[MUD-Dev] Re: Black Snow Revisited

[John Robert Arras]

On Fri, 29 Mar 2002, "Norman Short" <wjshort at wworld.com> wrote:

> I just came across this thread, since I've been too busy to read
> everything the list has been sending lately. But frankly I'm
> amazed.  I think you game company people have your head in the
> clouds ignoring reality.  For some reason you guys think you can
> put anything you want into a EULA and it automatically gives you
> those rights.  If the law in fact doesn't give you those rights
> it's just meaningless words.

<snip the rest>

Really? Ok, why not take a student version of MS VC++ and use it to
write commercial software and then let Microsoft know about it.

The student version is dirt cheap (or free) and it's perfectly
capable of making commercial software, but Microsoft won't let you
do it. It's just their little old EULA. Are you telling me that when
you develop commercial software, you use compilers that specify
noncommercial use?

On a less abstract level, do you support those who took the Dikumud
code and proceeded to develop businesses off it despite the license
that forbids making profits? After all, it's just some stupid EULA
that restricts people from using Diku code for commercial MUDs.

Why shouldn't the game companies (or people who write code) be able
to specify that you cannot use their servers for commercial use? The
players are using the servers for commercial use. The commercial
transaction consists of several steps including people agreeing on a
price for an item and the transferring of money and the final
transaction which has to take place using Mythic's server. In this
case, items are being sold. Regardless of how you want to split up
all of the individual actions into smaller pieces and point to how
innocent and permissible each of them is, when you take them all
together, the items are being sold and I think that the owners of
the servers should have a right to decide if their servers will be
used for commercial activity. Especially when you consider that
Mythic will have to deal with complaints if the customers of BSI get
shafted, and it looks like Mythic approved or at least tolerated BSI
activities.  Then, they have to deal with "legit" players
complaining that the twinks either collect all of the good loot, or
pay for it so they get left out in the cold. Not good for the
overall playerbase.

To put it another way, let's suppose that the following things
happen out in the real world:

  1. A man and woman meet on the street and start to talk.
  2. The man mentions that he has $N on him.
  3. The woman suggests that they go to a hotel room to continue talking.
  4. They go to a hotel room.
  5. They have sex.
  6. The man just happens to drop $N on the nightstand as he's leaving.
  7. The woman just happens to pick the $N up as she's leaving.

  Question: Did this man just pay the woman for sex? 

  Answer: Yes.

  Question: Let's suppose that they never actually discussed paying
  for sex. Does this make a difference?

  Answer: No. Even though every little thing they did is perfectly
  alright, when you put them together, the guy is paying for sex.

You can't just take a multistep process and dissect it until it's
down to simple little components that you inspect individually for
soundness when deciding whether or not the whole process is ok. You
have to look at the whole thing together. If BSI is collecting items
in-game, talking to people out of game, collecting money out of
game, then transferring those items in-game, then they're selling
the items. If any part of the transaction takes place on Myhtic's
server, then Mythic should have some say in it.

John

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