[jakebasile]

It looks like someone found a copy of Blizzard's copyrighted source code, returned it to Blizzard, and got a reward. Why are people upset about this? It seems like the right thing to do to my mind. If someone found a copy of my own source laying in the street I'd be very happy if they returned it instead of releasing it on the net.

[gottam]

We could of had enthusiastic fans see the inner workings of such a beloved game and tons of articles around the technical details, but instead we protected the intellectual property rights of a billion dollar corporation. Strictly by law, it was "the right thing to do", but it was a real missed historic opportunity.

[jakebasile]

I'll agree it's an unfortunate thing that Blizzard hasn't released the code. Personally I'd love to get at Diablo 1's code too. Maybe they will one day, but that right is theirs even though they are a huge corporation. Copyright law doesn't care about that detail. This thread has a lot of people wanting the guy to go vigilante, which I just can't get behind.

[pjc50]

When, in 20 years, we're hearing that this disc got lost again sometime in the bankruptcy chain of Activision Blizzard, we'll see whether corporate archiving or vigilante illegal archiving is more effective.

[jakebasile]

Is there any risk that the compiled binaries, on millions of computers and available for free and legal download from Blizzard, will disappear in 20 years?

[pjc50]

No. But the source is useful for other purposes than compiling , especially with original comments.

For rarer games, and those shipped on DRMed/copy protected media, it's certainly possible to get into a situation at risk of losing all known copies of the binaries!

[gottam]

I'm not going to berate the guy for doing what he thought was right, but reading this news doesn't exactly give me a warm fuzzy feeling. Just mixed feelings.

[echlebek]

It seems that you think that following the law is the right thing to do. That's an understandable point of view. But there's also something called civil disobedience. Sometimes the will of the commons should trump law. Is this one of those cases? Frankly, I don't know or care. But I think if you don't try to understand what you call the "vigilante" point of view, you're doing yourself a disservice.

[unionpivo]

How is it civil disobedience, if private citizen violates right of another private citizen (or in this case corporation)?

civil disobedience in my mind is when private citizen stand's up to what he perceives as unjust system or law. And I can't see what unjust you see here in this case.

The way I see it is simple a lost property returned to an owner, and reward for person who found it

[spike021]

It's still their property. IMO non-Blizzard individuals have no right to post it.

[gottam]

Like I said, from a black and white legal standpoint it was the right move.

But so much was lost from not simply uploading it somewhere from an internet cafe.

It enters the same ethical flexibility as things like wikileaks in my opinion

[nspattak]

As much as I would love to see blizzard's code, it is their intellectual property. This is nothing similar to wikileaks. Wikileaks publishes information that should have been public because it is of public interest and relates to the public yet it is not available to the public.

[chii]

Why isnt a culturally significant game's source not considered public interest? Especially when the game is no longer being sold?

[csydas]

In this particular and narrow instance, it does seem like Blizzard is making good on going back and updating and maintaining the old code. You can argue the reasons, I suppose, but this seems in line with exactly what copyright is supposed to be protecting here. They're reviving support for the game, updating it for modern machines to receive, and making the previous iteration accessible.

I would love to have it to, but it's hard to fault Blizzard here for anything but "hey it would be really nice if you..."

There is still a vested interest in protecting this game from Blizzard's point of view, and it sucks, but in this case they have a fairly good justification and have been holding up their end of the bargain (re-releasing)

They've been real champs about these older games, like Diablo II getting updates. My heart skipped a beat when we finally got a native OS X client update that wasn't a Carbon app - that was really going above and beyond in my opinion, and their support was great for it despite the hiccups on release.

[theandrewbailey]

It was being sold up until about a week ago. I'm sure that you can find a store that still sells it on CD.

Blizzard is making a StarCraft remaster right now; who knows how much original source is still in there. My guess is probably a lot, since they want to keep the same mechanics.

[hd4]

Because they might want to withhold their right to milk it for successive generations and not have to bother with making original games.

[treehau5]

Parent's usage of "Interest of the Public" here typically means "the welfare or well-being of the general public; commonwealth" and you seem to be meaning the "lot's of people are curious -- culturally significant" kind.

[charlesdm]

Doesn't mean he didn't take a backup!

