Just over a year ago, Bungie went to court to try to stop a serial Destiny 2 cheater who had evaded multiple account bans and started publicly threatening Bungie employees. Now, that player has been ordered to pay $500,000 in copyright-based damages and cannot buy, play, or stream Bungie games in the future.
In a consent judgment that has apparently been agreed to by both sides of the lawsuit (as dug up by TorrentFreak), district court judge Richard Jones agrees with Bungie's claim that defendant Luca Leone's use of cheat software constitutes "copyright infringement" of Destiny 2.
[...] Leone also created new accounts to get around multiple ban attempts by Bungie and tried to "opt out" of the game's license agreement as a minor in an attempt to do a legal end run around Bungie's multiple account bans.
[...] While a judge dismissed one such case against cheat maker AimJunkies last year, Bungie has since been awarded $12 million, $13.5 million, $6.7 million, and $16.2 million in damages in four separate copyright-based judgments against cheat makers.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 11 2023, @09:01AM (11 children)
I don't see how this can be copyright infringement. Breach of license? Sure.
But copyright infringement? Did he make an illegal copy for each account?
(Score: 5, Funny) by sigterm on Monday September 11 2023, @09:53AM (8 children)
From the judgement:
It works like this:
1. I buy a (license to use a) computer game.
2. I install it on my PC, which involves downloading and copying the copyrighted work onto my hard drive. This does not constitute copyright infringement.
3. I execute the application, which involves creating another copy by having the OS load the files into my computer's memory (RAM), dynamically modifying the contents according to the information found in the .exe header. This, too, is not copyright infringement. Obviously! (duh!)
4. I then run Cheat Engine, which modifies the 3rd copy currently held in RAM. Bam! I'm now a horrible software pirate (ARRR!), and need to pay the copyright holder $$$,$$$.
If you think long and hard about it, I'm sure you'll eventually find it all makes perfect sense. It would probably help if you're clinically insane, though.
(Score: 2) by coolgopher on Monday September 11 2023, @12:17PM (2 children)
So does this mean the Steam Overlay is now also considered unlawful? I mean, it too annotates whatever game you're running with various bits of extra information, some of which is derived from the game (FPS, etc)...
(Score: 3, Insightful) by looorg on Monday September 11 2023, @12:26PM
The Steam overlay is part of the product while this cheat product isn't. So there is a bit of a difference there. I don't he/they can claim that this is some sort of debugging feature they have created.
(Score: 1) by Mezion on Wednesday September 13 2023, @02:50AM
Immediate thought is no, because the steam overlay is not breaking license terms. This persons software would, as I expect there to be a disassembly/modification rules.
This kind of reproduction was spelt out pretty well in the Pystar cases, where they provided hardware and software designed to work with a MacOS install media to install MacOS on non-Apple hardware. This is not allowed by the licence terms, which them makes each copy (including all in-transit or partial copies of data) an illegitimate copy and subject to claim. The fact that the copy might be discarded after use was considered irrelevant.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by SomeRandomGeek on Monday September 11 2023, @05:21PM (4 children)
Sometimes, it helps to think about how it works legally rather than technically.
Legally, it works like this:
1. I am not allowed to play the computer game. If I did, it would be copyright infringement.
2. In exchange for certain considerations, the game maker grants me a license to play the game. The license has certain terms.
3. I am allowed to play the computer game. It is not copyright infringement, because I have a license.
4. I violate the terms of the license. Now the license is void.
5. I am not allowed to play the computer game. If I did, it would be copyright infringement.
(Score: 2) by sigterm on Monday September 11 2023, @05:58PM (2 children)
Your point about the license is perfectly valid. A license can basically contain any condition or stipulation the rightsholder wants, short of any that directly violate applicable law. If the license say that you may not access Bungie's online services using an altered version of the work, and/or use tools to circumvent their anti-cheating mechanisms, then sure, your license should be considered revoked once you violate these conditions.
