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Gracenote Reponds Regarding Roxio Lawsuit
jark writes: "Gracenote has responded to the community with an 'open letter' regarding their lawsuit against Roxio and their switch to FreeDB. Seems that they wanted to completely dodge all the bullets that were shot their way rather than address the real issues at hand (such as why they think they can claim OUR inputs are THEIR intellectual propery, among others)."
If I had a CD-ROM with the most popular CDDB entries, would I need gracenote's "service"? What's the average length of a compressed CDDB entry? What's 650MB divided by that? Isn't that trimmed down database likely to satisfy all of my needs?
Nope. I have a version of EZ CD Creator (4.02) that came with my burner. It worked fine before this lawsuit. Now, when it tries to get info from CDDB, you get a naggy blurb about Adaptec's license expiring in the form of actual track info. Adaptec is working on a patch to fix this.
It seems that facts are the pieces of information that really deserve to be free.
If gracenote gives FREE licenses to FREE software, then someone needs to write a FREE server application that can pull data. They get the free license.
THEY the same people write another component (also free) that interfaces with the "freesoftware" (with the free license from gracenote) that is serverside and serves to anyone who doesn't want to pay gracenote.
Could this work ?
CBoy (who can't remember his password to post from work)
Some facts for you all, so you can actually talk about things without pulling stuff out the air:
- Do you really think Gracenote would sue Roxio without the solid belief that they could win? Do you really think their suit has no basis in law? Think again. You may not agree with the law as it stands, but it probably does favor them in at least one of their claims. That's all it takes to win *something*.
- There is little doubt that there is stuff in the contract between the two companies that is not being made public. For all we know there could be something that bars them from switching services, or a million other possibilities. WHO KNOWS? Unless you KNOW, it's a waste of time to argue that the suit is baseless.
- You don't see them suing companies using other similar services, so I'm guessing their objection is to Roxio using one that's based on IP they fancy to be theirs. Comments about them suing because Roxio won't use *their* service are probably naive. Those would be totally baseless grounds to sue on, and it's a safe bet that they're not using Luigi's cousin's brother-in-law lawyer as their counsel.
- That press release was probably not intended for the general public. The level of corpspeek makes it look like it's for the press.
Just some stuff to think about. Continue.
Did I miss something or did he completely skip the question of _why_ they want to sue Roxio?
That's the sound of Gracenote kicking itself for not using a different license for their software back in 1995.
- A.P.
--
Forget Napster. Why not really break the law?
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
Next they will be fileing a patent on hashing based on track information
Actually, they already did. And got the patent too, if I'm not mistaken. Apparently the USPTO wouldn't know prior art if it came up and farted right in their collective face.
_____
Sam: "That was needlessly cryptic."
Sam: "That was needlessly cryptic."
Max: "I'd be peeing my pants if I wore any!"
Honestly, I think gracenote doesn't have much of a leg to stand on in this case. The real people they need to sue are the freedb.org folks and not Roxio... and honestly I don't think suing the freedb.org folks would do much good either.
I think the community at large would do better without these bozos peddling their wares.
--
I don't think this is actually feasible. Gracenote's database as a whole isn't available - you are just able to send them a query describing a CD (a chunk of "random" bytes) and get back the song titles and other info. In order to find the missing data, you'd have to keep sending queries for all possible sequences, and there are far, far too many for that for any reasonably sized identifying chunk.
So, nice thought, but not possible in practice unless you can hack into Gracenote somehow and copy their whole DB.
Disclaimer: I've never looked at how CDDB works, I'm just making logical guesses, but I think I'm right, and that's all that matters for slashdot.
So, roxio got what they wanted, and left. They get to keep the code/etc but don't have to pay anymore. It really is about the code, and not about the choice of databases, or the content of those databases. (Not that I don't think what Gracenote did was bad, but that is not what this is about.)
This, I think, is the beef Gracenote has. But, imo, that's what you get for going with a stupid licensing model. They should suck it up and deal with it.
"No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare."
--James Madison
Most of this piece is conciliatory fluff, but the real point is here somewhere in the middle:
Although the raw data is user submitted, the storage, retrieval, categorization, and organization of the database, the access interface, and the matching and filtering methods are absolutely proprietary, and we will do what is necessary to defend this intellectual property
Current cddb licensees turning to freedb is the most immediate threat to their revenue, so first thing to do is scare their customers. Depending on any patents they have they might then force the freedb to develop a different protocol to do the same thing or even try to get exclusive rights to the concepts of matching CD signatures with an online database. We don't want to go there. Community driven alternatives must prevail.
Can't get to freedb.org so can find no answers.
But what exactly is Gracenote complaining about?
As long as freedb.org wrote their own software, and started a database from scratch from user submissions... they could not possibly be accused of "stealing" from gracenote.
Gracenote doesn't own the contents of the CDs, that and the identifiers put on the discs are the property of the record labels.
On the other hand, I have no sympathy for roxio. Their software is pretty low quality and high priced. Given what they charge, I think giving 6 cents per user to those maintaining the cddb database seems fair.
Titles are not copyrightable. To be eligible for copyright, it needs to be a unique expression and titles aren't.
Copyright infringment is not an "IMHO" issue. Especially when applied to titles. It's pretty clearcut.
Band names can't be copyrighted either, and as a result are frequently trademarked.
LetterJ
Head Geek
The Glass is Too Big: My Take on Things
Patent Examining
The USPTO suffers because their database is badly organized and complex to search... The European Patent Office (EPO) have access, internally, to no only their own patent database, but also pretty well every major scientific publication on record and other data.
When a patent application is presented, a search is undertaken, looking at everything, not just previous patent data to see if there is any prior art whatsoever. I' not sure about the States, but I would hope it would be the same. If not, it would explain why the USPTO keep awarding crap patents.
Troc
PS I'm not a patent examiner, but I might be in a month or two. The EPO, where I'd be working actively searches and expects their examiners to submit more data to theie databases on a regular basis to aviod the problems we seem to be seeing in the US these days.
Troc's dubious podcast and blog: http://www.trocnet.net
The fact that the PTO only searches its own database was confirmed by the PTO's chief.
--
You know, you gotta get up real early if you want to get outta bed... (Groucho Marx)
"But remember, most lynch mobs aren't this nice." (H.Simpson)
-- Joe
or do you have one ? I read the article, then read your post and both are FULL OF IT :)
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
And aren't those song titles and album titles rightfully the IP of the bands/record labels that came up with them in the first place?
Umm no. You can't trademark a song name or album titles. There are zero IP issues when it comes to this part of the issue.
~ a low user id is no indication I have a clue what I'm talking about.
I must be missing something here. As I see it, Adaptec used to subscribe to Gracenote's services. Then, Adaptec decided to switch providers, and not pay Gracenote any more. How is this against the law? If Netscape includes a site in their default bookmarks, and then later decides to remove the bookmark, does the site have the right to sue Netscape?
As far as I see it, Adaptec is merely using a common business practice. Intel does it, Microsoft does it, Apple does it. It's called capitalism. If there's a cheaper alternative, or in this case a cheaper provider, USE THE CHEAPER ONE.
This letter gives me no answers to my questions. If they explained that Adaptec is required by law to use Gracenote, then I'd understand. They made no mention of it, however, and so I still remain here, confused. If anyone knows if such a contract or deal was made that prohibits Adaptec from using freedb, then please enlighten me.
Oh, and one other thing. They say, "Gracenote only charges licensing fees to developers of commercial applications, NOT end-users." But who do the developers pass these fees to? End users. They're presenting a logical falsely.