[sneak]

there is no ethical issue with keeping the secrets of others you have no obligation or commitment to keep.

[hsod]

Does this mean that if you find a random person's diary, there is no ethical issue with publishing it?

[ilugaslifg]

Liberating proprietary software is a moral good. Full stop.

The number of hopeless herbs on here who have so thoroughly internalized "legal == moral" is depressing.

[gottam]

You're the one who is making that connection, not me. I never implied it.

[ilugaslifg]

Yeah, sorry, I didn't at all intend that as a slight against you specifically.

[peterwwillis]

> It enters the same ethical flexibility as things like wikileaks in my opinion

I agree with you, it is completely unethical and totally self-serving.

[la_oveja]

Your ethic smells bad.

[peterwwillis]

Well, at least i'm not the only one who smells this way:

https://iapp.org/news/a/ethics-and-the-privacy-harms-of-wiki...

http://www.npr.org/2010/11/30/131699467/is-wikileaks-release...

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/zorn/ct-wikileaks...

http://theconversation.com/wikileaks-journalism-ethics-and-t...

https://www.seeker.com/wikileaks-the-ethics-of-revealing-sec...

http://www.pbs.org/wnet/religionandethics/2011/02/11/februar...

[qb45]

> It's still their property. IMO non-Blizzard individuals have no right to post it.

It's not their property, it's copyrighted. He indeed had no right to publish the contents but also no obvious obligation to return it. IMO he did a lame thing, the only worse option being uploading it anywhere before the © expires and getting into legal trouble.

[spike021]

I didn't say anything giving it back, though. As you say, the issue here in particular has to do with him posting or not posting it.

[princekolt]

I like your point. Were I the guy I'd have tried to push an agreement that they'd publish the source of their games once they had been discontinued for over 20 years or something like that.

[sneak]

Yeah. Even Apple recognized the historic significance of MacPaint and QuickDraw and released those sources.

http://www.computerhistory.org/atchm/macpaint-and-quickdraw-...

Carmack released the Quake1 and QuakeWorld sources, and I think also q2 and q3 eventually too.

StarCraft is ancient and the source is of no commercial value to them any longer. They don't benefit from its secrecy, but we do benefit from its release.

Then again, this is the company that sued open source developers who re-implemented a server (bnetd) for one of their proprietary protocols. It was that day I resolved to never give them money again.

[theandrewbailey]

> StarCraft is ancient and the source is of no commercial value to them any longer. They don't benefit from its secrecy, but we do benefit from its release.

They are doing a remaster right now. It would be reasonable to assume that it has at least some of the original code in it. I also suspect that Blizzard has used the same code base and modified it little by little over time.

[jpgvm]

It's not normal source code.

It's not like you found the source to the latest Halo game or something.

This is like finding the source to the original Halo game, of little to no commercial value but of immense cultural value.

Where possible these artefacts are archived so they will be around long after the companies have folded.

Unfortunately it's just not possible most of the time as companies end up taking their software to the grave.

Which makes this all the more depressing. This was an incredibly rare opportunity to archive something of cultural significance to millions of people, completely wasted because it fell into the hands of someone not equipped to deal with the situation properly or contact someone that does.

[jakebasile]

But in this case, that's Blizzard's right. They own it whether you like it or not. Just because something is important doesn't mean they should lose property rights to it.

Abandonware is a thing and I remember there being some legal headway made recently in that respect, but Starcraft isn't abandoned. They just released a compatibility patch and made it free to download.

[jpgvm]

I'm not talking about distribution, merely archiving.

I don't think it's reasonable to argue against archiving when it clearly has cultural significance.

[corobo]

There's absolutely no chance in hell the dude saying he sent a copy to archive.org would have stopped those reddit threads from foaming at the mouth. People want the code, not the archive.

[chii]

Blizzard does not lose their rights to it when somebody uploads the source code publically. If someone decides to use theor source code that they did not obtain a license for, blizzard can always sue.

Reading and learning​ from said source code is, and should not ever be illegal.

[corobo]

Uploading it is using it. The uploader would be sued if anyone. Anyone else using the code would be sent a C&D first.

