Slashdot Mirror
CueCat Goes After Online Barcode Database
Just noted that CueCat is going for this year's Useless Legal Action Beanie by going after www.upcdatabase.com, a site that is storing UPC codes and allows people to look them up. The database contains almost a half a million entries right now. Unfortunately they're not distributing copies of their database, so it may be necessary to create an open db just to make sure that this data isn't locked up. Update: 09/28 08:14 PM by CT : Lineo's cuecat site was taken down also.
"What?" you say, "I am well fibered and squeaky clean. How will I test it?" The answer is simple my friend. Just make certain that Digital Convergence knows about your exploits. They will send one of their lawyers after you di-rectly. Capture the lawyer and use him to perfect your scatological scanning software.
First off, the C&D letter is regarding the ability his site has to accept a UPC code directly from a CueCat scan, not about the database itself. He has a text input you can click in, and then scan the UPC code, and it will send it to a CGI script that decodes the CueCat scan, and looks up the UPC code in his database.
Secondly, the reason his database isn't publicly available is because he got a lot of seed data for it from a third-party source with the agreement that the entire DB wouldn't be made publicly available. (No evil closed-source-ness conspiracies here, he's actually a strong supporter of open source, and has written several open source programs you can find on Freshmeat.)
Stephen Satchell's theory behind the DC letters. Basically, DC is only going after barcode to web translations, not simply cuecat decoders. Even though DC has refused to answer what their "intellectual property" is, their letters have gone exclusively to sites that have software that can let you use your cat with the web. Satchell further points out that NeoMedia Technologies, not DC, actually have a patent on barcode to web lookups. NeoMedia is sitting on the patent until, I guess, there is enough money being made to jump in and begin extorting licensing fees...
-- Don't Tase me, bro!
Then again, some other yahoos seem to have a fresh patent on the very idea of a database mapping UPC codes to product-related URLs.
Time to patent my Method of Organizing a Sock Drawer. Black socks on the left, white socks on the right, colored and patterened socks in the middle. Who's reviewing these patent applications? A family of parakeets? A bag of gravel with a face painted on it?
- US05933829
- US05978773
- US06108656
Bonus points: NeoMedia's other three patents cover the "windowing" approach to solving the Y2k problem. So it sounds like NeoMedia specializes in buying up patents of the obvious that somehow slip through, and suing everyone in sight.Not sure of the details here, site is slashdot'd already but... if these folks are being pestered because of a db of upc's what about all the retailers out there? I thought the whole idea of the upc was to provide machine readable id's - they're not proprietary or secret. I would assume that somewhere out there there is a public list of the company identifiers. Method of getting the data would seem to be irrelevant if it is already public knowledge.
I am probably short sighted, but I have no real use for a barcode scanner. I got my CueCat in the mail, so I went to the Digital Convergence Contact site, entered my information, and politely told them that I didn't agree with their EULA, and asked them to provide me with a shipping container and postage so I could return the scanner to them...
...I haven't heard from them yet
I wrote a little editorial about this subject on my website www.exceptionalminds.com/rhacer/s oap box
Stand Fast,
Stand Fast,
tjg.
Dallas Morning News president: People just love that CueCat! :CueCat artice carries no byline, only the cryptic 'from staff reports.' That tells me that my former DMN coworkers didn't want anyone's name associated with this biased puff piece. If the DMN staffers had been allowed to actually report on the OTHER side of the story -- that the :CueCat has so far received negative reviews for being a fairly useless and hard-to-use piece of technology -- the story would have been bylined."
"Our market research shows consumers love this product and can't wait to use it at home," says Robert W. Mong Jr., president and general manager of The Dallas Morning News. "I find that very reassuring." He should; his paper's parent has invested $40 million in the company making the device.
From RENEE HOPKINS: "You may have noticed that the Dallas Morning News'
"If I have seen further than other men, it is by stepping on their glasses." - Michael Swaine
It is in response to something that was, up until yesterday, on his site[...]
:) It's
The Baltimore Sun that has an article about this cuecat mess:
This is your local FBM representative speaking
When I asked Davis about the letters, he was a bit more specific but not much. "They're developing computer applications in our patent space," he said.
