Blizzard, the creators of World of Warcraft, the king of MMORPG’s, won a substantial judgment in it’s ongoing lawsuit against MDY Industries, the creators of MMOGlider. As I understand it, MMOGlider is a bot that essentially plays the game for the player. MMO’s are a strange thing. You have people who pay for the game, pay monthly subscription fees, and then pay for a program to play the game for them. Anyway, it appears that MDY is going to be the one paying as a US District Court has awarded Blizzard 6 Million Dollars (or approximately 700,000 G ).
It’s still possible that Blizzard could appeal the decision that their request for double or triple the damages was denied. So the $6 million award has the potential to become larger.
MDY was held to have violated the Terms of Service agreement that all WoW players agree to and to have violated Blizzard copyright. The technical legal aspects of this case are complicated and beyond me to certain extent, even though I have a law degree. I don’t practice in this area though. However I am fascinated in how our current legal structure adapts to and is applied to the new digital world.
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