Flickr Patenting "Interestingness"

tjcrowder noted that Boing Boing is reporting that Flickr has filed for a patent on a system for determining "interestingness". From the patent application abstract: "Media objects, such as images or soundtracks, may be ranked according to a new class of metrics known as "interestingness." These rankings may be based at least in part on the quantity of user-entered metadata concerning the media object, the number of users who have assigned metadata to the media object, access patterns related to the media object, and/or a lapse of time related to the media object." So basically, nobody else can use tags to label files. Totally original thinking from the folks at flickr. *cough*

Comments

umm... no?

[geoffspear]

They're not patenting tagging, and there's no reason to think you can't use tags if the patent is accepted. The patent may be really stupid, but if we're going to get editorial comments, can they at least make sense?