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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?"
At least they are my favorite monopolist. Who is ClearChannel anyway?
Anyone have prior art to invalidate their patent?
Back in 1988, I recorded a Pet Shop Boys concert on DAT, and got mugged outside the stadium. Does that count as instant distribution?
It should be obvious to anyone whose ever used a multi-CD burner, or recorded a concert.
Third of Nine
Well, um, yes.
If your a big enough venue (read thosands of seats) then most likely your all ready owned by a large corporation. Clear channel does not support small venues, and in most cases goes out of its way to destroy them. So it britney can't play at the target center, so be it.
TruePunk | Games
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.
I remember a UIL band contest where the band director received a cd of there performance just after they played. This was somewhere back in 98...
The RIAA sues ClearChannel for illegally suing anyone for any reason having to do with music before they had a chance to get in on the fun.
Until Howard Stern starts marketing concerts under his banner. Then Clear Channel may have someone to actually compete with and silly patents won't be attractive anymore.
~S
Why must it be "novel" just because you can't do it in EZ Cd Creator? Cdrecord has had the ability to record from stdin since its creation. Sound has been in a block device (/dev/dsp) since OSS's creation. Piping a block device to stdout has been available since... cat. I have been piping sound from /dev/dsp to oggenc to disk (live) and from disk to oggdec to cdrecord (later) for 3 years in a live environment.
I support the general idea that CC shouldn't be getting a patent on something as simple as this.
I think, however that you lost sight of the big picture. Making Money. I support Open Source, but what takes priority, the client with 5k in his hand asking for a website, or my to-do list for my blog software, or another OS project.
Business today thrives on one company working against the others, being first to market still carries some value, I think that this is what CC is doing. Plus, If I'll say, If I see a concert at the Verizon Wireless Arena, and want to get a copy of the show, I'll buy one.
Maybe I miss the point, Maybe I'm too tired for this now.......
When I saw this on Ars Technica yesterday, I was going to put another mark on my slashdot ESP - I was sure to see this come up. Oups, I forgot it in one of my 50 browsers now open...
Hmmm, crispy. I just hope not everyone will run away scared by this. The patent will hopefully be invalidated, or shown not to cover the whole process.
Check with any large church. They have been recording and releasing their services immediately afterwards, some on CD, some on tape, depending on the size of the church and the length of the sermon.
Some of us consider that a performance, and its been done on tape for over 30 years.
You'll also need about $100,000 in bribe money.
Oh wait a minute, Live Music CD's
can anyone name any patents in the domains that intrigue most /.'ers that have actually been invalidated because of prior art? any? even one?
A patent is supposed to be [1] Not immediately obvious to an expert in the field, and [2] provide some new and original technology.
However, this concept is rather obvious - record a concert from various audio and video sources then compress the data onto a CD. If they have a patent on this process, then it might be defendable. But I can't see how they can defend the concept of recording a live concert onto a CD.
Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
Having read the patent, it is for editing the content while it is still being captured. It was filed in 2001.
IANAL, but it seems as though if you capture each song, and then edit them after the song is captured, then you have invalidated this patent.
The idea is that your ticket to the event entitles you to "download" up to about 40 minutes worth of music (IIRC) from the event, using a "secure" DRM system.
My wife and I went last summer and I went to download my "fair share" of the music when I got home. Guess what? The music is in a proprietary format and you need a special client to be able to download and decode it. The client is only available as a Win32 .EXE
Sorry guys, I only have Solaris and Linux at home. I emailed and protested politely and was ignored. The client is called Wippit. I emailed them and got no reply, despite the fact that allegedly they welcomed feedback from non-Windows users asking for clients for other platforms.
Stick Men
Grateful Dead at Live Music Archive
For years our church would have a cassette of the day's sermon available immediately after the church service. This is going back like 15+ years. Maybe it's not the same as the parent that CC is seeking. I didn't really RTFA :-)
Umm, hello? When have media companies ever been interested in the advancement of technology. If it wasn't something that was specifically their hands only, they've resisted everything. Radio, tapes, CDs, DVDs, VCRs (didn't thank wanker at the head of th MPAA say something about it destroying civilization as we knew it) MP3 players. Maybe they liked TV, since they figured 28 minutes of advertising could profitably pay for two minutes of content. bah. When the revolution comes, the heads of big media should swing just after the Lawyers and the heads of organized religion.
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.
But this time. ClearChannel patented bootlegging + dubbing + corprate logo. The only thing new there is the legitimacy of the copy, and that's essentially only new in the US and only in so far as people aren't talking about bands who weren't freindly to such activities. This is akin to someone inventing a hotdog cart, and you patenting selling hotdogs from a cart.
