Reflected harmonics can influence tonal qualities. Some audiophiles spend thousands of dollars to have the "music room" imaged & computer modeled to create the "perfect" acoustic format for their type of music. That's before they actually start buying furniture with so much glass, so much soft acoustic absorbing qualities etc.
It's not all about what you hear, it's about the gestalt of the experience. Secondary & tertiary harmonics both up & down are a big part of that for audiophiles.
What's ingenious about running software on a computer? I mean, we've had handheld computers with text input since the mid-90's. Perhaps there's some ingenious wireless antenna design that you could argue is patentable, but once you have a wireless handheld computer... running network applications (like email, or a web browser, or VOIP, or networked pong, or whatever) just isn't obvious.
There is nothing ingenious about running software on a computer. Building the computer to an entirely new series of specifications is. That's the point. You shouldn't be patenting the idea of a miniaturized pc running software to do something, you should be patenting the implementation of that idea. In RIMs case that would be the Blackberry itself. Even there, it's debatable if it is truely worth a patent, I don't recall if SMS w/ 2 way communication was available for text pagers prior to the first Blackberry or not, but I believe it was. In that context, changing a phone number for an email address is not worthy of a patent.
What might have been worth a patent was the ability to integrate a cpu powerful enough to run the software, with the memory, and the display, and the RF module, all while keeping the battery life at a reasonable level in a package small enough to be convenient. I could have done it if you didn't mind walking around with a Flyer Wagon to carry the system, but getting it to fit in your pocket took some doing. Depending on the state of the art at the time, it may or may not have passed the "someone reasonably skilled in the art" test. That it was desirable to do, was obvious. How to implement it, much less so. That's the problem with a lot of the patents currently. They vaugely restate the problem and claim all the apparatus that solve it.
No I said "a device". If you can combine a a series of technologies into a single device in a specified way, then yes, it should be patentable. When you miniturize things it's often a puzzle on how to make them fit. Solving that puzzle isn't obvious most of the time. That's a patentable device. But if I make it another way, then I don't violate 'your' patent. When you patent the concept, then you've fucked everyone, no matter how ingenious their method of putting it together.
Our policy is : when the server's full clean it up.
That really doesn't work with the new ruling. In order to comply with it, we will need to create a policy that's real and adhered to. So yes, the ruling effects everyone. It only changes things for some.
Um, companies under federal litigation have to turn over electronic communications in discovery. That means you have to already have them. Since any company can be brought into federal litigation at any time, that can be logically extended to mean that every company will have to retain these records.
Since I've seen plenty of articles on this, but none describing exactly what's at issue in this case, I did some searching and found this link to the Petitioner's Brief. [PDF Warning]
Apparently, an old patent existed for adjustible gas pedals, such that the pedal could be moved to suit the size of the driver. Additionally a second patent existed for a gas pedal which was linked to an Electronically Controlled Throttle (ECT). Teleflex then apparently patented a brake pedal which used a combination of the two technologies, which is, I think, about as obvious as it gets, and then sued KSR Int'l for infringement.
I also found this NYT article on the subject, which explains the case, and how such idiotic patents are allowed to stand.
Actually the problem isn't that they patented their pedal and sued. The old ETC system had the sensor on the mobile portion of the pedal, and it had a tendency to wear out wires. The Teleflex pedal combined the adjustable pedal and the ETC system with the minor tweak of placing the sensor on the fixed portion of the pedal. OK, that's dandy, and covers sections 1-3 of the patent. The problem is that they added section 4 of the patent which is a claim on all systems using a sensor mounted on the stationary portion of the system.
Teleflex isn't suing over the design of the pedal, they are suing over the concept of the design.
Given that the patent office said they were going to revoke the patents, I would say the patent office decided they were obvious.
The NTP patent was obvious because it took traditional SMS text messaging from a standard text pager, and routed email through the text buffer. That's it. They changed the SMS protocol from "text message" to "Email".
The entire series of protocols - both SMS and Email - are designed to be modular and system agnostic. Plug the protocols into a wired network, they work. Plug them into a wireless network, they work. Hey mix and match, they still work. Imagine then, if you will, that you can pipe the one into the other & have them work... I am astounded, absolutely stunned at the ingeniousness it takes to do that. It's like nobody ever thought to re-route emails to a fax.
And slots through which the fibers can pass but the seeds cannot.
A cotton gin is an implementation of "a method and apparatus for removing seeds from cotton."
