A federal appeals court has ruled that computer programmers do not have the right to reverse-engineer Blizzard Entertainment"s video games to improve their playability.
The 8th Circuit Court of Appeals in St. Louis ruled Thursday that federal law--specifically, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act--disallows players from altering Blizzard games to link with servers other than the company"s official Battle.net site. Affected games published by Blizzard, a division of Vivendi Universal, include titles in its "Diablo," "Starcraft" and "Warcraft" lines. In a 3-0 decision, the court upheld a trial judge"s ruling from October, concluding the programmers" "circumvention in this case constitutes infringement."