Blizzard Suing Peons4Hire for In-Game Spam
May 26th, 2007
As reported over at Broken Toys, Blizzard has filed a federal lawsuit against Peons4Hire, a World of Warcraft gold farming/RMT business. Blizzard has been taking steps to minimize the amount of unsolicited in-game emails and /tells that players receive from gold farming groups, but this is the first time that it has filed a lawsuit against one of the biggest offenders. Based on my lazy Saturday night digging, there are no major details about the nature of the lawsuit. Fortunately, I have never let a lack of information stop me from spouting off an opinion. That opinion is after the jump.
Without any real information about the complaint Blizzard filed, all I can do is speculate as to how Blizzard is arguing its case. They’ve filed the suit in federal court — this makes sense since Peons4Hire is based in China. It also generally means that Blizzard doesn’t have to bring the suit based on a federal statute or constitutional issue. Quite honestly, it’s tough to determine what federal statute that Blizzard would use. CAN-SPAM seems like a good bet. If Peons4Hire doesn’t clearly mark their in-game spam mails as advertising, then it’s possible that those mails would be actionable under CAN-SPAM. Since this is pretty much a brand-new legal issue, there’s no real case precedent to look at to determine whether in-game emails are the same as personal emails. They certainly seem the same even though the mail itself is sent and received on the same server.
Another angle that Blizzard could take would be to sue for trespass to chattels. This argument has worked before in spam lawsuits. In 1997, Compuserve sued a company called Cyber Promotions and based its complaint on a trespass to chattels theory. It argued that Cyber Promotions had availed itself of Compuserve’s bandwidth, processing power, etc. in order to send spam email to Compuserve users. This case has generally been considered an example of existing law being used to fit a new situation. It has also been a solid strategy for service providers wishing to put the hurt on spammers. The nice thing about trespass to chattels is that it wouldn’t require Blizzard to do more than prove that Peons4Hire exceeded the scope of its license to access the World of Warcraft service, that those emails and /tells were excessive, and that those uses placed a burden on its servers. In my opinion, this would be the way to go.
There is also the tried and true method of simply coming after Peons4Hire for violation of the WoW EULA. That may be something that Blizzard lumps in with the above methods. Heck, they could be arguing all three things. For all we know, they’re just trying to force a settlement. I think, however, that Blizzard is willing to go all the way to trial on this one — the bnetd case certainly proves that Blizzard will go to trial as opposed to just push for some kind of settlement. No matter how Blizzard has structured its lawsuit, it is worth keeping an eye on in the coming months. My money is on Blizzard prevailing. I just wonder how it’ll enforce the judgment against a company in China.
Only time will tell, I guess.
Entry Filed under: Law
8 Comments Add your own
1. Mank | May 28th, 2007 at 7:42 am
This is all very interesting. But I do have to question the motives involved. A lot of players are under the impression that this is a direct attack on gold selling itself. Which of course, it is not.
The spammers have already switched tactics since the lawsuit was filed. Just this morning someone has parked a level 1 player on the AH bridge in Ironforge that is somehow modded to issue a /say to any player that happens to come within a certain range of it. Ignore works quite well here, but this character has already been there for well over 4 hours, and a lot of players are left wondering where the GM’s are.
2. Mank | May 28th, 2007 at 4:17 pm
Sorry to double post, but I’m hearing talk that the company being sued is not a US based company, and that they are under no requirement to respond to a US federal lawsuit.
If true, and Blizzard wins by default, does a preceedent with any real teeth get set in that instance?
3. CmdrSlack | May 28th, 2007 at 7:37 pm
Well, a default judgment doesn’t set precedent, really. A default judgment gets entered where the defendant never responds to the suit, and the plaintiff petitions the court to enter a default judgment.
Quite honestly, it’s a great PR move to file this suit, even if it doesn’t really go anywhere. The company is based in China, so enforcing a judgment overseas is never an easy task. Even if Blizzard was successful, getting a Chinese court to enforce that ruling could be tough.
4. Capn John | May 31st, 2007 at 7:40 am
Not knowing (fully) how the internet works, is it possible for Blizzard to put a stop to this themselves by denying Chinese IPs access to US servers and realms?
5. CmdrSlack | May 31st, 2007 at 8:02 am
I guess so, but I knid of wonder what that’d do to their overall sub numbers if the all of the “GOLD FARMERS ATE MY LUNCH” yelling is accurate.
6. World of Warcraft Gold, W&hellip | June 1st, 2007 at 2:17 pm
[…] Here’s a real interesting commentary about the recent lawsuit Blizzard brought again a fairly heinous gold seller (we haven’t mentioned their name yet, and I don’t plan to, but it’s easy enough to find out who it is). Blizzard hasn’t shared much about the case at all, except for the fact that it’s filed in federal court, and that they want this one to serve as a precedent, not just for them, but for any MMO dealing with gold spammers. […]
7. Pie-rate | July 6th, 2007 at 2:00 am
Capn John:
They’d just use US proxies.
8. Blizzard puts Peons4Hire &hellip | February 1st, 2008 at 5:04 pm
[…] This is probably the best news I’ve heard so far all year: Blizzard has won an injunction against Peons4Hire (we’ll say their name now), which means that the one-time constant chat spammer is now legally banned from interfering with the game. It sounds like Blizzard sued on nearly all the causes that were speculated on a while ago, and as a conclusion, have outright won their case: according to the injunction, In Game Dollar (the company that advertised Peons4Hire) is “permanently enjoined” from “making any use of the World of Warcraft in-game communication or chat system to advertise any website, business, or commercial endeavor.” […]
Leave a Comment
Some HTML allowed:
<a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <code> <em> <i> <strike> <strong>
Trackback this post | Subscribe to the comments via RSS Feed