Simple question. why havent you guys been sued yet?

[RayOfAsh]

Isnt this illegal? Cant they sue you for it? And why havent they if they can?

[IACyberMAN]

I don't know if Sony really can sue for using alternate servers... they did make eqhost.txt... if they wanted EQ to be run only on their server, they would have programmed it into the coding of the game itself. Plus I don't think its third party software, its really just changing the eqhost.txt. However, I may be wrong, and someone feel free to tell me that if I am.

[Wendys]

They aren't making a profit, and aren't taking credit for making the original EQ.

[vapidsquid]

they can sue. try reading that EULA you agree to every time you start the game ;)

[DeletedUser]

Ah, they can sue you for using it. They can't sue me for making it. How am I under EULA with them if I dont play eq? There's something to chew on.

[TwoSock]

Ah, but, Hogie...

How are you supposed to know all you know about EQ and how the communicating works between server/client and EQ updates etc etc. if you don't play/use EQ :P

Is it possible to make the server solely depending on other peoples "information" without actually testing it yourself? heh

*Chew chew*

:shock:

[DeletedUser]

Ah, I can still packet log someone else playing from my house. Now, how would I be breaking the EULA then?

[Ayukawa]

Well to begin with, they are not emulating the program at all. What they are emulating is the server, which they have no access to in reality.
This is not breaking the laws at all. It is in fact protected under the "Derivative Work" laws. I suggest you look them up if you do not know what they are.

Some would then complain about the changing of EQHost.txt. The changing of the code in that file is also protected under law. I reference 1992-1993 for you:

Within a month of each other, two federal appeals courts have held that under certain circumstances it is "fair use" for software companies to reverse engineer a program in order to examine and copy its ideas and any unprotected expression. Coincidentally, the two cases involved Sega and Nintendo, two competitive giants of the home computer video game industry. In both cases the issue was whether video game authors -- Accolade in the case of Sega and Atari in the case of Nintendo -- had the right to reverse engineer the software contained in computer game consoles to learn the security code necessary for game cartridges to operate on the consoles. Both courts held that reverse engineering may constitute fair use, and the court handling the case against Accolade found that fair use was a complete defense against Sega's charges. However the court handling the case against Atari found that in addition to reverse engineering Nintendo's program, Atari had obtained in unauthorized copy of the program and had copies protected expression. Therefore, the court upheld a trial court's preliminary finding that Atari had infringed Nintendo's copyright.

Sega Enterprises Ltd. v. Accolade, Inc.

Sega manufactures the Genesis video game console. The console contains a "lock-out" feature: unless the machine finds a security code segment present in a video game cartridge -- consisting of about 25 bytes of data -- it will not run the cartridge.

Accolade disassembled object code stored in read-only memory ("ROM") chips in Sega's console, and uncovered the utilization code segment. It incorporated that code into its own game programs (which otherwise were completely original), enabling them to operate on the Genesis consoles.

Sega filed suit, complaining that Accolade, by reverse engineering the Sega software contained in its console, had violated Sega's copyright. The Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals held that disassembly of copyrighted object code is a fair use of the copyrighted work if "disassembly provides the only means of access to those elements of the code not protected by copyright and the copier has a legitimate reason for seeking such access." The court ruled that Sega's reason for reverse engineering, access to the Nintendo computers, was legitimate. Although Accolade might have been able to obtain the code by licensing it from Sega, that would have required Accolade to enter into an exclusive business relationship with Sega, a condition to access that the court considered to be unreasonable. Accordingly, Accolade satisfied the requirements for fair use.

Atari Games Corp. v. Nintendo of America, Inc.

Nintendo is a competitor of Sega, and like Sega its video game system contains a software feature that prevents a console from accepting a game cartridge that does not contain a security code. Atari took two actions in order to overcome this lock-out feature: it reverse engineered the Nintendo home video system console and, to assist it in that process, it obtained copies of parts of the Nintendo code from the Copyright Office under false pretenses.

