Their legal department might be trying to recuperate their costs now by suing others. It's a game that benefits no one. Meanwhile, Sony is part of the MPEG-LA consortium that's preventing free software and SMEs from including support for MPEG video formats, so they deserve no good will.
The best technique I've found is to have mplayer play the audio at 60% normal speed and have a text editor (emacs is my preference) in another window, flick between them with alt-TAB and hit Space to start and pause mplayer.
Exactly. And we'll all be better off when companies looking for a "BSD-style" licence start choosing the Apache 2.0 licence instead of the others which users no patent grant and no retaliation clause.
> Everyone has a right to file a complaint [...] without any consequences.
That's true for violations of criminal law (the State v. X, e.g. murder), but not for civil offences (X v. Y, e.g. copyright dispute).
Your suggestion would invalidate every promise not to sue. The software industry uses loads of promises not to sue. All the lawyers that help free software say that a promise not to sue is good. What makes you think you're right and they're wrong? (Sorry to use an "appeal to authority" reply, but your claim has about as much support among experts as the flat Earth theory does.)
If You institute patent litigation against any entity (including a cross-claim or counterclaim in a lawsuit) alleging that the Work or a Contribution incorporated within the Work constitutes direct or contributory patent infringement, then any patent licenses granted to You under this License for that Work shall terminate as of the date such litigation is filed.
Software patent problems are also worsened by ACTA, but this problem's getting lost among the discussion of problems of transporting pharmaceuticals via Europe. The pharmaceuticals issue is bigger, but the software patents issue still exists (and the DRM issues, which is even worse).
> The most important point is that it'll *never* be over
That's true, but there's a legislative process in progress now in New Zealand. That process will end one day. We grab the opportunity now or we lose it.
> this wouldn't help a NZ company if they sell outside NZ, correct?
The NZ government only has decision making power in NZ. For where they have power, they've decided to make companies safe. What NZ is doing is great and should be applauded and helped. It's up to the US government to make companies safe in the US.
On the international level, this sends two messages to other countries: 1. Countries aren't obliged to do what the US says regarding patent policy; 2. Abolition of software patents is a reasonable choice for developed countries.
These messages contribute to saner patent policy in other countries in the future, even in the US.
This is like standing around in an Apple store, and the guy beside you mentions he's here to return his iMoan, you reply, and you get asked to leave.
Sure, it's their store, but people have gotten kinda used to being able to discuss things with the people around them.
Imagine you were in the queue and security overheard you complaining about how long the queue was, and told you to go to the end. Well - it's their store right? They can do what they want, right?
Yeh, when Jobs said his control over every Apple-user's computing was about "freedom from porn", we could have guessed that "porn" was just being dragged up as a convenient excuse.
That's what I do too, and it reduces the problem for us, but I usually think about these issues from the point of view of what's necessary to protect my less-technical family and friends.
It at least has to copy them into volatile memory (RAM). Whether it makes a copy on a hard disk is an implementation issue, but the user can't know the implementation, so we can't make assumptions about it not making such copies.
They make a copy (they have to, to display thumbnails), but is it temporary or permanent ("To improve the quality of our service...").
There should be a law prohibiting the keeping of copies without express permission, and they shouldn't be allowed to make unrelated functionality dependent on the user agreeing to let them keep a copy.
Copyright law might work here, but I imagine the kiosk companies have found a way around that. Maybe there's a "Terms of user" stick on the back of the machine mentioning that they keep copies, etc.
I'm devising an archival method, but archive.org is actually doing a 90% complete job already, so it's not priority #1.
Anti-swpat campaigns have gathered masses of great data and documents over the years, but it's never well organised. To an outsider, it's opaque. I've worked on various such campaigns over the past eight years, and I know where to find most things, and I know how much of a problem the mess is. So I'm documenting all this insider-knowledge so that anyone else can do the work I do.
There are a lot of links because I believe that statements on wikis should be backed up, and I want readers to be able to dig further into any topic on the wiki.
Without links, it would just be a blog of personal opinions.
If you click around, you'll see that there is indeed analysis and the important parts of documents are quoted at whatever length necessary.
And no, en.swpat.org isn't written by Florian. There have been a half-dozen edits to articles about German topics from anonymous users, so some of them could be him, but that's it. Here's who writes most of en.swpat.org: Ciaran O'Riordan. He also shaved my face this morning. Nice guy.
Why did I post the links? Well, why did someone mod it +1 Informative?
