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PTO Rejects Instant Live Patent
Jivecat writes "Instant Live, a service of the concert promotion company Live Nation, makes recordings of live concerts that are rapidly burned onto CDs to be sold to the audience before they leave the venue. It's a nice service for fans, but Live Nation holds the patent for a technology that places markers between songs so they can be written as separate tracks rather than one big track — in effect giving them a monopoly on in-concert recordings. Now, thanks to the efforts of the EFF and a patent attorney, who found prior work of similar technology, the U.S. Patent Office has revoked Live Nation's patent. This is good news for those who consider Live Nation to be the Evil Empire when it comes to concert promotion."
PTO Rejects Instant Live Patent
That's because the idea of granting it is patently ridiculous.
The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
Some people like to diss EFF here on Slashdot, specially when they don't win some cases, but forget to thank them for the victories that make our lives easier. To show your support and help them to help us all, shell in some cash. The digital world thanks you :)
Unfortunately scumbags like Clear Channel still overcharge for tickets and hoard any good seating for their crappy radio stations to use or give away as prizes. Until asshats like CC clean up their act I, for one, will no longer attend any live event. I'll just wait for the DVD.
This is the NSA, we're gonna geet U h@x0r5! Also, what is a h@x0r5?
Now, thanks to the efforts of the EFF and a patent attorney, who found prior work of similar technology, the U.S. Patent Office has revoked Live Nation's patent. This is good news for those who consider Live Nation to be the Evil Empire when it comes to concert promotion.
But less so (good news) when the author of the prior art files for the same patent, no?
Interested in open source engine management for your Subaru?
What's that, Billy? That's right: it's a volcano. *BING*
Isn't there some clause that a patent has to be non-obvious?
"Thanks for all the money you paid to us. We've used it to buy off ISO among other things" -Microsoft
This isn't about stopping them producing CDs, it's stopping them from forbidding others to do the same.
why does anyone need extra software to break things into individual tracks? these concerts are almost certainly being recorded into protools... and it's about a 1 minute process to zip through the total recording and and just seperate the songs into different regions... and then burn away... you'll get seperate tracks, and you won't have to deal with patent issues over something this insane...
now is the winter of our discotheque
How hard is it to run a line off the sound board to a recording device and have some dude hit a button at the end of every song to signal 'put this as a new track'?
Your hair look like poop, Bob! - Wanker.
My boss's son is the CEO of Live Nation. The son is married to Jolene Blalock, aka T'Pol. So he still wins /. nerds.
These days we seem to have a plethora of Evil Empires. Evil Empire of software, Evil Empire of Domain Registration, Evil Empire of Music Labels, Evil Empire of Movies, Evil Empire of Pizza chains, Evil Empire of dry cleaning, Evil Empire of Milwaukee area Dairy Producers. The list just never stops. We need a onestop resource to look up the Evil Empire of a good or service, if we want to keep it all straight, or if we want to keep our purchasing and use of services of Evil Empires to a minimum. So we should put them in a Directory book. Yellow is actually aready taken, so is blue and red, How about the chartreuse book of Evil Empires?
Well.. maybe. Or Maybe not. But Definitely not sort of.
Surely the main reason to celebrate is that obvious patents can and will be struck down.
If my business plan is to register a load of bogus patents and hope that some will stick and make money, the last thing I want is to invest time and money only to see the community shoot me down.
A relatively small number of wins like this will kill off a lot of small to medium operators.
Live Nation's technology is nor prior art for any patent that might be filed going forward
My turnips listen for the soft cry of your love
have you ever been to a Phish show?
noone knows what the hell track they are playing, they are just 50 minute jams.
With all of the royalties attached to albums and performances, bands do NOT need another thing sucking away at their money. A lot of the bands that do this are independent, non-RIAA artists that play in non-Clear Channel venues. I've used the service, but prefer online ones like digitalsoundboard.net that sell DRM-free FLACs of the concerts [/plug]. Artists actually MAKE a sizable chunk off of these recordings, unlike their albums or even live show tickets. They don't need one more royalty to pay. This service is one of the few examples of what I think the music industry *should* be about. Supporting (and paying) quality artists for great music, without any strings attached.
Get your personalized Evil Empire today! We also sell Wars for/on Evil Empires, chartreuse coloured Evil Empire cups, caps, cardigans, parkas, thumbs, thumb screws, trench coats, pith helmets, whips, lawn seed, and other wares. Join our Evil Empire dating service, find your mate and leave others chartreuse with envy!
