Blizzard Sued Over “WoW” Gaming Guide
Posted by Jeff Chenkus on March 24, 2006
Filed Under Gaming | Stumble This
The corporate honchos and legal geniuses at Blizzard need to just relax. A World of Warcraft user makes his own guide to the game and sells it on eBay, and they feel the need to keep sending takedown notices claiming copyright infringement so that eBay eventually has to suspend his account. eBay should have left the account intact since Blizzard never responded to the counternotices as they are required to, but the main culprit here is Blizzard.
As pointed out in numerous articles, if just using screenshots to illustrate what you are talking about is not covered under fair use, and thus copyright infringement, there are a whole slew of publishers of books covering how to work with software such as Microsoft’s Office that are guilty as well. Blizzard, very simply, is just wrong. They have no case against this man and are only harassing him because they assumed he would not have the finanical backing to fight them. They have for some reason decided that a users guide is so against what they want that they are willing to harass him to the point of his account being shut down. At least the public advocacy group Public Citizen has taken up his cause as well. He does continue to sell the guide on a personal website and plans to continue doing so. His site can be found here, if you are interested. Whether or not you agree with the information this guide gives you is an entirely separate issue, the point here is Blizzards overreaching to try to shut him down.
Blizzard should just get the leash back on their lawyers and allow activity that will almost certainly be found to be legal. The way this company has treated their uses borders on shameful, and it would serve them right if a large percentage of users decide they just aren’t going to put up with this garbage anymore and just leave.
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3 Responses to “Blizzard Sued Over “WoW” Gaming Guide”
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Jeff, you are totally right. Blizzard and Vivendi do need to take a rest and calm down a bit…if this were any other person. I have had personal dealing with Brian Kopp on this eBay issue and it was Brian Kopp who abused eBay’s VeRO program on me as well. I was selling a WoW guide having nothing to do with the substance of his guide when my auction was taken down by eBay for “copyright infringement”. I contacted eBay imediately to lobby a protest. They only gave me Brian Kopp’s name and email address if I wanted to address the issue further. I contacted Brian but he was evasive and never returned my email, though I emailed him twice. I waited about a week and put my guide up for a second time. Again, Brian Kopp protested and claimed I “had infringed on his exclusive copyrights”. Exclusive???
I emailed Mr. Kopp and cc’d eBay. This time, I only received a reply from eBay, stating that they can do nothing at all and that I need to deal with Brian Kopp directly. I told them that he is evasive and unavailble and has dodged all of my emails. They told me that they have no power over whether Brian Kopp contacts me or not. At this point I gave up.
All this to say that Brian Kopp is not a victim, and though Blizzard’s lawyers need to take it down a notch, it is Brian Kopp who is the problem. Brian Kopp, who “uses eBay as his primary form of income”, abused the VeRO program so as to narrow the sales market in his favour. I ask, does this sound fair to you?
Based on what you have to say about Mr. Kopp, I do not disagree that there may be an issue with him in particular and it sounds like he has used non-response as a means of exerting himself fo rhis own personal gain. I was making no judgement on him or what he was selling, but rather on some of the odd ways that Blizzard takes to assert themselves against their users, the most recent being their issue with the user who was trying to recruit gay players for a guild and the banning of a user who was using a programmable keyboard. In many of these cases there can be seen some semblance of a reason why they need to have control to keep the game enjoyable and fair for all, the real problem is that you have no real recourse to object to their actions. If they would just set up some sort of grievance process, they may not be seen as such a dictatorship. The one thing I will say for them in a positive light is that with a user base of 6 million people, these could be seen as aberrations. I still think in cases where there is real disagreement, they would be much better served to have some comunication with the affected user rather then their non-responsive stream of form letters and legal notices.
It’s not fair at all DM. I find it amusing that Kopp is such a hypocrite on the issue.
Perhaps you should set up your own website and sell it independently as well.