RE: [dvd-discuss] Blizzard / Battlenet FAQ

["Ballowe, Charles" <CBallowe(at)usg.com>]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Steve Stearns [mailto:sterno@bigbrother.net]
> Sent: Friday, February 22, 2002 11:50 AM
> To: dvd-discuss@eon.law.harvard.edu
> Subject: Re: [dvd-discuss] Blizzard / Battlenet FAQ
> 
> 
> Yeah I realized after I sent that I should have clarified that a bit
> better.  By the terms of the statute, they don't really need to proove
> that, they just need to proove substantial non-infringing 
> use.  It seems
> like that would be one of the measures that a court would 
> use.  A lot of
> it would of course depend on the judge they get.  Some judges would
> likely say that there's no substantial non-infringing use because the
> supposed non-infringing use is unecessary given free 
> availability of the
> network.

It allows LAN play over IP -- IPX is officially supported by their
product, IP isn't (unless they updated something and I don't know
about it). If people are allowed to have multiple people play on a
LAN with only one purchased copy of the software, why not let them
play on a LAN that doesn't pass IPX? It seems that this meets the 
substantial non-infringing use requirement. Blizzard lacked the 
forethought to include this feature in their product, even though 
at the time StarCraft was released, nobody was using IPX on their
network unless they were maintaining a legacy NetWare server. While
this may be fine for a user with total control over their network,
a college student could have difficulty playing with a friend in 
the next room over. (My friends and I would routinely take over a 
cluster on a friday night so that we could play without hitting
routing/switching problems that prevented us from just playing from
our rooms).

-Charlie