Arthur C Clarke wrote about the "concept" of a communications satellite long before one was ever implemented, but he does not own the patent on it. Concepts are not inventions, they are ideas, theories at best, until someone manages to implement them.
Patents are designed to protect implementations of ideas. For that they work well. They do not work when you are protecting the idea itself. IIRC there are ~15 patented designs for implementations of electric motors. However, they all could have been blocked had a modern patent for "An apparatus for converting EMF to rotational work using magnets and wire coils." been issued. Until the patent office gets back to patenting implementations, and not concepts, the patent system is going to be broken.
However... one of those patents was granted (Sending email over a wireless network.) Stupid...
Technically the patent is on pushing the email instead of requesting the email.
Bob turns off his PEM (Portable Email Machine)
Bob turns on his PEM.
PEM registers with network.
Server sends PEM missed Emails
That's what the patent is about, the automated sending of the email when the PEM registers with the network.
The stupid thing is that prior to this being patented, text pagers did:
Bob turns off his Pager
Bob turns on his Pager.
Pager registers with network.
Server sends Pager missed messages.
By specifying email instead of more generic text messages, NTP got a patent on an already implemented idea.
Most of the research is state-subsidised. The govt gives out hundreds of millions a year in research grants to the drug companies & to schools. The problem is that that money doesn't buy an interest in the final product. IIRC ~20-30% of US drug R&D money comes from the US govt, yet none of the drugs are public domain when developed. Nor is there any sort of financial return on that investment.
Obviously that is rubbish, prior art is covered seperately in the requirements for a patent, and not treating obviousness as something differet then what is currently the norm is showing some very serious disrespect for those who wrote current patent law. The people who wrote it were really not as stupid as to mention the same requirement twice.
The patent law says that it is not patentable if someone reasonably skilled in the art, would develop the same device given the same motivation. Since the judges who have to rule on these things are not "reasonably skilled in the art" for which they have to make determinations, they developed the test of "teach, suggest, motivation". The law as written is designed to make sure that obvious solutions to problems don't get patented. The "teach, suggest, motivation" test was developed as a practical way to implement that. The problem is that it doesn't. It lowers the bar to the level of a clueless moron, looking at the whole of the prior art.
I agree that the motivation portion of the test is valid. If there has been a problem, with repeated failed attempts at a solution, over the course of years, then the solution is not obvious, no matter how simple it is in practice. (Encasing batteries in a metal housing to prevent leakage is the example given in the transcript - a 20 year problem with a stupidly simple solution.)
The "teach, suggest" part of the test is just a restatement of prior art. "If the body of prior art teaches or suggests a solution, it is obvious, otherwise it is not." Transferring the "genre, artist, album, song" hierachy menus from a computer's jukebox program, to an MP3 player that has a graphical display fails this test for anyone reasonably skilled in the art of interface design, and yet the patent was granted to MS.
How do you fix it so that solutions that are "obvious to someone reasonably skilled in the art" can be shown to be obvious to people not skilled in the art? I have no ideas. I just know the current method doesn't work.
A portable email device is "bloody fucking obvious" the minute you live in a world where both email and small wireless devices are common.
A portable email device that is pushed email instead of requests email is "bloody fucking obvious" when you have text pager technology (SMS) to push messages to a remote device. Making that message be an Email is not a stroke of genius. The fact that HAM radio operators were doing this for base stations since the early 80's, makes it even more obvious. This is stacking one on top of the other with no innovation - which was determined to be obvious (attaching a radiant heater to an asphault spreader is not an idea worthy of a patent).
Had NTP patented a device, and not the concept, this would be a non issue. A portable device capable of 2 way email contact, is worthy of a patent. The concept is not.
As regards the performance licensing bodies, I'd say that while ROMS is operating as it should domestically, I'd be surprised if the WTO didn't consider it somewhat less a legitimate body to handle international rights.
Do you also feel that BMI & APEC are not legitimate bodies to handle international rights?
ROMS is exactly the equivalent to those organizations, and the analogous ones in Spain, UK, and France. Actually, all of the organizations have what is referred to as the "blackbox" which is fees paid for songs by musicians who are not members of the societies. So if the Chinese restaraunt in Downtown Manhattan plays a song from a Cantonese musician, that fee goes to the blackbox. If a US musicians song becomes a big hit in Spain, it receives a substantial amount of airtime, but the artist only gets paid if they are a member of the Spanish system.
