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Microsoft Plans IE Changes Due to Plugin Patent
aWalrus writes "Microsoft has outlined some of the strategies they may pursue for modifying the way Internet Explorer handles plugins (annoying the user may circumvent the patent) if they lose their legal battle against Eolas Technologies (which claims they invented the seamless procedure for running plugins). There has already been a previous ruling against MS which they continue to appeal. This is likely to have repercussions in the Open Source Community too. If MS is found to be infringing the patent, that ruling could be extended to other browsers like Opera and Mozilla. Usability expert Jeffrey Zeldman provides an in-depth commentary on this issue and its implications."
correct me if i'm wrong, but opera isn't open source. The phrasing of that posting sure implied that it was.
The interesting thing about patents (and copyrights) is that you can enforce them selectively. Unlike trademarks, you can sue whoever you want whenever you want. Look at how Unisys didn't even mention their GIF patent until two years before it expired.
So, anyone with $700 to blow might could think up some random tech just to prevent Microsoft from using it, if they wanted too. If Eolas doesn't need to go after mozilla or any other browser if they don't want to.
(I'm also mentioning this because I keep seeing people post who believe you have to 'actively' enforce copyright and patent rights or lose them, and this annoys me.)
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
It might actually be nice, to force Web AdminDUHstrators to not rely upon plugins for everything. It might be nice to actually see web sites using HTML for a change. It might be nice to browse without having to see Flash ads screaming at me to BUY BUY NOW YOU BASTARD!
www.eFax.com are spammers
Why is MS acting like it's going to lose this lawsuit. It has never done that before. All the times it's been sued (too many to count at this point) it has always put up a public face of invincibilty and constant press releases about how the suit is groundless and how it is positive it's going to win.
Maybe this suit is so strong they know they are going to lose or maybe they want to lose so they have an excuse to make IE even more closed then it already is.
Maybe they will just abandon standards altogether with the next version of IE and blame it on the lawsuit.
We may be about to witness a complete bifurcation of the internet soon.
War is necrophilia.
While schadenfreude against Microsoft is slightly less fun than that against SCO right now, let's remember that this is the kind of stuff that stops innovation. No matter who is suing who for whatever perceived infringement du jour, this abuse is going to fsck all of us over.
This sig no verb.
I find myself constantly amazed at the American patent law system, and how general and sweeping patents are allowed to be. Like the company that tried to claim it invented e-commerce.
Isn't there some stipulation that you lose your patent if you don't defend it? It seems ludicrous to me that you can quietly patent something, wait for years and years while a huge industry develops around it with hundreds of companies involved and then say "oh you can't fo that".
The line at the end of the article on the linked website "We find ourselves in the unaccustomed position of rooting for Microsoft." is especially true. Go Bill!
The death of flash would be the most wonderful day in web browsing history since it's inception.
For some of us, those Flash sites are *already* inaccessible.
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
In very simple terms... If I discover that I can get the answer "5" by instructing the computer to add 2+3, and I apply for a patent on a method for computing the number 5, someone who discovers a way to get to "5" by adding 1+4, or subtracting 4 from 7 should not be found to be infringing on my patent.
That's exactly what Eolas is trying to do with this patent -- they've found an "answer" and patented a particular method at arriving at that solution. That shouldn't stop other people from developing alternate methods of arriving at this answer. I doubt very much that the code to implement this functionality is identical, so why does this patent have any sway over what other browser developers come up with for their particular solution?
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
Sarcasm aside, this is one court battle I hope Microsoft wins. Trying to patent an algorithm is like trying to patent "one click shopping."
You're right, I wouldn't steal a car. But if it were possible, I sure as hell would download one!
And since it isn't a proprietary standard, they don't need to latch it on through a plugin.
Everybody should take a look at SVG, it's really nice, and Mozilla already got some (basic) support.
How small a thought it takes to fill a whole life
Well here is the question I am asking...
"How shives a git?" Seriously this patent only affects American users as the patent is only registered in the US. My take is screw the Americans, and let the rest of world use plugins as normal.
MAYBE then the American law makers will see how truly dumb software patents truly are!
"You can't make a race horse of a pig"
"No," said Samuel, "but you can make very fast pig"
ridiculous of course. edison patented the light bulb, not the theory that electricity passing through resistance generates radiation!
2 1337 4 u!
Probably not. This is probably a play by Eolas to be bought out by MS or to license their patent portfolio to MS. In fact MS bending over so easily may indicate that this is exactly what is happening and MS is just strenghtening the patent rights they are about to acquire. IE maybe the only browser that can use said plugins in a year or so.
