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Patent Issued For Podcasting
pickens writes "The EFF is reaching out for help after a company called Volomedia got the Patent Office to grant them exclusive rights to 'a method for providing episodic media' that could threaten the community of podcasters and millions of podcast listeners. 'It's a ridiculously broad patent, covering something that many folks have been doing for many years,' writes Rebecca Jeschke. 'Worse, it could create a whole new layer of ongoing costs for podcasters and their listeners.' To bust this patent, EFF is looking for additional 'prior art' — evidence that the podcasting methods described in the patent were already in use (PDF) before November 19, 2003. 'In particular, we're looking for written descriptions of methods that allow a user to download pre-programmed episodic media like audio files or video files from a remote publisher, with the download occurring after the user subscribes to the episodes, and with the user continuing to automatically receive new episodes.'"
Didn't Leo of TechTV do something like this using RealAudio back in the day?
I'd like to patent first posting. Does anyone have prior art?
But weren't there a few guys, back in 1999 that used to have a pretty neat weekly show. Back then I don't think they were called podcasts but I do remember that the shows were really fun.
Anyway, I found a link to it on Wikipedia but I'm sure there are more links around.
It was called Geeks in Space, or something like that, and the site's admins that used to make the show was called flashdot, dashdot, slashdort or something like that.
All browsers' default homepage should read: Don't Panic...
Please help publicise swpat.org - the software patents wiki
I think most people have taped a show from the radio on a cassette tape back in the day to listen to on a walkman when they did not have built in FM tuners.... I feel so old now.
This is one of those patents that is almost like "I now patent the act of scheduling"
This story has made me depressed.
How about Marimba Inc's "castanet" ?
The patent should be invalidated because business methods should not be patentable. There's plenty of prior art for the individual pieces (making files available for download to subscribers is as old as the BBS, and email notifications when new files are available are not newer), but the patentee will claim "we are the first to put all these ideas together". Of course what they did would have been obvious to anyone trying to solve the problem, but even that's not the point. The real issue is with what they are trying to patent. Would the PTO (or the CFFC) accept a patent on the same business method, except that users send requests on postcards, the audio will be burned to CDs and mailed by post, and the subscription lists will be maintained in paper folders? If not, then the PTO should explain why sending files by post is not patentable, but sending them by internet is.
I wonder if it counts since it is:
Episodic content............. Check
Web Posted................... Check
Already Up in 1993.......... Check
Just my 1 cent of useless info...
This sounds more like a patent on RSS feeds- online episodic media goes way back (Big media had webisodes in 2000, with amateur stuff going back much further) but the patent seems to refer to subscriptions and automatic downloading.
Wikipedia has a whole section of prior art in their history section of the podcasting article here
On the whole, I find that I prefer Slashdot posts to twitter ones because I don't get limited to 140 chars before
Mortality.net Radio was posting episodes back in February 2002. The kicker is how it applies to the patent. It satisfies Claim 1A, but none of the others like subscription, auto-downloading, or showing if there is space remaining for the download (except how that is already covered in operating systems and/or web browsers).
What's the difference?
Some people I know pay a fee and get episodes on tape, cd, beta, vhs, dvd...mailed to them every month.
It is a business method, not patentable.
methods that allow a user to download pre-programmed episodic media like audio files or video files from a remote publisher, with the download occurring after the user subscribes to the episodes, and with the user continuing to automatically receive new episodes
Well, starting in 1977 users who wanted to watch a pre-programmed episodic audio/video stream called "Inside the NFL" could subscribe to the cable TV HBO/Showtime channel, and after subscribing would continue to automatically receive new episodes. Does that count?
I'm willing to bet that there are some internet mailing lists that sent audio files to their members back in the 1990s at least. Not sure if that's different since mailing lists typically "push" the data to an intermediary for download (ie, the POP server that the user actually downloads the mail from).
