Blizzard Sued over Home made WoW Guide

[Shino]

As much as I hate to say it, seems like the kid has a point...

Here's his site... http://www.angelfire.com/games6/wowseller8/auction.htm

[Kugyou]

Hmm. He might be in for a countersuit because of a couple of the comments he makes on his personal sale-site. While using Blizzard's content (screenshots, game mechanics) for an unauthorized commercial work using their content (his guide bundle), he attempts to invoke copyright protection for that work with the following statement:

[Shino]

Awesome Kugyou!

You make some excellent points. I'm interested to see what will happen with this. I doubt this kid is going to get anything out of this one though.

[Ming]

You're right in that he probably won't get anything out of this, however, I find it kind of crappy that they would interfere with him selling this, as if they're threatened by it. The comment made by Paul Levy regarding the sale of Microsoft Word guide books seems pretty valid. How is this situation any different?

What I really think is that this is a case of the big guy trying to bully the litle guy, sort of like that story where Microsoft sued that college kid for selling sealed softward products that he didn't need over eBay.

[Kugyou]

The main difference I see, Ming, is that the people who make "unauthorized" Word guides - or even normal publishers of "unauthorized strategy guides" - don't attempt to claim that the screenshots they took of the program/game are their sole copyrighted material. I've seen paragraphs in strategy guides that include long-winded "All images from the game are copyright of the game's creator, not us - we don't claim it, we don't want it, and if the creator tells us to remove them we'll have to come to your house with scissors and cut them out" disclaimers. Kopp, on the other hand, is selling his bundle of guides with a claim that the screenshots and other media from the game are copyrighted to him. Add to that the fact that he's threatening to use the very same tactics Blizzard used against him; namely, legal action and VERO removal of eBay resales of his guide. What Kopp doesn't mention is if Blizzard ever sent him any cease-and-desist letters; it wouldn't surprise me to learn that they have.

And as for the college kid getting sued - he resold academic-license software on eBay. That's not a shrink-wrap license - that's a BigRedStickerOnTheDangBox license. If you don't have proof that you're a student or educator (or, depending on the software, staff of an educational facility), you can't normally buy it on the open market. It gets worse, too - normal open-market sales of software (almost any software) only have 1 site license. Many of the academic licenses actually authorize you to have the software installed on up to three computers. That means that if you have to call Microsoft to re-activate software, they won't even flutter an eyelash if you say you've got it on three computers. Businesses have been exploiting this for *years* - borrow a student ID, get triple value!

[MitchellTF]

Hm...I'd say that this is the kind of case that deserves to go to court. It sounds complicated, but in this case I'm leaning towards Blizzard, though it looks like both Ebay and the kid behaved sorta badly. (But this is the kind of thing I'd want to see the trial off.)

[Yunni]

The written content I can understand, but if he's using screenshots from the game itself and saying they are HIS, then he's at fault, as Kugyou pointed out. Not sure with WoW, but with FFXI, every screenshot you take has their copywrite on the shots. If he hand-draws images instead, he'd have no problem, however. But nope, they are in-game content and that belongs to Blizzard. Silly boy.

[ScrumYummy]

I just found this insanely funny...

[Kugyou]

That's the one part about he DMCA I dislike - you can prety much file a conterclaim that says nothing more substantive than "Your momma", and the company has to respond to each and every one within a certain time limit. I do wonder why Blizzard didn't go for an injunction against Kopp selling the guide - I guess they probably figured he wouldn't counterattack with a lawsuit.

[Daijaga]

I jus twish the root underlying problem would go away. People that was to "0wz" and game instead of play it and enjoy the journey, wonders, community and sense of accomplishment in doing so. *sigh* Idealistic gamer much? Im raisin my kid to play video games right!