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Spotify Sued For Patent Infringement
An anonymous reader writes "Celebrated online music player Spotify just entered the US market a few weeks ago, and already it's being sued for patent infringement. Welcome to America! The patent in question is a very very broad patent on distribution of music in a digital form, which basically describes how anyone would ever distribute digital music. The company suing, PacketVideo, has no competing product. It just wants money from the company that actually innovated."
In 3 years it will be public domain to broadly distribute music in a digital form.
I once took an excursion to Reddit, and later HN. Unlimited up/down voting sucks when dealing with a hive-mind.
Spotify is actually an awesome service. For a few years it has almost completely stopped music piracy in scandinavia and in other european countries. Now instead of sending each other mp3 files as file transfer people are just pasting spotify links in IM conversations here. It's something music companies should be proud of, and help it grow even more.
The more these patent trolls do their thing, the closer we get to legislation that puts an end (or at least seriously hampers) such behavior. Unfortunately, such legislation tends to have unintended consequences but seriously, this is getting out of control and something needs to be done. I can see this as another case where the "loser pays" idea may have an impact.
If you're having trouble explaining the software patent issue to someone you think might be interested, refer them to Julian Sanchez' recent article which sums it up very nicely.
mt
Reading Claim 1, of which all the others are dependent, this is for the distribution of music using a user-specific DRM system. Also, the claim is incredibly long which != broad BTW. Remember, do one thing differently and you're golden. Reading the claim and with such specific nuggets like the music having to include a "core" that includes "at least one object identification code, object structure information, a consumer code and an encryption table", and at least one "layer" around the core containing "the actual music information" etc and I wonder if anyone would actually do it that way anyway. That was probably the way PacketVideo did it, who have actually be around for years doing video meida streaming going back to the 56K modem days (and probably before). And they are innovators, not a troll.
If you set up a commersial solution for something like this - everbody wants it - you'll get sued. If you do it the pirate way, you'll get sued. What way will gain most progression nowadays (letting alone you don't establish them in America at all)?
There are 2 types of people in the world - those who understand decimal and those who don't.
Patents, in theory, are designed with the ultimate goal of rewarding creativity. But now creative people can't walk two steps without tripping over a patent. So now they have to work for a giant company who has a mountain of patents in its vault just so they have protection from being sued out of existence by companies like the ones they work for.
Oh yeah, and anything creative the individual come up with is now property of the corporation, adding to the cycle.
US Patent laws are crap.
But who "celebrated" this thing? PR bullshit.
Fuck systemd. Fuck Redhat. Fuck Soylent, too. Wait, scratch the last one.
They manage to tiptoe through a minefield of copyright law only to have a troll sneak up and beat them over the head with a patent suit.
Just don't bother doing any business in the US if you can happily avoid it..
The patent in question is a very very broad patent on distribution of music in a digital form, which basically describes how anyone would ever distribute digital music.
Leaving aside why in hell the link is "distribution of music in a digital form" instead of "patent in question", it doesn't describe that at all.
A brief skim of the claims makes clear the first thing you'd guess from the abstract: that encryption is a necessary part. I think a subset of anyone most definitely would distribute music without encrypting it. In fact, I'd be surprised if any of the many outfits now offering DRM-free music purchases are encrypting their downloads -- encryption does seem rather pointless in that case, no?
Further, it specifies "a defined format for transmission in a digital music information object, the format including a core and a number of additional layers, the core including at least one object identification code, object structure information, a consumer code, and an encryption table, and the one or more additional layers including the actual music information" -- so if your protocol doesn't send the "consumer code" with the object (instead relying on session-level security) you're clear. If you avoid sending an "encryption table" with the object, you're also clear. This could be done, for example, by usnig a key generated and stored on the client, and having them send it to the server when initiating a session. Or if you must use a format meeting these specific requirements (not sure why you would, but let's say so), just don't send the music as part of the object -- send them a unique or short-lived link to stream the music from the same or a different server.