Do it yourself, because no one else will do it yourself. [beta blockade 10-17 Feb]
Just because they lost their patent doesn't mean they have to go out of business. Now the bar to entry is much lower.
Inventions have long since reached their limit, and I see no hope for further development.-- Frontinus, 1st cent. AD
As whoever had the prior art has missed the 'window of opportunity' to successfully patent it, which is one to two years, depending.
paintball
Should've been titled "PTO finally says no to a patent after much nagging."
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C1 bottles of beer on the wall. Take one down, pass it round... Oh, umm...
It's the only good idea Ticketmaster ever had, apparently. Every show I've been to that's offered a live CD, I bought it. One was instant live (Bauhaus), and the rest required you to wait (Pixies, Throwing Muses, Tori Amos). The Pixies CD distributor made a point of saying it was so they could get it in the studio, on proper equipment, fix levels, etc, and it is a very high quality product. The Bauhaus Instant Live one isn't bad though. I honestly don't understand why every band wouldn't do this. The only way a band makes actual money signed to a major is A:) T-Shirts, B:) Ticket Sales. C:) is clearly "sell the shows as you play 'em", because the lines were very, very long at each event. Who wouldn't want the CD of the show you just saw? They KNOW they're playing to a house full of fans, why not let them take the performance home? Cheers to any bands that do this. I dislike Ticketmaster (livenation) as much as anyone, but I know Throwing Muses did it themselves, and the Pixies one was through another small distributor, seems like it's win, win, win? My wife and I probably went to about 2 or 3 dozen shows last year, and would have bought CDs of all of them.
I like music
Any decent digital recorder allows you to place markers and begin new tracks on the fly. The recording service sounds like a great idea, but none of the procedures are novel or innovative.
Concerts used to be recorded live on vinyl and records sold at the door when the crowd exit.
Yes, I am that old...
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
I happen to be working with Live Nation on implementing my company's software for them. Thank goodness it has nothing to do with this little tidbit.
There is a difference between "insightful" and "inciteful" other than spelling.
Having mixed live sound I know that a board mix is fine for the band, but a real disappointment for a concert goer: not enough reverb, strange EQ, improper balance between the musicians. When you are mixing live sound, you are taking into account the musical wash (mush) coming off stage, the room sound, and the sound of the speakers. A good concert recording requires a separate mix and with the better recordings a separate mixer with EQ and effects. Sometimes the FOH (front of house) engineer can do both mixes, but it is a stretch. The FOH engineer's primary responsibility is the FOH sound. The flip side of the board mix is that if you buy it and take it home and it sucks then you will feel
ripped off and might wonder if the concert was really as good as you remembered it.
Been there, done that.
RLH
Correct me if I'm wrong, but can't you can apply for a patent, and advertise your concept all you want, without mentioning that its patent pending, and then once you get your patent, announce it as patented, and collect revenue.
The companies that have committed themselves to that patent will be forced to pay your royalties, face legal action, or back out of production. All of which can be extremely costly.
To avoid criticism; Say nothing, Do nothing, Be nothing.
Ever heard of a Grateful Dead show? The Internet was developed to distribute GD set-lists and show recordings.
-- I have a private email server in my basement.
Well if this "Alan" dude wants to come over and write me out this list of things I must not do I might take some notice.
But if you think I'll listen to some scmo follower "interpreting" the will of Alan for me then forget it.
Thanks.
There was something worse, Atari Teenage Riot ! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Live_at_Brixton_Acade my_(Atari_Teenage_Riot_album)
please excuse my apathy
TAO Recording is a feature that has to be supported by the firmware of the burner. It certainly isn't an innovation on the part of Live Nation. I've read that their operation consists of a trailer filled with banks of commodity burners. The only custom bit here is the software for managing the dissemination of data to multiple burners as it comes available.
I am becoming gerund, destroyer of verbs.
You can file a preliminary application that buys you another year to file the real one.
paintball
Parent knows what he is talking about. You're not going to accomplish much trying to run two mixes at once unless all you're doing is just ballparking everything and not adding anything creative.
Additionally, I'd also comment that the record mix should be done somewhere with sound isolation from the main event. Technically it isn't needed from an electronics standpoint, but good luck getting a good mix when the engineer is surrounded with 120dB of noise. I normally consider myself a half-decent mixer and when I've listened to CDs I've created in this sort of environment I cringe!