There are probably only a thousand or so professors in universities around the country that can demonstrate prior art to this trivially obvious idea. The people who signed the patent should be killed as a warning to others who non-sensically take it upon themselves to waste the time of the bureaucrats in the patent office.
And do it like room 101 from 1984. Only no rats threatening to chew through ones face. Make them angry, malnourished rats in a plexiglass tube stuck to their pooper. Have them actually chew through the people, and televise it. Then award each rat a Presidential Medals of Freedom.
Screw patents.
If you can't get people to buy it from you, then move out of the way of those who can.
This is getting insane.Free Mac Mini Yeah, it's
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.
Same old story. Patenting of trivial processes seems to be a one-click affair these days.
But how much of a problem will this be for small (< 500) venues and lesser-known artists who don't sell out big arenas? I know a lot of indie electronica artists who improvise a lot, which would be interesting to have captured for later.
Somehow a "live" CD from a sing-back dance show (my view of your average Britney and friends show) doesn't seem like a too exciting prospect...
Well, because if I brought a recorder into a concert, recorded the concert, then started handing out copies to my buddies I'd get arrested. Honestly -- people have been attempting to do this "on-the-sly" since the birth of portable cassette recorders -- and getting arrested for it too. I would say that it's not only a plain and obvious invention, but the only reason that there isn't a mountain of prior art is because: 1) the bands weren't interested / knowledgable / didn't care about it and 2) the fans couldn't do it themselves because the law prohibitted them from doing so (not that people didn't try).
Dumb, dumb, dumb.
Come on, records of Live appearances are not a new technique, neither is selling CDs a new technique, so how can one patent the concept of recording and selling a CD, be it minutes after a concert or month?!
Bitten Apples are still better than dirty Windows...
As I understand the patent, the unique thing is that it's for editing sound and video "live" as the stuff goes to media. Doesn't Tivo pretty much do this, with an ability to edit out commercials at recording time? Of course Tivo is generally used to record off-the-air instead of live, but that doesn't seem particularly relevant - an AV source is an AV source, right?
They patented the computer.
If you take a look at it, they could have patented the computer, a sound board, a radio station recorder, a camcorder, a cassette duplication system, a tape deck..
This is getting SO out of hand..
= Grow a brain...
Nothing more to say
For some reason, it seems that the more companies stress how much they "welcome feedback", the less likely you are to actually get some sort of response.
[or when you do, it's some sort of form letter, telling you that you're very important to them, and they'll look into it, but from the wording of the form letter, it's obvious that they've misunderstood what your issue was]
If they have a feedback mechanism, but don't go out of their way to over-hype it, then you might have a chance at getting a response from a real person. [eg, you have to go through the automated FAQ on The History Channel to get to the link for freeform comments. Although, the response to asking why they're always showing programs about Hitler still seemed like a form letter -- but it was at least a relevent response to the question.]
Build it, and they will come^Hplain.
Clear Channel is seeking an injunction against Democratic voters for infringing on voting methods, recently patented to ensue Republican elections....
Mod Karma -1: I sed bad wurds. If I cep my mouf shut, I wud be at riyses.
Anyone have prior art to invalidate their patent?
Howsabout every Grateful Dead concert from the 70's and beyond? IIRC The Dead encouraged bootleg taping and selling of their concerts.
"Lawyers are for sucks."
- Doug McKenzie
to some one skilled in the art.
This is yet another fine example of patenting the obvious. Most of the patent is important sounding (or not) filler. I love lines like "The editing module is communicatively connected to the event capture module."
This reminds me of a patent from a competitor. They submitted an application for a ridiculously broad and simple idea. As compensation for the idiocy of the patent body, they stuck the word unique into almost every sentence i.e. "This is a Unique idea that communicates Unique data between a base station and a number of Unique Transponder..." (It goes on like that)
A Patent is NOTHING more than a lenience to sue, that you buy from the government. As we have seen so many times lately, for a large company like Clear channel, the threat of a long legal battle is all they need to put a big dent in the competition. For any person or company that can't afford a 1 to10 million dollar legal bill, the validity of their, or the other guys patent is immaterial.
It is very disheartening Dr. Null
The real question is does anybody have a sackful of lawyers, and a corresponding sackful of cash for each lawyer?
Even if somebody did show prior art, they can just amend their patent to work around it.
Your patents system is broken. Fix it.
"A goldfish was his muse, eternally amused"
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
Just wait until they enter the religious broadcasting market...
