Slashdot Mirror
More on Sightsound.com's Patent
Charles Bronson
sent us a link to a ZDNet story with an
Update to
the story we posted yesterday about Sighsound.com claiming
a patent on the sale of downloadable music, and demanding a
1% royalty from mp3.com. Apparently
Goodnoise is actually complying!
the company is talking tough... man this is sick..... thats it.. im patenting binary number's 0, 1, anyone who transmits this gotta pay me $1... =)
Paul B...
Isn't this like claiming to have a patent on distributing music on CDs or over the radio? I'm going to patent selling products in an outdoor booth and claim a 5% royalty. Oh, don't worry, I'll donate 20% of that (1%) to slashdot to keep it quiet. Oh, I'm also claiming a patent on offering software for download over the internet. And video. I'm going to patent the idea of web sites. Everybody in the world will owe me thousands of dollars a year! Someone take these idiotic people to court. Please.
A.C.
Well, the pattern here certainly seems to be to just grant patents to whomever an on whatever (to help meet those patent quotas) and then let them fight it out in courts - which is fine if the folks in question happen to have $$$$$ for such things.
Thing is, doesn't this just move the problem elsewhere - e.g., from the patent office to the courts? Aren't the courts busy enough without all these assine patent issues?
Ah well. I'M certainly powerless to do anything about it.
They say they have a patent on downloading music and video formats. If you compress it, say with gzip or something, is it still considered to be music or video format?
Actually the patent is quite dangerous. Since paying the liscense fee creates, in effect, a liscense partnership, if any company serving audio/video via download is sued by artists or others with a gripe the patent holders would clearly become involved for "making it so easy to abuse the rights of the creator". I say all the artists who feel mistreated by their record companies start sueing!
It would appear that the patent is viable. Understand that the patent does involve the PURCHASE and subsequent download of audio/video "signal".
I agree that this is ridiculous, and that it could probably be easily challenged, but people who keep screaming "foul" aren't paying close attention. SightSound had the forethought to request a patent years in advance; who can blame them for trying to cash it in?
Why don't you shut the fuck up asshole, you think your the only one who can read you dumb fuck, just shut the fuck up and get the fuck out of here, you son of dumb fucking bitch, mother fucker you think you can read, huh, read this asshole, you piece of shit. Just get the fuck out of here, don't be here you dumb fuck, huh can you read now, huh...
You must think your the greates tthinker to come to /. in ages.
Who the fuck asked you for a summary of this situation you dumb fuck.
Keep you mindless ramblings to your own fucking self mother fucker.
German/frech telekom have this with BTX/minitel
you select a page, download some stuff, and payment is an integral part of it, managed by the telco as an intermediary.
uwe-klein@foni.ommit.net
Companies can just ignore the claims. If they did sue, patent laws are so hard to enforce (especially with stupid patents like this one), that most likely they'd lose more money than they get awarded (like they would).
Just hosting the web site elsewhere should make any claim null and void....
In that case, that should be more than enough to invalidate SightSounds patents.
Hmmm I remember a BBS in my area that did have music to download for a fee in 1986. It was music that was played back on the TRS80 color computer II and it cost 5 cents per download.
So the patent is a load of crap.... Kinda like the asshole that trademarked the name Linux.
MP3.com doesn't charge to download mp3's. You can download for free to your heart's content. They sell music through another medium - a CD which they will mail to you. Hmm... wonder if the patent for that is still available...
You can find some more info on Patents and IP in the Patents section of Gary's Encyclopedia.
Did you ever hear of paying BBS, there were BBS's that you paid a few bucks to if you wanted to download and you didn't have anything to uploads, like barter or pay BBS's, In 1989/1990 I traded or paid for hundreds of software titles (some illegal), .zips, .au, .wav, .mid...
this is just more proof that intellectual property and the info-age are on a collision course.
check out the page at ip not
The tactics here are clever, you have to admit. By only requiring a 1% licensing fee, they make it cheaper to comply than to challenge their patent in court.
