These forums have been archived and are now read-only.

The new forums are live and can be found at https://forums.eveonline.com/

EVE Information Portal

 
  • Topic is locked indefinitely.
 

Dev Blog: Client modification, the EULA and you

First post First post
Author
Previous Topic Next Topic
Entity
X-Factor Industries
Synthetic Existence
#161 - 2013-04-18 16:06:50 UTC  |  Edited by: Entity
Callic Veratar wrote:
Entity wrote:
CCP Peligro wrote:

Please, consider the fact that cache scraping can be used for illegitimate purposes which are damaging to the overall health of the game,


Cars can be used to run over people. I don't see the government issuing blanket threats to car drivers.


Really, these things are all over the place around here.


That is not a blanket threat. That's saying "if you use your vehicle to do bad things, you will get slapped", which is fine.
To keep with the car analogy, what CCP just said is "Driving a car is now illegal, but if you behave, we probably won't take action if you are driving one".

╦......║...╔╗.║.║.╔╗.╦║.╔╗╔╦╗╔╗

║.╔╗╔╗╔╣.╔╗╠..╠ ╠╗╠╝.║╠ ╠╝║║║╚╗

╩═╚╝║.╚╝.╚╝║..╚╝║║╚╝.╩╚╝╚╝║.║╚╝

Got Item?
IgnoreTheDroid
Pator Tech School
Minmatar Republic
#162 - 2013-04-18 16:06:58 UTC
Lallante wrote:
IgnoreTheDroid wrote:
Lallante wrote:
IgnoreTheDroid wrote:
Cache scraping is against eula... except we won't enforce it on some things that use it but we will allow the players to guess at what is allowed..


Glad we got a nice clear and concise definition of what is allowed and isn't.


That's the whole point. If you give people a clear, definitive explanation of what is allowed, smart, bad people will immediately set about exploiting the **** out of the loopholes.

CCP is using deliberately open-ended language in the same way that in many countries, criminal laws do. They want there to a grey area SO that they can approach each case on its own merits and dont have their hands tied when they have to deal with a clearly abusive case which is "technically" on the legitimate side of a clear dividing line.

Its a good policy and one I wholeheartedly agree with as a lawyer.



That's where the nice clause of "we can ban you at anytime for any reason" comes into play. People are going to find and exploit loopholes no matter what. This isn't going to stop it at all. All it is doing is making legitimate players worried that their actions are now a bannable offense because there is no clear statement on what is allowed and isn't.



Its going to stop legitimate players taking comfort from EULA wording to justify using a cheat. This eliminates much of the market for such cheats, which in turn discourages their development.


So evemon is a cheat? CCP, in this thread, said that evemon is fine...
Lallante
Blue Republic
RvB - BLUE Republic
#163 - 2013-04-18 16:07:25 UTC
Jack Haydn wrote:
What do you have an EULA for, which is supposed to clearly outline the terms of business between company and customer, if you completely erode and undermine said EULA, making it essentially useless and leave the user to guess what one can do and what not?

This is extremely pitiful customer service, CCP.

I hope you will come up with more clear terms and I hope you are going to tell us clearly "Yes, XYZ is ok, ABC is not." It's absolutely fine to change the terms later on, as long as you give people grace periods to adapt. If you want to allow multiboxing now, but want to ban it later, no problem! Inform people, give them a month to adjust and then start handing out bans. It's not like anything you say now is set in stone forever. This game is constantly changing on all fronts. But for gods sake, please be clear and specific.



The problem you miss is that, in your example of "mutliboxing", "multiboxing" isnt some discrete, easily definable thing. You can multibox just by opening the Eve .exe twice, for example, or you can run a program that runs instances of eve in virtual desktops and macros the controls together so that one person can control 20 accounts. There is a huge range of things that "multiboxing" as a description covers. It would be literally impossible to exhaustively list every element that is legit and is not legit. And thats why you need blanket statements.
Fade Toblack
Per.ly
The 20 Minuters
#164 - 2013-04-18 16:07:40 UTC  |  Edited by: Fade Toblack
Ranger 1 wrote:

If, even though you have been specifically told it's okay, you choose to not use EvEMon that's fine. Nobody cares.
But the fact remains you have been specifically told the overriding goal of EULA and TOS enforcement is to use what is specified in those documents is to catch botters, RMT, and other specifically cheat oriented activities... and NOT to go after folks using common handy activities.

