Uo:kingdom Reborn

[Jeff]

Because modifying these things requires some reverse engineering of these things and that is illegal in most areas of the world.

I don't know about "most," Jeff, but I don't think in the US:

"reverse engineering" legal - Google Search

Now I'm quite sure that many EULAs try to contract you into not doing that, but that's a different matter...

C//

The DMCA Exception

In general, the DMCA bans malicious reverse engineering. However, there is an exeption in the DMCA saying that reverse engeenering can be done under the purposes of inter-operability between software components.

Im not gonna get into a pissing contest about this, cause reguardless of the rules, EA can always throw shit at you saying you stole business away from them by reverse engineering their software. But according to this, its illegal. I would consider, intention to reverse engineer a product to avoid paying fees to play malicious. :/

 

[HellRazor]

My point is, it's no more "illegal" now that it ever was. The same laws that govern UOKR govern every version of UO. Supporting UOKR is no more illegal than supporting other clients.

Even the license agreement is pretty much the same as it was before. I think the only difference was some kind of "international" provision that wasn't there before. The piece in the license agreement prohibiting the use of emulators and third party software has been in there for a long time now. And the EULA is not a law, it's a license agreement outlining terms of service for UO.

The legality of software license agreements themselves is pretty questionable. There was a significant court decision made a few years ago about a Battle.Net emulator that was deemed illegal which could have bearing on all of this. Then again, there was another case regarding a software emulator of one of the console systems several years ago where the emulator was determined to be legal. So the whole thing is pretty sticky, legality wise.

The recent case involving the Lineage emulator was ruled in NCSoft's favor because the people who wrote the emulator were using stolen NCSoft source code. So that was more of a copy infringement issue.

Most emulators (including WoW emulators) getting "shut down" are voluntarily shutting themselves down after receiving cease and desist warnings from lawyers. A cease and desist is basically just a threat from a lawyer that a company will use as a tactic to get you to do what they want without spending any money. A lot of cease and desist letters have NO legal basis at all. They are just trying to use their corporate power and legal threats to bully and intimidate you.

But my main point is, if UOKR is illegal, it's ALL illegal. There is nothing unique about UOKR.

The worst that is likely to happen to you (unless you are running a really really large server and they feel threatened by you) is that EA will send you a cease and desist warning and then you will have to make a decision to shut down or not. If you don't, you may get sued, or then again, nothing at all may happen. It depends on how much money EA wants to invest to shut down a server that probably isn't making any kind of impact on their bottom line.

But my bet on what WILL happen to you is - absolutely nothing.

P.S. What is legal and what isn't legal also varies from state to state and even country to country.

P.P.S. I love threads like this because they bring out every "shithouse lawyer" on the internet. So please, do some research before posting things saying "this is illegal" or "that is illegal". Because most of the people who make those comments have done ZERO research and don't know WTF they are talking about.

 

[RadstaR]

hellrazor > nice.

 

[Jeff]

P.S. What is legal and what isn't legal also varies from state to state and even country to country.

I agree with the country to country part, but as for what I said, was stated from federal law for the U.S.

 

[shrundowr]

My point is, it's no more "illegal" now that it ever was. The same laws that govern UOKR govern every version of UO. Supporting UOKR is no more illegal than supporting other clients.

Actually portions of the original were made before the dmca

Reverse engineering

Reverse engineering the Ultima Online client for the purpose of copyright circumvention is a violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) in the United States. Many of the file formats used by the Ultima Online client were reverse engineered prior to the DMCA being signed into law on October 28, 1998, and have become accessible to the general public[7]. The continued reverse engineering of the Ultima Online client for the purpose of removing the encryption placed on the packet stream, as is necessary to use newer clients with most third-party servers, may be a violation.

 

[Courageous]

I don't understand the DMCA thoroughly, but to the degree I do, I see its ban of reverse engineering asfor anti-circumvention; this would apply to UO encryption, but not, as far as I can tell, its file formats. Which, given the interoperability exceptions in the DMCA itself, would seem to be excluded per se. I.E., the decoding of UO file formats in order to make the files usable by other programs would seem to be expressly allowed by the DMCA.

C//

 

[HellRazor]

The DMCA's anti-circumvention provisions would almost definately apply to anything that gets around the client's encryption.

There are also all kinds of legal tricks EA could attempt to get around the fact that the original UO came out before the DMCA was enacted, i.e. classifying each new release of the client as a new product and therefore covered under the DMCA. Stranger things have happened (i.e. the entire Battle.net case, which baffles me to this day).

All of this type of stuff would be resolved in a civil court, not a criminal court, so no one really needs to worry about a cop coming to their door to shut down their "illegal" shard. The bottom line is it really isn't worth EA's time and money to shut down your shard with a 10 player population. If they were going to go after anyone, it would be the large shards.

And hey, lucky for us, UOKR sucks so who would want to emulate that piece of shit anyways?

