If you have been following my recent posts or other emulation resources then you may already know, but the letter that many servers have received, is real. I wont go into detail about it in this post but here are some sources confirming the letter:

http://www.vioku.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=13&t=26&start=70
http://chaoscrusade.com/

It is rumored that Blizzard Entertainment has gone after the larger private servers because of the way people were making money off of Blizzard’s work. This however, has not been confirmed.

For more information on the whole case, refer back to my previous post, Click Here.

Well, as some people may already know, many private servers have received DMCA notices and other warnings within a day. Currently, It is being disputed wether or not these notices are real although some people insist they are. Now, I am not a lawyer but these are my ideas on private servers being legal or not.

Is using a private server illegal?
The answer use to be no however a recent MySpace suicide court case has turned this answer into a yes which allows Blizzard to attack anyone who has disobeyed the ToU (ToS) or has visited a private server.

Is hosting a private realm illegal?
Not really, as long as it is empty of Blizzard created entities or stolen source code.

Is hosting a private realm login server illegal?
Yes, it allows a user to get past normal account login and payment systems.

Is hosting a blizz-like server illegal?
Yes, It is using copyrighted materials.

Upon the announcement of the DMCA notices, (which can be downloaded HereandSupposed Author) numerous websites have gone completely offline and a rare amount have posted about this incident like www.ani-wow.com:

Update (12/04/08):We’re sorry to inform our users (you) that our “World of Warcraft” server will be closed, due to a “legal DMCA” complain letter from “Blizzard Entertainment Inc”.
We’ve received the letter this morning, and it’s been confirmed to be real, we have to get rid of all “World of Warcraft” content within 24/hours, and for obvious reasons we have agreed to cooperate with this DMCA letter and close “AniWoW” down..
———————————————————————————————–
Blizzard Entertainment is taking serious action to take down all unauthorized private “WoW” game servers/and or content related to “illegal use of emulators” within the next days..
- This isn’t just for us, all private servers will eventually receive this letter, as there’s a huge list of private servers listed in the DMCA letter…
———————————————————————————————–
We sincerely ask you to please take this under moderation, and NOT to blame Blizzard for their actions. They deserve the right to do what they did.
It’s been a fun time, and we appreciate and thanks all our users for the support and cooperation in making our community a fun place for everyone. This however, have come to a end.. and we believe this to be our final good bye.
(We’ll be opening a “community” forum, NOT related to “World of Warcraft” within the few days. So if you still want to keep in touch with members from our previous community, we’d like to ask you to stay tuned for more information regarding this notice).
AniWoW ( 1 Years, 6 Months, 4 days… )
May 10, 2007 – December 04, 2008…
Once again, thank you all! *drops a tear*
- Kyuu, AniMMORPG Founder.

Although most server owners insist this information is true, some do speculate it to be an attack on higher-ranked websites and this information is followed up by grammar, missing legal information, and other errors. I am sorry if this information is sort of jumbled, Its two in the morning here and I am not thinking straight.

UPDATE 1: After reviewing the notice sent out and other works by the Firm, some of the “mistakes” mentioned by users are not mistakes at all and appears to point towards a real notice. Some “mistakes” pointed out that are not mistakes after all are the multiple phone numbers displayed (simple explanation for that is that one is the actual authors number and the other is the Firm) and the missing “O” in the logo on the paper. The “O” can be missing because the paper used to originally print out the notice could of been printing into color, rendering the “O” yellow. When scanned into another computer and changed to greyscale, this can cause the “O” to simply vanish. Don’t believe me? Try it. Finally, the word “Blizzard” pointed out in the notice could of been written to name Blizzard Entertainment by what it is usually referred to, which is in fact just “Blizzard.” As for the typos and grammar errors, they do happen, don’t they?

I plan on looking into this more later today (if required) but for now, good luck.