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CDDB Joins The Bad Patent Club
An Anonymous Coward writes: "Today I received a very ominous package from GraceNote, owners of CDDB. Already infamous for turning a wonderful open project into a quagmire of heavy contracts, licensing fees, forced user registration and anti-competition clauses, the package from GraceNote contained one thing: copies of their patents, freshly awarded. "Don't even think about using FreeDB", the packaged seemed to silently imply, "because we own the patents, period." That patent? "Method and system for finding approximate matches in a database." Ouch. Thanks, USPTO." Scary: I use freedb constantly. I'd hate to lose it.
CDDB was originally GPL right? And FreeDB still uses the original GPL code before CDDB changed their licence. The GPL states that if patents are granted they must be freely licenced. It would be interesting to see a court test this one out.
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enterfornone - logging in for a change
"Pinky, you've left the lens cap of your mind on again." - P&TB
"I can see my house from here!" - ST:
Ever heard of the EFF?
Pro Bono?
Better me than them; I don't have much to lose...
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pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
And I thought that "but everyone else is stealing too" argument was a pretty weak one, usually used by young kinds?
I like paying taxes. With them I buy civilization -- Oliver Wendell Holmes
freedb.org is currently located in Germany with a couple of mirrors.
CDDB does claim some sort of ownership for the contents of their database: "Any information obtained through CDDB may only be aggregated on the client machine, and must not be shared." I'm not quite sure on what grounds they do this (I've submitted several disc tracklists, and I never saw any mention of any agreement that might give them ownership of that information...
Hey, I have an idea. Allow Slashdot readers to filter based on posters' "age". New users should, I think, be in read-only mode for the first few weeks but I wouldn't want to enforce that belief on others, so allow me to make the decision only for myself.
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Fuck the system? Nah, you might catch something.
What you describe is certainly what the American patent system has come to, but it was not the intention. The patent office, until recently, researched the claims in a patent with considerable care and accuracy. In principle they still have duty to do so, and frequently reject the initial patent application with examples of possible prior art, usually from other patents. Whats changed is that patent exmaminers are now encouraged, by the way they are payed to pass everything, and the patent office has poor records of the existing prior art for many fields in which they are issuing patents, especially softwate and business models.
I'd tend to agree that civil servants are not the appropriate people to determine obiousness or novelty, but, due to the great expense of challenging a patent, nor are the courts. The existing system allows patent holders to exploit their competitors for licensing fees as long as these remain below the expenditure needed to challenge the patent.
If you're going to have a patent system, and especially if you're going to allow patents in so many fields, wouldn't the appropriate thing to do be to allow challenges by interested parties during the examination process, as most European patent offices do ?
If at first you don't succeed...
The patent is not for the idea of a database, its for the idea of identifying a cd based on a database accessed through a network by matching the cd's tracklengths to information in the database, and thus identifying the album.
So, what is prior art? A database? A database searchable through the internet (like a search engine)? A database searchable through the internet full of song information and album information (which includes the track length - I'm sure there is some prior art for this, knowing musicophiles). Or does that data have to be used to identify a specific CD? What can you point to as prior art and say the CDDB's patent is just a logical outgrowth of x?
It obviously doesn't do a good job of matching anything though, considering what they're granting.
That has nothing to do with every other database on the planet...that would be ludicrous. This is actually something that they more or less "invented" and can patent it. As for the prior license stuff, I dont pretend to know squat about that. But have no fear that this patent is trying to stop all database searches or anything like that. That would just be obnoxious and overturned in two seconds...But then again I may just be talking out of my ass. I have a habit of that.
//FIXME: Bad
This patent doesn't actually read like its gonna hurt too much. I mean, I could be completely mistaken, and (oh god... about to use my first /.ism) IANAL (that hurt), but it seems straightforward enough.
Here is the abstract:
Entertainment content complementary to a musical recording is delivered to a user's computer by means of a computer network link. The user employs a browser to access the computer network. A plug-in for the browser is able to control an audio CD or other device for playing the musical recording. A script stored on the remote computer accessed over the network is downloaded.
The script synchronizes the delivery of the complementary entertainment content with the play of the musical recording.
All this does is cover the use of the browser to run an embedded plugin which grabs information from a database to show data related to the cd (or music recording). The only way this would be really bad is if they tried to claim control over non-physical recordings as well. (mp3s vs cd's)
In any case, unless your freedb access is done via a plugin in your browser, we seem to be ok.
Don't worry -- I patented that.
Got friends?
Wait a minute.
:-)
What about spelling checkers... they use approx matches to find mis-spellings. Doesn't that mean that the "no one has done it before" clause of patents is violated?
Not to mention search engines that find things based on how relevent they are.
They should declare this election a draw and give Clinton another term.
Come play free flash games on Kongregate!
What is claimed is:
1. At least one computer program stored on a computer-readable medium, embodying a method of searching for a match in a database of a plurality of records, where the records in the database include length information and number of segments for recordings corresponding to the records, comprising:
calculating approximate length information for the records in the database and for a selected recording having a number of segments;
and determining at least one approximately matching record in the database for the selected recording based on the number of segments and the approximate length information.
Hmmm... a computer program stored on a computer-readable medium. Yup. Printouts of code don't work that well.
A database of a plurality of records. Sure, that means more than one record, because one record does not a database make.
