Game's over for these software innovators
It's all fun and games, till somebody loses a lawsuit. That's what has happened to the creators of a piece of gaming software called BnetD, and their defeat suggests hard times ahead for well-meaning technology innovators who go too far.
Of the millions who play games over the Internet, about 10 million use the games of Blizzard Interactive, a subsidiary of the French company Vivendi Universal. Blizzard's World of Warcraft is the most popular online role-playing game in the world. Roughly 3.5 million people pay about $15 a month so they can slay monsters and cast spells. Blizzard offers several other popular titles, including Starcraft and Diablo. Nearly all allow for online play.
Indeed, just about every game company builds Internet gaming into their products, whether for living-room consoles like the Sony PlayStation 2 or for desktop PCs. It's good business: People like to play against other people, instead of the computer itself, so online-capable games sell better. That's why most games throw in an online feature at no extra charge. Blizzard charges extra for World of Warcraft, because it's constantly being updated. But an owner of the company's Diablo II adventure game can play online for free, forever.
Online game hosting has become a substantial business worldwide, with hundreds of Internet companies hosting popular games. Say you're a fan of the World War II game Call of Duty. There are companies that will rent you a remote Call of Duty server for $30 a month. You and your friends can log on from anywhere in the world, whenever you like.
Or perhaps your friends all live in the neighborhood. Just get a spare PC and use it to run your own Call of Duty server; the software is included with the game.
Most online game companies throw in free server software, so there are thousands of places online where you can find good fellowship and a good fight.
But Blizzard is different. The company runs its own private network, called Battle.net, with strict rules against cheating and vulgar behavior. Above all, there's an absolute ban on the use of illegally copied Blizzard games. The Battle.net system can spot a pirated copy of Diablo II a thousand miles away, and lock it out.
Seems reasonable -- but not to a handful of gamers who want to run their own game networks, just as they could with other titles. These guys bought some Blizzard games, ''reverse-engineered" them to master their secrets, and wrote their own compatible server code, called BnetD. They weren't out to make a fast buck; BnetD was given away so that anybody could set up a private server for playing Blizzard games.
Good clean fun? Blizzard didn't think so. BnetD servers work just fine with pirated copies of their games. BnetD's creators didn't intend to encourage software piracy; they even offered to include Blizzard's antipiracy code, if the company would hand it over. Fat chance, said Blizzard's chief operating officer, Paul Sams. ''We would not, under any circumstances, provide something that is so critical to our business to anyone outside of the company," he said.
Instead, Blizzard went after the BnetD programmers in federal court, demanding they stop distributing their product. The company argued that the license inside every Blizzard game forbids the customer from reverse-engineering the code. Blizzard also cited the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, a controversial federal law designed to stamp out piracy. They said BnetD violated the act by deliberately enabling crooks to play illegal copies of Blizzard games.
Internet civil liberties groups and a number of high-tech trade associations rallied to BnetD's defense. Jason Schultz, staff attorney for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, said BnetD's programmers only wanted to have fun. ''They didn't like the Battle.net service, especially when it first began," said Schultz. ''It was slow; there were problems."
Besides, if the company won, it might set a scary precedent. Federal law recognizes a right to reverse-engineer products to make compatible add-on products. The BnetD people thought this provision of the law covered them. If it didn't, they warned, just about any entrepreneur who wants to study a software product, then augment it, could find himself in the dock.
The court was unimpressed. It issued a summary judgment in favor of Blizzard last year. And last week, a three-judge panel in St. Louis unanimously upheld the ruling. Schultz, who helped represent BnetD in the case, couldn't say whether there will be an appeal to the US Supreme Court. But with four federal judges in agreement, the Supremes aren't likely to touch it.
Blizzard is hardly a villain here. It spent lots of money setting up its private gaming network, and letting its customers use it for free. The company surely has a right to use technology against software thieves; besides, it also uses Battle.net to enforce minimal standards of fairness and civility. Open gaming networks are infested with cheaters who've written programs to give themselves an unfair advantage, and with ''griefers," rude jerks who harass other players for the heck of it. Battle.net is generally free of these irritants.
Still, the court ruling reads like a handful of gravel tossed into the gears of innovation. Apparently, if the license forbids users from reverse-engineering the product, that's that. All independent research must stop, no matter how innocent the researcher's intent. Across America, software developers will think twice before they try to get creative with someone else's code. For would-be innovators, the rules of the game just got a lot tougher.
Hiawatha Bray can be reached at bray@globe.com. 
