Category: IP

What Technically Competent ISPs Do to Provide Service

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Verizon is investing resources in a technology called P4P, a PEER TO PEER technology which promises to reduce the burden on ISPs with regard to the distribution of commercial and licensed high bandwidth products.

This is what Bit-Torrent was designed to do. It was developed for things like Linux distros, and the idea was that when you released an upgrade, you would get the downloaders to share amongst themselves, so your server would not be vomiting blood.

Ars spoke with Verizon senior technologist and P4P workgroup co-chair Doug Pasko, who tells us that Verizon observed download performance improvements of approximately 200 percent during tests conducted with Pando. The performance boost can climb as high as 600 percent in some cases. Verizon believes that P2P technology is moving into the mainstream and is being legitimized for large-scale commercial content delivery. The company sees P4P as a way to enable broader commercial adoption of P2P tech while unclogging the tubes and relieving network congestion.

Since the efficacy of the P4P protocol largely relies on the availability of network topology information, Verizon and the P4P workgroup aim to make the new protocol an industrywide standard and convince other carriers to share their own data and participate. “Quite frankly, any carrier should benefit from this,” Pasko told Ars. The initiative has drawn support from a number of ISPs, including Comcast, which is currently facing scrutiny for impeding peer-to-peer traffic on its own network.

This is not to say that Verizon is not evil, after all they are the phone company, but they are not evil and stupid as ComCast is.

Consequences of the Supreme Court’s Redefintion of “Obvious”

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The people just won one, where the Federal District Court just struck down Bayer’s patent on Yasmin, a contraceptive.

The patent, which expires in 2020, is on a formula for the compound drospirenone in which the particle size was reduced so it could be absorbed by the body more quickly before it is exposed to stomach acid. U.S. District Judge Peter Sheridan agreed with Barr that the decision to reduce the particle size would have been obvious to any researcher.

Hell, it’s obvious to any cook too.

Why else would they sell powdered sugar. Smaller particles dissolve more quickly.

In Other Unsurprising News, the MPAA is a Bunch of Lying Jackals*

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Well, Harold Feld ads some fact checking to MPAA claims that, “40% of industry loses from internet piracy could be traced to file sharing at universities.”

LEK Consulting Services, which did the research for the MPAA, has now released its methodology, and based on their own numbers, the file sharing through university computing services is about 3%.

They used this study to justify attempts to use legislation to coerce universities to lock down their networks in very expensive ways, and to make the penalties for such activities worse than murder.

*No offense intended to Jackals.

AT&T: The Borg is Back.

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AT&T sells you bandwidth, and now they want to charge the people from whom you download a second time for the privilidge of using the wires that you have already paid for.

They are claiming that they want to help crack down on copyright infringement, but let’s be clear, this is a lie.

They want the RIAA and MPAA to support their efforts, so that later, they can charge the RIAA’s and MPAA’s clients for selling AT&T customers online music and movies.


We don’t care. We don’t have to. (snort) We’re the Phone Company!”

Getting IP Right, and Trying to Avoid the “Oh, Canada” Cliche

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Harold Feld asks, “Someone tell me why Canadians seem to be so much smarter than we are, at least on the public policy fronts that I cover?”

The public policy fronts that he covers involve things like IP and network neutrality, and he is, in this case referring to the the Candian Radio-Television Commission‘s (CRTC) announcement that it is imposing new national ownership limits and cross ownership limits on its broadcast media, and the political backlash that has delayed a Canadian version of the DMCA.

The answer is actually far more depressing than the my friend Harold Feld, esq. would like to think: The Canadians believe in public policy, and the United States does not.

This is why someone like Michael Powell could make a statement that basically said that corporate profit was a public good, and not get tarred and feathered.

In Canada, his phone calls would not be returned.

Canadians Kill MP3 Player Tax

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This report does not make it clear as to why the Federal Court of Appeal struck down such a tax.

There are provision in the Canadian copyright laws that allow for audio recording media, on the theory that they are means of distribution, but an MP3 player is not a means of distribution of music, but rather a means of consumption of music.

Simply put, people don’t swap MP3 players, though obviously some people swap music files.

Pirate Bay.org Being Hauled into Court Again

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Swedish law is fairly lax, and my guess is that they proprietors of the site will win.

They are are being charged with conspiracy to breach copyrights.