I'm not saying whether this patent was or wasn't sufficiently narrow to be nonobvious in 1995 when it was filed, but the characterization in the summary makes it sound a lot more like "any method of sending any music over any network", when it's really only a fairly broad, but not all-inclusive, class of end-to-end DRM schemes.
not sure but...what happens if spotify uses a cloud...aka...a "decentralized" memory device?
or if it was more than one device that it comes from....aka...part of a song comes from device A....another part from device B and so on.
gawd...I hate these trolls
Seriously, I'm sick and tired of this.
I'm absolutely convinced that we suffer way greater from all the damage those patent trolls cause and the general barrier that the pure existence of patents pose than the potential issues of a total removal of patents would cause. I have yet to see any conclusive argumentation why we actually need (in the meaning of: the society as a whole) patents. There might be slight issues with innovation in certain areas during the transition but I'm sure that this wouldn't outweigh the benefits of not having to employ hordes of lawyers or being afraid to get sued to hell and back all the time.
because their goal isn't to help innovation. Their goal, and I'd argue it has been this way from the start, is to help large corporations control the market. Even companies that lost out in megacorp-megacorp patent wars are still benefiting from the power they exercise over small businesses and startups, which lack the money and legal departments to fight patent lawsuit threats. This is why no one is calling for patent reform, even though it may at times seem logical. The lobbyists know exactly what they are doing. There will never be patent reform (or indeed what needs to happen, abolition of all IP) in the US, because the only thing keeping our economy afloat is the artificial control of the global market that they create.
The only thing that is going to happen is that our slow slide to irrelevance will continue, until we are a third world nation. The world isn't going to put up with the copyright and patent laws we force on them for much longer, and when European countries start to abolish IP, the US economy will collapse.
Great Intellect...
As anybody can see from my CV ( http://codeflow.org/ ) I used to work for DWS. This was a little serverside company sister to Secure Digitial Container, the company the patent comes from that was later bought (together with DWS) by PacketVideo.
I liked working for DWS, they where a small and quirky company with good people. DWS/SDC never sued anybody for this patent, it was mainly a bargaining chip to impress clients. Mind the patent is about DRM, specifically, it's about polymorphic DRM (that is the variant that delivers its own encryption/decryption/obfuscation code together with the content).
Sidenote: DWS/SDC where far flung leftovers of Napster.
But then the inevitable happened, the companies got bought by PacketVideo. The founder/investor and the then CEO (a superb business drummer, though no techie) left the company and American management took over.
During my work there, I was increasingly troubled by the DRM side of business. Eventually I left (and I'd have probably been fired if I didn't), mostly for reasons where management differed with my idea of efficiency and quality. I traveled around the world and I started freelancing, and I can't say it was a bad decision, has been a good life since.
I'm not surprised that PacketVideo eventually started suing people for the patents they hold. It's a small and troubled company that's been struggling for years to "get it right", and as they probably increasingly run out of funds to keep the fiction alive, it gets ever more tempting to cash in some quick buck simply by virtue of sitting on patents you've acquired.
Experiments and other stuff
On top of that, you're considering not paying the interest on the money you borrowed from the rest of the world. This would of course end people betting on your country as a safe investment. Money flowing into your economy from the rest of the world appears to be something to avoid as well. Reducing the number of people in your country that can actually pay their mortgage or stay employed at all seems to be no cause for concern either.
The only thing I can really see you doing that would cause your status as an ally and first rate investment opportunity to go into decline any faster, would perhaps be to start senseless wars that ran on for decades mainly to keep the price of oil up.
Oh wait...
So non-innovative, it doesn't bring us the top tech companies in the world...oh, wait...
I propose this as the new US national anthem:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MeXQBHLIPcw
Seems appropriate.
We both said a lot of things that you are going to regret.
Google Music is not available outside US/Canada. Amazon is not offering music to non-US/Canada customers. Virtual barriers are all around nowadays in the intellectual property business, and patents are just one tool. And the US and it's laws are not the only reason for that, but I admit that it is non-significant issue - both to import and export.
US has had Pandora and many others which compete with Spotify for a long time, Spotify became mainstream in Europe because it was the first that really offered good quality subscription (and first, free, that was the main kicker!) music service. This is just about one company trying to cash on the new kid in town.
Meanwhile in China they are laughing and selling knockoff-products of Ford and Apple.