Category Archives: IP madness

Patent madness

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Now you really couldn’t make this up. Some genius has filed United States Patent Application to protect the “Process of relaying a story having a unique plot”. The Abstract reads:

A process of relaying a story having a timeline and a unique plot involving characters comprises: indicating a character’s desire at a first time in the timeline for at least one of the following: a) to remain asleep or unconscious until a particular event occurs; and b) to forget or be substantially unable to recall substantially all events during the time period from the first time until a particular event occurs; indicating the character’s substantial inability at a time after the occurrence of the particular event to recall substantially all events during the time period from the first time to the occurrence of the particular event; and indicating that during the time period the character was an active participant in a plurality of events.

[Link via BoingBoing.]

Sony resorts to malware techniques

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Fascinating technical analysis by Mark Russinovich of what happened to his PC when he inserted a copy-protected Sony music disc into his machine. Basically, it installs a ‘rootkit’ — the kind of covert software used by malware authors (aka ‘hackers’ to the mainstream media) to compromise computers they have penetrated. Ed Felten has posted several thoughtful updates and comments on this unsavoury discovery. And Andrew Brandt of PC World is absolutely incandescent about it. Here’s what he has to say (en passant):

The bigger question people have got to ask is, does Sony not respect the integrity of the computers of its customers? This cavalier act of sneaking software onto PCs not only violates our own Prime Directive — it’s our PC, dammit — but threatens the entire music industry.

After all, if you suspect that a commercial CD will install software secretly, which you won’t be able to remove and which, itself, may increase the already-great security problems of your Windows PC, would you continue to buy CDs?

I’ll tell you right now, I won’t. I’d much rather buy an unrestricted copy of a song electronically, using iTunes, or Rhapsody, or one of the other music services that offer this feature, than take a chance that some music disc will stick some hidden files in my Windows folder, which I can’t see or remove.

Sony has dealt itself a serious blow, and the best thing it — and the rest of the music publishers — can do right now is condemn this practice, apologize to the customers that were affected, provide a method to get this junk off affected PCs, and make declarations that they will never, ever do this again.

I don’t think they will. And if they don’t, I simply won’t buy CDs anymore. Period. From any publisher. And I recommend that you don’t, either. As a fan of music who respects the need for artists to make a living, and a security-savvy PC user, I’m incensed that Sony — any company — would think it’s OK to do this. It’s not. But the only way (I can see) to send that message effectively to Sony BMG executives is to vote against CDs with my wallet.

Who Owns XML?

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More IP madness. According to MIT Technology Review,

Executives at Scientigo, a small software maker based in Charlotte, NC, say the company owns two U.S. patents (No. 5,842,213 and No. 6,393,426), that cover one of the fundamental concepts behind XML: the idea of packaging data in a self-defining format that allows it to be correctly displayed wherever it travels.

Scientigo CEO Doyal Bryant says the company plans to capitalize on the patents either  by reaching licensing agreements with big corporate users of XML or by selling them to another company.

HP panics over Blu-Ray

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From Good Morning Silicon Valley…

Bill Gates’ recent assertion that Sony’s Blu-ray DVD standard is “anti-consumer” and “won’t work well on PCs”… has apparently put The Fear into Hewlett Packard. At a meeting of the Blu-ray Disc Association Wednesday afternoon, HP, which has shipped a Wintel PC or two in its time, delivered a pointed ultimatum: Include two technologies supported in HD DVD or we will consider switching allegiances. The first of HP’s requested features, “mandatory managed copy,” allows users to copy high-definition movies for use on home networks. The second, iHD, supports PC-friendly interactivity and is slated to be implemented in Microsoft’s Windows Vista operating system. HP was “shocked” when Microsoft and Intel announced support for HD DVD, and hopes the addition of these features will lead to a compromise between the rival groups and hopefully a unified standard. “We’re still supporting Blu-ray, but we’re very serious that we want these technologies,” said Maureen Weber, general manager of personal storage in HP’s personal-systems group. “If in the end, they’re supported in one and then not the other; we’ll have to make a choice.”

Coincidentally, HP’s appeal came on the very same day that Forrester predicted Blu-ray will win the DVD format war. “After a long and tedious run-up to the launch, it is now clear to Forrester that the Sony-led Blu-ray format will win,” Ted Schadler, a Forrester analyst, said in a report. “But unless the HD DVD group abandons the field, it will be another two years before consumers are confident enough of the winner to think about buying a new-format DVD player.”

Google Adsense

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As an experiment, I’ve signed up with the Google Adsense system. Under this scheme, Google monitors the content of the Blog and places relevant ads in the sidebar. (You can see them if you scroll down a bit.) If a reader clicks on one of these paid-for links, Google pays me a small sum. (If I click on one of the ads myself, Google kicks me out of the system btw. Hmmm… I wonder what happens if I go to Memex from a public workstation and click on the ads from there?)