Seriously though, the vast majority of those 20,000 radio stations are religious stations. What we are talking about here is the pop music business. It like saying that Wal-Mart is on 6% of all the retail stores in the US. It may be a true statistic, but it isn't relevant to the discussion. Clear Channel is the king maker of pop music, owning the key radio stations and music venues. Additionally, radio has a long history of payolla and collusion. Slowly, these practices are being codified by law, like this "patent". The FCC, at the behest of these media companies, has made it very difficult to just turn the dial and find something of similar value. This isn't the free market. This is a market that the major players call the shots.
Are you just incredibly stupid, and/or do you work for the company?
---
(Cut from various sources)
The once small company has quickly grown to over 1200 stations, collecting approximately 20% of all radio advertising dollars and programming over 60% of all rock radio stations.
Clear Channel's largest competitor, Infinity/CBS, owns roughly 180 stations.
Within individual markets, such as Denver, Clear Channel controls every station broadcasting certain popular formats and their attendant desirable target audiences. In 2000, Clear Channel purchased SFX, Inc. (now renamed Clear Channel Entertainment), the largest concert promoter in the country.
By threatening vulnerable artists and labels with reduced or off-hours air play on the only stations likely to air their songs, Clear Channel pressures artists, labels and concert venues into sweetheart deals with its promotions arm.
Channel has directly retaliated against artists who spurn their services. In other cases Clear Channel is able to simply outbid local competitors and increase ticket prices for the consumers. In other instances in which local promoters are able to successfully outbid Clear Channel Entertainment for concerts, Clear Channel has refused to run advertisements for the shows or has aired them during undesirable time slots. This argument that Clear Channel is illegally tying its concert promotion business to its monopoly position in popular music radio underlies the Sherman Act proceeding currently underway in the District of Colorado, Nobody in Particular Presents v. Clear Channel Communications.
---
In economics, a monopoly (from the Greek monos, one + polein, to sell) is defined as a market situation where there is only one provider of a product or service
Monopolies are characterized by a lack of economic competition for the good or service that they provide (and a lack of viable substitute goods), as well as high barriers to entry for potential competitors in the market.
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.
Which made perfect sense to me.
naah sig schmig
Corporate America has been telling us for decades that unregulated free markets, i.e., competition, is the best economic system. Now via patented business plans, they've essentially eliminated all competition. What's capitalism without competition? Corporate fascism.
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
I'll give you the "new" part since it's close enough (35 USC 101), but "expert" is flat wrong; way too high a standard.
35 USC 103(a):
A patent may not be obtained though the invention is not identically disclosed or described as set forth in section 102 of this title, if the differences between the subject matter sought to be patented and the prior art are such that the subject matter as a whole would have been obvious at the time the invention was made to a person having ordinary skill in the art to which said subject matter pertains. Patentability shall not be negatived by the manner in which the invention was made.
"A person having reasonable skill in the art," e.g., a reasonable (not average, a "reasonable") person in the recording/CD distribution field.
This post was edited to be less of dick about it, but if /.ers are going to discuss the law, we should at least attempt to do it intelligently like we do other subjects (for the most part).
-truth
I had a steady B+ in my AI class until I failed the Turing test...
"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.What the devil did they see as "questionable" in this song?
Louis Armstrong "What A Wonderful World"
I see trees of green, red roses too
I see them bloom for me and you
And I think to myself, what a wonderful world
I see skies of blue and clouds of white
The bright blessed day, the dark sacred night
And I think to myself, what a wonderful world
The colours of the rainbow, so pretty in the sky
Are also on the faces of people going by
I see friends shakin' hands, sayin' "How do you do?"
They're really saying "I love you"
I hear babies cryin', I watch them grow
They'll learn much more than I'll ever know
And I think to myself, what a wonderful world
Yes, I think to myself, what a wonderful world
The only thing that's even close is the colours/faces passage -- but if anyone's going to find offense in that, they should do society a favour and walk around with blinders & earplugs to protect their overly delicate sensibilities!
You're right, I replied too quickly with poor wording (like now :)
Still, the presence of a lot of those songs on such a list is "questionnable" to say the least. But Clear Channel knows what's best for us I'm sure.
I'm really getting sick of all the business process patents. Selling concert CD's immediately after the show is nothing new; how many thousands of live albums are available on the market today? This method is just faster distribution than before; it's not an original process. Would you award a patent to a record company for selling live albums in stores a month after the concert? Of course not! So why do they get a patent for selling it 15 minutes later in the venue?
Maybe they could patent the actual recording/distribution kiosk design, because that would take some original, creative engineering to make it work. But the idea of "selling CD's after a show" is nothing new.
$8.95/mo web hosting
Why is it taken as assumed that acting as a monopolist is a bad thing in all cases?
Okay, so CC is coming down with even more restrictions, what are we to do? It's preaching to the choir, we already knew CC was evil in the first place, so this isn't informing anybody. Is this supposed to incite people to demand legal action as was taken by the government against Microsoft?