 

[PappaSmurf]

Because modifying these things requires some reverse engineering of these things and that is illegal in most areas of the world.

I don't know about "most," Jeff, but I don't think in the US:

"reverse engineering" legal - Google Search

Now I'm quite sure that many EULAs try to contract you into not doing that, but that's a different matter...

C//

You mean like this....

EA Online Software.
Some games on EA Online may require that you download software from EA or its licensors onto your computer ("EA Online Software"). EA grants to you a non-exclusive, limited license to use EA Online Software to play games on our Service. You may not sub-license, or charge others to use or access EA Online Software. You may not use EA Online Software for any other purpose. You may not translate, reverse-engineer, reverse-compile or decompile, disassemble or make derivative works from EA Online Software. You may not modify EA Online Software or use it in any way not expressly authorized in writing by EA. You understand that EA’s introduction of various technologies may not be consistent across all platforms and that the performance and some features offered by EA may vary depending on your computer and other equipment.

 

[HellRazor]

Software license agreements are a joke. In most cases you can't read them until after you have bought the (usually non-refundable) software, and most people would need to spend a few hours reading them as well as a team of lawyers to decipher them when all they want to do is play a game.

EA can blow me. I bought the software and short of passing out copies of it, I'll use it as I see fit.

And don't even get me started on the RIAA.

 

[Courageous]

I find EULAs and all shrink wrapped license agreements where no signature is given to be intensely obnoxious and utterly morally bankrupt. I'm sure the American people agree; alas the courts can only try their best to implement the law, and your representatives are in the pockets of big business. The whole situation is completely disgusting.

There is a little-known escape clause from these EULAs that you can invoke. If you do not give them a penny, there is no contract, EVEN IF YOU SIGN IT. There is no exception for this rule, even with software shrink wrapped license agreements (although not getting into this too deeply, I wouldn't personally test signature + no money, I would say that no signature + no money is a good bet that there is no contract at all).

C//

 

[Darklady73]

I am very Confused

I am working on my shard. It's a RunUO2.0RC1 shard. I have read this subject time and again but there is no instructions on how to do this or where to look. Is there any way you could be more specific? Even the ReadMe is very vague. I am still learning how to script things myself is why I am asking for more specific instruction. I have everthing downloaded. I just dont know where to put it or what to look for.

The UO client is currently at patch# 6.0.9 right now. Will this program of yours be able to get the encryption from it? I am not running the KR client. Thanks.

 

[Crowley62]

why is everyone worried about uo:Kr The dev team can't even get the mondains finished. Its been 14 months since uo2 rc1 was released. Did they stop trying to release a final?

 

[HellRazor]

Maybe you should try some other emulator that has all the features you want.

 

[shrundowr]

why is everyone worried about uo:Kr The dev team can't even get the mondains finished. Its been 14 months since uo2 rc1 was released. Did they stop trying to release a final?

try the SVN.

 

[Ulrich]

Abyss.... only for UOKR.

LOL if memory serves me they did this with Ilshnar, you could only get into Ilsh if you ran UO3D.... this did not last, and just for speed issues I don't see UOKR working any better.... sure some of the graphics are better... but some were in UO3D also.... and it did not last. If you could play WoW in a 2D client that gave you an edge in speed over everyone in 3D which would you use. Most UO gamers have lived with the graphics for 10+ years... It's about game preformance and the general game play that makes UO great. if it was about graphics we would all be playing WoW....

Anyway my thoughts.... UOKR will not last, EA will figure this out for a second time, and open everything up to the 2D client.... Or they'll get pissed delete the 2D client, alienate 70% of the UO community, and put the final dagger in the heart of UO.

 

[Crowley62]

Unfortunatly i am poor and can not afford the proper programs required to compile the client. If I could compile it I wouldn't be selfish either and keep it to myself I would post it for others that can't compile the scripts.

 

[shrundowr]

...Visual C# Express is free, as is Sharp Develop.

 

[Crowley62]

Yes they are but Windows xp SP 2 isn't and you need that to run those programs. I can not afford to buy windows it is very expensive for me

 

[Lokai]

Unfortunatly i am poor and can not afford the proper programs required to compile the client. If I could compile it I wouldn't be selfish either and keep it to myself I would post it for others that can't compile the scripts.

You would have to have .NET 2.0 with all the service packs, but here is a simple script you can put in a batch file to compile the core for you:

cd Server
SET DOTNET=C:\WINDOWS\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v2.0.50727
SET PATH=%DOTNET%
csc.exe /win32icon:runuo.ico /debug /nowarn:0618 /nologo /out:..\Server.exe /unsafe /recurse:*.cs
cd ..
Server.exe

You might even be able to do this without this exact version of .NET, just change the 2nd line to whatever your .NET path is, and it should work. Just put this batch file in your base RunUO folder and run it.

 

[Crowley62]

thx but i managed to get my windows updated finally now to try to figure out how to update my server. Thx for help i'm sure i can find a few how to posts on here about svn and compiling