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Interesting case. Not surprisingly there is no mention of the case on the Glider website. Markeedragon forums, which appears to be associated with Glider, provides a few more details on the story.
http://www.mmoglider.com/
http://www.markeedragon.com/forums/ubbthreads.php? ...

And here I was thinking it was simply millions of Chinese forced to play for days on end mining gold to be rewarded with one pound of rice.

Damn.

I used Glider probably more than I actually played myself, and I do feel bad about it. While I did make a few hundred dollars selling the gold I farmed, I feel that people who bot ruin the WoW economy, making everybody else have to grind a whole lot more.

I'm not into WOW, but I could see how this could hurt the game. I, for one, would feel cheated if I had worked so hard to get to a certain point only to find out I could have cheated to do it. Isn't one of the main aspects of an online game interaction with other players? If so many of them were "bot" controlled, then I would feel cheated and might cancel my account. In the end I think BLIZZARD is actually looking out for the players and the playing experience, AS WELL as their own profits... something we can't blame them for... unless no one wants them to spend millions developing WOW2, then fine, let the gaming experience suffer, let subscriptions get canceled and let everyone cheat.

This suit was filed November 2006.
Links to the original filings are on the forum.

What, people would rather live their life then spend 24/7 playing WoW!?

*Goes to buy the glider bot*

Quiting WoW was the best decision of my life.

I think the end-user agreement argument is a bit superflous... it governs the user - those 100,000 people or so that use this program - not the creators of enhancement software.

As much as I'm opposed to automating stuff in games like this (makes legitimate rewards become diminished), I don't think Blizzard has much of an argument here unless they pull some DMCA bull out.

Well.... it looks like i might be on the list of people getting disconnected from Glider =S
Seriously Blizzard, you have to expect an element of cheating in any game (no matter how well you try to prevent it). There is no way you can stop it, you can only try to make it more difficult. And for a game which has what (10 million subscribers???) paying roughly $15 per month = 150M p/m you would surely think they could afford to invest some R&D into creating a decent anti-cheat measure.

But then we also need to address the core of why people cheat and use Glider. If there are some 100,000 people using Glider (1% of the WoW Subscription base) would it not warrant a further look at why 100,000 people are cheating when they could be playing it as it was intended. Could it be that the game is geared more toward the 16 hour a day player rather than the 2 - 4hour a day player (who incidentally still pays $15 p/month)

Just my two cents from someone who used to play WoW 16 hours a day and now cannot stand to login again.

FTA: "Blizzard has said the tool infringes copyright because it copies the game into RAM"

Breaking the EULA is one thing, but that copyright claim almost sounds like legal stances coming out of the **AAs.

So a memory dump from a crash also infringes copyright law?

I agree that this kind of crap is lame, and needs to be done away with

However, the fact that people are willing to do this, gain advantage by doing this, and have motivation to do this is a problem. When you have to do hours upon hours upon hours of grinding the same ***** (such as battlegrounds for points) to get something, a lot of people toss a bot up while at work to gain that advantage. Personally, I just quit WOW when I was tempted to do this, as I was obviously tired of the game at that point. But it would be nice to have less brainless grinding.

The fact someone could be #1 in honor back in the day without playing, and simply recording 15 seconds worth of keystrokes to queue for alterac valley says a LOT about the game

Aww, they are going to get rid of the program that makes my e-balls so big.

I wish that Dungeons and Dragons were more popular then WOW.

For many reasons, real or imagined.

Just because WoW stopped being fun for me - I never considered cheating everyone else on the server I played with - guild members, people I'd teamed with while leveling. You'd have to be one hell of an asshole to cheat those people. =\ Anyhow, I'm not a normally litigious guy, but I approve Blizzard's move here, if for nothing else than out of respect for my former guildies.

Damn. People don't wanna work for anything anymore even getting skilled at playing a game. What's the point of having a high level character if you don't have the skill to actually play it effectively? That's like having a high performance car but you don't know how to shift the gears.

"Blizzard has said the tool infringes copyright because it copies the game into RAM in order to avoid detection by anti-cheat software."

Could I be sued for looking at any website from here on in??? Does think mean that when i boot up Windows that I am violating their copyright because it is being projected for public viewing on my monitor??? Am i violating copyright by taking a screenshot in WoW using their supplied screen capture button???

I think Blizzard are really trying to clutch at straws here and are probably going about it the wrong way.

But I am being lenient on my opinions even though I was banned from WoW for suspected 'botting' when in fact WoW was my life blood for 6 weeks between jobs (years ago).

The whole copying the game into ram thing is, on a basic level, a ton of *****. Windows copies ***** to RAM why is no one suing them?