We should develop a non-commercial program using Gracenote's technology that compares the entries in both DB's then submits anything that FreeDB is lacking.
Gracenote does claim to allow non-commercial access to it's DB's for personal use...
by Mike Buddha -- Someday the mountain might get him, but the law never will.
Plus, it's well established that song titles can't be copyrighted.
Or even better you could set your programs to the closest mirror of freedb to help level out the load.
...
--
I hope we shall crush in its birth the aristocracy of our monied corporations
And I'd be a Libertarian, if they weren't all a bunch of tax-dodging professional whiners.
Berke Breathed
First, I wholeheartedly agree that suing a company for choosing another service over yours is reprehensible and Gracenote ought to be taken out back and beaten senselessly about the head for doing it. It's crap like this that clogs up our legal system and makes it as bad as it is.
Second, after reading their letter, I don't totally disagree with their reasoning for charging developers to use their service. Let me explain.
It's not just data, it's a service
This I agree with completely. They have pay for a very expensive network, databases, servers, and the like. They may have collected the data with our help, but I know they munge the hell out of that data to make it usable.
Example: I used to work for a now-failing dot-com that, as part of our core business, had a very large database of (pretty much) all the lawfirms in the US. Our users (mostly law students) and their law schools did most of the data entry for that data. But let me tell you -- that data is generally USELESS until you do a lot of work to clean it up. And the more people who submit data, the harder it is to get it cleaned up. I spent an enormous amount of time writing complex pattern-matching and search & replace functions to clean up that vast amount of data. It's a lot of work, and maintaining that list and keeping it accurate required staff, money, and time.
So sure, Gracenote needs to keep the litigation in their freakin' pants, but I agree with them that the raw data they collect(ed), by whatever means, isn't what this is about. They need to be allowed to make money too, and if a developer or and end-user doesn't like those terms, they can always go to someone else. It's a free world!
-jason
Gracenote is the frontpage story on Suck.com today.
Suck me
pretty funny stuff, Maynard.
Another good reason to kill software patents.
Caution: Now approaching the (technological) singularity.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
According to the letter, the charge is $0.06 per user, which I find quite reasonable...
That's not the point.
I think they may have a right to charge you the 6 cents if you use their service. Yes, they may have obtained the data from us and under false pretenses too, but they are now charging for the service or at least so they claim.
If Google suddenly started charging one cent per search, it would be a charge for the search service, not for the billion web-pages which aren't really Google's property!
The thing is, how can CDDB expect money from someone who ISN'T using their service? It would be like the aforementioned Google suing because you decided not to pay the cent and switch to (say) AltaVista.
It's a darned interesting business-plan. To simply sue everyone who decided they didn't want to be your customer, and chose a competing product!
I see the point that they too put a lot of work into the database, but I think it's abhorent (if not actually illegal) to neither warn the users who submit the data (impossible in these cases) nor make the raw data available for a fee no greater than their actual costs and subject to no license.
But I don't know what anyone can do about it, except refuse to submit data to sites that don't make their intentions clear and legally binding up-front.
It does not matter where the data comes from. The situation would be the same as long as they have a legal right to a copy of the data (they probably do). Gracenote is arguing that they are providing a service of having collected the data together in one place, cleaned it up, organized and indexed it, and provide a service mechanism to deliver it. That's all fine and good. And it might even be a good thing that they are doing, since they do need to pay for the computer and the connectivity.
The problem is in their expectation of having monopoly rights over the whole concept enough to sue someone who chooses to go to the competition. Unless they can show that the competition specifically is violating some intellectual property belonging to Gracenote. The question now is, does FreeDB do that? I don't know because I have not looked. Is Roxio using Gracenote's code to access FreeDB? I don't know because I have not looked. But Gracenote did not come out and clearly assert these things were the case, so therefore I will assume that neither is true.
That only leaves me to believe that Gracenote is upset because probably their business plan depends on the notion that they will have a monopoly on this market. I suggest a call for a Justice Department investigation into such a monopoly. If Gracenote thinks they have a legal right to be a monopoly (e.g. through specific intellectual property), then they should say so and say what that is.
FYI IANAL BIPOO/.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
Umm, ok.
I am officially starting a network consulting company. Anyone here who has a network, and does not pay my company to help you maintain it will be hearing from my lawyers next week.
Lunacy...
-Wintermute
Well, that's what changed, IIRC - Now, programs that use CDDB have to use CDDB exclusively.
My understanding is that GRIP gets blocked anymore.
Is this the case?
Cheers,
Jim in Tokyo
MMDC.NET
-- My Weblog.
To use the CDDB database, you have to agree to ONLY use the CDDB database. No replication to FreeCDDB allowed.
But then again, how about a program that will read the *file system* of your computer and re-construct the CDDB entry for submission to FreeCDDB?
Let me explain:
You use a CDDB-approved CD ripper to generate a dir full of MP3s. You close that program.
You run a script to compare the files in YOUR filesystem to the CD still in the tray. You generate a FreeCDDB submission. You hit SEND and the FreeCDDB gets updated...
You haven't used the CDDB database in an un-authorized way, you've read the attributes of YOUR files that YOU created, that reside on YOUR harddrive.
The pity is that all of this trouble is to make up for the unfortunate fact that Gracenote abused our trust. Maybe they have the right to do it, but nobody who sat dutifully typing in their CD titles knew that it would be one day restrictively controlled like this.
Maybe Gracenote will realize that they could do better by just opening things up again, not challenging the community to make them redundant.
Anyone else notice that the open letter never said exactly WHY they were suing?
Cheers,
Jim in Tokyo
MMDC.NET
-- My Weblog.
From the bottom of the page
...
.... Although the raw data is user submitted, the storage, retrieval, categorization, and organization of the database, the access interface, and the matching and filtering methods are absolutely proprietary, and we will do what is necessary to defend this intellectual property
Essentially they are trying to say that they own:
1) the raw data that is submitted (the name of the song in the database etc.)
2) the interface, this could mean the protocol,
the interface to the database (i.e. rom the server application to the database. E.g jdbc)
3) the algorythm to issue the select statement via the protocol
4) they take the above 3 and combine them into how they define "IP"
Simply put it is very suspect, and most likely illegal to begin with ala the DMCA - as all this information is keyed off of a digital signature that is tied to the CD (tracks, time, etc.) - that information is owned by the record company. Not gracenote.
Actually I was thinking about it a little more. And Gracenote is actually breaking the law where as FreeDB is not. This is why:
Gracenote:
Believes that they "own" the content of the database, they call this "IP" (per the buzzword that everyone is using these days). However they allow the end user to use the database limitlessly as long as the client has been "approved" by Gracenote. (if free or not free etc.)
FreeDB:
Knows damn well that it doesn't own the content of the data. FreeDB believes that the data in the database is a community resource - getting to it may be slightly different as they own the equipment that the data runs on. This is entirely dependant upon the community at large.
The reason why Gracenote is probably screwing up is simple. 1) The record company, 2) artist, or 3) individual owns the IP. Not Gracenote. If 1) the record company has trademarks regarding the name of the song - they own that for a number of years. Sorry. If there is no record company, and the artist is independant then 2) the Artist owns it. Depending on both 1 and 2 it comes back to 3) the individual consumer. Simply put unless the consumer is given a liscense to sell or give away the intellectual properity they have no right to give it away to Gracenote for sale. If they DO then Gracenote *MUST* notify the consumer that this is their intent - and as such the consumer has the option not to allow this.
