Documentation Compliance Means MS Can Resume Collecting Protocol Royalties

angry tapir writes "Microsoft may begin collecting royalties again for licensing some protocols because clear technical documentation is now available, according to the US Department of Justice. The change comes after the DOJ issued its latest joint status report regarding its 2002 antitrust settlement with Microsoft. The settlement required Microsoft to make available technical documentation that would allow other vendors to make products that are interoperable with Windows."

Comments

Outrageous

[PizzaAnalogyGuy]

This is outrageous, and I have two examples why. First, protocols are like food recipes. The pizza you sell is yours, but the ingredients to make it is not. Here the protocol is your ham, pineapple, salami and shrimps on a barbeque sauce large size pan pizza. You have not stolen the app from your competitor, you're just making yours compatible with theirs. Like the third party IM clients can connect to MSN network. Secondly, how would any of those open source apps pay for the royalties? But maybe this is Microsoft's plan. Let me tell you what is happening here. Microsoft is paying for the local BBQ Sauce factory to include a license agreement before you can use their sauce in your pizzas. The license agreement says you are only allowed to use their BBQ sauce on Microsoft approved pizzas. And before you know, these pizzas will be degraded. Forget your ham, forget your pineapples, forget you bacon and forget your cheese. THIS is the pizza we offer, and this will be the pizza you like.

Re:Outrageous

[Anonymous Coward]

Damn your pizza analogies, I'm hungry now...

Re:Outrageous

[Shakrai]

First, protocols are like food recipes.

Which can be copyrighted and regarded as a trade secret. Or do you think that KFC should have to post their recipe online for all to see?

Perhaps you should try a car analogy instead? ;)

Re:Outrageous

[QuantumG]

You can't copyright recipes, and anything can be regarded as a trade secret.

Re:Outrageous

[Shakrai]

Yes, I should have left it at trade secret. My stupid. I shall now commence pounding my head against the table to atone for my error.

I also think that we just got trolled, based on the handle of the first poster.....

Re:Outrageous

[Darkness404]

Yeah, but a food recipe can easily be reverse engineered and used for profit or given away. If I magically figured out KFC's recipe without having prior knowledge of it and I made my own fried chicken stand that drove KFC out of business there wouldn't be a thing KFC could do. Similarly, I could reverse engineer coke and make my own soda. About the only thing that you -can't- do with a trade secret is if you know it most agreements forbid you from disclosing it or competing using it.

As for copyright, yeah, you can copyright anything, but I can still use your work, just not publish the recipe.

Re:Outrageous

[bmo]

A protocol is simply a statement of facts.

Facts are not copyrightable.

Sweat of the brow does not determine if something is deserving of copyright either. It must have _some_ creativity. Indeed, this is why software for years was not deserving of copyright, because it was considered a "list of instructions for a machine" instead of creative. This changed in the early 80's I believe (correct me if it was earlier).

A recipe is not copyrightable. It is a list of facts to reach a goal. The artwork, layout, etc, however, is. Thus cookbooks are copyrighted.

Software is unique in that it's now protected by both copyright, as if it's art, _and_ patent, as if it's a machine. Why one needs both is baffling to me.

--
BMO

Re:Outrageous

[davester666]

It could be worse. If you've had a few drinks and he used a car analogy, you could be off driving right now...

Re:Outrageous

[symbolset]

You have to give him (or her) points for creating a new account that memes another troll username and getting the initial comment with a topical troll message that references the username. That's troll diligence there.

Re:Outrageous

[QuantumG]

If you write your recipe as some creative prose, then sure, you can copyright that, the same as any creative prose.

But when I come along and see your prose and say "man that's pointless, here's a mere list of ingredients and some straight forward instructions" there's nothing you can do about it. Copyright doesn't prevent me from making a recipe of your prose, and copyright does not protect recipes.

Re:Outrageous

[timmarhy]

yeah right how dare they not just do it all for free right? there's no reason you can't charge a license for a protocol, just like any other piece of software. there should of course be nothing preventing you writing a competing protocol or your own clean room version. that's why patent are bad, but this is not.

