Another Perspective

[jimthayner]

Originally Posted by Humerox [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

I'm certainly not an expert on copyright law, but it's my understanding that, in order to be criminal, there have to be certain factors involved.

1) commercial advantage or private financial gain.
2) reproduction or distribution of a work that has retail value
3) distribution of a work intended for commercial distribution

Anything and everything tied into copyright law has to do with value and damages received from the loss of said value.

IF Sony recreated a totally classic environment then it might be different. It could be argued that classic is so far removed from "live" that it's not the same game. Sony doesn't see the market, they don't feel they're really being hurt financially, otherwise they'd squash the project like a bug.

As far as copyright itself is concerned, corporations and lobbyists have made sure that the original intention of copyright will never see the light of day...but that's another argument.

Those are common misconceptions about copyright law. I cited some case law (MDY Industries v Blizzard) According to the Digital Rights Millennium Act, software license holders are obligated by law to abide by the End User License Agreement. This is something usually handled in civil court.

The fact that Sony does not offer Everquest with only vanilla and Kunark is irrelevant, as the DRMA and subsequent precedent make it clear that only the EULA matters, not if someone is profiting/doing any harm.

Aside from that, I agree that copyright law is a little out of hand. Blizzard should have lost its lawsuit with MDY Industries as I do not believe that copying data from a hard drive to RAM should constitute copyright infringement.

Blizzard was well within their rights to ban players caught using Glider, but they should not have "won the case" on hard drive to RAM constituting copyright infringement. The status quo should have been maintained, Blizzard has every right to ban people who cheat, but since WoW Glider was NOT stealing any code from Blizzard (they merely made their own, unique, third party software).

A man's computer is his castle, and if he wants to edit the memory of what is on his computer, he should have every right to do so. But MMO companies are well within their rights to decide who gets to play their game and who does not.