The U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit held that reverse engineering an authorized copy of object code was a fair use of the work. However, in order to use the fair use defense in a case involving reverse engineering the copier must begin with a legitimate copy. Because Atari had used "purloined" code obtained from the Copyright Office, fair use was unavailable to it. Nevertheless, the Court left no mistake about its position on reverse engineering in cases using authorized copies: "when the nature of a work requires intermediate copying to understand the ideas and processes in a copyrighted work, that nature supports a fair use for intermediate copying."

Another difference in the facts of the two cases contributed to the holding against Atari. In the Sega case Accolade had copied only the 25 byte code segment necessary for its game cartridges to work on the Sega consoles. The court viewed this as an unprotected functional element of the program, which Accolade was entitled to copy.

In the Nintendo case Atari did not copy the security code itself, but rather the program which generated the security code. The court held that this program reflected "creative organization" not required by external factors, noting that there were a "multitude of different ways to generate a data stream" which would unlock Nintendo's consoles. Because Atari had copied a computer program protected by copyright law, it had infringed Nintendo's program.



Under that concept, and precedent, they have full rights to change eqhosts.txt, as it is the only way to make Everquest run on their Derivative Server.

[RayOfAsh]

aaahhhaaaaa......... :shock:

[Karikaru]

i have heard rumors of verant mercenaries/bounty hunters/hitmen out looking for people on the EQemu team to make them 'disapear' :shock: like in anti-trust :P

[BLOOD_kane]

i was in the General EQ Chat on Sony's servers the other night and someone brought up this site and one of the Lead GM's in the chat said they know of this site and this site isnt doing anything WORTH sueing over anyway.

[Trumpcard]

It would be a waste of their time and money. We are furthering their product rather than taking from it. You'd be amazed how many people started playing eq after trying the emulator...

[BLOOD_kane]

exactly...they saw EQW as more of a threat.... :P

[Deris]

After playing EQ for over 2 years, I fail to see why anyone would want to waste up to 9 hours a day playing on legit servers to get items they could get in twenty minutes. If at all, EQemu would seem to take away buisness.

QUOTE: Well to begin with, they are not emulating the program at all. What they are emulating is the server, which they have no access to in reality.

but aren't the recent steps to making EQEmu "legit" geared toward emulating the program? If so, won't it then be violating the EULA?

[edop2005]

They can legally sue you but I don't think they will do it until there are a large amout of eqemu users, let s say over 10000.

[Bardboy]

What difference would it make how many players the emu has?
It's not like they will get more or less money.

In any case, the Devs on this project are not giving them any reasons to sue. They're too smart for that. ...so far anyway... :D

If they decide to sue Eqemu, then they will have to sue HQ as well, and the next group that decides to work on an emulator. This isn't the first or last Emulator program. There are hundreds of examples of emulated game systems out there, and for the most part, legal action against them is a dead issue, as long as they don't break the laws.

[Mortamer]

guys, EULA's dont really hold up in court. So whatever the EULA says is considered law by Sony's terms and not anywhere else. However they might be able to get away with loosing buisness.

[RayOfAsh]

Hmmm.. well i wonder... do you think a EQ GM could be spying on us this very moment :shock: .

[Edgar1898]

Yes, they know about us and the other emu.

[Shawn319]

Yes it is against the EverQuest EULA to use an emulator (such as EQEmu or EthernalQuest). Does this mean we are all going to jail? no. Does this mean sony/verant will ban your EQLive accounts if they find out you are using it? YES.

EULA's are not binding in court (unless you are fighting the account ban).


Dont give any hint that you are using it, dont give any hint about your eqlive accounts (e-mail addresses, names, citys, ect)...


Why dont we make an EULA for running EQEmu.

****EQemu EULA****
1. By agreeing to this EULA, you must jump up and down 10 times and cluck like a chicken before you connect to a server.

