Glider (bot)

Last updated
Glider
Original author(s) Michael Donnelly [1]
Developer(s) MDY Industries, LLC [1]
Initial releaseJune 2005;19 years ago (2005-06) [1]
Stable release
1.8.0 / January 21, 2009;15 years ago (2009-01-21) [2]
Operating system Microsoft Windows 2000, XP, Vista [3]
Platform .NET 2.0 [3]
Type Internet bot [3]
License Shareware (US$25) [4]
Website www.mmoglider.com   OOjs UI icon edit-ltr-progressive.svg

Glider, also known as WoWGlider or MMOGlider, was a bot created by MDY Industries, which interoperated with World of Warcraft . Glider automated and simplified actions by the user through the use of scripting to perform repetitive tasks while the user was away from the computer. This allowed the user to acquire in-game currency and level-ups of the character without being present to perform the required actions. [5] As of 2008, it had sold approximately 100,000 copies. [1] Glider was ultimately discontinued after a lawsuit was filed against MDY Industries by Blizzard Entertainment. [6]

Glider was featured in the 2018 documentary film Play Money [7] [8] and its creator Michael Donnelly was a speaker at DEF CON 19. [9]

MDY v. Blizzard

While MDY Industries asserts that the software is meant to overcome design flaws in the World of Warcraft environment, Blizzard contended in a 2006 United States federal lawsuit that the program's use violated their terms of service. [10] In July 2008, the court entered summary judgment holding MDY Industries liable for tortious interference and copyright infringement, based, in part, upon the legal premise that users of the World of Warcraft client software are licensees rather than owners of their copy of software. [1]

Public Knowledge, a public interest group which filed an amicus brief in the case, [11] criticized the decision, saying it makes the loading into memory of legally obtained software an act of copyright infringement subject to high statutory penalties, if the user has violated the software's license agreement in any way. [12] [13] The court did not hold this view and found that Glider infringed upon Blizzard's intellectual property by making an illicit copy of the World of Warcraft client in order to avoid Blizzard's anti-cheating software, Warden, and ordered MDY Industries to pay Blizzard $6,000,000. [14] In finding this, the court agreed with Blizzard that World of Warcraft is licensed, not sold. [15]

Following the judgment, Blizzard petitioned to enjoin MDY Industries from distributing Glider or releasing its source code. [16] In March 2009, MDY Industries suspended Glider sales and operations pursuant to an injunction. [17] On December 14, 2010, United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit issued its ruling. They agreed that users were licensees rather than owners of the software. They changed the ruling on copyright, stating that users were in breach of contract concerning the end-user license agreement (EULA), but that this did not constitute a violation of copyright. Nevertheless, they ruled that the bot violated the DMCA. MDY requested that the case be sent back for review, but as of August 2011, the court had yet to hear or agree to any review. MDY's owner, Michael Donnely stated in a release on the official forums that given the manner of the ruling and the statements by the court, it was highly unlikely that MDY was going to be able to bring Glider back in any form. He stated that they were looking at their options, and that he would speak with the lawyers working the case, but due to the cost of the case it was not likely that there was much that they could do. By September 2011, mmoglider.com, the official "Glider" homepage, had vanished. [18] [19]

As of February 23, 2012, Blizzard acquired the domain name mmoglider.com and it is currently redirecting to a Blizzard-owned website, worldofwarcraft.com. [20] [21] Blizzard Entertainment also acquired ownership of 4 MDY Industries trademarks, including the "Glider" word mark and the corresponding logo image marks. [22] [23] The trademarks were cancelled in 2015 by the United States Patent and Trademark Office due to Blizzard Entertainment not renewing them. [24]

The domain name and trademark transfers suggests that a settlement might have been reached between MDY Industries and Blizzard Entertainment. However, details of the outcome of the case have not been released by either party and legal settlements are often confidential.

