Quote:
Originally Posted by image
Sounds like Sony is beating around the bush to me
|
No, Sony is acting in a prudent manner, and protecting the interests of their shareholders.
You see, there is a grey area about EULAs in law, and there's another grey area regarding files they distribute via a flat HTTP transport (note there's no copyright headers come from the SOE patch server) may or may not be freely distributed to the public . Just as this community doesn't want to test these things in court ( we can't afford it!) Sony doesnt really want this kind of thing to test it in court (as they're not absolutely 100% certain they'd win).
Using copyrighted images is however a completely different issue. Sony know they'd win any court case about them - no doubt whatsoever.
So they shut down (what they see as) offensive sites based on that aspect of copyright law.
Their actions have zero risk to them, and they protect their shareholder's investment. Don't forget, if they don't actively demonstrate that they try to protect their copyright of images made freely available to anonymous users over the Internet they (might) erode their propietry interest in said images.
Shutting down a site over a patcher however opens another can of worms. EQLive subscribers pay for a service. Do "owners" of the EQ client who are NOT subscribers have the right to use that software for other purposes? According to the EULA no, but EULAs are dodgy in law anyway (whatever they are they arn't contracts!). Sony certainly doesnt want to go to court over that on the (very slim) chance that they lose and open a huge can of worms for the entire commercial MMORPG industry. Given the love that US Courts have for Corporations, I have little doubt that they would win in court, but it's NOT zero risk.
FYI, I'm not a Lawyer, but I was CTO of a publically listed Internet gaming company that went belly up in the dotcom crash. The above is how things work in Real Life.