Calculating length information for a record... I might be able to get this:
select sum(a.track_length)
from record_tracks a, records b
where a.record_id = b.record_id
and b.record_name = 'The Wall'
and b.artist_name = 'Pink Floyd';
So, if I'm working for a client that has timing information in a database with more than one record, and I need to calculate total times, I'm going to have to pay CDDB to write a basic SQL query? Fuggedahboutit!
Eric
- A wm2xmcd utility is now included in the xmcd distribution that converts WorkMan CD database files to xmcd format.
It's unfortunate that the term for "legal work for a good cause" sounds just like a term meaning perpetual copyright: Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act[?], the act that extended the term of all subsisting and new copyrights by 20 years and set a precedent that every 20 years, 20 more years are added.
Will I retire or break 10K?
I find this rather amusing. Does this mean that none of Microsoft's patents are valid? I suppose you could consider it useful - it gives some people hours of amusement - watching for that randomly appearing bluish screen...
And nonobvious... Selling crap is a pretty obvious idea... And the phrase "prior art" comes to mind. But then again, I'll give them (Microsoft) credit - they have taken selling crap to a new extreme.
And who says that Microsoft's stuff is new? A lot of the stuff in their code is at the very least "inspired" by pre-existing stuff.
So what does all this mean? Perhaps it is now legal to freely distribute Microsoft software? No, that might help drag more people into using it!
________________________________________________
suwain_2
You don't like it, don't live here. You should be so lucky you have the ability and to "Apply for US citizenship"! I can't think of any better government than the one established in the US. JT
"Life is art...Paint your destiny"
Thus, a really strict (and surely incorrect) interpretation of this means that my local TV/radio stations have to pay royalties to them. Perhaps they just won't run ads anymore? ;-)
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suwain_2
When reading a patent, the interesting part is the claims, not the summary or the sometimes dozens of pages and figures that precede the claims. Thus, ShortSpecialBus's conclusions, being based only on the summary, have little basis. To read the claims, look lower on the cited page and click on the link to show claims. That is where you will find the meat of this patent. bob wyman (Note: I hold four patents as sole inventor and have some experience in this matter.)
"Entertainment content complementary to a musical recording is delivered to a user's computer by means of a computer network link. The user employs a browser to access the computer network. A plug-in for the browser is able to control an audio CD or other device for playing the musical recording. A script stored on the remote computer accessed over the network is downloaded. The script synchronizes the delivery of the complementary entertainment content with the play of the musical recording."
They go on to talk about what they are really claiming to have invented, which is basically a way to simulate (via the internet) a group of people in a room with a stereo. And multimedia content. (Glorified karaoke.)
Reading the "Summary of the Invention" section of the patent application, here's how I interpret it:
1. Contolling a CD player remotely (there was a Winamp plugin that did this a few years ago.)
2. Linking multimeida contet via internet
3. Assigning a unique identifier to a musical track. (Windows' CD player did this. Was that after CDDB?)
4. Adding background music to a chat room. (There are dozens of scripts for mIRC that do this. No doubt a few 10 year olds are now guilty of "stealing" their invention.)
Not only am I not a lawyer, I have no idea how lawyers' minds work. When they talk about things like a web browser, IRC, and HTML documents, are they effectively restricting the scope of the patent, or are they just giving examples?
Let them try.
I want to see them sue every library in existence.
(I think we'll have some prior art here.)
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pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
No, many of the unenlightened people around here know what an EULA is, for the uninformed its an End User Licence Agreement.
but I have to commend whomever at the patent office searched their database to see if a similar patent existed.
Raw stupidity like that is what keeps the rest of the world believing Americans are all like that.
Cheers,
leroy.
Assuming that this applies to FreeDB (which I don't think it does) I think that there is prior art. The patent was applied for in 1999, and I think FreeDB existed before that time.
Software sucks. Open Source sucks less.
Entertainment content complementary to a musical recording is delivered to a user's computer by means of a computer network link. The user employs a browser to access the computer network. A plug-in for the browser is able to control an audio CD or other device for playing the musical recording. A script stored on the remote computer accessed over the network is downloaded. The script synchronizes the delivery of the complementary entertainment content with the play of the musical recording.
Wouldn't: downloading the complementary entertainment content prior to playing the CD or other device and using the local copy successfully circumvent this patent? The script stored on a remote computer would nolonger be syncronizing with the play of the musical recording.
They haven't quite made their official release, but hop on over and show some support. The original data comes from FreeDB.
http://www.musicbrainz.org
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Jacob Everist
wildmage@mad.scientist.com
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wildmage
Memoirs of a Mad Scientist
Strange....approximate quering has been arround for quite a while in the database research community. If I recall correctly, Stanford and Wisconsin did research on approximate answers. Stanford is on approximate querying and Wisconsin paper did on approximate aggregation functions.
The papers are called
* Offering a Precision-Performance Tradeoff for Aggregation Quries over Replicated Data by Chris Olston and Jennifer Widom published in 1999
* Online Aggregation by Hellerstein, Hass and Wang published in 1997
And both papers refer to other older approximate querying process. So unless the patent is for something else, there are prior art for it (I couldn't figure out what they were saying in the patent - too much lawyer-speak)
Heck, there's already an ANSI standard for this. How can you patent a function performed by an industry standard?
