I really have trouble understanding how glider violates 17 U.S.C Sec. 1201(a)(1). Glider does not touch warden or the client at all. It bypasses warden in the sense that warden doesn't detect a known cheating tool as installed or running on the system. It does not impair warden's operation. You might be inclined to say Glider 'avoids' detection in such a way that it is violating 17 U.S.C Sec. 1201(a)(1), but that is acceptance of Blizzard's right to catalog and examine for their approval anything you do while using their software.
Say Blizzard wants to ban performance enhancing drugs in WoW because they give an unfair advantage. Children are now circumvention tools(say no to drugs kids). Anyone caught with children are now prohibited from playing WoW because they could bypass automated drug testing. The problem with the law is that anything can be a circumvention tool if you prohibit the right things.
Maybe I don't want Blizzard to know that I use emacs. I'm fairly certain that you can make a wow-bot with that. If I make sure that emacs has a random installation signature every time warden scans my system, then I am circumventing blizzard's right to detect my use of emacs? No, I'm just not letting blizzard know I use emacs. I have no legal obligation to report correct information to blizzard about my computer usage.
Is it just the fact that Blizzard doesn't want me to use WoW bots that makes avoiding their scans circumvention? The case can be made that they don't prohibit the use of bots through their copy protection, only the use of software that matches the signature of known bot software. Am I responsible for their inability to reliably detect software they don't like me running? Is hiding my emacs use any different from hiding my wow-bot use? If their detection is unreliable, is an unknown access vector which does not impede the operation of their detection software still circumvention of copy protection? Is it really the case that when any form of copy protection exists, even if it is almost entirely ineffective that not using the protected work precisely as proscribed by the copyright holder is a violation of 17 U.S.C Sec. 1201(a)(1) ?
Scary.
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The law:
Section 103 (17 U.S.C Sec. 1201(a)(1)) of the DMCA states:
No person shall circumvent a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title.
The Act defines what it means in Section 1201(a)(3):
(3) As used in this subsection—
(A) to circumvent a technological measure means to descramble a scrambled work, to decrypt an encrypted work, or otherwise to avoid, bypass, remove, deactivate, or impair a technological measure, without the authority of the copyright owner; and
(B) a technological measure effectively controls access to a work if the measure, in the ordinary course of its operation, requires the application of information, or a process or a treatment, with the authority of the copyright owner, to gain access to the work.