What about those of us who believe in capitalism and don't view monopolism as necessarily a bad thing or something which confers negative traits automatically? Must we all be indentured into group-think to survive the jungle of assumption here?
I bet there's not a single software-related patent that's been issued in the last ten years that couldn't be overturned by prior art. Stuff that seems cutting edge now was being mulled over twenty years ago, sometimes thirty or forty years ago.
At the risk of being off-topic but kind of still on-topic, have you all seen where PanIP's lovely "Automated Sales" patent got overturned recently? Unless PanIP can convince the USPTO to overturn its decision, it looks like there will be no more lawsuits against e-commerce companies coming from PanIP, unless they think they can stand on just their automated transactions patent, and that one under review, too.
There's a link to the story at the old website of the PanIP Group Defense Fund, at youmaybenext.com.
You are in error. No-one is screaming. Thank you for your cooperation.
Let's see:
I can't record the concert myself for later listening.
I can't take so much as a photograph so show my friends how great my seat was or any other purpose.
I can't buy a sanctioned recording of the concert.
I can't bring in a bottle of water or a crumb of food from outside.
Is Clear Channel also working on inventing that flashy thing from Men in Black, so after the show is over they can wipe the very memory of it from the brains of the concertgoers?
As subject. To invalidate a patent is to have it revoked by the Patent Office / courts.
They take all the joy out of life! It makes me so depressed. One of the finest experiences I've had in the last year is getting a DiscLive CD right after the Pixies show in Spokane. The artists got a cut, I didn't have to lug around recording requipment and the DiscLive guys are AWESOME.
You can read more about them on the "All around the world - Pixies live" forum on frankblack.net for one. There service is a GOOD THING and it hurts no one but the greedy bastards at Clear Channel. You should have seen the smiles on the 1000 or so people who go CDs that night. Everyone was HAPPY.
In our corporate run world soon we will all be slaves to the patents and morals of a handful of monopolistic companies. We can line up and listen to whatever clear channel wants us to listen to and pay them a hefty sum to do so.
It just makes me sick to my stomach. Every GOOD THING in the world gets taken away. Call me a whiner, but this just depresses the SHIT out of me.
I was doing that a decade ago with mics, mixer and two cassette decks - and I can safely guarantee that thousands of Deadheads were doing it two decades prior to that.
You're fired.
Sincerely,
Your boss at ClearChannel
PS: Thanks for the link. The RIAA has been contacted and that site will be shut down soon.
I just read the exact wording of the patent and the only thing it seems to incorporate beyond just recording sound to the media is that it does so "as it happens". And can be sent to multiple devices to record. Go to any recording studio in the world and they will have that exact same ability. The only thing this patent REALLY specifies is that it can be used at a concert. BS. Also, even if the courts ever upheld it, I believe you could technically get around the patent by just recording the audio first, and then just burn after the performance was over. Sure, you'd maybe have to wait another 5 minutes before you could leave with your disk but I sure wouldn't care if it meant those leeches didn't get my dime.
I recall seeing a show on Discovery about a year or two ago about how the Grateful Dead have been recording their own live shows and selling the CDs right after said show for several years as a way to side-step the commercial distribution channels. In the show, they reported that their net income increased many-fold over what they were paid from their RIAA member distributor (Imagine that, directly selling their CDs and taking all the profit vs getting $0.01 out of every $!)
Also, as others have mentioned, this most definitely is both obvious and a natural evolution of recording equipment capabilities. This "patent" should have been denied, since they're attempting to generically patent an existing process by merely putting a few time sensitive words in.
The cesspool just got a check and balance.
Read the friendly patent:
1. An event recording system, comprising:
(i) an event-capture module to capture an event signal and transform it into a primary event file that is accessible as it is being formed;
(ii) an editing module communicatively connected to the event capture module, wherein the editing module accesses and parses the primary event file into one or more digital track files that can be recorded onto a recording media; and
(iii) a media recording module communicatively linked to the editing module for receiving the one or more digital track files, the media recording module having a plurality of media recorders for simultaneously recording the one or more digital track files onto a plurality of recording media.
Unfortunately, we have some CC radio stations here in Indy. I've already made the conscious choice not listen to any of them. We have some very good independent stations here that are much better, anyway.
A lot of weirdness happened in the days immediately following 9-11. The list was one of them, but it NEVER amounted to a company ban. Generally speaking, CC doesn't operate this way.
Another urban legend: that CC banned the Dixie Chicks after they mouthed off overseas. Some CC stations did exactly that, but it was a local decision, not through Corporate. We were told to make the call based on our own markets. The only company I know which actually banned the Chicks was Cumulus.
