Open Source Music Fingerprinter Gets Patent Nastygram 487
Nushio writes "The code wasn't even released, and yet Roy van Rijn, a Music & Free Software enthusiast received a C&D from Landmark Digital Services, owners of Shazam, a music service that allows you to find a song, by listening to a part of it. And if that wasn't enough, they want him to take down his blog post (Google Cache) explaining how he did it because it 'may be viewed internationally. As a result, [it] may contribute to someone infringing our patents in any part of the world.'"
Update: 07/09 00:31 GMT by T :Story updated to reflect that Shazam is multiplatform, not Android-only, as implied by the original phrasing.
Well, really... (Score:2, Insightful)
What the? (Score:4, Insightful)
I call bullshit. (Score:5, Insightful)
Two: you cannot use a patent as a method to censor free speech.
Three: any US patent can be viewed internationally. A patent is by definition NOT a trade secret. Even if this guy's software DID use a patent-encumbered algorithm, his post cannot "contribute to someone infringing ... patents in any part of the world."
Four: a patent is not valid for the entire world.
Re:Patent and disclosure... (Score:5, Insightful)
Yep - I bet he's hit on a Trade Secret of theirs in his blog post and/or development work, and they're just trying to scare him away from posting the details. Trade Secrets are only secrets as long as nobody else knows about them - there's no protection on them other than that.
The patent holds NO ability to stop him from disclosing ANYTHING - anything covered by the patent is by definition publicly disclosed in the patent itself. If it's not there, it's not covered. Period. The "international viewing" holds no water either - there's nothing preventing someone from viewing the patent from another country.
He can go tell them to fuck off. He can probably sue for SLAPP or something like that too. I would!
In addition, my understanding is that this goes even further - there's nothing preventing him from developing his own implementation of their patent. The only issue arises when he distributes it beyond himself. IANAL, so this part I'm only 99.9% sure on. :)
MadCow.
Re:Well, really... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Well, really... (Score:3, Insightful)
It only happens so often because the first time [wikipedia.org] no one cared.
Re:Shazam... (Score:5, Insightful)
I think someone fails to comprehend... (Score:3, Insightful)
,,,the fundamental nature of patents. Patents are published, by the PTO. This means that anyone, "international" or otherwise, can already view them. Furthermore, it is settled law that discussion of a patented invention, including detailed explanation of how to implement it, is not infringement.
Re:Patent and disclosure... (Score:5, Insightful)
At least in the US you have absolutely no recourse against someone who independently (not an employee, etc) develops one of your trade secrets. They can even patent it themselves and force you to pay a license fee!
That's the trade off between patents and trade secrets.
Re:Well, really... (Score:4, Insightful)
Please expand first use of acronyms (Score:1, Insightful)
Not every reader instantly recognizes C&D as Cease and Desist. New readers constantly arrive, there are many readers whose first language is not English, and expanding the acronym will also improve how your submission is found in search engines. If you article is worth submitting and worth publishing it is worth making a little more accessible.
Re:Well, really... (Score:3, Insightful)
And there are no slow news days.
Re:Well, really... (Score:3, Insightful)
Yeah, that is unfair. I didn't realize all he did was post some code. That should certainly fall under free speech. I don't think their lawyers have anything to stand on here. If I were him I'd let them try to take him to court and then turn around and sue for harassment. I was wondering how he was getting matches for his song. He doesn't mention what database he is querying for a match.
Re:Patent and disclosure... (Score:5, Insightful)
His implementation was different than their's, and if that's the case, they've got bigger issues, as one of their developers wrote a PDF on how Shazam Works. [columbia.edu].
And this guy certainly wasn't the first to write an article about How Shazam Works [wordpress.com] either.
They're afraid of the code.