From The Door Into Summer by Robert A. Heinlein (1956):
There wasn't anything really new in it; it was just the way that I put it together. The "spark of genius" required by our laws lay in getting a good patent lawyer.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
1. A method for providing episodic media, the method comprising:
- providing a user with access to a channel dedicated to episodic media, wherein the episodic media provided over the channel is pre-defined into one or more episodes by a remote publisher of the episodic media;
- receiving a subscription request to the channel dedicated to the episodic media from the user;
- automatically downloading updated episodic media associated with the channel dedicated to the episodic media to a computing device associated with the user in accordance with the subscription request upon availability of the updated episodic media, the automatic download occurring without further user interaction; and
- providing the user with: an indication of a maximum available channel depth, the channel depth indicating a size of episodic media yet to be downloaded from the channel and size of episodic media already downloaded from the channel, the channel depth being specified in playtime or storage resources, and the ability to modify the channel depth by deleting selected episodic media content, thereby overriding the previously configured channel depth.
You mean like cable television?
Great minds think alike; fools seldom differ.
Hate to admit to it, but Art Bell use to do this with his radio show back in the 90s. I remember getting RA streams running on my Amiga 1200. It was so awesome.
Anyone else tired of this patent crap?
http://www.mp3newswire.net/stories/2000/ego.html
* Test Drive of The i2Go eGo with IBM MicroDrive.
by Richard Menta 9/01/00
*snip*
More Options
*snip*
Want more options? I2Go MP3Agent, the software that comes with the player, has text-to-speech capabilities designed to translate the morning email into MP3 files to listen to on the commute in. This culd be a lifesaver to busy dot-com employees who get backlogged with a hundred messages.
MyAudio2Go.com
One of the best options available from the folks at i2Go is a website they created called MyAudio2Go.com. On this site you can download daily news stories in MP3 format. You can select articles covering the top news stories, sports, business and finance, even recaps of a dozen or so television shows like ER. We loved this site and the best news is you don't need an i2Go to download and play these files. Check this site out!
*snip*
Final Score A-
Copyright 2000 MP3 Newswire. All rights reserved.
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/03_42/b3854093_mz063.htm
It has a subscription option, and you can download content, but the problem is that the subscribed content is "streaming" and not automatically downloaded to the client computer. I'll be following this story as this patent would invalidate my Miro player.
I wish just one of these frivilous "process patents," which the high courts have ruled acceptable because they modify the physical components of a computer (ie. hard drive), would go to the Supreme Court, as the recent comments from its members signal they think the patents are ridiculous as well and would probably invalidate them.
i ~ Celebrating Science, Cyberspace, Speculation
FidoNet has been in operation since 1984 and has always supported attachment of arbitrary files. I'd suppose that the first issue of the FidoNews newsletter, dated 1 December of that year, probably constituted the first episodic media transmitted to subscribers on that system. I don't know which issue was first to include a WAV or GIF file, but the capability was there from the beginning.
Cease and desist your complaining, I have the patent on "Being tired of this patent crap".
I have the application form right here, and the stamped envelope to send it off.. hmm, I seem to have forgotten to mail it. My apologies, carry on with your rant about being "tired of this patent crap".
I only look human.
My mother is a halfling and my dad is an ogre, so that makes me an Ogreling
http://web.archive.org/web/19961219235234/www.artbell.com/art/audio.html
Found some stuff from 1996. Art Bell from AM radio fame use to put his shows and parts of his shows up on the internet where you could download or stream them.
I think at some point you had to pay for some of the "podcasts". Though I never did.
But if this wasn't podcasting I don't know what is.
I patent... hmm, let me think, what is still patentable.... BEING STUPID! Yes, I patent being stupid! C'mon, 90% of the USA, start paying me up!
I remember downloading the Technology Report from Jeffrey Harrow (or whatever it was called at the time) once a week back in the 1990's. We didn't call it podcasting then, but it was available in audio format (mp3 and before), and you could call them episodes. You could have it emailed to you or there were many automated solutions. There was a unique URL for each episode and a 'latest' URL that would always point to the latest episode. I first subscribed when he was with Digital. Later, he 'casted from Compaq and the last time I listened, he was at theharrowgroup.com
However, I have created a new way to be tired of patents. By replacing degradable biological byproducts with miscellaneous debris from the auto industry, I have patented being tired of Patent Junk. And I get a car analogy too!