But I digress… I’ve signed up not in the hope of getting rich, but to explore the hypothesis that Adsense could provide a revenue model for supporting Blogging. The idea is that if you have a popular blog which attracts lots of readers, then you might be able to earn enough from Google to at least pay your web-hosting bills.

Well, maybe you could. But the more interesting question is whether signing up to Adsense would undermine the credibility — or integrity — of your blog. And already I’ve made an intriguing discovery. The first item I posted after signing up was the report below about the launch of the Adelphi Charter — which is all to do with reversing the commercial world’s current mania for stronger IP rights. And guess what the first two ads placed by Google were? One for an outfit called “The UK Copyright Service” (motto: “protect your work internationally — fast and secure registration service”); the other an ad for a trademark registration service!

I will persist with this for a few weeks to see how it goes, but the omens are not promising.

Kodak’s bid to own your pictures

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You couldn’t make this up. But I’ll let Dan Bricklin (a keen digital photographer) tell the story…

The idea of a “Wi-Fi” camera seems exciting but in trying to understand it I found that it comes with a big boat anchor — the photos are uploaded to Kodak’s site. But you don’t really own the pictures. If you ask they will sell your photos to you and deliver them to you on a CD (no downloads!) which contains your entire collection of pictures! According to their site you can’t even specify which photos — you have to pay according to how many photos are in your account!

Since the site and rules may change there’s what KodakGallery (formerly Ofoto) currently says: “When you order an Archive CD, your entire photo collection will be preserved on CD. Photos are saved as full-sized JPEGs in their original resolution. Archive CDs are priced according to the total number of photos in your account.”

While the idea of having your photos automatically moved from your camera to the Internet sounds wonderful, you lose ownership of your own pictures. Or maybe you shouldn’t think of them as yours — they effectively belong to Kodak and you get only controlled access. As much as Kodak seems to want to leave their silver-halide heritage behind they seem to be stuck in the old business model of making money when you process the picture, when you print the picture and whenever you want to print it again. It’s another example of how hard it is for a company to change its basic nature.

This is part of the larger trend that is fighting to keep control. The record industry doesn’t want to let you have any control over the bits you buy and Tellywood wants to wrap everything in a very tight DRM straightjacket. These are a business premised on control and they seem unable to change their basic nature. For them it makes a lot of sense to fight the future as long as they can. They have no better option and if they are smart they are taking cash out so when their business evaporates they can retire.

Copyright thugs seek to break up family

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From Good Morning Silicon Valley…

The heavy armor of the music industry’s legal department continues to clank forward, but a few people are starting to stand up in front of the tanks. One is Candy Chan, sued for alleged copyright infringement by a batch of record companies. The subject of the investigation actually was Chan’s then 13-year-old daughter, Brittany, aka “Spicybrnweyedgirl.” According to a p2pnet report, when Chan refused to settle on behalf of her daughter, the record companies regrouped and now want to go after the teenager directly — but first they want the court to push Mom aside and appoint a legal guardian in this matter.

Official: most recordings not available

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From a fascinating report by the US Council on Library and Information resources. Here’s an excerpt from the summary:

Survey of Reissues of U.S. Recordings finds that most U.S. historical sound recordings have become virtually inaccessible—available neither commercially nor in the public domain. According to the report, the rights to 84 percent of historically significant recordings made in the United States between 1890 and 1964 are still owned by someone and are therefore protected by law. For most pre-1972 recordings, protection comes in the form of state, not federal, law until 2067. Because recordings cannot be copied and distributed without permission of their rights holders, the only legal way to obtain a CD of a pre-1972 recording is through a reissue. Yet the study found that rights holders have reissued—or allowed others to reissue—on CD only 14 percent of the pre-1965 recordings they control. Thus, most historically important sound recordings are available for hearing only through private collectors or at research libraries that collect our audio heritage and have the equipment to play obsolete, often-frail recordings.

And the significance of this? Simple: it provides evidence for the claim that the current ‘strong’ copyright regime keeps a large proportion of creative works inaccessible.

Boyle on WIPO and webcasting rights

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Lovely Financial Times column by James Boyle. Sample:

I teach intellectual property law, a subject that is attracting attention from economists, political scientists and people who simply want to make money. These, after all, are the rules that define the high­technology marketplace. Are we doing a good job of writing those rules? The answer is no. Three tendencies stand out.

First and most lamentably, intellectual property laws are created without any empirical evidence that they are necessary or that they will help rather than hurt. Second, the policymaking process has failed to keep track of the increasing importance of intellectual property rights to everything from freedom of expression and communications policy to economic development or access to educational materials. We still make law as though it were just a deal brokered between industry groups – balancing the interests of content companies with those of broadcasters, for example. The public interest in competition, access, free speech and vigorous technological markets takes a back seat. What matters is making the big boys happy.

Finally, communications networks are increasingly built around intellectual property rules, as law regulates technology more and more directly; not always to good effect…