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Clear Channel Buys Patent For Instant Live CDs
An anonymous reader writes "According to this Rolling Stone article, and this article at P2P, everyone's favorite monopolist, Clear Channel, is bullying DiscLive and other companies in the available-after-the-concert live CD business by forbidding them from operating in their venues.
Looking at the actual Clear Channel patent itself, it's obvious that, unlike what is said by their Instant Live program head Steve Simon, their patent is very specific, and doesn't cover all media types and all onsite production, so isn't CC just standing behind a bogus patent to continue to act like a monopolist? Anyone have prior art to invalidate their patent?"
Anyone remember the Grateful Dead's policy on bootlegging, how they encouraged it and even gave a special area at the front of the stage for bootleggers to stand and get a decent recording?
Isn't this an instant recording of a live event? Hasn't this been going on for 20 years?
Sunday you're Thinking Different, Monday you're a huge tool, paying too much and waiting to think like everyone else.
ClearChannel acts immorally to make as much money as possible while producing nothing but law suites and noxious gas. Apple creates damn good products, ideas and such and then protect their creation. That's the difference. Your not + Insightful your + Short Sighted and - Thought.
vampirical
In its current format, it is just being abused by big business to stifle innovation, and as a means to create an income though suing anyone any everyone who even remotely does something similar to what they have a patent on.
This is the only solution, and should be done as well as a complete re-write of the copyright laws, and civil lawsuit laws, as they too are now just a revenue stream for big business.
This is also fast becoming the case here in Australia too as Australia becomes America through the FTA (Free Trade Agreement).
Well that is my AU$0.02 (US$0.014178) worth.
Third of Nine
Well, um, yes.
As far as prior art goes, the patent looks exactly what thousands of churches do every service, record to CD and cassette. Bigger churches actually mix the sound, make special tracks for special events within the service. Now wouldn't that be a nice media circus, big bad CC goes after America's churches, synagogues, and whatever-else-have-you.
sorry, i'm from europe, so i tend to not understand some things. i can understand if someone puts some nice things together with a lot of duct tape, calls this "bicycle with 8 wheels" or "telephone" and gets a patent for that. however, what i do not understand: someone buys some products and uses them exactly the way they are supposed to be used and gets a patent for that. really, i do not understand that.
beer as in "free beer"
The hard work of transparent windows is not to come up with the idea, but to implement proper support for it in your windowing system. By using transparent windows in your system, you automatically publish it, thus there is little or no value in the patent publication. Same with business methods: by using them, you make them known.
The patent system was never designed to allow monopolisation of every cool idea (otherwise we'd also have patents on book plots and drawing styles), because that results in blocking all independent creators who build something based on that idea. Of course, big businesses love that, because a patent on an idea is much broader than a patent on a particular implementation/invention and thus gives them a much broader monopoly, but it's bad for the free market and society as a whole.
Have a look at this presentation for more on the idea/invention difference, the goals of the patent system and how software patents work against them.
FWIW, I'm posting this from my iBook and my other computer is a G4, waiting to be replaced by a G5. So I'm definitely not some anti-Apple zealot, many would even claim the reverse :)
Donate free food here
I noticed on the clearchannelsucks webs site, just a bit farther down from their article, this item is siting there.
I wonder if CC is looking at the live disk as a promotional opportunity to sell to advertisers, and that's why they're barring artists use of their own live recordings? I guess they figure that if they have the patent, they can control the use of the technology, and then turn around and lisence advertising on the live CD to Pepsi, or Budweiser, or whomever is willing to pony up the cash to have their ads "inserted" onto the live tracks.
And I doubt there are many artists who would be willing to do that on their own, given the backlash from fans.
"In one embodiment, the present invention provides an event recording system that has an event-capture module, an editing module, and a media recording module."
That's a recording studio.
It just happens to be at the event, and the timeline is compressed to enable them to sell copies by the time the concert ends. There is no invention there at all, just a bunch of blue-arsed audio-engineering flies. As for prior art:
- recording a live concert off the radio
- recording a live concert off the TV
- any artist who has recorded a live album (although this obviously has the time issue)
- church services (we record ours to disk and master to CD when the service ends)
- any broadcast corporation that archives live programmes. That's all recorded to tape, ready to syndicate to other stations instantly.
- any of those 'cut an album in an hour' compos
In short, this is a crazy patent - they've simply patented doing something people have been doing for ages, but doing it slightly faster.Because we all know, and ClearChannel and the RIAA have shown, that digital technology makes everything magically different. Just like the Internet.
While I strongly disagree with their actions, here are the general reasonings
"Imagine" : The line "imagine all the people" could potentially trigger some bad images of the victims
"Sunday Bloody Sunday" : see above "Obla Di, Obla Da" : the line "Obla Di, Obla Da, life goes on." could potentially be construed as a disrespect to the seriousness of the situation. as if to say, big deal, move on.
While I totally disagree with governmental censorship, this is an instance of a company trying to be respectful to it listeners. The ban was temporary, and based on the fact that things were hard enough on many people as it is.
So try and keep in mind, that no matter the intention of a song (promoting peace etc...) If the lyrics are taken out of context (say you tune in mid song) I can stir some really upsetting emotions. Last thing I need is someone breaking down in tears on the highway causing a stir when it could be prevented.
Sigs? We don't need no stinking sigs!
Well, here's the thing: if a company conducts itself in such a way that this kind of story gets out, and causes everyone who hears it to kind of nod their head and say to themselves "yeah, it sounds like them"...
...whose fault is that? Your company's image is based not just on what it says, but on what it does and how the public perceives it. Right now, the public who care to think about it, think Clear Channel is a conniving bunch of monopolists who curry favor with the neoconservatives (who are ruining what was a perfectly serviceable Republican party) in the interest of expanding their monopolies.
Can't stand the heat? Get out.
I mean, there is no 'Freedom from being offended' in the Constitution, as far as I know. If there is, then it sure takes a LOT of fun out the 'Freedom of Speech'.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........