interesting article regarding pservers

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Today a Federal Court decided that programmers are not allowed to create free software designed to work with commercial products. The issue at hand was whether three software programmers who created the BnetD game server -- which interoperates with Blizzard video games online -- were in violation of the Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA) and Blizzard Games' end user license agreement (EULA).

BnetD is an open source program that lets gamers play Blizzard titles such as Warcraft, on servers which don't belong to Blizzard's Battle.net service. Blizzard was throwing a fit against programmers who wrote BnetD because they "violated the DMCA's anti-circumvention provisions" and that the programmers also "violated several parts of Blizzard's EULA, including a section on reverse engineering."

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), co-counsel for the defendants, argued that programming and distributing BnetD was fair use. The programmers reverse-engineered Battle.net purely to make their product work with it, not to violate a copyright.

EFF's Staff Attorney said that consumers have a right to choose where and when they want to use their boughten gaming product. He went on to say that Blizzard's ruling forces you to use their servers whether you want to or not. Finally he declared that Copyright law was designed to promote competition and creative possibilities, not restraint.

EFF will obviously appeal the case, challenging the court's ruling that creating optional platforms for purchased content can be criminalized.

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article taken from ircspy.com

I think since the blizards are free anyway I dont see what their problem is, its like saying I can only play counterstrike on valve servers!

the difference with blizard is that it has a module that checks for valid Warcraft keys ;)

With the open source program in this article u can logon and play multiplayer with a cracked version

:tp: subtile difference is that peepz who would normally buy the game to be able to play multiplayer ( remember everyone had to buy halflife if they wanted to play the free CS-mod ) wont be arsed to do so now ...

actually this personal server thingy has been around for ages already :)


Also think of the consequences that a decission like this could have on other trials ... if the programmers win it in appeal ( which i doubt tbh ) then for example lin2 server emulators wouldnt be illegal anymore

its all about seeing the big picture here :)

:lips:

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Originally Posted by Dragon

its all about seeing the big picture here :)
:lips:

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Yet don't you think cases like this (just as any other case) should be bound to the actual action (offence) and not how it may affect something else..

It should ... but laypeepz actually consider previous decissions in other cases that have a resemblence...

its called a precedent i think.

:lips:

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Originally Posted by Dragon

the difference with blizard is that it has a module that checks for valid Warcraft keys ;)

With the open source program in this article u can logon and play multiplayer with a cracked version

:tp: subtile difference is that peepz who would normally buy the game to be able to play multiplayer ( remember everyone had to buy halflife if they wanted to play the free CS-mod ) wont be arsed to do so now ...

actually this personal server thingy has been around for ages already :)


Also think of the consequences that a decission like this could have on other trials ... if the programmers win it in appeal ( which i doubt tbh ) then for example lin2 server emulators wouldnt be illegal anymore

its all about seeing the big picture here :)

:lips:

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I see your point, but I still think that people should have the right to make their own private servers(assuming the game is bought in a shop and its not p2p), the fact that emulators are made by independent people shows the need or wish as you prefer for the general public to be able to create their own servers. It might look new but its considered perfectly normal in first person shooters, strategy games, the ability for users to play a game with their own settings so they can test the limits of the game.