The nonsensical parts of the case are the arguments regarding an "unauthorised derivative work," which are clearly hogwash. If I acquire the right to use a copyrighted work, for instance by buying a book or a painting, I'm then perfectly allowed to scribble in the margins of the book or draw a mustache on the painting with a sharpie. I don't need the copyright owner's "authorisation" to do so!
Now, can I sell this "derivative work" and/or present it as my own? That's an entirely different question, and the answer may very well be "no" depending on the circumstances. However, that's not the least bit relevant to this particular case, as nobody were selling or misrepresenting anything.
(Score: 2) by looorg on Monday September 11 2023, @06:22PM (1 child)
I might have missed this or confused it with one of the other pieces of aimbot/wallhack software in this and the current crop of similar things they are most definitely selling it as far as I can recall. It was not given away freely. Those days are long gone.
Such as AimJunkies mentioned in the article summary to accepts bitcoin payment for their service.
https://www.aimjunkies.com/ [aimjunkies.com]
(Score: 3, Interesting) by vux984 on Monday September 11 2023, @08:43PM
An aimbot doesn't "contain the game"; it does not contain a copy of it, or a derivative copy of it. At best it is a set of instructions to modify it, that you would be applying to your own licensed copy.
I can't sell you a modified copies of the harry potter novel where all the characters have foul potty-mouths, but i can absolutely sell you a set of instructions for modifying your own copy of harry potter to make the characters all foul potty-mouths.
(Score: 2) by aafcac on Monday September 11 2023, @09:35PM
The license being revoked isn't relevant, the copy was licensed when it was distributed by an authorized party. Copies to the disk and RAM don't count when it comes to Internet.
It's messed up how far Copyright has been allowed to drift over the last few decades in particular.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 11 2023, @12:23PM
Best guess is that he had to debug and/or disassemble part of their code to figure out where they stored or how they manipulated data so he could create the cheat/trainer. I'm not sure how viable it is these days to just sit and sift thru memory (gigabytes of it) to try and find subtle changes. But I assume it's still doable in that regard. But then that is probably only for the low hanging trainer fruit of non-online software and mainly for easy things such as life, energy, money and things such as that. Just like back in the olden days of trainers and cheat. If you want to create aimbots or wallhacks etc then you need more and just sitting sifting thru memory probably isn't going to be enough. You need to hook into the display and such things so you'll most likely need more access then just looking thru memory. You might at least want a hint of where to look. You will also need to dodge various online DRM checks that will monitor memory so you are not in there trying to poke in new values or information. So you will in some regard violate their software, hence copyright infringement.
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Wednesday September 13 2023, @04:46PM
I don't see how this can be copyright infringement. Breach of license? Sure.
If I authorize you to sell ten copies of a registered work and you sell twenty, that is copyright infringement, which basically always boils down to breach of contract.
Copyright sets up parameters between author and publisher, but they lost sight of that in the last century with the advent of software licenses.
Poe's Law [nooze.org] has nothing to do with Edgar Allen Poetry
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Rich on Monday September 11 2023, @10:45AM
Is this the loophole they found to kill Right-to-Repair and control everything you own for the "you'll-own-nothing" dystopia?
Once it becomes entrenched case law considering any modification to be an illegal derived work, the free world will be any place outside the US and the remaining first world (the others don't care) can only hope to not be sucked into that.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Mykl on Tuesday September 12 2023, @12:51AM
It's possible, but really inefficient.
It sounds to me like Copyright is the approach agreed upon because we don't actually have a better relevant law to ban cheaters.
I think that society would, in general, agree that we should kick cheaters off a game platform where it adversely affects other players' experience (I don't care about cheating in solo play - if you want to put some training wheels on when you're alone then that's your business). The question is how to codify that into law so that it serves the intent without creating unintended side effects. There's also the question of getting enough politicians to care about the issue to put this matter before the hundreds of other pieces of legislation vying for their attention.
Bungie is unlikely to want to spend the years and dollars involved in creating a brand new law, so is using an existing (imperfect) tool that is available today.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Wednesday September 13 2023, @03:28PM
Bungie’s Copyright Infringement Claim Against AimJunkies Fails to Convince Court [torrentfreak.com]
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