Slashdot Mirror
Transparent Web Caching Patented
JohnQPublic writes "BIND author and all-around Internet personality Paul Vixie and Mirror Image Internet have recently received US patent 6,581,090, specifically '..technology that efficiently stores and retrieves content requests and balances Web traffic between origin servers to improve performance and speed' - sounds an awful lot like what Akamai do. There's a press release from last week that gives some lovely 'details', including this little gem from CEO Alexander M. Vik: 'We anticipate that these patents and our technology solutions will encourage large groups of corporations to become customers of Mirror Image services. We also recognize that this technology is a critical component of other content delivery services and weâ(TM)ll be attempting to work cooperatively with our competitors and their customers to address this issue.' Can you say 'patent infringement suit'?"
This better not affect squid.
If it does, I can see a number of ISPs going belly up due to the increased cost of traffic.
"Smoking helps you lose weight - one lung at a time" -- A. E. Neumann
These types of lawsuits are what will ruin the Internet for everyone. I am going back to my 9600 baud modem and gopher.
"And I for one welcome our new insect overlords."
if they move all their assets to India or other low-cost countries, they hit a double whammy : cheaper labour + no pattent fees.
The US pattent office is well on it's way to push every profitable tech offshore... hey, maybe I should pattent that !
When will I end this grieving ? When will my future begin ?
What we need is people to allow their patented software to be used royalty-free in GPL'd software. This way, they would still get royalties from commercial vendors (which they should) without hurting open source. It seems like this would be a perfect candidate.
I'm sorry, but our comnpany has patented First Posts. Our lawyers will be in touch shortly.
Oh, I see you have a different implementation (first Pists), but that means diddly squat nowadays doesn't it, bwah-ha-ha.
I am patenting a system for the moderation of online discussion boards using different models of messages and a scoring system that can allow users to browse only high-rated or sometimes-funny but nefariously modded down posts.
i ve
They will range like so:
Insightful
Funny
Offtopic
Troll
Informat
Flamebait
The scoring will range from a -2 though 5 basis, users may boost certain catagories of messages by as many points as they want, further allowing them to see what they want to see.
This system is free to use, but you must agree to the EULA
EULA:
Me ( Eric(b0mb)dennis ) hereby reserves the right to freely use any property you own, including, but not limited to:
Kitchen and/or pantry (I need to eat)
Toiletry (The bush just aint cutting it anymore)
Your personal computer(s) (My name is Juan and I am posting this message from a chicken coupe in The Country formally known as Iraq, i am using RFC 1149 in conjunction with a new form of animal telepathy to post this message -=patent pending=-)
I also reserve the right to change the moderation of any post I see fit.. (This should be modded +5 Troll, if it's not done, expect some SCO action on your butt)
Thank you, and please be sure to invite me over for dinner... 50,000 Dinas isn't even buying me a zucchini anymore
Excuse me, I don't mean to impose, but I am the ocean
The patent
This is an Excellent example of why software patents are bad
Right now, if you are a European citizen, like I am, then Write to your European Member of Parliament (MEP), and tell them that you think software patents are a bad thing, and that they should vote against them on June 30th.
The forthcoming European vote was covered here on slashdot a few days ago, but did not make the front page, so did not get much coverage.
You can find a list of European Members of Parliament here To avoid annoying them, do write you your MEP, not to a party leader. If you have several, please take a look at which issues they cover, and chose the one that take an interest in trade/technology etc.
Remember, Write NOW! we don't want this sort of cr*p in
This is starting to get out of hand!
I dont live in US(god bless that nation), but I am afraid that these "IP properties" enforcements is going to far. I use the term "IP properties in general though I shouldn't, but you know what I mean. Will patents and court decision made in US affect me in europe? Will I have to move to some obscure island where no enforcment of US interests exist?
Having worked with Mirror Image I have to say that the way Mirror Image is doing the caching differs strongly from Akamai's.
While Akamai is putting cache servers in many IP provider's locations (I think more than 5000 so far), Mirror Image is concentrating its caches in about 20 locations connected to the big exchange and peering points. The Mirror Image presenters were explicitely stressing this point and that this other approach is the key to Mirror Image's success. So I guess the patent covers the Mirror Image Way Of Doing Things rather than the idea to cache websites to speed up transfer rates.
Can you say 'patent infringement suit'?
Yeah, I bet Akamai even installed a vixie-cron job to launch the suit automatically in the next few days.
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
Pretend web caching. That's where you:
mv hellworld.c superduperwebcacherino.c and charge
joe cluelesscorp 25 grand for it. It's so perfect
you don't even have to reconfigure your browsers!
Then you go to mexico and live like a king for
3 years before coming back with a new identity
and patent pretend IDS.
For every annoying gentoo user, are three even more annoying anti-gentoo crybabies. Take Yosh from #Gimp for example.
Does the patent office seem more interested with getting new patents out of the hideous "pending" ohase instead of investigating the ramifications of such patents? Patent law is specific, and it is not supposed to be this easy to get a patent on a technology that everyone has been using for so long...
If we want to fight this patent battle the solution is not to sit back, wait until a patent comees out, then bitch about it. We need to be pro-active.
The EFF and/or the FSF should be actively going out and patenting every software idea that comes out of free software under the sun. They could then just release the patents with some kind of liberal license, with a revocation clause.
This would give you two things... it would supposedly prevent other companies from patenting the same thing, and it would also give us a portfolio a-la IBM to use as defense... as in if these guys try to sue squid, the EFF comes in and says "well we have a patent on using the color red on menus... so if you sue squid we will revoke your patent license and sue you!" Stupid example but you get the idea.
All you cache are now belong to us.
Can somebody please explain how this is so different from the transparent proxy setup (ipf/ipnat rules and squid) that's been well documented in, for example, the OpenBSD world for ..... well for a really long time?
*sheesh*
#include "gettingoutofhand.h"
I worked for MII a few years ago (the company I worked for was bought out by them) and everything I saw indicated they were on their way to destruction and should make their time.
The Vik brothers have been using MII as part of a shell game for years - I wonder when they got the bright idea to try and make money with it?