It really doesn't matter what was discussed in the past, this is your official word on the subject at this time.


I have a certain technical interest in doing some things that are completely within what CCP wants to ban, but aside from some speculative discussion in the pub I stay clearly away from those areas. I want to be completely whiter-than-white and continue to enjoy playing Eve in perpetuity.

Now cache-scraping was previously declared outside the scope of the EULA by an Eve dev. Therefore whether or not the action broke the EULA was never a consideration.

Sreegs stated that *in his opinion* it was within the EULA.

Today we've been directed to a wiki page that states that not only is it within the EULA, it's completely against a rule.

And this isn't the wishy-washy "gaining stuff quicker" rule. This is the blank-and-white reverse engineering rule.

So I've been cache-scraping for pretty much as long as there have been publically available cache-scrapers (Contribastic). So today's back-door-on-the-wiki announcement basically says that I've been breaking the EULA for some time now. And I _nearly_ get an amnesty however that expired 3 days ago.

So I've done nothing at any point I thought was wrong, but I've broken the EULA and lost that whiter-than-white status.
Lallante
Blue Republic
RvB - BLUE Republic
#165 - 2013-04-18 16:08:15 UTC
IgnoreTheDroid wrote:
Lallante wrote:
IgnoreTheDroid wrote:
Lallante wrote:
IgnoreTheDroid wrote:
Cache scraping is against eula... except we won't enforce it on some things that use it but we will allow the players to guess at what is allowed..


Glad we got a nice clear and concise definition of what is allowed and isn't.


That's the whole point. If you give people a clear, definitive explanation of what is allowed, smart, bad people will immediately set about exploiting the **** out of the loopholes.

CCP is using deliberately open-ended language in the same way that in many countries, criminal laws do. They want there to a grey area SO that they can approach each case on its own merits and dont have their hands tied when they have to deal with a clearly abusive case which is "technically" on the legitimate side of a clear dividing line.

Its a good policy and one I wholeheartedly agree with as a lawyer.



That's where the nice clause of "we can ban you at anytime for any reason" comes into play. People are going to find and exploit loopholes no matter what. This isn't going to stop it at all. All it is doing is making legitimate players worried that their actions are now a bannable offense because there is no clear statement on what is allowed and isn't.



Its going to stop legitimate players taking comfort from EULA wording to justify using a cheat. This eliminates much of the market for such cheats, which in turn discourages their development.


So evemon is a cheat? CCP, in this thread, said that evemon is fine...


Then its probably fine. Its for each individual player to use their brain when deciding whether to use a tool whether it could constitute a cheat, unfair advantage, exploit or other circumvention of intended game mechanics.
seth Hendar
I love you miners
#166 - 2013-04-18 16:08:20 UTC
Lallante wrote:
People arguing that it needs to be clearer what is legal and what is illegal are completely wrong.

The whole point is that it needs to be sufficiently broad to allow CCP to take whatever action it feels necessary to safeguard the game, and not have its hands tied because someone has found a particular angle that is "technically" within the EULA but in practice is highly abusive.

If you are worried that your actions might be deemed cheating, unfair, exploits, gamebreaking, or otherwise circumventing a deliberately designed game limitation, then don't do them.

If you are not so worried, chill out. You aren't going to be banned for a technical breach.

Getting hung up on what does or does not technically break a EULA is completely missing the point.


i think you are too missing the point that here, by stating that cache scraping is illegal, they are static that 90% of their player base is ACTUALLY, and since years, breaking the EULA and thus, potentially exposed to a no-warning perma ban.

because eve-HQ and evemon are, by default, cache scrapping, and i don't need to say most of the player are using one or the other...
Kleesama
Tradewars2002
#167 - 2013-04-18 16:08:46 UTC
Lallante wrote:
People arguing that it needs to be clearer what is legal and what is illegal are completely wrong.

