While I won't condone the hack-creators, Blizzard IS overstepping its boundaries. Expect the courts (unless Blizzard bribes them, which I wouldn't put above Bobby Kotick) to deliver Blizzard a legal slap and insult. A few things Blizzard is doing wrong, that none of those cheerleaders responding here are noticing:
- The "License Agreement" packaged with a game holds zero legal weight; it's pure garbage that does NOT make up a contract. When you purchase a game, regardless of how draconian the DRM is, you own it. The first-sale doctrine states you may do whatever the heck you like with it; this has been held up with 100% consistency by all courts for >100 years. More recently, (see Vernor v. Autodesk) it was declared that a company cannot simply state that software is "licensed, not sold;" they actually have to, y'know, have a license agreement actually SIGNED by both the maker and buyer. So yes, that's right: you can safely ignore reading those long EULAs, because they are not legally binding. They're just an attempted scare tactic.
- "Copying copyrighted data into RAM." Is that not what, y'know, playing the game does? The first-sale doctrine dictates that a user may use the work, regardless of what copyright protection it has, as they wish. They are merely restricted from violating the COPYRIGHT ITSELF.
- "Creating derivative work?" As far as I know, all of the hacks contain zero actual content from the game: they contain MODIFCATIONS of said content. As such, it is a wholly indepdendent work. And the fact that it requires the orignal game for the hack to work further establishes that it cannot be "stealing" from the orignal. So the hackers are 100% non-liable there.
- "Reducing the value of the service." This is the first non-100% BS claim Blizzard makes. However, they have a hard way of going about it; the burden of proof is on THEM to prove that value was lost. Since they've publicized their mass-bannings to "clean" the game so well, they've basically shot themselves in the foot there, so they can't win on this; they just defeated their own argument. Furthermore, even IF they're derivative, hacks can be classified as a "transformative derivation," that adds value for a user not otherwise available normally. This is what, say, allows Google to have thumbnails in its Image Search, as was found in Perfect 10, Inc. v Amazon.com. (where Google was co-defendent along with Amazon)
- The one thing Blizzard CAN get the hackers for is SELLING these hacks; this could, depending on how specific the tools are, be something they are liable for infringement on. But in this case, the worst they could be gotten for... Is the profits they made off of said tools. They could be commanded to hand the money over to Blizzard, nothing more. And even this would be a long-shot; "unauthorized" third-party tools USUALLY are permitted under law, as we've seen with, say, the GameShark/ProActionReplay for consoles, and the countless hacks and editors for Blizzard's OTHER games. (including StarCraft, Diablo 2, and World of WarCraft) No one got successfuly sued by Blizzard over them in >10 years, now did they?
So all told, this lawsuit won't get Blizzard anywhere. This is just more evidence of the nut-job Kotick ruining what was once the world's greatest PC developer. The lawsuit demonstrates a gross and glaring lack of understanding of IP law, and an attempt to bully everyone to think it's what they lie it is. Sadly, courts happen to know what they're doing. And this COULD bite them in the rear; as any case where the first-sale doctrine is relevant up risks the court declaring that DRM is a violation of a user's right under said doctrine. And if Blizzard thought the "hackers" were hurting them, wait until a court tells them they have 30 days to patch the game to be DRM-free and work entirely offline.
So yeah, vote this down all you want to show Blizzard how much a real fan you are. The truth remains that their lawsuit is empty bluster. They have no legal grounds to sue, because unlike what they (along with Sony BMG, Ubisoft, EA, Activision, Apple, etc.) want you to believe, copyright law doesn't give them god-like command over anything that so much as touches their product.
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