[Berobero]

It's Blizzard's right, but only insofar as that happens to be what copyright terms say right now. Also, something having intrinsic value to society at large outside of the ability of a private entity to benefit from ownership is, quite literally, the reason why people should lose property rights to copyrighted works at some point.

[antihero]

> that's Blizzard's right

Sure, legally. But the question is whether we care. Ethics are relative.

[hd4]

I would make a slight amendment to that

>whether we care

But I'm glad that there are those who get it.

[unicornporn]

It's their right now, but in "life + 70 years" it could have been an incredibly valuable cultural heritage in the hands of the public. Now the game will die when Blizzard chooses to stop adapting the game to new platforms.

[wcummings]

Blizzard probably doesn't own all the source to SC1, they could have licensed code from other companies that they can't release even if they wanted to.

[sneak]

Intellectual Property isn't property, and publishing things does not deprive anyone of their property rights. It's a kludgy hack set up by Congress to prop up industry.

[yason]

Registering and getting copyright should depend on providing a no-strings-attached source format to a universal archival organisation. If you intend to sell your product or defend your copyrights you would have to have it registered and archived first. Should you stop selling the product the archive would be opened since you obviously aren't making money off the product anymore.

This would effectively limit copyright to the products' natural lifecycle and prevent hoarding the bits "just because I can", thanks to copyright imbalance.

[huehehue]

Not too sure about "no commercial value" considering the impending release of StarCraft: Remastered

[emn13]

Correct: the right to distribute a game with that branding and those mechanics is valuable if you have the means (such as any copy of the source) to do so.

The source by itself is hardly (monetarily) valuable, pretty much to anybody. Blizzard clearly still has other copies, and anybody else wouldn't be able to do much of anything commercially with the code.

It's quite possible somebody has even already reverse engineered much of it, rendering it even less valuable by itself, even to copy-cats.

[jhasse]

> It's quite possible somebody has even already reverse engineered much of it, rendering it even less valuable by itself, even to copy-cats.

Starcraft reverse engineered to run on ARM: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7372414

[saboot]

Wow, this is a very overlooked comment. I had no idea about Starcraft: Remastered. They're releasing the original game in HD.

Pretty much nulls all of the 'no commercial value' arguments I see here.

[jpgvm]

The code doesn't have commercial value because it contains no secrets that would allow you to implement a competitor to Starcraft HD/Remastered.

The code doesn't give you the legal permission to distribute and brand a game Starcraft. The reality is the code has no commercial value, the brand on the other hand may as well be a license to print money.

[oblio]

It doesn't. Want to bet that "Starcraft: Remastered" has a major code overhaul? Just read their release announcement.

Even if the code was still similar to the original one, the non-HD version is given away for free...

[IsmaOlvey]

No. They're using the same gameplay code as the original Starcraft:

    Q: How did you go about replicating all the unexpected “bugs” that made BW micro
    so special? Did you simply reuse code from the original game, or did you find a
    solution to replicate the nuances of BW’s gameplay?

    A: StarCraft: Remastered is able to achieve this effect as it uses all the same
    gameplay code as Brood War. This means that Dragoons and Goliaths are still a
    bit derpy in how they react to movement commands. The Reaver’s shot doesn’t
    always find a target. Mutas stack.

    The fact is that the gameplay is identical enough that old replays from 1.16
    will play and work just fine under StarCraft: Remastered.

from http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/brood-war/520464-an-intervie...

[onion2k]

This was an incredibly rare opportunity to archive something of cultural significance to millions of people

It's a bit like losing Leonardo Da Vinci's paint recipes - it's a loss, but it's not a big loss. The important thing about his art is the art itself. The same is true of Starcraft.

[cjhopman]

This is exactly why I dig up the bodies of influential historical figures every chance I get.

[astrodust]

You search them for gold masters of source code on CD-ROM?

I found one on Lincoln, but it was just some cat photos and backups of selfies from the cessation of the Civil War at various Reconstruction projects.

[madeofpalk]

> It's not normal source code.

...its not?

[jpgvm]

No. It's not.

Chiefly because Starcraft is not a normal game.

This is a game that defined a cultural generation in South Korea, established e-sports singlehandedly and in many ways made the RTS genre what it is today.

