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CMGI, Altavista Patent Indexing, Searching
Aggrazel
passes along
a FinancialTimes.com story
that would send chills down my spine if I weren't already jaded and bored by such patent nonsense. You mean suits at a
megacorp
are taking advantage of absurd U.S. intellectual property laws to stifle innovation, quash competition, and steal candy from hard-working programmers? I'm shocked, shocked!
Here's the InternetWorld interview:
"...virtually everyone out there who indexes the Web is in violation of at least several of those key patents. Q. Does that mean you'll pursue that? A. Yes, we will. Coming up in the first quarter of 2001."
Could someone please find out what patents CMGI owns?
And in related news, DeadSea notes that the search engine that powers the ODP
(dmoz.org)
has been
released,
under the
MPL.
It's rough around the edges; go thou and smooth it out. While you still can.
Better yet, start writing to AltaVista's advertisers and tell them you're boycotting them because they advertise with AltaVista. Explain why. Explain that everyone on Slashdot (with X page views per day, blah blah) knows that AltaVista is evil, and probably isn't too happy with their advertisers.
Watch AltaVista's advertising dry up. Laugh. Watch them stop with this patent nonsense.
At least we know that the inventor of the internet is currently unemployed, so he should be available as an expert witness to establish prior art.
What's a sig?
Could you tell me what I'll need to do to keep them from indexing my site?
The AltaVista spider identifies itself as Scooter, so HTTP_USER_AGENT will contain Scooter. If you're using Apache with mod_rewrite, something like the following should work:
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^Scooter
RewriteRule . / [F]
Which will return a Forbidden page for every request.
This is going to be fun. The best part is that Altavistat is not a "big bully" compared to the other search engine companies. They are all in the same "weight class" which means this patent is going to have to stand up in court on it's merits.
:).
:)
Those "merits include prior art in the form of Yahoo. One of the most likely targets
It will only get sillyer anyway. Right now a Jamaican politician has a patent on "Electronic Voting". So any country that uses computers to conduct an election will owe him money. To make that politically acceptable he set up a trust that won't give him any of the money personally but will support charitable causes. Apparently serious windfalls are expected
--= Isn't it surprising how badly I spell ?
US5970497: Method for indexing duplicate records of information of a database
US6138113: Method for identifying near duplicate pages in a hyperlinked database
US6021409: Method for parsing, indexing and searching world-wide-web pages
US6128690: System for remote memory allocation in a computer having a verification table contains information identifying remote computers which are authorized to allocate memory in said computer
More can be found at Delphion's Intellectual Property Network.
--
It will be interesting to see how they try to persue this. Will they go the route that BT is trying to do with their patent on hyperlinks, in this case, suing a small but important player, someone that they can probably match in legal fees so they have a test basis for further cases? In addition, suing a small player will be downplayed in the media, and thus few people would get a bad outlook on BT; if BT then won, they can take on bigger players, using their previous victory with the right media spin saying "Hey, just protecting our interests". Quite possible, but the question is which of the search engines out there would CMGI sue? If they tried to hit Yahoo or Google, they'd get a black eye really fast from the media world, so I suspect it will be something like HotBot or a minor search player.
"Pinky, you've left the lens cap of your mind on again." - P&TB
"I can see my house from here!" - ST:
Mr. Whetherell tells us so himself: He warned the company would defend its patent rights "if necessary . . . to the letter of the law.", which tells us that questions of ethical behavior or technological innovation presumably don't matter as long as there is still a legal loophole to be pursued.
The greed that has surrounded the whole VC industry over the last few years has caused people to lose fortunes, stalled important research by drawing away good people, discouraged long-term investment in research by stable companies, and made it nearly impossible to share and build on each other's research results, both in computer science and in biotechnology.
What can you do about it? There are some ideas that probably do need to get funded in a VC environment, and there are some far-out ideas that probably are well suited to that kind of funding. But for the most part, it's probably better not to do business with VCs, not to solicit funding from them, and not to work for startups. Not much good can come of companies that are fueled mostly by greed and irrational expectations. If you have a good idea, you can almost certainly find many other ways of financing it and building a business around it.
Thanks for admitting the duplicate story at least. (at Altavista's Planned Patent Lawsuits by CmdrTaco on Wed January 17, 11:34 AM CDT ). Why does this seem to happen so often? Editor overload (not enough cooks), duplication of efforts (too many cooks), interface problems with viewing the submissions queue (it was a only a week-old story), or what?
#include "disclaim.h"
"All the best people in life seem to like LINUX." - Steve Wozniak
#include "disclaim.h"
"All the best people in life seem to like LINUX." - Steve Wozniak
MacNN mentioned this patent being granted to some company nobody has heard of that supposedly covers using OS-level software to write CDs and DVDs...in other words, some of the very things Apple introduced a couple of weeks ago. D'oh!
--
I use Macs for work, Linux for education, and Windows for cardplaying.
How can something like this be patented? I mean, it's essentially a _slight_ variation on how any simple _handwritten_ list works.
You make a list. You check it. Twice.
Shit, Santa's got prior art on this.
-k.
Altavista figures it owns some useful technology and wants to assert it across the world. Fine. Glorious. Let them try.
But before we start marching, let's just remember that what they say they own isn't the same as what they own. Until you see the patent asserted, and consider deeply its claims, you simply don't know how bad (or how silly) all this is. Particularly in the case of web portals, where there are fierce competitors, I wouldn't be too troubled -- these guys can (and will) take care of themselves. They have portfolios too, BTW, and will be quite content to assert those as counterclaims.
