Transatlantic Free Trade Agreement

[Cornholi]

Disclaimer: I don't know much about international laws or intellectual property or whether this agreement actually affects the private server community or not.

That being said, it's been many times that I've heard about this agreement and how it's going to affect the private server community, how now EU servers are going to be able to be legally prosecuted by Blizzard and they're going to be shut down, so I decided to find out what this agreement is and found out this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transa...ules_and_principles_and_modes_of_co-operation

4th point down is intellectual property, now as I said in the disclaimer, I don't know much about this so I was hoping someone more experienced in this topic would able to confirm or deny if this is going to affect Kronos or the private server community as a whole.

 

[Lharts]

It seems like you guys are all frightened by the shutdown of rebirth. Was it really confirmed (by anything, but a statement from the staff) that is was actually blizzard who shit it down?

On topic. Kronos is safe at the moment. No need to be concerned.

 

[Cornholi]

Hmm nothing confirmed yet (I personally won't believe it until I see evidence) though I don't know what this has to do with Rebirth specifically, history has shown that Blizzard will prosecute if they have the chance (Scapegaming). I'm just asking if this agreement will make it possible for Blizzard to knock on the door of this big private server networks (Feenix, Twinstar, and Molten to name a few).

Edit: Meant Twinstar instead of Valkyrie.

 

[Skosh]

The Trinity Core project had a number of private servers back through the 2008-2012 time period that I was aware of, and one of these was called Bloodcraft that ran for over a four year time frame. The server was hosted in the US (Midwest state location, not certain of exact state) and it only got a single Cease and Desist from Blizzard during this time. The situation Blizzard faced was that the private server was openly labled by the hosts as being for Educational Purposes only, with no money exchanges allowed, and that all players toggled an agreement that they were playing with their own purchased client copies of the game.

Blizzard attempted to take an end run around in getting it shut down by threatening the IP host company with legal action, but the company was made aware of the fact that no recognized laws were being broken so it was a miserable failure.

The players later migrated to TrueWoW after the staff behind Bloodcraft brought their project to a close for their own reasons, none of which had to do with Blizzard. So the gist of all of this is, if no profit is involved and additional measures are taken to appear as an innocently run private server, Blizzard can't do anything directly. Nadda. Nothing. But they can threaten IP hosting services by going up their chain of command to the people who own them, and casually leaning on them in other ways.

So what does all of this mean for this project? I have no flippin' clue since 'donations' with a form of goods & services being exchanged will be available for real money. I'm just laying out the facts of similar situations that I am aware of.

Edit - to answer the Rebirth question, that server was initially hosted on a Cloud IP provider which was leaned on by Blizzard which caused the initial shutdown last Summer. Previous to this the server admin claimed to have spent upwards of 55k in US dollars in legal actions taken by Blizzard against him, which I find to be hogwash as there is not one shred of evidence of any court cases or filings being a part of the claimed legal procedings. That stuff is public record and is EASY to confirm even from internet sources when all you have to do is eyeball the court history of a giant company involved (Blizzard in this case).

A fund-raiser was kicked off with a provision that it was not for profit, but for the purchase of new hardware / IP hosting that would be shared by that gaming community. The Rebirth admin chose a new Canadian host (cheapest one in town more or less) and that one got leaned on by Blizzard again. So the server is down, AND their shipped server hardware is in storage by the IP company, or so they claim.

 

[borislav]

shitty topic, outline your point in your post or expect nothing of worth. ( a link is not a point )

 

[Aieris]

Not to mention, that Kronos will (most likely) not be the largest of Twinstar projects. And Twinstar runs their servers for 4 years and never announced any problems.