The whole point is that it needs to be sufficiently broad to allow CCP to take whatever action it feels necessary to safeguard the game, and not have its hands tied because someone has found a particular angle that is "technically" within the EULA but in practice is highly abusive.

If you are worried that your actions might be deemed cheating, unfair, exploits, gamebreaking, or otherwise circumventing a deliberately designed game limitation, then don't do them.

If you are not so worried, chill out. You aren't going to be banned for a technical breach.

Getting hung up on what does or does not technically break a EULA is completely missing the point.



Do you use Evemon?

If so, are you planning on stopping now because there's a question as to if it may be considered "cheating, unfair, exploits, gamebreaking, or otherwise circumventing a deliberately designed game limitation"?

Because that's how I read this.
Uppsy Daisy
State War Academy
Caldari State
#168 - 2013-04-18 16:09:16 UTC  |  Edited by: Uppsy Daisy
Gypsio III wrote:
waffle


Yes, you're right Gypsio, I am so stupid and you are so clever.

So they are all illegal, but CCP probably won't ban me, I get it.

If CCP would just confirm that in writing for those specific examples, I'm sure a lot more players will sleep easy in the knowledge that they are playing without the threat of getting banned every day.
Ambassador Crane
Hellhound Productions
#169 - 2013-04-18 16:09:32 UTC
Here's how I read this devblog and wiki, and then the subsequent comments in this thread between CCP and various players:

Quote:
CCP: Cache scraping is against EULA

Players: But EveMon and other non-disruptive 3rd party apps use Cache scraping!

CCP: We understand! Cache scraping has always been against EULA but we are only after botters, RMTers and Macros. If your intentions aren't bad, then you're fine and we overlook it because we can.

Players: But we skipped all those years in school after 1st grade! We didn't learn common sense! You MUST break it down Barney style!

CCP: This isn't the Barney show. How many more ways can we say basically the same thing before you stfu?



Hopefully none, but common sense seems to be fairly absent in this thread....

Going out on a limb here in saying that on behalf of the more intuitive players, I'd like to apologize for our fellow player's short comings.... Roll
Ereilian
Doomheim
#170 - 2013-04-18 16:10:17 UTC
CCP Peligro wrote:
Steve Ronuken wrote:
Benny Ohu wrote:
is cache scraping what evemon does when it 'sends market data from your eve installation cache to online endpoints'?


Yes


We are looking for cheaters, hackers, botters and the likes. We are not looking for EVEMON users. Basically, please don't worry.



Not acceptable. By your own "we can do anything we want" EULA anyone using that functionality is breaking the EULA. You have basically come here saying, without saying it, that that is fine as you do not consider it a problem. So the obvious decision is to remove it from the EULA. Seriously you KNOW where the botters and RMT are, you KNOW and still refuse to take action on a global scale against all of the entities involved. Grow a pair and take on the Null Bot empires and RMTs.
seth Hendar
I love you miners
#171 - 2013-04-18 16:10:26 UTC  |  Edited by: seth Hendar
Lallante wrote:
Jack Haydn wrote:
What do you have an EULA for, which is supposed to clearly outline the terms of business between company and customer, if you completely erode and undermine said EULA, making it essentially useless and leave the user to guess what one can do and what not?

This is extremely pitiful customer service, CCP.

I hope you will come up with more clear terms and I hope you are going to tell us clearly "Yes, XYZ is ok, ABC is not." It's absolutely fine to change the terms later on, as long as you give people grace periods to adapt. If you want to allow multiboxing now, but want to ban it later, no problem! Inform people, give them a month to adjust and then start handing out bans. It's not like anything you say now is set in stone forever. This game is constantly changing on all fronts. But for gods sake, please be clear and specific.



The problem you miss is that, in your example of "mutliboxing", "multiboxing" isnt some discrete, easily definable thing. You can multibox just by opening the Eve .exe twice, for example, or you can run a program that runs instances of eve in virtual desktops and macros the controls together so that one person can control 20 accounts. There is a huge range of things that "multiboxing" as a description covers. It would be literally impossible to exhaustively list every element that is legit and is not legit. And thats why you need blanket statements.

the issue is not multiboxing by itself, the question was about software that are used to make multiboxing easy.