Another reason why software patents are a stupid idea. Running plugins transparently is obvious to anybody working on something like a browser. You've got a file, you've got its filetype, and you've got a registered list of plugins and the filetypes they support. What the fuck else would you do?!!
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
which begs the question, is anyone ever going to update their internet explorers to criple the plugin functionality that exists today ? I think Not.
Siggy Say, Siggy Do
The death of flash would be the most wonderful day in web browsing history since it's inception.
Do i hear a HALLELUJIAH!?!? (even if i can't spell it).
While we are at it, i'd love nothing more than to ban HTML, Flash and embedded animated or static images from email and newsgroup postings.
The 160th person to send me 3 lines italicized, purple MS Comic Sans Font on a dark blue background, with 280kb of images IS NOT FUCKING CUTE ANYMORE!!!!!
Gawd, people.
Flash is for www.newgrounds.com
do() || do_not();
As far as Flash is concerned I had take it off my computer. I just wasted too much time watching advertisements. If I had more control over what flash did on my machine, like I have with images, quicktime movies, and PDF, I would be more than happy reinstall and use the content. I think Flash is a good product. I just think it disrespects the computer user.
I believe that solutions exists that will not only render the patent meaningless but will also make the web a safer more pleasant place for the general users. I believe it can be smilier to giving the users to stop popups, which sometime lead to inappropriate content or sequences of windows that took over the computer.
Which is why MS is having such a problem with it. IE is a framework that, in part, allows content to pushed onto users whether they like it or not. It would be very hard to keep that functionality without technologies included in the patent. In other browsers, in which the user is respected with functionality that allows a more customized web experience, removal of the seamless technology will only be a nuisances.
Which is why we need to take all MS statements with a large grain of salt. They have quite a bit to lose if the push philosophy is destroyed. They are not the only ones. Will the advertising houses use flash it users have a choice of it's viewing, or will the just use Quicktime. Will MS web products lose importance if IE does have the ability to force content? I think not.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
For some it might be, but other people enjoy flash because it is versatile medium.
where would candystand.com be without flash and shockwave? homestarrunner.com?
If you don't use flash, you have animated gifs(not versatile) or movies.
I enjoy flash content. Who cares if it is in the page? I have a decent connection.
The only annoyance to me is popups and google is very effective at blocking those.
You're quick to judge people without the experience and knowledge equal to yours. The overhead in making any site with a substantial amount of content js/dhtml based rather than flash is more than what most companies feel its worth to offer a useable site to people without a small widely used plugin.
My girlfriend and several close friends are graphic designers who make a good portion of their living building sites based on flash. Their ability to produce visually appealling and interactive sites that get people "in the door" so to speak is more valuable to companies than your or my ability to write a few thousand lines of js that turns a web page into a debugging/updating nightmare.
Some people draw pretty pictures others write programs deal with it.
If You Drink, Don't Park, Accidents Cause People.
"If Microsoft is forced to pay off Eolas, doesn't that mean they've paid for the patent?"
No, that is just the penalty Microsoft has to pay for violating the patent. It does not give Microsoft future rights to use it.
Someone has mentioned that Microsoft is not being its normal blustery self and claiming the patent is invalid, or that Microsoft will obviously win in the end. Microsoft's reasoning could simply be to infuse in the mind of the technology public the strong validity of the claim, and then buy out Eolas and its patent. At that point, I.E. would be the only browser on the planet legally allowed to use plugins and a whole host of other technology.
Sure, because Mozilla isn't bloated enough. Let's add another 50 megs of binary code to that executable.
Besides, the way it looks, it doesnt matter whether the code is in a dynamic library or in the same executable. If it seamlessly displays something thats not HTML, it's a plugin. Library vs statically compiled is just a loading semantic.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
"The death of flash would be the most wonderful day in web browsing history since it's inception."
Go to http://www.ninjai.com, watch the 7 chapters that are available, and then tell me again you think the death of Flash would be the most wonderful day in web browsing history.
Flash isn't the problem, it's the gimmicky implementation of it. That doesn't mean it doesn't have some damn cool uses. Don't cure the disease by killing the man.
Roughly, this seems to boil down to "wouldn't it be great if I get to play kingmaker in the browser war?!"
That I'm not so sure about.