Pressed a bit more, he said the company is relying on a 1991 patent it acquired that covers the use of a standard bar code scanner to "create a network event."
This would be a fairly broad patent, and could keep others from using bar code readers for purposes that have nothing to do with Digital Convergence's core business.
If you can find the patent(s) in question, please email me. Search freshmeat for the software.
___________________________
Napster-to-go says "Fill and refill your compatible MP3 player", which is a lie. It's not MP3. It's WMA with DRM.
You cannot detect colon cancer with a thing that has colon cancer itself (:Cue:C.A.T.). And it's spreading! If it becomes :Cue:C:A:T: it will not
be advisable to make it touch any part of your colon.
A barcode-to-web-lookup patent, especially if awarded in the last 15 years, would be especially nutty. Barcode scanners have been used to trigger data lookups across networks for as long as there have been barcodes. I find it hard to believe that shop-floor, factory and warehouse barcode readers weren't being used to pull up mainframe data 20-plus years ago. Must find this NeoMedia patent. Sounds on the face of it like yet another bit of galling ineptitude at the USPTO.
Hey! I have an idea! How about rigging, say, a modified finger daemon to hand out item URLs to scanning applications. Then the lookups wouldn't be done "on the web".
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Or do they think that somehow combining the two represents a brand new idea that should be protected from competition?
Yeesh. I don't remember anyone promising these people that they had some God-given RIGHT to make money and trample everyone else in the process. If you want to make money in a capitalist marketplace, offer a *better* product for *less* money!
If it ain't broke, it doesn't have enough features yet.
This letter wasn't sent in regards to the database he has amassed, they would have no legal griveance over that. However, like the rest of us, he has a perl script that you can scan your :cue:cat directly into, and use it as your search query, this "violating" their IP. This is what they're pissed about, just like the other hackers who got letters. They probably dont like that there is a competing database of UPC codes, but certainly have no legal right to go after them for that.
-Josh
Information on UPC Symbols is in the public, isn't it? Isn't this a universal (AFAIK at least American?) standard?
My thought is that CueCat is probably VC-based, and they're watching their business plan being eaten... but they have VC-money to sue with.
A database of UPC Symbols would be of great use to smaller business and retailers who want to use them "scanning in" either a.) purchases of commonly purchased items, without having to actually scan the box or b.) inventory tracking.
Inventory tracking is difficult to do when there are slight differences between the two products. A simple Maxtor HDD listing with features like UDMA, etc. can even be complex, for instance, if one has a 5400RPM rotation instead of a 7200 rotation. If you've ever worked with a distributor and not had the SKU, you know that the most complex part is trying to determine what things are by a jumble of extremely long sentences and unclearly abbreviated phrases. Sometimes the differentiation doesn't fit on the screen (e.g., the Maxtor drives would look the same, except for the price).
It would be nice to scan in what inventory you want to reorder from a laser-printed sheet and have it automatically poll Ingram-Micro (or whomever) to see if it is available.
As far as difficulty scanning boxes, if you've ever tried to move a set of stacked boxes around to find the UPC code (often on the bottom), you probably know what I'm talking about. It's not fun.
With companies being so quick to sue, they seem to forget that, even with something like the CueCat, there is always a way to make some sort of money simply by (*gasp*) taking care of your customers. Not *everyone* is interested in hacking it, and most people are probably looking for a solution-based (e.g., service) approach. When you dump your customers (e.g., the lawsuit money has to come from somewhere, and customer service is often the first to suffer) to go after hackers and play lawsuit-cowboy, you have alienated both parties... parties that both had the potential to support your company in some fashion.
In the hacking world, hackers give good publicity. Sure, they love to tear your stuff apart, but they gave rise to stuff like the iOpener and the CueCat which would have never been heard of otherwise. Hackers represent the ultimate consumer - they have a no-BS approach, they're intelligent, they're skeptical, and they love a quality product they can tool around with. Most small business owners would be able to die happy if they could have even received one-fifth the publicity that either of these companies got. Go figure.
Lucas
--
Spindletop Blackbird, the GNU/Linux Cube.
