Blizzard wins online game suit

Game publisher Blizzard Entertainment, a division of media conglomerate Vivendi Universal, has won a closely watched intellectual property case, with a federal judge ruling the company could block unauthorized servers from running online competitions based on its games. The case revolved around BnetD, free software created by St. Louis Internet service provider Internet Gateway that allows users to host online matches of popular Blizzard games such as "StarCraft" and "Diablo II." The tool is meant to bypass Blizzard.net, the company's online gaming service, which many players have complained is erratic and overrun with cheaters.

Judge Charles Shaw of U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Missouri issued a summary judgment Sept. 30, agreeing with Blizzard's arguments that BnetD violated the end-user license agreements for the games and provisions of the controversial Digital Millennium Copyright Act. The ruling prohibits any further distribution of BnetD software.

[Confidential Sage]

Blizzard Win a Loss for Players

Blizzard may have won their day in court using our favorite Digital Millenium Act, but online players of their games lost, and hopefully this will cost the company lots of business. I do not blame anyone for wanting to play on a server that is not erratic, nor overrun wiht cheaters. Either way, Blizzard has only themselves to blame for a negative outcome from this lawsuit.

[unknown unknown]

Luckly the EFF is appealing the ruling (no text)

EOM

[volterwd]

Why should they care?

how did Bnet D even hurt them, if they stopped allowing hacks and actually did something about Bnet maybe there wouldnt be a need for BnetD