From the Cringely interview:
"One possible scenario is that Eolas would have the power necessary to re-establish the browser-as-application-platform as a viable competitor to Windows. That would be an interesting outcome, wouldn't it? How much would that be worth? The Web-OS concept, where the browser is the interface to all interactive apps on the client side, was always a killer idea. It still is. It lost momentum not because it wasn't economically or technically feasible, but because MS made it unlikely for anybody but them to make money on the Web-client side. Therefore, nobody could justify the necessary investment to take a really-serious shot at it. It doesn't have to be that way, does it? Just think of how we could use this patent to re-invigorate and expand the competitive landscape in this recently-moribund industry. What if we could do what the DOJ couldn't, and in the process make Eolas and everybody else, possibly excluding MS, richer? Wouldn't Eolas stand to profit more in such a scenario than any kind of pre-trial settlement could provide? Wouldn't everybody else?"
You can call it a fact that Eolas is really pissed at Microsoft, gives a shit about the money and the only thing they want is kill IE.
Life isn't like a box of chocolates. It's more like a jar of jalapenos. What you do today, might burn your ass tomorrow.
Agreed. Flash has its uses, but I hate it when I stumble into a site some fucktard thought would be cool to do 100% in Flash. After gritting my teeth over -click not working to open a link in a new window and the right-click context menu not being available, I invariably hit or - out of habit to navigate back one link and end up backing out of the whole damn site, forcing me to thread my way back in to whatever buried page I was reading. Rule #1 of web design should be don't fuck with higher-level UI elements, and Flash fails miserably in that regard.
Actually pure flash pages like Homestar could get around it pretty easily. Most the animations a full page and the minimal HTML is only a wrapper. All they have to do is change the linking a bit so the .swf file is called directly and not embedded in HTML (it's only embedded plug-ins covered by the patent).
Still, HR is the exception - most flash I'd be more than happy to see go bye-bye.
Such a vague and moronic patent calls for a moronic and vague workaround. The patent is "Distributed hypermedia method for automatically invoking external application providing interaction and display of embedded objects within a hypermedia document". So basically, you have to change the concept of a document in such a way that the patent is not infringed. Have the court determine "what is a document?" and change a subtle detail or two. A simple border or window superimposed over the area ought to be enough.
"How shives a git?" Seriously this patent only affects American users as the patent is only registered in the US. My take is screw the Americans, and let the rest of world use plugins as normal.
Well, IE is developed in the US. The Mozilla Foundation is in the US. Safari is developed in the US. Konqueror gets significant development in the US (at the very least, due to Apple's contributions, if not others). That pretty much leaves Opera as the only significant browser that's in the clear. In the end, you're probably going to have to deal with the results of this lawsuit.
Flash itself isn't evil, but because of its usage, it makes dozens of sites useless. It's certainly fair to say that the web becomes less useful because of the use of Flash.
I simply refuse to install the plugin. The few sites where it might be appropriate are completely outweighed by the hundreds that use it inappropriately.
How can we continue to believe in a just universe and freedom to eat crackers if we have no ale?
This affects everything embeded in a web page that runs as a plugin, so get off your high-flash-hating-horse and get a clue.
Besides, Flash does not suck. What does suck is using Flash inappropriately.
"Sweet-Ninjai does a great job to utilize the Flash technology."
I realize that Ninjai is an unusual case and that Flash is mostly used to be obnoxious. It just saddens me that projects like this would happily be sacrificed simply to deal with an annoyance that's more of a social problem than a technical one. Flash is a powerful media for artists. Don't kill it.
The round hole is HTTP, and the square peg is the notion that a web site is a video or movie, an animated entity, an event-driven application, interactive somethingorother, or any of the other things it really isn't.
Where I work they put someone in charge of our web site who has done video production, and lo and behold, she wanted to make the web site into a video. She eventually got her way, and a zillion bytes of flash later, the site sucks to look at, is hard to navigate and they bitch that they can't tell what people are looking at from site reports since...it's all a huge flash "application".
A whole mess of reactions to this:
Call me an optimist, but I have a strong feel in my right gut that Eolas will provide dual licensure for the patent, similar to Trolltech and Qt, where free software (BSD, GPL, Artistic license) gains free use and closed-source has to pay a "reasonable" fee.
Reason I think this is that (a) legally, it's a pain in the colon for lawyers to sue open sourcers; (b) it's horrible PR, just look at that company in Utah. Then again, lawyers tend to not give a flaming f--- about reasonable measures.
And to be clear, I hope to high heaven that they get as much of the $5 x 10^8 they can, because UC could _really_ use that cash to defray what the state's screwing them out of.
just don't mod me down, please.
I used to be someone else. Now I'm someone better.
Real life is underrated.