I commented before about not trusting Vixie very much due to some of the things he has done in recent years, and he proves me right.
/ 02/03/16562 43&mode=nested&tid=95)
Makes MAPS a pay service after orbs (their biggest competitor at the time) closes up shop.
Creates the "members-only" only bind list which deals with bind related security problems.
(http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=01
I don't know if maybe he is pissed off since he isn't thought of as a god or what, but turning internet community related items into pay services isn't a way to become the net got.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but 3 lefts do - Lew of GO magazine
The generally accepted term for this type of technology is "Content Distribution Networking" or "Content Delivery Networking". Akamai, Speedera, Digital Island etc. are Content Distribution companies which will (according to the necessary commercial agreements), take a customer's content and distribute it around their overlay CDNs. Generally speaking, these CDNs overlay the traditional Internet using co-located space in customer or exchange point datacentres. There are, however, some CDN organisations who take the approach of building their own infrastructure.
"Transparent Web Caching" on the other hand is generally a term applied to the transparent redirection of TCP port 80 IP traffic on access equipment through a set of HTTP proxy devices. This technique is used by many ISPs to force users to use their Webcaches even if the user thinks they are being clever by disabling the pre-defined HTTP Proxy settings in their Web browser.
Until recently, you could build your own CDN ($$$) using software from people such as Inktomi, but can still use devices from other manufacturers such as Network Appliance or Cisco Systems.
Contribute to the online videogame encyclopedia: GamerWiki
From the article: "Mirror Image developed the transparent Web caching patent in 1996"
From Mirror Images "About Us"
1997: Mirror Image Internet Inc. is founded.
The earliest date on the Patent itself is September 30, 1997.
IIRC Squid also was around in '97.
The exact dates will be interesting.
They might want to watch out, because from what I understand AOL has the world's largest internet cache system (all running Linux, actually). And I'd bet that it's been in place since before 1996.
'patent infringement suit'
Where is my farking cookie?
Excuse me, I don't mean to impose, but I am the ocean
This is the kind of crap that both pisses me off and freaks me out.
It's like what's next? A system of delivering electronic information and images over telco voice and data lines? When are we going to get some sanity injected into our wonderful patent office? I shudder, knowing it just ain't going to happen any time soon...
It's like you have to be a fricken jerk to make it in this world. Seems only people like this make it while you and I fight to find that next contract or maybe that next training/cert will convince some non-technical HR person that our skills/ed. actually DO fit the job requirements "and then some".
Now I have to try and get some sleep and I'm all worked up! Crap.
I've been doing this with OpenBSD IP Bridging and Squid for about 4 years. I'm sure others have been doing it longer. I wonder if there is prior art in that (or if the non-obvious clause applies).
If yes, i see the following problem:
Country X has a maniacal patent office that patents every possible idea (breathing , sex, everything). Then companies from country X , sue companies from countries A,B,C and win. This way, country X has a strong grip on world bussiness and innovation.
Because of such a scenario, i think countries will protect themselves from runaway patenting fury. It is a big problem in the US and i suspect it is only growing bigger, but i doubt others will be affected by this unless we adopt the same techniques. (which we sometimes blindly do).
Slashdot Sig. version 0.1alpha. Use at your own risk.
Well, Slashdot readers won't be much affected by that last patent. Unless you cover porn, or goatse.
Here...
Dupe posts are
Some of us, particularly those of us smart enough and opportunistic enough to actually get software patent applications submitted, believe in them (well...most of them anyways).
I and many others busted our asses thinking of ideas and developing them and I think it's a bunch of crap that you boneheads on Slashdot think that's a bad thing. You think it's fucking easy to think of something for the first time, prove that it works, do the prior art and existing patent searches and then write up the application?
It's a lot easier to moan about the evils of software patents than to actually *earn* one. I don't work on carburetors or maybe I'd patent some new nozzle or something. I choose to invent software things which are every bit as real to me as a more efficient carburetor is to a hardware guy. It's an invention and to my little programming mind it's a real thing.
I've said it here before and I'll say it again. In twenty years I'll have patents on the wall with my name on them and be damn proud of them. You can print out your little anti-software patent diatribes on Slashdot and hang those up and maybe your grandkids will be as impressed with those as mine will be with my patents, but I fucking doubt it.
OK! Someone here with the resources to do so should create a website where people can post their ideas, just to fight these useless *BUSINESS* laws at their very own playingfield.
Better still; ban all patents in the software world (which would mean that the USPTO would lose a lot of money), it's the beginning of a better world.
I think people have enough crap to go through each day than to have *BUSINESS* laws stealing ideas from people who GENUINELY want to improve something for everyone.
It adds up... That's for sure!
Listen, buster. I have no idea what you are talking about "chat-room" but it doesn't sound good. I also have no idea why you decided to taint my post which, (using my amazing powers of influence to gain knowledge of slashdot articles 3 days ahead of time) took me a good 12 hours to write, relay to pigeons, and send them on their way... I'm telling you, though... RFC 1149 is utterly useless when CowboyNeal is the editor... they won't even go near that stench... that's a bug, please fix it. Best regards, Juan
Excuse me, I don't mean to impose, but I am the ocean
'We anticipate that these patents and our technology solutions will encourage large groups of corporations to become customers of Mirror Image services'
It's the technology that should be getting the customers, not the patents, it's this kind of attitude (we're using patents to encourage customers - read FUD) that leads to forgetting why patents are there, to allow you to enjoy the benefit of the attractiveness of your INVENTION, not the attractiveness of your patent
Johns: Well, how does it look now? Riddick: Looks clear.
This one looks like its perfectly legitimate, but given the nature of the business and the patent system I doubt he will get very much out of it.
applicants ay the patent office for each application they file, as well as different fees for the number of claims filed, for continuations of applications and a lot of other things.
The patent office also gets paid for term extensions, that means when your patent is issued, the applicant pays the issue fees, and then at set years, additional fees to continue the patent term, the applicant just doesnt magically get 20 years of protection without additional costs. In fact several hundred patents expire every 2 weeks because the fees werent paid.
