Blizzard wins ruling against BnetD

Federal court deems fan-run Starcraft servers in violation of Blizzard EULAs.

Blizzard Entertainment has won a summary judgment in federal district court against members of the BnetD project. Initiated in 1998 by then-UCSD student Mark Baysinger, BnetD emulated Blizzard’s Battle.net online service, a server designed to allow gamers to play Blizzard’s PC games against each other online. The St. Louis court found that the BnetD servers circumvented Blizzard’s antipiracy technology, allowing gamers to play hacked or illegal versions of Blizzard’s software, most notably the Starcraft, Warcraft, and Diablo series.

"We consider this ruling to be a major victory against software piracy," stated Mike Morhaime, president and cofounder of Blizzard. "By ruling in our favor on every count, the court is sending a clear message that creating unauthorized servers which emulate Blizzard’s Battle.net servers is without question illegal. We have worked hard to provide gamers with a free, safe, secure, reliable, environment on Battle.net, and this ruling is a strong validation that we are justified in protecting and ensuring the integrity of our game service."

Judge Charles Shaw also ruled that by reverse-engineering the Battle.net software, the defendants were in violation of Blizzard’s End User License Agreements and Battle.net’s Terms of Use. Furthermore, Judge Shaw ruled that any further distribution of BnetD software or the creation of any more Blizzard server emulators for use with legal or illegal copies of Blizzard software is illegal.

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