On Mar 27, 7:41*pm, Brian Trosko <btro...@panix.com> wrote:
> gerryq <ger...@indigo.ie> wrote:
> > IIRC, the people behind bnetd claimed falsely to have implemented a
> > 'clean room' reverse engineering of Battlenet protocols, and Blizzard
> > was able to demonstrate that that they were liars. *Cue collapse of
> > their case. *I don't believe any unusual corners of copyright law had
> > to explored.
>
> This is inaccurate. *Blizzard relied on the DMCA, not usual
> copyright law, and claimed that bnetd violated that law by circumventing
> a copy prevention technology. *This was prima facie false, because the CD
> key technology in no way was a copy prevention technology. *One could, and
> still can, copy a D2 CD to one's heart's content, and the CD key
> requirement will not do a single thing to prevent those copies from being
> made. *The court held, ridiculously, that code that does nothing
> whatsoever to prevent a copy being made of a piece of software, and
> indeed, isn't even *called* until such time as that copy of the piece of
> software is actually used, was a copy prevention technology, and that
> bnetd circumvented it. *

Surely making copies ineffective does prevent some copying by making
it pointless? Thus it seems reasonable to call it a copy prevention
technology.

Similarly, purple ink bags that explode in a case of money if the case
is forced open are obviously a theft prevention technology, not a
banknote colouring technology.

- Gerry Quinn