[Law] Blizzard vs PocketGnome

[Fisher]

Heya everyone,

So I'm spending my time here reading the ruling against Ceiling Fan Software LLC, which can be found here (pdf) and I find it rather ridiculous. Now, I'm not a lawyer, thus I have no idea how legal system works. However, I do have some common sense here, and based off of what is written, the only possible ruling should be for Blizzard to go home and cry, but that's about it. Let us break this story down into segments for easier following/understanding. I also urge any lawyer to comment on this, explaining how the hell is this possible. So let's go.

1) Who is a developer?

A developer is a person making software for whatever use they see fit. If a developer provides Terms of Use for their software, such as "I'm not responsible for how you use my stuff", they can't be held responsible for how the users use it. Regardless what it is. If World of Warcraft does any damage to your computer, guess what? It's not Blizzards fault. You could stretch it and say they broke the contract, which was made the second you agreed to their Terms of Use and End User Licence Agreement (ToU and EULA), where it states they will provide services in exchange for you paying the fee, however, read it again. I'm sure it's well hidden, but it should state something along the lines of "Blizzard will do everything in their power to provide you with an environment to play as long as it's humanly possible". And there you go. You sue them, they come to court and say "We did everything we could" and they are in the clear. They made software specifically to make money on it, so should we group up and sue them for theft? No.

2) Are bots illegal?

This is a hard one. Just kidding. They aren't. I can't speak worldwide as I don't know the laws, but I'm yet to hear that some country considers bot, as in software automating tasks, illegal. If that was the case, Task Scheduler on Windows would be illegal, your phone alarm would be illegal. See how tricky that is. So in general, no, bots aren't illegal. There's a very thin border between blackhat and whitehat exploiting, but in case you run into a blackhat exploiter, this is exactly what happens. You sue him, and hope for the best. Well, in this case, achieve the best, which shouldn't be possible. Someone made a bot for your game. Are they to blame for that? You, as a game maker, left them a nice window to pull it of, and they did. Go fix it. Don't consider courts as your primary revenue source, but that's a different topic we may cover in a different thread.

3) Claiming damages

So Blizzard is claiming damages, and here, they refer to the funds they invested into preventing people from botting. One small problem. There is no absolute way to prove this. Unless they have a specialized team to hunt PocketGnome, and even if they do, they would still have to pay some people to do bot hunting. Or bad language hunting. Or whatever, you get my point, one way or another, human filters (hehe) would be employed by Blizzard to filter something. So no, Lambo-driving lawyers, that can't be a damage claim. I don't even own a car, and I can tell you that. Another one of their damage claims refers to their reputation and good will. Someone is damaging your reputation by making a bot for your game, so in order to fix it, you go to court of law and openly admit you can't stop the botting completely, you openly admit how many players use the software, in order to what? "Heal" your reputation? Am I the only one who sees that as "little bit weird"?

4) Contract breach

So they established there is enough elements suggesting a contract breach. I'm not going to tear this much apart. Fact is, 90% of people hit "I agree" and that is their fault. They should read the terms. However, prosecution, even while knowing that nobody alive reads ToU and EULA, assumes they were aware of the full contract that was between Blizzard and them. Hey, maybe their little sister installed the game and you should sue her. I'm going to leave this one up for discussion, however, keep in mind that there are way too many variables to simply and safely assume someone was aware of the contract. Maybe their English is not that great, maybe they did not attend Harvard and they don't understand the law language. Or maybe they bought World of Warcraft back when it came out, and they agreed to very very different terms, only to be forced to agree to new ones, such as you monitoring my chat, in order to keep playing. I'm sure there is a law somewhere stating that they can't really force stuff down peoples throat like that.

5) Punishment

My favorite. So Blizzard want's PocketGnome to stop existing. Let me translate that here real quick. A company to whose platform your software attaches wants to erase your personal, intellectual property from existence, because it's violating a "law" related to the game itself. Doesn't quite work that way. Well, at least it shouldn't. There is absolutely no connection between Blizzard and the software someone created. Because hey, which law was broken? He made a software? Sold it? How's that illegal? So he did not break any law here. He did, however, breach a contract. Contract that doesn't state what's the penalty for breaching it. I'm sure it says somewhere you will get banned if you use the bot, but what happens if you develop the bot? Oh I don't know... Nothing? If the contract had a penalty for creating a bot, this law case would be completely valid, however, it doesn't. Where does it say "You should forget you ever made the software, remove all links containing it, pay us a lot of money, if you decide to make a bot for our game"? Nowhere. So what are the grounds for this lawsuit exactly?

Lets sum it up.

• He broke no laws
• He broke a contract that doesn't state what penalty is
• He made damages that can not be proven or quantified
• He did not force anyone to use the bot

I wrote this article in plain language on purpose. At this point, anyone is asking them selves "So what the hell?!". Trust me, I don't know. Blizzard won a case a like this. So next time you want to create a contract and sign it with someone, make sure you don't include any penalties, so you can go in front of a court of law later and claim anything you want.

If you have any law background, feel free to rip anything I wrote apart. Well except for the fact that similar cases that happened before this one can be used to influence the courts decision. Except that.