None of this happens with Gracenote, simply put they take and sell. This is a sad thing indeed because Gracenote doesn't have any idea of how these companies look at the IP that THEY protect. Gracenote should take precautions as not to be sued themselves.
At any rate, thought this was interesting
Essentially gracenote is suing because they are using a competing service. Regardless of if it is the same protocol or not. This won't stand up in court simply for the fact that businesses can (and do) support community services instead of a corporation. Gracenote must have learned that they have no value to add to the service, and as such they must protect it. Sadly this is not going to fly with Freedb out there. If Roxio / Adeptec wants to use a differing service - who cares? Unless Gracenote / Adeptec had some other agreement above and beyond .... there just isn't much to stand on here.
grip does this. I have the primary server set to freedb, and secondary server set to cddb. If the data is not on freedb, it says "the information is on the secondary server but not on the primary. would you like to submit the information to the primary server?" I click yes, and that's it. very painless
I haven't really understood what Gracenote has sued Roxio for, and this letter did not make it any clearer.
As a user of the CDDB service through CD Wizard (For windows 95 at the time) I inputed nearly 200+ CDs that were not already in the database, and recently I have been writing a Windows based application and they want to charge me for access to what boils down to my own work? This is the most baseless lawsuit ever. Moreover, the reson they have brough on this lawsuit is because the storage, retrieval, categorization, and organization of the database, the access interface, and the matching and filtering methods are absolutely proprietary so what have Roxio done wrong against this?
UG!
-eric
I just blew all my mod points already. If I hadn't you can be sure that I would most definitely vote your stupid comment down for it's idiotic inline Perl expressions.
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
not my presious karma, anything but that. I'd die without it!!!
I still have like 600 points left on this account before I even come close to the 'cap' of 50....
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
Simple, :)
They hire from the FBI, where they built up all their experience at thorough investigation and truth-seeking
-jhp
/. -- the Free Republic of technology.
They're absolutely right. It's not about data, it's about intellectual property. IANAL, but at least I can spot a red herring when I see one.
-jhp
/. -- the Free Republic of technology.
That means you('re) free to go after 4th grade.
looks like they let you out early
the only alternative that wouldn't have put them in this same position would of been straight binaries-only proprietary software.
;)
how good would the database been, then??
it's unknown cause that didn't happen!
speakin of 1995: *i* remember back in '95 when win95 came out and it had a built in cd player and you could enter all that same kinda data into the cd player and it saved it into a text file in the windows directory. that was cool. not as cool as CDDB was at the time though. too bad MS didn't think of a central network database of CD titles available over the internet... i mean, they knew the internet was going to be a big thing, right?
Yes, I think so.
When I enter us.cddb.com and ~cddb/cddb.cgi, the query always fails (am I doing something wrong?).
I strongly believe that trying to be clever is detrimental to your health. -- Linus Torvalds
Although the raw data is user submitted, the storage, retrieval, categorization, and organization of the database, the access interface, and the matching and filtering methods are absolutely proprietary, and we will do what is necessary to defend this intellectual property.
Including suing someone who want to switch to a free alternative? Not mentioned.
Most of our developer partners understand our need to defray our costs, and don't demand that we provide our service for free. They also know that even if they had free access at one point in time it doesn't mean that they are guaranteed free access in perpetuity, at our expense.
But of course, if they want access to a free service without paying our expenses, then hell, we'd better get after them.
See how it works kids? Your average suit who needs to worry about business and that kind of stuff will read this excellent piece of spin-doctoring and wonder what all the hullabaloo is about. I reckon this letter cost them a fortune to draw up.
--- Hot Shot City is particularly good.
Well, there's the rub. If you as a free software developer decide to use their db, you have to agree not to use (or allow your users to use) another db. If you haven't signed the agreement they will block your program from accessing. Of course, you can always download some other program that is licensed, find out the name and version it sends to grace-less-note, and mimic that in your program. After all, there's not too much in their so-called IP that is all that sophisticated. A much better choice would be to support something like cd24db which has a better identifier algorithm and defines more formal fields for the info so it isn't a jumbled mess like grace-less-note.
Gracenote owns a patent on the hash algorithm used to ID CDs when they're inserted into the CD playing software. That hash is transmitted to a central server and then the server responds with the matching artist/title/track data for that hash. Regardless of who owns the actual data in the database, if you patent the hash algorithm then whoever (in the U.S. and whereever else the patent is valid) is using that hash algorithm to retrieve data from a server has to do so in accordance with the patent holder's wishes (whether or not you think the patent is bullshite, if you live in the U.S. that's the way things are. If you aren't in the U.S., and you don't sell products in the U.S., then you may happily ignore such silliness.)
Simply put, Gracenote (in the U.S. at least) controls how and who can connect to any data source on the Internet using their CD ID hash methodology. That's what the suit is about.
They're basically saying: Roxio's using our patented CD ID technique, and they're not following the terms under which the patent was licensed, so you are our bitches. All your cash are belong to us.
There are also many totally missing fields. Nothing for producer, composer, recording details (location, date etc), the lyrics, the liner notes etc.
Seems like the lawsuit filed against AOL for violating the Fair Labor Standards Act would work equally well against Gracenote.
8 9, 00.html
See:
http://www.techtv.com/print/story/0,23102,33102
A for-profit corporation cannot use volunteer labor without paying the minimum wage in the US. If Gracenote is using freely submitted information and they now consider it proprietary, they owe a lot of people money and the taxes on it.
Here is a small patch to show people how to make grip look like a different client. In this case it would make it look like xmcd.
Oi! I was not ment as a troll or even fud, I was simply telling people what I found, because I was supprised, it sent my login and host to cddb, I was please and proud grip hind that information. I think Grip is a great program and I use it all the time.
However looking how it hid the information, and how its submision system is interesting if you setup a secondary server in grip, it will automatically, ask if you want to post this to the primary, and also it warns people about submitting to cddb that it will become part of a private database. All I ment was I could understand why gracenotes feared it, and also why they banned it.
Did you know the cddb protocol supports/requires the client to send your user name and host name to the server with the request?
/~cddb/cddb.cgi?cmd=cddb+query+5c096c06+6+150+1270 2+50127+72362+81675+102570+2414&hello=private+free .the.cddb+Grip+2.95&proto=3
... interesting!
I grabbed this from xmcd 2.6pl0
hello=oolon+sunset.ankh.org+xmcd+v2.6PL0
User-Agent: Mozilla/4.7 (compatible; xmcd 2.6PL0)
Accept: text/plain
Having found this in xmcd I thought I would check another client, and this is what grip sent before they banned it.
GET
HTTP/1.1
Host: freedb.freedb.org
User-Agent: Grip/2.95
Accept: text/plain
I guess gracenotes didn't like an email address of private+free.the.cddb and of course there is grip's submission system which was how do i say
As a show of support, I've modified my copy of Winamp to query freedb instead of CDDB. (I'm not sure if the Linux players query CDDB or not... haven't ventured that far into Linux yet.)
Here's how:
Open the Winamp Preferences window and look under input plug-ins for "Nullsoft CD/LineIn plug-in." Select that item and click Configure. A window will pop up entitled "CD playback settings." Change the value in the CDDB server field to read as follows:
freedb.freedb.org:8880
And of course make sure the "Use CDDB" option is checkmarked.
I encourage all Winamp users who support freedb to do this.