****
AGREE - DECLINE


Now, by agreeing to this, you have to jump up and down 10 times and cluck like a chicken or else we will sue you? i dont think so.. it might make us mad because you dont respect our rules, we might ban your accounts, but we cant sentance you to death by lethal enjection.......

[Shawn319]

Hmmm.. well i wonder... do you think a EQ GM could be spying on us this very moment :shock: .


Yes i do think there could be an EQ GM watching right now. same thing for chat room..

DONT GIVE ANY HINTS AS TO YOUR EQ IDENTITY. if you do, byebye account

[Aragain]

Oh, I just change my EULA.txt file to just say, "SOE SUCKS". And the credits say, "SOE SUCKS" too. But anyway, thats not very impressive.

[a_Guest03]

I've seen trials where people sued a ham sandwich, and a Thunderbird. The state of New Jersey won against the Thunderbird, but the guy suing the ham sandwich lost. Just because you sue, doesn't mean that the judge will rule in your favor. Most of the time, it depends on what can be proven. Can they prove that our versions of the EULA said "yadda yadda yadda?" I doubt it... You can just say that you changed it, then agreed to it, and that it said "Sony owns Everquest. They agree to do my laundry." Then sue Sony for not holding up their end. It's all text that can be changed without initialing anyway. The true license agreement is not very binding, otherwise, Sony would be doing my laundry.

[Toofles]

Ahahahahahaha. I don't know why, but that made me laugh. Thus:

http://www.wintersroar.com/~jens/eula.jpg

I also recommend you add this (http://www.wintersroar.com/~jens/license.txt) to the patcher :D

[Nira]

They can legally sue you but I don't think they will do it until there are a large amout of eqemu users, let s say over 10000.

As of right now, there are 14,528 registered users. Already past your 10,000 mark. :P

[Aragain]

HAHAHAHAHA!

[Windcatcher]

Yes i do think there could be an EQ GM watching right now. same thing for chat room..

DONT GIVE ANY HINTS AS TO YOUR EQ IDENTITY. if you do, byebye account

I'm sure there are GM's keeping an eye on what gets done here. I'm sure it makes good business sense to at least be aware of any derivative or interactive products with EQ, but if (and I stress *if*) SOE has GM's here for the sole purpose of banning people's EQLive accounts, let me be the first to say to those employees that you are pathetic immature excuses for adults.

No, no one has banned my account. I gave my account away a million years ago, and there's nothing to ban. But I do consider myself to be somewhat mature, and I've worked for many years in the software development industry. One of the projects I'm most proud of involves military communications--there are brave men and women out there right now defending this country (the U.S. of A.) using equipment that I helped to develop, and I'm damned proud to have the knowledge that my portion was as bulletproof as I knew how to make it. To the GMs: these people are out there defending me, and they are defending YOU. The thought that someone might spend his hours doing something so unproductive as trolling message boards so he or she can ban someone's *videogame* account makes me want to throw up. Pathetic doesn't begin to scratch the surface. If you're going to work in IT, at least do something productive.

[Bardboy]

LOL, Windcatcher. DAMN! I laughed so hard I farted!

[Aragain]

Windcatcher's post wasn't funny, it was very true, and I can say I know how he feels.

The thought of some sneaky little bastard just sitting there behind his computer screen waiting for the right information to pop up just to ban an account is frustrating, I don't think it has happened yet though, has it?

[Vermea]

Not that I care if they ban my account, the main reason being I don't HAVE an EQ Live account. Anyhow, the EULA is crap...it says nothing about "I agree to sell my soul and give everything I have to SOE" It would cost them more to bring you to court then it would to just let this project go on. Okay...so a good number of people lay EQ Live and EQEmu...so they're still making their $15 a month from them, why the hell would they care? It makes no sense to bring ANYONE to court for playing an emulation of their servers....besides, it's the software that's protected by law, not the servers.

