A number of blogs are commenting on the Arizona District Court ruling against MDY Industries' product Glider, a bot which allows users to cheat in World of Warcraft. Blizzard, the producer of WoW, argues that its EULA prohibits the use of such bots. Fair enough. Users who violate it are implicitly terminated. OK. Therefore they are violating Blizzard's copyright. Hold on -- where did that come from?
The court has ruled that the bot violates the DMCA as a "circumvention device." It doesn't give the user any access to material that they can't access otherwise -- what the judge called "literal elements" -- but by letting the user access them in a different way, it infringed on the "non-literal elements" of WoW, whatever those are. It isn't clear from what I've read, but it seems reasonable to conclude that not just MDY but the users who utlilize Glider could be found guilty of copyright infringement, and thus subject to huge fines.
This legal reasoning could apply to any software that is licensed with a prohibition on using other software designed as a front end to it. Such prohibitions are useful to the vendor, even though they decrease the usefulness of the software, because they mean that only the maker of the original software can sell add-ons to enhance its functionality. Part of the ruling against MDY was based on WoW's having features that attempt to block bots, but it's easy to add a weak anti-add-on shield to any software, even if all it does is establish intent to block add-ons.
For instance, the iPod Touch is an iPhone minus the telephone capability, which would make a very decent PDA except that Apple has crippled useful functionality like the ability to add appointments directly on the iPod. "Jailbreak" software is widely available to circumvent this. The iPod Touch Terms and Conditions (long PDF) prohibit the user from reverse engineering or modifying its software, so installing a jailbreak may violate those terms and may be considered a "circumvention device." If Apple can take legal action against jailbreak users under the DMCA, it could be bad news.
- WOW Bot Glider Found to Violate DMCA (digitaltrends.com)
- Judge: WoW bot violates DMCA, EULA violations infringe copyright (Free Culture News)
- WoW bot maker sued after home visit from Vivendi attorney (Ars Technica)
- Judge's ruling that WoW bot violates DMCA is troubling (Ars Technica)
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