Blizzard Suing Starcraft II Cheat Makers

[Andrew]

No matter how many people are sued or charge there always will be hackers...Just I think this will help lower that amount of people by alot because no one wants to be sued! btw anyone know whats the charges(what they gotta pay n stuff)[/

[TheEconomist]

What can the Los Angeles court possibly do against someone overseas?

Joke?

As long as its not China (who actively supports stealing of technology, particularlt hardware), there's a lot that can be done.

@Andrew: They are suing the creators of the hacks that are selling them. They aren't going to sue little Tim who logs on to Battle.net with that cool new program he found on Google.

[Norfindel]

Joke?

As long as its not China (who actively supports stealing of technology, particularlt hardware), there's a lot that can be done.

Uhmm... but they're overseas, they have no jurisdiction there, so what can they possibly do? You would need the cooperation of the other country's law system. You can count with that for things like mass killers, but guys that made a hack for a game? Come on...

[SaZun]

You would be surprised at how willing friendly countries will be with law suits. By agreeing to the EULA they are required to abide by it. Regardless of where they are.

I'm in a place atm, where... I have seen this. Some guy gets a random american cell phone number and calls the girl. She freaks out and tells the security office. They give the number to local police. Guy is tracked down and gos to a fingernail factory. (i've seen multiple version of this)

[TheEconomist]

Uhmm... but they're overseas, they have no jurisdiction there, so what can they possibly do? You would need the cooperation of the other country's law system. You can count with that for things like mass killers, but guys that made a hack for a game? Come on...

There is an international cooperation effort for things like this. America has a lot of pull in this way. That's why America is one of the few countries that can actually defend against piracy in overseas despite unwillingness of a lot of countries to perform their duty. If overseas governments chose when not to cooperate, that would be against several agreements that have been made and America would have quite a few avenues to pressure them until they concede. Really, Canada (that's where this is right?) has no choice but to cooperate.

I'm surprised this is new to you as there's piracy news articles regarding multinational lawsuits almost daily.

[Norfindel]

Never seen any news about it. International news here are about other stuff, like the miners in Chile, some terrorist act, something about politics, etc.

[SaZun]

You gotta look into it to find them. Certain sites will display the news feeds more. Local news for us tends to be about only the bad. Then CNN is filled with random and the war.

Then yahoo news feed is usually about celebrities, relationship advice and conflicting articles saying coffee is good and coffee is bad.

[Blackthourne]

Brilliant! Dont care if it works or not, this heralds a new age in the anti-hack war.

[Dalarsco]

It's funny how alot of the people that commented on the news in Kotaku seem to actually defend the hackers.



Seriously, do this kids read before posting?

We put limits on what cops can do to in order to catch people for real crimes. Hackers piss me off, too, but I won't give up civil liberties to catch terrorists and I sure as hell won't give them up to catch hackers. EULAs and other forms of DRM are bad for our personal freedoms. I should have just as much control over digital objects as I do over physical ones.
I hope they nail these guys for copyright infringement based on the derivative works clause. It's a clever loophole to use for now, though I would love to see game hacks treated the same way as steroids and other physical performance enhancers. But the EULA is in no way a valid legal document and it will be a gross miscarriage of justice if the judge in this case holds it up as one.

[spychi]

I am with the cheaters here, if a person modify's the source code which enables cheating and doesn't use it he is clean, if he uploads it, he has the right to do it as he made those changes in the code which makes him the owner of such mods, nowhere Blizzard is able to win such court case, it is Blizzard which illegaly sues people