Blizzard sues woman $88 million for running unauthorized WoW server

[Dana Scully]

sauce

Hey, Don't Run Unauthorised World Of Warcraft Servers, OK?


Because if you do, it'll cost you $88 million. That's how much Scapegaming's Alyson Reeves was ordered to pay Blizzard following a court case, in which Reeves was found guilty of charging users to play on an unauthorised World of Warcraft server.
Over the years, she'd amassed over $3 million from these unsuspecting players, which forms part of the enormous settlement. The other $85 million? That's for statutory damages.
You silly kid! There may be plenty of money in World of Warcraft, but that's Blizzard's money, not yours!

Somehow I doubt she'll ever actually pay that $85 million she still owes, but good lord Blizzard.

 

[Cthulhu]

Actually, private WoW servers are a pretty good investment. You offer the game (or the basis of it, 30 times faster) for free, and offer additional services such as buying gear instead of grinding them together. People will spend $200 on good gear on such places - and Blizzard would need people to play / pay for well over a year to get the same amount of money.

This is why microtransactions in MMO's instead of monthly fees work. I dunno if it works like this on other MMO's based on said microtransactions though.

 

[Makoeyes987]

Well as we can see, it isn't a good investment cause apparently it'll cause you 88 million dollars.

Good luck paying that off.

 

[Alex]

Blizzard sucks.

 

[Max Payne]

She shoulda stopped before she got caught, or you'know had better security.

I'd have quit after the first million

 

[Ⓐaron]

Blizzard is officially just as bad as the RIAA and MPAA now. Fuck Blizzard. I hope they go out of business, although that's incredibly unlikely.

 

[Tennyo]

Yes, screw Blizzard for putting their foot down when people do illegal things with their product. Shame on you, Blizzard, for not letting people do things they aren't supposed to do! Shame on you for going after someone who violates your copyright!!!!

I have no sympathy for this woman. She knew what she was doing and got caught. Maybe don't break the law next time?

And it's obvious she won't have to pay $85 mil, because she doesn't have it. The number is more than likely just to make a statement than anything else.

 

[Hisako]

Yeah, she deserved to get hit with a lawsuit. But still, how the heck did they get that number?

Was that the estimated amount of moneywhoring Blizzard missed out on because this woman was hosting a cheaper alternative?

 

[Tennyo]

Apparently the court came up with that number. Not Blizzard.

The court took the size of the community, 427,000, and multiplied that figure by $200 "per act of circumvention" of a copyright security system, and came to the statutory damages amount of over $85 million. It's unclear if Reeves, who didn't respond to the suit, would be able to pay the award to fulfillment, or if the defendant would appeal the ruling.

Also, apparently the woman never responded to the lawsuit and that is how Blizzard won?

fees. Reeves had not responded to the suit, resulting in the default judgment in favor of Blizzard.

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/29936/Blizzard_Wins_88M_Judgment_Aga....php

So she just sat there twiddling her thumbs knowing she should go to court but didn't? Or something...?

Why would you do that if you are being sued? :/

 

[Ⓐaron]

I don't give a shit how illegal what she did was, $88 million is fucking obscene for a fucking intellectual property violation which as far as any of us know really doesn't harm anyone at all (to prove that it harmed Blizzard you'd have to prove that the people that paid for her server would have paid for Blizzard's servers instead if her server hadn't existed, which is impossible to do; besides, it's not as if Blizzard is suffering from any shortage of income right now). Fine her what she made off the server, sure, but charging $85 million beyond that is absurd. And if Blizzard is really that concerned about lost revenues then maybe they should stop running servers that are so shitty that people would rather use cheaper bootleg servers with better performance.

 

[Ⓐaron]

oh, and not showing up to court shouldn't cost someone $85 million either

 

[Tennyo]

Well, not showing up to court obviously did. She should have responded to the case if she didn't want anything bad to happen. This woman screwed up and now she has to suffer the consequences. That's kind of how life goes.

