Out-Law News 1 min. read

ISP supported in games fight against media giant


The US-based Electronic Frontier Foundation yesterday criticised media giant Vivendi Universal for threatening gamers who created their own multiplayer gaming community. Vivendi sent a "cease and desist" letter to Internet Gateway, an ISP that hosts free software which emulates a Vivendi game.

The emulator, called "bnetd," is based on a game called Battle.net. Battle.net is a title from Blizzard Entertainment, a company owned by Vivendi. Blizzard game purchasers can meet on-line or on a local area network to chat, find competition and start multiplayer games using the bnetd software.

Vivendi demanded that the ISP disable the web site hosting the bnetd software, claiming it violates copyright law and the anti-circumvention provisions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). The EFF, a civil liberties group, responded to Vivendi's letter, calling its claims unfounded and stating that the bnetd software, which was removed upon receipt of the demand, would be re-posted in 10 days.

"A group of volunteers decided to write a server for Blizzard games because the Blizzard servers were undependable and we wanted increased functionality," explained Tim Jung, owner of Internet Gateway, based in St. Louis. "Vivendi claims that the server violates the law because it does not implement checking the game's CD-KEY, designed to prevent the use of illegal copies of their games. We asked them to give us the information we needed to do the checking, but they refused."

"This is yet another example of misuse of the DMCA and copyright law," noted EFF Legal Director Cindy Cohn. "Bnetd developers engaged in legal reverse engineering without circumvention or any illegal activity."

The EFF added that “the DMCA has no requirement that one must include every feature of a program or system like CD-KEYS; in fact, the DMCA's ‘no mandate’ provision states that developers of interoperable programs do not have to respond to CD-KEYS and similar technology.“

"Corporations have wielded the DMCA to censor magazines, academic researchers, and competitors," said EFF Senior Intellectual Property Attorney Fred von Lohmann. "Now Vivendi is using the DMCA to threaten customers who simply want to improve the gaming environment for a product they've purchased legitimately."

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