Slashdot Mirror
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?
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.
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.......
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.
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
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.
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.
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...
Nothing more to say
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
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.
Honestly -- people have been attempting to do this "on-the-sly" since the birth of portable cassette recorders -- and getting arrested for it too.
And honestly, people have been doing it legally for years as well at venues that allow such things. Hell, concerts by less main stream groups like the Grateful Dead, Rusted Root, Phish, and such from that genre have vocally encouraged people to record their shows and then trade them with other fans, all legal, and all with the band's consent.
I have even been to several shows where recorders with high quality digital equipment were even allowed to tap in to the sound board itself to get pristine audio from the band without the majority of the audience cheers and such.
If you want prior art, just look up anyone who trades live Dead shows. Unless the patent specifically states CD recordable media and availability immediately after the show, there is no case. And even then, there is still no case, as such has been going on in the same venues I mentioned earlier for years and years via DAT (digital signal on tape), analog tape, and even CD as CD burners first became publically available.
If they really need the help, I have some old Dead shows on tape that are second gen from DAT originals I would be more than happy to let them listen to. Even have some first gen analogs that were pulled from the soundboard at a couple shows.
Either way, its all been done before, and this really looks more like a case of Clear Channel being their usual monoploistic selves. They already own the vast majority of radio stations in Amercia, and the FCC has told them that they cant buy any more, so they have to expand somewhere.
Wonder if I could buy some patents and start suing too! The new Americal dream:
Buy IP
?????
Litigate for fun and profit!!!!!
Jeff
"Our funds have never taken part in toxic or death spiral convertible financings of any sort" -BayStar's managing partne
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.
"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!
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
Really! This is like, hey look, this is a CD and I can record data to it. Oh look music is data. Now I'm going to patent my incredible invention, "recording music onto a CD".
I reckon if this is the sort of standard of patent we're seeing now, every patent issued by the US patent office in the last twenty years ought to be declared invalid because obviously we can't trust any of them to actually be sensible!
Skiing? Check out The Independant Skiers Portal
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.
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 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
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
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?