MP3.com named in copyright lawsuit

cybrthng writes "Check out the news on CNET's News.Com about how PlayMedia is now taking its lawsuit against NullSoft after MP3.COM also. " The article talks about the fact that MP3.com doesn't know all that much either-although it appears that PlayMedia is targeting them because they have determined that MP3.com was the biggest distributor. Either that, or they want a chunk of the 115$US million MP3 is hoping to raise in their IPO.

Comments

Theory for what's going on

[Effugas]

My best guess is that the creator of AMP is rather miffed that he didn't market his code well enough to profit from it, that he didn't get into business arrangements that would make him a partner(*cough* why was Nitrane even necessary), and now has been courted by lawyers who think they can wring large chunks of money out of the equation.

The MOST interesting part of the equation is Winamp licensing an engine from FFH. FFH will, IMHO, flip around and bend Playmedia over the proverbial legal bar questioning their chutzpah demanding legal protection over something that they ostensibly "stole" from FFH in the first place.

My "off the cuff" legal analysis of this situation will be that the judge will throw the entire case out, noting that Playmedia(and FFH) lost their claim over the *large* period of time they allowed WinAMP to spread. The Nullsoft guys will successfully argue that Playmedia knowingly allowed the code to be used, that any similarities in code were those that would be expected (by anybody, even Playmedia) from somebody who had seen the source code legally and had recreated it in a new technical system, and that to accept Playmedia's claim would be to usher in a new era of Contagion Litigation.

Contagion Litigation, related to submarine patents, occur when a given technology is allowed to spread contagiously, and when enough parties are infected, the legal nature of the product is reasserted and everybody is forced to pay. It's a form of fraud, obviously, since if each receptor of the "diseased code" had known the legal implication of using the technology before integrating into their systems they would have chosen an alternate route.

There's an element of beauty in all of this. Luckily, the autocratic nature of most courtrooms should cut through the BS rather quickly. I'm sure there's significant precedent against stuff like this.

Yours Truly,

Dan Kaminsky
DoxPara Research
http://doxpara.netpedia.net


Once you pull the pin, Mr. Grenade is no longer your friend.