bnetd and DMCA
Hello,
If you check http://www.bnetd.org, you'll find
a note explaining that their project has been
branded as illegal by the DMCA.
Bnetd is a server for networked playing with propietary
Blizzard games like Starcraft or Diablo. It aims to provide
the same features as the official BattleNet service.
Those games are protected in a way that server addresses
cannot be changed in order to use an unofficial server,
but the bnetd project (and others, even blizzard itself
used to) provides a tool to hack the game so that
unofficial addresses can be used.
What Blizzard claims is not well specified:
"The aforementioned site either hosts or distributes software which
illegally
modifies and/or alters Blizzard Entertainment copyrighted software or
bypasses anti-circumvention technology, thereby infringing upon Blizzard
Entertainment copyrights."
The Debian package only contains the server code, which is
written as free software from scratch.
Is that package illegal?
If it does indeed break the DMCA, would it be any problem
in distributing it outside the US, where this law [1] does
not prevail?
[1] Well, if US government can harrass into the Norway
to prosecute Jon Johanssen for violating the DMCA,
maybe law prevailance doesn't matter.
Cheers,
--
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Robert Millan Debian/GNU user
zeratul2 wanadoo es http://getyouriso.dyndns.org/
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