Are 'Server Emulators' Legal?

Ashran: "I'm one of the lead developers on the EverQuest server emulator at HackersQuest. What I've wondered is, whenever creating an server emulator is legal in the U.S. It is legal here I live, but new team members might be from the U.S. We've received a few 'Cease and Desist' e-mails from the CEO of Verant, but we've ignored them all up to now. Does anyone have any experience in this field?" For those of you curious as to what a "server emulator" is, check out yesterday's article on the recent beta release. Well, at least Hemos gets his wish and now knows what Verant's reaction is.

This is SONY Guys. Be Afraid.

It doesn't matter one whit if Origin left the UO emulator guys alone -- this is SONY, the same company which tried to sue the bejeezus out of the Bleem! guys, right?

I certainly applaud your efforts -- Verant and Sony are making disgusting profits off this game ($45 or so Canadian for the game, then $10 Cdn per month? 200,000 or so users last I heard? You do the math. Has ANY game ever received over 2M in revenue per month? Sheesh.)

In my opinion, Verant/Sony has done far to little to deserve this much money -- I recently sold my EQ to a friend. Considering how many people PAY to play EQ, you'd think they could change the spawn points and quests a bit -- the same boring crap over and over again. I can get that on free MUDs, thank you.

But I digress -- Authors, stay anonymous. And you'd really better open your source and get it MIRRORED in case Sony drops the hammer on you. Remember Gnutella, it was nearly murdered in the cradle.

Right analogy, wrong conclusion

It's the old razor and razor blade analogy. Let's say a razor company sold razors for around cost, and then designed them so that no one else could make blades for them.

This is the Gillette model: give them the razors cheap/free to build up demand for the blades, which is where they make their money. As you mention, console makers follow this model too: they take a hit on selling you the hardware, and make up the money through licensing fees on the games for their console.

Thus far, your analogy holds. The error lies in associating the emulator with a knock-off blade company. The emulator is replacing the razor, not the blade. Recall that the original company gave away that razor at a loss to drum up business. Now some one else is taking that loss for them. Sony no longer has to sell you hardware at a loss to reap money off of games -- you can buy the games for your virtual playstation that didn't cost them a dime. Shouldn't they be happy? They still have their original revenue-source, and now it potentially reaches more customers.

Well, obviously they are not happy because they've been going around suing people. The reason they are unhappy is that in allowing someone else into their market, they no longer have complete control. You mention the importance of control, but I don't think that you take it far enough. This goes beyond simple economics and into power. They know, as Microsoft knows, that controlling a market is how you make the long term money. They don't want to settle for good business -- they want to make the market sit up and beg.

--Lenny

Re:How do you connect?

The easy way is, of course, to put an entry in your HOSTS file to change the IP address of patch.everquest.com, but if Verant simply makes the client go to a specific IP address instead of a fqdn, then the only way to connect to the Server Emulator is to modify the client and NOW they've got you.

Wrong, and wrong.

There are ways around this, like patching system calls to redirect to the emulator server.

Then as far as derivative work is concerned, I can do whatever derivative work I want for private use, as long as I don't distribute it. Are they going to sue me if I use their booklets as toilet paper? Are they going to sue me if I cook their CD in my microwave? I don't think so. They just have the right to piss off and get off my back.

EULA = Toilet Paper

Who cares what the fucking EULA says? I'm French, et je m'entrave queudale. Ashram ist aus Österreich, und er spricht keine English. Et voila. It's Verant's fault. They just had to provide a legible agreement. "Agree", "Agree", ça veut dire quoi?

Re:Complicated...

I thought that all legalese translates to

"Bend over and enjoy it!"

But then again, I am not a lawyer...

Hooptie

Re:Double Blind Reverse Engineering

On the plus side, you can't take the pee out of the swimming pool.

Actually, we've had a lot of success on the piss-removal front, with our enormous dialysis machine. If only we were having as much success with our put-the-cows-back-in-the-barn-after-the-barn-door- has-been-left-open device, codenamed border collie.

this is not good for open source/"hackers"

I think you could make an argument that Verant can't prohibit you from doing this based on their EULA. But if they are sufficient persistent, even if you can make that argument, getting your way in court would be a lengthy and costly process.

What I don't understand is why you bothered doing this in the first place. It was quite predictable that Verant wouldn't like this and might take you to court. And you are cloning a server for a proprietary game with proprietary clients, helping increase the popularity of the very company that's now causing you legal problems.

