The courts can be so confusing

That is why it is never a good idea to go to court.

I was doing some more readings on Blizzard vs MDY, and here is another case that almost contradicts MAI vs. Peak : Storage Technology Corp. v. Custom Hardware Eng’g & Consulting, Inc

I spend about 2 hours reading it since I can't figure out part of its logic, and I still don't quit understand it. The conclusion seems to be, even in the case the defendant win, if the copy right owner has made the license restrict enough, the defendant would have lost.

I also learned that my 1102 fair use defense won't work either, huge surprise.

And I don't want to spend another hour reading Blizzard's EULA. It is boring (unlike the case study), and in the most unlikely case that the EULA does has hole, I will still won't want to go to court.

P.S. This blog is now totally devoted to public education, I am sure the links used can be allowed under section 1102 fair use.

I wish I am a lawyer

Just saw this, Intel is suing Nvidia and AMD for licensing issues

My thought is, the chipset agreement is pretty much useless, because such agreements will not hold in a court of law. As the case Lexmark Int’l v. Static Control Components and a trail of other case shows, not only the higher courts favor little guys, such licensing is totally unnecessary because according to my recent research on copyright law, what Nvidia does (making chipset) totally falls under section 1102f fair use rules.

Of course Intel has multi-million dollar lawyers, and I am just a dirt cheap engineer/part time freeware developer/part time bot writer.

More cases

I am in danger of turning this blog into a case study, but I can't help myself.
http://www.eff.org/files/filenode/Blizzard_v_bnetd/20050901_decision.pdf Blizzard vs Bnetd. After reading the ruling, it is clear that why the judge ruled against bnetd:

Unlike in Lexmark Int'l, Inc., Battle.net mode codes
were not accessible by simply purchasing a Blizzard game or logging onto Battle.net

Appellants's circumvention in this case constitutes infringement. As detailed
earlier, Blizzard's secret handshake between Blizzard games and Battle.net effectively
controlled access to Battle.net mode within its games. The purpose of the bnetd.org
project was to provide matchmaking services for users of Blizzard games who wanted
to play in a multi-player environment without using Battle.net. The bnetd.org
emulator enabled users of Blizzard games to access Battle.net mode features without
a valid or unique CD key to enter Battle.net. The bnetd.org emulator did not
determine whether the CD key was valid or currently in use by another player. As a
result, unauthorized copies of the Blizzard games were freely played on bnetd.org
servers.

This is rather exciting, because the previous case of Lexmark Int'l v. Static Control Components now also make sense. I was so confused about that one it is almost like sky is falling, but now it does make sense. The case of law is almost like programming, it can seem strange but when dig down it does make sense. Only if law suits can be slower like programming (you can think and think in programming, but for lawsuits, you must act fast), I would rather practice law.

All of us might have violated copyright law at some point

After wrote my previous blog, I did some thinking and found that all of us, who uses computers (especially wrote computer programs) might have violated copy right law at some moment.

According to US copy right law:

“Copies” are material objects, other than phonorecords, in which a work is fixed by any method now known or later developed, and from which the work can be perceived, reproduced, or otherwise communicated, either directly or with the aid of a machine or device. The term “copies” includes the material object, other than a phonorecord, in which the work is first fixed.

In this case, my wife might wrote a copy righted joke (short one, 1 or 2 sentences) on our computer, left notepad open and left. I switch account, turn on WOW and warden scans, copy the entire joke from RAM location A to location B and do his work. There is a copyright violation! My wife's exclusive right to make copy (under section 106) has just been violated.

And for that, even anti virus program are liable.

And for us programmers, sometimes we allocate memory in excess of what we need, and that excess un-initialized part of RAM might contain copyrighted material. And in C/C++, when you pass in an array by copy, that is a copy. And when a debugger is attached, you can see/communicate with that data.

Of course, in that case no one will sue you because it is hard to argue how they are harmed. But it is against the law in its current language anyway. (In the case of MAI vs Peak, Peak's IT person can't even boot MAI customer's machine.)