By never intending to make a product for sale that uses the patent in question you never have to pay the royalties for other patents that your product would undoubtedly infringe upon. For example, Microsoft probably owns the patent to object linking and embedding (OLE) outright. They could charge Eolas a large amount of money to license the OLE technology if Eolas ever made a browser product. But there's the rub - Eolas won't. So in the US legal system you are rewarded for never producing a product. What a disincentive to innovation this is! Surely the founding fathers never had this in mind.
So how can this patent stupidity be combatted? Simple. File millions of stupid and trivially obvious patents that build upon a previous patent and extends it to some new domain - for example, using an OLE control in a browser while using a spreadsheet. Every programmer in the world should be encouraged to each file a single patent. A computer program can be created to generate them randomly. And yes, I realize it costs around $1000 to file a patent claim on your own, but hear me out. If everyone files enough of these silly patents eventually one will be denied. At that point you take the US Patent Office to court for denying your patent while admitting equally "valid" patents to expose the stupidity of the patent system. Why not?
we hate MS, go Eolas!!!
we hate patents, go MS!!!
No.. this ones easy:
"I hate Microsoft as much as anyone else does, but fuck Eolas!" and "Fuck the USPTO!"
Its just easier to hate them all.
--Drunk as in Beer
"When it did, I watched about ten seconds of it, realized I didn't care, and closed the window.
So I agree with the parent that the death of Flash will be the most wonderful day in web browsing history."
Mighty bold debate style you have there. I personally wouldn't use ignorance to reinforce a heavy handed decision.
The death of flash would be the most wonderful day in web browsing history since it's inception. For some of us, those Flash sites are *already* inaccessible.
True enough.. I don't even have Flash installed on my Linux box at home (or even my Windows box for that matter, but I don't browse with that). I don't need it, so why bother?
--Drunk as in Beer
I have often wished I could uninstall plugins more easily. In 'doze I know of no good way to do it other than uninstalling the product (Flash, Acrobat, Quicktime, whatever ...). I have done this on more than one occasion.
Adobe Acrobat is an example. IMO, the plugin version is far worse than the standalone version. You don't have proper access to all the controls, file management, printing, and full-screen mode. At least I don't know how to access them. I have the same problem with many of the media players.
Flash is a bane. With Mozilla I can block image and pop-up ads but the Flash plugin is an open wound for infection with annoying ads. Flash is not alone - just the other the tell-tale cup-o-java appeared in an ad. Fortunately Java is so slow that I was able to ax it before it started.
So for the most part I'll be happy to see the world revert back to launching stand-alone helper applications. I want to use my browser for browsing, not playing video games.
But this is all amazingly silly. This is so obvious to a "practitioner of the art" that the patent office should have instantly rejected it. Displaying data where it's requested is a fundamental notion. And invoking a program based on its type is also a fundamental notion. COM and DCOM were developed specifically for this reason, for example: to enable in-line display and manipulation of data. They both precede this patent (COM certainly does) making them prior art.
The patent wasn't even filed until October 17, 1994. But Java was publicly demonstrated on September 1992 (originally called Oak), and Safe-TCL came out in 1992 as well. It wouldn't surprise me if they also met this patent, and were prior art too.
This is a junk patent that needs revoking.
- David A. Wheeler (see my Secure Programming HOWTO)
I first heard about this lawsuit back in '99-2000. After watching what Amazon was able to get away with vs. B&N, I knew the s**t would hit the fan sooner or later.
MS has known about this for 3+ years, and didn't do much to stem the tide of something bad happening about this until now. All of the web developers complaining about how this will affect future development plans can thank MS for being so forthcoming these past years and warning them that something like this might happen. Instead they waited to spring the news that this might be bad for developers 3 years later, after the embedded stuff had a chance to further mature, and more people bought into the technology. I know, I know, they can't comment on pending litigation, but it sure seems to me like they left a lot of people high and dry.
Amen. .NET will take their place.
Actually this will happen either way whether EOLAS goes after other browsers or not. if MS no longer supported plug-ins then no web site is going to use them. That is like it or not most people are going be using IE as their browser and not Mozilla. They aren't going to switch. So that means plug ins will slowly die off and
moreover EOLAS cant just sue MS then offer the technology to the world for free but somehow exclude MS. If the try to GPL it then Opera, and maybe Safari and Omniweb cant use it. EOLAS could quietly decide not to sue but then All the other browser will have the sword over their heads.
Remember that the patents are held by the University of California, EOLAS is just the administrator. UC is going to have a funding crunch so someday they will see this as a fat source of revenue. they will collect from everyone not just MS.
