is there any chance of the Schthack PSO2 server getting us shut down?

[Mylandra]

Before Christian turned douche, he explained to me some other things, namely that his server was totally from scratch and didn't break any laws that he looked into. Of course, if you took Ed to court over """donations""" (which Chrisitan also basically did but it was almost completely under the table)....well it's a good thing he never got enough donations to be noticed. Thousands is a lot to the every day man, but even PSO made a fair bit more than that up to it's death.

However, to do PSU (and probably PSO2) he needed to bypass SSL, which is illegal. (this isn't tied to EULA)

Regardless, all PSO EULAs are not legally binding in the US. Can't speak for those outside of it

Ok, I'll reiterate my first post since it's a bit vague and people may not want to go through all of the game EULA.

A barebone private server being legal would be irrelevant in a court case. While alot of countries such as USA allow you to legally reverse engineer any software so you can analyze malware activity to better understand them, people keep forgetting to read the game EULA. And while you might think it's not important since there are clauses that doesn't apply to your country, others might apply.

Let's take the most basic example of that. Distributing and copying any of the game files is a breach of the EULA. Why is it important? Because by breaching the EULA, you are not respecting the contract that binds you and SEGA and it states you should delete the whole files from your system. Not doing so may place you under federal crime and violating the Digital Millenium Copyright Act whichever means anyone either sharing the files aka the server owners are guilty, but it isn't limited to this. All the players playing on the private server may also be guilty of federal crime and in USA is enough to get you jailed under specific circumstances. It's basically the same rule that applies to copying and sharing other medias such as movies, songs, cracked software, etc. It's not because SEGA doesn't make billions out of their games and they don't have the money to sue people like the media industry that it makes it more legal.

Let's come back to the server a minute. If none of the files would be hosted on the server, since it's just copying the protocol and there's no copyright to that protocol itself, it would be perfectly legal. But just look at the server content and list the files the server is actually using. The server is hosting various files including but not limited to quest files, item files, monster/npcs/boxes files. As far as I know, nobody received proper written consent by SEGA to be allowed to use such files which is a breach of the company intellectual property. I won't bother going through all the other points in the EULA which may or may not point towards other illegal activities as it would be too long for a simple post such as this one.

Edit: For those that are aware of this, it is exactly for this reason you can find proper working game system emulators on the web and the developers usually don't host any rom files.

 

[Sodaboy]

Actually, if we want to get technical about it, there is no EULA. I mean, at least not one that is distributed with the game, so no one who's playing actually agreed to anything SEGA may have laid out.

They get their download from a private server and they don't agree to anything from SEGA during download, login or play. There isn't even a text file that comes with the client that has a license agreement in there.

PSU and later games did display an EULA when logging on, though. PSO, nope. Maybe the argument can be used for older players who played PSO during SEGA and read something when they downloaded the client, but new players who may be new to PSO etc. haven't agreed to anything.

Not arguing about the copyright stuff on content, though!

 

[Mylandra]

Actually, if we want to get technical about it, there is no EULA. I mean, at least not one that is distributed with the game, so no one who's playing actually agreed to anything SEGA may have laid out.

They get their download from a private server and they don't agree to anything from SEGA during download, login or play. There isn't even a text file that comes with the client that has a license agreement in there.

PSU and later games did display an EULA when logging on, though. PSO, nope. Maybe the argument can be used for older players who played PSO during SEGA and read something when they downloaded the client, but new players who may be new to PSO etc. haven't agreed to anything.

Not arguing about the copyright stuff on content, though!

I don't think it works this way. For instance, let's assume there's a license that states people can't use some open source software to write a proprietary software using it. If someone purposely remove the EULA from the source and copy it on the net. I do not believe the source itself becomes EULA-free.

The EULA basically state the limit where it becomes illegal concerning copyrights. Take the game, it was perfectly legal to have on your computer while running the game on SEGA server. The EULA was first breached by whoever leaked the files on the net whichever makes the sharing of the files illegal at that point regardless of the license being present or not. The EULA doesn't really need to be present at a later point because it is assumed the usage is already illegal, but it's still very important for a software provider to bundle it with the files to make it clear whether or not a specific usage is legal by their terms (Not sure if it was before the download on BB or somewhere else). People tend to forget they don't have to click a button for the EULA to be valid, they automatically agree by using said files. As an example, you don't click on anything neither are you forced to read the EULA while using open source projects, but their license still applies even if you avoided reading it since you are using said copyrighted content. There are other points to take note, simply altering the game files can also be copyright infringement since it's basically the same as altering the source code without the company consent. These points are also explained in the EULA itself. In fact, simply adding/altering some ASM code in the client whether it's a cheat or mod could be considered copyright violation (Both people using the tools and the maker are guilty). However, things like proxies for psobb can be perfectly legal since they were made from scratch using reverse engineer techniques and they don't alter anything in the game client (On PSO2, people have to alter the SSL license inside the client to do this). I wonder how far the copyright laws can reach.

In the end, the copyright law rules over everything, but it's just a matter of determining what usage is legal from what isn't. Anyway, no one can be 100% sure about the laws since there are so many clauses. I think even lawyers can have a hard time with digital rights since it can get so complicated at times.

 

[CTB]

Well, I guess I'm not really wording it honestly. When the EULA is violated and a party is taken to court, they end up going into specific portions of the EULA because they generally tie into copyright law. The EULA itself is a mixed bag: some courts say the EULA in itself is enforceable while other courts do not agree. That's because (sometimes) not all of the terms in the EULA are legally binding or "reasonable."

Copyright law is annoying because you can argue so many damn ways it's stupid. For example, "leaked files." There was never a leak; all the files we have come from the official source. It's infringement to host Sonic Team's quests and Sega's translations, but obtaining them was done 100% legally. Copyright enforcement is ultimately up to Sega in this case, and they've (literally) never stopped anyone from rehosting the installation file for PSOBB, something that was already free to download. Actually pretty much everything is quashed with that so while a lot of it definitely is copyright infringement, Sega has more or less said "whatever" for the time being.

Also (with how arguments can get silly) Soderpop actually has a point. It's easy to argue that is unreasonable for a player on this server to know the EULA...Sega shouldn't have crammed that into billing and the patch server so many years ago.

(again this is alllllllll united states. if you're in canada it is very likely to be different.)