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Blizzard Entertainment</span> American video game publisher and developer

Blizzard Entertainment, Inc. is an American video game developer and publisher based in Irvine, California. A subsidiary of Activision Blizzard, the company was founded in February 1991 as Silicon & Synapse, Inc. by three graduates of the University of California, Los Angeles: Michael Morhaime, Frank Pearce and Allen Adham. The company originally concentrated on the creation of game ports for other studios' games before beginning development of their own software in 1993, with games like Rock n' Roll Racing and The Lost Vikings. In 1993, the company became Chaos Studios, Inc., and then Blizzard Entertainment soon after being acquired by distributor Davidson & Associates early in the following year. Shortly after, Blizzard released Warcraft: Orcs & Humans.

bnetd is a communication app that enables users of the online game StarCraft released on March 31, 1998 to connect and chat together. A bnetd clone was released on April 28, 1998 under the name StarHack and provided near-complete emulation of the original online multiplayer gaming service network. This was accomplished through reverse engineering of the corporate Blizzard Entertainment's Battle.net.

<i>World of Warcraft</i> 2004 video game

World of Warcraft (WoW) is a massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) released in 2004 by Blizzard Entertainment. Set in the Warcraft fantasy universe, World of Warcraft takes place within the world of Azeroth, approximately four years after the events of the previous game in the series, Warcraft III: The Frozen Throne. The game was announced in 2001, and was released for the 10th anniversary of the Warcraft franchise on November 23, 2004. Since launch, World of Warcraft has had nine major expansion packs: The Burning Crusade (2007), Wrath of the Lich King (2008), Cataclysm (2010), Mists of Pandaria (2012), Warlords of Draenor (2014), Legion (2016), Battle for Azeroth (2018), Shadowlands (2020), and Dragonflight (2022). Three further expansions, The War Within, Midnight, and The Last Titan, were announced in 2023.

In a series of legal disputes between SCO Group and Linux vendors and users, SCO alleged that its license agreements with IBM meant that source code IBM wrote and donated to be incorporated into Linux was added in violation of SCO's contractual rights. Members of the Linux community disagreed with SCO's claims; IBM, Novell, and Red Hat filed claims against SCO.

Madster was a peer-to-peer file sharing service. It was released in Napster's wake in August 2000 and shut down in December 2002 as a result of a lawsuit by the Recording Industry Association of America.

MGM Studios, Inc. v. Grokster, Ltd., 545 U.S. 913 (2005), is a United States Supreme Court decision in which the Court ruled unanimously that the defendants, peer-to-peer file sharing companies Grokster and Streamcast, could be held liable for inducing copyright infringement by users of their file sharing software. The plaintiffs were a consortium of 28 entertainment companies, led by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer studios.

The multinational technology corporation Apple Inc. has been a participant in various legal proceedings and claims since it began operation and, like its competitors and peers, engages in litigation in its normal course of business for a variety of reasons. In particular, Apple is known for and promotes itself as actively and aggressively enforcing its intellectual property interests. From the 1980s to the present, Apple has been plaintiff or defendant in civil actions in the United States and other countries. Some of these actions have determined significant case law for the information technology industry and many have captured the attention of the public and media. Apple's litigation generally involves intellectual property disputes, but the company has also been a party in lawsuits that include antitrust claims, consumer actions, commercial unfair trade practice suits, defamation claims, and corporate espionage, among other matters.

Arts and media industry trade groups, such as the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) and Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), strongly oppose and attempt to prevent copyright infringement through file sharing. The organizations particularly target the distribution of files via the Internet using peer-to-peer software. Efforts by trade groups to curb such infringement have been unsuccessful with chronic, widespread and rampant infringement continuing largely unabated.

File sharing is the practice of distributing or providing access to digital media, such as computer programs, multimedia, program files, documents or electronic books/magazines. It involves various legal aspects as it is often used to exchange data that is copyrighted or licensed.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Wowhead</span> Database for World of Warcraft

Wowhead is a website that provides a searchable database, internet forum, guides and player character services for the popular massively multiplayer online role-playing game World of Warcraft. It is owned and operated by ZAM Network LLC, a subsidiary of the Chinese company Tencent.

Lexulous is an online word game based on the commercial board game Scrabble. It is run by an Indian company of the same name on a dedicated website, and is also available within the social networking site Facebook.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Greg Street</span> American video game designer

Greg Street is an American video game designer and former Head of Creative Development for Riot Games.