The vast majority of patents are approved the first time, believing so is just ignorant.
Bring back the old version of slashdot.
If you create something new and innovative, then all power to you - only the most rabid OSS freaks will complain about that. However, if you patent 'using dual muscle/bone hybrid appendages for transport' (ie walking), or of course amazon's 'click once to purchase items' or even BTs 'using links to navigate the web' then everyone is going to get upset.
"You think it's fucking easy to think of something for the first time,"
I do that every day mate, every bloody day.
"prove that it works,"
Likewise - it's called my job (Research Associate BTW), if it doesn't work then I'm not doing my job properly.
"do the prior art and existing patent searches and then write up the application?"
No, because I never would.
" I don't work on carburetors or maybe I'd patent some new nozzle or something."
Yeah, you could probably get some ideas by studying the inside of your own nose, you seem to have your head so far up your own arse that you'll be able to see it quite clearly.
"In twenty years I'll have patents on the wall with my name on them"
Assuming that civilisation last 20 years (which I doubt), I hope you do. Because then your grandkids will know how much of a wanker up their grandad was.
Whoa, wait a minute here.
There are a lot of people, myself included, who think that the problem lies with the way software patents are researched and granted in the US, not necessarily with software patents by themselves. Not to mention the fascination US companies have with taking everything to court.
IANAL, but I believe there are at least two main tests that should be applied before granting a patent: (1) it should be new, and (2) it should not be obvious.
The first test looks at "prior art": is this a common practice or is this really novel and unique? Many software patents have been given for things that are very commonplace: the online "shopping cart", using XOR to draw a cursor on a graphics screen, and now (possibly) caching Internet content. The Patent Office seems to be doing a particularly poor job of making sure that software techniques being patented are actually new and different. It seems to stem from a huge number of applications coupled with a fundamental lack of understanding about software.
The second test, that it is not obvious, is a little more confusing, at least to me. Things that are obvious to programmers probably aren't obvious to, forgive me, normal people.
Having said all that, I'm sure that some people disagree with software patents altogether. I'll let them explain their point of view.
I am fairly sure these guys used to run a company called Locomo here in Stockholm, that did Akamai-style hosting. I am also fairly sure they went bankrupt. Living la vida Locomo.
It's not so much software patents in general, as the ridiculously absurd software patents, that clearly did not deserve to be granted in the first place, that get people riled up; "One Click" ordering, for instance. Patents are not meant for things that are obvious or trivial. Far, far, too many software patents that are granted, are either one or more of:
trivial
obvious
already implemented, dozens of times over
covered by other existing patents
etc.
That said, I oppose software patents in general, anyway. Software can (and should) be copyrighted, which prevents somebody from stealing your implementation. If somebody else can work out a better (or just alternative) way to do what your software does, they should be allowed to use it, IMHO.
// TODO: Insert Cool Sig
isnt "intercepting a message from an Internet user directed to a content provider address" illegal in the States? Wouldnt this be conducive to acts of terrorism?
Such a free country becoming not so free so quickly on the backs of the so free laws. Damn shame.
Hi,
If you read the texts published by the EP-members that published eg
this
then you will see that they claim to avoid these kinds of "frivolus patents". I guess that one has to really read the proposal to be sure. At least make sure that you say something else than "Don't do it - it will be like horrible like in America" - because the MEP's are told that it won't be like that.
You should remark that the examples of "ok to patent" from the linked text
# an invention in which an X-ray apparatus was controlled by a data processing unit in a way which provided an optimum balance between potentially conflicting operational requirements
# an invention in which an increase in processing speed in a computer was achieved by a new and non-obvious method
actually allows the sorts of patents one sees in the US unless the EUPO is given _ample_ technical expertise to assert which ideas really are new.
Even better is of course to explain why patents on software are evil in all shapes and forms (if that is true).
Or to explain that the bennefits of "good patents" will be outweighed by the disasterous roadblocks to normal conpetetion on the software market that the inevitable "bad/frivolous patents" will create.
In short - MAKE SURE THAT YOUR ARGUMENT IS NOT EASILY DISMISSED BY YOUR MEP AS "OUR PROPOSAL TAKES CARE OF THAT"! If it is dismissed easily your mail will do more harm than good.
The patent is at Delphion (free registration required) and the USPTO. Paul Vixie is listed as an inventor but probably has no ownership rights, or even the ability to collect on royalties. So don't lynch him yet...
The first base (or independent) claim is:
Doesn't sound much like my understanding of how Akamai works (I didn't think Akamai "intercepted" requests -- the origin servers actually pointed to the cache servers in their img src tags). It does sound an awful lot like a transparent proxy however.
There's 36 claims, but only 3 are independent -- the rest are derived from those 3 (dependent claims). It's only the claims that are worth reading and worth worrying about. Press releases, abstracts and summaries are all irrelevant to what a patent actually covers. I find them more confusing than useful.
Let's concentrate on the 3 independent claims then. Here's the other 2:
15. A system for transferring information via the Internet, comprising:
36. A method for efficiently delivering cached information to Internet users, comprising the steps of:
As you can see, the differences between these claims are very subtle. I'd need to spend more time reading those claims to understand
By documenting prior art, you can invalidate any patents filed later by third parties on the same technology.
By filing a defensive patent, you can negotiate against any patents filed later by third parties on different but still obvious (*cough* - 1-click anything - *cough*) technology.
Since the patent office seems to currently approve patents on "doing something people have done for centuries... but with a computer!" this may be necessary.
Of course, I'd want to see in writing something which grants open source software a perpetual license to use such patents, as opposed to say Red Hat's "we promise not to enforce our patents against free software unless someone buys us out or we change our minds" promise.
The press release also mentions patent no.s 5,991,809, 6,370,580 and 6,480,893.
It turns out the last two deal with offloading requests for static content to a separate webserver. Well, isn't that a common use for mod_rewrite? It certainly existed back then, this is the earliest page I can find where it became an 'official' part of apache (I am sure theres more in the cvs logs) - thats from Jan 97, version *3* of mod_rewrite. The patents weren't filed until 5 months later.
