Sept. 2, Red Herring
Blizzard Beats BnetD, Again

Game developer Blizzard Entertainment won a federal ruling on Thursday against a group of programmers whose software hacks the company?s online games to allow gamers to play across the public Internet, instead of on Blizzard?s proprietary servers.

The 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said that the BnetD software, which mods Blizzard?s games to enable them to access the BnetD servers, violates the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) . . .

"This ruling is bad for gamers, but it could also be terrible for the software industry," said EFF staff attorney Jason Schultz. Mr. Shultz said the ruling curbs industry competition, adding, "Add-on innovation is one of the hottest areas of creativity and economic growth right now in software. This decision will slow investment and development in that field."

Sept. 3, Slashdot
"EFF Releases Music DRM Guide"

Chris Chiasson writes "The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) recently created a plain English guide to several fair use restrictions that major online music services, such as Apple's iTunes, force on their customers via Digital Rights Management (DRM) laden music files and End User License Agreements (EULAs). An excerpt from the guide follows: 'Forget about breaking the DRM to make traditional uses like CD burning and so forth. Breaking the DRM or distributing the tools to break DRM may expose you to liability under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) even if you're not making any illegal uses.' The EFF also lists four alternative music services which sell unrestricted files."