In some areas, interoperability is important. Open source software really does need to be able to clone things like the MS Office file format and UI. But for something like Everquest, it would have been so much better to start from scratch with building a game that is similar and in the same genre (you could have based the client on any of a number of standalone open source games).

I think this project is not worth spending much time or effort supporting for the open source and hacker community. It may set dangerous legal precedents, consume lots of legal resorces, and cost us good will. In fact, it doesn't even strike me as something that is technically particularly interesting to "hack"--what kind of interesting technical principles are you going to discover?

My recommendation would be this: either stop the development for good and start an open source game effort to produce something in the same genre, or make what you have incompatible with EverQuest and develop your own client instead. I think there are more important and more rational battles to fight.

Re:Sure, it's legal.

So, if I buy a car and then use third-party parts for the car (tires, spark plugs, etc) can the car company sue me?

Nobody is 'taking' anything from Verant, they're just choosing not to continue using a redundant service.

Re:Sure, it's legal.

Nope, it's a sale. Same as buying a book. You own that book. Copyright law may govern what you can do with it, but there's no way the book publisher has entered into a contract with you, no matter what they may want to claim. Ditto with software.

The EULAs are completely meaningless, funny jokes at best, fraud at worst, and you can ignore them. Click 'I Agree' if you must, if they claim you entered into a contract you can point out that they're attempting extortion.

Re:Compatibility?

The EQ box is an incomplete product. It requires a service to function. The tying of two products or services together is called bundling, and is generally illegal.

Because they are separate products, I can use the IP in the client (which I've paid for) to create my own IP in a server. If the creators patented the idea of an EQ server, I owe them a licence fee, but I don't believe they have.

None of this is theft.

--

Re:Copyrighted world

There's a very clear way of showing this.

They are not copying. They are imitating.

To copy requires permission. To imitate (unless it's patented) does not.

Think Coka-cola and Pepsi. One _imitated_ the other. They are not identical.

It's the same way that FVWM95 is legal. It imitates (as closely as possable) the MS Windows GUI. It doesn't copy - that would be illegal.

Re:Free source? EverQuest people love it!

And, by the way, EverQuest can simply open a tiny office in Austria and you'd have to kiss your server goodbye - the newly opened office can legally sue you over copyright infrigerment.

Nope sorry, try again.

If this was about copyright, the Berne Convention [cornell.edu] applies.

Given that reverse engineering is specifically allowed in most of Europe (I'm Scottish, can't comment directly on Austria), I doubt it applies.

Anyway, for copyright to apply, they's have to have copyied part of Everquests work. If they haven't done that, copyright does not apply.

Breach of contract is about all it could be, and if you think that the EULA is going to be held up as suffcient for that, I'll be very surprised.

poor analogy

It isn't stealing service, it is providing a competing service.

Stealing service: using Verant's servers without compensating Verant. End users, not market competitors, steal service.

Competing service: providing an alternate service. End users choose one among many competing services, increasing the incentive for each competing service provider to enhance their service.

Sound anything like market competitors for open source service providers (Red Hat, slackware, Corel, etc.)? This is the central idea behind free markets, and using the DMCA to shelter an anti-competitve monopoly is probably not entirely legal.

That doesn't mean a company like Verant cant try to get away with it and succeed--the people they are fighting in court need to be dedicated to their cause, or Verant basically wins by forfeit. If the server emulator developers expect a court action, they need lawyers preparing their defense today, and really aught to think about a preemptive strike. Take the offensive, get a declaratory judgement.

Because writing a CLIENT is bloody hard

Writing a dedicated server is WAY easier then writing a GRAPHICAL client. If you have worked in the game industry you would know this.

Maybe I'll use a better analogy that more /.'ers will understand. How many people do you see writing new and innovative GUI's for Linux? Or how many programmers do you see creating a graphical front end for their programs? Because a command line program is easier to get done.

Look, it takes a team of 10 to 30 people OVER a YEAR to write a game. Even up to 2 years of your life! The *basic* networking code can be done in a few weeks (allthough it is usually spread out over a few months for tweaking: mostly to deal with lag, and network performance.)

There is a reason games take 1.5 years and cost a few million dollars to produce: Because they are *BIG* projects. You need programmers. You need artists. You need musicians. Here's the perfect example, open source even! See World Forge [worldforge.org] for how they are progressing.