Consider this hypothetical situation. You go to one of the numerous electronics or computer retailers across the fruited plain and you buy a computer off the shelf. (Please...you can stop laughing now at the absurdity of this possibility.) The thing's preloaded with the latest bluescreen inducer. (We're also assuming that, for whatever reason, thinking different isn't an option.) You'd rather replace the preloaded software with something that's a little more reliable. You borrow a copy of $LINUX_DISTRO|$FREEBSD_DISTRO from a friend and blow away Win$YEAR when Billy sends some attack lawyers down from Redmond and slaps you with a lawsuit for depriving him of any future revenue when Win`expr $YEAR + 1` comes along.
How is the above hypothetical any different than what Gracenote is trying to pull off here? They seem to be under the impression that once you use their service in your software, you're stuck with them forever.
(Does anybody have a tool and/or a project (probably of a distributed nature) going to brute-force CDDB for all possible data and pass the info along to one of the free (as in speech) alternatives?)
20 January 2017: the End of an Error.
Maybe, but without user submissions, Gracenote would have no data. How could Google charge for a search service if it didn't have any web pages to search?
>too bad MS didn't think of a central network database of CD titles available over the
:-)
>internet...
Shhhh! We don't want to give M$ any more markets to invade.
If everyone things it's bad now, just wait until M$ gets into the business - then you'll really
start to see the lawsuites fly!
Someone please mod the above post down to -1 so no-one every gets to see it.
"The best part? I became an ordained minister while not wearing pants." -- CleverNickName
They wouldn't mind outputting all that user input in one large comma deliniated text file? I'm not asking for Gracenotes code or services. The users would just like to get back what they put in.
FreeDB _gives_ people everything for free. Why should people have to pay CDDB if they're using FreeDB instead?
--
Win dain a lotica, en vai tu ri silota
My 3 days of mods just expired, so I can't mod you up, sorry. I have to say I agree with what you say. Unfortunatly everyone wants to ignore the costs and get everything for free. I think they made a pretty good point what value they think they contibute to the database.
mark
I think it's wonderful if they have a better process for maintaining there database than there competition. That's the idea.
BUT, you can't 'pout' (read 'sue') because someone chose your competitor.
The ONLY TWO POSSIBLE grounds for lawsuit would be if they truely have a patent on the protocols themselves. Specifically, the retrieval and access interface.
If that's the case, They they will also need to sue FreeDB to shut down their service because the violation is also there. (of course, most likely a new protocol would be developed and FreeDB would be back again.)
Oh, and you don't only have to READ the article. You need to try to UNDERSTAND IT as well.
-- You can't idiot-proof anything, because they're always coming out with better idiots.
A year or two ago, I made the mistake of buying a genealogy application called Family Tree Maker. After I got most of my known info entered into it, the software strongly urged me to upload it to their central systems, so the info could be used to help others with their research.
It sounded like a decent idea, but I read their policies carefully. Any info on my family that I uploaded to them would be copyrighted by them and become their property!
Needless to say, I declined to upload it. Boy, was I burned up.
Copyright Barons like Gracenote try this sort of happy horseshit all the time, thinking that if enough people jump ship to impact the business, they can always back off and look magnanimous. Well, I don't care whether Gracenote eventually stop attempting lawsuits like this or not: I'm just never going to use them again, period. I understand the arguments about rewarding good behavior. But I'm also aware that if companies fear permanent loss of business from backlash to practices like this, they're less likely to attempt it.
--
JDF
Gracenote:
Believes that they "own" the content of the database, they call this "IP" (per the buzzword that everyone is using these days).
Gracenote never claimed to own the content of the database. They own the code that accesses the database and the schema of the database. They'll have to prove that FreeDB uses that code and/or schema to win against FreeDB (if that's who they were suing), but either way they have no case against Roxio.
-
Addlepated - punk & metal
I can resolve www.hotmail.com (it redirects me to somewhere at passport.com) but I find that I cannot ping either of hotmail's nameservers. I think hotmail is in my ISP's DNS cache.
I can ping all four of apple.com's nameservers, and I can also resolve www.apple.com. Can you ping any of apple's nameservers? See their Whois entry.
I cannot ping either of gnu.org's nameservers, and I cannot resolve any host in the gnu.org or fsf.org domains. See my post below about this.
Mike
-- Could you use my software consulting serv
I think your missing the point.. Gracenote is claimin that "their" intellectual property is not the data, but the means of storage, access, and catalogzation of the user submitted data..
Not that i agree with them.. but thats what they are sayin towards the bottom of the "open letter"
~~No i can't spell, thanks for askin thoe~~
From what I understand in reading about the case, they (Gracenote) are claiming that Roxio/Adaptec developed the conectivity to Gracenote's service, and that they are now using the same code (i think this is the argument?) to connect to freedb. To paraphrase: they're still using the same protocol.
I'm not sure (though doubt) that Gracenote had anything to do with writing th actuall code (I don't think that they would own any copyright in the programs at least, but whatever). I still don't see where Gracenote hopes to go with this... time and again, the law has shown that protocols aren't protected to the degree that companies sometimes want them to be. . .
--
Never trust anyone over 90000.
Tisk Tisk.
They don't own the data... Here's my only supposition for a possible reason for the suit.
Do the older versions of EZ CD Creator (4 and below) still use the Gracenote servers? If so then services may be getting used without expected, although maybe not entitled payment.
'Course, if I ever DO find something missing, it'll be FreeDB that'll get the tracks.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Digital:Convergence was hoping everyone would use their stupid scanner to scan in data and then enter the associated text so they could have a very similar database. Pity that didn't pan out. They also tried to sue everyone when their device was reverse engineered. Must be a stupid business plan...
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
I'd have much more of a leg to stand on if I filed a class action suit demanding that all user submissions be removed from the database as they were entered with the understanding that the license of the database was GPL. Basically if the database is a copyrightable entity then permission of all copyright holders (IE: People who entered the data) would have to be sought before the license of the database could be changed. IANAL (But I play one on TV.)
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
How is Roxio causing a problem here?
They are using the patented Gracenote API which FreeDB is offering. I do think that if Roxio was using the non-patented FreeDB API instead of the Gracenote API, there would be no problems and no possible reason to sue.
-rt-
-rt-
** Evil Canadians are taking over the world. Learn about the conspiracy
How about instead of everyone running a distributed client to leech information from CDDB's database, everyone can take that same amount of time and enter their cd's into FreeDB's database instead. That's all it would really take to compete with CDDB. I do it whenever grip can't find a cd of mine, it's easy.
Here's my DeCSS mirror, where's yours?
Hey I want to get the world governments to adopt the "Convention to make Gregg the King of the fucking World, so all bow down before him! Give him your money and spread your legs if he asks." I think this is the only way to protect intellectual property, and our entire way of life. The capitalist system must move towards a Greggism otherwise the godless commies of freedb and Adaptec Inc. will destroy all you hold dear.
The current Slashdot moderation system is made by gay communists!
So, I'm a little foggy on this...what exactly is it that they own? All of this data is public information, anyone can pull up CD's on Amazon and copy all of the song info. The only difference is that Gracenote has actually paid people to enter this data.
If I pay someone a large amount of money to type in the King James Version of the Bible to post on my website, and I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that some else downloaded all of my files and posted them on their website, do I have any legal recourse? I would assume not.
Please note, I'm not a lawyer, but I play one on TV.
if you use MD5 checksums, and wear the shirt to Tijuana, you could be busted for munitions as well as DCMA violation.
maybe someone could make an interpretive dance or long haiku out of it.
"(am I doing something wrong?)."