Before it was an official apache module, mod_rewrite was released in 1996 and there is evidence of people using it for offloading requests from one server to another that same year.
-Baz
The EFF should not just publish stuff. The EFF should publish stuff, and keep an anti-patent database that can be mirrored, downloaded, printed out, and whatnot.
The source for these things should be recorded, if the person desires [for example, I can have this under my name, and give contact info. That makes me a possible expert witness for $$$, or it makes me in line for consultation, if someone wants to carry this through] or it can be anonymous.
If they did this, I would frequent that location often, as I *often* have ideas that are more than marginally patentaable [seeing this], and very practical in some cases.
I would then record my ideas, and software developers could implement them or not, as they see fit.
The problem with just publishing an idea is that it is hard to track it down later. So that's why I think the EFF should proactively begin a database. Begin it, and I will start submitting from day one, and keep submitting.
-----
For example of what I might submit: *** AND THIS IS NOW PUBLISHED, THOUGH I DO NOT GUARANTEE IT TO BE NEW *** to efficiently code a compressed movie, subtract two frames' values. Then run an FFT on portions of the frames. First FFT should be only about 8 pixels wide on 32x32 blocks, if need be second can be 16 pixels on 64x64 blocks, and so on.
The subtraction will yield "fringes" where picture movement has occurred. The FFT will then yield high frequencies that changed, informing the computer which motions to check.
From that, you generate a motion map. From the motion map, you then generate (1) object shapes (2) object motion maps, (3) scaling motion implies object rotation. As objects become well defined, it becomes less necessary to predict this or send new information about it. Indeed, you begin to generate object shape libraries for quick reference. A ford has a particular shape from the side; so does a bicycle. Match a few parameters, and its motions become quite predictable.
Where the mean color-curves of a frame change heavily, you compare it with the last frame with similar mean color curves.
From that, you generate frame predictions. Now, you transmit information from the worst predicted blocks, first the worst predicted half, then the 2nd worst predicted half, and so on, until it is more efficient to send the whole new block, than it is to split it any further. In this way, you minimize the data that must be stored for updates.
Correct Horse Battery Staple: 72 bits of entropy. Enter "Correct H" into google. When it generates the phrase, that's
I wonder if there's any way for victims of patent extortion involving patents which have later been overturned can engage in a class action lawsuit against USPTO and force a more careful review of patent applications to eliminate nonsense like this? Let alone recovering damages... Somehow I think it's likely that they've made themselves immune from such, however.
Power without accountability is not the same as taxation without representation, but it has a similar sour taste...
This is God. As an omniscient, omnipotent, and omnibenevolent Creator,
anything possible in your universe can be traced back to me as prior art.
I want my licensing fees!
This post encoded with ROT26. If you can read it, you've violated the DMCA. Handcuffs please, sergeant.
I'm not sure what the poster meant by "sounds like what Akamai do", but Akamai is far from a "transparent cache proxy". Anyone who has used Akamai for more than 2 minutes would realize this. The only things Akamai might do that could be somehow linked to the patent is that Akamai is a cache that distributes data regionally. It's not transparent and it's not terribly easy to use for the we developer, either.
Kris
Kriston
If so, maybe it's a good thing (although it was always amusing when the site went down before the 5th post).
When I am king, you will be first against the wall.
Caching is a pattern that is hardly without prior art. I don't know how well that patent would stand up against a wealthy holder.
This is my sig.
Doesn't that suggest they are aware of a lot of people already doing this? I bet they didn't mention those other 'services' on their patent application. Obviously it's a case of "gee let's patent something everyone is doing and charge them for it because the PTO only recognizes prior art if it's in prior patents".
IANAL but I thought if a company can show that they were doing something before a patent application they don't have to pay to continue doing so. If not, can't they challenge the patent on the basis of their prior art? At least in principle, even though they may not be able to afford it?
This is all addressed in Zechariah 11 of the Bible (apt-get --install bible; bible; Zec 11;;;;). It isn't a US-only thing. It isn't a today-only thing. It's shepherds eating their sheep, and selling their sheep to each other to eat. But the problem, as outlined in Zec 11, is that the sheep get the shepherd they deserve.
Sorry, them's the breaks.
Correct Horse Battery Staple: 72 bits of entropy. Enter "Correct H" into google. When it generates the phrase, that's
From the preamble of the GPL: "Finally, any free program is threatened constantly by software patents. We wish to avoid the danger that redistributors of a free program will individually obtain patent licenses, in effect making the program proprietary. To prevent this, we have made it clear that any patent must be licensed for everyone's free use or not licensed at all." Sorry, but that is not possible. Which is why something like XviD is in violation of the GPL even though they claim that the source is distributed under the terms of said license (They should have rolled their own license, I guess...).
________
Entranced by anime since late summer 2001 and loving it ^_^
The account manager stepped in quickly. :)
Ah, the good old days. We did pick Mirror Image, and were quite happy with them. One important trick was to write a master switch into our software that could turn URL rewriting on/off at will. So some mornings if there was trouble with an MI location we could just flip the switch and have no troubles.
www.HearMySoulSpeak.com
"Oops is a more than worthy alternative, that was developed outside the US."
How appropriate. Oops you got your patent law in my program. You got your program in my patent law. Two tastes that tastes terrible.
The only thing I've found that comes close is disclosing things in a usenet discussion group, and even that does not constitute publishing. It simply makes it a little harder for a patent applicant to show that no prior art exists.
Boycott the cron daemon !
Or, better yet - use the Dillon crond - and get yourself a product with a better security record in the process.
I gotta wonder - Bind, ISC DHCPd, Vixie Cron - are there any products Vixie's been involved with that didn't suck?
It looks to me like Mirror Image's original "transparent supercache" system is what's described in this newest patent (not so much their Content Delivery Network). The patent looks like its fairly broadly worded, and probably covers some similar models too, but on the other hand, they cite plenty of prior art in their own patent. So overall I would guess that "ordinary" transparent caching is not covered by this patent, but then again IANAL, and in particular IANAPA.