This is great! I think I will start patenting all sorts of things I didn't think of so that I can sponge off of the system. Maybe I can patent the way Microsoft transacts its business. Billy Bob Gates would hardly feel a 1% drag on his juggernaut.
This patent is a prime example of the complete
ineptitude of the US Patent office. There is
nothing novel about their "invention". In fact
there is no invention whatsoever. If this
patent holds water then I'm going to go and demand
my patent on the sale of every other mime type
over the internet. In effect this patent issues
a monopoly over all music and video sold over the
internet. If they had invented the entire internet and a novel method of downloading the data then I could understand, but this is just
plain ridiculous.
I'm sure that MP3.com, now rolling in the loot
from Sequoia Venture has enough cash to bury
this claim.
Learn to spell.
What's your problem asshole!? It's still fucking insane to be able to PATENT the SALE of ANYTHING! So what if I have a fucking patent for selling coffee in a mall!!??? I don't see the fucking difference, selling in a mall... selling on the internet.... Completely insane!!
I am so sick of people insulting other people's intelligence on here. It's as if people need to reassure themselves of their own intelligence...
What about a third-party memory?
I.e. digital "something" is tramsmitted from "first memory" to the "third and independent memory" and after payment is cleared "second memory" grabs that "something" from unlocked "third memory". Or something like that?
The fact that the patent covers music-for-fee doesn't really change the issue much at all. This is much like a person copyrighting the idea of commercial air travel after the Wright Bros. flight, then demanding royalties from Delta. It's a vague idea, NOT a process, and they didn't even contriubute to the underlying technology. If patents like this were actually viable, any forward-thinking chucklehead could put a vise on virtually any kind of business.
Much could be said for any other form of theif that see something potentially valueable in the future and just start squatting and then claim squatting rights after everyone else has done the building.
I pay 35 cents to call you up and pay a song on my CD player (the 1st memory of the 1st part) thru the phone across the lines to your ears and into your brain (the 2nd memory of the send part).
BTW, If I sign a love song to my wife over the telephone, then I am technically violating his patent becasue the brain stores music digitialy.
This is good old American lawerism at work. People that don't contribute anything to society, do no work, but file some papers with an idiotic government agency, get all the money.
We're all idiots that we're actually coding, working etc, and not FILING PATENTS!
On a more serious note, I would be willing to contribute some money to any lawyer that would be willing to sue the pants off these people (for what, I don't know. The concept of tit-for-tat appeals to me).
Lets face it software patents are a bad idea.
Isn't it time to do something about it.
http://www.slip.net/~chianti/Softw are_Patents.html
This might very well end up strengthening the format
Anyone got a patent on methods of having sex? First person too will be a rich person...
It is yet uncertain whether Sightsound's patents will stand up in a court of law. Currently, the company is suing music site N2K Inc. for alleged violations. "The validity of the patents are certain to be challenged," said Lydia Pelliccia, spokeswoman for the Recording Industry Association of America, which numbers the largest music companies in the industry -- as well as N2K -- as its members.
This statement leads me to infer that such a patent is not in the RIAA'a interests. I would suggest that sightsound's involvement with the SDMI is to ingratiate themselves with the recording industry.
Their patent ( along with all the other patents on
generic internet business models ) simply cannot stand under US patent law.
If only. Unfortunately, I don't have much hope that the courts will be of much help in most of these cases. Without a serious concerted effort on the part of a lot of people in the right places, the USPTO is going to continue to approve patents like this. And many companies will choose to go along with licensing demands because they think they might be able to come up with their own patent that they can hang over the heads of the industry as well.
Its music! On HOLD! HA HA!
Make the PO accountable. Patent the Idea of "Patenting BS patents for License purposes" and let the PO pay a license for it.
...but still damn obvious.
If I can document the idea of paying for information transmitted over the network preceding this patent (and I sure as hell can), then the idea of paying for sound or video and it being transferred is trivially obvious.
Posted by telephoner:
The idea of distributing music over telephone lines is as old as the telephone itself.
