An interesting issue which should have come to a court ages ago is being surfaced by the MDY v Blizzard suit.
As you know, most of the time when you do something on a computer, copies are being made. In fact, a LOT of copies are being made (see my old post on microtransactions for a more detailed analysis and historical point of view on this). In particular, installing a piece of software means getting a copy on a disk, copying it into memory, then copying it from memory onto your own disk, then reloading it into memory every time you launch it.
So, Blizzard put a copyright claim in their suit against MDY, makers of WoWglider. And a third party called Public Knowledge, which advocates for digital rights, filed an amicus brief (“friend of the court,” basically a side opinion because they feel they have a stake in the case) which argues that the copyright claim is, well, bogus.
The issue is essentially this: Blizzard claims that when third-party programs like MDY’s Glider (which automates certain World of Warcraft tasks) load World of Warcraft software into a computer’s RAM, that “creation of a copy” violates the copyright Blizzard holds in its software.
Public Knowledge argues “that Blizzard doesn’t have a claim on copyright grounds because the right of users to make the copy for use by the computer is already guaranteed by law. […] Therefore, Blizzard cannot claim any infringement of its copyrights based upon the creation of RAM copies because the right to make those copies was never Blizzard’s to license in the first place.”
This has broad relevance outside of this one case. So it’s particularly interesting that the judge in the case has now ordered Blizzard to answer this issue specifically.