Re:android hate (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, I am. As a non-native english writer, who has difficulties dealing with grammar nazism, I find commas useful to explain stuff. =P
Re:Well, really... (Score:5, Insightful)
What is far more scary is that using a sliding window to calculate DFTs and then hashing these values, and storing there offsets is somehow patented. To say that this is "obvious" to someone with any understanding of waves and Fourier transforms is an understatement.
Re:Well, really... (Score:2, Insightful)
...they have no case against his blog.
That doesn't matter if he have no way of defending himself, and the call for reform, or better, abolishment, is virtually absent.
Re:Well, really... (Score:5, Insightful)
"What is far more scary..."
Yes. As others said, unjustice must always be news, no matter how (sadly) common it becomes.
1) It's an obvious application of a Fourier transform so it shouldn't have been accepted for patent on first place.
2) Even if it wasn't obvious, this guy did not have access to the original code so chances are by big margin that this a different method to achive the same result so even after the patent is granted is very dificult to believe he could violate it.
3) Even if it wasn't obvious and it was the very same patented method, patents are, well, patent, so it's ludicrous to say "you shouldn't make public this" when the very patent system is built around the fact that the patented method is meant to be made public.
All in all this is a news about a disfunctional and criminally stupid patent system abused by a disfunctional and criminally stupid company.
Yes: this needs to be aired.
Re:What the? (Score:5, Insightful)
By that logic you could freely distribute an infringing program as long as you don't run it.
Yes, exactly. In the same way that a description or schematic of a patented invention does not infringe a patent, simple source code does not infringe a patent. How is this difficult to understand?
Re:Well, really... (Score:5, Insightful)
Don't get me wrong, this really sucks for the guy and is completely unfair. But this sort of thing happens all the time. If this were a rare occurrence, then yeah, I'd be up in arms. It's sort of not newsworthy anymore.
The only reason that these things happen is that every time these things happen everybody looks around and says "Well, these things happen..." and THAT'S why they happen!
If you see something, say something...peace out.
Re:android hate (Score:5, Insightful)
it was an iphone app long before it was an android app
What does it matter that it was on the iPhone before Android? It's hardly surprising, considering the iPhone was released years before the Droid. I admit there hasn't been the usual heavy complement of Apple stories today, but that doesn't mean you have to start looking for ways to create them from unrelated articles. In any case, this has almost nothing to do with any platform, except that the author wrote the code in Java so as to run it on Android.
Back on-topic, the author has posted an update [google.com] which talks about the alleged patent infringment and includes the notices sent by the company. Classically, they hesitate to give actual patent numbers, but what it really comes down to is this: As the author says,
I've written some code (100% my own) and implemented my own methods for matching music. [...] I'm just a programmer who likes to work on technical, mathematical algorithms in his spare time. And if enough people ask for the source code, I'd be happy to give it to them. Who would have thought that creating something at home in a weekend could result in a possible patent infringement!?
But oh, no! Landmark claims
Landmark Digital Services owns the patents that cover the algorithm used as the basis for your recently posted "Creating Shazam In Java".
Well butter my biscuit and call me Daisy! Case closed! After all, they have a patent on "the algorithm". To be fair, the biggest instigator of this entire fiasco is probably his choice of using the commercial software's name in the article title. Going just by "Creating Shazam In Java", you might at first think he's attempting to completely re-create the software (for who knows what purpose). Of course, if you bother to read even the first few paragraphs it painfully clear that it's nothing of the sort. But because of this,
The code isn't published yet, but I was planning on releasing it under Apache License to the open source community soon. [...] Since I don't want to end up like Dmitry Sklyarov [wikipedia.org], with the possibility of a lawsuit, I'm not going to publish the code anymore...
If crap like this continues, independent software development in general (including a large chunk of FOSS) is doomed.
Just deleted Shazam and installed SoundHound... (Score:3, Insightful)
There are several services doing this same general thing, might as well support the ones that aren't a-holes!