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
I'd think you could go back much earlier. Syndicated radio, back in the 1930's, was done by individual radio stations subscribing to a show; e.g. a "podcast". "Downloads" were done by the syndicator making copies of records and mailing them to the subscribers. I see zero difference between that and current podcasts where the "syndicator" puts audio/video files on a computer network so that subscribers can download them.
Why is this not prior art? It is episotic media. It is pushed to a user once they subscribe using the mail service and is wapped in a publication ( the channel).
Undetectable Steganography? Yep, there's an app fo
Does this patent cover newsgroups? I think that would be prior art.
Who would win this election: Andrew Weiner vs Andrew Weiner's weiner.
Well, that. Before podcasts, there was Pointcast.
It failed but it was basically that, news podcasts without the iPod.
--
El Guerrero del Interfaz
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SHOUTcast Originally released in 1999. It could serve audio files in a streaming sense. Also, some plugins for WinAmp would allow you to download each individual files since all shoutcast involved was streaming mp3s across HTTP one after another. Later, video began to show up.
There's prior art for podcast-like distribution of audio shows dating back to 1993. However, the patent has to be read, and each claim compared to previous efforts. Simply demonstrating that people used the Internet for audio show distribution prior to 2003 does nothing.
See indymedia radio projects circa 2000. For example reports by Linda Thurston. Moving along...
Get a web developer
I would like someone who is informed about the patent process to clarify for me, and by extension the /. community, an aspect of the patent process that I do not understand and seems to be a point of confusion among readers here:
If a patent is (wrongly) awarded for a technology that has been covered by prior art, even if the prior art has not previously been patented, what is the legal status of the patent and the prior art? Can the patent be a threat to prior art (could previously existing podcasting/RSS technology be threatened by legal challenges)? Would a challenge by the patent holder risk invalidating the patent when the defendant produced evidence of prior art? In the event of a legal battle where the patent was found to be invalid due to prior art, who would be responsible for legal costs?
So if this is the future...where's my jet pack?
Not a lawyer, but isnt software update of things like AOL client or acrobat reader from the 90s prior art? they automatically checked for updates and downloaded them with no user interferiance beond launching the app, the same way itunes does with podcasts
I remember specifically in the mid 1990s, AOL pushed a client update that as I recall downloaded automatically when you logged in that added a pictures feature, and a new .WAV file, "youve got pictures!"
well, youve got prior art
perhaps this counts. if the fixed periodic nature is a problem, just be a little lazy when putting things on the servers. ;-)
Art Bell was podcasting in 1998. Even by then there were several years of archives so the starting date was probably closer to 1995. http://archive.coasttocoastam.com/gen/podcast.html
Camping on quad since 1996.
How about usenet?
It even uses the term 'subscription' and even has episodic content, in the form of actual TV episodes. All we have to demonstrate that there were 'channels' dedicatied to specific content...like alt.binaries.multimedia.firefly, for an example of a 2002 group.
Specific, episodic content that you subscribe to and your client (For example, NewsBin) can download automatically.
Yes, that behavior would be illegal, but that doesn't stop it from being prior art.
That alone seems to fit claim 1, 2, 4 and 5 of the patent. And I have a Usenet client that can do 7, but someone needs to find one with that feature from 2003.
3 and 6 could happen based on what directory you download into. (3 if that directory is automatically synced, and 6 if that directory is chared.)
Claim 8 appears to be...compression? Yum, those episode files were compressed. Usually using rar. (For no apparent gain, as you can't compress video files much that way, but, hey, I'm sure at least one of those files ended up at least a tiny fraction smaller.)
Chaim 9...we need someone to find a Usenet client that let you watch while you download, which could be easily used to download only part of an episode. (OTOH, we don't need to really worry about this claim. If they're left with a patent on automatically 'partially downloading podcasts based on space', whatever.)