When Mr. Bell invented the telephone, he was looking for some interesting things to do with it. One of the main uses he considered, was that people could dial into a kind of music station, and listen to live music or recordings.
I wouldn't pay them a dime. This patent won't hold up in any decent courtroom.
Posted by The [not so] Little Hacker:
Umm, excuse me, but did you read *both* patents?
here and here ??
T[ns]LH
Posted by Emperor Penguin:
It seems like an end run around all of this silliness would be, to charge for something other than the content, access to the files for example & say you were giving the content away free.
At least 'till some joker files a patent for retrieving info from a database.
*If* this BS patent claim should happen to stand up in a court of law (there have been dumber things that made it), there is an option that I see after reading the patent. The patent specifically controls the transfer of this music for the "first memory" to the "second memory". In this case, it appears that memory is being used as as a synonym for storage space. What if online vendors and customers used a protocol that created a temporary shared memory architecture? Or perhaps even a temporary shared file system? One could conceivable make the case that an SMA operates as a single "memory". The patent certainly doesn't cover transferring the data between multiple homogeneous memory segments.
Oh my god! A sound file available for public download! I never did that over ZMODEM before!
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
Do you have any idea how expensive your idea would be?
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
Just found this article on The Register. Civix-DDI says it has some patents on electronic mapping that Microsoft, AOL, Yahoo!, Rand-McNally, Infoseek, Lycos and the Denver Post newspaper are infringing on. Hmm.. I haven't looked up the patents yet so I'm not sure how valid their claims are. I will in a bit if someone doesn't beat me to it.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
Here are some of my favourite quotes:
:) :)
:)
"Digital Audio Music is simly music converted into a very basic computer language know as bnary. A series of commands known as zeros or ones encode the music for future retrieve".
Commands known as 1's and 0's???
Another golden one:
"When a song is retrieve from the Hard Disk 60 Only a replica of the permanently stored song is retrieve. The permanently stored song remains intact on the Hard Disk 60, thus allowing repeated playback."
Imagine that, you can read data from a hard disk and yet STILL have the hard disk store the data!!
It's just sad.. These guys shouldn't be allowed near a patent office.
sigs are a waste of space
All these idiot who think this patent applies to downloading music didn't read the patent, just CmdrTaco's bad summary of it. The patent specifically applies to on-line payment and fullfillment of on-demand downloads. It doesn't apply to:
- ftp, because you don't pay for it on-line
- ISPs, because you pay per hour, not per file.
The only thing I could think of that *possibly* could count as prior art would be if you could find a Porn BBS or something where you paid per file you downloaded.
Stop relying on "soundbites" to form your ideas, people - you're *supposed* to be smarter than the average couch potato!
The next Cmdr Taco duplicate will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and see it early!
From now on everybody who uses TCP/IP has to pay me a cent for every package sent. 5000 packages per day makes 1 $ refund.
"Thats extremly low" said Bill Mates CEO of Microducks.
:-))
Jeez, I dont feel quite tied to a patent claimed somewhere in the world.
We'll make you an offer you can't refuse. We'll offer you protection from your competitors for a small cut and do what ever it takes to make sure you bring us profits. Sounds like they want a close family to me. Patents can be legal extortion. The pen is mightier than the sword.
That's extremely low, said Gene Hoffman, president and CEO of GoodNoise. "This has no material affect at all (on our business)," he said, indicating that the fee, at least, would not be a problem.
In fact, setting the charge so low is a good business decision, he added, as it makes it more likely that the companies would comply. "But it's bad for artists." Hoffman had not seen the letter, and did not know how his company would respond.
He said he didn't know how they's respond, not that they'd be complying!
Both patents only apply to their method, not existing ones. So the idea that this company has a patent on buying stuff with SSL based tech and uploading the music (or video) via HTTP based tech is ludicrous (sp.?) You can't patent a pre-existing algorithm or a general (pre-existing) idea...
As I remember they were patenting "the method" (i.e. their method) of allowing people to pay for music or video and then receiving a download of the content the customer paid for.