As for
None of the copyright holders in question here are members of ROMS, but their materials are still "performed" because AllofMP3.com can buy a CD anywhere they like and create "performances" of it by allowing downloads. That is not analogous to the situation you describe.It's exactly analogous to the situation I am describing. A radio station, or web site can play any song they want, from a classic Muddy Waters song to the Demo CD the DJ picked up driving down the street. It's part of the compulsory licensing system. The only thing AllOfMP3 needs to do to be in 100% compliance with the RIAAs desires is to switch from MP3 transfers to streaming audio on demand. That's it, change the protocol from ftp to streaming audio. The practical effect of that is.... nothing. Most of the streaming audio players will also record the stream, meaning at the end of the day, everyone who buys a played song from AllOfMP3, has a copy of the song on their HD, and no American musician has received a penny.
If your connection is reset at the point of sale, you don't get charged a second time, and the record company doesn't get paid for it. The storefront eats it as far as retransmision costs go. The record companies only receive money based on the actual sales of downloads. With a record, the record company receives money for 85% of the records shipped, the 15% discount being determined to be the average level of breakage for 78rpm records.
A connection reset in no way effects the amount of money going to the record company. The store has 1 copy of the song which is cloned for each sale. The record companies are paid for each sale. There is no 'breakage' in terms of the number of copies produced by the record company vs the number of sales they receive payment for.
With Records:
Recordco ships 100 records to Storeco & is paid $10 each.
Storeco receives 85 records in saleable condition & deducts $150 from Recordco's bill for breakage.
Musicians accounting shows 100 records distributed with 15% breakage & royalty for 85 records.
With Digital Downloads:
Recordco provides Storeco with 1 copy of the record.
Storeco pays Recordco $8 for each of 100 sales.
Musicians accounting shows 100 recordings distributed with 15% breakage & commision for 85 recordings.
With digital downloads, Storeco has to handle the "Connection has been reset" problems, not Recordco, yet Recordco is getting the benefits of breakage with regards to how much they pay to the musicians for royalties - in essence a 15% decrease in royalty payments plus 100% recoupment of losses from manufacturing defects.
Well, ok, so you play MoH:F (FPS) and your emotional arousal increase (amygdala), and your control, focus, and concentration decreases (prefrontal portions) MORE SO then if you play NfS:U (Racing)...
That says to me that both of them have these effects. It also does not state how long this effect LAST (does it stop right at the end, 1 min? 10 mins? an hr? a day?).
Now, can any bio/psych people tell us EXACTLY what those 2 portions controll?
Are we wimply seeing that it takes greater concentration to play a racing game then it does an FPS? How does brain activity like this play out in real life? (what causes it?)The abstract says that this is the next stage that they are planning on investigating. If it turns out to be an entirely transitory thing, then the correlation between violent entertainment & physical violence is minimized outside of that lapse period.
One interesting thing to see would be the comparison between violent games, movies, and competitive sports - basketball/football. Lets see how everything stacks up, not just viewing things in isolation. After that, we can move on to see if there is a correlation with events/behaviours later in life.
That doesn't change the fact that they ignored the laws of the country they were dealing with and slandered/libeled AllOfMP3 by declaring them pirates.
For point 1:
Yes, the royalties in Russia are lower than they are in the US. They are also lower in a large number of other countries around the world. The problem was that AllOfMP3 became a large distributor, in a country the RIAA had previously ignored. In Spain, Italy, and most of the rest of the EU, they already had arrangements hammered out over years of wheeling and dealing resulting in similar rates. In Russia, they went in claiming you have to follow our rules and pay us what we want, to which Russia properly said 'fuck off, play by our system or be ignored'.
For point 2:
I think this is exactly on point, the RIAA makes claims they can't support, and when someone shows them to be wrong, they wave their hands, scream pirates, an hand more money to Congress.
So I still say the RIAA is a bunch of asshats, and I'm sorry Russia caved.
That is what I do besides paying to Real Networks for "radiopass" broadband radio. Paying to a shadowy Russian site knowing the artists not getting anything just to have fake legal music isn't a right of me so I didn't lose anything.
Do you think Real Networks only plays music from people who are registered with BMI? There are 2 other registration/dispersment agencies. Real only has to pay 1 of them to be legal. Most artists don't register with all 3. Some don't register with any - most foreign artists don't even know about them. In that situation, how much of the money you are paying Real Networks is handed to the artists?