Re:Uninstall Shazam (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Why take down his blog? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:What the? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Patent and disclosure... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:What the? (Score:4, Insightful)
This case outlines one of the many major problems with software patents, one being that a split between implementation and description does not exist. The source code -- or even the object code -- to a program implementing a patented method is a description of that method.
Re:android hate (Score:3, Insightful)
independent software development in general (including a large chunk of FOSS) is doomed.
Only in countries silly enough to allow software patents. The rest of the world will laugh quietly to themselves as some countries bring themselves to a creative and technological standstill.
Re:Well, really... (Score:3, Insightful)
The Congress of 1994 actually was quite good, and they repealed a lot of idiotic laws from the books, plus cutting taxes. I credit them more than Clinton for the economic boom that came shortly afterward. They were also responsible for the Telecommunications Act that freed-up TV channels 52 to 83 for cellular and internet expansion.
Unfortunately that Congress evolved into the 2000 Congress which thought it was okay to forget their principles and pass draconian legislation like the Patriot Act. Power corrupts.
Re:Well, really... (Score:5, Insightful)
The claim being that in software, once you do something, nobody else can do anything similar, even if it doesn't use any of their code or procedures. If the end result is the same, then whoever the most money to spend on legal fees is the winner. It's a fucked up way to run a railroad.
So, once someone made a word processor, nobody else should be able to make a word processor. And once somebody made a program that can play music files, nobody else should be able to write a program that can play music files.
"Innovative" has become such a cheap word. It really doesn't mean anything any more. When a word like "innovative" becomes a legal term of art, innovation ceases.
Re:Well, really... (Score:5, Insightful)
Not just any scum, but unscrupulous corporate scum, which means that it's not even a person making the decision, but legally fictive golem that exists only to reward those that have bought shares, even at the expense of society as a whole. If it was a person, at least a case could be made for going up to him and calling him a piece of shit who should be ashamed of himself, to tell his neighbors that he's a piece of shit, and to remind his wife and kids that they're related to a piece of shit.
But what is a "Shazam"? It has no neighbors, no family, no community, no responsibility to do anything but eat and shit money in the pockets of its shareholders. It doesn't respond to shame, to peer pressure, to moral outrage. It doesn't even respond to the "marketplace" because they assert another legal fiction (patent) in order to pervert the marketplace, to ensure that it is immune to market forces.
And that is ultimately what this "Intellectual Property" baloney is all about: making sure that the marketplace can not work.
Ac (Score:1, Insightful)
Well, I can see why shazam people are pissed. The had an army of phds and architects working on it backed by millions of dollars of vc, plus fancy talk in boardroom feeling good about themselves. Now some dude with short attention span rolls it out as a weekend project. And of course last sentence from the google cache link didn't help either:
Or turn it into a huge online empire like Shazam who knows!
Re:Well, really... (Score:3, Insightful)
In a sane world making such an admission in a legal filing would be grounds for voiding the patent since patent law requires dislosure of everything a person skilled in that field would need to know to implement the patented tech.
We do live in a sane world (well at least in this regard).. if Shazaam admits it did not disclose the "best mode" for practicing its invention, or that it did not disclose enough information in its patents to "enable" the "person having ordinary skill in the art" to practice the invention, then the patent(s) become invalid and are thrown out.
As for trade secrets, assuming this guy didn't actually steal the information from Shazaam or is in cahoots with someone who did steal it, he can't have misappropriated any trade secrets since he did the work all on his own.
Re:android hate (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah and you're supposed to put a comma in front of conjunctive words like "and, or, but, because" especially if they join two sentences.
<snip>
I rocked my English SATs (99th percentile) so I'm fairly certain I'm right.
Shouldn't you have put a comma before "so" if you are going by that rule?
- I rocked my English SATs (99th percentile). I'm fairly certain I'm right.
- I rocked my English SATs (99th percentile), so I'm fairly certain I'm right.
Re:Well, really... (Score:3, Insightful)
Well patents are pretty damn public knowledge, so I don't see how an open-source project that does the same thing can be infringing on a patent.
