Category: IP

The RIAA Has Me Rooting for the Russians

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Heck, if the choice was between the RIAA and Dick Cheney, I’m not sure how I’d choose.

Russian copyright wars to continue despite AllofMP3 shutdown
By Chris Williams
Published Tuesday 3rd July 2007 10:47 GMT

AllofMP3.com, the UK’s second most popular source for music downloads after iTunes, has been shut down after diplomatic pressure was piled on Russian authorities.

MediaServices, the combative firm behind the site, is still selling cut-price music however, meaning the international legal posturing is set to continue.

The British Phonographic Industry (BPI), which had won the right to sue AllofMP3 in the UK, told The Reg this morning it was unsure how the shutdown would affect its legal attack.

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Nefarious WIPO Plot Defeated

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Basically, the question is about rebroadcast of over the air and cable signals on the Internet across international boundaries.

The broadcasters were trying to use this as a way to generate additional, and undeserved, profits, by creating a new “right”.

WIPO broadcast treaty defeated by web activists
By OUT-LAW.COM
Published Monday 2nd July 2007 09:57 GMT

A controversial new intellectual property right due to be created by the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO) has been successfully opposed by a coalition of web activists and the technology industry.

WIPO has spent nearly 10 years gathering international agreement over a new deal for broadcasters which would give them intellectual property rights over broadcasts which would exist in addition to existing copyright laws.

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At the end of the meeting, though, there was not enough agreement between member nations about the proposal and the committee recommended that the proposal not be forwarded to a diplomatic conference for adoption.

Gwen Hinze is the international affairs director for the EFF. She told weekly technology law podcast OUT-LAW Radio about the opposition to the plans.

“If you create a new layer of rights that sit on top of copyright from a consumer’s point of view that raises questions about access to information, so information that might otherwise be in the public domain as a matter of copyright law, the exceptions and limitations wouldn’t apply and that raises some concerns about access to knowledge,” said Hinze.

Podcasters were worried that the new right would affect material they produced and their ability to disseminate it on their own terms. One and a half thousand of them signed an EFF open letter to WIPO protesting against the move.

Consumer electronics companies also protested because the plan contained technological protection measures which they feared could give broadcasters control over television recording equipment, such as TiVO boxes.

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Opponents agree that television signal piracy is a problem that must be solved, but say that it can be solved with a ‘signals based approach’ rather than by creating an entire new intellectual property right.

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As always, I do not agree to the term intellectual property. It does not exists. There is simply a limited exclusive license in order to promote the useful arts and sciences.

Universal Attempts to Screw )tunes, Two Great Retister Headlines Edition

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No mistake about this. The labels are doing this for control, and once they have control, they will make the music experience total hell for listeners.

I wonder who writes the headlines for The Register. They are the best heds on the net.

World’s biggest label kneecaps iTunes store
By Andrew Orlowski
Published Monday 2nd July 2007 10:34 GMT

Universal Music Group (UMG) has dealt a serious blow to Apple’s music ambitions by refusing to renew its contract with the iTunes Store.

The New York Times reports that the decision not to continue the annual contract was made by UMG executives last week.

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Update today

Universal downgrades kneecapping to kick in nuts
By Andrew Orlowski (andrew.orlowski@theregister.co.uk)
Published Tuesday 3rd July 2007 14:02 GMT

Universal Music Group (UMG) has responded to yesterday’s report in the New York Times by declaring that it will continue to supply its catalog to Apple’s iTunes store. It’ll just do so on new terms, far more flexible than it previously enjoyed.

The Times reported that UMG had refused to renew its new annual contract with Apple. Apple therefore faced the prospect of seeing the world’s biggest record label withdraw its repertory from the iTunes store. But Business Week reports today that UMG is keeping this nuclear option dry.

It cites anonymous sources who explain that UMG has made an “at will” arrangement, that “enables [UMG] to strike exclusive distribution deals with other digital music providers for individual artists or tracks, though it will continue to sell music through iTunes. Under the new arrangement, for example, Universal could charge another music e-tailer (or Apple, for that matter) a premium to sell Jay-Z’s latest single exclusively for a limited time”.

