First Rule Of World Of Warcraft: You Don't Talk About World Of Warcraft
24th Mar 2006, 21:00 GMT
Gregory A. Beck from Public Citizen Litigation Group writes "Public Citizen Litigation Group has just filed a lawsuit against Blizzard, Vivendi Universal Games (Blizzard's parent company), and the Entertainment Software Association on behalf of a small eBay seller. Our client (the eBay seller) wrote an unofficial gaming guide to World of Warcraft called "The Ultimate World of Warcraft Gold & Leveling Guide." After he began selling an electronic version of his guide on eBay, Blizzard, Vivendi, and the Entertainment Software Association began repeatedly invoking the notice and takedown provisions of section 512 of the DMCA to have the eBay auctions terminated on the grounds that the guide infringed Blizzard's copyright. Our client filed a DMCA counternotice and, because the companies did not respond within the fourteen days required by statute, eBay reinstated the auctions. But even after that, the companies continued to file notices of claimed infringement, ignoring the prior counternotice, until the seller's eBay account was suspended. In addition, Vivendi's lawyer has threatened to sue if he continues selling his guide. Vivendi's position is apparently that merely writing about their game infringes their copyright even if the author incorporates none of the company's text or storyline. Although the e-book does contain a limited number of screen shots to explain combat techniques, this is well within the bounds of fair use. If Vivendi is correct, then selling a how-to book about Microsoft Word would infringe Microsoft's copyright, especially if the book contained one or more screenshots of Word's user interface. We think this cannot be the law. Big companies often use the DMCA and eBay's "Verified Rights Owner" -- or "VeRO" -- program to harass small sellers of competing products. With the hundreds of thousands of notices of claimed infringement it receives, eBay is not capable of examining the merits of each individual claim. As a result, eBay terminates targeted auctions without question and small sellers who can't afford to defend themselves are left without recourse. Even a DMCA counternotice is ineffectual if a company can simply ignore it and continue terminating auctions at will."
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