Re:Outrageous

[ozmanjusri]

Kentucky Fried Chicken Seasoning Mix Recipe
Just mix these commonly-found spices together! Great when used for skinless chicken fingers too.

2 tablespoons salt
2 cups flour
2 tablespoons pepper
4 tablespoons paprika
1 teaspoon garlic salt
1 tablespoon mustard, ground
1 tablespoon French thyme, ground
1 tablespoon sweet basil
1 teaspoon oregano, ground
1 tablespoon jamaica ginger, ground

http://www.bubhub.com.au/community/forums/showthread.php?t=14201&page=2

Re:Outrageous

[MrMr]

Hah, You just wait until there's a story about jellied eels, smoked beer or lutefisk.

Re:Outrageous

[shutdown -p now]

You can't put out your protocol under anything less than an "all implementations are free" license and then pretend you're supporting interopability.

Of course you can. It's called "reasonable and non-discriminating", and it's when you license your protocol to anyone who asks, for the same price regardless of who asks, and that price is reasonable. See MPEG4 etc.

It can be argued whether this is open, but interoperable - sure.

Re:Outrageous

[Teun]

Because you like the taste of ass? ;)

Re:Outrageous

[bit01]

telling in what way,

You didn't respond to my main point. Dishonest.

judging by your sig maybe you think i'm paid or something - if you know somewhere i can get paid for pointing out the obvious like i am, sign me up!

Not explicitly stating you are not an astroturfer and trying to distract. Dishonest.

but seriously, are you suggesting if i come up with a protocol for transfering data between x and y, i shouldn't be able to charge people to use it?

Pretending there are no reasons why this is a bad idea. Dishonest.

---

Don't be fooled, slashdot is not immune, like most social networking sites it is full of lying astroturfers dishonestly pretending to be objective third parties rather than paid company propaganda.

Re:Outrageous

[phantomfive]

That is in fact the case here. According to the article, some of the protocols are encumbered by patents. I can't imagine what kind of patent you can get on a protocol, but that is the sorry state of the matter.

Re:Outrageous

[symbolset]

RAND is a cover for non-open. It used to work before the lawyers got ahold of it. Let me school you:

There is one and only one measure of openness now: You can implement it without a license, or you can't. That's it. You want to be interoperable, or you want to control who can interact with your interface. The control is the limiting factor and it's the difference between useful and not.

Re:Outrageous

[The Cisco Kid]

You might be able to patent a *particular* implementation of the protocol, but if you think you can patent a 'protocol', you don't understand what a protocol is.

Its like patenting a language. Can you imagine someone patenting English, or French, and then in order to speak it, you'd have to pay a license fee? I'm not talking about books on learning the language, or video courses, or whatever, I'm talking about the language itself.

Re:Outrageous

[gbjbaanb]

You forgot that KFCs secret recipe is protected in order to keep them competitive against their, uh, competitors. Microsoft forfeited that right when they stopped having competitors, that's why the DoJ got involved in the first place.

protocols

[sopssa]

Since when protocols are something you can license? They're pretty much available for everyone, technical details available or not. Protocols really shouldn't be limited by licenses.

However on another case, Blizzard has been fighting such too against cheaters on their games.

But really, what law do you violate if you're using a "licensed" protocol? I haven't heard of such cases before.

Re:protocols

[benjamindees]

The DMCA only prohibits reverse engineering to circumvent "copy protection" mechanisms. It would be circular reasoning to assert that the copyrighted material being protected is the protocol itself.

Re:protocols

[phantomfive]

It is extremely rare that a protocol becomes a competitive advantage because of their quality, mainly because designing a protocol in most cases isn't really very hard. Usually the only reason to keep a protocol secret is to keep competitors from interoperating with your software, which is why Microsoft was convicted of being a monopolist in the first place.

In fact I can't think of any protocol that was kept secret because it performed better at the time. Maybe some old networking protocol or something. I can think of a ton of protocols that were kept secret purposely to prevent interoperability. Here's a few:

SMB/CIFS
CDMA diagnostic port protocol
Blizzard online game protocols
IPodITunes protocol
Skype
AIM protocol
MSN chat protocol
Yahoo chat protocol

There are others. Fortunately reverse engineering a product for the purpose of interoperability is allowed under the DMCA. That is one of the bright spots of that legislation.

