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."

Comments

On the other hand...

[another_fanboy]

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.

Suspicions

[Kwesadilo]

I would be suspicious of P2P from a media company. Especially one that gives the user more ... identity.

From TFA:

"Over time," suggests the application, "if a particular user consistently recommends interesting content before other users, then they will emerge as a kind of expert recommender."

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

And the user history information could be sold to marketers.

Why was the first thing that came to my mind...

[Opportunist]

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!