I'm tired of people misquoting the patents and then other people yelling at them. I'm not a lawyer by any means, but let's analyze the patents a little, shall we?
Abstract from patent US5191573 (files : The present invention is a method for transmitting a desired digital video or audio signal stored on a first memory of a first party to a second memory of a second party. The method comprises the steps of transferring money via a telecommunications line to the first party from the second party. Additionally, the method comprises the step of then connecting electronically via a telecommunications line the first memory with the second memory such that the desired signal can pass therebetween. Next, there is the step of transmitting the desired digital signal from the first memory with a transmitter in control and in possession of the first party to a receiver having the second memory at a location determined by the second party. The receiver is in possession and in control of the second party. There is also the step of then storing the digital signal in the second memory.
I'm tired of people misquoting the patents and then other people yelling at them. I'm not a lawyer by any means, but let's analyze the patents a little, shall we?
Abstract from patent US5191573 (filed in 1990, issued in 1993): The present invention is a method for transmitting a desired digital video or audio signal stored on a first memory of a first party to a second memory of a second party. The method comprises the steps of transferring money via a telecommunications line to the first party from the second party. Additionally, the method comprises the step of then connecting electronically via a telecommunications line the first memory with the second memory such that the desired signal can pass therebetween. Next, there is the step of transmitting the desired digital signal from the first memory with a transmitter in control and in possession of the first party to a receiver having the second memory at a location determined by the second party. The receiver is in possession and in control of the second party. There is also the step of then storing the digital signal in the second memory.
Now correct me if I'm wrong, but the web was fledgling in 1993 and to my knowledge non-existant in 1990. However, not being an internet user at the time, can anyone tell me a service which offered music for download (and here's the key part) after you paid for it?. People saying that newsgroups or downloading from BBS's are missing the point of the patent completely. The patent does not claim to cover a free music download, merely one where money changes hand and then the audio/video signal is transferred from the server to the client. The only possible problem I see here is the bit about storing it on the client's system. Technically if I use NS, MSIE, lynx, whatever...the 1st party referred to in this patent is not storing the audio/visual signal on the 2nd party's computer per say, but that's a weak point to stand on.
The other patent was filed for in 1996 and issued in 1997 and seems rather redundant to me, and can in my opinion probably be overruled with prior art seeing as I'm sure some company was selling music online for d/l before 1996.
I'm not saying that I like the concept of this patent, but please look at what it's actually saying before you go off on tirades.
You'd seem to be correct. Although the patent implies sending a credit card number via a comptuer or other similar device, it does not actually explicity state that to be the case, so I guess calling up the BBS and giving them your credit card number would be covered. Thanks for the information, I'm glad we've finally come up with something that seems to be prior art.
.. and they sent the letter to mp3.com .
So don't blame CmdrTaco for the error, it's sightsound.com mistake then!
Besides, I can think of prior art like, online databases existed since the late 70's, I don't remember the names.
I'll bet you're just saying that; you haven't really patented the binary digits. If you have, please give the relevant patent number that we can look up.
First, you have to know that I am absolutely not supporting these guys. I think that what they are doing -- claiming to own a general idea, as if it were a specific technology, etc. -- is absolutely disgusting. I can't decide whether to assume that they are so mind-bogglingly stupid as to really believe that their patent is valid, or such unscruplous greedy bastards as to try this sort of patent terrorism when they are fully aware of all the arguments we are yelling and screaming about. (This is a general problem I have with "Never attribute to malice what can be adequately explained by stupidity." -- maybe it really is malice. I would at least say "Do not necessarily..." instead of "Never...".)
However: my point here is that, whereas you are just babbling about getting silly patents, they actually did go through the process of applying for, and receiving these patents. Whenever one of these "ridiculous patents" stories comes up and people make comments like yours, I am struck by this difference.
David Gould
David Gould
main(i){putchar(340056100>>(i-1)*5&31|!!(i<6)<< 6)&&main(++i);}
...I for one would not complain about the above being a grammar flame, etc., since the difference between "infer" and "imply" is really something that nerds, of all people, should get right; we should be making fun of the non-nerds who just lump "all those technical-sounding 'logic' words" together instead of using them properly. The original comment was really pretty backwards: when a statement implies something, that thing is what we can infer from it.