It should be archived. Even if it can never be released due to copyright or other legal nonsense it shouldn't be left to a commercial entity to ensure it survives.

[Scea91]

So, if I were an influential person, should my private diaries also be made public, even though I have no wish to share them?

[qb45]

I have a bad news for you: this is usually exactly what happens.

[sneak]

After one's death, it's no longer their business what happens to their secrets. One has no dog in the race any longer.

[Scea91]

Sure, but AFAIK Blizzard is not dead yet.

[eridius]

I don't know. A lot of people in this thread apparently never learned to tell right from wrong.

[scrollaway]

Did you? :)

Starcraft influenced the culture and politics of an entire nation and became a national sport. It pioneered "e-sports". It's a piece of history, and this disc is standalone a piece of history as well.

I think I know right from wrong, but I would still have absolutely no idea what to do if that disc landed on my doorstep.

Edit: I cannot believe this is such a controversial thing to say. Shame on the people who think this is an easy decision to make, put yourself in someone else's shoes for a while.

[jakebasile]

But it's still owned by Blizzard. It doesn't matter how important it was, they still own it. I am 100% sure the guy did the right thing in returning it, not only legally but morally as well. If Blizzard were to MIT license it that'd be amazing but they're the only ones with the power to do so, no matter who finds a copy in a box.

[Majestic121]

It's not owned by Blizzard anymore, it is a major piece of human culture and should be treated as such.

To poorly translate Victor Hugo : "The principle is twofold, let us not forget it. The book, as a book, belongs to the author, but as thought, it belongs - the word is not too vast - to the human race. All intelligences are entitled to it. If one of the two rights, the right of the writer and the right of the human mind, should be sacrificed, it would certainly be the right of the writer, for the public interest is our sole preoccupation, and All, I declare, must pass before us."

[scrollaway]

It's unclear whether it's a legal obligation given that the disc was found, it's even less clear whether it's a moral obligation.

If you didn't know anything about Blizzard, what would you speculate? Someone elsewhere in the thread for example is speculating Blizzard would destroy the copy -- if I thought that'd be a possibility, I would personally never send it their way and you could in no world convince me it's moral to send a piece of history to its demise.

[jakebasile]

It probably isn't strictly a legal obligation to return the physical disc barring stolen property stuff, but it would definitely be illegal to redistribute copyrighted code without a license to do so. Maybe you could claim some type of fair use but it wouldn't be transformative so I can't see how.

As for morality, I apply the golden rule: if someone found the code I wrote for a groundbreaking piece of software, and I didn't want to open source it, I'd really like for them to respect my wishes and return it.

Edit: I'm unable to reply further, but to clarify I was referring to the maxim of reciprocity or "do unto others". If the positions were reversed I'd want my property returned. If I find someone's wallet I'd return it if possible, as I'd want someone to return mine.

"The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few" is my favorite Star Trek quote, but I don't think it applies in this situation as it was intended as a motivation for a personal decision to sacrifice, not to force someone else to sacrifice. That line of thought can get pretty dark pretty fast.

[scrollaway]

> I apply the golden rule: if someone found the code I wrote for a groundbreaking piece of software, and I didn't want to open source it, I'd really like for them to respect my wishes and return it.

Is that really the golden rule? What about "the good of the many"?

Returning it to Blizzard directly is good for Blizzard. Returning your code is good for you. Realistically, it has little monetary value (all the "value" will be spent on lawyers arguing what the value is), so maybe it's only good for you because it's simpler for you.

What if your sense of morality is not in line with everyone else's sense, and I'm returning code to someone who will not do "the moral thing" afterwards? Does that make me immoral?

Point is, this is not an easy decision at all. It's not an easy answer at all. I'd be petrified and I believe anyone else who spends time to consider the implications would be too.

[csallen]

> As for morality, I apply the golden rule: if someone found the code I wrote for a groundbreaking piece of software, and I didn't want to open source it, I'd really like for them to respect my wishes and return it.

The golden rule is, like most other unilateral rules, an oversimplification. Of course, that's what makes it attractive — it's an effortless substitute for having to think through the complex and messy realities of any given situation. But let's not kid ourselves that something is automatically good because we would want that thing in Blizzard's situation, case closed.