This is my post. There are many others like it. If you don't like what you read here, go try one of the others.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Monopoly indeed. Look at some of the press articles from the DiscLive site. CC and DL have been going to toe to toe for a while with this. Of course, from this one article, it is clear that CC clearly has the upper hand: "But who will have final say over these recordings? Simon says, "As the promoter/venue owner we do not need special permission from the promoter/venue owner to record shows."
I can see CC refusing mechanical licenses to to DL as they are the 'owners' of most of the venues.
Note that DiscLive has applied for a patent too:
"DiscLive has developed a patent pending proprietary technology that enables the mass-production of CDs and DVDs within minutes of the end of a concert."
As a frequent gatherer of legal live recordings, I think the prior art is with the fans, as they are the ones who have been plugging into soundboards and passing out free CDs immediately after a show that allows live recording, since the day laptops came with burners in them. One just need to look at a site like FurthurNet to see the hundreds of legal recordings available for download (their software and registration required to download), many of which were issued immediatley after the show.
It seems to me there's a dual standard for prior art: If you want to invalidate a patent, you must show that someone did essentially the exact thing covered in the patent. This is generally quite hard, because generally the patent will have enough detail that everything anyone comes up with is just a little bit off.
On the other hand, when it comes time to enforce the patent, anything that looks vaguely like the patent is forbidden.
So, you could build a Direct-To-CD system with technology pre-dating the patent that isn't quite like the one in the patent, and even if you could prove that system was used for that purpose before the patent was filed, it would not invalidate the patent if shown as prior art. On the other hand, try to use that system today and you'll get sued.... you might win, but you'll probably lose.
Someday, I hope to see a defense to the tune of "I was using this system before the patent" for a system like the one described in the previous paragraph, and see what happens to the patent then when the two conflicting standards both come into play at once.
(Of course, there's a reason the patents are broad: A narrow view of these patents would be almost impossible to infringe, rendering the Patent Office nearly meaningless, and that's anathema to a bureaucracy.)
Anonymous yammering Coward, monopolies are bad. That's why they're illegal in the US, regardless of BushCo's fondness for them. The Sherman Antitrust Act, the landmark legislation protecting the people from monopolies, trusts, and cartels, was passed a century ago, after the robber baron monopolies squeezed people so hard that there was a near collapse of the economy outside the insular circuits of the monopolies' cabals. They're always bad. Believe what you want about capitalism - unless you're the monopoly, they're bad for you. Drop the crap about "group-think" and read a book.
--
make install -not war
This 'patent' is another glaring proof of the broken federal system. It is far too vague to be legitimate. Since I cannot fix the patent system I will start at the evil empire. I already boycott ALL CC stations (all suck now anyway) and I will not buy any of their 'Live' crap, or go to a CC-sponsored concert (since they have no hard-rock presence in Dallas this is also easy). I'd boycott advertisers on their stations but that would require listening. It's time to start skimming the gene pool.
parent post doesn't deserve -1. I made a mistake in my original post, using the word "ban" where I should have said "deprecated temporarely". Worst part is I have mod points but obviously already commented on this thread.
Einsturzende Neubauten (http://www.neubauten.org/) had problems with this on their recent US tour. Clear Channel acknowledged their prior art outside the US by only charging them a token fee to record in this country.
Boy was the band upset. They have been doing this outside the US since at least 2000.
-c
Should not this patent have failed under the "obvious to a practicioner" part of the patent process?
I shall have you know Microsoft is my favourite monopolist.
My mistake. Although the patents that I have seen defended successfully, are those that have been written by experts.
As in, only experts would come up with something non-obvious to a person of ordinary skill?? Isn't that the defintion of expert?
I think what you're saying is that you've only seen non-obvious patents be defended as non-obvious. Imagine that.
Your solution to stop corporations from (for lack of a better description) owning ideas is to remove the one law preventing them from trampling REAL innovators? You do realize, don't you, that if there were no patent laws, a corporation would be able to copy the ideas that inventors work hard to come up with, and produce the invention without having to compensate the inventor for the idea. Can I have some of what you're smoking?
"Ask not what your country can do for you." --John F. Kennedy
"The once small company has quickly grown to over 1200 stations"
Which is a small percentage of the 20,000 stations out there. Next...
At best not necessarily relevant, at worst intentionally deceitful use of statistics. How many of those 20,000 stations are 1 kW stations out in the middle of nowhere? If you look at Infinity's web site, they emphasize the number of their stations that are in major markets, and I dare say that Clear Channel is similarly concentrated.
"Within individual markets, such as Denver, Clear Channel controls every station broadcasting certain popular formats"
That is rather poorly worded. Hard to understand what you are saying.
