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Sony UK Refused P2P Software Patent
blane.bramble writes "The Register reports that Sony cannot patent inventions in the UK that remove the anonymity of the peer-to-peer (P2P) user experience. Sony tried to patent a method of passing around user reviews of shared files, but the UK Patent Office rejected it, and then rejected it again on appeal. The article indicates the patents were rejected because the 'inventions' were not eligible for patenting. " From the article: "When a P2P user downloads a piece of content from another user's computer, be it a song or a game or a movie, he normally knows nothing about that user - or where that user obtained the content. Sony's proposal would change that experience. Sony describes a method for attaching a user history to content when it is shared among computers or other devices. When one user downloads a song, he can see who had it last and what he thought about it."
I think that would be a cool feature. I would like the ability to tag content with a review for others to read later on, add to or disagree with as they please.
Seems as though the UK has a more workable definition of an "obvious" idea than we do in the US. This is a good start.
Dammit Otto, you have lupus.
I'm assuming that they would try to patent this so they could block other companies from creating this sort of software. . .if Sony decides to go Pro-P2P the RIAA would shit themsleves.
If you are about to mod me down, keep in mind that this post was most likely sarcastic.
This is a neat idea. However, if the MPAA and RIAA got their filthy hands on it they could track p2p downloads. Considering Sony's history of DRM, I'm sceptical of their motives.
It seems that everybody is thinking Sony won't implement the idea. The fact that they cannot patent the very idea doesn't mean they can't go ahead and do it!
I would be suspicious of P2P from a media company. Especially one that gives the user more ... identity.
From TFA:
Then the RIAA could descend wrathfully on this supposed uber-pirate. Even if the guy used a psuedomym, like the article suggests, the system would probably have some sort of personally identifiable information on him that the RIAA could get the court to subpoena the information, or Sony could just give it to them.
I think the only way that I would consider this feature a good thing is if it had no "identity," which would only as useful as the comment metadata that you can already put on files you share in some systems. Either that, or if it was part of a system where you already had an identity, like that subscription thing Sony did with Playlouder that the article talkied about. This might be all that Sony was planning to do with this anyway.
Anyway, I would be hesitant to jump into this. I'm suspicious.
Also, I wouldn't want to have to deal with the implications of
This space reserved for administrative use.
Why was the first thing I thought "How are they gonna abuse it?"?
Instead of thinking that this might be a useful feature to actually discriminate between good and bad content, why was the first thing I was thinking about the question how Sony would use this feature to rip me off? The idea itself sounds quite interesting...
Riiiiiight! Defensive patent! If you patent it, nobody can implement it. Nobody could rate their fakes down into the basement when they try to poison the seeds of torrents and eMule.
gotcha!
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
I agree with you, but if it was really that cut and dry, then why was Sony pursuing the process in the first place? They must have been hoping to game the system, like another poster said, to essentially block others from using this technique of P2P by extracting the theory from the software. Well, the obviousness comes from calling a duck a duck. A patent "about a method that could be applied to software" is still forbidden, no matter how you slice it. I think this is good news, depending on the lasting effects.
Dammit Otto, you have lupus.
That actually IS exactly the difference. Everyone can implement a rating system. And many P2P Systems have one, as metadata, not attached to the file, but rather to the P2P info around it.
Thus, it is easy to label fakes, spam, viruses and so on. It makes it harder to "poison" the P2P system with fakes and questionable payload. You download something, label it crap if it is and the next person knows he needn't download it for it is a fake anyway.
Now, it ain't been too long ago that some studios had the brilliant idea to distribute fakes that only consisted of noise or insults to downloaders, named like the file you wanted. This was soon weeded out by the rating system of various P2P systems, simply because people labeled the crap as such and it didn't take long to find the "good" apples from the haystack of crap. In other words, it was worthless.
With the patent granted, these rating systems would have to vanish, because I highly doubt that Sony would grant a license to any P2P creators (and let's not even think about these licenses being free of charge). In other words, poisoning would work again, because you could not rate the files, it would be disallowed to use such a technology, since it's patented.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
The comment/review sections would quickly fill up with spams attached to the typically long-gone junk IP/etc addresses typically used by spammers.
Where were you when the voynix came?
Yeah, but Sony can't use that to track pirates or enforce their DRM related activities.
Au contraire. Think of all the people that got identified -- some virus writers, but some ordinary joes -- thanks to Word's keeping track of who edited it. IIRC, the MAC address is a part of it, and most people didn't even know they were tracked, so they didn't even know what to spoof nor even that they needed to spoof it.
If Sony actually got the ball rolling, so every file you ever shared is for ever marked as downloaded from you, the RIAA would probably be in so much joy that they'd ejaculate in their pants. They'd just have to leech every single shared copyrighted song or movie, to have the complete history of who offered it for download, all the way to the original person who leaked it. Lawsuits, here we come.
The MPAA at least has been working hard to create just that: a means to identify who shared a preview of movie. In their case, by watermarking it. Sony's version is head and shoulders above that.
Seriously, identifying sharers is the RIAA's and MPAA's wet dream. It's the kind of wet dream where they don't just wake up to change their underwear, but the whole mattress and blanket.
And this one not only lets dolts go on record as having shared that file, but also conveniently lets them write a self-incriminating testimony in the form of that review. Want to bet that you'd see it coming back to haunt you in court, when Sony's expert comes and says "style analysis of the 500 word review says it's him who wrote it and shared our movie"? No more getting Scott-free out of court by blaming it on your 6-year old kid, no more blaming it on mysterious hackers that got into your wireless access point, no more nothing. It's not their style.
So I suspect that what Sony is trying to do here is _not_ to create a better P2P experience, but basically to coat a cyanide pill in chocolate and hope that enough dolts will swallow it. It's hoping that they can package it as such a cool feature as to get enough idiots to just stop thinking about the more sinister aspect of it.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Sony's patent agent, Dr Jonathan DeVile [..] said the examiners were wrong, that the inventions cannot be a program for a computer because, in operation, there are at least two computers involved, communicating over a network.
Dear lord, what interesting hoops that man's mind must be able to jump through to earn his paycheck. Doctor of what? Some bizarre form of n-dimensional logic where if you throw your bullshit far enough it comes back as the truth?