With Apple facing competition from ad-supported download services, it’s hardly surprising UMG wants to retain flexibility with its pricing. But what UMG wants even more than Apple is to maintain a higher unit price for music, as competition from service providers drives the per-unit cost down, reducing the value of its assets.

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RIAA Victim Goes RICO On Their Asses.

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Here’s hoping that the RIAA gets really shafted.

RIAA tried to shake down 10-year-old daughter, suit claims
By Dan Goodin in San Francisco
Published Wednesday 27th June 2007 18:45 GMT

An unemployed single mom with health problems has renewed her legal challenge of the Recording Industry Ass. of America (RIAA) with unseemly new details. They include accusations that the cartel’s goons tried to contact the woman’s 10-year-old daughter at school by impersonating the girl’s grandmother on the phone.

RIAA agents pursuing bogus copyright violations also called the apartment of Tanya Andersen looking for her daughter Kylee and demanded they take the girl’s deposition, according to a complaint filed last week in federal court in Portland, Oregon.

Later, during settlement discussions, the RIAA told Andersen she had to abandon all legal rights she may have in a countersuit or the association would once again demand to “interrogate and confront her little girl at the offices of the RIAA lawyers,” according to the suit.

This crosses so many lines, both ethically and legally.

“Defendants’ lawyer threatened persecution of Kylee in an effort to force Ms. Andersen to abandon her counterclaims against the defendant record companies,” Andersen’s complaint claims. “Their demand for face-to-face confrontation with Ms. Andersen’s then 10 year-old child in a deposition at the offices of RIAA lawyers were also intended to coerce and threaten her.”

She going RICO on all this. I hope that some goes Abu Ghraib on these bastards.

Careful readers will remember Andersen, now 44 years old, countersued the RIAA (http://www.theregister.com/2005/10/04/riaa_sued/) in late 2005 after being accused of illegally downloading gangster rap tunes such as “Shake that Ass Bitch,” “Bullet in the Head,” “I Stab People” and several with titles that even we cannot publish.

Her counterclaims equated the RIAA to thugs that knowingly employed illegal investigative methods and pursued factually flawed charges. Suing under state and federal Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organization laws designed to target organized crime rings, Andersen became something of a folk hero for her refusal to submit to the 800-pound gorilla.

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Wanker of the Day: Patent Troll Edition.

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Daniel Leckrone, the Chairman of TPL Group.

The TPL Group describes itself as:

TPL has been “purpose built” to deliver an array of services that are fundamental to streamlining the development and commercialization of proprietary products and technologies. By consistently delivering innovation and opportunity, TPL has earned a reputation of being a trusted partner that can enable constructive licensing programs as well as new product development programs that leverage the IP assets within its patent portfolios.

These folks are patent trolls, and Mr. Leckrone is their chief.

Misnamed Patent Reform Act would stifle innovation

By Daniel E. Leckrone
San Jose Mercury News
Article Launched:06/27/2007 01:31:51 AM PDT

While U.S. patent law has been effective in protecting the intellectual property of inventors, which has fueled productivity growth and the U.S. economy for more than two centuries, the so-called “Patent Reform Act” introduced in Congress this year proposes major changes to the law governing how patents are obtained and enforced. Ironically, these changes are being promoted by the most powerful and prosperous high-tech corporations – the “Patent Goliaths” – which came to power based on the patent system as it now stands.

In mounting their full-scale invasion of the territory protected by patent laws, the Goliaths continue to amass political support which, if not effectively challenged, will lead to an unwarranted degradation of the legendary patent system established by the U.S. Constitution. Even the lethargic Department of Commerce has vigorously opposed most of the sweeping changes proposed by this act, as the Department of Commerce explained in its recent 11-page letter to House Judiciary Subcommittee Chairman Howard Berman, a lead sponsor of this misguided legislative effort.

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The author is a patent troll, and he has an interest in keeping his “automatic injunction” shakedown legal.

The rise of patent trolls, in mobile phones, internet connectivity, etc. the Euros and Japanese are increasingly eating out lunch. You can’t make a move in the US these days without getting approval from lawyers.

It not only prevents innovation generally, it makes it prohibitively expensive for the small inventor to actually bring a product to market, because of fears that it might violate a undeveloped, and frequently completely obvious, patent held by the parasites.

