Acacia Steps Up Content-Transfer Patent Claims

MarkRH writes "Over at ExtremeTech we've got an in-depth story on the 20-odd suits being filed against the online porn industry by Acacia Research Corp., which has been previously covered on Slashdot. Now, several online porn companies are forming an association called IMPA (the 'Internet Media Protective Association'). We sat in on conference calls held by the industry, and interviewed Acacia executives. Bottom line: the porn industry is just the beginning."

Comments

The bright side

[banzai51]

In aggregate, these guys should have the money to defeat these 'patent' claims.

Brilliant move

[lightspawn]

This company is looking to legitimize the patent by going after the shady companies which as we all know are destroying the immortal souls of kids everywhere. How can you not love them? They're fighting to keep your kids safe from nipples!

Now they'll have the parents and politicans and whatever on their side, and perhaps somehow make people believe that going along with this patent scheme is great for the moral future of a terrorist-free America... and then there would be no reason not to go after fortune 500 companies which don't much care for lawsuits but have enough money to license any patent, no matter how preposteriorous.

All right .....

[binaryDigit]

now we get to side with the pR0n industry. I guess lame ass patents transcend most of the normal things that the average /.'er dislikes (M$, Sony, et al).

When is the USPTO going to realize that there is a significant problem with patents and how they are applied to technology and do a major overhaul of the entire system. Is there a group that is working on getting this pushed through?

Re:All right .....

[JonWan]

When did Slashdotters NOT support the porno industry?

Remember this is the "Patent it all and let the courts sort it out" U.S. Patent Office you are talking about.

Hmm.. well, check two articles down.

[User 956]

Looks like we found the answer to today's Ask Slashdot:

Sometimes it appears like the U.S. is losing its edge in technology. Well, I was wondering what the Slashdot community at large thinks is wrong (or right) with the U.S. and technological innovation?"

this kinda stupid

[Dylan_t_p]

Thing is IF they were to win this battle (acacia not the porn industry) where would they drawn the line? So many differnt people acording to their claims are infringing on their patents Nasa for one, all major internet news sources stream content over the internet too so where do you stop? Do you sue the government for infringing on your patents? Take down the news Media? This is a pretty good example of why the government should do some major changes on how patents work so they don't get abused like this.

Anyways thats my two cents let the down-modding begin

the legal term "go fuck yourself" applies

[poot_rootbeer]

I'm surprised that Acacia actually seems to have the balls to go through with their threats to bring this to court. It would only take one ruling that the patent is overly broad and inapplicable to ruin their business plan forever.

Threatening to sue is a great way to make money, because there's very little expense and great potential for return involved. (It's like a meatspace equivalent to email spamming.)

But actually suing people is a much more risky business plan. You can never be sure that the men and women on the jury are going to act in the best interest of your bottom line.

WTF?

[wideBlueSkies]

>>Online porn providers represent an ideal target, executives at Acacia say

Why, because they're profitable?

Not that I agree with Arcadia's belief that it owns those patents, but they shouldn't be single-ing out a particular industry. They should be going after everyone, not just the adult firms.

It sounds like gold-digging to me. Perhaps they should wait until their patent claims are considered legally valid before they try to strong arm anyone.

The good news is...

[dark-nl]

From the article: "[...] the lawsuits represent a bet-the-company proposition."

If they lose this, then it's game over for Acacia and a victory for the human race.

Re:I say, "Great!"

[LostCluster]

It's that kind of logic that these twerps are hoping for...

The problem with it is that if a porn site loses the patent cases first, then when they go after AOL Time Warner and friends they can point to their porn case victories. Content doesn't mater in the patent. If it's a violation of the patent to transfer a .mpg of porn, it's a violation to transfer a .mpg of a religious gathering too.

This sets up a horrible sitation for the big content owners. If they throw their weight into this case, they're gonna get labeled as supporting porn. If they stay out of this case, they're gonna get hit hard with patent claims of their own...

And then once the big guys go down, well, are their any forms of digital media on your site?

Re:mm..

[dirvish]

Why do you think the internet is as succesful as it is? PORN! Why do you think pay-per-view exists? PORN! Porn gets most forms of media going.

What happened to the good old days?

[Anonymous Coward]

The days back when Real Men did Real Work. None of this bullshit with hijacking patents and holding businesses at ransom.

Why Porn?

[spoonboy42]

It strikes me as odd, at least from a logical perspective, that Arcacia would try to "enforce" their patents by first going after online porn. It would make infinitely more sense if they went after the actual "infringers": namely, the companies producing streaming audio and video software. Going after Real, Apple (QT), M$ (WMP), and the like would have more legal validity, since webcasters purchase technology from these companies that they assume is legal... If any illegal goings on were happening, it stands to reason that the streaming media software providers would be the target.