But dont' just take my word for it. I'm just a 3d graphics programer. Talk to other game developers.

Where's Carmack to speak up when you need him? :-)

SAMBA

Hmm, since Microsoft hasn't crushed SAMBA with it's Fist of Doom(tm), I wouldn't worry.
I think that that would be the tell-tale sign since if server emulators were illegal by any strech of the immagination, the high financed Microsoft Legal crew would have smashed SAMBA into little bits by now.
Instead they try to break it any chance they get.

DMCA

IANAL, BIWJJ (But I Watch Judge Judy :-))

Up until now, it would have been perfectly ok. You're just creating an implementation of a protocol, and protocols IIRC cannot (and should not) be patented. Even if it is possible to patent a protocol, I doubt that protocol was patentable.

However, the DMCA introduces a new twist. Even if the protocol is not obfuscated, one could argue that setting up a sniffer would be bypassing their protections. It's a stupid argument, but it might be a valid argument under the DMCA.
--

Re:Complicated...

That clause should be taken out and shot. Can someone write a version of babelfish to translate legalese?

Re:Write once, never can be written again

So no one can EVER write a new FTP server because it emulates a current version?

Except, of course, that the FTP spec is publicly available, and has no end user license attached to it. Microsoft tried to pull this one with the Kerberos in W2K (well, one step further: they published it, but snuck wording into the EULA that takes rights away you wouldn't lose if you didn't read the spec but just reverse engineered it).

I'd steer clear from the lawyers, until the radical departure from the constitution embodied in UCITA and DMCA gets tested in court (whatever happened to furthering society and protecting the little guy?) I would just as soon spend my money on funnier things than court cases.

Re:Does Server Emulation = Reverse Engineering?

It certainly has been decided, and reverse engineering is legal, if it is directed at producing a compatible application. Reverse engineering aimed at stealing somebody else's intellectual property is not legal, and this case looks to be decidedly an example of the latter.

stop watching Judge Judy; you are wrong

First, you are very clearly NAL; you've managed to confuse patents and copyrights in your third sentence.

Secondly, Everquest is clearly, clearly not a "protocol". It's a software application. Emulating it involves replicating its functionality substantially, and this really could not be done without substantially ripping off its IP. In principle, you could reverse engineer the file formats, then do a "clean room" build of the emulator, but this would basically be the creation of a new online game engine, compatible with Everquest (allowing you to take advantage of the reverse engineering for compatibility loophole in DMCA). But somehow, I don't think that this is what these guys have done.

What they're doing is creating an application, using the Everquest IP, which allows you to play a game very like Everquest without paying fees to Everquest, and which is not in the control of Everquest (what happens if someone downloads the emulator, gets hold of a load of Nazi content and creates "Holocaust Everquest"? Shouldn't the owners have the right to prevent that?).

Here's an analogy; I take the Perl source code to Slashdot, port it to Python (this would be a good idea anyway) and don't release the source. When the GPL zealots come breathing down my neck, I claim to have "reverse engineered" a slashdot "emulator". Do I have a case? Like hell.

Connectix, UO, and others

Connectix was not successfully stopped from creating a Playstation emulator (not exactly a "server emulator", but I'm sure it involved a bit of reverse engineering of both hardware and software). There is a GPL'ed StarCraft Battle.net server (bnetd). There is also a free Ultima Online server. There are many other examples of protocols that have been reverse engineered in whole or in part. I don't see how Everquest is any different. Of COURSE Verant is scared of this. When companies get scared they seem to instinctively send out cease and desist notices.

-John

Re:Not true...

Yes true.

Jon Johansen was arrested because the authorities in Norway suspected that what he was doing was a criminal act in Norway. His appearance in the US was voluntary.

You cannot be extradited on a civil matter.

I'm a Canadian. Suppose that I slander you. You can sue me in a US court; I dont have to show up, and I never have to pay any judgment (although I'd be foolish to visit the US). You can, however, try to sue me in a Canadian court -- however, as you're not a citizen, your rights are limited.

This does not extend to copyright, as an example, because Canada is signatory to the Berne convention; if I as a Canadian infringe on the copyright of an American, they can easily sue me in Canadian court, and/or pursue criminal charges against me in Canada (similarly, you could sue me in a US court, but, again, I wouldn't have to show up and would never have to pay a judgment, and copyright violation is not an extraditable offense, so criminal charges pressed against me in the US would be irrelevant).