Mirror Image's original business plan was to provide a client-side supercache service to client-side ISPs in places where upstream bandwidth was scarce/expensive (ie, Europe in the 90s). MII would 'mirror' popular high traffic (American) content onto supercaches located just a few hops from the ISPs. ISPs subscribing to the MII service could then configure their proxies to do a "look aside" and access popular content from the local MII supercache rather than have to sent requests across the ocean and pull the content all the way back. It worked nicely for ISPs that needed it, but there were fewer and fewer client-side ISPs willing to pay for access to the MII supercaches. So MII expanded into the server-side part of the caching business: "Content Delivery Networks".
In 2001, MII bought an existing CDN technology company (Clearway Technologies) and in the process acquired a nifty server-side software agent (your choice of Apache module or IIS plug-in) that automatically "Mirrorizes" *coughcoughlikeAkamizescough* all of the output from an origin Web server, so getting your server's content onto the MII CDN only takes a couple of minutes and you don't have to alter any of your Web content. That agent and its associated methods are covered by the other patents mentioned in MII's press release.
Personally, I believe that if MII wanted to sue Akamai for patent infringement, they probably could make a case for it these days, but --as always-- it's unclear that that would be the best use of their resources.
-Mark Kriegsman
Former Chief Scientist, Mirror Image Internet;
Founder, Clearway Technologies;
Inventor, US Patents 5,991,809, 6,370,580 and 6,480,893 (now assigned to MII)
So, waitasec here. If you set the evil bit on your RFC 1149 packets, do you get the scenario documented in this gem of a film? *shudders*
--Fesh
Kill -9 'em all, let root@localhost sort 'em out.
First he takes over maintenance of BIND, then proceeds to blackmail his "customers" into paying him to be told about the copious amount of security problems, essentially capitalizing on the work of others.
Then he had BIND 9 written, which has nothing to do with BIND. We call it BIND then? Again, to capitalize on the work of others (not that the BIND name is something to carry proudly).
Now he patents what Linux could do at least since 2.0 (1996) with a patched squid 1 (been there, done that). Granted, his patent appears to be earlier than Akamai (1998) but Digital Island may have been early enough to invalidate the patent. They were bought by Cable and Wireless a while ago.
Bottom line: SOMEONE had to invent caching. It very well could have been these guys. But if they approached one of my clients with an offer to license this thing, I would want to do a LOT of investigation before advising one way or the other.
Laws affecting technology will always be bad until enough techies become lawyers.
To those who before me in this thread who reel off a list of things the FSF and EFF should be filing patents on, calm down and think for a minute.
Filing a single patent application costs thousands of dollars once you figure in the cost of the lawyer--if you can find one qualified to file a patent application. Lawyers qualified to practice patent law are few and far between. In order to become a patent attorney, you have to have a B.S. in Science and a large percentage (probably most) of people who opt for law school have a background in arts and crafts. The rare lawyer who meets this prerequisite can, after passing the regular bar exam try to pass the patent bar exam. Now, make an estimate of how many lawyers the FSF and EFF between them can afford and then decide how much of their time ought to be spent filing patent applications that they never intend to use for generating revenue. And god help them if they ever have to litigate a patent dispute. Expect to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars a pop if you get into an all out court fight over a patent.
If after considering these facts, do you still think FSF and EFF should be spending their scarce resources on anything besides lobbying to change the patent system? If you still believe they should be filing patent applications, how much are you willing to contribute to help them fund it?
Hello Paul???!?
Black holes are where the Matrix raised SIGFPE
Their patent claims read like a first-pass analysis of the caching-load balancing problem.
To my mind, this sort of thing should not be patentable - it is merely a problem analysis, not an innovative solution.
Most competent people who understood networks and the issues behind content provision would have come up with a similar, if not identical solution.
This could have been failed on the 'non-obvious' requirement, but hasn't been.
It seems that the technical abilities of the patenting authorities are not of a level to deal with patent applications such as this one competently (or indeed in a timely fashion, if it was filed in 1996).
The best solution for everyone (except greedy patent factories such as this example) is to outlaw the patenting of software and software designs. There's plenty of copyright law out there to protect the code you write, and if it's not the best code at the most appropriate price, then you'll fail in the market and too bad.
If on the other hand you have a true innovation in your field, you'll have a good 12 months to build the initial market before the competition comes to play.
If America really is true to the principles of the Founders, it's time that the politicians looked at this issue and came up with a solution to stamp on parasitical patents such as this. Even if unsuccessful in their aims of extracting money, the costs to others in the field of dealing with the attentions of these people is a disruption to trade, and needs to be eliminated.
oh brave new world, that has such people in it!
This is worrysome since most ISP terms of use agreements state that they can track customers web browsing and use that information as they see fit.
Looks like we need a mechanism to append "?" to every URL sent out to prevent it from being cached.
It might be interesting to investigate if patent office officers (kind of military names, aren't they?) are getting bribes to pass these kinds of patents.
In reality Paul may become a god, say Sarupaul or Vixieron. I mean the dark one. ... uhm ... patent in the ... uhm ... paper basket
And thus by by owning the patent (made of gold, showing words when heated) he will rule "them all" untill some little perky geek (one lived his youth in the well furnitured hole) will accidientaly drop this
I'm not a brake. I'm an accelerator. Just a slow one...
Akami have their own patents, notably 6,502,125 which will likely cover what they do...
What, Akami have over 6 million patents? They must work very hard!
Look, here's the litmus test.
"I have a patent on a device that does XYZ"
If I, the college undergrad, can think of in a few short minutes, a way of implementing XYZ with existing (and possibly old) technology and techniques, then it is too obvious for me to respect said patent.
You say "Transparent Web Cache" and I can give you 5 different ways of accomplishing it by the end of the week, without even having to hear you explain exactly what it does.
That, too me, is utter bullshit. And I've never looked at the content of the patent before filing so it's not like I'm claiming it after the fact.
The patent system is broken and/or this patent is bung.
Maybe if you invent the next LZW, then the more power to you.
