DVDCCA Claims Patent on CSS 227
An anonymous reader writes "After dropping their suit against Andrew Bunner, DVDCCA has filed a patent-infringement lawsuit against 321 Studios. This is an interesting claim, because since patents are published, something can not be both patented and a trade secret."
What happens to the world... (Score:5, Interesting)
Even foreign governments.
Intellectual property in all of its various forms is being abused by the corporate world. The madness is the laws supporting this behavior continue to pass, bypassing the individual and wholeheartedly supporting the corporation.
Isn't the government supposed to be working for us? Aren't our rights supposed to be first and foremost in their minds? There is a balance to be maintained, and our rights are not unlimited, but more and more across the entire globe the individual is lost.
Not to be funny but has anyone considered the implications of all these recent intellectual property rights and how it seems more and more that we're being pushed into the draconian future of Johnny Mnemonic and Shadowrun? The only way you get information is to steal it. The only way for another corporation to get information is to hire you to steal it.
I grow more and more distressed at the world my son will grow up in, the conditions he will consider normal, the laws he will break just by trying to think.
Re:What happens to the world... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:What happens to the world... (Score:5, Insightful)
But of course you should be able have the right to call an idea your own and have it recognized as such. As a scientist I will jealously guard my research and results up to practical applications as my own property. I have patents and will defend those if necessary.
Completely restricting the use of an idea is a completely different thing, though. That's not what patents were invented for - it's only today that the big corporations have begun to see copyright and patents as tools for hoarding and hiding information.
Re:What happens to the world... (Score:5, Insightful)
But if I should come up with the same idea through my own research whilst being completely unaware of yours, I shouldn't have the right to call my idea my own and have it recognised as such?
It should cut both ways or not at all.
Re:What happens to the world... (Score:2, Interesting)
That's correct; you don't own an idea unless you're the first person to think of it. This creates an incentive to be creative, not lazy, and to keep up to date on the latest developments in your field.
This can be disputed, of course, but I think that's the reasoning.
yours
Re:What happens to the world... (Score:5, Insightful)
The laws as they stand today ignore this distinction and, as such, directly inhibit the creativity they are designed to protect. If the mouse trap were invented today, the inventor would not only be able to patent his design but the very idea of "catching mice". Than the world would have had to wait 20 years before someone could propse a better way.
We are in the very first dawn hours of modern technology and though our ideas may seem extremely special to us today they'll be nothing but the the wheel of tomorrow.
Re:What happens to the world... (Score:3, Insightful)
The patent system awards the first to invent (or, outside of the US, the first to file), and it's just tough luck if someone beats you to it. That's life in a competitive system. If you don't like it, change society or live in a commune where another resource allocation method is used.
Read the US constitution and find that the patent system is there for the people too - that includes you and I as creative individuals. The bargain is a _limited_ monopoly for 20 years. 20 years if not a bad payoff for the ti
Re:What happens to the world... (Score:5, Insightful)
Because those people [google.com] have such vast resources, they patent as much as they can---even things that seem obvious. The average person does not stand a chance against them.
Re:What happens to the world... (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:What happens to the world... (Score:5, Insightful)
But, let us ignore the merits of the Eolas paten itself. Instead let us examine what Microsoft has done and can do. MS has enough lawyers to comfortably fight any patent is chooses. If they see a patent they don't like (and can't buy) the can challenge it. Can you afford to challenge a patent? What about 10? What about 1000? MS can.
They can also afford to ignore a patent. They can do whatever they want, ignoring what the patent holder wants now, and pay for it later. If I thought I would have to pay a multi-million dollar settlement for ignoring a patent I wouldn't do it - I can't afford it. MS can.
Money DOES equal power and pretending it doesn't in a civil arena is disingenuous. Nobody "Rules the world" but corporations of MS's size can afford to abuse the system - almost anywhere they want.
Many anti-corporation people are just "wacko" - they will make claims that make no sense. However with size comes privilege and if there is one thing Microsoft has it is Size.
Re:What happens to the world... (Score:2, Insightful)
I wouldn't be so smug in dismissing the danger of corporations [google.com] yet by invoking Eolas as a counterexample, since it is highly unlikely that Eolas' patent will be allowed to stand after it is reexamined [slashdot.org] -- something which almost certainly would not have happened were one [microsoft.com] of those corporations not involved.
One example isn't an argument (Score:2)
Re:What happens to the world... (Score:2)
You have a bit of a twisted perspective on the world. The so called "people" you refer to are just average people like you or I that happen to work for a company where resources are marshalled in a different way. If you don't think you fare a chance as an independent person, join a collective enterprise where you can marshall resources.