There is no need for an injunction with patent trolls. They have no intention of developing a market, they are just getting money for someone else’s work.

This means that they can be made whole at any time by damages with interest.

There is no irreparable damage, so no need for an injunction.

Of course, this means that any company can tell the patent troll to take it to court rather than paying their blackmail, and this is what he fears.

This is NOT Piracy

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I understand that people like to call ANY threat to profits “Piracy”, but this ain’t it.

This is like GM chipping cans of motor oil so that only Delco cans work in your car.

Can cryptography prevent printer-ink piracy?

By Erica Ogg

Story last modified Wed Jun 27 10:37:34 PDT 2007

In the computer printer business, everyone knows the big money comes from the sale of ink cartridges.

Most of these cartridges are made by printer manufacturers and sell for a substantial premium. Some come from unauthorized sources, sell for substantially less and attract the attention of antipiracy lawyers.

Cryptography Research Inc. (CRI), a San Francisco company, is developing chip technology aimed at helping printer manufacturers protect this primary source of profit. The company’s chips use cryptography designed to make it harder for printers to use off-brand and counterfeit cartridges.

“We’re not saying we can end piracy, but our system is designed to recover from failure,” said Kit Rodgers, CRI’s vice president of business development.

Not all ink-cartridge remanufacturing is illegal–much of it is, in fact, legitimate–but pirated ink-cartridge technology cuts substantially into original manufacturers’ profits.

There are three main ways the $60 billion-a-year worldwide printing industry loses money:

• Used cartridges get refilled and sold as “new”– instead of as remanufactured.

You will note here that this will potentially block ALL non OEM cartridge remanufacturing. In fact, most non OEM remanufactured cartridges are sold as remanufactured such and are legal.

There are already laws against fraud.

• Cartridges get illegally replicated through reverse engineering.

You need to explain to me how it’s illegal. Every non OEM ink manufacturer has to reverse-engineer the cartridges, and I don’t see court cases, except in the case of fraudulent labeling.

• Printers get hacked or physically altered to use any type of ink.

Umm…You’re telling me that my use of an ink refiller on my machine is piracy?

And here is the kicker:

In a high-profile 2003 case, Lexmark International, the company that makes printers for Dell, took printer-supplies specialist Static Control Components to court for selling a chip that allowed Lexmark printers to accept any kind of ink cartridge. Lexmark ultimately lost the case, but it hasn’t stopped others from trying fiercely to protect their business.

What they are trying to do is block legal competitors to their markets.

American gamble or bluff: WTO members bet on Antigua | The Register

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When you look at the legislation, and the debate in the Congress, it was clearly about protecting US race tracks and casinos.

There are some movies that I would dearly love to download form Antigua, and they could manufacture some very cheap generics of high demand drugs.

The drug tourism should more than make up for the loss of gambling revenue.

American gamble or bluff: WTO members bet on Antigua

By Burke Hansen in San Francisco

Antigua yesterday filed for formal trade sanctions against the United States, demanding $3.4 billion in compensation from the truculent, recalcitrant super power for failing to open its domestic market to remote gambling services. Antigua, as expected, was not alone; the hottest online gaming market in the world, the EU, also filed for sanctions.

Antigua has been embroiled in a four year battle with the US over the provision of remote gambling services, and the WTO has repeatedly ruled against the US, in increasingly stern terms. After the US tried to insist to the WTO that it had brought itself into compliance without doing anything at all – a novel argument that riled the WTO compliance panel – the WTO issued a definitive and far reaching ruling in favor of Antigua, opening the door for sanctions for the tiny Caribbean country that has seen one of its principal industries pummeled repeatedly by the American Department of Justice (DOJ).

The rules of the WTO typically provide for traditional tit-for-tat trade sanctions, but for tiny countries like Antigua that depend heavily on imports, such an approach can be economically devastating, while doing virtually nothing to penalize the offending nation. The WTO thereby provides an alternative: countries may suspend their own obligations to the offending country. Antigua thus could sell unlicensed copies of American movies or software, for example, to compensate itself for losses resulting from the American actions.
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The Pirate Bay to launch YouTube-style video streaming site

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Good. Now I can make fun of the Thai King.

