Many years ago, company MDY issued the Glider Bot for World of Warcraft (WoW). The Glider Bot allowed to automatically do mandatory routine tasks in the (which are not thrilling but simulate “real” life). Using the bot allowed you to accelerate your progression by earning experience without in fact being in front of your screen. An alternative is gold farming, i.e., you pay somebody to take care of your character while you’re not playing, thus also gaining experience.
As you may guess, Blizzard, the editor of WoW, does not like the bots. It has even installed a tool, called warden, that attempts to detect such bots. Glider passes under the radar of the warden.
Thus, Blizzard sued MDY for copyright infringement because it violated the EULA (End user License Agreement). In February, the Ninth Court of appeals ruled that MDY did not infringe copyright (under some complex difference between covenant and condition, for more legal details see the blog “Lawyers in a Gamer’s World”).
But the court ruled that indeed MDY infringed DMCA’s circumvention of technical prevention measure (the other TPM) although it did not bypass it!
As usual, copyright and DMCA issues are awfully complex.