Amazon Patents Changing Authors' Words 323
theodp writes "To exist or not to exist: that is the query. That's what the famous Hamlet soliloquy might look like if subjected to Amazon's newly-patented System and Method for Marking Content, which calls for 'programmatically substituting synonyms into distributed text content,' including 'books, short stories, product reviews, book or movie reviews, news articles, editorial articles, technical papers, scholastic papers, and so on' in an effort to uniquely identify customers who redistribute material. In its description of the 'invention,' Amazon also touts the use of 'alternative misspellings for selected words' as a way to provide 'evidence of copyright infringement in a legal action.' After all, anti-piracy measures should trump kids' ability to spell correctly, shouldn't they?"
But they can't use my patented method of suing! (Score:1, Funny)
Re:Advertising (Score:5, Funny)
Scientists point out problems. Engineers use them to kill people overseas.
Plausible deniability? (Score:3, Funny)
I love watermarks that can be defeated with a spellchecker and a thesaurus!
Re:Patentable? (Score:4, Funny)
The word you wanted was edition, or are you infringing on amazon's patent?
Re:Sounds Dodgy at Best (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Patentable? (Score:5, Funny)
Aww come on. This is the smuckin fartest invention ever!
Re:Patentable? (Score:3, Funny)
BRILLIANT! (Score:3, Funny)
We can set the copyright lawyers, representing the authors and publishers, against the patent lawyers representing Amazon. With any luck, they'll sue each other into the poor house and leave the rest of us alone!
Alternatively, we could establish a special court that handles these copyright vs patent cases. When all the lawyers arrive, wall the area up, cut the bridges and toss in a few spiked baseball bats to let 'em fight it out with. Maybe in New York...
Re:It's not about the patent, it's about the lying (Score:3, Funny)
With the Internet, it is everyone's right to destroy the revenue model of any business they choose to target. You and I should equally be able to force any business into bankruptcy just by posting their creations online for everyone to download for free. With suitable bulletproof hosting, the original owner isn't going to be able to do anything about it.
It is all about making things free that didn't used to be. Devalues everything over time - creators get the message that they might as well make it free when they have a choice before someone takes that choice away from them.
Re:Advertising (Score:5, Funny)
Coming soon...
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Re:Advertising (Score:4, Funny)
Change "Johnny nervously wrinkled his brow as he reached for his Coke" into "Johhny nervously wrinkled his brow as he reached for his Pepsi".
The potential for awesome failure is particularly high in childrens' books. For example, "Ding Penis Dell, Pussy's in the well" would just put a whole new slant on things.
Re:Americans say "May the 1st", not "the 1st May" (Score:3, Funny)