Again, no non-US citizen should ever worry about being sued in a US court.
--

Re:Get a lawyer

No, since he's not a US resident or citizen, he can safely ignore any C&D letters.

Regardless of how nasty the US legal system is, it has absolutely no power over foreign nationals when it comes to civil cases.
--

Sure, it's legal.

Emulators, server emulators, and mp3's are all legal.

Using copyrighted material without permission (purchasing it or otherwise) probably isn't. This includes goods, ROMs, music, video, photos and text, although many of these are often not enforced... (which is how people often use tapes, video tapes, hard drives, photo-copy machines...)

In the case of EverQuest, I really don't see what the problem is. People still buy your game, and they still use your game. They just aren't connecting to your server. Boo hoo. They aren't even copying anything they shouldn't. I mean, what should you care what they do in their own time, and who are you to tell your customers how they should use your product? You should help them, and give them some specs, and they'll like you better, and support you in the future.

In my case, I'm pretty happy with Loki, for example. They produce great games, and they respond to the community. I beta-tested Heroes III, and I bought a copy, too. They added a lot of stuff they said they would, like fullscreen mode for non-root, and I think the map editor is in beta. I just need to ask them if the Expansion Packs will work with Linux, and if I could just get those separately, or if they have plans to port them...
---
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate [ncsu.edu].

EULA = Toilet Paper

Except in the US, thanks to the infamous DMCA, the EULA are a worthless piece of shit. Most of them are illegal. Case in point, Verant's license agreement for Everquest *IS* illegal in France. It prevents me from reselling the game ... illegal. It does'nt respect privacy laws ... it's illegal and they risk up to 3 years in jail. AND ON TOP OF THAT IT'S FUCKING WRITTEN IN ENGLISH. Guess what, I'd be surprise that any French court let them enforce it ... mwaaah ah ah ah.

May be legal to write, but not legal to use.

It's pretty questionable whether DMCA and contractual prohibitions on reverse-engineering will hold up in court, and doubly so when dealing with a fairly transparent, essentially unencrypted protocol. Everquest's EULA does explicitly bind users of the software not to reverse-engineer it, but even beyond the enforceability of this clause, the end user is also prohibited from using the client with non-approved (read: clone) servers.

So even if you developed a clean-room server clone that stood up to legal scrutiny, end users are prohibited from using it. In other words, you might be able to defend the creation of the server, but nobody can play on it with a real Everquest client. The players don't own the software, you know. They just have a revocable license to use it with the official servers under its terms of service.

My approach to defending against this--if the clone server was made in a defensible, double-blind manner--would start by warning users that connecting to a clone server is a violation of their Everquest license agreement and that they (the players) are open to prosecution if they connect to it with the offiicial software.

You may want focus on a (clean-room) clone of the client. Even an incomplete, experimental one. And then distribute it so that it becomes difficult to determine who is connecting to the clone servers with an EULA-violating official client. After all, if there's reasonable probability that a given user on a legal clone server is using a legal clone client, a judge feel that a request to subpoena IP traffic information logging who was connecting to the server and when would be too broad and invasive.

Just some thoughts. Your lawyer's advice may be very different.

Complicated...

From thier EULA [slashdot.org]

9. You may not use any third party software to modify the Software to change Game play. You may not use our intellectual property rights contained in the Game or the Software to create or provide any other means through which the Game may be played by others, as through server emulators


Which means, if you you didn't agree to this clause (which, I belive only went in with the latest patch), Evergquest are implicity saying that you have the right to make a server emulator. Else why explicetly ban it now?

There is also the DMCA act - I think that a server counts as 'interoperability', don't you?

And lets not forget the strong legal standing affored to EULA - ie bog all [0].

To me, if you can build a playstation emulator, why can you do the same for a server? Your emulating very similar things (a required interface for the software you purchased to work).

Course, whether or not the courst agree with common sense remains to be seen.

[0] UCITA may have changed that

/. -- Get a lawyer!