Black holes are where the Matrix raised SIGFPE
that made the illegal technology specifically intended to speed the sharing and transfer of large, copywritten materials... ... and they even go so far as to make a copy of it themselves, no less. I say these pirates and piracy enablers need to go to jail!
heh.
help me i've cloned myself and can't remember which one I am
* FOSS supporters who are against software patents - If you don't fit under that umbrella, I'm not talking about you.
Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken - Tyler Durden
At the time of filing, the whole concept of "caching" had been "invented". Nothing new there..
/. FOR WASTING BANDWITH ON THIS SUBJECT AND FOR ME WASTING MY TIME AND ENERGY ON YOU AND YOUR "INNOVATIVE" COMPANY.
Ah, yeees. Let us examine the implementation details... Aha.. Mhm.. Mkaay?
*STAMP* PATENT APPLICATION DENIED!
Hey George, please take these with the others.. Okay then, get me another shredder.. What do you mean they all are in use, there are 1024 of them on this floor alone, and this is a 256-floor object!! Fine, I'll shred it manually again..
Oh yeah, I almost forgot our standard speech: NOW PAY US $$$ FOR WASTING OUR TIME AND
Case closed.
They filed the application in 1997, but the patent was just granted this month. MII is simply asserting that that other companies have started using the patented method/apparatus in the time between when they filed and when the PTO granted their patent: nothing mysterious there.
Ok, I'm not anywhere familiar with reading patents, but as far as I can guess, we have plenty of prior art.
From reading the basics of it, and having almost gone into convulsions for attempting to understand it, heres what I can gather.
Re-directing a user to an "alternate address" is covered. So it doesn't have to be transpartent in the proxy sence, the client can be re-directed.
We all know CPAN, right?
CPAN redirects you to a mirror automatically. Thus CPAN is covered by this patent, if I read correctly that redirection is considered 'transparent'. CPAN also had a 'local copy' that you may have been redirected to. Further making it appear to be more of a 'proxy'. CPAN was created in 1995, two years prior to this patent.
There are hundred of other sites that were using this method prior to that, all prior to the patent.
AOL uses proxies, as does many countries (China anyone?), anyone know when they were first setup?
No wonder that jerk is getting a software patent. What else would you expect from an asshole who is in stupid admiration of Aynd Rand. What a moronic caveman!!!
For what it's worth, US patent law can actually protect inventions starting from the "date of invention", usually meaning the first time that a description of the invention was written down.
And anyway, it doesn't look to me like all transparent caching is covered, just MII's old (late 90s) "supercaching" system. Nevertheless, the language in the patent is reasonably broad, and if they wanted to pay lawers to stir up a ruckus, they probably could.
What I am surprised by (being outside the US), is that common sense has not prevailed and the Patent Office either made redundant, or at least the process reviewed. Maybe I should not be surprised by this, seeing as it IS the US, a country founded on freedom, easily manipulated into greed.
Generally speaking, people respond to this with an attitude of, "Is it possible to patent a process, by which the person recieving the patent was fully aware of a given entity(s), who have exercised a similar R&D process, to come up with a similar product". Does this not imply that the US Patent Office, is in itself, promoting Anti competitive behaviour, the exact same practice that the DoJ took Microsoft to court with?
If Microsoft can argue, and win, that something as obvious as a Graphical User Interface which Apple came up with first does not belong to them(before you start I'm a PC User), what right does this office have to say that something as simple as a single click, an online auction, a transparent cache and so on, is a process that someone can say is exclusively their technology.
The answer here is: Apple, go patent the GUI. Now watch Microsoft reply. Watch them win. Watch the rest of the world use the case as precedence, and have the Patent Office effectively thrown out the window.
Now take a step back to reality, and watch the rest of the world look at the United States Patent Office, as quite literally, a joke. And you wonder why the world looks at you and says:
Only in the United States.
If you do not look beyond the short term, it will have a detrimental effect on Intellectual Property that has legal right to this process. Probably to the point where most people just dont care what the USPTO says, and simply goes ahead anyway with whatever it was they are doing. If a governing body cannot act responsibilty, sensibly, and in a way that appeals to the common sense of the community, then the community through its actions will render it ineffective.
This is the earliest reference to transparent caching that I could find in the squid-users archive.
Ok, If it needs to be "published" in dead tree format. Then perhaps someone should start a new magazine. Published monthly, it could collect ideas online and publish them to preserve their freedom.
On the other hand, with patents if you were to very generally describe an idea, others could still patent a very specific implementation. If you were to be specific, others would just have to be specifically different. It would still be better to actually patent some of these ideas (ala IBM) for defensive use.
Also, I am not sure, but I think that somebody could still patent the published idea within one year of the public disclosure.
McFly777
- - -
"What do people mean when they say the computer went down on them?" -Marilyn Pittman
Free trade is giving a good smack down to a country that has a stupid policy. And that is good.
I am only speaking of this hypotheical situation (since Akami hasn't moved their servers to India, yet). I don't want to get in a big thing over free trade (which WTO, NAFTA, etc are not), since I have work to do.
... I am a resident of one of the many countries that are joining, but do not yet have a voice in the European Parliament?
Correct Horse Battery Staple: 72 bits of entropy. Enter "Correct H" into google. When it generates the phrase, that's
The current system is designed to create high paying jobs for lawyers. It benefits nobody else. The solution isn't more patents. The current system allows the USPTO to screw up and then have somebody else fix the mess. In this case, millions of dollars are wasted in court and half the patents are deemed invalid. The solution is to make the USPTO clean up its own mess. Free of charge to the public.
It's like a disease. It's better to prevent than to heal later. The best solution would be a patent reform (unlikely) or, at least, a lawsuit against the USPTO for reckless endangerment of the Internet marketplace and serious omission.
Then you fire everybody that had part in this big mess and start fresh with new people and a new little rule estipulating that any US citizen could demand (for free) a patent reviewed in light of some evidence of prior art or even of broadness and lack of novelty. A patent is a license to monopolize an idea and all the public should have the right to challenge the patent without having to waste hundreds of thousands of dollars in court. Basically, shift the burden of proof to the USPTO. Don't even bring the patent holder into the discussion. The USPTO screwed up. They must fix it.