CCP is stating they won't do anything about those, but they will do for macro user.

but here is the thing, those softwares ARE USING MACROS.

so for me, the answer CCP should give is: multiboxing alone is okay, multiboxing using software == BAN
Lallante
Blue Republic
RvB - BLUE Republic
#172 - 2013-04-18 16:11:01 UTC
Esmilis99 wrote:
You are a crappy lawyer then. Rules have to be clearly defined. If its unclear, then either side can use to its advantage (in RL scenario, if theres an ambiguity, the best lawyer wins). Now in a situation CCP GMs are the judges, and a player has zero chance of defense, it can easily get out of hand. Saying that everything is against the EULA just because CCP doesn't want to leave any gray area for criminals to abuse is exactly the opposite of a good policy.

Remember that you cant discuss petition results, and technically any random CCP GM can go on a ban spree whenever he wants, and players banned have no way to reverse the ruling because they are technically breaking the EULA. It's not enough for a GM to post to a forum "yeah, trust us, you are breaking the rules but we wont do anything".

I cant believe how many gullible naive people are playing this game. I kind of expected some more brains from the players of EVE, where you are encouraged not to trust anyones random ramblings in the forums, and look at things that actually do matter.


lol
Danny Centauri
Republic University
Minmatar Republic
#173 - 2013-04-18 16:12:14 UTC
Ambassador Crane wrote:
Here's how I read this devblog and wiki, and then the subsequent comments in this thread between CCP and various players:

Quote:
CCP: Cache scraping is against EULA

Players: But EveMon and other non-disruptive 3rd party apps use Cache scraping!

CCP: We understand! Cache scraping has always been against EULA but we are only after botters, RMTers and Macros. If your intentions aren't bad, then you're fine and we overlook it because we can.

Players: But we skipped all those years in school after 1st grade! We didn't learn common sense! You MUST break it down Barney style!

CCP: This isn't the Barney show. How many more ways can we say basically the same thing before you stfu?



Hopefully none, but common sense seems to be fairly absent in this thread....

Going out on a limb here in saying that on behalf of the more intuitive players, I'd like to apologize for our fellow player's short comings.... Roll



Players have learnt the hard way to get specifics from CCP, historically grey areas have led to disaster. EVE Community now takes a stance of over react first, prevent problems later and it seems to have worked ever since Incarna was introduced.

EVE Manufacturing Guide - Simple guides to manufacturing in EVE for both beginners and more experienced players.
seth Hendar
I love you miners
#174 - 2013-04-18 16:12:32 UTC
Ereilian wrote:
CCP Peligro wrote:
Steve Ronuken wrote:
Benny Ohu wrote:
is cache scraping what evemon does when it 'sends market data from your eve installation cache to online endpoints'?


Yes


We are looking for cheaters, hackers, botters and the likes. We are not looking for EVEMON users. Basically, please don't worry.



Not acceptable. By your own "we can do anything we want" EULA anyone using that functionality is breaking the EULA. You have basically come here saying, without saying it, that that is fine as you do not consider it a problem. So the obvious decision is to remove it from the EULA. Seriously you KNOW where the botters and RMT are, you KNOW and still refuse to take action on a global scale against all of the entities involved. Grow a pair and take on the Null Bot empires and RMTs.


agreed, reported many bots for monthes, they are still around, daily, botting.

not much need to be said....
pmchem
Brutor Tribe
Minmatar Republic
#175 - 2013-04-18 16:14:37 UTC
Entity wrote:

That is not a blanket threat. That's saying "if you use your vehicle to do bad things, you will get slapped", which is fine.
To keep with the car analogy, what CCP just said is "Driving a car is now illegal, but if you behave, we probably won't take action if you are driving one".


Goonswarm and an extremely famous third-party dev (btw Entity, I like Reverence) COMPLETELY agree on the cache scraping controversy.