It didn't seem that unclear to me. How about a first-order predicate calculus version? "There exist markets m and formats f such that for all radio stations s, if s in in market m and has format f, Clear Channel owns s, and Denver is one such market."
It doesn't matter that there are 20,000 radio stations if all those that are (1) in the area that you want to perform and (2) have a format that features the kind of music you play are all owned by Clear Channel.
See http://www.cybercollege.com/frtv/frtv022b.htm for a breakdown of US stations by format: according to that page, there's 11% oldies, 11% religious, 11% news/talk, 12% country--if you're a current, non-country performer, that's about half the stations in the US that are irrelevant when it comes to publicity or airplay.
According to George Carlin, when he came to my town, CC and CCE are totally separate and that is why he is not leaving CCE because of the Stern brouhaha.
Your argument here falls flat. When dealing with these issues, it's not as simple as a fraction, and you know it. You're dancing around the issue like a plant, but I won't call you one directly.
Clear Channel owns 1200 radio stations. It's CLOSEST competitor owns ~250 stations. It has very systematically carved out those radio stations, so while it own "6%" of the radio stations in the US, it "owns" over 25% of the revenue and listenership in the country, and 60% of the rock radio listenership. A vast majority of it's listenership is in the most coveted 18-to-34 age category.
With the purchase of SFX, it became the largest concert promoter in the country, and controls COMPLETELY the advertising for it's venues. This allows it to make deals and pressure artist into their terms, or else disallow it usage of larger venues AND make advertising on appropriate music stations impossible. If you're a rock band touring, and one company owns 60% of all the stations you'd adverstise on, and the TOP 60% of stations, which meant more than 60% of the listeners, you'd have a hard time launching a successful tour without them.
You feed the monster. You can say what you like, but NO ONE likes ClearChannel except ClearChannel and ClearChannel stockholders. The RIAA, the artists, the concert promoters, they seem to maintain a universal loathing for a company that, since it's purchasing spree, has driven down radio listenership while simultaneously buying up as many alternate means of distribution as they can. Artists are lost no matter what they do.
--- I'm going sane in a crazy world.
The second paragraph, "60% of the rock listenership" should be "60% of rock programming", indicating actual station ownership. It's listenership percentage in the rock markets is higher than the 60% of stations it owns. Since I can't edit, I'm correcting myself, so it's not contradictory.
--- I'm going sane in a crazy world.
Yeah right. The poster above you has already stated that clear-channel has something like 60% of the popular music ad revenue. I've heard 70%, but I won't argue that point and neither did you.
He says, "By threatening vulnerable artists and labels with reduced or off-hours air play on the only stations likely to air their songs, Clear Channel pressures artists, labels and concert venues into sweetheart deals with its promotions arm." Rather than refuting this claim, you say to him simply that this is A "pressure" that can be avoided by going to the other 94% of stations that are not Clear Channel. You should correctly be stating that the pressure can be avoided by going to stations generating the other 30% of the ad revenue for that particular market, not 94%, which would include talk radio, religious stations, etc...
Its difficult to argue that Clear Channel has done anything illegal. Clear Channel's effects should be looked at more from a sociological or ethical standpoint, rather than legal, and then the company will appear far more disturbing.
Like most large, market-dominating companies, they abuse their dominance-- they abuse their media outlets to give unfair advantage to their non-media enterprises (the venues).
Sociologically speaking, and this is where it can get Orwellian, they create a "lowest-common-denominator" listening audience by continually repeating some of the most mundane songs across their Majority of pop-music stations. It is marketing paradise when a company knows that 95% of their audience, whether the audience likes it or not, is familiar with the latest Celine Dion (remember the Titanic media circus? It wasn't that good of a movie, was it?) or Britney Spears (Pepsi's advertising-puppet). The impact on our culture can easily be seen in the list of Grammy and Oscar nominations (especially the Grammy's!).
Anyway, I could write a huge essay on this matter, but I won't waste my time.
No, they've patented the system that does it
If the patent is broad enough to read on all systems that could possibly do it, then they've patented doing it.
I've just read the patent, and it appears that the first claim covers breaking a live recording into tracks (.cue file anyone?) and then sending the audio to digital media recorders.
Every time a patent article comes up, we see all of this hoopla about prior art.
/. mind, it invalidates the patent but the mega-corp *still has the patent*
Tell me, have any of these absurd tech patents been overturned because prior art existed? Or are we all just waving our arms in the air saying "Oh, we had that before!" and then doing nothing?
It doesn't matter if prior art existed if absolutely nothing gets done about it. Sure, in the
The RIAA has little if anything to do with live albums other than that a label may contractually own copyright in all musical recordings made of a performer's voice. If a recording artist managed to negotiate such a clause out of her contract with the label, then the label lacks grounds to complain.