Considering the fact that , “seven parliamentarians from the ruling conservative party called in a newspaper opinion article last month for the decriminalization of file sharing.”, and the fact that the Pirate party has more members than the Greens, I’m not surprised that they are relying on public defenders.

This is being driven by the US, and everyone knows it.

Morons Unclear on Trademark

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The teenage entrepreneur screwing this up I can understand, but the reporter completely screwed the pooch on this one.

A kid makes jewelry called “change rocks”, and Obama has a concert series called “change rocks”.

The kid has no right to do anything with regard to trademark. Quoting the Wiki, “Trademark law is designed to fulfill the public policy objective of consumer protection, by preventing the public from being misled as to the origin or quality of a product or service.”

So if there is no potential consumer confusion, there is no harm, no foul.

Obama can’t sell jewelry, but he could do T-shirts, bumper stickers, etc. My guess is that his concern is about his Google ranking, or an attempt at free publicity.

Don’t care, and neither should Obama. Tough luck, kid.

A New Nigerian Scam

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It seems that the only things that Nigeria makes the news for these days is oil related unrest, various forms of fraud, and one of the highest indices of corruption in the world.

The latest one is a Nigerian firm, Lagos Analysis Corp. (Lancor), suing the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) non profit over a “4 shift keyboard“, which allows for better handling of multiple languages.

The kicker is that the OLPC has not shipped any of the keyboards.

Oh, and that one of the principals at Lancor, served time for bank fraud.

Also, it appears that there is no valid patent in the first place.

Go, Groklaw is your friend, and it appears that there is a crooked judge in Nigeria.

Wal-Mart Screws the Pooch on Digital Downloads

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So, after less than a year, Wal-Mart is abandoning its digital download service.

Its basic features were:

  • Just as (if not more) expensive as a DVD.
  • A draconian DRM regime which forced you to watch it on your computer and only that computer.
  • It only ran on Windows Machines.
  • No High Def.
    • Which doesn’t mean much to me, but for the technophile early adoptors, it does.
  • The DRM scheme allowed the studios to revoke your rights to the movies that you downloaded with no recourse.

To quote ars technica:

The message here is very clear: draconian DRM and unrealistic pricing are turning consumers away from legitimate retail channels and giving them a big incentive to adopt underground file sharing.

Jumping Carcharodon megalodon

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Yep, the RIAA is at it again.

This time, they are claiming that copying from a CD to your computer is a copyright violation, so if you want to mix on your iPod, you are SOL:

Now, in an unusual case in which an Arizona recipient of an RIAA letter has fought back in court rather than write a check to avoid hefty legal fees, the industry is taking its argument against music sharing one step further: In legal documents in its federal case against Jeffrey Howell, a Scottsdale, Ariz., man who kept a collection of about 2,000 music recordings on his personal computer, the industry maintains that it is illegal for someone who has legally purchased a CD to transfer that music into his computer.

The industry’s lawyer in the case, Ira Schwartz, argues in a brief filed earlier this month that the MP3 files Howell made on his computer from legally bought CDs are “unauthorized copies” of copyrighted recordings.

Clueless: NY Times Columnist David Pogue

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Mr. Pogue is wringing his hands about how those meddling kids today don’t respect IP.

He relates how he wrote an article about PyMusic, a piece of software that strips the DRM out of iMusic downloads, and how he received a sh#@ when he said, “To me, it’s obvious that PyMusique is designed to facilitate illegal song-swapping online, nd therefore, it’s wrong to use it.”

He gets a bunch of nasty emails from readers (one of those things, it seems that upsets NY Times and WaPo writers) explaining how there are a myriad of legitimate uses for this, such as backup, using some other sort of MP3 player, etc.

So, he claims to get it, and recently he went before a young audience, and gave a number of examples, and asked if they were wrong.

The final one, and the one that shocked him, was when he only got 1 or 2 hands for, “You want a movie or an album. You don’t want to pay for it. So you download it,” and he gets 2 hands out of 500.

He’s shocked, but he is shocked because people understand the issue, Patent and Copyright Law is at its Core Public Interest Law.

IP meaning intellectual product, not intellectual property, is not and was never intended to be property as we understand it.

Congress under Article I, Section 8, Clause 8 of the constitution, has the power to, “To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries.”