I have several friends who are current users of this program. The program is very well thought out and can be useful. A total of three of my friends have leveled characters to 70. However, using this program does have its downfalls. They all look like gold farmers with no professions/trinkets and so on and so forth. Although they might look like noobs, one of them actually farmed about 2,000 gold in one evening with his computer playing for him while he slept. Kind of unfair, it's kind of lame. But the thing that makes me the happiest is that one of my friends thought, "Hey, lets buy another separate account, pay for the monthly fee, get Burning Crusade and then level that guy to 70. So I can farm with two guys at once and completely rule the current economy on that certain realm." He got banned, and I was happy. Moral of this story, MMOGlider works well. But it was only a matter of time before Blizzard nerfed it. As we all know, anything good in WoW gets nerfed in the next patch.

Blizzard might actually have a small case here. Most programs that interfere with games (trainers, bots, etc...) must interface with the game by modifying it's memory. In order to modify it's memory it typically has to have a copy of the memory structure to begin with. It's possible to be creative enough to bypass this, but bypassing the bypass is also pretty easy and the end result is that the program is typically updated every time the developer updates their game.

whats world of warcraft?

I dont play WOW or mmorp'gs but normally i think suing somone over this is ***** but since this is a MMORPG where other people are trying to play and have fun, this can ruin their hard work in leveling their characters while other people cheat their way to the top. And its right in the user agreement so i see nothing wrong with somebody who doesnt comply to it.

The EULA claim is legit, but probably won't bring a whole lot of damages - the bot authors only violated the EULA for the subscriptions they purchased. If they didn't subscribe, they aren't even a party to that contract. The ones violating the EULA are the *users* of the bot, and I don't see Blizzard pursuing a class action suit against its own players. Ban them? Sure. Sue them? I don't think so.

The copyright claim seems like BS, but I'm not a copyright lawyer (my wife is, tho). I do know that a copyright only controls how people *copy* your work, not how they use it. Which is why Vivendi has to come up with the far-fetched "copying into RAM" *****. But copyright damages are much greater.

Bliz is just ***** that after trying for years, with all of their resources and manpower that they cant beat one dude.

Yeah, i h8 people who cheat on mmo games, or real competitive games, it just takes the fun right out of it for everyone else so im against cheating 100%, i only like to cheat on single player games i have already beat, *ehemm* oblivion.

buried, old info.

I hate cheaters and bots as bad as anyone, but portions of this case could go either way. The bot portion of the program may very well run afoul of the end user license agreement, most notably the clauses excluding commercial explotation of the game or any part of it, or the use of a utility program to intercept or emulate communications with the game server. Regardless, the EULA has a catch-all provision that says, "Any use, reproduction, modification or distribution of the Game not expressly authorized by the terms of the License Agreement is expressly prohibited." However, the EULA only applies to the user who has installed the WOW software and is playing the game. If the owner of this company is not playing the game with his own version of the bot, then he has never agreed to the contract, and therefore cannot be in breach of it. And while a person can induce another to breach a contract, that generally, without more, does not subject that person to civil liability. Without having read the complaint, my guess is they'll try to pursue him under some kind of electronic trespass law like Ebay did back in the day to the auction spiders.

The copyright infringement allegations appears to lack merit, on first glance. Again, the law is pretty clear that breaching a contract that contains a copyright license, which the Blizzard EULA does, can subject the breaching party to an action founded in copyright infringement. Again, if the owner of this company is not playing the game, and therefore hasn't agreed to the EULA, then he's not in breach of the agreement and thus not directly liable for infringement of copyright.

If anything, he might be liable for inducement of others to infringe copyright, but that's a separate matter and one not alluded to in the article, however poorly written it may be. Even in that case, the Copyright Code allows for a copy of a program to be made in RAM without subjecting the user to infringement. Specifically, 17 USC 117 says that the lawful owner of a piece of software may make a copy or adaptation of the program in the computer's memory so long as the new copy or adaptation is created as an essential step in the utilization of the program in conjunction with a machine and that it is used in no other manner.

Without knowing more about how WOW runs regularly, it's difficult to say whether the copy this bot program allegedly makes to the RAM is an essential step to using the game. If it does make a copy, then this defense might not be available because it would be hard to argue that a copy made for purposes of evading anti-cheat software to artificially inflate ones game status is an essential step to running the game. However, if WOW normally copies itself to RAM, and this bot program merely utilizes or adapts that copy, then the argument of infringement becomes more difficult to prove.

This will be interesting to follow.

That's what they get when they purposefully design a game that takes an absurd amount of time to accomplish anything at a high level. I stopped playing when the expansion came out because the grind from 60-70 was ridiculous, especially as a full-time student holding a full-time job.

Blizz doesnt have any legal footing here. Its like bittorrent, sure people illegally trade with files with bt but it doesnt mean bt is illegal. They can go after the users, but not guy that made glider.