Of course, there's a pretty shady reason why Acacia is going after porn first: A lot of people, particularly in the judicial system, have very little sympathy for pornographers. They will, at least subconciously, be much more receptive to the image of pornographers as "criminals", since they already consider them evil.

If they win their suits against the porn distributors, though, they have a legal precedent for hitting all kinds of companies, including the software providers (presumably where the money is), as well as anybody who delivers multimedia over the internet. So, the social conservatives who might hand down a token judgement against porn will be in the awkward position of setting a precedent to sue, say, a church that delivers sermons streaming over the Internet.

As with a lot of civil liberties issues, pornography is the frontier of freedom in this case. Many civil libertarians (myself included, since I'm also a feminist) probably wouldn't mind if porn suddenly disappeared. The problem is, if we legislate or judicate against pornography, then we set a very dangerous precedent for harrassing all kinds of expression (usually based on an arbitrary definition of morality, but in this case, purely economic reasons). Additionally, it's really none of my or the state's business what consenting adults do in front of a video camera. Anyway, even if you find pornography morally repugnant, it's still worth defending, when you consider what happens if we allow freedom of expression to erode at its very edge: the erosion spreads to radical political views, then alternative religious beliefs, and so on, eventually leaving a homogenous orthodoxy of ideas. Or, in this case, you simply have a parasite on the patent system getting in the way of people doing business, expressing themselves, and innovating.

Re:Why Porn?

[Anonymous Coward]

Many civil libertarians (myself included, since I'm also a feminist) probably wouldn't mind if porn suddenly disappeared.

Don't confound prudishness with feminism. Antiporn feminists try to blur the line with all sorts of nonsense about how "women are being abused" by porn . They want you think that all the women in porn are clueless fluff-heads who can't stand up for themselves and decide on their own if they want to be in the porn industry or not. In their next breath, these antiporn feminists will tell you that women should have freedom of choice, and that they should be considered mens' equals in both intelligence and decision making. They try to have it both ways -- that women are too stupid not to be in porn, and are "exploited", and that women are wise enough to take care of themselves.

Sometimes they toss in the notion that porn is inherently "degrading" to women, trying to demonize their opponents. But strangely, females still decide to do porn: maybe they think that having a few hours of sex on camera with a handsome male lead is less "degrading" than, say, being mired up to the elbows in chicken guts all day, (for minimum wage, like the women in the soup factory back home), or less degrading than living on permanent welfare. I know if I could make money to have sex with beautiful women, I'd certainly consider it.

Feminism, (as opposed to female supremists with a personal agenda for power), is based on the notion that women as intelligent and capable as their male counterparts, and should be treated as equals -- not sheltered like children. Anti-porn feminism doesn't make a lot of sense to me.

Porn exists because people want it. There may certainly be a criminal element interested in exploting porn -- but then again, the criminal element exists to exploit whatever it can. The mob used to run bars when drinking was illegal, and lotteries when lotteries were illegal.

I don't buy the argument that because "the mob controls porn stars" that porn is bad. It tells me the mob is bad, and we need better policing, and better support by the community for porn stars, so that when a criminal abuse takes place, the porn star isn't ashamed to talk about it publicly. That would involve treating them like people, instead of "victims" or outsiders, though.

From personal experience, I've talked to a stripper who told me that she tried to work at a donut shop, but quit because she didn't like how she was treated.

She was expected to take verbal abuse from her customers and not answer back, even if they were in the wrong. Working at the strip club, if a customer got rude with her, she was free to answer back as she saw fit. She felt she had more freedom as a stripper than as a donut cashier, and that was important to her.

Every time I hear someone rabbiting on about how women expressing their sexuality, and getting paid to do it somehow "victimizes" them, I think of the stripper I met. And I wonder if her detractors are blinded by their sense of "morality", oblivious to the truth, or just plain jealous.
--
AC

Re:The contribution of business to the internet

[bnenning]

At the risk of overstating the case, I do think this is a further example of market forces alone being very far from the wholly benign influence they're so often touted as being.

Note that idiocies like this are only possible because the Patent Office, a government agency, has displayed spectacular incompetence. Intellectual property is a government granted monopoly, and when it is abused there's almost always plenty of blame to be shared by both the public and private sector.

Re:Best quote in article

[Tablizer]

Get paid to surf porn. That's my dream job. Plus if they win, they get to audit the porn companies

Note that you can't be choosey. You would have to also audit gay porn, poop fetishes, and goatse-like fetish places.

You still game?.....Hello?

Re:What the porn industry should do...

[NineNine]

Larry Flynt has been doing this for years. I don't know the last count, but I know that he has gotten at least SEVERAL senators/congressmen to resign. He regularly offers bounties of tens of thousands of dollars for slimy information on slimy politicians. If I were to meet one famous person in my life, it'd be Larry Flynt. That guy's got some huge balls.