Actually, I would think the best word would have been "say" or "mean", as in "Both sentences say the same thing."
Still, what started this whole argument was the point that a lot of people are misunderstanding the patent. Maybe instead of comparing the article to Rob's summary (which, as pointed out above, was not so bad after all), he should have compared the article directly to the dumb comments that he was reacting to. The point is valid: the patent is on paying for downloads, not just downloads. The other point is that it is still obscenely wrong-headed of them to claim to own this idea.
David Gould
David Gould
main(i){putchar(340056100>>(i-1)*5&31|!!(i<6)<< 6)&&main(++i);}
AOL! AOL has had credit card transactions for just about FOREVER. They have had pay areas where you could download sound bytes, atc, and have to pay for your time/transfer after the fact, usually billed *TADA* TO YOUR CREDIT CARD!
AOL has been around how long now?
As has been mentioned to death, BBS's have done similar things for years (mostly porn BBS's).
Minitel
I could go on and on. But patenting "making money for downloading of a certain type of information" is already based on other patents. Many of them opened up to public consumption already.
SightSound are just a bunch of lowly squatters, who happened to patent something completely unenforceable, and are trying to get over on the glut of newer businesses who are following an older business model.
These people are little more than a waste of time, oxygen, and a lousy 30 seconds that their mothers spent squirming around in the back of their daddy's manure trucks with assorted male relatives, the family dog, and the family pig.
SightSound. Poster childern for Retroactive Birth Control in the coming millenium!
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Everyone's insane, I tell you! We're the only sane ones left. Some of us.
Ben
The internet killed BBS's, but before the Internet there were plenty of pay bbs's offering either warez or porn or both.
Ben
Once upon a time many years ago there were "over the phone line" jukeboxes. You picked up the receiver (handset), told the operator/disk jockey what song you wanted to hear and dropped coins into the slot just like a pay phone. The operator then put the record on the turntable and played it and the sound was fed down the phone line. I'm assuming it was a leased line rather than a dial-up connection so the phone company probably put some EQ on the line (they called it conditioning)just like they did for leased lines running to radio stations. Of course these were 78 rpm records so they probably sounded as good that way as if there had been an actual juke box with turntable on site. Lo-Fi either way. And since the people paying to here the music probably "remembered" what they heard, I think we can beckon to Sightsound to "lean close so that we can whisper to you" and then scream "Prior Art !!!"
Back when digital recording of audio was just beginning to take off (pre commercial Internet days)there were several different schemes in the works to let someone walk into a store and up to a kiosk where they would select the songs they wanted and cassettes would be made for them from music stored digitally either on site or at the other end of a leased line and they would pay so much per song. Cost would be about the same as buying an album but you got only cuts that you wanted. Of course the audio cassette had to be recorded in real time so it could take an hour or so. Apparently these patents, or at least the first one, came out of one of these schemes, and possibly the second patent was an attempt to extend the first one to jump on the internet bandwagon.
I think the best way to handle this would be for the sellers to discount their prices by 1 per cent and tell Sightsound to collect from the consumers, and to add "sorry, our customer privacy policy prevents us from releasing any identification information about our customers."
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
According to this
t ory/0,2257,12439-21077-153977-0,00.html
http://www.nandotimes.com/24hour/nao/business/s
Sony is going to be selling music over the net.
Soundsight's (or whatever their name is)lawyers probably won't even know what hit them.
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
So this would, in effect, make all the pay-per-view services on the globe liable to pay licensing to these guys... kinda funny.
the amazing bc
just another guy doing IT
webnaut, music junkie, holes-in-head
I been looking at this one also and have finally come to the conclusion that the information in the patent abstracts are rather too abstract. More info, that should be in the full patent description, is needed to fully assess the applicability of the two patents.