MS wins again by being the biggest gorilla
you're confusing patents with copyrights. copyrights cover code and other "text".
in the wonderful world of patents, you don't even have to create anything to make a shit load of money.
all you have to do is spend a lot of money and convince the patent office that you have some new idea. in the last ten years or so, technology companies have begun taking advantage of the patent office's obvious ignorance regarding anything more complex than a horse and carriage, particularly computer and internet "technologies".
now we've got bottom-feeder parasites like amazon and ebola (er whatever the fu** the company is called) patenting intentionally broad and vague ideas and then figuring out ways to apply their silly patents to other people's actual creations.
plugins have been around since about the time ebola obtained their patent (i believe). chances are the patent author saw the plugin model about to emerge and then obtained the patent.
then he waited a few years for a big ripe victim. what better victim than M$. everyone but dumb end users, pseudo geeks and managers hate M$. who's going to sympathize with them? virtually nobody. GO GET EM, the crowd cheers, not realizing the long term damage being done. legitimizing these absurdly broad and useless patents threatens the future of technology as a whole. who knows what patent parasites will strike you when you come up with a great idea?
amazon, ebola and all other companies that attempt to make a payday out of these patents are doing major damage to all users of technology. the only good patent holder is one who holds on to patent in order to protect the idea realm from patent parasites, and i don't even know that such patent holders exist.
i'm truly sick of these leeches. but all i can do is boycott (and i do) and maybe convince a few others not to cheer on the side of companies like ebola in these types of lawsuits.
He is the same kind of heavy handed tactics that we all get pissed off at corperations and IP firms for. He is trying to use patents as a weapon, not a tool.
Patents are SUPPOSED to be for making money. The idea is that if you are an inventor that comes up with some new brilliant processor or design, you can protect it so everyone can't just rip you off. People will have to pay you license fees for access to your idea. This is good for small inventors that have the skills to invent but lack the capital for production, and for large research firms, that spend billions of dollars to develop a new material or something that is cheap to produce, but was expensive to discover.
The problem is in the computer world we see lots of asshole like Rambus trying to use patents as a weapon. They try to use them purely to drive competition out of bussiness. This is anti-capatalistic and completely against teh intent of patents.
Well, that's just what this guy is doing (from the sounds of it). He wants to drive MS out of the browser market using this as a weapon. Despite the target being MS, that makes him no better than any other scum that uses patents to force away competition.
Take something like a areversed situation. Suppose I invent a new magic kernel algorithm that literally doubles the speed of all applications (I know it's not possible, but for the sake of argument). This is actually a novel process and actually something worth of a patent. So I publush it and apply for a patent. I go ahead and let everyone use it and don't say anything for years. Then I'm in a bar and Linus is there, and he and I get in a big fight in which he whips my ass six ways from Sunday. So I get all bitter and decide to enforce my patent against Linux only to make it suck. I certianly would be villified (and rightly so) for doing this.
Also the real problem is, he won't succeed in driving MS form the browser market, only making them work to lock it down tighter. Since they won't be able to do easy embedding with an open HTML solution, they'll come up with their own proprietary solution that circumvents the patent (and only work with Windows/IE). Given their size and market share, I give them a better than average chance of succeding and furthering their grip on teh browser market. In the event of a court challenge, they have this patent to point out how they TRIED to be open and interoperable (never mind how hard they tried), but got sued and so have no choice.
While anything you can do in Flash you can do in JS/DHTML is true. What I've found is that when Project A needs to be done, and done yesterday Flash's development cycle has got to be 1/10th of that doing JS/DHTML.
You do it once in flash and which ever browser it's in, displays it like that. Even NS 4.x.
Here's a seperate rant. What is so bad about flash if it doesn't interfer with the functionality of the site? So many seem to cry death to flash as soon as there's a page with it. Is it because these sites just don't work without that flash component? If so I would cry "good riddence to poor usuability design". That's the true problem, not flash.
-- taking over the world, we are.
The problem with the patent system, as they are currently being granted, is that the USPTO is allowing people to patent concepts and ideas. The intent of the laws, and as they were enforced for a very long time, was to protect a specific implementation of an idea, NOT the idea itself. In fact, for many, many years you had to show a working model of your "idea" before you could even be considered for a patent. That still seems a like a damn good idea to me. Your idea doesn't work? Then you are either a. too stupid to make it work and b. should let somebody else try, rather than sitting back and living off royalties.
The Founding Fathers showed remarkable wisdom and foresight in so many ways, and this is yet another area where we have gone off track and are screwing ourselves over.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.