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The question is, how is installing a third-party tool copyrightinfringement if it doesn't use Blizzard's code? This is where thingsget dicey. In a filing, Blizzard quotes a section from its EULA thatsays that "All connections to the Game and/or the Service, whethercreated by the Game Client or by other tools and utilities, may only bemade through methods and means expressly approved by Blizzard." Inother words, you're only allowed to play WoW using Blizzard-approved software.
By scrolling through the EULA and clicking okay, you agree, and canthen play the game. Here's where Blizzard's logic gets slippery. Toplay the game, certain parts of the code have to loaded into yourcomputer's RAM. In effect, Blizzard says you're making a copy of thegame. Since Glider breaks the EULA, you no longer have a license tomake that copy in your system's RAM, and now you're infringing onBlizzard's copyright.
So you see, any program which creates a "copy" of itself in yoursystem's RAM—and that's every program on your computer—makes you guiltyof copyright infringement unless you have a license allowing you to doso. Public Knowledge, a DC-based public interest group defending therights of users in "the emerging digital culture" has filed an amicus briefwith the court explaining why these claims are so preposterous. PK'sarguments are sound and easy to understand. "Defendant Blizzard insiststhat users of its software must rely upon a license from Blizzard tomake RAM copies, and users infringe copyright when they use thesoftware in a way not permitted by the license agreement," the amicus stated."But the license agreement cannot govern users' rights to make RAMcopies, because that right is already reserved to users under 17 U.S.C.§ 117. Therefore, Blizzard cannot claim any infringement of itscopyrights based upon the creation of RAM copies..."
The law cited by PK states that
"it is not an infringement for the owner of a copyof a computer program to make or authorize the making of another copyor adaptation of that computer program provided...
that such a new copy or adaptation is created asan essential step in the utilization of the computer program inconjunction with a machine and that it is used in no other manner." It's going to be hard to argue that using your RAM to run World of Warcraft isn't an essential step in playing the game.
Public Knowledge doesn't seem to want to side with either party inthese suits. "This is a case pitting distasteful gaming behavioragainst anunsavory over-assertion of copyrights," Sherwin Siy, Public Knowledge staff attorney stated.Blizzard is trying to stop a company from profiting from cheaters, butin doing so it may alter EULAs and TOS agreements, to the detriment ofusers.
Quote:
"Under Blizzard's theory, a copyright owner could not onlycontractually impose the most onerous restrictions on itscustomers—restrictions that undermine rights guaranteed by copyrightand First Amendment law—but could also enforce those conditions withthe threat of copyright law's high statutory damages," argues Public Knowledge in its brief. "Blizzard'sattempt to use contract to alter and displace those aspects ofcopyright law it does not like, while using copyright penalties toconstrue and enforce the terms of that alteration, is untenable, andthe Court should not endorse it."
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