Originally Posted by Cairenn
Be very very careful in how you approach this, given that Carbonite is (for all intents and purposes) ARR licensed.
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* *After reviewing the contract I was able to pull from the GitHub project site, I found that the contract was a generic form which did not contain the developers company name in the description, only in the title. After reading it, I had a sinking feeling that it seemed odd that blizzard would allow a mod to have a license agreement seeing as the code used in Carbonite only functions within World of Warcraft.
* *To make sure I had my facts straight, I accessed the online edition of the terms of service for Blizzard and World of Warcraft. Reading through them, I found that the User Agreement made by the developers is not a legally binding document due to the fact that Blizzard’s terms supersede this agreement, nullifying it. As per their included statement quoted below:
“SEVERABILITY/NO WAIVER. *If any provision of this Agreement is held to be unenforceable, this Agreement will remain in effect with the provision omitted, unless omission would frustrate the intent of the parties, in which case this Agreement will immediately terminate. *Failure to enforce any provision of this Agreement is not a waiver of future enforcement of that or any other provision.”
To explain my position I have included the applicable segments of the TOC from Blizzard and how they impact the “Agreement” from the Carbonite developers team.
C. use any unauthorized third-party software that intercepts, “mines,” or otherwise collects information from or through the Game or the Service, including without limitation any software that reads areas of RAM used by the Game to store information about a character or the game environment; provided, however, that Blizzard may, at its sole and absolute discretion, allow the use of certain third party user interfaces;
In this line, Blizzard states that they may allow add-ons, macros and modifications to the game client at their discretion. Those of us who have played long enough should remember when models were being re-skinned using MPQ mods and the fateful day in which blizzard threw down their mighty iron boot and squashed these mods out of existence. Mods are only permitted by Blizzard because they do not find them to be damaging to their intended game experience.
All rights and title in and to the Service (including without limitation any user accounts, titles, computer code, themes, objects, characters, character names, stories, dialogue, catch phrases, locations, concepts, artwork, animations, sounds, musical compositions, audio-visual effects, methods of operation, moral rights, any related documentation, “applets,” transcripts of the chat rooms, character profile information, recordings of games) are owned by Blizzard or its licensors. The Game and the Service are protected by United States and international laws, and may contain certain licensed materials in which Blizzard’s licensors may enforce their rights in the event of any violation of this Agreement.
* *At this point in the TOC Blizzard is clearly stating that they own any and all things associated with World of Warcraft unless they have specifically given licensor rights to a company for their use. The development team for Carbonite does not indicate any sort of agreement with Blizzard. In fact, on their website at the bottom of each page they have a disclaimer stating the exact opposite.
“World of Warcraft” and “WOW” are trademarks owned by Blizzard Entertainment, Inc. This Website and the Carbonite Add-on are not endorsed by or affiliated with Blizzard Entertainment, Inc.
in whole or in part, copy, photocopy, reproduce, translate, reverse engineer, derive source code from, modify, disassemble, decompile, or create derivative works based on the Game; provided, however, that you may make one (1) copy of the Game Client and the Manuals for archival purposes only;
Clearly here the construction of the Carbonite addon has broken the TOC. *Simply by deriving source code from the game for the mod they have invalidated themselves.
* *In closing, no addon developer is allowed to license their code, charge for their mod’s use or attempt to derive proprietary rights from their work on these types of files. Addons only exist because Blizzard allows them to exist. A program written using proprietary information from a software company cannot, in any way shape or form, create a legal license for itself unless permitted to via written consent from the parent company.
If anyone can find fault in this or can sight something to disprove me then I would love to see it because I would like to end this debate once and for all. We have had to tiptoe around something which should be free and open for everyone.