The only - and I do mean only - difference between the US compulsory licensing arrangement and the Russian one is that Russia considers all digital audio transfers to be public performances, and the US only considers Streamed digital audio to be a public performance. In technical terms, the only difference is if I get to name the file or if it's sitting in a cache file on my computer.
If AllOfMP3 operated in the US and streamed the songs, paying BMI for each download it would be considered 100% legal by the RIAA, even if 95% of the music downloaded was in Russian & delivered to Russian IP addresses. Because ROMS was being paid instead of BMI it's a crime? Excuse me, is BMI paying anything to the Russian, Greek, and Chinese musicians who's music is being played in ethnic restaraunts around the country? - The general answer is no, but I don't see you screaming in moral outrage.
The issue of MP3 vs stream creates a division that is not supported by the technical reality. The mechanisms are identical*, only the implementation is different. Do we want a legal structure where individual implementations of achieving the same goal are deemed legal or illegal based on the whim of some corporation?
*Mechanism:
Music is digitally transcribed.
Music is encoded by $CODEC into $FILE
$FILE is sent by SERVER to RECIPIENT using TCP/IP protocols
$FILE is buffered by RECIPIENT
$FILE is decoded by $CODEC
Music is converted from digital signal to analog audio waves.
The only difference, is that an MP3 buffers in a named file, and a stream buffers in either memory or a temp file.
Add to that the fact that many of the stream players will also copy the stream to a set file, and the distinctions are worthless in a technical sense.
Allofmp3 can have whatever rights it wants given to them by the Russian government, but the fact of the matter is, the Russian government did not have the authority to give the site those rights because it didn't have them. You can't just pass a law that says that any intellectual property that happens to come within your borders (no matter how it got there) is fair game to be bought, sold, and copied by anyone who likes without any compensation to the owners of the rights to those properties.
Actually the WTO has provisions for doing exactly that. Talk to Antigua, they are contemplating petitioning the WTO for exactly that right in retaliation for the US banning of international online gambling.
The thing you forget is that by default all ideas, inventions, and performances belong to the public domain and will eventually be there. All forms of IP are artificial constructs which are supposed to be contracts between the creator and society - as represented by the government - to encourage the growth of that body of public domain works. There is no natural right to own an idea. It is perfectly acceptable for different countries, and therefor societies, to determine that someone else's contract is not suitable for their society.
Moreover, your argument doesn't reflect the facts. Russian law says that the artists must be compensated - at a rate set by the Russian Govt - and that the way to receive your share of the compensation is to go through ROMS. It's no different than the way the US handles compulsory licensing for public performances - there are 2 or 3 agencies that collect funds & disperse them to their members based on performance records and at a rate determined by the Library of Congress. If you do not belong to one of these agencies, you don't get paid. Because no physical media changes hands, the Russian law determines any digital audio transfer over the internet to be a performance. US law determines only streamed audio to be a performance. Given the proliferation of programs which convert streams to MP3's I think the Russian approach is much more practical and reflective of the reality of the situation.
If I remember correctly, allofmp3.com was getting licenses from these "collection societies", so probably the Russian government will first close down the societies, then close down allofmp3.com.
The US has compulsory licensing also. It's part of the FCC mandates, and the prices are set by the US govt not the Music industry. The only difference is that Russia sets a much lower per instance rate than the US, and Russia also puts MP3 transfers under public performances not sales because there is no physical media transferring. If the RIAA members wanted to get paid in Russia, they should have followed the Russian rules.
New Line is telling Jackson that LOTR is still in the red - despite giving bonuses to it's board for huge profits.
It's a known fact that the numbers in recording companies books are magical. They are sued and loose every year for underreporting profits for individual artists. They just keep doing it because they get away with it often enough to make it profitable.
For one example from the video industry:
Kohn says in his lawsuit that he engaged an auditor who was barred from seeing numerous MGM documents but did find "material shortfalls, overcharges, discrepancies [and] irregularities" in his film's DVD accounting. In one instance, he says, MGM deducted $7,312.68 for "Basket" returns from a bankrupt video chain that appeared to have ordered no DVDs.
For the record, that's over 1% of the gross from the theatrical release of the movie.
If you want cooking the books, look no farther than the 15% "breakage" that record companies deduct from the digital sales through iTunes.
