NEWS: Blizzard takes legal action

[Troys]

that really blows.. i just got my rogue fully geared on toxic too =/

[arigity]

ToxicWoW had a disclaimer, moron.
Edit: And, of course they are - if it was a properly legal-proof disclaimer, Blizzard would sue you, and you would win the case because they were not allowed to enter your site. The DMCA policy is currently still one of the lower level legal liabilities (alliteration ftw) and other things - such as Disclaimers and Terms of Use - overpower it.

this isn't entirely true for several reasons, you wouldn't get very far waving a disclaimer around in a court saying "but i said they couldn't enter!" not the least of which because your disclaimer would have no legal standing or (if by some miracle it did) would be classified as illegal.

you can't go around with a disclaimer expecting it to remove you of all legal responsibility should someone from blizzards company enter your website. a disclaimer is not a law, you can't write down "you promise not to sue by entering" and expect that to be carried out as if it were one.


also, should the disclaimer be upheld in court, any evidence gained specifically from your website would be tossed out, however their is more then enough evidence on other sites (like mmowned ) to still put the case in blizzards favor.

[Sounddead]

Actually a websites terms of service is now the law in the US. As of like.. last week or something. I saw it on ATOS.

[Nivelo]

Just two cents... http://www.conflictwarcraft.com/Dec3LtrtoSoftlayer.pdf

[Calek]

ToxicWoW had a disclaimer, moron.
Edit: And, of course they are - if it was a properly legal-proof disclaimer, Blizzard would sue you, and you would win the case because they were not allowed to enter your site. The DMCA policy is currently still one of the lower level legal liabilities (alliteration ftw) and other things - such as Disclaimers and Terms of Use - overpower it.

Wow, what are you like 12 years old? I think I was being pretty nice and civil considering your uppity attitude in this post to begin with. I don't care who ya are, calling me a moron for little reason is rude Chief.

And yes, I should've been MOAR SPECIFICAL in my detail of the disclaimer. What I meant by that is, the websites which require acceptance of a disclaimer before you can enter and see anything. This is something that Toxic-Wow did not have.

I appreciate the conductive posts in the thread, they are informative and I thank you guys for helping unravel this thing. Let's hope that some big time servers can make it through these times, and emu programmers aren't targeted as well.

[yrref]

I used to run a private server, which wasn't really big, but had quite some people on it. I killed it 3 weeks ago. I am quite glad i did.

[Calek]

I used to run a private server, which wasn't really big, but had quite some people on it. I killed it 3 weeks ago. I am quite glad i did.

Honestly, from what I've seen I don't think you'd have had much to worry about. So far I haven't seen any cases where they went after someone running an emu on their desktop. It appears that the ones who have 500+ people online at any given time are the ones that got hit. And it's Blizzard's law team who are sending the notices to their server's hosts.

Hellgawd was certainly right about this not being the end of private servers. In fact, this is a golden opportunity as far as I can see for the smaller time servers to rise.

[Gripen2]

From WoWfusion

Hey guys,

I know you haven't see me on the forums in a while, however that is apart from the subject of the matter.
Many may have guessed from the topic title that Blizzard has finally taken action against World of Warcraft private servers. They recently had communication with our servers' host, SoftLayer. In fact, it was Blizzard's lawyer who submitted the "abuse" to the SoftLayer. Therefore, all servers will be down until further notice. I don't know what else to say at the very moment, but I will do my best to keep you guys updated.

EDIT-1: Blizzard is shutting down ALL private servers, not only us. Sorry if I failed to make that clear.

Regards,
WoWFusion Staff.

[Calek]

Just two cents... http://www.conflictwarcraft.com/Dec3LtrtoSoftlayer.pdf

+3 Reps for you! Thank you for posting that! I've been anxious to see it

[Gastricpenguin]

This is great stuff! *Grabs popcorn*
+7 rep

[Djfrederick]

Just two cents... http://www.conflictwarcraft.com/Dec3LtrtoSoftlayer.pdf

Nice mate. Thanks for posting it here. +rep

[DeadlyMaker]

Honestly, ignore the mails they send you, don't even open or reply to them.

I like those coward servers, who shut downs their servers because someone who has 9milion players and over 100milions of dollars sent them a bloody mail. What the **** are you scared of he's not much more human than us others. If I still had my server I wouldnt back down because of that, there is always a way around things even if the smartest man cant figure it out. Strike the **** back and don't be scared.

[Calek]

Honestly, ignore the mails they send you, don't even open or reply to them.

I like those coward servers, who shut downs their servers because someone who has 9milion players and over 100milions of dollars sent them a bloody mail. What the **** are you scared of he's not much more human than us others. If I still had my server I wouldnt back down because of that, there is always a way around things even if the smartest man cant figure it out. Strike the **** back and don't be scared.

It was a letter from Blizzard's lawyers sent certified mail to those server's respective hosts.

Where do people keep hearing it was an E-Mail or a letter from Blizzard itself? In fact, there's a scanned copy of the letter in this post.

*EDIT* You're right though. If my servers had ever ventured beyond the realm of a large guild on retail or a few friends, I would've had the presence of mind to take every legal precaution available. The admins of these servers that got shut down only have themselves to blame.
And it's no secret that a lot of the big ones were making a huge profit in donations, well above the cost of running the servers. It's also no secret that most of them did very little to try and grow the servers beyond downloading repacks.

If I were making what they were via the donations, I'd be spending hours accordingly (based on that month's donations) at a decent hourly rate to refine my DB to as close to 100% Blizz-like as possible, clear out bugs, and only ADD new content to my existing server).

[Evil1337]

From Blizzgaming

Earlier today it was believed blizzard was sending DMCA notices via a lawfirm shutting down servers, to make sure no data is lost, our website is currently offline so I can create complete off-site back-ups. I will also be doing this for each of our realms after. The following servers were known to be affected and terminated service today:

chaoscrusade
toxic-wow
Ani-wow
wowfusion
wowgasm
wowscape

[DeadlyMaker]

Honestly, I don't give a jackshit if it was from their lawyers. I'd still stand up for it I doubt they would even dare to take it to court. If a fluxload of people backed me up, they would only make a shame of theirselves. And waste time on only the smal amount of players who plays private servers. I doubt those players would go back to retail if they knew blizzard were doing this. I personally hate greedy people so i wouldnt back down.