Yes, you have been stealing Intellectual Property from CDDB and Gracenote. Shame on you.
- Steeltoe
http://www.debunkingskeptics.com/
The same way companies can't sell if they have no customers. What was excactly your point?
- Steeltoe
http://www.debunkingskeptics.com/
I have four points to bring up:
1) The cost is always moved down the chain to the end-users. Just because a company has to pay out, doesn't mean their customers don't pay their bills. Neither company or customers lives in a vacuum. I know some people believe it is possible to give more than you take/are given, but in reality that is impossible. Yes, I'm looking at the bigger picture here, not individual customers.
2) If you are paying for the service, then why on earth do Gracenote look at the submitted data as their IP? So you see, users pay more than 6 cents if they want to use CDDB and be able to share CD-information with others. They pay with their labor and freedom.
3) In order to obtain a "FREE" license, you have to be approved by Gracenote. You cannot violate any of their stupid rules about controlling where "their" information should end up. If it's a filename - it's okay, but if it's a database it's not. Where's the logic in that? What's the friggin' difference? So you see, it's not really free and you're "lucky" if you conform and is accepted at all.
4) A contract saying that you should give up your right to compete - or go to a competitor, should never be valid in the first place. IANAL, but such contracts just reaks of inefficiency and evilness. It's not even just about open markets, it's about basic freedoms.
- Steeltoe
http://www.debunkingskeptics.com/
It's just sarcasm, or a feeble attempt to be funny? ;-)
- Steeltoe
http://www.debunkingskeptics.com/
to allow us to verify that the application does not submit bad data and will not overload the servers or harm the database in any way;
...and that takes bandwidth, servers, database licenses, terabytes of storage, and an expert staff to keep it all running. Additionally, we provide multiple levels of support to our developers to help them offer the best possible applications.
Isn't the basis of CDDB the fact that all CD's do have a unique ID? If every cd has a unique ID then how exactly do you spam the database with bad data? Any entry would be detected as fraud either by the CD-ID already exsisting, or become obvoise from multiple entrys from other sources that agree one title/track info.
to ensure that developers abide by our privacy policy, which allows end-users to access the service in a way that protects their information;
Privacy poloicy? First i don't belive CDDB is really conserned about end users, they get there money via OEM. second what kind of privacy poloicy would have any relavance here?
to protect our ongoing business from, among other things, theft of our intellectual property or repurposing of our service without permission.
Thank you for saying what you really mean. that you belive the end users data is some how you IP. sure I can agree that you should own access to it, as you have maintained the data. but it's not that same as intellectual property, and not the same as a copyright, patent or whatever the hell you think it is.
Don't forget lawyers, Marketing and PR. (which is whote collectivly wrote this BS)
-Jon
this is my sig.
it's more polite, and gets closer to the point. which is why.
I imagine it must be simply on the bases of "breach of contract". a contract that must say "you may not use our competeters". however, what i bet it says is "you may not use our SDK with competitors" perhapes thats what the problem is.
Even thought the protocol for freedb is simple, i can see Roxio not using the free implementation due to the restricitve GPL license. and opted to just keeping using CDDB's SDK.
If so this is a true irony for the open source/ information wants to be free croud.
-Jon
this is my sig.
What nobody has noticed yet, and what I'm guessing Gracenote is really hoping a judge won't notice either is that there is some real foul play going on here.
For those who don't know, a classic legal maneuver is to wait until a big player (also known as Deep Pockets (TM)) comes into the picture. Then, if there's someone who's pissing you off, you try and get the big pockets rather than the real source of the problem.
I.e., Gracenote has wanted to off FreeDB for some time, but they know a law suit would just cost them a good chunk of money and they would have no hope of getting any of it back (just an injunction that says stop doing that). Now, in comes Roxio, nice big corporation with a fair amount of money. PLUS, Roxio is in a situation where they really need to look good to public/stockholders/etc. (read: recent IPO/public-trading). SO, this is perfect, says Gracenote. We can sue Roxio (who really just happened to waltz in at the wrong time with some sort of activity that pisses Gracenote off...namely, using a competitor, AFAIK), jack up our damage request for the patent infringement junk, and then just have them settle out of court to get us out of their hair! Woo hoo!!
Unfortunately, the tie between Roxio and whatever pretend infringement of Gracenote's IP that FreeDB is committing, is vanishingly weak. Moreover, there's there all these other GLARING problems with Gracenote's suit (they don't own most of the content in their database, their code was GPL'd long ago, their patent is invalid in any case, etc).
All in all, this is pretty crafty lawyering...and pretty scummy.
It's against Gracenote's terms of service to use both CDDB and FreeDB, I believe. Probably for exactly this reason.
All kings is mostly rapscallions. -Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
I propose that people learn the lesson here and just forget restitution. See revenge instead by supporting better protocols and better databases!
I did the same thing...provided several discs worth of information to them. How about we play a little of their game? I propose that we charge $.01 (US) per time that someone looks up our songs in their databases? Since they are getting $.06/user, it shouldn't be too bad for them and it sounds fair to both parties!
Doh!
I would agree. Putting the lawsuit aside, CDDB is not so bad. If they were our only option, I would not break down in tears. BUT, we do have a truly free option, so why bother? Just stick with the better one, and stop worrying about how evil CDDB may or many not be.
The only "intuitive" interface is the nipple. After that, it's all learned.
"The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than that of whether a submarine can swim" -EWD
Windows Media Player will obtain CD artist and track title information, just as most other similar software will do. Reading over the feature list for WMP7, the use of CDDB is not mentioned at all. Even ZDNet noted this in a review of WMP7. Seems that Microsoft didnt want to pay Gracenote either and has chosen to use AMG, though I am sure that Microsoft did pay a license fee of some sort. Regardless, it sure is interesting how Gracenote seems to have let Microsoft slide and chosen not to even attempt to tackle a lawsuit against them for not using their service yet they are pissed at Roxio. Nice of them to be convenient with their choices of who is infringing and who is not.
Guess they figure that Microsoft has too much money to invest in lawyers, as compared to Roxio, and therefore they would probably risk too much in litigating against the big boys in Redmond.
Here is my favorite passage
Although the raw data is user submitted, the storage, retrieval, categorization, and organization of the database, the access interface, and the matching and filtering methods are absolutely proprietary, and we will do what is necessary to defend this intellectual property.
This is just silly. I guess they are claming to own cddbp and I assume next they will file a patent on sql. Next they will be fileing a patent on hashing based on track information. This is completely silly and I hope Roxio fights them, it will turn out like the rambus suite, they will loose, waste a lot of money, hopefully pissing of the judge enough to allow the other side to counter sue, and for all of this to go away. My question is why are they suing roxio (a user) and not suing the competing service freedb? If they run a service so better then freedb, why dont they just compete, exactly like rambus. If they really were better they wouldnt need the courts they would win in the market. Its more and more obvoius that the courts are a second chance after loosing in the market place.
Haven't you thought that maybe it was done on purpose? Bush mangles our grammar every day...
. as p
http://slate.msn.com/Features/bushisms/bushisms
That's actually *not* a goatse.cx link. (I invite you to click both links; you'll indeed see that they are different -- in fact, the one below is, IMHO, better.)
/. profile to point to a freshly-created one. Lather, rinse, repeat.
As for the email address, I obviously own the domain, and will blackhole the address once it starts collecting spam. Then I'll change my
--
Steve Scherf and Ti Kan created CDDB in 1995 and wrote every line of code. Steve Scherf is, and has always been, the chief architect and a founder of CDDB Inc, now doing business as Gracenote.