SELECT Product, Company
FROM AllDatabasesEverMade
WHERE Feature LIKE "*SQL*" OR Structure="Relational"
ORDER BY DateProduced;
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Good judgment comes from experience.
Experience comes from bad judgment.
Notice what is patented: a means to index and retrieve information in the music CDs. They are not claiming that the content of the Database is solely theirs (they wouldn't do it with a patent, anyway) they are claiming that they thought out / bought out the idea of creating such a database and accessing through a computer network.
The solution would be to find prior art that shows that to be untrue, but I don't know if anyone really came up with that idea before the (then free) CDDB folks.
That is really a bad kind of patent (not unlike one-click and the like) but since the US Patent Office is accepting them and noone seems to have power to stop them, it will not be the last of those.
bah, I suck.
For instance:
"Dot Com Development, Inc", "Method and apparatus for tracking client interaction with a network resource and creating client profiles and resource database".
sounds like something familiar...
I think the abstract of that patent is a real gem. 176 words in the sentence using only 58 different words. And it actuallly wants to say something. Cute.
I can very easily fault any business for unethical business practices. There are a fair number of business apologists who say that a company cannot be faulted for legal though unethical practices. Why would that be so? Businesses are not magically above being held to a moral code by consumers.
My mum thinks the rubbish I listen to isn't music. I'm sure she thinks the same about _your_ listening tastes too. So we're not covered by this.
FP.
Also FatPhil on SoylentNews, id 863
Well, NOW you can't because you've posted to this forum and cannot spend moderator points here. Goofball.
This message brought to you by the Council of People Who Are Sick of Seeing More People.
If you're not trying to file your own patent but are instead just trying to do something, then all that matters is the claims. The rest (the "teaching") is the price the inventor pays to educate the public about the claims. If you're doing something that's in the claims, then you have to worry about the patent. If you're doing something that's in the teaching but not covered in the claims, then the patent has no bearing. Someone else's might, of course.
It seems there is a veritable laundry list of IP laws and crummy patents that people hate. From the laws protecting CSS from reverse-engineering to Amazon's infamous "1-click" patents. It seems to me that these things all have a common thread. Is it that they curtail something "sacred" (free expression? innovation? free enterprise?), or that it permits something nasty (monopolies? expansion of corporate controll?)?
In either case, can the current law be interpretted better so as to assuage these conserns, or is there something wrong with current law? It seems to me that the basic principles for gaining a patent on something are pretty restrictive. If I were a judge, I would be very dubious as to the validity of patents on software at all. In the strictest reading of the law, it would seem to me that software (and data in general) cannot be patented because it is merely information, and doesn't "do" anything. This would put it firmly in the arena of copyright law. If I were conviced that software is patentable, I would only allow process patents for software, which are the hardest to get.
I know this is somewhat of a side issue, but personally, I would never, under any circumstances, grant or uphold a patent on a gene. The very idea seems absurd to me - it would be like an astronomer patenting a particularly interesting globular cluster because they found it first. I might allow patents on drugs that utilize particular genes, but the gene itself is part of nature. I would require that a gene be written from scratch or be sustantially and directly modified inorder to be patentable.
What is the "right" way of looking at IP law? I mean this in both the ethical and the legal sense. It seems to me that the government is not granting patents in accordance to the letter and spirit of the law. Nonetheless, it seems comfortable in the way it grants them. Why is the government muddying the waters?
The knee-jerk response is that what big money wants, big money gets. But there has always been pressure from big money to grant and enforce spurrious patents. Today, though, it seems that nearly every modestly clever idea is being rubber-stamped by the patent office. It seems to me that this shift in standards coencides with a similar slip in rigorous interpretation of the first amendment. What happened? Or am I just paranoid?
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In spite of the suggestions and all the tests that I have made, I have not cavato a spider from the hole.
In the early 1990's there was a company called Frox that made a really expensive CD Player/VCR/etc, kind of like a Replay TV/TIVO/MPG Jukebox/etc. all rolled into one. I believe it used a hash of the CD track times to identify the CDs.
Might that be prior art for this patent?
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Even if they could hold it up, it's too specific to be any good.
First, the describe using a browser to access the network and then a plugin for that browser being used to download complementary content. I think you could make a strong case for a CD player not being a browser, but instead a database client or application. And if it includes the CDDB like feature as a base part of the feature set instead of a plugin...
Then, a "script" is downloaded from the remote computer and syncronizes the delivery of the complementary content with the playback.
Except that in the case of a CDDB like system, all you have to download is an XML (or whatever) data stream (basically the content itself) and there is no "script" at all! It's the application itself that is responsible for syncronizing the content with the playback. In case you DID actually want to have some dynmaic control pver presentation stored on the server, you could simply have a Java class file (not a script, but a small application) that's downloaded and then controls synchronization.
I don't see who this patent would affect apart from the music industry wanting to do some synchronized web/music stuff in future CD"s.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Second, the actual database itself is composed of submissions. Unless, I explicitly disclaim ownership of the submitted data, how can cddb claim to own it?
Hate to break it to you, but YOU don't own jack shit, the record companies do!
"And like that
I'm not sure what you are saying here. I think you may be confusing copyright and patent law. Or you may be raising a very interesting question regarding the operaton of the doctrines of waiver, estoppel, and/or an implied in fact or implied in law patent license.