[Trumpcard]

Don't blame them indivudually guys, they get paid to do a job, just like most of us do. If my boss walked over to me and said , 'Go out and find the employees that are goofing off, or not abiding by the rules and report it back to me', then i dont think i'd have much choice. You do what you get paid to do, whether you like it or not, so don't villianize those guys for doing what they're told to do.

On that note, this is the stupidest round of paranoia I've seen swim through here in a long time.

Now if they're doing it just to be pricks, well then, thats another story..LOL...

[DeletedUser]

Shortly after the Planes of Power leak we were posted pretty much everywhere, I noticed we had some people from sony addresses surfing our forums, I posted a nice announcement to tell them to leave the boards, then I banned the ips. If I ever see them on here I don't let them stay, they have no reason to read our posts.

[devn00b]

here is my 2cp on this.

ELUA cant be a binding contract. as proven in court and upheld by the US supreme court. (Feel free to look it up if you realy wanna know).

For a contract to be binding there has to be a verbal or written contract. Clicking i accept does not constitute a legal contract. because there is nothing verbal or signed.

Soe couldnt sue, EQEMU hasnt damaged them in any way, lol sit in irc for a bit and alot of people come in saying " ive never played eq but i bought the game just to play eqemu ".

thats how i see it...

[Vermea]

Bah, what do they care what we're doing anyway. We're not really taking any business away from them anyway. Those of us like me who don't have an EQLive account...I wouldn't pay for one anyhow, so it's not like EQEmu gives me a reason to not pay for EQ Live...I just wouldn't play if this place didn't exist.

[Bardboy]

No disrespect was intended. I have the highest regard for Windcatcher. What I thought was funny, was the very idea of some shriveled up, bespecticled old gnome, laying in wait here on the boards watching for someone stupid enough to reveal thier eqlive information.

I'm old enough now, that not much about human nature suprises me much anymore, but I would be slightly shocked to find out that someone actually did this.

Anyway, It conjured up a rather silly and ridiculous image in my mind. I apologies if I offended WindCatcher.

[Windcatcher]

NP. I have a thick skin :wink:

[Deris]

I'm afraid with the staff supporting the, "Hey dudes! Play EQ for FREE!!!" type of mentality ; it's just asking for trouble. I wouldn't be surprised if Verant took some sort of strict legal action against the dev team. It would suck, but tecnically it sounds like they are in rights too if the intent is to simply create free EQ servers. I always thought the intent was to make fun servers in which users could just shit around have fun. Not create mock server based PC societies like those present in EQlive. I know I certainly don't have time for that type of crap =P.

[Crazyj007]

Okay! JUST STFU! if you dont want to play EqEmu why are you here? just shut up! why do you want to know if they will get sued? STFU! its not your business! :twisted: now..........lemme get to my question 8).........is there a DAoC emu out there?? i play EqEmu and was wondering if theres a DAoCeMU

[Trumpcard]

I'm locking this thread as its degenerating...

[DeletedUser]

I'm locking this thread as its degenerating...
Sorry, I just had to post this so they know Trump.

I have indeed gotten banned from 2 live accounts because of the EMU. I have lost a 59 bard and a 56 monk on live. This is only because I host the website. It really came to a head when the PoP beta was released and we were linked, they were threatening me via emails to take the site down, but they wouldn't unban my accounts, so I told them I only wanted to talk to their lawyers from now on. I haven't heard a thing from them since.

I will tell you this, I use to be a live GM (as in, a Sony Employee in San Diego). I wasn't there for long, but they dont care what you do as long as you dont talk about it on live. They are able to view everything you type in game (it is call /sniff), they automatically catch certain words in logs (such as death threat phrases and such). They didn't actively go after account sellers on ebay, they didn't actively go after showeq users.

Brenlo (Alan Crosby, who is now Head GM) said: "..there is no way to detect showeq, and we really dont care about them. Just do whatever you think if they admit to using it...."

This was when I was training under him. I personally am not scared of sony. What are they going to do, sue me? That doesn't mean much when a person has no money anyway. It isn't like I'll have jail time for it (as it is not a criminal case).