Digital Millenium Copyright Act
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Library of Congress rules in favor of jailbreaking
Today, the Library of Congress has ruled in favor of both jailbreaking and unlocking phones according to an Associated Press Statement published on the New York Times. The Library of Congress statement can be found here if you'd prefer to read the original. The Washington Post has also picked up this story. This ruling responds to an EFF petition, one opposed by Apple, that maintains the current status quo, allowing iPhone owners to continue both practices, and pushes things even further. Jailbreaking allows iPhone owners to download third party applications outside of Apple channels and unlocking offers a way to use iPhones on third party GSM networks, typically T-Mobile.
LGJ: Unlicensed games and the DMCA
Each week Mark Methenitis contributes Law of the Game on Joystiq ("LGJ"), a column on legal issues as they relate to video games: Fans of retro games or even just videos about retro games are familiar with the "unlicensed" games that existed on bygone systems like NES and SNES. These titles include a number of "Bible games" and more risque offerings like Bubble Bath Babes (box art pictured above). What's of particular interest to me, though, is how unlicensed games were ever "allowed" in the first place, and how more recent legal requirements more or less eliminate the possibility of new unlicensed titles in the retail marketplace.We can trace unlicensed games back to the US game industry's so-called "crash" in the early 1980s. At the time, the console market was basically an open playing field. If you wanted to make a game for an Atari console, you just made it. This led to the widely publicized over-saturation of low quality titles, which killed consumer confidence in the home games market. Remember, back then, there was no Joystiq.com -- let alone the other copious resources used to research a game before purchasing. So, when Nintendo came to the US and almost single-handedly brought the video game industry back from the dead, the company decided to take certain quality control measures to prevent repeating Atari's mistakes.
Blizzard responds to the Glider decision
Blizzard (via Nethaera) has released a nice long statement on the Glider outcome over on the forums. She basically runs through the history of the case and why Blizzard is against what Glider is doing, and why going through the courts was the only route left to them. She says that Warden (though called only "security measures") was enabled in response to player concerns about bots, and that when the MDY/Glider people circumvented Warden, their only recourse was to seek an injunction through the courts, which, as we've reported recently, they plan to have soon.She does say that Blizzard won based on the judge's decision that MDY did violate the Digital Millenium Copyright Act, but Neth doesn't go any further into the issue, and doesn't elaborate at all on what might happen if this case is used as a precedent against other types of Terms of Use violations. As you might expect from an official Blizzard telling of the tale, the case is seen as a victory for Blizzard and their players -- for them, it's all about keeping bots out of Azeroth, and this decision will definitely help them do that.And that's obviously not a bad thing -- most players will agree that MDY was allowing players to cheat (by letting the game play automatically without them in control), and thus preventing the client from being used in-game is a good thing. It's just that DMCA issue that might be a nagging problem -- we'll have to see what happens with that in the future.
