Game company Blizzard has won their contract and DMCA case in District Court against three defendants who reverse-engineered Blizzard software (among other things) to set up their own gaming network on which to play Blizzard games. The defendants did so because they saw Blizzard's restrictive license and network as unethical ("Oh did they now," commented my game designer husband), and for it's "hack value." (The court drily notes in footnote six "the parties do not define 'hack value,'" cracking up said husband). The alternative network was particularly annoying to Blizzard because play on it was not restricted to those with a valid CD key--that is, pirated copies could be played on it.

Defendants argued that the software license, with standard clauses that restrict reverse engineering, was preempted by copyright's fair use doctrine, under which reverse engineering is a fair use. The court rejected this argument. Free software folks are exercised by this case, and hoped that the court would rule on the side of preemption. Imagine their ire, however, if a court were to rule that copyright statutes preempted the terms of the GPL, restrictive in its own way…

While a world in which reverse engineering is restricted by contract will be missing some interactivity, it seems far richer in terms of software and business model options than a world in which the only copyright package sold is one that is decreed by legislators.

posted by Solveig Singleton @ 8:40 AM | DRM & Watermarks, etc., Free Culture Movement, Games

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