The turn of the millenium has had a few sea changes for patent owners, not terribly well-covered in the media. In late December, the Federal Circuit's opinion in Festo virtually turned upside-down the strength of patents where any claim was amended, directly or indirectly. Virtually every existing patent, but particularly every existing software patent, has involved some substantial prosecution history changes. This change in the scope of the so-called "Doctrine of Equivalents" will dramatically impact upon the already narrow scope given to patent claims by the Federal Courts.
Moreover, don't forget that the more nuts the claim, the more likely it is invalid. The less nuts the claim, the less likely it has been infringed. Its a difficult process to drive the patent truck through that tunnel between enforceability and validity, and in so doing, you will discover that the patent system is fairly effectively self-healing.
The combination of Festo and these other factors suggests to me that it isn't time to take up arms. Let's wait and see what patents they wish to assert, and against whom.
My guess, no one anywhere is filing any patent claims that aren't slam-dunks in the first quarter 2001, we're all waiting to see if the Supreme Court takes up Festo again.
The recent stockholders meeting was a little tense, however, with little old ladies ready to wring Dave Wetherell's neck!
Here's some things you could implement by chaging you apache configuration or by including a bit of code in you CGIs/PHP stuff:
1) Block/Redirect by referer. That way, if you've already been indexed, you can redirect Altavista users to a page explaining Altavista's infamies and directing them to a more ethical search engine. Additionally, if you have legal firepower, you could let Altavista know that you know they're indexing your site and that you charge to let you site be indexed.
2) Please see the children of this comment for suggestions about robots.txt and blocking/redirecting by User Agent (Altavista's is called Scooter).
I think there is a Webmaster's guild somewhere. Also, perhaps the w3c could weigh in.
--
Tweet, tweet.
Archie (for those of you who weren't working on the Internet before 1995 :-) was a distributed data gathering and indexing system for anonymous FTP sites. Having taking a cursory read through CMGI's press releases & patents, I can tell you that most of that stuff followed the prior art of myself and the rest of the Archie team, from Archie versions 1 through 3.
If you want any background on this, feel free to contact me.
Alan Emtage (aemtage@mediapolis.com)
I urge all moderators to moderate quincyq down. He is nothing but a thieving plagiarist who takes credit for the research, thoughts, and writings of others.
``Does your search engine move as fast as your business? Click here to download a FREE trial version. AltaVista search engine 3.0''.
How ironic.
I wonder, can still use grep or do I have to pay some asshole who lives off the backs of others?
That's enough to build some talking points:
And you know the entertaining part? If the "indexing patent" turns out to be effective in court, search engines are liable to move web sites to offshore locations (Seahaven? :-)) where the offending patents do not apply.
If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate.
I wonder what AltaVista's improvements over prior indexing tools are, though. "Your Honor, our system has one key feature never before proposed in an indexing system for distributed data--namely, humongousness. Of lesser importance, but still significant, are our introduction of Searchliciousness and The Wow! Factor."
This is a really popular question, I seem to get it every time I post a story that is in any way negative about a company that has ever advertised on Slashdot.
I really have no control over it. Let me explain this to you. Our editorial and writing staff are not influenced by, nor do we influence, our staff that buys banner ads. There is a total disconnect there. They can sell ads to whoever they want, I have -- let me say this again because apparently it's such an awe-inspiringly difficult concept that few people are able to comprehend it -- I have no control over whose ads appear on a story I post.
Brace for reality: most places consider this a good thing. You know, like, not having the ad for Famous Ray's Website appear on the page facing the flattering review of Famous Ray's Website?
Like, not having the marketing department staffers come sit down in my cubicle and say "we'd like you to review Famous Ray's Website, and we think they're really good, you'll probably agree with us, we hope."
I don't know those staffers. I don't want to know those staffers. They have never done that and it doesn't come up because we don't talk to each other.
While it is a little annoying to me that some companies whose policies I disagree with *cough* DoubleClick continue to put banner ads on our webpages, I will not try to influence ad sales, because then ad sales will come try to influence me. They leave me alone; I leave them alone.
Don't like it? Tough. Think that this is an "oversight" or that this makes Slashdot or myself somehow corrupt or stupid or evil? Please go away.
(Sorry. I'm in a bad mood. I just posted a story duplicate -- except for the dmoz.org search tool, that's cool and it's new, go download it and mess with it.)
Jamie McCarthy
Jamie McCarthy
jamie.mccarthy.vg
Why just settle for boycotting Alta-Vista... Why can't we block them from indexing our websites.
Is there a webmaster organization with enough members to confront Alta Vista and tell them that if they persist in this action that we will charge them for every webpage that they index?
they go bankrupt first?
sulli
RTFJ.
Most newspapers do not let the advertising department and editorial department have much contact. That is you can buy an ad that runs in the cooking section, but until the paper is printed you won't nessicarly find out that the column you are under is bashing your product. (In practice the finial copy editor would catch this and request a simple re-arrangement, but that isn't for sure) You can also buy an add under "Dear Abby", but you are not allowed to know what the column for the day is. For news stories you never know what will run on the same page as you. (Layout will try to keep ads conflicting with stories seperate, but they are not required to. The editorial and adversisers will have no knowlege of conflicts until after the paper is printed, and the layout editors have no control over content, just where the content is.
While this system isn't perfect it does tend to keep conflicts of interest down.
This algorithm is based on the chinese fortune cookie amusement generation algorithm:
;)
1) Read fortune
2) Add the phrase "in bed" the end of the fortune.
Web patent generation algorithm:
1) Read previous patent
2) Add the phrase "on the web"
3) Mask in legalese
4) Apply for shiny new patent
(Note: This method is patent pending....