Seriously though. Pirate bay needs to get some lobbiests, because they need to make it clear to Swedish MPs that the current Swedish law is to the advantage of Sweden, no matter what the US threatens.

The Pirate Bay to launch YouTube-style video streaming site

Ends all the speculation and formally announces the “latest and greatest” project from the world’s most famous BitTorrent tracker site.

Previously I speculated that the “it’s coming” project was the Playble music subscription site that would offer users the option of paying whatever monthly subscription fee that they could afford with fees going directly yo the artists themselves.

Well, Brokep ends all the speculation this morning and announces that they’re going to create a new “video streaming site.” much like YouTube but without the censorship.

He writes:

Oh, and the surprise that’s coming… it’s still not what people think it is… it’s been speculations on it being Playble.com or the video somewhat secret video site.

But, as a treat I can tell you – YES – we’re going to do a video streaming site. It’s true. It’s in the works being done right now and as usual we put a bit of Pirate Bay mentality behind every project we do.

In a chat I had with Brokep this morning on good ol’ fashioned iRC, he was kind enough to answer a few questions about the site and what it will all be about.

He confirmed where the site will be — http://thevideobay.org/, and furthered that they had performed a test stream on Eurovision a while back, and that it held up with “no problem whatsoever.”

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The site plays content police, and with this new project from The Pirate Bay, users will now take up that role and make for some much needed freedom, especially in light of YouTube kowtowing to countries like Thailand who objected to videos mocking their King which were subsequently removed.

Some Rockers are Smart, Some are REALLY Stupid

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This rock and roller understands how music distribution is changing, and what his fans want.

Rock star says piracy battle is lost

‘The horse has bolted’
By OUT-LAW.COM
Published Friday 15th June 2007 08:52 GMT

Major record labels are still fighting the piracy battles of 1997 according to a leading rock musician and digital rights activist.

Blur drummer Dave Rowntree told OUT-LAW that they should have realised in 1997 that their battle was already lost.

“If you turn back the clock when all this stuff was still on the horizon, the key realisation to have made was that we had lost the war already,” Rowntree told OUT-LAW Radio, the weekly technology law podcast. “That’s what I was going round telling everybody 10 years ago, saying ‘the horse has bolted, there’s no way of undoing what has been done already, the only thing you can do is to try and turn your business around so that you turn this into a plus rather than a minus’.”

Rowntree advises digital rights advocacy group the Open Rights Group and has been a vocal opponent of the mainstream record industry’s policies of chasing individual file sharers. When told that the last Blur album was leaked on to the internet he reportedly said “I’d rather it gushed”.

Rowntree said that the major labels’ policies of putting digital rights management (DRM) technology on music CDs to attempt to stop them being copied and shared backfired spectacularly.

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And then we have the Blithering idiots that are Don Henley, Celine Dion, Martha Reeves, Christina Aguilera and Wyclef Jean, and the “musicFirst Coalition“

SiliconValley.com – Performers seek royalties on airplay from radio

MUSIC GROUP PLANS TO LOBBY FOR NEW LAWS
By Alex Veiga
Associated Press
Article Launched: 06/15/2007 01:35:48 AM PDT

LOS ANGELES – A coalition of recording artists, music companies and industry groups said Thursday it will push for compensation of performers whose music is played on the radio.

The musicFirst Coalition, which counts recording artists Don Henley, Celine Dion, Christina Aguilera and Wyclef Jean among its members, intends to lobby Congress for new laws requiring the payments by broadcasters.

The group said U.S. performers, from superstar vocalists to background singers, deserve to be paid when their work is aired on AM or FM radio.

‘The artists and the musicians and the community in general have come together to say now is really time to make sure that when music is played on the radio, that people who perform that music are paid fairly to do it,’ Mark Kadish, the coalition’s executive director, said during a conference call with reporters.

Under current law, only songwriters are paid royalties when songs are played on AM or FM radio.

How long will it take Clear Channel, and its satanic ilk to use this to create a new form of Payola, which will come from Artist’s royalties.

This is why we need to stop looking at IP as property.

Another Patent Troll Whines

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They make nothing. They sell nothing. They can be made right with money.

And the patent is f&^%ing obvious, and probably does not stand up to the new standard that SCOTUS set a few weeks ago.