Mildly off-topic -- but this is Ask Slashdot, right? So why doesn't Slashdot have someone on staff who can answer these questions from a legal standpoint? The question is, or seems to be, a simple one. If the EULA for software says that you may only connect up with the authorized server, is it legal for me to connect up to a different server? Is it really legal for them to put an extra requirement on the client piece, that I did not agree to when buying their box with a cd in it? An on-staff legal advisor at /. could give a quick answer, and do further research. I mean, sure the guy (or gal) would quickly become as loved and hated as JKatz ... but would still be a very valuable addition to the /. staff. Surely Andover can afford it, right? What's the stock at today? Another question ... say I buy a piece of software, and agree to some restrictions. Is the company on the other end really allowed to just up and change the terms and agreements at any time? That's fairly standard text in EULAs ... but is it legal? If they change the text, say to include new text stating that I can't connect my client software to any server but theirs, then can I demand an instant refund and return the software to them? IANAL ... so I dunno. But if there was /. lawyer reading over posts, giving quick answers and then digging into precedents a little bit ... we might have a little more solid answer to questions like this, instead of the fairly standard mob-rule FUD answers we get now.

Analogies for server emulators...

What is happening with server emulators, as well as many other products (DVD, Playstation Emulators, etc.) is that companies are making a product which requires another product. Then they are trying to control where you get that second product.

It's the old razor and razor blade analogy. Let's say a razor company sold razors for around cost, and then designed them so that no one else could make blades for them. Then, when some other company figures out how to make the blades, you hire a bunch of lawyers and sue them to high heaven.

This is simple, blatant, anti-competitiveness. You can argue that the company depends on it for profits, but that doesn't make it legitimate. If you sell a product at a loss to bait the sale of another product, you are taking a risk. The risk is that your customers may buy that other product from a competitor, or even get it for free from someone giving it away. Using legal pressure to force that competitor to "cease and desist" is unethical and anticompetitive, as well as a misuse of the legal system.

However, in today's society, certain companies seem to be getting away with it anyway.....

Yes.. most of the time.

For EthernalQuest yes. It is specifically stated in the EULA that every user has to "agree" too that you not reverse engineer any part of the application or its communication protocol for the purposes of cheating or creating a server emulator or anything along those lines.

Verant took a cue from Ultima Online and hoped to squash the thousands of private servers before they started.

However I'm fairly certain the enormous hardware requirements to run a decent private server as well as the lack of the semi-refined mob AI will keep the private servers to a minimum.

Now the question of server emulators in general? IANAL but unless it is word for word prohibited in the EULA that you agree to when you purchase and or launch the software in question I'd say it may fall under the "acceptable reverse-engineering for compatability" umbrella of protection.

How do you connect?

It strikes me that one point nobody has mentioned is that the EQ client connects to Verant's Patch Server and then to Verant's Login Server. Any Server Emulator is going to have to not only emulate that process, but have a way for the client to connect to it, since the client has no method of choosing to connect somewhere else.

The easy way is, of course, to put an entry in your HOSTS file to change the IP address of patch.everquest.com, but if Verant simply makes the client go to a specific IP address instead of a fqdn, then the only way to connect to the Server Emulator is to modify the client and NOW they've got you. You may be able to get away with putting up a server, but the legalities of modifying their client (which, of course, you are licensed to use but do not own, grrr!) is much easier to convince a court to prohibit.

Or are you doing it with a small program running on the client machine that intercepts and reroutes packets (a man-in-the-middle attack)?

My Humble 2 Shillings

If you can do some like this, why not create your own game and forget about duplicating these people's server.

Take the best features, dump the worst, add new things you wish it had.

Vote [dragonswest.com] Naked 2000

Don't Ask Slashdot!!!

I am putting this in the first thread to make sure you see it, because it is important that you do.

You have lawyers going after you...

Talk to a lawyer! ASAP!

Get together with a lawyer that specializes in this type of law, and get them to consult and advise you on the issue. Knowing what your rights are is critical to your business and your personal welfare right now, do not act on the advice of a bunch of computer hackers. Some of the comments here appear to be informative, but I am not qualified to judge their merits, and neither are you. Don't fuck around with your legal rights and liabilities; bring in the professionals and do it right.

If you choose to go with the legal opinions of anonymous kernel programmers, you do so at your own peril.

Get a lawyer

Umm, if you're getting Cease-and-desist letters, you really probably shouldn't just ignore them. Even if they are totally full of shit, the US legal system can be nasty.

IANAL, and Ask Slashdot most certainly is not either.