Assume you invent something. The invention is embodied in software. First, you have a copyright on the writing -- i.e., the code. You then -- as and only as a matter of copyright law -- grant a license to others to copy and modify the code. It could be the GPL, BDS license, whatever.
Further assume that -- perhaps unknown to everyone -- you apply for a patent on your invention. The patent is awarded. Does the fact that -- again as and only as a matter of copyright law -- you licnesed others to copy and modify your code effect the validity of your patent? No.
However, the fact you licensed others to copy and use your code may effect the enforceability of your patent -- at least against your copright licensees. A court may say that you have waived any right to obtain damages against such copyright licensee. A court may find you are estopped from obtaining any damges from them for past use. (I would certainly hope, and expect so.) Whether it would prevent you from obtaining injuctive relief regarding future use is an interesting question. A court may find that you have waived such relief, are estopped from seeking such relief, and/or that you granted an implied in law or implied in fact patent license when you granted the copyright license. Again, an interesting issue.
They don't claim to own the information. They don't claim to have a copyright on the information. They don't, as far as I know, even claim to have a copyright on any particular database. They are claiming a patent on a method of operating, utilizing or making a database. Again, it is important not to confuse patent law with copyrhight law.
Only Women Bleed (Sex, Sharia remix)
How does that patent you linked have anything to do with freedb (or cddb's current services, for that matter)?
If the CDDB people cause trouble for the free system, perhaps track and album info could be transfered to a distributed database, perhaps running on gnutella.
It wouldn't be as reliable at first, but eventually it would fill up as people added their own entries.
Seems this kind of solution is going to be more and more common as open projects seek to slip beyond the reach of litigious patent holders look for a way of making money out of the completely obvious and unoriginal...
What's more approximate than one of these so-called Internet Dating Services? Hell, go back even further, to strengthen the argument: the generic "computer dating service". That's prior art on a "method for finding approximate matches in a computer database". All they could argue on the patent is the specifics of implementation - the very detailed specifics. Oh.. and given the performance of *some* database systems we've all heard of, *any* query on a database exposed by that query engine could be considered "approximate". Can that count as prior art?
One man's religion is another man's belly-laugh. - LL
Personally, I'm just waiting to see when Disney decides that 95 years for copyright protection isn't enough since Mickey Mouse will be close to entering the public domain yet again.
I used up all my sick days, so I'm calling in dead.
Well, it looks like it is time to move to a different country. Most other western nations that I can think of (Most of Europe, Canada, Austrailia, New Zeland, ect..) don't have these stupid patent offices/laws, nor do they have the DMCA, UCITA, of (back when it was relevant) crypto export laws. Perhaps southern california is not the best place to conduct high-tech buisness after all. :)
...si hoc legere nimium eruditionis habes...
It should be interesting to see the cddb people go after microsoft with this patent. The new windows media player 7 will rip/encode music for you and pulls cd track listings off of an online database, but not from cddb (or freedb for that matter).
The best way to accelerate a windows box is at 9.8 meters per second square.
FWIW, I meant patents, not copyright law. Call it a mental typo.
/ZL
Tide still has competitors and hasn't destroyed its industry, so clearly invalid and abusive patents on chemical formulae are being held in check in some way that isn't working for algorithms and protocols. Possibly because soap predates patent law, so the most fundamental ideas are clearly not novel--this wouldn't be such a problem if we'd spent a few more decades working out the basics of computer science and networks before letting carpetbaggers start fencing off all the frontiers.
In most civilized countries, you can't patent something one it's been published, even if you're the one who published it. I'm not sure if this is true for the US now (it wasn't back when RSA was patented, but that was a while ago...).
Anyway, releasing GPLed code is "publishing" something, for all intents and purposes. So if the US does have a provision against patenting things that have already been published, then the patent should be invalid for that reason.
ObIANAL: IANAL
Fact is, now that they got the patent, assuming it stands up in court, there's no end to the suits CDDB can bring (and win). Federal judges are mostly good ol' boys who don't know the first thing bout them 'new-fangled computer contraptions'. You get a tech-related case in their court, it comes down to who has the fanciest lawyers. Assuming the lawyers are of equal stature, your typical judge will side with the large corporation.
So, basically, what I'm saying is that with this patent, CDDB can shut down FreeDB on a whim.
Disheartening, indeed, but true.
I am,
I am,
Fine
Doesn't this mean that RIAA should be suing them for keeping a database of illegally copied data from their CDs?
Who Wants To Date A Norwegian?
nope, sorry. Regardless of whether or not cddb can claim to own the accumulated data (and I think they could probably get away with that), the patent is on a process or a technique. They might hold a copyright on the data, but they hold a patent on what they do with the data. Now, I agree that what they're patenting (essentially, a way to provide content based on what CD you're listening to) is pretty shaky, but that has nothing to do with the CDDB data.
BTW, back before CDDB was "CDDB.com", it was under a "free-to-use but restricted" license. IIRC, the fellow who came up with it got "implicit consent" from you when you submitted the data. Just because they're giving something away doesn't mean they can't patent it, either.
~wog
It's that thing in the installer that you never read but just click "agree".
Hmmmm... not to play devil's advocate here, but the information you keyed in technically belongs to the artist and/or recording company that produced the CD. Perhaps you don't really own that information after all *grin*.