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
Allgames.com started podcasting back in 1996
And it's been around since Windows 98. Yes, the patent deals with audio and video files, but files are files in the eyes of the patent office (at least in the silly way they are justifying these algorithm/process patents for computers). I know it can't be this simple, but I'm having trouble figuring out why this wouldn't qualify as a 'prior art'.
i ~ Celebrating Science, Cyberspace, Speculation
VCR Plus+ is essentially the same thing, in effect, and predates it by a couple of years: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_recorder_scheduling_code
I wonder when will someone just patent the procedure for patenting obvious concepts. How awesome would that be, could cash in on all of these types, and then we won't have to spend our time commenting on these silly patents [for existing] concepts.
Iv'e been doing that since they invented VCRs with a timed record feature. About twenty years now (except now I use a DVR).
The whole idea of "push" media spawned back around 1995 with Pointcast, Marimba, BackWeb and others. It was The Next Big Thing(TM) and it was going to change the way we used the internet. Of course at the time most people were still using 28.8K dialup at home and didn't want to wait for an hour while all your new content downloaded as soon as you connected.
Most of this was much more general than just pushing podcasts, but the whole idea of subscribing to a "channel" that updates you and automatically downloads when new content is available is what push media was all about. I could go on, but Wired Magazine headlined this in their March '97 issue, or just google it.
the above is my personal opinion and does not necessarily reflect that of the little voices in my head
the USPTO doesn't just get paid if the patent is approved, they are paid for nearly every document that is filed with the office. For example:
an extension of time after a rejection, office gets paid
Applicant files an information disclosure statement, office gets paid
notice of appeal, office gets paid
request for continuation, office gets paid
and so on and so forth
Bring back the old version of slashdot.
You could "download episodic content" from a "publisher" for YEARS before 2003.. using the Peer to Peer networking scene tools.. that's exactly what they did, so prior art shouldn't be too hard to find, especially considering some of those scene tools were open source....
Dunno about you, but my university had about 8 TB of "episodic content" shared out on the local LAN with P2P tools by 2002..... mostly fansubbed anime episodes.
Does not any mailing list count as prior art w.r.t. claim 1.
- I am thinking of comp.risks which sent digests "episodic media", the channel being "e-mail"
- LISTSERV was the mechanism for subscribing, and the e-mail was sent until I unsubscribed.
- The digest had a list of the size of the stories, and my e-mail reader told me how big each digest was.
The patent system is so broken. You can get a patent for anything, Scott's Toliet Paper should hurry and get the patent for wiping your ass front to back before Cottenelle does first.
ouch?
I got one song a week. Does that count?
Gravity is a contributing factor in nearly 73 percent of all accidents involving falling objects. -Dave Barry
Netscape had Netcaster and IE had Active Channels, both http push sytems where you subscribed to a feed and had it sent.
Doesn't sound far from the claimed functionality.
That's from 1997.
vi? Who's that?
your local site subscribes to various news feeds.
They're automatically downloaded to your news server.
Your news-reader client tells you how many unread items you have in the queues you've subscribed to. I know that there was text and pictures
(multimedia) in various alt.binary groups, etc.
weather.com were using backweb.com to do this in 99. backweb seems to stem back to 96-97. The user installed client-side backweb agent, then subscribed to one or more channels. The backweb agent downloaded new content from these channels as and when it was added to the channel. The content was 'multimedia', being pretty much anything that could be encapsulated in flash or java. I don't know how it handled low-disk conditions for part 4 of claim 1, but "not dying horribly" should be an obvious extension to parts 1-3 of claim 1.
Forwarded to EFF:
National Institutes of Health were doing pod/vodcasting including via subscription when I first arrived in June 2002. The office responsible is the Center for Informational Technology. The benefit here is that NIH is under instruction from the office of the director to make every effort to provide information to the people for whose benefit NIH exists, the US public. Although intended to refer to health information, there is nothing in the directives that preclude CIT from providing details regarding *casting technology history as well as evidence in the form of samples from their archives.
"I may be synthetic, but I'm not stupid." -- Bishop 341-B
I'm secretly hoping no prior art is found. Such issue would raise public awareness to the idiocy of how patenting is being applied to the software world. I guess many people would simply give up without trying to find out why, but sometimes we need a big accident or something "famous" dying to shock people into realizing the erring ways.
My sig is better than your sig.