[tripzilch]

> That line of thought can get pretty dark pretty fast.

so does "do unto others", if you follow it.

additionally you just argued that the same moral rules and rights that apply to you, a living breathing individual with an inner drive to enact right over wrong, can be transferred to an entire corporation, a legal construct blind to ethics unless forced by legal rules. which is kinda inhumane.

and, the golden rule is only a good moral yardstick if your choices in what you'd want to have others do unto you are moral in the first place. not a very nice thing to question, sorry, but your hypothetical example does feature you writing groundbreaking software but wanting to keep it closed source. depending on the software and how groundbreaking it is, that's an open question, very much up to discussion.

[Dylan16807]

> As for morality, I apply the golden rule: if someone found the code I wrote for a groundbreaking piece of software, and I didn't want to open source it, I'd really like for them to respect my wishes and return it.

What if you said that after the copyright had expired? Would you still say it's immoral to release it against your wishes?

[ue_]

>but morally as well.

If you believe in private property rights, then sure. If not, then no. Some such as Max Stirner, 19th century philosopher, would disagree with your assertion that it is a moral issue.

[ant6n]

If somebody leaked it, it wouldn't change the ownership or the copyright itself. It would still be Blizzards code. It simply wouldn't be a secret anymore.

[Pica_soO]

You seem to hold the right to property higher then anything else. It might shock you but the society has the right to disown you, if your property is needed elsewhere - for example to build a interstate.

Now everyone's free to be the gremlin sitting on the sack, but if that sack literally is a masterpiece that shaped the whole of civilization, one day people will gently hoist you aside and replace the sack beneath you with a sack of similar monetary value, to put your original sack in museum.

Sorry if that's inconceivable in a black and white worldview. And no - its not communism, that is civilization. A right to destroy art does not exist.

[sneak]

Easy solution. Torrent the iso, return the lost property (the disc) to its owner.

No moral or ethical issue whatsoever. Nobody's rights violated. Everybody wins.

[jhasse]

The iso and the disc contain a finger print -> they know it must be you -> you lose

[hd4]

They would still have to prove you a) leaked it, b) didn't prevent someone taking the CD and creating a backup without your permission

[Tactic]

It's an absolutely simple decision for me to make. It is not mine, therefore I give it back.

It's like I taught my children... even if you don't know whose it is, you know it isn't yours.

And in this case it is even known.

The amount of moral flexibility in these comments astounds me, although it probably shouldn't.

[scrollaway]

Being inflexible with your legal and moral codes is a sure fire way to become a completely immoral person.

I would say it astounds me to find people who are as rigid as you are, but truthfully, it doesn't.

[sgift]

Or don't share your values of right and wrong. It may surprise you, but people have different opinions on this matter and it frames what they do in life.

[tripzilch]

to be more exact, many people here seem to be incapable to tell right/wrong from legal/illegal or taking the easy/hard choice.

these are all different from each other. and more importantly, orthogonal to each other.

by orthogonal I mean that given a choice, deciding whether it is right, should be done independently of whether it's legal or easier/harder. think about it. even if you had the power to change law, making something legal won't make it any more right, and vice versa.

it seems to me that this guy made his choice of returning the CD vs releasing the code on the basis that the former is legal and doing the latter (somewhat securely) is harder.

not so much on whether preserving the code, in light of the cultural historical importance is right or wrong.

(you don't need to agree with me, but I'd love to hear a solid argument why the latter would be wrong, that doesn't conflate right/wrong with legal/illegal)

and even then, it's not entirely indefensible to base your actions just on what's legal or easiest. ethics is hard and especially the law provides a nice shortcut if you don't like to think for yourself too much. Just, don't go pat yourself on the back for doing the right thing. You don't get to do that. He does get a ticket and goodies from Blizzard, though. Sweet. Shouldn't taste bitter at all, at least for a while.

[eridius]

Releasing the code isn't wrong because it's illegal. It's wrong because it's violating Blizzard's rights. They own that code, they created it and they have the right to control its distribution. Just because Starcraft is a culturally significant game doesn't mean it's ok to violate Blizzard's rights.

The argument in favor of releasing the source code just seems to me to be a dressed-up version of "but I really waaaaaant to!". Wanting something doesn't make it right.

