By Jason Roberts
A Federal District Court in St. Louis has found members of the BnetD project guilty of violating Blizzard’s End User License Agreements(EULAs) and Battle.net Terms of Use (TOU), as well as the provision of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) that prohibits the circumvention of anti-piracy technology as well as distributing said technology.
“We consider this ruling to be a major victory against software piracy,” stated Mike Morhaime, President and Co-Founder of Blizzard Entertainment. “By ruling in our favour on every count, the court is sending a clear message that creating unauthorized servers which emulate Blizzard’s Battle.net servers is without question illegal. We have worked hard to provide gamers with a free, safe, secure, reliable environment on Battle.net, and this ruling is a strong validation that we are justified in protecting and ensuring the integrity of our game service.”
Judge Charles Shaw found that the defendants were bound to the terms of Blizzard’s EULAs and Battle.net TOUs, and by altering Blizzard software they were in violation of those terms. Judge Shaw also found that because the BnetD servers created a functional alternative to Battle.net and were used to bypass Blizzard’s anti-piracy technology, the defendants were infringing on the copyright agreements.