Blizzard Wins Lawsuit on Video Game Hacking

[Link]

Blizzard Wins Lawsuit on Video Game Hacking
Posted by Deren Smith on 03 Sep 2005 - 00:53

A federal appeals court has ruled that computer programmers do not have the right to reverse-engineer Blizzard Entertainment's video games to improve their playability.

The 8th Circuit Court of Appeals in St. Louis ruled Thursday that federal law--specifically, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act--disallows players from altering Blizzard games to link with servers other than the company's official Battle.net site. Affected games published by Blizzard, a division of Vivendi Universal, include titles in its "Diablo," "Starcraft" and "Warcraft" lines. In a 3-0 decision, the court upheld a trial judge's ruling from October, concluding the programmers' "circumvention in this case constitutes infringement."

News source: C|Net News.com
---------------------------------------------------------
Source

[Mephistopheles]

LOL, that siuts them for trying to beat Blizzard, even though, they have a tcp/ip online and LAN service, it's really easy to play Diablo 2 using IP, for what I know on Sarcraft and Warcraft, I think it has to ba LAN, there's a weird LAN on Starcraft called UDP, I don't know what is it, but it's the one that works. Battle.net is really good, I don't know why someone wouldn't want to use.... o right, using pirate cd-keys, but open battlenet is still open to play, it's ... filled with hackers, well, screw them LOL.

[Gamemaniac]

Well ... I'm not sure what to say ...


In a way I'm kind of unconfortable because reverse-engineering is a common way to learn stuff. But since I'm planning to develope commmercial videogames in the future... I guess this will protect my future incomes.

Just one question ...

Do you know if there is a similar law in Mexico?

[Mephistopheles]

No, I don't know, there should be someone similar, because, for example, you don't need to be on the United States to make Diablo II servers, and if being on Mexico gives you some kind of immunity, then there would or will be international issues, a company should be able to sue you for damaging it without matter where you are, Starcraft Battle.net gives a Easters US, Western US, Europe and Asia cover.