, Meetin and ton of other private servers exists and nothing can be done. To finish with, I leave a message to Sulake, because I know they are reading this: You really do NOT want to take down retro servers, it’s a huge mistake. I have nothing with you, but let’s face it, all retro servers’ players play at least twice a week Habbo and own things there, taking down retros only will make you lose people, because all that players will go to other games. And stop being hypocrite, you ripped off kekocity’s video tv idea, they made it for their game and in two weeks’ time you already released it in Habbo. Just one more phrase “Do not do unto others what you do not want others to do unto you”.
My respects to Aaron.
Just an anonymous open-coders defender.
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Originally Posted by Oblique