[dragonwriter]

> Releasing the code isn't wrong because it's illegal. It's wrong because it's violating Blizzard's rights.

IP rights are a creation of law and not usually (even by those adhering to a view of natural property rights) not viewed as a reflection of natural rights, so you seem to be both rejecting and endorsing legality as the basis of the wrongness here.

[eridius]

The law doesn't grant rights. It merely protects them. And the laws weren't created in a vacuum either. Laws that protect IP rights exist because we as a society believe that IP rights are something worth protecting. Yes, the laws can become divorced from what regular citizens believe they should be; the prime example here is copyright law being extended to cover a crazy amount of time. But I've never heard anyone before express the idea that someone should lose the right to control their own source code after 20 years have passed.

[Nadya]

> Laws that protect IP rights exist because we as a society believe that IP rights are something worth protecting.

This is not always true. Laws for `X` often only exist because a few `donations` were made to the right organizations and some politicians were taken to a nice, fancy dinner by some lobbyists to "talk" about things. In an ideal world, lobbyists educate politicians to make better decisions. In reality the practice is closer to bribery by wine and dining politicians and making large donations to their organizations/charities/political party. So I do not agree with this claim - because I don't believe a large portion of society gives a damn about IP protection laws. Especially in instances where society "loses" because of it (eg. unused patents)

[dragonwriter]

> The law doesn't grant rights.

Yes, it explicitly does.

> It merely protects them.

Some people believe that certain legal rights reflect pre-existing natural rights. As I stated in GP, it is quite uncommon, though, even among proponents of natural property rights, to view the legal rights in intellectual property as being in that category.

If you believe the IP rights at issue here are natural rights, that's fine, but you should explicitly make the case (or admit that it's a moral axiom you adhere to), rather than just assuming it's an uncontroversial position, because, simply put, it's not.

[kgu]

Edit: never mind, silly question

[eridius]

Right and wrong is, roughly speaking, defined based on what is good for society as a whole, balanced against the needs of the individual. It has nothing to do with some higher or cosmic absolute truth.

[rawland]

Completely agree.

Unless an owner of code decides something should run as FOOS, it's basically their own.

As far as I remember, the StarCraft game is already free (which is pretty awesome) [1]. So, maybe it's a matter of time until the source code might be free, too. However, it's up to them.

For the truly curious (which are arguing about the cultural value and so on), it is still possible to look into it using a decompiler. It is messy, but it is possible.

[1]: https://starcraft.com/en-us/articles/20674424

[acuozzo]

> Why are people upset about this? It seems like the right thing to do to my mind.

Shit: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1937_Fox_vault_fire

Happens: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1967_MGM_vault_fire

If something is culturally significant then it should be preserved and these two hyperlinks should easily make the case that preservation requires distribution.

[jakebasile]

You keep posting this as if it's relevant. Shit does happen, but it doesn't change the facts that Blizzard owns that code. Also, many in this thread are acting as if Starcraft itself is going to be destroyed thanks to this guy returning the code. You can download Starcraft for free from Blizzard [1] and they're releasing a remastered version soon [2]. It isn't going anywhere, so even by your own assertion there is no moral right to preserve the source, which isn't needed to enjoy the cultural artifact it creates.

People make mods for tons of games without source code. People are making up excuses and flimsy reasons to get what they want.

[1]: https://starcraft.com/en-us/articles/20674424

[2]: https://starcraft.com/en-us/

[acuozzo]

> Shit does happen, but it doesn't change the facts that Blizzard owns that code.

This would be relevant if we were discussing US law, but myself and others in this thread are posting replies derived from reasoning beyond Kohlberg's fourth stage of moral development, so please forgive me for saying that the significance of your point here is lost on me.

The preservation of culturally-significant works of art is considerably more important than any definition of ownership found in any law from any country in any time period that you can cite.

> It isn't going anywhere, so even by your own assertion there is no moral right to preserve the source, which isn't needed to enjoy the cultural artifact it creates.

You make an excellent point here, but I'm not convinced that there is no moral obligation to preserve the source code. Granted, it isn't the product, but I don't believe that its preservation value can be easily dismissed given that the product is well-preserved. I will have to think more on this.