;you are wrong

What they're doing is creating an application, using the Everquest IP

Which flavor of IP? Copyright, trademark, patent or trade secret?

switch (IP) {

case ("copyright") :
It is not a violation of copyright to
reverse engineer computer code. If it is
done in a double-blind fashion,
copyright is moot.

case ("trademark") :
Don't use the Everquest name to market
the product, or explicitly and
consistently disclaim that Verant/Sony
has no affiliation and does not condone
the product.

case ("patent") :
Well if it is patented, you're up a
creek. I don't think it's patented,
though, because I don't think it's
patentable. I'd be happy to be
demonstrated wrong.

case ("trade secret") :
It isn't a secret if you published it.
Even with a no reverse-engineering
clause in the EULA, because that's a
legally weak argument (and that's an
understatement.)

}

(what happens if someone downloads the emulator, gets hold of a load of Nazi content and creates "Holocaust Everquest"? Shouldn't the owners have the right to prevent that?)

Only in that the product would clearly be a misappropriation of their trademark. Call it GEORGE-3D and you're off the hook.

I take the Perl source code to Slashdot, port it to Python (this would be a good idea anyway) and don't release the source.

If you ported it, you own the copyright, you've got control of the code. This can be challenged by Andover, perhaps by saying that a translation of their work violates their copyright like a translation of Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy into Icelandic would be, and they may win, but only because you didn't do it in a double-blind fashion. Let's just say you wouldn't necessarily lose.

Should Still be Legal

First: Disclaimer: IANAL (But I play one on TV!)

EULAs are of questionable legal standing outside a couple of states here, and reverse engineering a protocol could in no way be viewd as bypassing any sort of copy protection so you should be clear of any DMCA nastiness that's found its way outside the US. Check with your friendly EU/WIPO representative to be sure. Personally I'd tell the guys at Verant to blow you and merrily post their E-Mails on your web site.

However

Why not use your formidable programming talents to help the WorldForge project instead, providing a completely unencumbered and free client and server? Users of your EverQuest server software are going to invalidate their license and Verant might get nasty and start cancelling their accounts. They apparently don't seem to think that they can compete in terms of creativity, world design or game balance or they'd just be ignoring you.

Editorial/Opinion/Rant/Flame

Of course, I have Linux and Only Linux on my system, and there never was a Linux port of EverQuest, so the guys at Verant can blow me, too. I did have UO for a while, until they stopped maintaining the Linux client after which I dropped my account, so the guys at Origin can blow me too. And while we're on the subject of blowing me, the guys at the RIAA and the MPAA can blow me, too. And all the congress people who've been allowing the corporate erosion of the Bill of Rights can also blow me. And the WIPO and the ICANN can blow me too. There needs to be a lot of blowing going on, yessir...

Double Blind Reverse Engineering

This is one of the reasons that double blind reverse engineering is a huge deal.

IANAL:

Way back to the IBM PC days people wondered how to clone something that had restrictive licenses and not get sued (Or at least win in the event). The solution is creating a double blind.

The proccess is simple, but needs two very seperate parts. This is basically how IBM BIOS was originally reverse engineered.

Person A owns the product in question. This person is charged with writing a specification. "When XXXX is sent to the computer YYYYY should respond back based on ZZZZ" This person isn't writing any code. They are simply documenting a specification.

Person A hands the spec to Person B. Person B is a programmer. They create a program based on the Spec that Person A has created. Person B should not touch the product at all. They shouldn't interact. If they need testeding then they need Person C to test the product.

The main goal to all of this is to isolate the programmer from the product you are reverse engineering. This avoids both copyright and License issues at bay.

In this case I think you're screwed. Even if you had a legal chance there hasn't been much throught about how to isolate programmers from liability.

On the plus side, you can't take the pee out of the swimming pool. So even if you cease and disist someone could pick up the code and continue working on it.

Re:Get a lawyer

More importantly, this /. article is public domain, and therefore it could be considered a claim that you have, in fact, read, received and understood those letters.

Most of the U.S. legal system is based on issuing notices. Many times, a person cannot be held liable for specific things until they have been officially served notice. Check fraud and bad credit debt come to mind immediately... (if you have creditors after you, just hide from them... they have to tell you in person that they are taking you to court... if you are not informed in person you don't have to go)

Disclaimer: IANAL (I am not anal either!)