Advanced Copyright Law on the Internet

(vi) Movida Communications, Inc. v. Haifa

In this case, the court ruled that the defendant’s actions of tampering with or altering pre-
paid control software resident on Movida pre-paid wireless handsets, entering unauthorized PIN
numbers into the phones for purposes of unlocking or re-flashing the phones, and reselling the
phones for use on networks other than Movida’s, violated Section 1201 of the DMCA. The court
issued a permanent injunction against the defendant, prohibiting him even from purchasing any
model of Movida handsets, in addition to re-flashing or unlocking any Movida handset, and
accessing, altering, erasing, tampering with, deleting or otherwise disabling Movida’s proprietary
prepaid cellular software contained within any model of Movida handset. The order also
provided that any violation would be punished in an amount of not less than $5,000 per Movida
handset.^857

(vii) Microsoft Corp. v. EEE Business Inc.

In this case, the defendant engaged in the unauthorized distribution of Microsoft software
that was available only under a Volume License Agreement. The agreement permitted only
authorized volume licensees to install software to unlock the media programming to enable the
user to enter a 25-character alphanumeric code, called the Volume License Key (VLK), which
was unique to the licensee and required to be kept confidential under the terms of the Volume
License Agreement. The court ruled that, by distributing a VLK without authorization, the
defendant had effectively circumvented Microsoft’s technological measure to control access to a
copyrighted work in violation of Section 1201(a)(2) of the DMCA.^858

(viii) MDY Industries v. Blizzard Entertainment

In this case, the defendant distributed bot software called “Glider” that was able to play
Blizzard Entertainment’s multiplayer online role-playing game known as World of Warcraft
(WoW) for its owner while the owner was away from his or her computer, thereby enabling the
owner to advance more quickly within WoW than would otherwise be possible.^859 Blizzard
Entertainment brought claims under the DMCA, alleging that Glider evaded Blizzard
technologies known as “Warden” to detect and prevent the use of bots by WoW players.
Warden included two different software components. The first component, known as “scan.dll,”
scanned the user’s computer for unauthorized programs such as Glider before the user logged
onto the WoW servers to play the game, and if it detected such programs, scan.dll would deny
the user access to the game servers. The second component, known as the “resident” component
of Warden, ran periodically while a user played WoW and if it detected the use of a bot program,
Blizzard would revoke access to the game.^860

(^857) Movida Communications, Inc. v. Haifa, 2008 Copyr. L. Dec. ¶ 29,528 (C.D. Cal. 2008).
(^858) Microsoft Corp. v. EEE Business Inc., 555 F. Supp. 2d 1051, 1059 (N.D. Cal. 2008).
(^859) MDY Industries, LLC v. Blizzard Entertainment, Inc., 2008 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 53988 at 2 (D. Ariz. 2008 July
14, 2008).
(^860) Id. at 34.