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Open Source Music Fingerprinter Gets Patent Nastygram
Nushio writes "The code wasn't even released, and yet Roy van Rijn, a Music & Free Software enthusiast received a C&D from Landmark Digital Services, owners of Shazam, a music service that allows you to find a song, by listening to a part of it. And if that wasn't enough, they want him to take down his blog post (Google Cache) explaining how he did it because it 'may be viewed internationally. As a result, [it] may contribute to someone infringing our patents in any part of the world.'"
Update: 07/09 00:31 GMT by T :Story updated to reflect that Shazam is multiplatform, not Android-only, as implied by the original phrasing.
Don't get me wrong, this really sucks for the guy and is completely unfair. But this sort of thing happens all the time. If this were a rare occurrence, then yeah, I'd be up in arms. It's sort of not newsworthy anymore. I'm probably going to get flamed for saying this, and maybe I even deserve it, but it's true.
Patents are open for viewing aren't they (with the exception of the NSA)? So if they have a patent for something, then how can they order someone to take down information that a supposed patent covers?
Two: you cannot use a patent as a method to censor free speech.
Three: any US patent can be viewed internationally. A patent is by definition NOT a trade secret. Even if this guy's software DID use a patent-encumbered algorithm, his post cannot "contribute to someone infringing ... patents in any part of the world."
Four: a patent is not valid for the entire world.
Yep - I bet he's hit on a Trade Secret of theirs in his blog post and/or development work, and they're just trying to scare him away from posting the details. Trade Secrets are only secrets as long as nobody else knows about them - there's no protection on them other than that.
The patent holds NO ability to stop him from disclosing ANYTHING - anything covered by the patent is by definition publicly disclosed in the patent itself. If it's not there, it's not covered. Period. The "international viewing" holds no water either - there's nothing preventing someone from viewing the patent from another country.
He can go tell them to fuck off. He can probably sue for SLAPP or something like that too. I would!
In addition, my understanding is that this goes even further - there's nothing preventing him from developing his own implementation of their patent. The only issue arises when he distributes it beyond himself. IANAL, so this part I'm only 99.9% sure on. :)
MadCow.
I used to have a sig, but I set it free and it never came back.
A story submitter, on Slashdot, humbly and openly admitting a mistake. My hat is off to you, sir. Here's hoping some of the people responsible for the more absurdly sensationalist summaries (your submission is certainly _not_ one of those, just to be clear) that creep onto the front page take your precedent as an example. I won't be holding my breath, though.
The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources. - Albert Einstein
,,,the fundamental nature of patents. Patents are published, by the PTO. This means that anyone, "international" or otherwise, can already view them. Furthermore, it is settled law that discussion of a patented invention, including detailed explanation of how to implement it, is not infringement.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
At least in the US you have absolutely no recourse against someone who independently (not an employee, etc) develops one of your trade secrets. They can even patent it themselves and force you to pay a license fee!
That's the trade off between patents and trade secrets.
Not every reader instantly recognizes C&D as Cease and Desist. New readers constantly arrive, there are many readers whose first language is not English, and expanding the acronym will also improve how your submission is found in search engines. If you article is worth submitting and worth publishing it is worth making a little more accessible.
His implementation was different than their's, and if that's the case, they've got bigger issues, as one of their developers wrote a PDF on how Shazam Works..
And this guy certainly wasn't the first to write an article about How Shazam Works either.
They're afraid of the code.
Check out Unsealed: Whispers of Wisdom! http://unsealed.k3rnel.net It's an action-RPG about Open Sourcerers.
Yes, I am. As a non-native english writer, who has difficulties dealing with grammar nazism, I find commas useful to explain stuff. =P
Check out Unsealed: Whispers of Wisdom! http://unsealed.k3rnel.net It's an action-RPG about Open Sourcerers.
it was an iphone app long before it was an android app
What does it matter that it was on the iPhone before Android? It's hardly surprising, considering the iPhone was released years before the Droid. I admit there hasn't been the usual heavy complement of Apple stories today, but that doesn't mean you have to start looking for ways to create them from unrelated articles. In any case, this has almost nothing to do with any platform, except that the author wrote the code in Java so as to run it on Android.
Back on-topic, the author has posted an update which talks about the alleged patent infringment and includes the notices sent by the company. Classically, they hesitate to give actual patent numbers, but what it really comes down to is this: As the author says,
I've written some code (100% my own) and implemented my own methods for matching music. [...] I'm just a programmer who likes to work on technical, mathematical algorithms in his spare time. And if enough people ask for the source code, I'd be happy to give it to them. Who would have thought that creating something at home in a weekend could result in a possible patent infringement!?
But oh, no! Landmark claims
Landmark Digital Services owns the patents that cover the algorithm used as the basis for your recently posted "Creating Shazam In Java".
Well butter my biscuit and call me Daisy! Case closed! After all, they have a patent on "the algorithm". To be fair, the biggest instigator of this entire fiasco is probably his choice of using the commercial software's name in the article title. Going just by "Creating Shazam In Java", you might at first think he's attempting to completely re-create the software (for who knows what purpose). Of course, if you bother to read even the first few paragraphs it painfully clear that it's nothing of the sort. But because of this,
The code isn't published yet, but I was planning on releasing it under Apache License to the open source community soon. [...] Since I don't want to end up like Dmitry Sklyarov, with the possibility of a lawsuit, I'm not going to publish the code anymore...