Yes, it would be a mess at first, but companies like IBM, Amazon, Microsoft, and others, would think ten times before even trying to file a stupid patent that wouldn't stand the public challenge. Also, the USPTO would do better research before granting any patent. Only really new ideas would survive being challenged by the public (and those are very few as we all know).
All your caches are belong to us.
You think the corporations we have now are massive? Give it a couple decades. Consolidation and Corporate Darwinism will ensure that for the largest areas of business, we will have but a handful of truly MEGA corporations, that own every aspect of our lives.
I could just be extremely paranoid from reading too much cyberpunk...but I think the current trends of patenting IP are the beginning of the biggest 'snowball-effect' we'll ever see economically.
Buy Steampunk Clothing Online!
CPL also points out that there's no way for any contributor to guarantee that they're not unknowingly infringing on some third party's patent. IMHO, this sort of accidental patent infringement is the scariest part of patents and OSS.
The older IBM Public License had some onerous text that made the royalty-free patent license go away if you sued the contributor for infringing another patent, even one totally unrelated to the OSS project. I think this was intended to make "offensive" patent lawsuits unattractive, which was a nice goal. But the result was different -- some companies refused to use IPL'd projects because the license would have prevented them from suing IBM "defensively" if it intentionally infringed on some totally unrelated patent for hardware or whatever. I managed an open-source project at IBM for a while and we had a few potential users with this objection. After I left, the group managed to re-license the project under the X license. I'm glad IBM finally fixed this in the CPL.
Laura
The level of specialization in the sciences has gone too far for patent examiners to be able to judge obviousness ... if there is a 100 thousand people in the world to which an idea is obvious, the chances of the patent examiner being one of them is slim.
HTTP is an ungodly mess and collection of bugs, turned to features for backwards compatibility, which makes transparant caching near impossible to do reliably.
I'm all in favor of transparent proxying being wiped out, anyway. It's just a royal PITA for end users. I'll happily use an opaque proxy *as long as when I need to I can bypass the proxy*.
May we never see th
If you goto the squid page, you'll find the squid cache was started in 1995. Looks like prior art to me.
Netfilter technologies (www.netfilter.net) has been doing transparent web proxying with Squid since port redirection was first introduced into Linux (was it version 2.0 in 1996 or version 1.2 in 1995? I don't remember). They modified squid to do it. The first customer it was deployed for was the Department of Veterans Affairs.
Needless to say, the notion is _obvious_.
Moderating "-1, Disagree" is simple censorship. Have the guts to post your opinion.
"...and we are sure the users of that prior art will soon become our customers."
Stupid people make stupid things profitable.
Paul Vixie is not your friend.
If Vixie were an ice cream flavor, he'd be pralines and dick.
what good is that? don't they actually want to store and retrieve the content? isn't the request just a header that doesn't need to be stored? if that is the actual wording of the patent then i'm not real worried
If this is true (it does have a low UID with a username that actually matches the guy's name), this should be +5 Informative.
Akamai does not do transparent caching. they host files for large sites on networks all over to help cut down on internet congestion and link usage. they bring the content closer to the end users. Transparent caching is entirely different. If you want to know more about transparent caching a few good places to start would be on WCCP and GRE.
Having worked on the network infrastructure software for epicRealm, I can say that is exactly what they did- along with handling dynamic content caching. Keith had a patent on the system in question and had filed a US patent (important thing here...) six months prior to the Mirror Image US Patent application (They apparently filed elsewhere first...).
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
hey AMERICA wake up. You'll lose all your tech if you keep this up. The DMCA is already scaring people away and keeping conventions from happening in the US. the USPTO is stifling all under it's jurisdiction. This is technical suicide.
but you don't care,you're waiting to export my job to india anyway. yeah for the share holders. wish I held enough shares to not need my job.
because I have been enjoined by this Holy Office to abandon the false opinion which maintains that the Sun is the centre
(time) (hostname) named[7219]: client 65.216.72.15#55555: query (cache) denied
Repeat over and over...
15.72.216.65.IN-ADDR.ARPA domain name pointer bs1.ord.xpc-mii.net
There are many more hosts like this, and they all do their crap from source port 55555. They ask questions about things that my systems will not answer, since I set up limitations on who can ask recursive queries. What a concept.
Why would someone who supposedly has a clue about how to load balance, including tricks like anycasting, generate this kind of crap to get the job done?
There is no such thing as a defensive patent application!
Would you consider a patent with an irrevocable royalty-free public license to be a "defensive" patent?
Will I retire or break 10K?
Ok, software patents, patents for which vast prior art exists, blah blah blah, are generally Bad Things. But in this case I'm going to disagree.
Considering all the problems I've encountered which were introduced by "transparent" web caches, I'm inclined to say that anything -- even Evil Patents -- which makes transparent caches less popular is a Good Thing.
Tarsnap: Online backups for the truly paranoid
How about setting things up in Mexico, right across the border ?
According to what I've read, the copyright and patent laws of the United States of Mexico are just as restrictive as those of the United States of America. Recall that Mexico tried to extend copyright terms to life plus 100 years, which is 50 years beyond the minimum of the Berne Convention and 30 years beyond even what the EU and US set with the Bono Acts of the 1990s. ("Acts", plural; the EU had its own Bono Act as well.)
Will I retire or break 10K?
After they finish fixing the copyright system maybe Lessig, Lofgren and Doolittle will take an interest in fixing the patent system.
I hate my ISP's crappy transparent web caching.. it causes no end of problems.. including, last year, all of Google's logos being replaced with bizarre images.
This guy is from my home country: Norway. He is a scumbag. Nice people like Paul Vixie should stay far from him.
Fuck...apparently you can patent anything these days....Who needs to work, just patent something and sit back and collect royalties. Hmmm...Ithink I'll patent AIR that way if you wanna breathe you must pay me. MUWHAHAHAHA!