There is nothing dubious about it. The RIAA has agreements with most other countries - Spain, Italy, etc... They do not have one with ROMS because they didn't like the Russian version of compulsory licensing. Russian compulsory licensing says that any company wanting to be paid royalties has to sign up with ROMS, since the RIAA won't sign up with them, it's their loss and their fault, not that of AllOfMP3. You don't get to sit outside the system and scream cheat, when you're the one not playing by the rules.
In the US Vendor says my song is worth $X for every public performance, US Copyright law says it's worth $a - and you have to allow them to play it. It's part of the mandatory licensing that makes radio possible.
Russian law does exactly the same. They simply state that since the MP3 doesn't change a physical media it's closer to a public performance than a record sale.
Remember IP is an entirely artificial construct. Once an idea has been expressed, natural law dictates it belongs to everyone who comprehends it. It's your "Intelectual Property" only because it's been artificially declared as such. The natural state of ideas is to belong to the public domain. Physical objects can only be in 1 place at 1 time, and are therefor subject to scarcity, theft, and ownership. Ideas cannot be "stolen" in that the use by them by other people does not deny you the use of that idea. Only in the bizarre context of a patent denying you the right to implement an idea you yourself have developed, can an idea be stolen.
The US has mandatory licensing for radio and public performances. The music industry has no ability to deny any venue the right to play anything. Are you saying that the US laws are borked according to the copyright owners?
Russian law says that AllOfMP3 can sell any music, so long as they pay the licensing fee to the Russian equivalent of the RIAA. AllOfMP3 did that. When the RIAA complained, they were told to sign up with the Russian Agency and they would get paid like everyone else. They refused, and demanded to be treated as above Russian law. Sorry, if as an American Artist I don't sign up with one of the disbursment agencies, I can't get a portion of the revenue collected for public performances of my works. I see absolutely no difference here.
I think the RIAA is a bunch of asshats who ignored the law in another country and managed to pull enough strings in congress to get what they wanted. I am really hoping Antigua asks the WTO for permission to void US IP next month. Shit like this just proves the US needs to wake up & realize they are not the end all & be all of the world - and that from an American.
Slashdot Mirror
This is the UK we are talking about not Chicago
Actually, from what I am understanding, the road was closed & barricaded for the season, but someone opened up the barricades.
Reflected harmonics can influence tonal qualities. Some audiophiles spend thousands of dollars to have the "music room" imaged & computer modeled to create the "perfect" acoustic format for their type of music. That's before they actually start buying furniture with so much glass, so much soft acoustic absorbing qualities etc.
It's not all about what you hear, it's about the gestalt of the experience. Secondary & tertiary harmonics both up & down are a big part of that for audiophiles.
There is nothing ingenious about running software on a computer. Building the computer to an entirely new series of specifications is. That's the point. You shouldn't be patenting the idea of a miniaturized pc running software to do something, you should be patenting the implementation of that idea. In RIMs case that would be the Blackberry itself. Even there, it's debatable if it is truely worth a patent, I don't recall if SMS w/ 2 way communication was available for text pagers prior to the first Blackberry or not, but I believe it was. In that context, changing a phone number for an email address is not worthy of a patent.
What might have been worth a patent was the ability to integrate a cpu powerful enough to run the software, with the memory, and the display, and the RF module, all while keeping the battery life at a reasonable level in a package small enough to be convenient. I could have done it if you didn't mind walking around with a Flyer Wagon to carry the system, but getting it to fit in your pocket took some doing. Depending on the state of the art at the time, it may or may not have passed the "someone reasonably skilled in the art" test. That it was desirable to do, was obvious. How to implement it, much less so. That's the problem with a lot of the patents currently. They vaugely restate the problem and claim all the apparatus that solve it.
No I said "a device". If you can combine a a series of technologies into a single device in a specified way, then yes, it should be patentable. When you miniturize things it's often a puzzle on how to make them fit. Solving that puzzle isn't obvious most of the time. That's a patentable device. But if I make it another way, then I don't violate 'your' patent. When you patent the concept, then you've fucked everyone, no matter how ingenious their method of putting it together.
Our policy is : when the server's full clean it up.
That really doesn't work with the new ruling. In order to comply with it, we will need to create a policy that's real and adhered to. So yes, the ruling effects everyone. It only changes things for some.
Um, companies under federal litigation have to turn over electronic communications in discovery. That means you have to already have them. Since any company can be brought into federal litigation at any time, that can be logically extended to mean that every company will have to retain these records.