So let me get this straight: it wasn't a nameless "them" that turned CDDB into the cash-greedy proprietary corporation it has now become, but rather it was one of the two co-founders of CDDB?!
Thanks, Steve. (I wonder what Mr. Kan has to say about this whole brouhaha?)
--
Are we so sure they are suing based on the contents of the DB and NOT the DB archetecture tiself? Could the IP they refer to actualy be the protocol and the database design itself that FreeDB uses? If you lok it mentions the programs sold are charged .06 per user. I didn't see any claims that it was the content at all, but rather the software that delivers the content.
If it truly is the software they are suing on, I think they have a right to sue for use of thier IP being the protocol and db design.
Lets not get narrow sighted and aim for the first obvious target. It may not be the real intent of the lawsuit.
What? me have a sig? don't be ridiculous.
This is exactly why we need more capitalism. What Gracenote and many other mega-corps are pushing for is a socialist agenda of a government enforced single distribution point for each good or service. Capitalism is a FREE MARKET! Meaning that anyone can enter, and that there is no guarantee that someone won't come along with a better product or service and put you out of business.
The CDDB server just passes along info entered by users. But the users are just passing the same info along from their album covers. If this CD data belongs to anybody, it's the copyright holders of the track listings.
(Personally, I think all the track listings are really public domain, or should be. The database is a different story. Suing a company for using a competing product (if that's what's going on) is a completely separate issue, of course.)
-Erf C.
-Erf C.
Cthulu always calls collect...
I think the problem is essentially that they took the user input in building their database then changed modalities as far as business practices. There's really a very simple solution. They should be permitted to retain their database and licensing fees... after REMOVING any and all entries that were from user input. They'll have their database and licensing fees which they want to protect. They just won't have much of a database that anyone will want to use their service..but again, they WILL have what they claim is theirs and for what they are billing. Fair enough? :) (Then again, if that's not acceptable to them, they should simply retroactively pay for all the submissions (up to the point they started charging)...in essence non-employee compensation of independant contractors for 'research and data entry services'.
Dear Mr. Hyman ,
I've read your open letter and still am having trouble figuring out why you are suing Roxio. I've seen no reason given for this and all I've read in the open letter is "feel good fluff". I agree you offer a valuable service to application developers by providing titles & cover artwork and don't have an issue with you charging for the service.
The issue I see is that Roxio's contract with your company has expired and rather than renewing with you they've decided to switch to a competing service that also happens to be free. The way I see it is you are trying to legal measures to pressure developers from switching to competing services such as FreeDB, CDindex, or MusicBrainz.
I would greatly appreciate hearing what intellectual property Roxio is actually violating.
Regards,
-withheld-
Their concern is probably based on Section 6 of their license, which reads (in part):
6.Negative Covenants and Restrictions ...
d.Your Licensed Application shall not have or
enable a function that permits transmission
of TOC or the combination of TOC together with
Data to anyone other than Gracenote.
which seems to tie closely to Section 3.b
b.You will use the Gracenote CDDB Client and the Gracenote CDDB Database as the exclusive source for CD identification and Data when your Licensed Application accesses such information by reading a CD's TOC or disc identification number and retrieves Data or related data via the Internet.
Section 11.d says,
"Either party may terminate this Agreement upon 90 days notice for any reason."
But this is where it gets interesting. They have Section 13, which reads in whole
"13.Survival of Provisions. These sections shall survive termination of this Agreement: 6, 7, 8, 12, 14, and Schedule A."
So, once you cancel this contract you're still bound by it? I can understand their restricting exclusive use to their server of their approved apps, but I don't understand how any of these provisions apply to someone who terminated their license.
John
IANALBIPOOSD (I Am Not A Lawyer But I Play One On Slash Dot)
John
I contributed some lists to CDDB because they were providing the data for free to everyone, now that they changed the conditions, I will have to ask them, remove my data!.
It is not fair, they build their bussiness based on free submissions from users because we thought that the database could be accessed for free, everyone is fooled, now the database is big and they go and charge for its access. They argue that the value is in the software that manages the interface: wrong!
That same database interface beeing empty is worth nothing.
What is not fair is to change the conditions, I will ask them something, create a new company, call it Gracenote2 with this very nice interface to a new empty database and start over again, I am sure that you will have as much submissions as before this time that users will know the new conditions and soon you will have the same data than before, with a slight difference, now your bussiness will be completly legitimate in my point of view.
From their letter they never actually say that the data in CDDB is their IP, but at the end of the letter they start talking about interfaces. It could be that Gracenote has not only sold a license to use the CDDB database to Roxio/Adaptec, but they may have sold them a license for a set of libraries to provide access to the database. Of course the license to use the proprietary libraries could say that they can't be used to connect to a competing database. If this is the case and Roxio/Adaptec hasn't written their own libraries to access FreeDB then Roxio/Adaptec would be in violation of that license.
There is a worldwide trend of granting intellectual property protections to databases and compilations of information. This is especially prevelant in European nations, given the EU Database Directive.
For instance, check out the Terms of Use adhesion contract used by the Irish affiliate of Monster.com.
" The contents of the TMP Sites, such as text, graphics, images, logos, button icons, software and other material (collectively, "Material"), are protected under European Union, Irish and international copyright, database right, sui generis right, trademark and other intellectual property laws. Except as provided in the Agreement, all Material is the property of TMP or its content suppliers or clients. The compilation (meaning the collection, arrangement and assembly) of all content on each TMP Site (other than on Private Label pages of Monster.ie) is the exclusive property of TMP, subject to any and all intellectual property rights that Customer may have in the materials prepared and posted by Customer on a TMP Site and all other prior intellectual property rights that Customer may have, and may be protected by European Union, Irish and international copyright laws. "
Why would this be of signifcance to residents outside the EU? Well, consider the Hague Convention on Jurisdiction. The purpose of the Convention is to make foreign civil and commercial judgements recognizable and enforceable in other nations. One of the most controversial aspects of the Convention regards Intellectual Property, as different nations have different IP regimes -- like Database Protections and Sui Generis rights.
Now, if you're an American, you shouldn't have to be worried about European style Database Protections, other than considering them faraway, European oddities. Under the Hague Convention, a judgement regarding Database Protections against you held in an European court under European law can be enforced against you in America.
Hope that sheds a little light on your question.
Sincerely,
Vergil
Vergil Bushnell
Insects and Grafitti Photos
...if they think this patent will stand up. All they claim is a particular hash from some information (track length, etc.). Not exactly innovative or in any way unobvious to a practitioner of the art.
If Roxio/freedb used any of the other bazillion hash mechanism out there they could sidestep this issue, but then older clients would need to be patched, and really, they shouldn't have to.
Gracenote's vaunted "Intellectual Property" boils down to a password to their servers that they have given out to everyone but now want to charge for. (Not the data, just the password!)
-Ryan C.
If you had read the whole article you would see that they are primarily calling their database ENGINE and INTERFACE their IP, not just the content of the database. While it still sucks, at least we should use valid arguments.
to protect our ongoing business from, among other things, theft of our intellectual property or repurposing of our service without permission.
I love how they call it "their" intellectual property, after stealing it from the thousands of volunteers who contributed their time and effort to creating the database. What a bunch of wankers.
--
Friends don't let friends use multiple inheritance.
.. I thought this was a particularly good bit of reasoning:
Not to mention the fact that we input a lot of data ourselves - we're CDDB users too.