If crap like this continues, independent software development in general (including a large chunk of FOSS) is doomed.
"What do you despise? By this are you truly known." --Princess Irulan, Manual of Muad'Dib
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There are several services doing this same general thing, might as well support the ones that aren't a-holes!
Don't just uninstall. Give them the lowest rating and leave a comment about this. I downloaded the app just to be able to do that and uninstalled it right away.
Patents are selectably enforceable. I can choose to never sue you for infringing. What laches is supposed to prevent is me waiting until you are very profitable before suing you. However, even if I choose to never sue you, I can still sue Joe once I find out he is infringing.
"Uh... yeah, Brain, but where are we going to find rubber pants our size?" --Pinky
The whole point of software patent wording has become to ensure maximum ambiguity; the more ground you cover the less there is room for your competition to lay it's own claims or to avoid patent extortion. Who you gonna call when an industry monster sends it's goons around? Probably some nonprofit organization that'll tell you to cave cause it might get rough out there.
independent software development in general (including a large chunk of FOSS) is doomed.
Only in countries silly enough to allow software patents. The rest of the world will laugh quietly to themselves as some countries bring themselves to a creative and technological standstill.
Well, I can see why shazam people are pissed. The had an army of phds and architects working on it backed by millions of dollars of vc, plus fancy talk in boardroom feeling good about themselves. Now some dude with short attention span rolls it out as a weekend project. And of course last sentence from the google cache link didn't help either:
Or turn it into a huge online empire like Shazam who knows!
Yeah and you're supposed to put a comma in front of conjunctive words like "and, or, but, because" especially if they join two sentences.
<snip>
I rocked my English SATs (99th percentile) so I'm fairly certain I'm right.
Shouldn't you have put a comma before "so" if you are going by that rule?
- I rocked my English SATs (99th percentile). I'm fairly certain I'm right.
- I rocked my English SATs (99th percentile), so I'm fairly certain I'm right.
This fellow is in the Netherlands, where non-commercial use of patents is entirely legal. Any threats of legal action are uncalled for, and suggesting he take down his blog post when Shazam has published an even more detailed white paper is simply beyond the pale.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
Do you understand the basic concept of a patent? To earn the monopoly you have to publish your idea. The idea becomes part of the public domain. If someone else republishes your idea the the system works as intended. A patent is not a copyright. This sounds to me like the patent holder really doesn't want to honor the bargain he agreed to. The monopoly is on implementation. We can publish code examples to our hearts content as long as we don't run them.
independent software development in general (including a large chunk of FOSS) is doomed.
Only in countries silly enough to allow software patents...
And the ones stupid enough to accept the crap ACTA will feed on their throat... actually, for those will be even worse: no allowing their software developers to patent but preventing them to use methods already patented in US.
Questions raise, answers kill. Raise questions to stay alive.
That is such a beautiful example of Muphry's law.
Though your post could have benefitted from a gaffe or two.
Some useful links:
http://www.shazam.com/music/web/pages/team.html
http://www.shazam.com/music/web/contactus.html
I'm from India and sent the following message.
(Copy-pasta - but change the country to your own.)
---------------------
Hello,
On behalf of the larger internet music community, your CTO is hereby notified to Cease and Desist from sending Cease and Desist letters to people in other countries trying to do good things.
Your CxOs' desire to single-handedly control the way music is sampled, reeks of a colonial, imperialist mentality which is completely obsolete and totally incompatible with the internet.
Your CTO's emails asking Ron Van Rijn to not release source code are ridiculous at best and disgusting and unconstitutional, anti-freedom-of-speech at worst.
Please issue a public apology to Ron Van Rijn for harassing a good man, or else, face permanent tough love on the Internet and consequently permanently offline.
There's no telling when and where someone on the road will stop and call you names in public.
If you want to make money, the Internet will give you a 100 new ways every year.
If you want to make money by threatening innocent people and stifling creative philanthropy, the bad reputation you will earn will remain forever and you will not be trusted by anyone again.
Your CxOs have invited a Public Relations nightmare upon themselves.
I hope they have the wisdom to apologise. Here, in Asia, your Intellectual Poverty laws are irrelevant, our Govt is very much sensible, and we continue to not provide a large amount of your revenues despite being populous consumers of all kinds of western music.
Stop being idiots.
Start being techies.
Sincerely,
Asian internet music lovers.
I uninstalled the app immediately and left them with a one-star rating plus a link to explain the background. Also, I uninstalled them as malicious. Feel free to link http://tinyurl.com/3a93ed8 in your one-star ratings.
Get SoundHound instead. It's better anyway. Now that I have SoundHound, I am actually glad that Shazam made me look for alternatives.
Again:
http://tinyurl.com/3a93ed8
http://www.soundhound.com/
PS: It would be evil to install them just to uninstall them with one-star ratings. I could not condone that.