Apparently, an old patent existed for adjustible gas pedals, such that the pedal could be moved to suit the size of the driver. Additionally a second patent existed for a gas pedal which was linked to an Electronically Controlled Throttle (ECT). Teleflex then apparently patented a brake pedal which used a combination of the two technologies, which is, I think, about as obvious as it gets, and then sued KSR Int'l for infringement.
I also found this NYT article on the subject, which explains the case, and how such idiotic patents are allowed to stand.
Actually the problem isn't that they patented their pedal and sued. The old ETC system had the sensor on the mobile portion of the pedal, and it had a tendency to wear out wires. The Teleflex pedal combined the adjustable pedal and the ETC system with the minor tweak of placing the sensor on the fixed portion of the pedal. OK, that's dandy, and covers sections 1-3 of the patent. The problem is that they added section 4 of the patent which is a claim on all systems using a sensor mounted on the stationary portion of the system.
Teleflex isn't suing over the design of the pedal, they are suing over the concept of the design.
Given that the patent office said they were going to revoke the patents, I would say the patent office decided they were obvious. ... I am astounded, absolutely stunned at the ingeniousness it takes to do that. It's like nobody ever thought to re-route emails to a fax.
The NTP patent was obvious because it took traditional SMS text messaging from a standard text pager, and routed email through the text buffer. That's it. They changed the SMS protocol from "text message" to "Email".
The entire series of protocols - both SMS and Email - are designed to be modular and system agnostic. Plug the protocols into a wired network, they work. Plug them into a wireless network, they work. Hey mix and match, they still work. Imagine then, if you will, that you can pipe the one into the other & have them work
And slots through which the fibers can pass but the seeds cannot.
A cotton gin is an implementation of "a method and apparatus for removing seeds from cotton."
Arthur C Clarke wrote about the "concept" of a communications satellite long before one was ever implemented, but he does not own the patent on it. Concepts are not inventions, they are ideas, theories at best, until someone manages to implement them.
Patents are designed to protect implementations of ideas. For that they work well. They do not work when you are protecting the idea itself. IIRC there are ~15 patented designs for implementations of electric motors. However, they all could have been blocked had a modern patent for "An apparatus for converting EMF to rotational work using magnets and wire coils." been issued. Until the patent office gets back to patenting implementations, and not concepts, the patent system is going to be broken.
- Bob turns off his PEM (Portable Email Machine)
- Bob turns on his PEM.
- PEM registers with network.
- Server sends PEM missed Emails
That's what the patent is about, the automated sending of the email when the PEM registers with the network.The stupid thing is that prior to this being patented, text pagers did:
- Bob turns off his Pager
- Bob turns on his Pager.
- Pager registers with network.
- Server sends Pager missed messages.
By specifying email instead of more generic text messages, NTP got a patent on an already implemented idea.Most of the research is state-subsidised. The govt gives out hundreds of millions a year in research grants to the drug companies & to schools. The problem is that that money doesn't buy an interest in the final product. IIRC ~20-30% of US drug R&D money comes from the US govt, yet none of the drugs are public domain when developed. Nor is there any sort of financial return on that investment.
The patent law says that it is not patentable if someone reasonably skilled in the art, would develop the same device given the same motivation. Since the judges who have to rule on these things are not "reasonably skilled in the art" for which they have to make determinations, they developed the test of "teach, suggest, motivation". The law as written is designed to make sure that obvious solutions to problems don't get patented. The "teach, suggest, motivation" test was developed as a practical way to implement that. The problem is that it doesn't. It lowers the bar to the level of a clueless moron, looking at the whole of the prior art.
I agree that the motivation portion of the test is valid. If there has been a problem, with repeated failed attempts at a solution, over the course of years, then the solution is not obvious, no matter how simple it is in practice. (Encasing batteries in a metal housing to prevent leakage is the example given in the transcript - a 20 year problem with a stupidly simple solution.)
The "teach, suggest" part of the test is just a restatement of prior art. "If the body of prior art teaches or suggests a solution, it is obvious, otherwise it is not." Transferring the "genre, artist, album, song" hierachy menus from a computer's jukebox program, to an MP3 player that has a graphical display fails this test for anyone reasonably skilled in the art of interface design, and yet the patent was granted to MS.
How do you fix it so that solutions that are "obvious to someone reasonably skilled in the art" can be shown to be obvious to people not skilled in the art? I have no ideas. I just know the current method doesn't work.
Had NTP patented a device, and not the concept, this would be a non issue. A portable device capable of 2 way email contact, is worthy of a patent. The concept is not.