The NMPA and the performing rights organizations, on the other hand, have their fingers in every musical pie, even more so than the RIAA and its member labels.
Cdrecord has had the ability to record from stdin since its creation.
The patent covers adding track start/end cues during the performance and then using the equivalent of 421 burners (or any other plurality of digital media recording devices). Can a user of cdrecord pipe in a .cue file created in real time?
The patent covers adding track start/end cues to a live digital recording and then sending the result to a duplicating machine. Tapes don't have track cues.
We should at least make patents non-transferrable.....
This could at least keep large companies from swallowing up every good idea that comes along...and potentially squashing it...
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
Hell, what secret is there to it? You have the same CD of the music the current act is "Lip Sync'ing" to...
I can be shrink wrapped and all WAY in advance...
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
The Specification (the text you quoted) has nothing to do with the strength of the patent. The patent is encompassed in the claims. e.g.,
1. An event recording system, comprising:
(i) an event-capture module to capture an event signal and transform it into a primary event file that is accessible as it is being formed;
(ii) an editing module communicatively connected to the event capture module, wherein the editing module accesses and parses the primary event file into one or more digital track files that can be recorded onto a recording media; and
(iii) a media recording module communicatively linked to the editing module for receiving the one or more digital track files, the media recording module having a plurality of media recorders for simultaneously recording the one or more digital track files onto a plurality of recording media.
If the "media" is a DVD, they aren't "getting around it" by using one.
-truth
I had a steady B+ in my AI class until I failed the Turing test...
Please vote for one of the following:
A) Microsoft
B) ClearChannel
C) The FCC
D) US Congress
E) SCO
F) The US Patent & Trademark Office (PTO)
G) The RIAA
H) The MPAA
I) The NRA
J) The KKK
Hate to tell you this, but radio in Michigan is a complete wasteland. It doesn't matter where you set the dial. Mostly stock rap and country, no variety.
The only decent stations you can get are if you're lucky enough to be in the range of the Canadian border. I finally broke down and got XM Radio. It's still new to me but so far, I like.
nos laetus epulor qui would domito nos
And that is different than what we have now how?
Free Mac Mini Yeah, it's
No, there's no imaginary cabal at work. Did I imply the existance of some spooky conspiracy at work in the ranks of CC? All of the information I need to look badly upon CC is in the numbers, publically available.
You frustratingly fail to admit that Clear Channel is market dominant. We need to agree on the market which is being talked about, since you seem to believe that it includes ALL radio stations, whether they be sports, talk radio, religious, etc, of which Clear Channel, as you say, may only own 6%. The market of which I, as well as others who refer to Clear Channel as 'market-dominant', am referring to is the popular rock, hip-hop, adult contemporary, and classic rock stations (more may exist, but hopefully you get the idea.)
Given that Clear Channel takes in 70% of the revenue from the aforementioned market, it follows by definition that Clear Channel is market-dominant.
This would not be quite so bad if Clear Channel didn't leverage this market-dominance to gain dominance in other markets--namely in live music revenue. This is not illegal if the government doesn't say it is. It's just a question of ethics. However if this Sherman Act argument, which the above poster mentioned, is valid, then Clear Channel's actions are illegal. That's up to lawyers to decide.
Which brings me to my main point: Clear Channel is going to get a lot of criticism from people who aren't happy with being inundated with music and radio formats which they feel aren't interesting. CC's market-dominance is a major part of the problem and will be a tool used by CC-critics to attack Clear Channel. That's something that you and your buddies at Clear Channel are going to have to get over.
How about this for an idea: Tell your boss to start some indie-music channels in your major broadcasting areas! Think of the potential in marketing to indie-listeners and in public relations to critics! Start some "free-radio" indie stations! Address your critics, don't weasle your way around their arguments; start a new trend in the corporate landscape!
Ok, so you'd rather sit back and explain to the customer why THEY are the ones who are wrong; why Titanic *must* have been the best movie of 1997 (because it won an Oscar, of course. Why did it win an oscar? Because it was the best movie of the year! And why was it the best movie of the year? It won an Oscar!)? This is exactly why monopolies were made illegal in the first place and precisely the reason CC is getting so much crap.
I'm surprised that no musicians have commented on this.
So let me get this straight... For the purposes of argument, I'm in a band, performing my own music. I'm already paying a soundman. If I tell my employee to record and make copies of the show for anyone who wants to buy one, I suddenly have to pay Clear Channel a cut?
Fuck that. The death of another good idea.
Good luck to you and your Clear Channel buddies in your holy crusade to bring the catchiest 20 songs on eternal repeat to every number on the radio dial!