<i>Jacobsen v. Katzer</i>

Jacobsen v. Katzer was a lawsuit between Robert Jacobsen (plaintiff) and Matthew Katzer (defendant), filed March 13, 2006 in the United States District Court for the Northern District of California. The case addressed claims on copyright, patent invalidity, cybersquatting, and Digital Millennium Copyright Act issues arising from Jacobsen under an open source license developing control software for model trains.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Battle.net</span> Online gaming platform by Blizzard Entertainment

Battle.net is an Internet-based online game, social networking service, digital distribution, and digital rights management platform developed by Blizzard Entertainment. The service was launched on December 31, 1996, followed a few days later with the release of Blizzard's action-role-playing video game Diablo on January 3, 1997. Battle.net was officially renamed to "Blizzard Battle.net" in August 2017, with the change being reverted in January 2021.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Copyright infringement</span> Illegal usage of copyrighted works

Copyright infringement is the use of works protected by copyright without permission for a usage where such permission is required, thereby infringing certain exclusive rights granted to the copyright holder, such as the right to reproduce, distribute, display or perform the protected work, or to produce derivative works. The copyright holder is usually the work's creator, or a publisher or other business to whom copyright has been assigned. Copyright holders routinely invoke legal and technological measures to prevent and penalize copyright infringement.

<i>Sega v. Accolade</i> 1992 American court case

Sega Enterprises Ltd. v. Accolade, Inc., 977 F.2d 1510, is a case in which the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit applied American intellectual property law to the reverse engineering of computer software. Stemming from the publishing of several Sega Genesis games by video game publisher Accolade, which had disassembled Genesis software in order to publish games without being licensed by Sega, the case involved several overlapping issues, including the scope of copyright, permissible uses for trademarks, and the scope of the fair use doctrine for computer code.

<i>MDY Industries, LLC v. Blizzard Entertainment, Inc.</i> Court case in the United States

MDY Industries, LLC v. Blizzard Entertainment, Inc and Vivendi Games, Inc., 629 F.3d 928, is a case decided by the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. At the district court level, MDY had been found liable under theories of copyright and tort law for selling software that contributed to the breach of Blizzard's End User License Agreement (EULA) and Terms of Use (ToU) governing the World of Warcraft video game software.
The court's ruling was appealed to the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, which reversed the district court in part, upheld in part, and remanded for further proceedings. The Court of Appeals ruled that for a software licensee's violation of a contract to constitute copyright infringement, there must be a nexus between the license condition and the licensor’s exclusive rights of copyright. However, the court also ruled, contrary to Chamberlain v. Skylink, that a finding of circumvention under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act does not require a nexus between circumvention and actual copyright infringement.

File sharing in the United Kingdom relates to the distribution of digital media in that country. In 2010, there were over 18.3 million households connected to the Internet in the United Kingdom, with 63% of these having a broadband connection. There are also many public Internet access points such as public libraries and Internet cafes.

<i>Micro Star v. FormGen Inc.</i> 1998 American court case on copyright

Micro Star v. FormGen Inc. 154 F.3d 1107 is a legal case applying copyright law to video games, stopping the sales of a compilation of user-generated levels that infringed the copyright of Duke Nukem 3D. Micro Star downloaded the Duke Nukem 3D levels and re-packaged them as Nuke It, after seeing their popularity on the internet. Micro Star filed suit in the United States District Court for the Southern District of California, asking for declaratory judgment that they had not infringed any copyright. Game publisher FormGen counter-sued, claiming that Micro Star created a derivative work based on Duke Nukem 3D and infringed their copyright.

The protection of intellectual property (IP) of video games through copyright, patents, and trademarks, shares similar issues with the copyrightability of software as a relatively new area of IP law. The video game industry itself is built on the nature of reusing game concepts from prior games to create new gameplay styles but bounded by illegally direct cloning of existing games, and has made defining intellectual property protections difficult since it is not a fixed medium.