However, you might be interested to note this update that he's added to the upcdatabase.com page:
(And yes, I know I'm not identifying him or the software he's written, because he doesn't wish to tie his real name to the UPC database, for reasons that are his and his alone.)This organization is probably the most evil direct marketing organization ever constructed, every CueCat device has a serial number that is sent with barcode data that is swiped. On top of that they want you hook up your computer to your TV so your TV can control your computer. You can see this in action on the Infomercial they started running, the theme of Angels from Heaven watching the activities of the residence of the Town of Convergence, USA isn't very far away from a big corporation collecting data from everyone to see if they're being naughty or nice consumers. They want you to think you're in control. It isn't about where you want to go and do, it's all about them collecting datapoints about what TV shows you watch, what products you have in your home, what magazines you read, what books you own, and what foods you eat.
DO NOT IGNORE Digital Convergence.
DC's Executive Bio's is a laundry list of people everyone hates, direct marketers and data miners. These are the people who create the databases of people, the ones that get sold to telemarketers that call you every day of the work week during dinner to do a "consumer survey." You think your telephone sucks now? Imagine what life will be like when someone calls you to offer you coupons for everything you ever scanned, only if you buy them from their catalog or bring the coupons to their store.
DO NOT IGNORE Digital Convergence.
This is the true begining of the war on our privacy. They want people to scan everything, and I wouldn't be surprised if they eventually suggest tatooing barcodes on your wrist for the ultimate digital wallet application. Christans might have some choice words about that event when it happens.
Some people might make light of all their gaffes with privacy and security. Don't brush them off just because of their incompetence so far. They will get better at what they do and the value of their "data" will escalate. Don't bet for a minute that your profile data won't be sold to Visa, MasterCard, American Express, Banks, Experian, Transunion, or Equifax.
You did fill out a fake name and address when you got your CueCat from Radio Shack. Didn't you?
Digital Convergence delenda est.
Forgive the anonymous posting, but I've had enough dealings with lawyers for teh while, you understand. Though, since I received the CueCat in hte mail due to my WiReD subscription, and unsolicited, apparently I can do anything I want with it, including sticking it up my ass. Which brings me to my point.
I'm writing the software for another use of Cue:Cat, colon cancer detection. Most tumors are colored differently than healthy flesh. Healthy flesh is red, which means it reflects red light. Tumors are usually not red, they reflect less red light. The Cue:Cat uses red light to detect barcodes, thus, it should also be able to detect differences in flesh, by detecting the differing amounts of red light reflected by healthy flesh and tumorus flesh.
So, I need a algorithm to detect changes in reflect light intensity, and a search algorithm. I'm thinking of using my Lego Mindstorms to insert the Cue:Cat in an ass, and then rotate it and push it in and pull it out (Venture Capitalists take note, perhaps we can go after the Sybian monopoly, nonstop female orgasms should be the right of every female who can't experience me, not just those with $2,000.
So, if anyone wants to help me with this, please respond here. The sensations of a cat shaped barcode reader plunging in and out of your ass are amazing, and we might detect cancer.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I think that CmdrTaco yielded to the numerous complaints that there were too many CueCat stories. I'm surprised, cause I submitted a story about The Register's take on the CueCat. It was rejected, and they accepted this vaguely terse piece of FUDcrud? That's pathetic.
"Ancillary does not mean you get to rule the world." --U.S. Circuit Judge Harry Edwards, speaking to the FCC's lawyer
Read about how DC has commited mail fraud (and how to file your complaint with the US postal service) here.
::cue::crap spammer-- er uh scanner here.
And learn how to 'de-claw' (so it doesn't send out a serial number) your
If you voted for Nader, THIS IS ALL YOUR FAULT!!
If this is the patent, and by some perverse twist of fate, Delphion's site info isn't in lockstep with who is the current assignee of the patent, you're going to find that anything of the sort is in violation of the patent. Of course, I may have missed the patent (There's something buried, not in the abstracts...)- having said this, I'd like to point out that without it being in the abstracts, it's not likely to be a valid use of the patent grant, because they've got to specifically mention what they're patenting there. Furthermore, most of the usages that we see with it that DC's up in arms about isn't really covered by this patent- the usages don't link up with any marketing data except the case of the engines flipping you to Amazon, and that's tenuous too.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas