Blizzard VS private servers

[Mr. Moose]

It appears that Blizzard has started to take action against the WoW private servers. While there's no real evidence of this , forums posts in several places show that many of the popular servers are currently down.

A message was posted on the Vioku forums (A forum created for the community of the popular server Ani-WoW)explaining the current situation :



"Ok, so by now.. most of you should be probably aware of what’s going on..
But for those that don’t, I’ll make it simple.. “Blizzard Entertainment” have sent us a “copyright dmca notice” with a take down request, which needs to be done within 24/hours (btw 12 hours passed already). This isn’t a joke obviously, and to protect our asses we’ve decided to take the server down and cooperate with Blizzard on this request.. Is obviously that we don’t want to go jail for a game!

So here’s what we’re going to do (I won’t go into too much details): Our servers will remain closed until further notice, but is most likely that we’ll close our doors to World of Warcraft permanently.. This however, does not mean that is the end to our community and future ideas, after all.. our goal was to make Aniwow one of the best private servers by January.. remember that? Well, it might be an impossible task now that everything has turn down into us, but remember.. it’s never the end to something that received a lot of dedication (at least to my own personal rules), that being said.. there’s a second chapter coming up… no one never knows."


But there are more take-downs happening, For example Chaoscrusade (A server I used to play on a lot). They have posted the following :

"We regret to inform you that ChaosCrusade will be down until the issue with the received DMCA is cleared.
We cannot give a time/date or even an estimation at this present point in time but we will try to keep all of our users updated."

And then:

12/05/08: ChaosCrusade is pending with the law firm Sonnenschein.
12/04/08: ChaosCrusade has gotten a photocopy of a DMCA letter from the law firm Sonnenschein.

But the letter is recognises as a possible HOAX because
the letter is missing:

a) A statement made under penalty of perjury.
b) Subpoena. Lacking subpoena violates SoftLayer’s privacy policy.


Sonnenschein is the law firm from Blizzard , They have represented Blizz against those responsible for bNetd, (the software that enabled people to play Blizzard’s previous games online without using the official Battle.net server system.)

12/05/08: the DMCA passed as authentic. The future of ChaosCrusade will depend of the decisions the lawsuit will make over the next few days. All realms will remain offline.

This is all the information I got at the moment , if anything new shows up I'll add it.

-Inf

[Menthol8]

I've heard of this its really bad.

Can't believe it.

THeres now loads of rumors. WOW are going to try to set down all the private servers.

[JoeThePlumber]

I hope no one get in any legal trouble for this all this good people that work there ass off to get a server running will be sad to see it go.

[Ease]

They're all going down slowly, Imo the letter is fake.

[Poglia]

Yes, this is true. For example WoWScape, AniWoW and Toxic-Wow have been closed.

http://img78.imageshack.us/img78/987...tey9rcwlx3.jpg

[Grasi]

Xtremetop100 is also down, I guess they mean it for real.

[project anthrax]

why cant they just let the people who cant afford the servers be able to have fun and play on free ones its not like there losing any customers

[Hellgawd]

One big repost, I suggest moving the 11 page thread from the emu section into here instead of making another article for it.

[Poglia]

why cant they just let the people who cant afford the servers be able to have fun and play on free ones its not like there losing any customers

If you can afford a computer and an internet connection you can afford 13 euro per month to play.

[Wilkey]

Haha http://img369.imageshack.us/img369/6973/wowwtfme8.jpg
BTW this really sucks...

[Ket]

I am very surprised by this as it seems historically private servers for MMOs don't get these types of lawsuits even though the threat was always there.

[TuFF]

Wowscape is down too, Wow.

[Noobcraft]

We have had a thread about this for about 2 days now with way more info.
http://www.mmowned.com/forums/emulat...al-action.html

[Stickman08]

Lol? if blizzard is ready to start a war against private servers I can't imagine the results... Private servers will always exist, at least for WoW so it's an endless war. All blizzard can do is reduce their numbers but never stop them.

[Verye]

Huh? Why are people surprised? This is not the first time they've placed lawsuits against private servers.

They violate copyright laws.