Distributing source code isn't just discussing or summarizing the patent, it's implementing and distributing the invention.
Re:They're actually being fairly reasonable (Score:3, Insightful)
This fellow is in the Netherlands, where non-commercial use of patents is entirely legal. Any threats of legal action are uncalled for, and suggesting he take down his blog post when Shazam has published an even more detailed white paper is simply beyond the pale.
Now hold on there (Score:3, Insightful)
Do you understand the basic concept of a patent? To earn the monopoly you have to publish your idea. The idea becomes part of the public domain. If someone else republishes your idea the the system works as intended. A patent is not a copyright. This sounds to me like the patent holder really doesn't want to honor the bargain he agreed to. The monopoly is on implementation. We can publish code examples to our hearts content as long as we don't run them.
Re:android hate (Score:5, Insightful)
independent software development in general (including a large chunk of FOSS) is doomed.
Only in countries silly enough to allow software patents...
And the ones stupid enough to accept the crap ACTA will feed on their throat... actually, for those will be even worse: no allowing their software developers to patent but preventing them to use methods already patented in US.
Re:android hate (Score:4, Insightful)
That is such a beautiful example of Muphry's law [wikipedia.org].
Though your post could have benefitted from a gaffe or two.
Re:android hate (Score:1, Insightful)
Some useful links:
http://www.shazam.com/music/web/pages/team.html
http://www.shazam.com/music/web/contactus.html
I'm from India and sent the following message.
(Copy-pasta - but change the country to your own.)
---------------------
Hello,
On behalf of the larger internet music community, your CTO is hereby notified to Cease and Desist from sending Cease and Desist letters to people in other countries trying to do good things.
Your CxOs' desire to single-handedly control the way music is sampled, reeks of a colonial, imperialist mentality which is completely obsolete and totally incompatible with the internet.
Your CTO's emails asking Ron Van Rijn to not release source code are ridiculous at best and disgusting and unconstitutional, anti-freedom-of-speech at worst.
Please issue a public apology to Ron Van Rijn for harassing a good man, or else, face permanent tough love on the Internet and consequently permanently offline.
There's no telling when and where someone on the road will stop and call you names in public.
If you want to make money, the Internet will give you a 100 new ways every year.
If you want to make money by threatening innocent people and stifling creative philanthropy, the bad reputation you will earn will remain forever and you will not be trusted by anyone again.
Your CxOs have invited a Public Relations nightmare upon themselves.
I hope they have the wisdom to apologise. Here, in Asia, your Intellectual Poverty laws are irrelevant, our Govt is very much sensible, and we continue to not provide a large amount of your revenues despite being populous consumers of all kinds of western music.
Stop being idiots.
Start being techies.
Sincerely,
Asian internet music lovers.
Re:Well, really... (Score:3, Insightful)
You are quite right that you are not qualified. But on the subject tof US patents being enforced abroad you are also quite wrong.
Re:Well, really... (Score:3, Insightful)
So is posting a recipe for chocolate chip cookies, but you don't see Betty Crocker suing every mother in the world who makes the same cookies for their kids.
Re:Just deleted Shazam and installed SoundHound... (Score:3, Insightful)
Thanks for the tip, gonna be removing Shazam myself and trying out this new one.
STOP CUSSING - ACT! (Score:3, Insightful)
I uninstalled the app immediately and left them with a one-star rating plus a link to explain the background. Also, I uninstalled them as malicious. Feel free to link http://tinyurl.com/3a93ed8 [tinyurl.com] in your one-star ratings.
Get SoundHound instead. It's better anyway. Now that I have SoundHound, I am actually glad that Shazam made me look for alternatives.
Again:
http://tinyurl.com/3a93ed8 [tinyurl.com]
http://www.soundhound.com/ [soundhound.com]
PS: It would be evil to install them just to uninstall them with one-star ratings. I could not condone that.