How much larger of a sign does CCP need that they're screwing this up?

https://twitter.com/pmchem/ || http://community.eveonline.com/news/dev-blogs/community-spotlight-garpa/ || Goonswarm Economic Warfare Cabal
Fade Toblack
Per.ly
The 20 Minuters
#176 - 2013-04-18 16:14:58 UTC
Lallante wrote:
As an actual, RL lawyer I'm going to have to break it to you that this is bollocks. In practice CCP can ban you for no reason at all and you have no legal redress whatsoever


At which point we don't need CCP to "clarify" any policy at all. So the communication from CCP on this dev blog etc still completely sucks...

My problem isn't the policy. It's the communication.
Kleesama
Tradewars2002
#177 - 2013-04-18 16:17:38 UTC
Really, I see a couple options here.


1. Implement Apple-level app authorization on CCP's end. "This app is allowed" "This app is not allowed" CCP of course has a wonderful track record of doing things in a timely manner and this will work out well! Roll

2. CCP needs to be specific on cache scraping. "Allowed" or "Not Allowed"



I get that cache scraping can be used by bots, but those bots require other things as well that DO EXPLICITLY VIOLATE THE EULA. Cache scraping alone is only for data population.
Callic Veratar
#178 - 2013-04-18 16:17:46 UTC
Entity wrote:
Callic Veratar wrote:
Really, these things are all over the place around here.


That is not a blanket threat. That's saying "if you use your vehicle to do bad things, you will get slapped", which is fine.
To keep with the car analogy, what CCP just said is "Driving a car is now illegal, but if you behave, we probably won't take action if you are driving one".


No, what they said is "We cache database information on your computer. If you use it to do bad things, you well get slapped." The initial action was not cache scraping but the caching itself.

They have stated there is an group looking into moving the market data (and more) into CREST. Once that happens there's no reason to scrape the cache as there's an official, supported, and equal method for everyone to access all of the data.

That being said, it would be excellent if there was an official post that said something to the effect of "mining data from the cache is not a ban-able offence prior to the release of officially developed tools." In my mind, that's where the line should be drawn. You can mine data and analyse it as much as you like, but if you do anything else that feeds back in to the game in any way, you deserve a ban.
IgnoreTheDroid
Pator Tech School
Minmatar Republic
#179 - 2013-04-18 16:19:34 UTC
Lallante wrote:
IgnoreTheDroid wrote:
Lallante wrote:


Its going to stop legitimate players taking comfort from EULA wording to justify using a cheat. This eliminates much of the market for such cheats, which in turn discourages their development.


So evemon is a cheat? CCP, in this thread, said that evemon is fine...


Then its probably fine. Its for each individual player to use their brain when deciding whether to use a tool whether it could constitute a cheat, unfair advantage, exploit or other circumvention of intended game mechanics.


And thats the problem right there. At any point in time CCP could decide that they don't like evemon anymore and consider it a cheat. There is not clear cut definition of what is and isn't allowed.
Tergerom Loregeron
Sebiestor Tribe
Minmatar Republic
#180 - 2013-04-18 16:20:07 UTC
Lallante wrote:
Esmilis99 wrote:
You are a crappy lawyer then. Rules have to be clearly defined. If its unclear, then either side can use to its advantage (in RL scenario, if theres an ambiguity, the best lawyer wins). Now in a situation CCP GMs are the judges, and a player has zero chance of defense, it can easily get out of hand. Saying that everything is against the EULA just because CCP doesn't want to leave any gray area for criminals to abuse is exactly the opposite of a good policy.

Remember that you cant discuss petition results, and technically any random CCP GM can go on a ban spree whenever he wants, and players banned have no way to reverse the ruling because they are technically breaking the EULA. It's not enough for a GM to post to a forum "yeah, trust us, you are breaking the rules but we wont do anything".

I cant believe how many gullible naive people are playing this game. I kind of expected some more brains from the players of EVE, where you are encouraged not to trust anyones random ramblings in the forums, and look at things that actually do matter.


lol


If you're a real lawyer then I'm truly sorry for anyone who hired you in their defense.