Let me try to explain. If the patents are too generic in terms of what they cover (transmission protocol, procedures, etc), then prior art may be claimed. However, if the protocols, procedures, etc... are very specific, and applicable for this case, then prior art may not be valid. Saying that I will transmit data versus saying that I will transmit compressed digital audio signals using a client/server protocol are two different beasts. I would speculate that these patents go into much more specific detail into the procedures for conducting this transaction.
The flip side of this, is that the patents may only be valid for only very specific situations. This leads to another question that I have. Suppose a patent says that one performs steps, A, B, C, and D. Is the patent still valid if only steps A, B, and D are performed? In this case, the missing step C is the monetary transfer part.
Finally, one should keep in mind that the individual steps, A, B, C, and D can have prior art. However, putting them all together can be new and therefore patentable.
This does sound like a patent on Baloney Sandwiches, doesn't it? What they actually patented was a "business model" of transacting a download in exchange for an online transfer of money. I'm no patent lawyer, but I thought that business models were outside the scope of patents.
If anybody feels like researching it a little bit (I'm afraid I just don't have the time this week), there's plenty of info on The US Patent and Trademark Office.
And nobody can make a baloney sandwich with out licensing patent number 3,14159,666 from Microsoft.
Vince
Linux help for beginners to advanced users: Control-Escape.com
I seem remember hearing about Rusty & Eddies' getting shut down before this timeframe....
"That's extremely low" (base, ugly, moronic)
"has no material effect" (on anything, it's folly)
Journalists, and the way they make everything
say what they want it to, or think it means.
sheesh. furrfu.
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
Well, however b.s. this patent is, if it's
enforced that only benefits Free Software, since
the whole idea is that you never pay for the
piece of information, but rather for service,
be it distribution or consulting. So, if I have
a site for MP3 music which charges you just a
monthly fee, that would not be covered by this
patent. So, if music publishers are siding with
this patent they are stupid...
Vassili Leonov
...worked without the benefit of digital memory, which is mentioned specifically in the patent.
0 1 - just my two bits
Did anyone else see the part about Sightsound suing N2K? Apparently, they will be defended by the RIAA.
Dare I say that Sightsound is messing with the wrong people. Their patent ( along with all the other patents on generic internet business models ) simply cannot stand under US patent law. I hope the case goes to court and a precendent against blatantly ineligible patents is set.
After that, I hope the RIAA will join Sightsound to the special place reserved for them in hell.
Quoting from the USTPO pages:
"A patent cannot be obtained upon a mere idea or suggestion."
The question is whether they patented a process without being specific enough. I At first glance, it looks specifc enough, but once you clear the legalese it certainly looks like this might be too generic of a patent. And if that argument, one must consider the validity of this being technical enough of a process to get a patent. You can't patent a process without having a solid technical base to support it. If you look at other computer IP patents, you'll see that they patent algorithms and manufacturing processes. They are specific in nature. This patent is probably too broad (not by much) to let Sightsound get away with it. Look for a patent challenge from the RIAA.
Food for thought.
Why? You can't patent something that is a process that involves no new technologies. After all, software is distributed over the internet for pay, and that is essentially what they are talking about here...exchanging data for money.
I read the whole patent application, and if this is valid, well, I can patent this cool parametric equalizer I built in 1983, which would entitle me to royalties on all stereo equipment sold everywhere. The wording is vague and non-technical (actually, the guy doesn't seem to even be familiar with the correct terminology), and the figures are laughable. Everyone, you should send scathing email to SightSound.com. I basically told them any judge trying the case should kick their asses for being so stupid as to try a stunt like this.
It seems they are actually patenting a business model and not a technology. Downloading over the Internet is not materially different from having a CD sent to you - same content (What if I log into AOL - that's not the Internet).
If they push their patent too hard they will, like most who do, fail in their attempts to protect. They will either use a narrow definition in which case we are probably safe, or such an incredibly broad one as to prevent eletronic distribution which will fail. I just hope it ends up in court.
The ability to patent anything other than an alogorithm is incredibly myopic. I haven't seen a patent for micro kernel based operating systems...grab it quick!