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 MDY Industries, LLC v. Blizzard Entertainment, Inc. et al., Order Archived 2008-08-16 at the Wayback Machine (District of Arizona 2008).
  2. "Glider 1.8.0 release". January 21, 2009. Archived from the original on February 21, 2009. Retrieved 2009-03-01.
  3. 1 2 3 "Frequently Asked Questions about Glider". 2008-01-04. Archived from the original on 2008-07-03. Retrieved 2008-08-04.
  4. Boyer, Brandon (February 22, 2007). "Blizzard, Vivendi File Suit Against WoW Bot Creator". Gamasutra . Retrieved 2008-08-11.
  5. Lastowka, Greg; Dougherty, Candidus (13 February 2008). "Copyright Issues in Virtual Economies". E-Commerce & Policy. 9 (5). SSRN   1092285.
  6. "The Lawbringer: Glider's story ends". Archived from the original on 2018-01-23. Retrieved 2018-01-22.
  7. "Play Money". www.facebook.com.
  8. "Play Money". Play Money Film. Archived from the original on 2018-01-23. Retrieved 2018-01-22.
  9. Christiaan008 (14 February 2012). "DEFCON 19: Hacking MMORPGs for Fun and Mostly Profit ( w speaker)". Archived from the original on 2021-12-21 via YouTube.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)
  10. "Legal battle over Warcraft 'bot'". BBC News. BBC. March 26, 2008. Archived from the original on 2008-09-02. Retrieved 2008-08-11.
  11. MDY Industries, LLC v. Blizzard Entertainment, Inc. et al., Amicus curiae brief of Public Knowledge in support of neither party on cross-motions for summary judgment Archived 2008-06-06 at the Wayback Machine (District of Arizona 2008).
  12. Siy, Sherwin (2008-07-15). "Fine Print Scarier Than Ever: District Court Rules Against MDY in Glider Case". Archived from the original on 2008-08-04. Retrieved 2008-08-04.
  13. Claburn, Thomas (July 16, 2008). "Blizzard Wins Big Legal Victory Upholding Software License Rules". Information Week . Archived from the original on 2008-08-17. Retrieved 2008-08-16.
  14. Ziebart, Alex (1 October 2008). "Blizzard wins $6 million in court case with MMO Glider". WoW Insider. Joystiq. Archived from the original on 4 June 2009.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: unfit URL (link)
  15. Kuchera, Ben (May 7, 2008). "Blizzard attempt to kill WoW bot bad news for copyright law". Ars Technica . Retrieved 2008-08-11.
  16. Duranske, Benjamin (July 29, 2008). "Blizzard Seeks Permanent Injunction Against MDY, Asks Court to Prohibit Making Glider Open Source". Virtually Blind. Archived from the original on 2008-08-15. Retrieved 2008-08-16.
  17. "Glider off-line, effective March 12th, 2009". 2009-03-12. Archived from the original on 2009-11-15. Retrieved 2009-10-08.
  18. Corynne McSherry (2010-12-14). "A Mixed Ninth Circuit Ruling in MDY v. Blizzard: WoW Buyers Are Not Owners – But Glider Users Are Not Copyright Infringers Legal Analysis". Archived from the original on 2016-07-21. Retrieved 2016-12-04.
  19. von Lohmann, Fred (2009-09-25). "You Bought It, You Own It: MDY v. Blizzard Appealed". Electronic Frontier Foundation. Archived from the original on 2009-09-29. Retrieved 2009-10-08.
  20. "Whois Lookup & IP - Whois.net". whois.net. Archived from the original on 2013-06-07. Retrieved 2012-11-21.
  21. "World of Warcraft". World of Warcraft. Archived from the original on 2007-09-08. Retrieved 2013-07-25.
  22. "Trademark Status & Document Retrieval". tsdr.uspto.gov. Archived from the original on 2020-02-18. Retrieved 2018-01-22.
  23. "Trademark Status & Document Retrieval". tsdr.uspto.gov. Archived from the original on 2020-02-18. Retrieved 2018-01-22.
  24. "GLIDER Trademark - Registration Number 3444885 - Serial Number 77301191 :: Justia Trademarks". trademarks.justia.com. Archived from the original on 2018-01-23. Retrieved 2018-01-22.