These people are paracites, and they are destroying innovation in our society.

There has been a “price before auction” for a hundred years.

Company calls for end to eBay’s `Buy It Now’

PATENT LAWS DEBATED BEFORE FEDERAL JUDGE
By Sonja Barisic
Associated Press
Article Launched: 06/13/2007 01:37:55 AM PDT

NORFOLK, Va. – A small Virginia company in a patent fight with eBay asked a federal judge Tuesday to stop the online auction powerhouse from using its “Buy It Now” feature, which allows shoppers to buy items at a fixed price.

A federal jury found in 2003 that eBay had infringed Great Falls, Va.-based MercExchange’s patent. But last year, the U.S. Supreme Court handed a victory to patent-reform advocates when it ruled that MercExchange was not automatically entitled to a court order blocking the offending service.

Now, U.S. District Court Judge Jerome B. Friedman must decide whether MercExchange is entitled to a permanent injunction. The judge did not say when he would rule.

Friedman also did not immediately rule on eBay’s request to stay the proceedings until the federal patent office has completed a re-examination of the patent – a process MercExchange’s lawyers said could take 10 years.

Lawyers for San Jose-based eBay told the judge the company has designed a work-around so it no longer infringes on the patent, and thus an injunction is unnecessary.

Attorney Jeff Randall said MercExchange has not suffered irreparable harm and that the company is better off now than it was before the trial, citing an investment by a hedge fund.

MercExchange’s attorneys, however, argued that the potential for future infringement is at stake.

Bush Admin Seeks Changes to Patent System

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Ordinarly, I’d be encouraged, but I think that this HAS to be some sort of sweetheart deal to a supporter.

The following quote comes from the D-Squared Digest. I consider this to be the wisest thing yet written this century.

I believe that the following should apply any Bush admin initiative.

But it does inspire in me the desire for a competition; can anyone, particularly the rather more Bush-friendly recent arrivals to the board, give me one single example of something with the following three characteristics:

  1. It is a policy initiative of the current Bush administration
  2. It was significant enough in scale that I’d have heard of it (at a pinch, that I should have heard of it)
  3. It wasn’t in some important way completely Fucked Up during the execution.

So while this patent overhaul sounds like a bad thing, I think that I can wait for 18 months until adults are in charge.

Bush administration seeks overhaul of patent system | CNET News.com

By Steve Lohr

Story last modified Wed Jun 06 19:55:16 PDT 2007

The Bush administration wants to reform the nation’s patent system by requiring better information from inventors and allowing public scrutiny of applications, according to the director of the government’s patent office.

The goal, said Jon W. Dudas, director of the United States Patent and Trademark Office, is to improve the quality of patents, which should curb the rising wave of patent disputes and lawsuits. The legal wrangling is often over broad descriptions of ideas or activities, so-called business methods, or software that contains only incremental changes over prior work.

“There ought to be a shared responsibility for patent quality among the patent office, the applicants and the public,” Dudas said in an interview yesterday. “If everything is done right at the front end, we’ll have to worry a lot less about litigation later.”

Some steps to improve patent quality will require changes in the law, said Dudas, who will present his views to the Senate Judiciary Committee today. Both the Senate and the House have introduced patent-reform legislation this year, amid concerns that the current overburdened, litigation-choked system is hampering innovation rather than encouraging it.

One key change, Dudas said, would be a legal clarification of what is required of patent applicants. Under current law, an inventor is required to explain why a new product is sufficiently original to deserve the exclusive rights that patent protection conveys. But the applicants have a lot of discretion. The supporting information, Dudas said, ranges from “almost nothing” to what he called “malicious compliance,” which he described as boxes and boxes of background information intended mainly to obscure the nugget of an invention in the patent application.

Reform legislation, he said, should require the applicants to conduct a thorough search of related patents and technical journals, and then explain why the patent being sought represents a significant innovation beyond previous ideas in the field.

Dudas said the reform legislation should also make sure the search and information disclosures do not put an unfair burden on inventors who are not wealthy. Personal income, number of patents filed and other measures, he said, could be used to determine who would be exempt from certain requirements. “For the truly small inventor, we might do the search for them,” he said.

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