Well there is a lot of noise about this thing. READ the patents. It is pretty clear that they do not refer to MP3 or even to mp3.com activities. Nor even to Internet.
Meanwhile there is a small problem that we might be ignoring. What's this fuss all about? About mp3.com? Or about MP3 format itself.
Well I made a small analysis of sightsound's letter and came to three interesting points:
1. These guys do not seem to understand the activities of mp3.com. The terms and conditions of license look like if they even didn't care to take a look at mp3.com's site. Is this letter some sort of template where one of the addresses was mp3.com?
2. The letter is made in a typical provocative formula: "I offer you gold or fire... Choose!". First they propose something in a very abstract manner. Then they end the letter with a clear threat. This is not the usual type of letter one would write to a business. Usually a letter of this kind would put almost anyone in the defensive or counter-attack. So is this some sort of provocation?
3. There is a weird game of words in it. Please look very carefully at the following:
"I'm sure you are aware of the Secure Digital Music Initiative (SDMI) which is intended to foster, among other things, the selection of an open architecture, secure format for the download sale of music by the end of this year."
So these guys show a clear intention of marriage the anti-MP3 movement that has been roaming for a while. But:
"While SIGHTSOUND.COM is participating in SDMI and determining whether _the_ format will be appropriate for inclusion in a Long Term Patent Licensing Program,(...)"
Now what's that talk about "the format"???? The first statement is rather undetermined on what relates to "format". However in the second statement we see that "an (...) format" becomes "the format". Besides while the first statement talks about a future situation, the second one is about _THE PRESENT_.
Now, are these guys talking about mp3.com? Or about MP3 format? If so who are they to decide about it? The damn context of the statements makes me wonder if the author (authors?) of this letter where making a general intimindating template to throw over the free music community, while they had in mind another target!
Besides it is quite interesting to see the time line of sightsound's letter to almost coincide with the "watermarked MP3 initiative" where some bonzos showed a more softened attitude towards "wild" MP3.
Let's think a little bit on this. Maybe these guys ain't crooks (they would get into trouble). Nor tortugas trying to fly as high as the falcons of music industry (fried in courts and public suicide). Maybe behind the look of sightsound there is someone else who calmly tries to probe the "market" behind such curtain.
If the last case is true we have trouble here. Someone is trying to define what file formats should or shouldn't be. If you didn't get this one try to imagine M$ forcing all computer industry to use the Word format and outlawing HTML. What a beautiful world it would be.
Well on the patent issue I mentioned in a previous post that while being vague, this patent _describes_ an invention. I perfectly know how patents can be vague. The "gaming patent" was one of them.
But looking carefully at the schemes and claims it is perfectly clear that sightsound is steaming up and nothing more. Probably all this would become clear only in court, when they will be forced to set up all the details of the "invention" (is there a practical realization of it anywhere?) Some claims do sound very near to things related to modern sound systems. However note that this invention is primarly an _hardware implementation_ of a translation system through telecom lines.
Truly I understand the sightsound's letter more as they are participants of the SDMI. You give another interpretation to it. Maybe you're right. But frankly the english in that phrase is a bit obscure and may have some interpretations.
In your interpretation we are dealing with guys suffering of Napoleon complex. I imagine sightsound deciding wether Sony has the right to publish or not music over the Internet...
However I keep my first suspicions alive. I wonder if suddenly mp3.com goes to court with these guys and we find a good veteran lawyer standing on sightsound's side and defending the poor small earnings of this company against the dark underground conspiracies of MP3 community...
The future will say.
PS: In Russia algorithms cannot be patented. Copyrighted yes, but never patented.
To find "prior art" (in order to invalidate the patent(s)), one need only find out when the alt.binaries.sounds.* and alt.binaries.multimedia.* USENET groups were formed. Many gigabytes (terabytes?) of files have been transmitted over the years, using FTP as well as USENET news.
It is a shame that somebody is going to have to spend the time and money to take SIGHTSOUNDS to court to fight this thing, which appears to be frivolous as best, and pure extortion at worst. The cost of such legal action will most likely result in the raising of fees to offset those costs. Nobody wins, unless the distributors back down and give in to SIGHTSOUNDS, which is probably what SIGHTSOUNDS is hoping.