If you become distracted for one second to change the radio station in your car while you are driving and end up getting into an accident, and as a result you die, would you argue that this was not enough to deserve death? Maybe it wasn't, but you died anyway. Because that's how life goes. Sometimes bad things happen that are more than you deserve, but you still screwed up and now you have to deal with it. :/

 

[Cat Rage Room]

I agree with Tenny on how life is fair and there ain't shit you can do about it.

But 85 million dollars is a lot of money. Shouldn't there be a limit on how much you should be able to sue for in relative to the crime?

 

[Ⓐaron]

yeah exactly

I definitely agree that she should have shown up to court. But it shouldn't have cost her eighty-five million extra fucking dollars, and the fact that our legal system awards such absurd punitive damages to people who obviously can't pay it for the sake of clients who obviously don't need the money is fucking ridiculous. Even charging her an extra $1 million for not showing up to court probably would've been well beyond her means, although I doubt I would've complained near as much if that had been all it had cost her. Seriously though, just charge her the $3 million she made off the servers and be done with it.

 

[Ⓐaron]

it's also worth pointing out that Tenny's analogy isn't really all that solid because running into another car isn't a punishment humans are inflicting on others. Humans are capable of mitigating their own behaviour in terms of what's, you know, reasonable.

 

[Ⓐaron]

Seriously this woman is basically going to be a fucking slave to Blizzard for the rest of her life because some fucking court decided that corporate power is more important than basic human dignity. That's the antithesis of justice. Then again it's not as if the U.S. court system has been particularly noted for producing just outcomes.

 

[Max Payne]

Blizzard is officially just as bad as the RIAA and MPAA now. Fuck Blizzard. I hope they go out of business, although that's incredibly unlikely.

That's.....not really an appropriate response to the situation at all man.

You hope Blizzard, a company that employs literally thousands of people, to go out of business because of a lawsuit with someone who stole from them?

Honestly, the only thing that I can say is that the court should just make her pay everything she made to blizzard, and spend maybe a year or two in jail/on parole.

 

[Ⓐaron]

When a corporation responds to intellectual property theft by completely destroying the person who stole from them, yes, I do hope they go out of business. It's sickening practice and it needs to be stopped. There are plenty of corporations out there that don't think punishing people in such an inhumane fashion is necessary. Take back whatever revenues she made by running the server, sure, but this woman is never going to have a life of her own again, and as I already mentioned, there's no proof that she even cost Blizzard any money, because there's no proof that the people who played on her server would ever have paid Blizzard a fucking cent. If they were anything like me, they wouldn't have given Blizzard a penny.

 

[Alex]

Humans are capable of mitigating their own behaviour in terms of what's, you know, reasonable.

Except when it comes to handing out fines for statuatory fines. It doesn't like they've quite grasped how to mesh that with the concept of being 'reasonable' yet.

 

[Ⓐaron]

I said they're capable, not that they actually do. Most of them don't

 

[Tennyo]

it's also worth pointing out that Tenny's analogy isn't really all that solid because running into another car isn't a punishment humans are inflicting on others. Humans are capable of mitigating their own behaviour in terms of what's, you know, reasonable.

You completely missed the point of my post. Utterly and completely.

The point is that people need to stop doing things they aren't supposed to be doing with no regard to the consequences for their actions. You do something wrong, you screw up, it will come to get you.

Yes, of course this is a LOT of money. Yes it is excessive. I still don't feel sorry for this woman, and I still don't hate Blizzard for taking her to court, because she did something illegal. She did something she knew she wasn't supposed to be doing.

It's like how here in MN, years ago now, there was a lawsuit filed against a man because he had filled a large mailbox with concrete and put his smaller one inside as protection against kids who were going around the neighbor hood smashing them. One kid took a swing at his and broke his arm. The family claimed he was going to be a surgeon when he grew up (yeah right) and that now his whole future as down the drain because of this man. No one stopped to think that the dumb kid should not have been smashing mailboxes in the first place and needs to suck it up and deal with the consequences of his actions. Filling your mailbox with concrete is now apparently illegal here, so that kids who break the law and take a swing at them with a bat don't hurt themselves. Got to pamper the poor babies who break the law, I guess.

