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Comment by Maskawanian | Hacker News Reader

I like Minecraft, played it for a while...

However, what right does Mojang have to dictate this?

Looks like it hinges on a clause in the EULA, so their right to do this probably depends on the legal status of EULAs in your jurisdiction (they're not enforcible everywhere).

Ignoring the legal aspect, this strikes me as a dick move. I'm certainly not interested in pay-to-win minecraft servers, but if people want to use them with their purchased copies of the game, they should be able to.

People are using Mojang code.

Just because it's in a EULA doesn't make it legal, enforceable, ethical, or moral.

I agree with you. But, IANAL so I have no idea if it's legal or enforceable.

Given the "what right does Mojang have?" question, though, the answer is that assuming the EULA for the server code is enforceable, copyright is the right they have.

Which begs the question...does copyright sensibly mean anything when it is being run entirely on a machine owned by somebody else, especially with functionality introduced not by the original authors?

I could buy a trademark infringement argument, perhaps, but copyright doesn't seem to really make sense.

IANAL, but I think if server owner's jurisdiction prevents them from using software without obtaining a license and this jurisdiction allows this exact kind of noncompliance to void the whole license (which is not always the case) - probably yes, it has a meaning.

Obviously, it only matters if someone notices the noncompliance and lack of the license. For example if Mojang actually sues.

And to them I say "good luck with that" in the most sarcastic tone I can muster. There are tens of thousands of private servers out there - the effort they play at expending on shutting down the despicable and horrible and bad and terrible practice of paid perks could be better redirected at further developing their games.

This is the kind of priority fail I'd expect from EA or some other massive publisher, not an indie rockstar like Mojang.

You see, the discussion - as I get it - was about very status of the copyright law - i.e. whenever there's a legal basis for a lawsuit or Mojang threats are void. It wasn't about server operators who don't give a damn about that - sure there are some.

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