I guess that's the cost of doing ANY kind of business nowadays.
(void) lar3ry();
--
"May I have ten thousand marbles, please?"
You are a FUCKING LAMER. A waste of space. A pathetic excuse for a human being.
If you (and all your type) don't have something meaningful to add, stop wasting bandwidth.
-- Moderation in all things, exceptions to all rules --
From you: patent on on-line payments and fullfillment of requests for downloading music
Imagine that... both statements infer the same thing.
Its about the music industry retaining control of the multi-billion dollar cash cow based on the antiquated disposable media model. Things might change one day but I wouldn't want to be in between all that money and the people who are used to having all of it. Historically people in these "incoming" positions of these sorts of paradigm shifts have frequently turned up dead.
Left shift 1 for e-mail...
Burn the goddam patent office, burn all that copyright shit down, too. And while you're at it, kill all those fucking people who get rich by being parasites on the poor, and not contributing to society at all.
a2b on the other hand, has come up with the ransom demands and has been a licensee for roughly six months.
For more info on this, I have been documenting the events thus far at Stop DSS
"Although we may build the technology that we define as tools, we must be vigilant that those tools do not define us."
Since it seems OK to patent variations on the idea of selling products or services, maybe I will take out a patent on taking money from shifty people in exchange for frivolous patents on obvious things, and stuff other people invented.
Then we can licence this technology to the patent office for 25% of their profits (which could then be put to good use). If the patent office refuses to pay, we can sue them and take an injunction out against the office, preventing them giving out any more frivolous patents.
Its a win-win situation
do any of you know how much it costs to actually get patent approved, let alone simply pending? it's brutally expensive!
i'm left wondering a) where sightsound got the money to push this patent through - the second one went through in a year!! b) consider the source - who stands to gain the most by forcibly extracting payments?
i would not be at all surprised to see that sightsound was a puppet company set up by the large media players. these patents are so bullsh*t it's not even remotely funny. sure, we can see they're ludicrous, but what happens when a (bribed?) judge upholds the patent?
can we say "legal precedent"? if that ever happens, god only knows where it'll go from there.
-blarg
-- familiarity is only skin deep
How on earth could anyone be granted a patent for the distribution of any form of digital information over the internet ?
That is what it was built for a long time before this patent application !
This is crazy.
Needless to say, this is the most stupid thing I have heard this week. Maybe except for the idea that MS is not a monopoly. This gives me an idea - Who owns the patent for the concept of Operating Systems, anyway? D'oh.
You mean patents are only valid 17 years? How lame. There must immediately be a campaign to extend patens to last for 95 years as has been proposed for copyright! ;-)
Seriously, not that I think patents are inherently bad, but some people are just abusing the idea.
As soon as too many of these companies comply w/ this ludicrous request, sightsound will have a legal fund to persue compliance from the rest of 'em and defend the validity of the patent in court. BAD! VERY BAD!
-- Game over man, game over!
Is there a group that takes action against
such things? This whole patent thing is out
of control, as most posters seem to agree.
If there's not a group, anybody wanna start
one?
Tweet, tweet.
Spiffy. The idiocy of the patent officer(s) responsible for this is staggering. They've issued a patent for a figment of the applicant's imagination. This patent sounds suspiciously like one of Alexander Graham's many patents... the telephone. :p
PS: Other examples of possibly pre-existing art may include (I don't know the exact dates of the initial invention of these, but...):
Cable Television
Phone Sex/Psychic Lines
Sattelites
Telegraph?! (I'm assuming there were "payment from receiver" options)
How is this different from the "Payment required" status of the HTTP protocol? While the HTTP 0.9 spec didn't say how it is to be implemented, the concept was clearly there years ago.
I just patented the website so everyone who has one has to pay 50 cents a hit or I will take legal action.
Lord Suggs aaron@yourlink.net http://members.yourlink.net/aaron