Who Owns Software?
If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!
Blizzard, the company behind Word Of Warcraft, currently has a lawsuit against MDY Industries over a bot program called Glider. Blizzard is pushing this thing to new limits now, arguing that a software creator retains complete control over how a program is used, meaning that anyone who uses it in a different way could be found guilty of copyright infringement.
I can’t begin to express just exactly how big of a load of total crap this is. That’s right up there with a fixture company suing a plumber because he took a set of kitchen fixtures and decided that it would be neat to use them as bathroom faucets. It may or may not be a good idea but certainly there’s zero ground for a lawsuit over the matter.
And here’s another thought, manufacturers of lots of things, software in particular, are fond of making it clear that their product is not warranted to be suitable for any particular purpose or use. If they hold that Blizzard’s claim is right, then software makers and manufacturers of all kinds of things had better realize that they’re giving up that cute little disclaimer and that their product IS for a particular purpose.. which means it had bloody well better WORK.
Do they really want to go there?
I didn’t think so.
Technorati Tags: blizzard, copyright, lawsuit, program, software, world+of+warcraft
If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!