Good lord! imagine how much work it must of been for them to input all that Data! I wonder, when I sent info to CDDB, did they have to hire somebody to type all that back into the system? Gawllee!
-
Starsucks
Why is it modded down as offtopic? Seems ontopic to me.
Well if you had read all the way to the bottom of my message you would have seen that I don't believe we have the whole story here. Nobody is stupid enough to sue someone for using another service. That just doesn't make sense. There has to be more to this than has been said.
yvan eht nioj
I have never submitted anything from CDDB and usually turn the feature off when I find it do to the pause I usually get when it has to go access the internet for info.
I keep hearing from the slashdot crowd about how Gracenote is trying to take over the data as their own property when it rightfully belongs to those who submitted it. While excuse me if I'm wrong but isn't the CDDB just a listing of song titles and album names? (I know there are some additional things now, but that's not the primary purpose here) And aren't those song titles and album titles rightfully the IP of the bands/record labels that came up with them in the first place? All you users which entered data into CDDB. Didn't you just crab your CD covers and input exactly what was written? So how does this give rights to the one who submitted the entry?
I would agree that Gracenote has no right to call the content their own. But I don't think the submitters have any more rights to it. I do, however, agree that Gracenote has rights to defend their service. They pay for the servers, bandwidth, development/enhancement of infrastructure, etc. They have a right to charge for that stuff.
What I find confusing about this open letter is that they don't mention FreeDB at all. They only mention Roxio trying to use their service without paying. I'm thinking we don't have the full story yet. It just doesn't make sense that they'd go after Roxio for using FreeDB. There's more to this than meets the eye.
yvan eht nioj
Oh, what the hell, here's mine. I took a different approach and asked him why they sued to begin with. -1, Redundant away.
Dear Mr. Hyman,
I just finished reading your open letter to the community regarding your lawsuit against Roxio/Adaptec (http://www.gracenote.com/open_letter.html).
What your letter fails to mention, and what I - along with numerous others - still don't understand, is why you're suing Roxio/Adaptec in the first place. From what I gather, Roxio/Adaptec has chosen not to use your CDDB service, instead opting to use a free competitor. In capitalist societies, the right to choose from whom you receive a particular product or service is a given, and in many cases, the lowest bidder gets the job.
Nowhere in your letter do you say that Roxio/Adaptec has any contract with Gracenote mandating that they use your database and your database only. Is there such a contract? If so, then Roxio/Adaptec is clearly in breach, and you've got every right to exercise your legal options. But if you don't have a prior arrangement, why exactly are you suing?
I look at your lawsuit, and I see McDonald's suing me because I decided to eat at Burger King today. That's how I'll continue to see it until Gracenote explains why the lawsuit was filed to begin with.
Regards,
Shaun
Thanks to the War on Drugs, it's easier to buy meth than it is to buy cold medicine!
They say the raw data is not what they want to protect, but only the filtered data, and the processes they use for that.
They don't say it explicitely, but do I read the willingness to submit the raw data between the lines?
Later, in 1979, the Alan Parsons Project had a hit with another song entitled "Games People Play". No lawsuit that time.
Likewise, band names are not subject to copyright, though they may be trademarked, as done by the New Riders of the Purple Sage(tm).
Mail? Put "slashdot" in the subject to pass the spam filters.
There is a legal defense of "unclean hands" which argues that the law does not protect someone because of past acts. In the MP3.com case, they argued "unclean hands" against the record companies because of certain restrictive clauses in the artist contracts. I recall this arguement was also made in the DeCSS case in relation to improper use of regional controls to defeat fair use of the disks. If this is fully litigated, the fact that this was a user-created database that changed its terms of service will certainly be argued as creating "unclean hands" in regards to the data in CDDB. This does NOT mean that code or other types of copyrights would be defeated - just the database protections of core data.
He's talking about terrabytes of data and multiple hosting but how hard are those resources to come by? I'm not saying they don't pay a lot for them, but are they using their equipment as efficiently as they can? I guess that's proprietary information.
The next value-added feature will be strong encryption and User ID verification for end users to ensure their ehm . . . safety. Implementing this feature could cost zillions in consulting fees.
Luckily, these guys are pros and they're gonna save us by making all the good choices. That's why they deserve the money!
Never found this on cddb. Same CDs are twice in the database with slightly different names, tracks are named incorrect and so on.
i admit it isnt easy to keep a big database really accurate when every in the world can submit entries. But they shouldnt be pride on this, because it is a fact the data is _not_ accurate.
J.
Tongue-tied and twisted, just an earthbound misfit, I.
My preferred ripper Audiograbber has also dropped CDDB in favor of freeDB.
This can only be a good thing.
They start the letter by stating that they thought long a hard about filing a lawsuit against Roxio. Then they state how they don't think they charge that much for thier service, and what thier service includes. Lastly, they talk about who wrote the CDDB software, and how it(the CDDB software) is thier intelectual property.
My question is, What in Gods name does any of this have to do with why Gracenote thinks that Roxio infringed on any of they're rights by switching to a free company instead of paying them. Roxio didn't break contract, it had legaly expired. They didn't steal anything from Gracenote, and as far as I know the Album name/Artist name/track name format has been long associated with identifying one record/artist/track form another.
This suit is gonna flop so hard.
RA7
-
"Consistency is the hobgoblin of small minds" - RWE
Gracenote fails to mention that when referring to their "intellectual property", they are mostly referring to the patent they have on the generating the unique key's for identifying a particular CD by segment count and length.
Which leads me to ask the question: if this is their whole IP claim, couldn't FreeDB simply use a different algorithm (say MD5) to generate a unique CD key ???
"Perfect numbers like perfect men are rare." -Descartes
"It's a darned interesting business-plan. To simply sue everyone who decided they didn't want to be your customer, and chose a competing product!"
Yep, interesting. And STUPID. Just look at hwo far that got RAMBUS... RAMBUS (that fradulent IP Lawfirm) has made enemies of the whole RAM industry, which means their company long term life expectancy wasn't good even IF they'd clubbed Infineon.
Gracenote is doing the same thing. By swinging a club at Roxio they are alienating ANY AND ALL of their paying customers. Gracenote should instead be making their service SUPERIOR to FreeDB (faster servers, more accurate data, etc) which might induce tbe larger companies like Adaptec derived Roxio to choose them.
But this is 2001, improving your product so it suceeds on MERIT is NOT AN OPTION, suing is...
Go figure.
=== The price of freedom is eternal vigilance
"Maybe, but without user submissions, Gracenote would have no data. How could Google charge for a search service if it didn't have any web pages to search?"
Exactly, and as the operator of several websites, Google charging for services (in effect making money off my strictly non-commercial, paid for out of my own pocket sites), I'd refuse to let them list my site.
But then, as the author of my websites, I clearly own the original content contained there. Fuck, under the DMCA, if I were to remove the meta tags (used by search engines) and put in a DMCA copyright notice granting NO ONE the right to list my site in a search engine, I could probably sue Google for "circvumventing" my "protection scheme" (weak as it would be) under the DMCA, if they by-passed it by manually listing it, describing the site, etc, instead of using the (not there) meta tags.
Whether users punching in CD tracklists/titles "owned" that information is debatable. However, what is NOT debatable is that they owned the LABOR they gave to type it all in. IMO, IANAL for Gracenote to make "ownership" even of their database stick, they'd have to dump the user entered one and re-create it on their dime...