Re:protocols

[symbolset]

Protocols are not code. Protocols are methods of interaction between pieces of code, even if the code is methods of interaction embedded in hardware. That these methods could possibly be considered as something that should be protected by some sort of intellectual property agreement is a testament to how far we've fallen from the root assumption of Unix: that all things should be able to connect to all other things whenever physically possible.

This is the mindset that brought us DRM, all of Sony's stupid proprietary media formats, and an iPhone that won't tether.

I'm sick of it. I have enough stuff that doesn't connect to my other stuff. I'm not buying any more stuff that doesn't connect to the stuff that I already have. I'm not using any systems that require proprietary licensing to connect the stuff I have to the new stuff I buy. I'm done with all that stupidness.

Re:protocols

[Brandano]

Not only that, the DMCA explicitly allows reverse engineering of software in order to allow for interoperability with other applications:
see paragraph (f) here:
http://static.chillingeffects.org/1201.shtml
Microsoft has no ground to stand on from the copyright angle, so it's attempting to imlpement the same limitations from a software patent angle. Which currently has no value in most of the civilized world.

Re:protocols

[roystgnr]

Blizzard online game protocols ...
Fortunately reverse engineering a product for the purpose of interoperability is allowed under the DMCA.

That's assuming, of course, that you can convince a judge that your purpose was interoperability. Last I heard, it was still illegal to make a client interoperate with Blizzard's servers, and illegal to make a server interoperate with Blizzard's clients.

Just in time, too!

[Weaselmancer]

And it only took them ten years.

Funny how the government doesn't even give you ten days past the due date of a parking violation though, isn't it?

Ahh, shit

[inode_buddha]

Here we go again, clumsily trying to do the interoperability dance. It reminds me of deja vu all over again...

Decision to force them to document more protocols

[electrosoccertux]

An interesting side effect of the DOJ's decision to force Microsoft to document more of their protocols was that internal Microsoft employees have found their job easier and the teams more efficient.
I stumbled across this tidbit while research for a final paper about software patent (good/bad/why/alternatives). You can read about it here.

Re:Decision to force them to document more protoco

[Foredecker]

Oh, do you mean these :)

Microsoft Exchange Server 2010 Protocol Documentation

Here is the announcement from Feb 2008: Microsoft Makes Strategic Changes in Technology and Business Practices to Expand Interoperability.

Bing is your friend.

-Foredecker

Congratulations!

[Bob9113]

Congratulations, Microsoft, and allow me to offer this toast:

May you attempt to create a revenue stream and inhibit competition, and continue to poison your long-term success by limiting others' ability to create novel goods and services with your platforms.

May your long, slow, demise be as stealthy as a panther in the night, so that you may continue not to understand until it is too late to recover and your war chest is too depleted to purchase any particularly egregious laws during your death spasms.

And finally, may Steve Ballmer always be your public face. He is nearly as amusing as Sarah Palin.

:)

Re:Congratulations!

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

And finally, may Steve Ballmer always be your public face. He is nearly as amusing as Sarah Palin.

You software hippies are just afraid of Steve Ballmer because of his good looks, his charm, his masculinity, his Christianity, his ability connect to the common user and his overall wonderfulness!

Samba has a license for many of the key patents

[tridge]

Before everyone gets too worked up, please look at this:

http://samba.org/samba/PFIF/

Samba and any other free software project (via the PFIF) has a royalty free license to most of the patents that are important for these protocols.

There are some patents that are excluded from this (see appendix 4 of the agreement for a list of the excluded patents), and we do indeed need to avoid infringement of those patents. That has not so far proved to be an insurmountable obstacle, although it is an inconvenience.

Cheers, Tridge

Re: Supposed KFC Recipe

[Ginger Unicorn]

CHICKENGREASESALT

Re: Supposed KFC Recipe

[ozmanjusri]

You're right - I left out the MSG.

Actually, rumour has it that in the 80s, KFC switched to using just salt, pepper, MSG and flour. I do think the modern version is less tasty.