I know it is as simple as a fraction. No company that controls less than 10% is any sort of monopoly. You know it. and you are the one dancing around it.
No, you are the one heavily spinning by implying that all radio stations are equivalent, when they obviously aren't. You're effectively arguing that it doesn't matter if a band can't be promoted on 50 kW stations, because there's a 1 kW station willing to do so.
I'm reminded of the joke about the fellow who made horse and rabbit sandwiches who, asked how he made them, said that he used equal parts each kind of meat--one horse, one rabbit.
Clear Channel currently owns over 722 radio stations and a few dozen tv stations. They're one of the biggest boosters of the Bush administration because of the monopoly-limiting regulatory rollbacks the republicans have perpetrated.
In my area, CC owns six radio stations. You won't hear any local music on any of them, and as a result, the whole local music industry is floundering because the main outlets for promoting music are dominated by a few big corporations.
One thing you can bet on. If Kerry gets in office, he's not going to let the media consolidation continue. That alone is reason enough to make sure Bush gets out, so that companies like Clear Channel can't end up owning a majority of the airwaves and then impose their will on everyone else.
Clearchannel owns 1200 radio stations. Did you forget the AM band? They also own many of the ticket sales outlets which provide ticket sales for the larger venues, and have considerable holding in movie theater chains such as Carmike, AMC, Cinemark, and Century.
What "monopoly-limiting regulatory rollbacks" have been perpetrated? Are you talking about deregulation of the media? Well yes, you could talk about how Clearchannel owns over 1200 stations in the major markets, and provides content to 60% of radio listeners in the US (which happens when you buy radio stations in big cities...duh). But what you and your ilk never bother to mention is that there are 12,500 radio stations (AM FM total all formats public and private). Clearchannel owns just under 10% - some "monopoly". Additionally, the number of radio stations has increased since deregulation occurred, up 15% in markets considered "saturated" (rural markets) and 12% in major markets (urban areas).
In my area, they own none. You still won't hear any local music because most local music sucks. Really. Other than the novelty of hearing it live, 99% of local bands always suck balls. The music industry cannot make a profit with their current discovery, production, and distribution methods so consequently they manufacture acts that aren't even up to the suck-ass level of most local acts, many of whom aren't doing anything but covering the songs put out by said manufactured acts.
But if you're so bothered by it, why don't you start a station? For around a grand you can set up a LPFM station that, in urban areas, is capable of reaching a thousand homes. Play nothing but local music, and sell advertising. Report back in one year.
How can I bet on that? Lets look at John Kerry's words.
Now let us examine Kerry's voting record, and it's impact.
There are over 12,500 radio stations - AM, FM, private and public. Clearchannel owns approximately 1,200 radio stations. So how does owning 9.6% of capital constitute a monopoly? Maybe if you consider that Clearchannel owns stations in major markets, and can reach 60% of the listening audience, you could call it a monopoly IF and only if you could prove that the other 11,000 radio stations are unable to access more than 40% of the market because of clearchannel.
People, grow the hell up. Market dominance doesn't make someone a monopoly. Its the natural result of making a product better suited to the demands of consumers.
Last year at the Timpanogos Storytelling Festival, their was a CD available on the last day with recordings (some with video) of stories recorded live at the festival, including IIRC some from that day. It was a really cool CD that I need to get back from my sister....
Join moola.com, play games to earn money.
Prior art or no, if a big enough company patents something everyone else is screwed. No matter how daft the patent, if you can't afford the legal fees to contest it, or to stand up to ${BIGCOMPANY} lawyers, you will get nowhere other than the poor house. It's not fair.
Stick Men
More like honour! Let's face it, AC/DC songs all sound pretty much the same.
As others have pointed out, this is nothing but a speedup of procedures that have existed for years in the recording industry.
The Sonic Solutions CD mastering system that has been around since some time around 1990 does most of the front end work described. It records while allowing simultaneous editing of the incoming file. What it doesn't allow for, by itself, is multiple workstations, BUT it would be possible to use multiple Sonic Solutions workstations with each operator recording a section of the concert and then combine the sections at the end of the concert. If you put SCSI raid boxes on them, you would have the redundancy mentioned in the patent.
Multi-ganged CD burners have been around forever, too.
I think this would have been obvious to average designer of Digital Audio Workstations.
If they have integrated all this stuff so they can start burning CD-Rs DURING the concert (once you start burning a CD, you can't stop until the end), they have done a very impressive bit of programming, but I don't see anything intellectually stimulating about the concept....
An engineer who ran for Congress. http://herbrobinson.us
He voted for media deregulation. How much more black and white do you need it to be? You people are so filled with hatred and denial that even the truth ceases to matter to you.