Donna Wentworth from Copyfight says, "Annalee Newitz has a column filled with righteous ranting about the latest nastiness that Blizzard Games is perpetrating via its EULAs: spying on gamers' computers. You'll recall that Blizzard is the company that sued three open source programmers for creating software that let gamers play with others on the platform of their choice."
Excerpt:
According to the World of Warcraft terms of service, when you install the latest version of the game, an anticheat program called Warden snoops through your entire computer looking for "unauthorized third-party programs" that allow users to "hack" or "modify" the online game environment or "cheating of any kind." Warden then "communicates the information" it finds back to Blizzard. This "communication" process is described in alarmingly capacious terms that make it clear Blizzard has the option of examining your PC's hard drive anytime it wants. […]
Breaking the rules isn't nice, but this is a game, people — a game! It's not a matter of national security; nobody is going to get killed except the stupid video game avatars. Do you realize the government would have to have a warrant to get the kind of information Blizzard claims it has the right to suck out of your computer to stop cheaters? Doesn't that seem a wee bit wrong?
