A Pyrrhic Victory? Blizzard vs. Glider

http://www.gamerates.com/posts/show/blizzard_wins_legal_case_v_bot_maker_glider

We posted a blog post on this over at GameRates.com on what this means for some other ToS/EULA violators such as virtual currency sellers.

"What does this mean for the gold industry however?

First off it may embolden Blizzard to actually take on major gold sellers in the courtroom. However, this could be a very dangerous move as if they lost or perhaps a U.S court found that virtual currency has real worth it could awake the sleeping giant of legal problems. For example if Blizzard bans someone accidently, or it’s servers crash, or they nerf an item all which destroy virtual goods (with real legal value) in the process one may be able to sue Blizzard for these “real” damages caused. For this and many other reasons we doubt that such a case will arise although the reverse may be true (a gold farmer suing blizzard for preventing them from selling its legally acquired in-game goods for cash outside the game). For those of you that have been around for a while you may remember the BlackSnow Case against Mythic where such a thing happened.

Still the scary thing is the wide ruling that violating a Terms of Service (ToS) or End User License Agreement (EULA) that you haphazardly click every time you play the game can be counted as copyright infringement. An EULA can say virtually anything it wishes. Does violating any part of it really count as copyright infringement? If you choose to farm items by hand using normal game mechanics without interfering with anyone else and then you mail the items you acquire to another person that is fine (it would be considered “twinking” a friend or new character), yet if you do the same action and the person sends you $10 through PayPal for the gift is it then considered a copyright violation because it violates Blizzards ToS?

That’s ridiculous and as such we don’t see the case ever being applied to the virtual currency market.

In fact we think that if the case is appealed it has a very good chance of being reversed. It’s simply too broad in its scope"

On a side note, Glider may be "big", but it considered a consumer grade bot. As far as the large virtual currency companies they often have custom programed bots for farming/powerleveling and there are a bunch of Asian versions of glider.