Can I mod down posts by people who obviously didn't bother to read the linked patent and made braindead assumptions under the 'troll' category? They're just asking for 'learn how to use your web browser, you fucking imbeciles' reply, IMNSHO. =)
I don't think you can say that. You don't know jack is a registered trademark.
Why those miserable tiny minded ASSHOLES! they ought to be diped in shit, they need to be beaten with a leaky douche bag!Bah! BASTARDS! Gaaaaa!!! I am not amused.
Sorry, that's ridiculous. How can you raise ire about a patent title when the abstract describes what's actually in the patent? There is nothing in the actual patent text which has anything to do with SQL LIKE queries, which is what RDBMS vendors would be "in an uproar about." You didn't read the patent, you rushed to post something that you thought was pithy, and now you're trying to defend your uninformed posting with an unbelievably spurious argument. I didn't have to "read into" anything; I merely "read" what you posted.
The title and abstract describe what you perceive to be "two utterly different things" because you are coming after this from a semi-technical perspective. To the patent lawyers, "approximate match" may mean "related match" (i.e. a music video of a given CD, as described in the abstract), or any number of other things which do not necessarily coincide with what "approximate database match" means to you.
Language exists to provide a conduit for sharing ideas between people who have a shared world of discourse. The patent was written for patent lawyers (who have their own world of discourse unrelated to yours), not for you. That's why you seem to think that the patent title and abstract are describing different things.
~wog
If I read that right (could happen), it's talking about the technique of identifying an audio CD by matching the list of track lengths, which a) is necessary because (I guess) the audio CD format doesn't contain any other identifying metadata, and b) is nearly-enough unique across albums to provide a pretty good fingerprint of the album. Is that a fair translation? If so, then regarding:
I can't recall anyone using this method on CDs/DVDs before CDDB.
What about Apple's audio CD player software, which I believe came pre-loaded on my first Power Mac (a 6100/60 purchased in 1995)? That program has a window visually resembling a CD player's control panel, and beneath that, a CD title field and a list of track title fields. Initially, those fields say "Audio CD 1" and "Track 1", "Track 2", etc., but they are editable, allowing you to type in the information from the CD case. The application stores this information in a database, so that when you next insert that same CD, after having ejected it, done something else, etc., it recognizes it and displays the information as you had typed it. I don't know for sure, but I have always assumed that it did it by associating the user-defined information with some unique information -- probably the track lengths -- from the CD.
If I'm right that that's how they do it, then it would appear to constitute prior art, no? As far as I can tell, the only new things about CDDB are doing it over the internet and combining entries from many users, so they don't each have to enter the information by hand the first time.
Also, even if Apple didn't use exactly the same method to identify the CDs, I can honestly claim that it was the first solution that occurred to me when I first thought about it. That it, when I first noticed that the progrm had that feature, my thoughts went something like: "Hey, it remembers what I typed for this CD before! I wonder how it managed that. I know the CD itself doesn't contain the information, or why would I have had to type it the first time? It must have saved what I typed and associated it with some unique identifying information that is on the CD. It's probably keyed on the vector of track lengths -- that's not guaranteed to be unique, but an exact duplicate seems pretty unlikely. Clever." If it occurs immediately to a first-year CS student, which I was at the time, doesn't that qualify the technique as "obvious"?
David Gould
David Gould
main(i){putchar(340056100>>(i-1)*5&31|!!(i<6)<< 6)&&main(++i);}
I don't think so.
The idea of creating a "unique"(*) hash based on track length is very old.
There's an Apple tech note on it. I can't find the Tech Note itself, but the same format is used in BeOS, and there's a posting about it here.
(*) Since it is impossible to positively identify a CD based on track length (there is no requirement for uniqueness there) does that invalidate the patent? Aren't patents on the impossible automatically invalid?
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Read more of this story at Slashdot.Read more of this story at Slashdot.Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Actually that's just the preamble, it doesn't seem to be enforced in the body. Still, it would be interesting to know whether there is no GPL code from other authors in CDDB, since the GPL version is still actively maintained.
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enterfornone - logging in for a change
Just reading through some of the comments here made laugh and laugh and laugh. Why? Everyone seems to jumping up and down about something that they haven't read properly, or only skimmed the abstract. This is just how over reactionary some /. readers are.
So lets give this some context. Firstly, the patent is for operating over HTTP or protocols to supplant or improve HTTP (section 1 of the aforementioned patent), so for all those that suggested prior art in the form of local copies, or it preventing local copies, ba-baam. Wrong answer.
As for relational databases and fuzzy matching. Wrong again.
The patent covers ways to identify unique identifiers for CDs based on the lengths of the tracks on the cds, and method for retrieving information from a network (preferably the web), based on this information. Another section of the patent is to distribute music to all users of an IRC chatroom at the same time.
So, the prior art that we are instead looking for is firstly, where there is a database containing the tracks, length, and so on, which can be identified by a unique identifier based on the time of the recordings. The last part, the unique identifiers based on the time would be the hardest part. But perhaps a music company somewhere around the world had already implemented something like this on an internal network, or a radio station with a huge cd library.... The second part of the prior art one would be wanting is something related to chat rooms, and trying to send this music to everyone at the same time. Something I know nothing about so I will leave it to someone else to think about this.
The problem with this is that it allows them to go after anybody with a similar process. Sure, they very well may decide to let us play over here, or they may decide to come into our sandbox and plop their name on our sand castle. The mere possibility that they may do this is enough to shoot the patent down, IMO.