ROMS is exactly the equivalent to those organizations, and the analogous ones in Spain, UK, and France. Actually, all of the organizations have what is referred to as the "blackbox" which is fees paid for songs by musicians who are not members of the societies. So if the Chinese restaraunt in Downtown Manhattan plays a song from a Cantonese musician, that fee goes to the blackbox. If a US musicians song becomes a big hit in Spain, it receives a substantial amount of airtime, but the artist only gets paid if they are a member of the Spanish system.
As for None of the copyright holders in question here are members of ROMS, but their materials are still "performed" because AllofMP3.com can buy a CD anywhere they like and create "performances" of it by allowing downloads. That is not analogous to the situation you describe.It's exactly analogous to the situation I am describing. A radio station, or web site can play any song they want, from a classic Muddy Waters song to the Demo CD the DJ picked up driving down the street. It's part of the compulsory licensing system. The only thing AllOfMP3 needs to do to be in 100% compliance with the RIAAs desires is to switch from MP3 transfers to streaming audio on demand. That's it, change the protocol from ftp to streaming audio. The practical effect of that is
A connection reset in no way effects the amount of money going to the record company. The store has 1 copy of the song which is cloned for each sale. The record companies are paid for each sale. There is no 'breakage' in terms of the number of copies produced by the record company vs the number of sales they receive payment for.
With Records:
- Recordco ships 100 records to Storeco & is paid $10 each.
- Storeco receives 85 records in saleable condition & deducts $150 from Recordco's bill for breakage.
- Musicians accounting shows 100 records distributed with 15% breakage & royalty for 85 records.
With Digital Downloads:- Recordco provides Storeco with 1 copy of the record.
- Storeco pays Recordco $8 for each of 100 sales.
- Musicians accounting shows 100 recordings distributed with 15% breakage & commision for 85 recordings.
With digital downloads, Storeco has to handle the "Connection has been reset" problems, not Recordco, yet Recordco is getting the benefits of breakage with regards to how much they pay to the musicians for royalties - in essence a 15% decrease in royalty payments plus 100% recoupment of losses from manufacturing defects.Well, ok, so you play MoH:F (FPS) and your emotional arousal increase (amygdala), and your control, focus, and concentration decreases (prefrontal portions) MORE SO then if you play NfS:U (Racing)...
That says to me that both of them have these effects. It also does not state how long this effect LAST (does it stop right at the end, 1 min? 10 mins? an hr? a day?).
Now, can any bio/psych people tell us EXACTLY what those 2 portions controll?
Are we wimply seeing that it takes greater concentration to play a racing game then it does an FPS?
How does brain activity like this play out in real life? (what causes it?)The abstract says that this is the next stage that they are planning on investigating. If it turns out to be an entirely transitory thing, then the correlation between violent entertainment & physical violence is minimized outside of that lapse period.
One interesting thing to see would be the comparison between violent games, movies, and competitive sports - basketball/football. Lets see how everything stacks up, not just viewing things in isolation. After that, we can move on to see if there is a correlation with events/behaviours later in life.
That doesn't change the fact that they ignored the laws of the country they were dealing with and slandered/libeled AllOfMP3 by declaring them pirates.
For point 1:
Yes, the royalties in Russia are lower than they are in the US. They are also lower in a large number of other countries around the world. The problem was that AllOfMP3 became a large distributor, in a country the RIAA had previously ignored. In Spain, Italy, and most of the rest of the EU, they already had arrangements hammered out over years of wheeling and dealing resulting in similar rates. In Russia, they went in claiming you have to follow our rules and pay us what we want, to which Russia properly said 'fuck off, play by our system or be ignored'.
For point 2:
I think this is exactly on point, the RIAA makes claims they can't support, and when someone shows them to be wrong, they wave their hands, scream pirates, an hand more money to Congress.
So I still say the RIAA is a bunch of asshats, and I'm sorry Russia caved.
The only - and I do mean only - difference between the US compulsory licensing arrangement and the Russian one is that Russia considers all digital audio transfers to be public performances, and the US only considers Streamed digital audio to be a public performance. In technical terms, the only difference is if I get to name the file or if it's sitting in a cache file on my computer.
If AllOfMP3 operated in the US and streamed the songs, paying BMI for each download it would be considered 100% legal by the RIAA, even if 95% of the music downloaded was in Russian & delivered to Russian IP addresses. Because ROMS was being paid instead of BMI it's a crime? Excuse me, is BMI paying anything to the Russian, Greek, and Chinese musicians who's music is being played in ethnic restaraunts around the country? - The general answer is no, but I don't see you screaming in moral outrage.