> swpat, while interesting, doesn't have much more than aggregations of links from other sites.
That's one of the goals. We did tonnes of work in the EU in 2003, and LPF did great work from 1991-1995, and there was great work in New Zealand in March. The problem is, websites rust terribly. The documentation from the EU 2003-2005 is partly taken offline, partly moved, and a lot of it always relied on having specific knowledge of the relevant sites anyway.
swpat.org is aggregating that info so that it's available now to people in other countries, in a searchable way, and it will be available to the next campaigns in the same country in five years time when most of the current activists have changed jobs.
In 2015 or 2010, do you think everyone will remember the details of IBM v. TurboHercules? Do you think the current blogs and campaign sites and news articles will still be where they are today?
How many people today know of, and where to find info about these topics:
Half of these will evoke a "Yeh, rings a bell", but few or none will be clearly remembered by people.
So, please help document IBM's actions today so that some other folks in 2015 will be able to find it, get a summary, and find the related pages. (I'm working on adding a backup feature to preserve copies of all linked documents.)
Slashdot Mirror
You could be right about them being hardware patents. (I was wrong before, regarding the CSIRO patents, which seem to be hardware patents.)
The point of documenting the situation is so that we can evaluate just once, write it down with the reasoning, and have clarity for the next time.
What parts of the patents seem to imply they're tied to hardware?
Could I infringe them by writing new software and using it with standard hardware? (If so, then they're software patents)
Help very welcome.
I'm working now on gathering software patent info related to Sony.
* http://en.swpat.org/wiki/Sony
Help welcome.
Sony was the target of a 3D patent in 2004:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/11/04/mckool_smith_lawsuit_update/
Their legal department might be trying to recuperate their costs now by suing others. It's a game that benefits no one. Meanwhile, Sony is part of the MPEG-LA consortium that's preventing free software and SMEs from including support for MPEG video formats, so they deserve no good will.
http://en.swpat.org/wiki/MPEG_video_formats
http://en.swpat.org/wiki/Harm_to_standards_and_compatibility
When a video doesn't play, or when a company expresses doubt about supporting a free format, it's due to MPEG-LA.
To play an audio file at 60% normal speed:
mplayer -af scaletempo=scale=0.6 the_file.ogg
And then to check the transcript, change the 0.6 to 1.5 (or 2.0 for someone like Richard Stallman who speaks slowly and clearly).
I've worked on loooads of transcripts. I did most of these:
* http://wiki.fsfe.org/Transcripts
The best technique I've found is to have mplayer play the audio at 60% normal speed and have a text editor (emacs is my preference) in another window, flick between them with alt-TAB and hit Space to start and pause mplayer.
Exactly. And we'll all be better off when companies looking for a "BSD-style" licence start choosing the Apache 2.0 licence instead of the others which users no patent grant and no retaliation clause.
> Everyone has a right to file a complaint [...] without any consequences.
That's true for violations of criminal law (the State v. X, e.g. murder), but not for civil offences (X v. Y, e.g. copyright dispute).
Your suggestion would invalidate every promise not to sue. The software industry uses loads of promises not to sue. All the lawyers that help free software say that a promise not to sue is good. What makes you think you're right and they're wrong? (Sorry to use an "appeal to authority" reply, but your claim has about as much support among experts as the flat Earth theory does.)
Among the permissive licences, Apache 2.0 has the best patent retaliation clause:
If You institute patent litigation against any entity (including a cross-claim or counterclaim in a lawsuit) alleging that the Work or a Contribution incorporated within the Work constitutes direct or contributory patent infringement, then any patent licenses granted to You under this License for that Work shall terminate as of the date such litigation is filed.
> I don't think you realize just how low the "bottom" is.
Just to add an example: China hasn't hit the bottom. Consider how unlikely it is that they're on the verge of "bouncing back" toward freedom.
Software patent problems are also worsened by ACTA, but this problem's getting lost among the discussion of problems of transporting pharmaceuticals via Europe. The pharmaceuticals issue is bigger, but the software patents issue still exists (and the DRM issues, which is even worse).
swpat.org is a publicly editable wiki, help welcome.
> The most important point is that it'll *never* be over
That's true, but there's a legislative process in progress now in New Zealand. That process will end one day. We grab the opportunity now or we lose it.
> this wouldn't help a NZ company if they sell outside NZ, correct?
