General Discussion

Originally posted by AlienShirt

I am with many others on here they did not need the money. The right thing to do would be to donate that 6 million to a worthy charity.

They could just put that money right into a fund that pays for legal actions against other criminals that do similar action.  

Originally posted by Feyshtey

By this logic you should donate any money you currently pay to MMO developers to charity. There is no way to argue that you -need- to play computer games. So that ~$15 is not something that you 'need'.

Then again, you earned the ~$15 right? What you do with it is no one's business unless you're breaking the law in it's use. If you feel compelled to give it to a charity, great! 

I cannot agree more, and thank you very much for bringing up the topic.  I'd like to invite everyone from the community to put in a subscription to those who DO really NEED it:

www.compassion.com/default.htm

I cannot think of a more rewarding contribution that can have such a huge impact on an individual's life.  I've been sponsoring a child for the last three years and it's awesome to hear from her how much that money helps in food, clean water, hygiene, and education.  It is a blessed work.  Please take a moment to check it out.  They have very sound financials and have earned these quality charity ratings:

You can make a huge difference in a desperate child's life.

Kudos to Blizzard for winnng against another company that violated the EULA.

For those who think botters are good for the game =

Originally posted by Feyshtey

Originally posted by AlienShirt

I am with many others on here they did not need the money. The right thing to do would be to donate that 6 million to a worthy charity.

 

By this logic you should donate any money you currently pay to MMO developers to charity. There is no way to argue that you -need- to play computer games. So that ~$15 is not something that you 'need'.

Then again, you earned the ~$15 right? What you do with it is no one's business unless you're breaking the law in it's use. If you feel compelled to give it to a charity, great! But if you decide to turn it into $1's and throw it at strippers it's no one's right to say word one. 

Frankly Blizzard could provide rolls in the stalls of their office bathrooms made from this $6mil judgment for people to wipe their asses with and I wouldn't care less.

 

 

 

If this were true, I would be in the bathroom all day if I worked for Blizzard! "It's like wiping your ass with ... sil... err... money!"

Dude!

[MDY hands Blizzard a melon]]

not sure what all the agruing is over - blizz finally did something about all the people who use these bots and go sit in the battlegrounds without being afk so they are booted while the rest of us work our butts off to get them honor. Thats what it boils down to. I see so many boters in battlegrounds, usually the same ones over and over just standing there getting honor cause their bot will make them cast a spell or move around so they dont afk out. And to think those boters are selling their characters on ebay and other franchises for 1000's of dollars. I think so many need to get a reality check here. It's about time Blizzard did this.

Originally posted by Faelan

Originally posted by redelf07

Just what [Activision] Blizzard needs... more money.

 

When the money comes from cheating scumbags who ruin the game experience of everybody else, I say GO GO GO BLIZZARD - MAKE 'EM PAY.

Keep in mind that even if you don't approve of WoW or Blizzard, this may very well deter the cheaters from going after other MMOs. A win win for everybody unless you're a cheater.

Amen brother, this is a lesson to be learned by all cheating bums that try to exploit MMO's for their own personal gains. just as you do, I say Good going Blizzard, this will deter cheaters at least a bit if they know theyr are going to get hit in the pocket for millions of dollars. Im all for the onslaught on Gold farming/powerleveling exploiting 3rd party software. this is a step in the right direction for the genre. keep the lawsuits coming.

This is AWESOME NEWS. GO BLIZZARD GO!!!

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Originally posted by Feyshtey

The position of Blizzard was largely that MDY infringed on their copyright. Blizzard’s position was argued using the Copyright Act, and the DMCA. By order of the Ninth Circuit Court, copying a program to RAM constitutes a copyright infringement because you are making an unauthorized copy of the game. This is one of the biggest building blocks of the Blizzard case.

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This is a horrible, horrible decision. Copying a program to RAM on the computer where it is legally installed, should NOT be a copyright infringement (see many many analysis of why back around the time Blizzard filed the suit). Glider may (or may not - not sure exactly how it works) have violated the DMCA (the worst piece of copyright legislation ever passed) but it did not violate copyright.

This decision will likely lead to "really bad things" for all consumers as more and more corporations figure out how to exploit this "copyright violation".

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Originally posted by Feyshtey

The judgment of the court also decided that MDY had knowingly violated the End User License Agreement and the Terms of Use they agreed to upon starting the game. This is a HUGE win for game makers globally that cannot be understated. This is another case where the EULA and TOU have been upheld in a court of law, making them even more defensible in the future. The grey area that bot farmers and gold sellers have treaded for a decade is getting quite a bit less grey, and that benefits anyone that would see these parasites hanged.

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I'm baffled by this as well. I fails simple logic. MDY wrote Glider. In order to write Glider, they did not necessarily have to run WoW at all (I'm sure they did but it would be possible to develop without). The EULA and TOS only apply to people running the game so unless Blizzard can prove MDY actively ran WoW while actively developing Glider, there is no violation. It is clearly a violation to use Glider to play the game.

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Originally posted by Feyshtey

Furthermore the court found that MDY took measures to avoid detection and aided their customers in doing the same. The court found it to be a clear violation for MDY to agree to terms of use, and then deliberately break those terms of use using any means they could, -and- provide those means to other people. The court also commented that this was not a case of altruistic individuals attempting to circumvent the processes for 'fun', but quite clearly that the circumvention was to continue to make money on the copyrighted intellectual property of another entity.

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This I can clearly agree with. MDY probably would have been fine if they had not been selling Glider for profit. Glider clearly was designed solely to assist others with breaking the EULA/TOS of WoW and, by charging for it, they open themselves up to many more charges (than if they had just given Glider away).

As I've said before, I don't have a strong opinion on Glider (Chinese gold farmers (most of whom do it manually) are a far bigger problem) but Blizzard's copyright violation charge (other charges were at least reasonable) should have been laughed out of court.