The issue of MP3 vs stream creates a division that is not supported by the technical reality. The mechanisms are identical*, only the implementation is different. Do we want a legal structure where individual implementations of achieving the same goal are deemed legal or illegal based on the whim of some corporation?
*Mechanism:
- Music is digitally transcribed.
- Music is encoded by $CODEC into $FILE
- $FILE is sent by SERVER to RECIPIENT using TCP/IP protocols
- $FILE is buffered by RECIPIENT
- $FILE is decoded by $CODEC
- Music is converted from digital signal to analog audio waves.
The only difference, is that an MP3 buffers in a named file, and a stream buffers in either memory or a temp file.Add to that the fact that many of the stream players will also copy the stream to a set file, and the distinctions are worthless in a technical sense.
The thing you forget is that by default all ideas, inventions, and performances belong to the public domain and will eventually be there. All forms of IP are artificial constructs which are supposed to be contracts between the creator and society - as represented by the government - to encourage the growth of that body of public domain works. There is no natural right to own an idea. It is perfectly acceptable for different countries, and therefor societies, to determine that someone else's contract is not suitable for their society.
Moreover, your argument doesn't reflect the facts. Russian law says that the artists must be compensated - at a rate set by the Russian Govt - and that the way to receive your share of the compensation is to go through ROMS. It's no different than the way the US handles compulsory licensing for public performances - there are 2 or 3 agencies that collect funds & disperse them to their members based on performance records and at a rate determined by the Library of Congress. If you do not belong to one of these agencies, you don't get paid. Because no physical media changes hands, the Russian law determines any digital audio transfer over the internet to be a performance. US law determines only streamed audio to be a performance. Given the proliferation of programs which convert streams to MP3's I think the Russian approach is much more practical and reflective of the reality of the situation.
It's a known fact that the numbers in recording companies books are magical. They are sued and loose every year for underreporting profits for individual artists. They just keep doing it because they get away with it often enough to make it profitable.
For one example from the video industry:
For the record, that's over 1% of the gross from the theatrical release of the movie.
If you want cooking the books, look no farther than the 15% "breakage" that record companies deduct from the digital sales through iTunes.
There is nothing dubious about it. The RIAA has agreements with most other countries - Spain, Italy, etc... They do not have one with ROMS because they didn't like the Russian version of compulsory licensing. Russian compulsory licensing says that any company wanting to be paid royalties has to sign up with ROMS, since the RIAA won't sign up with them, it's their loss and their fault, not that of AllOfMP3. You don't get to sit outside the system and scream cheat, when you're the one not playing by the rules.
In the US Vendor says my song is worth $X for every public performance, US Copyright law says it's worth $a - and you have to allow them to play it. It's part of the mandatory licensing that makes radio possible. Russian law does exactly the same. They simply state that since the MP3 doesn't change a physical media it's closer to a public performance than a record sale.
Remember IP is an entirely artificial construct. Once an idea has been expressed, natural law dictates it belongs to everyone who comprehends it. It's your "Intelectual Property" only because it's been artificially declared as such. The natural state of ideas is to belong to the public domain. Physical objects can only be in 1 place at 1 time, and are therefor subject to scarcity, theft, and ownership. Ideas cannot be "stolen" in that the use by them by other people does not deny you the use of that idea. Only in the bizarre context of a patent denying you the right to implement an idea you yourself have developed, can an idea be stolen.
The US has mandatory licensing for radio and public performances. The music industry has no ability to deny any venue the right to play anything. Are you saying that the US laws are borked according to the copyright owners?
Russian law says that AllOfMP3 can sell any music, so long as they pay the licensing fee to the Russian equivalent of the RIAA. AllOfMP3 did that. When the RIAA complained, they were told to sign up with the Russian Agency and they would get paid like everyone else. They refused, and demanded to be treated as above Russian law. Sorry, if as an American Artist I don't sign up with one of the disbursment agencies, I can't get a portion of the revenue collected for public performances of my works. I see absolutely no difference here.
I think the RIAA is a bunch of asshats who ignored the law in another country and managed to pull enough strings in congress to get what they wanted. I am really hoping Antigua asks the WTO for permission to void US IP next month. Shit like this just proves the US needs to wake up & realize they are not the end all & be all of the world - and that from an American.