...for large corporations theyre just pocket change, and wont deter them from patent fraud.
the only thing that might deter them from patent fraud is prison time.
The problem is you need to have as much "patented" as you can get, or else your neighbors might get it first. And the US wants to extend NAFTA well beyond the continent, and one of the politicos prime targets is asia - where "intellectual property" is often a completely alien notion.
And then we have Mexico, which is seriously discussing the notion of extending copyright to life + 100 years and then allowing the government to license the public domain. That means every song ever copyrighted in mexico becomes, in perpetuity, the property of the government of Mexico.
Now, do you think if that passes there the US won't follow right along? The lobbyists will argue we have to in order to compete and there goes US copyright. The problem is exactly "free trade." What made this country great is seting ourselves apart from the rest of the world. And since the coming of NWO pt.I (and parasite Sr.) all we have done is follow the "lead" set by the very countries we once rose above.
And not just in patent and copyright law, either.
This was predicted a while ago when patents were used as threats toward the Open Source community. If every idea in the world was to be patented tomorrow, what do you think would be the result? No, not anarchy, but definetly a breakdown in "the system" as we know it. More than likely after a few weeks or months of chaotic legal issues congress or some other form of government would step in and pass legislation changing how patents work. In the end though the Open Source community would be hit the hardest as they tend to be the most controversial source of innovation in technology.
Lots of open source works are illegal in many countries because they perform the same function as other works which are closed-source and either patented or copyrighted or both. This is a result of laws which restrict freedom of thought and speech in order to maintain the status quo and capitalism's roots: dominance over competition. The problem is, Open Source works were not meant to compete with other products or companies. When you put the GNU General Public Lisence on your software, the last thing on your mind should be whether or not you will be able to keep others from reproducing the work or taking and developing it into something different or better. Open Source is a springboard from which new innovation and technology can come from. Yet it is being abused and in some respects destroyed by the principles some governments operate upon.
When you patent something so simple and useful as web caching, you're cutting off the Open Source community and its users and developers from the freedom to express themselves. Who came up with one idea or another should have nothing to do with whether or not someone is allowd to take and use that idea. Essentially, patents are to the Open Source community as a muzzle is to freedom of speech.
HowStuffWorks' "How Patents Work" describes a benefit of patents for society: They help disseminate technological information to other inventors. When you apply for a patent, you are required to submit a detailed description of your invention. This description becomes part of the patent office's database, which is public record. Once the patent has expired, the idea is more readily available than it would have been if it had never been patented. The problem with this "dissemination of technological information" is that it takes 20 years in the USA for it to occur. That's 20 years longer than it should take. Inventors can't just take an idea and use it for another idea like with Open Source; instead an inventor would have to purchase a license to use the original idea in his newly spawned idea. This puts Open Source "inventors" at a significant disadvantage because a great amount of Open Source work is made free in the monetary sense of the word (i.e. gratis). Because of that, many Open Source developers don't have the funds to purchase a license and therefore can't use the original idea. Now, profit isn't completely foreign to Open Source works. The GNU General Public License specifically encourages people to profit from an Open Source work by charging money for its distribution. Of course under the terms of the GPL someone could simply purchase the product (and therefore a copy of the source) and then give it out freely to everyone else in the world. This is what some people in business and government do not understand and do not take advantage of. Immediately these people say "but then you can't make a profit because someone is already giving it away!" And so the government is supposed to make sure that NOBODY can simply 'give it away'? What then is to become of the Open Source works that are made by developers who don't have $3,000 to spend on a patent they don't want to restrict anyone from using or enforce anyone to obey? They're supposed to get fucked, that's what is to become of them. In the name of the executive, the legislative, and the judicial powers, Amen.
The idea of a patent is a great thing. Invent
Hrr. There is prior art! I've been using transparent web caching (ipfilter+squid) for at least one year now and I bet the idea is older than that.
I think cisco also does it with wccp or whatever it's called. It's been around for a while.
Okay, I'm gonna patent the wheel.
Lessee...one guy called me a 'wanker', that started convincing me, another was a 'Research Associate'. With a title like that he must be right. I think that's what I was called when I worked on the ALVIN Group at WHOI many years ago. Now that title was a joke. The funniest part is that nobody here knows who I am and never will. I don't particularly care.
...and definitely did run on SunOS 4.1.3.
Oh, I see you have a different implementation (first Pists), but that means diddly squat nowadays doesn't it, bwah-ha-ha.
Looks to me like a "derivative work", which means that you own it too. You should sue. For billions.
A substantially similar concept was globally marketed by a U.S.-based company called Orblynx several years ago. It involved pushing data out to caches from a data warehouse via satellite....
oh yeah and patents suck!
ac
Now, if you take out a patent and make it irrevocably royalty-free and public, then you would have no recourse against another company that infringes that patent.
However, I could impose a "free software only" limitation on the royalty-free public license and then use the patent against companies that want to use my invention in a proprietary program.
Will I retire or break 10K?
I just read the press release and the MII web site, and there's no mention of him there. I actually worked for Vixie Enterprises back when the WGI (Web Gateway Interceptor) was put together, and wrote the hacks to the NetBSD kernel to do the interception (it's not as easy as you think, BTW, and I doubt Linux 2.0 could have done it without similar hacks).
I don't recognize these other names, though. I notice that MII is located in Woburn, Massachusetts, which is a long way from Redwood City, CA, where Paul's offices are. I suspect that there's more to this story than we've heard so far - I don't remember Paul applying for a patent on the WGI.
It'll be interesting to hear the rest of this story...
U.S. patent system goes by first to invent, not first to file (as in many other countries). "Prior art" needs to predate the invention, not the filing.
How do you determine prior invention? Documentation.
The latest word from the U.S. Supreme Court is that software patents are invalid (Diamond v. Diehr, 1981). Lower courts have contradicted this ruling since then, and the Supreme Court hasn't heard any relevant cases recently. Maybe if you could get your case up to the Supreme Court they would reinforce their 1981 ruling. Too bad lower courts have managed to make it "illegal" to "infringe" on patents that the country's highest court has ruled invalid.