Glider case, zoloFighter and Warden law breaker

OK, here is what I got so far. Virtuallyblind has an excellent article analyzing this. Too bad I didn't notice that before.
http://virtuallyblind.com/2008/07/14/blizzard-wins-sj-mdy/

I checked out the 3 cases:
http://www.law.cornell.edu/copyright/cases/991_F2d_511.htm MAI vs Peak
http://www.internetlibrary.com/cases/lib_case567.cfm Ticket Master vs RMT
http://www.gehrkelaw.com/files/wall_data_inc.%20v.%20Los%20Angeles%20County%20Sheriff%27s%20Dep%27t.pdf Wall data vs police department

The worst one is MAI vs Peak (Edit: from the ruling, MAI sales licenses only), in which the judge basically says if you bought software, you are not the owner, and you can't debug that software if the vendor didn't want you to.
I was surprised by that, it is totally against the copyright law in my understanding (i.e. as long as you pay for the software and don't use multiple copies you are OK).
The ruling basically says that even if you bought the software, if the creator of that software don't want you to load it into your computer's RAM, you break the law if you do so.


The TicketMaster ruling makes more sense, because RMT didn't buy anything, they just use the website against rules.


Wall data vs police dept is more straight forward, police department made too many copies.

In all 3 cases, commercial interest seems to be the key issue. In MAI vs Peak, the judge most likely think that the former MAI employees holds trade secret and defected to Peak via commercial interest, so he made the ruling to protect MAI's interest.
The side effect of that is, software owners are no longer owners, they are leasers now. Any move the software maker don't like, and they can bar you from doing anything in the name of copy right.
It seems that with that ruling, section 117 is no longer in effect.

The only possible solution seems to be the fair use defense, which the police department used. However the judge in that case saw no such thing based on all 4 criteria of fair use.

One thing I want to add is, after reading the rulings, I think all those judges should be revered. I am not kidding. They display exemplar knowledge, quoting prior cases/research/publications at well, almost like a library.
I have no idea how they can do that, and I am rather worried that the entire legal system could collapse under its own weight when there are just too many prior cases for ordinary humans to handle.


From the rulings, the judges are clearly rule within the confinement of law, and they follow logic instead of common presumption. However within the confinement of law, they clearly can use their own judgments on grey area issues (i.e. what is fair use in Glider and Wall Data case).

It also come as a shock to me, that WOW's warden could be breaking the law by examining copy righted material on users' computer. Since copy to RAM is also a copy "When such a copy is made in excess of a license, the copier is liable for copyright infringement. Ticketmaster LLC v. RMG Techs., Inc., 507 F. Supp. 2d 1096, 1107".

So basically since judges are not allowed to break precedence, the only available defense is section 107, fair use:


This is a break down for zolo:
(1) the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes;
non-commercial, and some educational.

(2) the nature of the copyrighted work;
entertainment. WOW also uses warden to scan users' system, which could mean it is a potential law breaker (i.e. copy copyrighted material to RAM).
the bot also act as a DMCA protection device.

(3) the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; and
not sure

(4) the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.
since there is a default time limit, zolo users will be forced to stay near the computer and start the bot again and again.
This allows interaction with other users, and ensure blizzard's name and profitability.
I for one will give up WOW for its long hours, if not for the bot. And I remember there are other persons on my board states the same.

Glider lawsuit

I found out that glider has stopped yesterday. Here is what I posted on zolo forum yesterday:

I just found out glider lost the suit (partially anyway, pending appeal).

I was shocked as why violating EULA became a violation of law issue. I was confident glider will win because they didn't do anything unlawful.

Spend an hour today reading copy right law and I thought they could use section 109 and 117 as defense. But after reading some of the court text, it appears that glider's lawyer already used such defenses. If a judge change the law, all following law suits must follow precedent.

I will have to take time to read through the entire context, but before that all donations will be suspended, no new keys will be issued. From the judge, seems to me that the commercial nature of glider is the main down fall (I can't figure out why section 117 is throw out, so that got be the reason). From the text, the judge seems to indicate that there is chance of appeal.

From the beginning, this bot is not meant to make money. If that is the case I will do more than $1 per charge because of the paypal overhead. My donations to charities for a single year is many times higher than all the donations combined. My initial goal is to share this tool with like minded people in similar situations, for it is man with wife/gf argos or students need focus on their homework. The donation, no matter how small, will enable blizzard's argument that I profited from this and such is guilty. So donation is taken out.

Those already donated, the key will keep working till expire.

I will find time to read the entire section of the verdict and the law.

So what I did yesterday is disable donation. I am sure that will 100% make zoloFighter covered under section 107, fair use law. Of course because I can't call a judge to confirm that, I have to do more digging myself.

Since then I have found several links and other people's discussions, I will post another blog today.