On July 14th the gavel of the Blizzard vs. MDY (Glider) fell in the 9th circuit court and since then it’s echo has reverberated across the blogosphere. But first a quick background summary:
Glider is a popular bot/macro program for World of Warcraft that essentially runs “glides” or small scripts that play World of Warcraft automatically. They have scripts to automatically level you up or to farm items/gold for you. You can setup a script to run while you sleep and wake up in the morning a few levels higher with backpacks full of items and some gold. It doesn’t perform any cheats or hacks that a normal player could not perform. It simply acts as if a human was playing the game (albeit a human with a low IQ, no job or outside responsibilities, and with a nasty cocaine habit).
Blizzard sued the creators of Glider for aiding in copyright infringement in an ongoing legal battle with the first decision just recently decided.
In the words of the creator of glider (Mercury):
“Well, the judge ruled today and it was not good for us. He found for Blizzard on the copyright and tortious claims. I must admit, I'm rather surprised at the scope of the decision, as it seems copyright holders can now pretty much declare anyone an infringer at the stroke of a pen.
But, hey, things will likely get more focused in the days ahead. For now, here's the judge's order. Be warned that it's pretty heavy on the legalese.”
Extended commentary can be found by our friends at Virtually Blind and from the wise erudrite sages in the ivy tower known as Terra Nova. The EFF (think ACLU for digital rights) has also commented on the hearing:
“Sadly, the court in this case found otherwise. It held that because Blizzard says the software is licensed, and because it imposes restrictions on use (including such standard restrictions as a requirement that a user who transfers her copy of the software to another must delete all copies from her computer). And that means that users who violate the EULA could be on the hook for copyright damages--including statutory damages, which start at $750 and rise to as high as $150,000 per infringed work. Most disappointing, the court gave short shrift to the absurd policy consequences of treating users who violate a contract as copyright infringers. The logical implication of the holding is that any time you buy software, be it film editing software, accounting software, iTunes, Skype, etc., software owners can always use license agreements to prevent you from ever having full control over your software and taking advantage of standard copyright limitations (such as the right to sell your copy [Section 109 of the Copyright Act] or the right to make copies necessary for use of the software [Section 117]). You can buy it, but you can’t own it.”
What does this mean for the gold industry however?
First off it may embolden Blizzard to actually take on major gold sellers in the courtroom. However, this could be a very dangerous move as if they lost or perhaps a U.S court found that virtual currency has real worth it could awake the sleeping giant of legal problems. For example if Blizzard bans someone accidently, or it’s servers crash, or they nerf an item all which destroy virtual goods (with real legal value) in the process one may be able to sue Blizzard for these “real” damages caused. For this and many other reasons we doubt that such a case will arise although the reverse may be true (a gold farmer suing blizzard for preventing them from selling its legally acquired in-game goods for cash outside the game). For those of you that have been around for a while you may remember the BlackSnow Case against Mythic where such a thing happened.
Still the scary thing is the wide ruling that violating a Terms of Service (ToS) or End User License Agreement (EULA) that you haphazardly click every time you play the game can be counted as copyright infringement. An EULA can say virtually anything it wishes. Does violating any part of it really count as copyright infringement? If you choose to farm items by hand using normal game mechanics without interfering with anyone else and then you mail the items you acquire to another person that is fine (it would be considered “twinking” a friend or new character), yet if you do the same action and the person sends you $10 through PayPal for the gift is it then considered a copyright violation because it violates Blizzards ToS?
That’s ridiculous and as such we don’t see the case ever being applied to the virtual currency market.
In fact we think that if the case is appealed it has a very good chance of being reversed. It’s simply too broad in its scope