The NZ government only has decision making power in NZ. For where they have power, they've decided to make companies safe. What NZ is doing is great and should be applauded and helped. It's up to the US government to make companies safe in the US.
On the international level, this sends two messages to other countries: 1. Countries aren't obliged to do what the US says regarding patent policy; 2. Abolition of software patents is a reasonable choice for developed countries.
These messages contribute to saner patent policy in other countries in the future, even in the US.
If I didn't forget to write the link text, the first link whould have been:
That's a general page of background for the situation, more important than the other three links :-)
The most important point is that this isn't over. The Bill isn't even written yet, nor are the patent office guidelines. Background info:
Bad comparison.
This is like standing around in an Apple store, and the guy beside you mentions he's here to return his iMoan, you reply, and you get asked to leave.
Sure, it's their store, but people have gotten kinda used to being able to discuss things with the people around them.
Imagine you were in the queue and security overheard you complaining about how long the queue was, and told you to go to the end. Well - it's their store right? They can do what they want, right?
Nah, that's not modern society.
Yeh, when Jobs said his control over every Apple-user's computing was about "freedom from porn", we could have guessed that "porn" was just being dragged up as a convenient excuse.
yay!
I hope you enjoyed reading the end of my post after you replied :-)
That's what I do too, and it reduces the problem for us, but I usually think about these issues from the point of view of what's necessary to protect my less-technical family and friends.
It at least has to copy them into volatile memory (RAM). Whether it makes a copy on a hard disk is an implementation issue, but the user can't know the implementation, so we can't make assumptions about it not making such copies.
The kiosk situation is generally lousy.
Do they keep a copy of all my pics?
They make a copy (they have to, to display thumbnails), but is it temporary or permanent ("To improve the quality of our service...").
There should be a law prohibiting the keeping of copies without express permission, and they shouldn't be allowed to make unrelated functionality dependent on the user agreeing to let them keep a copy.
Copyright law might work here, but I imagine the kiosk companies have found a way around that. Maybe there's a "Terms of user" stick on the back of the machine mentioning that they keep copies, etc.
I've made a start on documenting IEEE-USA's take on software patents. Help sought:
swpat.org is a publicly editable wiki, help welcome.
> But that's the most important part.
Maybe. But en.swpat.org is only for documenting software patents. For example:
What do IBM's statements on this case tell us about their patent promises? Does it confirm them, expand them, or limit them?
There are loads of other interesting topics, and I'd generally love to start documenting DRM and privacy issues, just not on en.swpat.org.
I'm devising an archival method, but archive.org is actually doing a 90% complete job already, so it's not priority #1.
Anti-swpat campaigns have gathered masses of great data and documents over the years, but it's never well organised. To an outsider, it's opaque. I've worked on various such campaigns over the past eight years, and I know where to find most things, and I know how much of a problem the mess is. So I'm documenting all this insider-knowledge so that anyone else can do the work I do.
There are a lot of links because I believe that statements on wikis should be backed up, and I want readers to be able to dig further into any topic on the wiki.
Without links, it would just be a blog of personal opinions.
If you click around, you'll see that there is indeed analysis and the important parts of documents are quoted at whatever length necessary.
And no, en.swpat.org isn't written by Florian. There have been a half-dozen edits to articles about German topics from anonymous users, so some of them could be him, but that's it. Here's who writes most of en.swpat.org: Ciaran O'Riordan. He also shaved my face this morning. Nice guy.
Why did I post the links? Well, why did someone mod it +1 Informative?
> swpat, while interesting, doesn't have much more than aggregations of links from other sites.
That's one of the goals. We did tonnes of work in the EU in 2003, and LPF did great work from 1991-1995, and there was great work in New Zealand in March. The problem is, websites rust terribly. The documentation from the EU 2003-2005 is partly taken offline, partly moved, and a lot of it always relied on having specific knowledge of the relevant sites anyway.
swpat.org is aggregating that info so that it's available now to people in other countries, in a searchable way, and it will be available to the next campaigns in the same country in five years time when most of the current activists have changed jobs.
In 2015 or 2010, do you think everyone will remember the details of IBM v. TurboHercules? Do you think the current blogs and campaign sites and news articles will still be where they are today?
How many people today know of, and where to find info about these topics:
Half of these will evoke a "Yeh, rings a bell", but few or none will be clearly remembered by people.
So, please help document IBM's actions today so that some other folks in 2015 will be able to find it, get a summary, and find the related pages. (I'm working on adding a backup feature to preserve copies of all linked documents.)