Legality of "freeshards"...

[Mike-hybrid]

LOL. Violating the terms of agreement is not against the law. What is it a class X felony? 10 to 15 years prison time? Seriously all that means is that OSI can stop extending their service to you. Have you ever heard of anyone serving jail time for making derogitory comments about race, sex, or sexual preference on OSI? Thats against the tos too.

This has to be the best post ever. What a fucking outstanding point you make. MUCH LOVE FOR THAT POST.

As for emulating being illegal. The person purchases a copy of UO, they are free to do with it what they like: whether it be modify the files, etc. As long as the person who owns a copy of the Ultima Online software does not redistribute it illegally (without permission of EA), they cannot be sued/taken to court.

As for the SERVER software, it is all derivitive work of the RunUO developers and team. They designed the code from scratch, therefore even though it is created to "emulate" any game, any court in the US couldnt touch them for it - because the code came from their brain. They didnt plagerize code.

Think of it as 2 people writing about the same subject. Example: 2 people have written books about Colin Powell. Their books are basically the same thing: a story about Colin Powell's leadership techniques, but neither wrote the same things/opinions. Therefore neither of the 2 plagarized the other's work. Make sense?

This has been discussed many times over, and I guarantee no matter how big free shards get, EA will not care. EA still makes money in the end, and thats what they do - work for money. We are different, we work for fun - and they know suing us wouldnt be worth the effort, because we arent making any money (except donations to pay for the server - which they cant touch because they are "donations").

Hope this makes sense. But really, the bottom line is what chupo said. Violating the OSI/EA ToS means nothing outside of their servers. The ToS is agreed to in order to receive their "service" (connecting to their servers and playing).

 

[Meister]

But it is a violation of their ToS to connect to a freeshard, right?

 

[Kethinov]

Agh people! I have to get all terminology Nazi on you guys.

RunUO IS NOT AN EMULATOR. It is a server daemon! A completely rebuilt-from-scratch implementation of the UO server protocol. Even www.uogateway.com makes this terminology mistake. And this has been bothering me for a while.

Here. This is the definition of emulator.

To imitate the function of (another system), as by modifications to hardware or software that allow the imitating system to accept the same data, execute the same programs, and achieve the same results as the imitated system.

This definition applies to real emulators like VirtualPC or PearPC which emulate the x86 and ppc hardware architectures respectively and allow you to execute the programs designed for that architecture on a different one. Here are some examples:

Let's say I have a ppc machine with Mac OSX installed. In order to run Windows on this machine, I have to emulate the x86 platform. So I must run VirtualPC.

ppc arch -> install Mac OSX -> install VirtualPC -> Install Windows -> Run windows programs

Same is true on x86

x86 arch -> install Windows / Linux -> install PearPC -> Install MacOS -> Run Mac programs

Same is true of console hardware emulators

x86 arch (for example) -> install Linux -> install ePSXe -> run PSX games
ppc arch (for example) -> install Mac OSX -> install SNES9x -> run SNES games

Get the pattern? EMULATION ALWAYS REQUIRES (at least) FOUR LAYERS.

arch -> native operating system -> emulator -> emulated software

Here's RunUO

x86 -> Windows -> RunUO

Nothing is being emulated. RunUO is a server daemon. Here is the definition of a daemon. (No it's not an evil creature of death which spawns in Hyloth.)

A program or process that sits idly in the background until it is invoked to perform its task.

RunUO is a server daemon! It sits and waits for connections. It manages connections. You know what else is a server daemon? Apache HTTP server. Microsoft IIS webserver. Quake3 game server. Subspace zone server. All of these are widely accepted as "servers" and they do exactly what RunUO and all other UO server daemons do. (They are mor correctly referred to as server daemons, but server will do. They are all most certainly not emulators.)

I can hear the counter arguments already. "But RunUO is an emulator because it emulates the functions of EA's UO server software!"

No, no, no, and no! This is grammatically correct in the english world, but not in the computer science world. Take a look at Samba. Samba is an implementation of the Windows file sharing protocol. Samba does with Windows file sharing exactly what RunUO does with UO. It's completely rebuilt, from scratch, free alternative. Just like RunUO. So why doesn't anyone call Samba a Windows File Sharing emulator? Because it isn't an emulator! Nor is RunUO. There are other examples, but I think I'm overstating my case already. Everyone calling RunUO an emulator bothers me because it's not correct!

Thanks!

 

[Kethinov]

But it is a violation of their ToS to connect to a freeshard, right?

*blood pressure rising*

OK I realize that people get all confused with these concepts so I won't flame.

Here is how it is in very plain, very simple language: Playing on a non-OSI UO server is not illegal, you cannot be fined, sued, or go to prison etc. Playing on a non-OSI UO server is a violation of OSI's TOS. You can be banned from their service for playing anywhere but on their servers. OK?

 

[Atriox]

But it is a violation of their ToS to connect to a freeshard, right?

You will not attempt to play your EA game on or through any service that is not controlled or authorized by Electronic Arts. You will not participate in any online service that provides online features or game play for your EA game that is not authorized by Electronic Arts.

http://www.ea.com/global/legal/tos.jsp

Yes, it is. So you fully understand, I quoted the EA Terms of Service from http://www.ea.com

I think you've been mixing up the End User License Agreement with the Terms of Service. That thing you have to say you you install somethingagree to when is not the same as the ToS. Nowhere in the EULA does it even refer to freeshards, so it must be legal.

 

[Bloodshed]

Terms of Service are just that. TERMS of SERVICE. You break the terms, and they can choose to deny you service. Noone is going to jail. The police arent going to break down your door.

 

[Meister]

I dont have the EULA in my UO Folder i think.. can anyone tell me where to find the EULA for UO?

 

[Phantom-hybrid]

I will make it easy for everyone to understand.

Everything about this shard is legal, you have nothing to worry about.

With that said, I am locking this post, as there really isn't anything to say.