This is not property. After all, when I say, “Take my wife….please,” Henny Youngman still has the joke.*

IP is an infringement on a very natural state of creativity. Patents and copyright are not much more than 300 years old, but we have the Odyssey, the Aeneid, Gilgamesh, the Bible, the Christian Scriptures, and some really kick ass cave paintings, among thousands of other items.

These young students have looked at the world around them, and determined, for example, that record distributors steal from the artists and give them no money, so that their money does not “Promote … the useful arts”.†

David Pogue does not understand the underlying principles of the current IP regime, and these wet-behind-the-ears kids in his audience do.

*Of course his being dead for decades makes his being able to tell it academic.
†Of course looking at modern pop music, there is a question as to whether any of the stuff in the top 40 rotation qualifies as, “useful arts”, but that is a metaphysical question, not a legal one.

A Good Point on the Music Industry

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Cogitamus has a very good point on the music industry, when he looks at the RIAA’s latest VNR (Video News Release).

The RIAA is saying that if you find a mix CD that actually has the music that you want to listen to, it’s probably pirated.

So let me get this straight, in order for me to get the music I want in the format that I want, it has to be illegal?

Seems to me that this is a pretty good indication that the current legal music industry is absolutely worthless.

Jury Duty Reviews

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Well, a few weeks ago, I got a summons for Jury duty, and today, I had to show up, juror number 635, so I show up to the courthouse in Towson at 9:00am. Parking is paid for, so I go up to level “L”, park, and go into the courthouse.

Taking a left after the metal detector, I then go up a short flight of stairs, hang a right, and get in line. I am given a packet with a jury badge, and $15.00 in cash for expenses.

Once we are all checked in, a woman working for the courts picks up a microphone, and explains the basics of how it works. We are to be sent upstairs by juror number, and then go through voir dire. Given my early diet of Perry Mason, it all seems pretty much second nature to me.

There are monitors arranged throughout the jury room, and they are used to show a brief, and rather cheesy video showing how it is all supposed to work. It was narrated by a judge, and showed pretty clearly just why they use actors to portray them on TV.

While we were waiting, they put a movie on the monitors to entertain us* (more on this later), but about halfway through, the paused it to call jurors 1 through 330 to court for voir dire. They then restarted the film. At about 12:20, most of jurors 1-330 (they only take twelve and a few alternates) returned to the jury room.

At about 12:50 we were sent out for lunch with instructions to return by 2:00pm. They ran the last half of the film again for the benefit of those jurors remaining from the 1-330 cohort.

At about 3:30, Judge Pat Springer came to the room, and thanked us all for our service, and we were free to go.

As a special bonus to this post, I am adding what I hope will be a VERYinfrequent feature of this blog, Jury Duty Reviews:

The movie in question was Secondhand Lions.

Michael Caine: Garth
Robert Duvall: Hub
Haley Joel Osment: Walter
Kyra Sedgwick: Mae

The film was chosen by the court staff was an attempt to find something that would not offend anyone, but still would entertain what would necessarily be an adult audience.

The film covers some fairly well trod ground, with Osmont being the 13 year old child of the feckless mother Sedgwick who is dumped off on his great uncles, Caine and Duvall.

Sedgwick has a minor roll really, and this is essentially a 3 person film, albeit one where they are played by 6 actors, because of the extensive use of flashbacks.

It is set in Texas, and Cain does his accent very well. Duvall does not do an accent, but his manner of speaking fits in well with the Texas location. Thankfully, Osmont does not attempt an accent all.

Duvall, as always, is impressive, as is Caine, who can sometimes disappoint, and Osmont does a very creditable job in playing a 13 year old.

Your kids will love this movie, and it’s entertaining for the adults.

It’s funny and…I’m sorry, but I have to say it….Heartwarming.

*Yes, I know, it’s technically a public performance in violation of US IP laws, because it qualifies as a “public performance”, but I’m not ratting them out to the MPAA.

Hack Allows Apple’s Leopard OS to Run on PCs

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Personally, I’m not interested in Macs, I’m a PC guy, my interest here is that I like to see companies with arrogant restrictions in their licenses get owned,

For those of you who who do care, I’m not so sure how much it would matter that Leopard can be made to run on PCs either. After all, you have the hardware.

In either case, I find this interesting from a purely voyeuristic perspective.