_______
Scott Jones
Newscast Director / ABC19 WKPT
FC Closer
apt-get remove xmcd
That's all. cddb.com pleased us, like amazon did, to ignore their existence, so let us do them this favor.
So our ingenious patent law allows somebody to invent something, and then impose arbitrary new licenses on those to which it had previously licensed the unpatented technology, with the one provision that it may not exact previous "damages".
So, then, basically a company can license technology to people it doesn't particularly like, or those it wants to control, then wait a while, while those people produce major products, then WHAM, obtain a patent, and now those people are under your control? Seems like by licensing something, you've *already* given away some rights under contract, and you shouldn't be able to just arbitrarily force others under a new license because you've now patented something that you've licensed to them.
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
That would not be wise. You can be easily tracked via your email header IP address. I would not suggest this,unless you like jail/poverty.
there is an international treaty that many nations signed upholding patant rights granted in any of the countries on the list.
i.e. if you get a patant here, and your product is bootlegged in say, the UK, the bootlegger can be prosecuted. very few countries arnt on that treaty. (italy is one, i think new zeland is one, sealand(!) is one, noot sure of the others).
-
"Consistency is the hobgoblin of small minds" - RWE
Hmmm, 'number of elements', 'length of element', 'find match'... So a CDDB lookup - obligatory guff about 'a computer program stored on a computer' aside - is really similar to what you do when you stand in front of a locked door, with a bunch of keys in your hands:
So, next time I come home in the dark of night and stand there fumbling with that keyring, I'll make sure no lawyer is watching me or I'll have to pay GraceNote? Or is the addition of that 'a computer program stored on a computer' condition really all the innovation needed to get a valid patent?
--frank[at]unternet.org
Fuck it. If they're being arseholes let the RIAA at 'em. Some one tell them about all them lists of song titles that are obviously the IP of the poor artists the industry so dearly likes to protect.
I'm all for protecting intellectual property (no flames please) but geez! how do you sell that! It's isn't intellectual property anymore than using a spatula to flip pancakes is!
It really amazes me that /. readers never seem to realize that patents, even technical ones are written for and approved by lawyers, not for technical people. That's why patent titles never seem to make sense, folks. (HHOS)
~wog
Check out glasbead (found it off of Rhizome, a net art site).
here is part of the description: "glasbead is an online multiuser 3d object allowing players to create a myriad of soundscapes in a shared realtime environment. "
here is the URL: http://www.glasbead.com/ I seem to remember half a dozen other java applets that came out and provided shared audio spaces on the net. They could easily be described by this awful patent.
Clue time -- maybe it was just a typo or brain fart, but people need to differentiate copyrights and patents. Copyrights deal with a specific work that someone has done -- a specific peice of code, music, text, or whatever. Patents cover entire ways of doing things, or even the general concept of things that can be done.
Copyright law does NOT need to be changed. It's fair as it is. Patent law DOES need to be changed.
Where does the GPL state this. I just took a look and I didn't find anything of the sort. If this was written into the GPL, it would be unenforcable, because the owners of the copyright are not bound by any licensing agreement. Hence, they're still free to patent things.
"The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than that of whether a submarine can swim" -EWD
Dude, copy and paste. It isn't that hard either.
They must already have their own database, which they search, right? I'm sure they have had one for a long time. They may have even used it to see if this patent already exists!
IANAL, but I just talked to the corporate patent lawyer. Get your own lawyer for legal adivce.
In the US you have one year from the time an invention is first published to file for a patent. In every other country you must file before publication. I'm unclear if by filing after publication you no longer have rights to the patent in other countries.
If you get a patent in the US, every other country will honor the date of filing for a patent when you go to file in their country, meaning that if someone in Germany violates a US patent you can file for a German patent, and then once it is granted sue the German company. If nobody in Germany violates your patent you don't need to file for one there. NOTE that not all countries honor patents.
Couple of problems. Since the original developers licensed the program that had cddb code in it under a fairly free license, doesn't that mean, that they can't later revert it?
Second, the actual database itself is composed of submissions. Unless, I explicitly disclaim ownership of the submitted data, how can cddb claim to own it? As far as I know, you need to explicitly give away rights, they cannot be taken. Also, none of the CDDB programs have any sort of EULA about this?
I don't claim to be a lawyer (sorry, IANAL sounds weird) but this doesn't seem like it holds a lot of water.
p.s. don't bother making (Funny +5) comments like "I'm going to patent breathing or whatever" We've heard it before.
----------------- "I have a bone to pick, and a few to break." - Refused -------------------
This insanity has got to stop, and it falls on us geeks to do something.
Your average citizen doesn't realize how software patents affect them (and will affect them). All they see is higher prices and less innovation, but they don't know why.
Write to your elected representatives, to industry leaders, and to news organizations. We need to make people aware of how patents are stifling innovation instead of rewarding it. If you're too lazy to do any of that, please please please at least join EFF. They even have student rates.
I don't understand - CDDB the system existed before CDDB the company. The CDDB code was written before the ocmpany even existed. If that doesn't count as Prior Art, what does?
Either the courts or the patent office will take this one back.
========================
63,000 bugs in the code, 63,000 bugs,
ya get 1 whacked with a service pack,
--- Grow a pair, liberals... stop letting the Republicans bully you!
