flyinfungi

I was curious what legal right allows WoW sites stay up. Sites such as Wowhead, Thottbot, Warcraftmovies, Jutsu, etc. If Blizzard wanted to couldn't they take legal action against any of them and have them closed? Do these sites have any rights to stay open if Blizzard took the Hammer to them?



(Yes I understand that would be counterproductive for blizzard to take down these sites. This is rhetorical.)

Fungi cause the great majority, an estimated two-thirds, of infectious plant diseases. They include all white and true rusts, smuts, needle casts, leaf curls, mildew, sooty molds, and anthracnoses; most leaf, fruit, and flower spots; cankers; blights; scabs, root, stem, fruit, and wood rots; wilts; leaf, shoot, and bud galls; and many others. -Encyclopedia Britannica

 

◊ Bekah

What on earth would/could they be taken down over?

There have been websites shut down in the past over NDA violations and I believe there was some minor action against RMT sites a time or two- but the only thing that most of the sites you list are doing are providing information about the game.

Blizzard is always open to litigate against pretty much anything- they've certainly got a healthy enough legal department. There's no real reason for their removal though- even excluding that it would be massive negative publicity.

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Lookit

Blizzard takes great lengths to encourage fan sites. They offer website toolkits (such as this one for WotLK) that make it easy to create a fansite with a high-level of visual polish. They also link to "Official Fan Sites" such as WoWwiki and Curse Gaming directly from World of Warcraft Community Site.

They realize how important fan sites are to the growth of any MMO community, and they do make effort to support them.

In the case of sites like Thottbot that often have datamined information, Blizzard would probably be well within their rights to take legal action as the information is their intellectual property, but I certainly don't see them doing that anytime soon. The value that a site like Thottbot provides to their playerbase far outweighs the harm of seeing armor models before they have been obtained in-game.

 

◊ Greenexile

He mentioned that it was a rhetorical question.

At a glance, I would say they have the right to control their IP as they see fit. I'm guessing that this would include control over fansites dedicated to their IP. I'm not an IP lawyer though, and so this is most likely totally wrong. I'm sure there's also a bit of a distinction between sites that just review gaming IPs and sites that are actually dedicated them - so Wowhead would be a different kettle of fish to MMOGameReview.com or something. There might also be some issue with the idea that Blizzard's armory puts out alot of the same information the wowhead.com does.

In conclusion: Yeah I really dont know. It would be a complicated issue if Blizzard suddenly decided to close up shop and rule their IPs with an iron fist. Luckily its an issue that will almost certainly never come up

 

◊ Quigon

There is something to do with usage of graphics. And the fair use policy.

Fair use - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

Alerian

Thottbot and the like cannot claim fair use if they generate income primarily from Blizzard intellectual property. Not-for-profit fan sites, on the other hand, are protected under fair use.

 

• Theras

From: Blizzard Entertainment - Inside Blizzard: Legal FAQ

So there you go. The legal right that allows WoW sites to stay up is because Blizzard has given the public relatively open-ended permission to make sites about their products.

<Illidari Demon Hunter>

 

◊ Greenexile

I could be wrong but I think the OP was asking a rhetorical question regarding what would happen if Blizzard wanted to revoke that license (and note that quote grants a license, not a right). From the look of that second paragraph it seems that they theoretically could revoke the license and shut down any site that uses the WoW IP that they chose. You would also want to consider that the license they grant is limited to non-commercial use and there may be an issue as to whether online advertising turns a fansite into a commercial enterprise.

But as I said above, I'm not an IP lawyer and you'd probably want to hear from someone who specialises in airy fairy property that you cant smelt or build stuff on

 

LucidityAxel

In the US, you can sue anyone for pretty much anything. I can sue random people in my neighborhood because the color of their hair upsets me. That doesn't mean those suits won't get thrown out in court, but as long I have the money to pay a willing lawyer (or am a lawyer myself) I can cause my neighbors a lot of headaches. Then they can counter-sue me for harassing them, etc. Large corporations with lots of money can sue individuals they don't like for all sorts of reasons and cause them the same sort of headaches, especially since most individuals won't have the financial resources to meet them head-on.

Owning the copyright on something means you have a legal right to control how and when it is reproduced. If someone reproduces a work without your permission (or without acknowledging your copyright) then you will likely have pretty good standing to sue them in a court.

In terms of fan sites, some of them would be able to stay open and comment all they like about Blizzard and its products even if Blizzard were unremittingly hostile towards them. If they scrupulously avoided using any music, sound, software code, story text, or graphics produced by Blizzard in its games or on its websites then Blizzard would have very little standing for any legal action that would hold up in a court of law.

Under that scenario, the fan sites could probably get away with some limited use of Blizzard materials by claiming Fair Use, but this would undoubtedly give Blizzard more pretexts to sue them and would make it less likely that any such suits would be dismissed outright.

The fact that Blizzard is supplying people with free kits of art for their fan sites and has even posted a license notice from their legal team is a pretty good indicator that they think it is in their best interests to allow their customers some use of their copyrighted materials.

 

Tyrian

WoW customers have come to expect websites like wowhead.com and thottbot.com are available while they play this game.

If blizzard shut these down, customers would not be happy and would expect Blizzard to create a similar website in-house. That will cost money to create, administer and update. Thats money they could be spending on development. Also, if Blizzard made a in-house website like wowhead.com they would effectively have to open the floodgates to the game and release a massive amount of information on quests, items, drop % to make the website worth visiting etc etc.

Basically Blizzard realises these sites are demanded by players - but why pay to make it yourself when someone else could do it for you?

 

Benegesserit

Considering the Armory's ever-expanding list of features, I wouldn't be terribly surprised if the Armory eventually does everything WoWHead does. But until Blizzard can improve its performance, I'd be upset if they suddenly took action against WoWHead and others.

Consider Allakhazam. It has a multi-MMO database. Companies like Sony and Turbine could have also taken shots at it, and yet nothing has happened (to my knowledge). I think every MMO developer has the brains to know that these kind of sites on serve to draw in more customers. Even if there was a little discrepancy that Blizzard could pounce on, I doubt they'd consider it over the benefits they bring.

I played LotR for a few weeks and eventually gave up because there wasn't a clean and reasonably thorough database like WoWHead. Sure, it's not really fair considering its age, but since its fanbase isn't nearly WoWs (the game, not the books), I didn't have a lot of faith that a solid site was going to crop up any time soon.

 

andastra

Having the information out on sites like wowhead also gives Blizzard cover. They could always claim certain data on abilities, drop rate, etc. are not accurate.

 

Zurgat

Alakhazam is pretty slow for me, as is the blizzard armory.
Wowhead and thott work quite good.

If blizzard were to improve anything on their own armory it'd have to be speed.
There's some things that i think are pretty unlikely blizzard would ever list accurately (drop%, drop numbers, or user feedback).
Not that it'd be a bad thing though.


How about CT_Profiles though ?
Did blizzard create their armory before or after that was shut down ?

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• Jokie

I'd also imagine that they could file some sort of DMCA claim against the sites that datamine the files for the unreleased weapons or bosses (including WoR and MMO Champion). Could they claim reverse engineering violation?

 

Tanoh

Pretty simple to sidestep that though. Just get some EU clients started on datamining and host the servers in non-US. It would be a bit annoying though.

I really don't think they care though, as stated above the benefits overweights the negative. Also prosecuting fans is usually a PR nightmare (hello riaa!)