Yes, they totally apply, they have made a derivative work based on WOW and data received from WOW servers, they are not legally allowed to receive payment for something like that without Blizzard approval.
That the service is free or not and the payment is support is irrelevant, what they do is illegal, they are receiving money without Blizzard’s approval. Even if they money is only for support and voluntary is still needed the approval of the copyright owner, is no different for patreon pages for Skyrim mods, the mods could be free for everyone, there could not be any patreon exclusivity but yet it still monetary income and that means copyright violation.
It does not care what your premium payments it used for or what do you receive for. Even if your only reward is a thank you the payment is still a copyright violation.
Of course, and here the “right” thing is for the creators of a work to deserve payment, and to be able to choose who can and who cant earn money based on their work. But the authors of WOW is Blizzard, no raiderio, so the right thing is for Blizzard to be the one who earns money with their work. If raiderio wants to earn money with Blizzard’s work they need their permission. Think about authors for a moment, do you actually thing it would be right for anyone to create a work based on other people works doing what they want with the original work and sell it without permission?
It’s a free service, they are not charging for you to see the data.
You work and Blizzard and know they disapprove? I simply don’t believe you. You also want me to believe that Blizzard aren’t aware of the big sites that use the API and that some have premium services on top of their free ones.
Except there is no violation. Just because you claim there is one, doesn’t make it so. We see so many claims on the forums of laws being violated, human rights act is another, various privacy laws. None of them apply. This doesn’t either.
Raider io, wowprogress, audit spreadsheet etc are all using the data legally without any breach.
If you are “pushing” then you are in a premade group. Pushing with PUGs is more like getting the base score and hoping that a +10-ish key will run for a decent score.
First week of 8.1 I did a lot of 6-5 for gear and to get a score in every dungeon. Plus few higher ones, +10 for weekly and so forth. Next week was everything +8/9 or higher. This week +11-12 or higher and there are many weeks to come for this M+ season. If you really want a god-mode score already then pay for something that will not help you or play in a pre-made optimized group.
You can use many other addons, it’s free market - someone can make a free version of a paid product. Paid product will then loose customers unless those paid features are unique and not replicated by free product in acceptable amount. You don’t want to buy PS - use GIMP.
There always be fishing for potatoes as well as offering extras for early access and for support. That paid service of rio is completely passable but if you don’t want to adjust - pay and be a potato.
Also do note that players must update the addon to get the updated database. It’s to be expected that a lot of players may have 1-few days old database. Some may just use link addon and see your score on site which updates quicker than the daily addon update.
It is beyond me why Blizzard is tollerating having a green in their fourms defending illegal activities of a third party site earning money at Blizzard’s expenses. The law is the law, you like it or not, I won’t continue to argue with someone who defends copyright laws violations. I cant answer to someone whose opinion i dont respect.
This conversation is going in circles. They provide a free service. There is a premium available if you want more out of it. That’s it. It’s all permitted. Raider IO is not breaking any rules. Nor is the Audit spreadsheet which also offers a premium service.
The addon in game is FREE. The website is FREE. The desktop APP is FREE. They both update for FREE, the website updates in real time (as the API becomes available from Blizzard). The addon is updated overnight.
Yes, it is what happening here. The addon could be free, the service could be free, but yet still they are receiving money, even if is just voluntary donations, and they dont deserve money for their work, both legally and morally,because it could be their work, but they dont own it. Blizzard, being the owner of WOW, deserve that no one like raiderio earn money based on WOW without Blizzard’s permission.
An author deserve to receive money for their work, but the only author here is Blizzard’s, not raiderio. Raiderio is only the author of a derivative work, they only have the right to do their work and receive payment for their work if the original author want it in the first place.
And yes, anyone could do it for free because Blizzard allow it, but no one could do it for money, including dontations, except Blizzard itself, because Blizzard does not allow it.
There is no need to change any conditions. The conditions allow raiderio to access the data, they have not stolen any data, but in no place in the conditions Blizzard is allowing to anyone to earn money with that data. The premium service in itself is a copyright violation of a Blizzard’s property. At the end RaiderIO as a work is a derivative work of World of Warcraft, whose owner is Blizzard, so any payment for any premium service or donation without Blizzard’s approval is a copyright violation. And there is no place in Blizzard’s API conditions where it is expressed than receiving money it is allowed. And copyright laws works by omission, if the author has not explicity given permission it means there is no permission
So what do you want, a public website and service like RaiderIO or private, not available to majority of players applications that give significant advantage to a selection of players? Complex applications do cost and if people won’t be able to get any compensation they may not do it (thus making the ecosystem smaller) or do it for their or their friends to use. And you would not know of it existence to moan even. Maybe force Blizzard to make Fanbyte disable ads on Wowhead and other of their sites? Make every stream or content creator disable monetisation and subscriptions or usage of patreons? Blizzard games would be dead instantly.
If M+ would be in disarray without any ranking system it would barely exist outside of guilds and selected groups. That would severely limit the amount of active subscriptions…
I also know how to quote someone and remove part of their quote.
The part of my quote that you deliberately removed is
It does not matter if the addon and the service it is free, but you can continue to manipulate to defend Blizzard’s copyright violation, why Blizzard would want to keep an MVP whose openly against Blizzard’s copyright is beyond me.
Ok I understand your pov, but I still think it doesnt apply because (and since we’re going with the copyright and money issue) publishing free copyrighted material is illegal too, so we can agree that by having access to the APIs theres already a permission there.
And it’s all there for free, you are just given the option to skip the line to use it if you support them, I’m cool with that.
More important, Blizz is cool with that, with such a high profile addon they certainly know whats going on in there and since copyright infringements arent public crimes, even in the case this would qualify for it there seems to be no issue