Try this
Put the sites outside of the United States and Japan. In any other country that does not accept Software Patents.
There-fore use the Power of the NET.
Canada or Mexico sound like good starting points. Else only the people in Software Patent Free Countries are free to use it.
Anonymous Coward
It takes a small fortune to patent anything on a wroldwide scale. If a large corporation wants to steal your inventions they cn and will.
What was the first database system? db? How about all those relational databases? I know of a few for the Atari ST that existed back in 1987.
Then count the near-databases. Excel's a virtual database because of how it stores cells (it doesn't do a bulk sheet, it allowicates one at a time.) Most any database with a search function would qualify. Oh, and don't forget the first file system!!! What was that, back in the 1970's?
This patent died the day it was born.
--
WolfSkunks for a better Linux Kernel
$Stalag99{"URL"}="http://stalag99.keenspace.com";
--
# Canmephians for a better Linux Kernel
$Stalag99{"URL"}="http://stalag99.net";
Think about it this way: You ask me to look up the name Robert Dave Grahamn in a list (database). So, I first go by last name (Grahamn). Then I look for the first and middle names (Robert Dave). Oops! No Robert Daves! Next step: look for Robert D., then Bobby Dave...you get the point I hope.
Telling a computer a list of possible aliases is the same thing (if looking for robert, check bob and bobby too).
I don't care what anyone says - America's going too far in the patent department. They literally patented logic!
Want good Xmas music? Look for Manheim Steamroller!
SIG: HUP
Sorry to ask this, but.... for those of us not yet familiar with freedb, can anybody tell me what it is and/or post a link?
Moz.
see a Text Widget
Well, if you read the title and read the abstract, they're describing two utterly different things. I wasn't commenting on the abstract. I was commenting on the title. It really amazes me that people like you read so much into things. I quoted that section because that was the section I was commenting on. Maybe you shouldn't jump to conclusions?
I believe that in one of the posted extracts of the patent it said something about generating a key based on information on the CD. OK, wipe off the rabid foam and try to follow this scenario.
I've got this nice website that people come to. I've developed this browser plugin that reads info off a CD, generates a key, goes to my website, finds lyrics and downloads them back to the browser.
Now, to keep somebody else from duplicating what I've done and especially from sponging off my DB, I patent the process.
Now, they've protected their resources, but they really haven't stopped you from developing a system that does essentially the same thing, only differently. They did not patent browsers, plugins or DB's. It sounds like they only patented how their system works so you have to use their plugin to read their DB.
Average Intelligence is a Scary Thing
that this patent even exists!
Many people are saying that this will not hold up in court, and it won't.
But it will still stop small companies that can't afford multimillion dollar court battles from infringing upon it.
Until some other huge tank of a company decides to tread (no pun intended) on this patent, it will hold. And it will hold well. And if CDDB never goes after the big companies, it could last it's entire lifetime.
It's been said before, and I will say it again.
Support the EFF.
I noticed that Ti Kan's name is on the patent. Kan wrote xmcd, the GPLed Motif/Lesstif based CD player. CDDB grew out of the xmcd database.
The patent is on a system that matches CD tracks inexactly. (Inexact matches are nothing new, but the inexact match of a cd's timing record may be novel). The proponents of CDDB claim that this sytem (called CDDB2) enables them to aggregate multiple pressings of the same album, even if the new pressings are slightly different.
Is this capability substantially different from the algorithms in FreeDB enabled players? More to the point, is it substantially different from the original xmcd code-- which was released under the GPL.
Gracenote, the company that controls the CDDB patent has already used the CDDB algorithm to authenticate owners of David Bowies "Bowie at the Beeb" album. Owners of that album were able toa ccess an extra track (Ziggy Stardust remix). To what extent does this conflict with similar "authentication" algorims used by my.mp3.com?
It sounds like some of the stuff I've done (Approximate searches). Of course none of my stuff in used in public. And are they going to sue yahoo, google, and other search engines. That is what they do.
like it or not, patents have evolved into a corporate weapon, under the current model, how can anyone fault cddb, or amazon for patenting anything they can.
If you are sick of this model, then why not send your congressmen a letter (a *real* letter, one you wrote on paper!). Until the laws regarding copyright are changed, we are just going to see more of these patents rewarded.
If anyone's interested: Patent Law
To qualify for a utility patent, an invention must be new, useful, and "nonobvious."
I still have trouble seeing how GraceNote can claim what they are doing is "nonobvious" when so many other people were eaily able to emulate what they did with ease: just look at freedb.
---
"Of course, that's just my opinion. I could be wrong." --Dennis Miller
ummmmmmmmmm like, SELECT * FROM TABLE WHERE DATA LIKE '%SOMETHING%'?
I'm surprised Oracle, MS and every company that uses SQL isn't in an uproar over this.
Haven't seen links posted yet, so here they are
http://www.delphion.com/details?pn=US05987525__
http://www.delphion.com/details?pn=US06154773__
http://www.delphion.com/details?pn=US06061680__
Did you actually read the patent? It's much more specific than you assume:
------------
1. At least one computer program stored on a computer-readable medium, embodying a method of searching for a match in a database of a plurality of records, where the records in the database include length information and number of segments for recordings corresponding to the records, comprising:
calculating approximate length information for the records in the database and for a selected recording having a number of segments; and
determining at least one approximately matching record in the database for the selected recording based on the number of segments and the approximate length information.