But, as I said on another thread, Gracenote's suit against Roxio is groundless, UNTIL they sue FreeDB and establish that FreeDB is an illegal service. Roxio is in effect, a user of a service that is legal.
Why do they not do this? Mostly because they know they'd lose to FreeDB, as the have no grounds to sue them either. Even though they later patented their interface, the interface that FreeDB uses was GPL'ed. Once GPL'ed it can't be taken back...
The court should not only dismiss Gracenote's suit, they should do so "with prejustice" which means that it cannot be re filed in it's current form. This suit is nothing more than using the courts as a form of extortion. In effect, "putting out a hit" on a business that is simply going for the best deal.
=== The price of freedom is eternal vigilance
"Except for the fact that you're ignoring the accepted protocol for excluding search engines. Your proposal is as legally weak as putting a statement like "This site may be indexed by search engines at a fee of $50 per listing." at the bottom of the page. You'd get laughed out of court."
Not necessarily, if any ridimentary "copy protection" was attempted, because of the DMCA...
I agree with you, such a suit would be STUPID, and should be laughed out of court. And it's something I'd never do. However, the fact that the DMCA, as passed, as argued and ruled on by "judge" Kaplan in the 2600 case (particularly his no-link to DeCSS extension) would seem to make such a suit possible. I only provided this example to once again show why the DMCA is bad law.
Maybe a court would laugh me away if I sued a pay-per-search Google for "circumventing" my no-list, no link copyright notice (by circumventing my not having descriptive meta tags). But do you think that these courts would laugh away such a suit being brought against Google by Time Warner (who for sake of argument, started their own pay-per-search engine and wants all their content ONLY listed on it)? I don't think so...
=== The price of freedom is eternal vigilance
Uh, actually it's the other way around. Rather than address why they think Roxio has violated their intellectual property by using a Gracenote competitor, they address why they think "our" contributions to CDDB somehow became "their" I.P.:
Next time, please read the damn article before posting. Oh, this is /. Nevermind!
If all this should have a reason, we would be the last to know.
...What possible legal objection could they have to the FreeDB project? FreeDB used a *GPL* version of the CDDB system (released by Mr. Scherf under the GPL as described in the readme which accompanied the release), started their system with data that was freely distributed with the GPL CDDB code, and supplemented it with data freely contributed by individual users. Maybe I'm just blind, but I cannot see anything that could even remotely be considered infringement of patent, copyright, or any other Gracenote IP. They can patent all they want to, but that does not retroactively invalidate the prior GPL releases of their system.
FreeDB is not copying Gracenote's current code. They are not stealing Gracenote's current data. They are not using Gracenote's network infrastructure. Therefore, they are doing nothing wrong...and thus, Roxio cannot be guilty of any sort of "contributory infringement" because there is no infringement occuring in the first place.
The only possible legal basis I can see for this lawsuit would be some sort of clause in Roxio's contract that forbids them from going to a compteting system. If that is the case, however, it's really their own fault for not reading the contract thoroughly before signing it. Yeah, it's a sleazy clause, but Roxio's legal team should have been more on the ball...
DennyK
What happen to it? It got slash dotted?
CDDB's big asset wasn't the data, it was the thousands of users who performed data entry for the CDDB database for free. Shit, Adaptec should charge them to use CDDB, because it's essentially providing GraceNote with free data entry personnel!
What a bunch of lamers.
Please read before modding as troll... I can actually see why Gracenote charges for the service. According to the letter, the charge is $0.06 per user, which I find quite reasonable, considering that they surely use quite a bit of bandwidth, and have quite a few servers to maintain. As for the issue of user submissions, I think the argument can be made that there really is no issue, as A: the users themselves pay nothing, and get quite a useful service. Another important note is that Gracenote gives FREE licenses to non-commercial 'vendors'. This way, those who use the technology in their commerical products pay a small per user fee to maintain the network, pay the editors salarys, etc, and free developers can still use it.
That said, I think the lawsuit is totally ludicrious, unless there WAS a clause in the contract, in which case, Roxio is obviously screwed...
TODO: Something witty here...
Don't like it? LET 'EM KNOW ABOUT IT! Did you submit dozens of entries to the CDDB only to have Gracenote steal your work? Contact them and DEMAND they remove the entries you submitted. I doubt they will, but it will scare them if they think there is a chance someone (any one person) will be able to force them to remove entries submitted by CDDB users who did not authorize Gracenote's usage of their data. Yeah, this is stupid. Need caffiene absorbtion to make brain work good. 'Salright?
Suck it through a straw....
"It's not just data, it's a service
Gracenote provides fast, accurate and secure data delivery to end-users that is available around the world 24 hours a day, 7 days a week to more than 25 million unique users a month. We operate redundant systems in multiple locations to provide what we feel is the best-possible user experience, and that takes bandwidth, servers, database licenses, terabytes of storage, and an expert staff to keep it all running. Additionally, we provide multiple levels of support to our developers to help them offer the best possible applications. Thousands of developers understand and appreciate the value and quality of our service, and are willing to pay our modest licensing fees to support it."
How is Roxio causing a problem here? They aren't hijacking Gracenote's servers, they are just using data from elsewhere -- and, as Gracenote says it's not about the data. And all they are saying after that is that they give great service for their licensing fees. So? Just because they do a great job, everyone should be forced to use their service?
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Stay in school, kids! Peace out, Dubya
To: dhyman@gracenote.com
Sent: Thursday, May 17, 2001 7:37 PM
Subject: About Suing Roxio
Dear Mr. Hyman -
I read your open letter regarding the lawsuit against Roxio, and I would like you to know that I am sad to see how you are digging in your heels over this.
The fact is, regardless of however much code Gracenote has developed, that the data was provided to CDDB by end-users who, for the most part, were contributing to other end-users. If CDDB had said, "help us build our database so we can get big enough to stop anyone else from doing it," you would have never ended up where you are now.
I do not dispute that you have every right to ask that developers who build connectivity to your servers be asked to pay a fee. What I do dispute is your right to try to force, by abuse of the law, anyone who would dare choose to not use your service to have no choice. And you may not realize this, but in the end, your war is against the users, those whom you are trying to deprive any choice in cd-databases.
Your behavior on this matter is wrong. Why is it that you do not respect the right of others to compete with you? Just because they are offering a free service does not mean that they have done something wrong. In your letter, you state that you provide quality service. I do not doubt that. If you are that much better than freedb, then you have nothing to fear.
I will switch my CD-ripping software to connect to freedb, and encourage everyone I know to do the same. Please discontinue this lawsuit. Give users a choice.
Thank you
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Stay in school, kids! Peace out, Dubya
Does this mean the GPL (which CDDB's orginal software was under) could do the rounds in court?
It will be interesting to see what they think of the license.
Very insterting,
I will have to take a look into this on my linux boxes.Sounds to me like linux is starting to become like MS with spyware in all the products.
Incarnate
what a coincidence -- suck has some commentary on gracenote and other similar companies in their daily essay. Mmmm....suck...filler archives....
I have an idea how to fix them. Let's sue Gracenote and make them add an option to remove the content from CDDB. This way, everyone could take back what they added to CDDB [and maybe more]. Then let'see what happens to CDDB.
"We invented guns, drugs, nuclear bombs, but stupidity beats it all badly"
This is a new threat to free software, on the same order as anti-circumvention measures built into law. They both have the same goal: to lock you into a proprietary system to access data. This is a bigger threat than proprietary software. Replacements can be written for any software, but if you are not allowed to access data, you can not make a free equivalent.
Open Source is not Free!