My whole point? People need to start being smart for once and think about the consequences for their actions. Don't do shit that you aren't supposed to be doing and bad things like being sued for $88 million won't happen to you.

You don't honestly think Blizzard is going to make her give them all that money, do you? Money she doesn't have?

But it's her fault she did something illegal, and her fault she chose to not show up for court. Now she has to deal with the consequences of her actions, whatever they may be.

 

[Cat Rage Room]

Yes, of course this is a LOT of money. Yes it is excessive. I still don't feel sorry for this woman, and I still don't hate Blizzard for taking her to court, because she did something illegal. She did something she knew she wasn't supposed to be doing.

True, but there is such a thing as disproportionate retribution. The punishment has to fit the crime; for example it's wrong to steal, but that doesn't make it okay to say, cut off someone's legs for doing it, just because they shouldn't steal. Wrong should be punished, but there has to be some sort of reasonable precedent or else the entire justice system serves no purpose.

 

[Tennyo]

I don't think they can even force her to pay with money she doesn't have anyway. The number is just for show, to show that they are serious.

 

[Ⓐaron]

You completely missed the point of my post. Utterly and completely.

You completely missed the point of my post. Utterly and completely.

The point is that people need to stop doing things they aren't supposed to be doing with no regard to the consequences for their actions. You do something wrong, you screw up, it will come to get you.

I didn't dispute any of that. I even said that I agreed that she should have shown up to court and that she shouldn't have run the fucking server.

It doesn't change the fact that charging her $85 million more than she made from it is fucking obscene. Blizzard doesn't need the money. She can't possibly afford the money and because she's being charged more money than she possibly has, there's no way she'll ever make that kind of money in her life (you have to have money to make that kind of money). Thanks to our retarded bankruptcy laws, the chances of her even being able to file for bankruptcy to get her debts forgiven are pretty insubstantial. The rest of her life is ruined. The punishment does not fit the crime. She should be charged $3 million and that should be it. And if you don't think that having the rest of someone's life ruined for running a pirate server is an inappropriate punishment then you have a severe deficit of empathy.

Your analogy was inappropriate because people can control what they do. The jury didn't have to charge her $88 million for a fucking pirate server. They have at least the capability of self-control, even if they obviously didn't demonstrate it in this case. They're perfectly capable of a bit of basic human empathy and reasoning and realising that there's no possible way anyone can pay such an excessive fine in their life. They didn't, though. And that makes them at least as worthy of condemnation as she is.

You don't honestly think Blizzard is going to make her give them all that money, do you? Money she doesn't have?

Yes. Yes, they very well might. Blizzard are a bunch of assholes, they've made that plainly clear from their past actions. The fact that they were completely willing to expose all their customers' identities because of a little simple bit of trolling that can be easily solved by clicking a fucking red X proves it. The only reason they shut down the Real ID débâcle was because they would have lost revenue from all the people that would have cancelled, and likely the only way they'll forgive this woman any of her debts is if the backlash from this absurd verdict is so heavy that they realise they'll stand to lose revenue. Shrugging your shoulders and saying "Well, she shouldn't have run the server" isn't going to help anyone. That's absurdly obvious. The fact that the legal system charged her $88 million over it is self-evident proof of that fact. Stating the obvious doesn't do anything to fix the real problem, which is that our court gives absurd payouts to people who don't need them. Until people take substantial actions to remedy this, nothing's going to change, and verdicts like this are going to happen all the time.

Even if Blizzard does do the unexpected and forgive her some of her debts though, it doesn't change the fact that the court system's verdict was still completely inappropriate. No company should ever have that kind of power over someone whose sole crime is pirating their intellectual property. It's absurd and it goes to ridiculous lengths. Damages in these kinds of cases should be limited to the extent of the revenues made from pirating material, or the price of the material pirated, whichever is larger. Anything more is inappropriate.

 

[Cat Rage Room]

Yeah I'm gonna have to agree with Aaron here. Wrong is most definitely wrong, but there has to be an appropriate response to it.