------------
And so on... It's probably enforcable - I can't recall anyone using this method on CDs/DVDs before CDDB.
Move freedb.org to freedb.org.jp
Stupid US software patents don't apply in Japan.
0 1 - just my two bits
The first few claims on the page sound like a patent on a fuzzy logic datase search engine. I'm thinking this can be extrapolated to just fuzzy logic which cannot be right. I believe fuzzy theory is completely open and non-patentable, and hence this is as unpatentable as the concept of a database?
The following are excerpts of a cddb howto from an early 1998 document by the authors of cddb, found at http://mp3.musichall.cz/download/source/informatio n/cddb.howto. Its neat what you can find with google. It seems to raise license issues.
The CDDB data format and the CDDB servers are designed to be open, and are now used by many other client application software requiring CD information. The list of CDDB-capable applications is growing rapidly and a current list of these applications is available via the CDDB web site: http://www.cddb.com/
The xmcd package and the CDDB server software are both released as free software under the GNU General Public License, and we would like to foster the concept of free software. Moreover, the public CDDB servers all run on sites that have graciously volunteered their disk space, computing and network resources, not to mention occasional maintenance and support chores, all for free.
Given this, we provide full assistance to freeware authors who desire to incorporate the use of CDDB into their software. In addition, shareware programs are also supported, because it is our understanding that shareware authors, like freeware authors, usually develop their software because they enjoy doing so, and they rarely make significant enough money from their shareware programs. Users of CDDB-capable freeware and shareware applicationa may use the public CDDB servers for free.
Commercial uses of CDDB data and/or servers are subject to negotiations with the CDDB Project. Write to us at cddb-support@moonsoft.com for information.
The xmcd and CDDB server software are both released to the public with full source code. You may inspect the source to see how it works. but please be aware that the source code to both of these packages are released under the terms of the GNU General Public License. The full text of the GNU GPL is in the COPYING file in each of these packages.
Well Mister User #1767, you mean you've heard it before. SlashDot has a constant influx of new readers who might enjoy the occassional item that you've encountered a hundred times and grown weary of. They might even (gasp) repeat an old joke! Perhaps you could cut people a little slack.
"If I have seen further than other men, it is by stepping on their glasses." - Michael Swaine
I wrote a CDDB proxy which can operate as a standalone CDDB database and includes similar fuzzy searching for CD records. I released this on Freshmeat.net last year under the GPL license. Does this mean i'm going to receive a cease and desist letter?
The fact is that in the REAL WORLD, unless you are a big company like Microsoft, CISCO, IBM, (fill in your favorite giant), you simply dont have the human nor financial resources for constant fast improvement for software/hardware. They need time to breath, to recruit. Though none of our slashdot geeks have realized that from their sysadmin desks, because they never looked beyond their Linux boxes and their stack of mp3 CDs.
That is one thing with Open sourcing your software without something to insure you that no one is gonna steal your technology. Especially for small companies, that is going to be a fatal blow.
I know it is going to be moderated down because of the anti-IP, anti-windows, FREE BEER crowd on slashdot, but I have got to say what is in my throat.
Assume for a minute that this patent is broad enough to also apply to cddb/freedb functionality. The patent was filed VERY recently, in mid-1999. Freedb itself preceeds this patent if I'm not mistaken. MacOS and BeOS (and probably Windows too) have had cd database functionality (using a similar method but different algorithm than cddb to generate the key) since at least 1997. There is so much prior art here, it's not even funny. If they attempted to shut down freedb based on this patent, the judge would summarily dismiss the case after a minute, and cddb would open themselves up to a "frivolous lawsuit" countersuit.
Good. Two sellouts locked in a court battle that drains both. (improved! now posted as a reply to the right parent!)
CEE5210S The signal SIGHUP was received.
Hey, I don't find lists of song and album titles very "entertaining." Besides, there's prior art to this -- those little closed captions you see on television. Not to mention Music Videos and streaming MP3's with the web frame telling you what song is playing (an example being http://www.fatfreeradio.com)
The user employs a browser to access the computer network. A plug-in for the browser is able to control an audio CD or other device for playing the musical recording. A script stored on the remote computer accessed over the network is downloaded. The script synchronizes the delivery of the complementary entertainment content with the play of the musical recording.
Got friends?
...A plug-in for the browser is able to control an audio CD or other device for playing the musical recording...
Hmmm...
sounds like we can't even play our own cd's anymore. One could easily make the argument that winamp is a browser. it uses plugins to play everything. it also looks up cds and stuff over the net and that is probably the main offense. don't you just hate these patents that have almost infinite amounts of prior art. It's a shame that this kind of thing has to happen. Now a bunch of smaller people are going to get squashed like bugs untill one of the giants stubs their toes on this rediculous patent.
The patent description is actually more specific than some of the drivel the USPTO has granted (like one-click shopping). It clearly applies to multimedia content (e.g., music), and linking "complementary entertainment content" (e.g., most anything including ads, metadata, external links, etc.).
Yes, boys and girls: they've applied for international patents as well under the EU and WIPO. So, don't plan on getting relief from moving offshore. Although a naive (aka reasonable) point of view would think it's more expensive to pursue non-US infringers by US patent owners, in fact WIPO makes it (a) cheap; (b) biased; and (c) fast.