Re:What happens to the world... (Score:2)
Re:What happens to the world... (Score:3, Interesting)
The problem is that ideas aren't a finite resource to be allocated like wheat or coal or milk. Ideas can be duplicated without effort. I'm reminded of this quote:
Re:What happens to the world... (Score:3, Insightful)
You rely on the fact that "ideas can be duplicated without effort": please remember that while duplication of ideas costs near zero, the development of those ideas can cost quite a lot. In fact, you are making the argument for the patent system: it recognises that ideas take time/effort/cost to produce, yet can be stolen in an instant: hence the 20 year protection.
case-by-case would be too unworkable: the system is not perfect because it tries to accomodate the entire swathe of inventions with a single bru
Re:What happens to the world... (Score:5, Insightful)
And why "should you"?
As a scientist I will jealously guard my research and results up to practical applications as my own property. I have patents and will defend those if necessary.
Yes, I have no doubt that you will be "jealous" and display all sorts of other annoying behaviors so common of academics.
However, what you are completely overlooking is that "your" research and "your" results are based on centuries of tradition and thought by others. Your work has only been possible because others shared their ideas freely.
Furthermore, your patents keep other people from using the idea even if they themselves came up with it independently. It is just an accident that you happened to have filed the patent on "your" idea first. Chances are, in fact, that others had the same idea before but didn't patent it or did publish it.
Let me repeat that: your patent keeps other people from using their ideas that they themselves came up with independently. How do you justify that?
Completely restricting the use of an idea is a completely different thing, though.
That's what patents do: for about 20 years, the patent holder gets nearly full control of the invention. Patents don't even have academic or research exemptions.
That's not what patents were invented for
That is exactly what patents were created for: to give inventors exclusive use of an idea for a limited amount of time. And, at least since the times of Edison and Watson, corporate patent portfolios have been a big thing. It's just that barriers to entry into many markets were so strong for other reasons that they didn't have to use their patent portfolios much until now.
Re:What happens to the world... (Score:2, Informative)
Re:What happens to the world... (Score:5, Interesting)
I've always been annoyed by the academic "first to publish" game. How many grad students end up having to slave night and day in the lab to try to be the first to discover something novel, and being a week behind another group is the difference between getting your Ph.D. with lots of recognition and having to pick some other project and work a few more years. It also brought us such wonderful concepts as holding up the full publication of discoveries so that a scientist can publish just enough information initially to establish priority and get recognition, but hold up enough information so that only they can get additional publications on follow-up reasearch (for an example of this, look at the tradition where crystallographers would publish glossy photos of their proteins on the front page of Science and then only release their coordinates a year later - I believe that this is fortunately and finally falling out of favor (though I haven't been current in the crystallography field for a few years now)).
Knowledge is furthered the most when people work together, and it should be recognized that all modern discoveres are merely the result of standing on the shoulders of those who went before us. Actaully, this is one thing that I like about the GPL - it basically says "I made my contribution to the world public, and if you're gonna stand on my shoulders you had better do the same".
In a day and age where automation has made neither food nor labor scarce society shouldn't be running in a mode where everybody is compelled to try to be king-of-the-hill just to life a modest life. It seems like we've turned into a society where either you are one of the few people who reap the benefits of modern technology (ie you own the capital), or you are one of the people displaced by it (ie it you work at Walmart).
Re:What happens to the world... (Score:2, Interesting)
"all modern discoveres are merely the result of standing on the shoulders of those who went before us"
Old, tired saw. That goes for all information at all times? And? How would you propose someone recoup the time and investment of the R&D? Are you digging in your pocket and sending cash in th
Re:What happens to the world... (Score:5, Interesting)
You sound exactly like Karl Marx ;-)
He argued that the master-slave society could only give way to communism once there were sufficient resources to sustain everybody's basic needs.
He also said that the "haves" would fight to prevent the "have-nots" from sharing in the wealth. Looking at the world around us today, it is like Karl Marx had a window into the future.
I disagree with a lot of what Karl Marx wrote - I think he ignores the fundamental problem of human greed, as well as the ever-increasing lower limit of our basic "needs" - but it's always a treat to read The Communist Manifesto and realise how right he was about so many things. Marx has a a better hit-rate for his predictions than Nostradamus!
Re:What happens to the world... (Score:2)
The idea behind protecting i
Re:What happens to the world... (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, I made no such statement, I challenged someone to justify their position because they thought it was obvious that people should be able to.
The idea behind protecting ideas through a system of intellectual property is merely a balancing act.
That's the idea, indeed.
Without it, many of the best aspects of capitalism will be eliminated.
That's your assertion. And, in fact, there is ample historical evidence to the contrary.
For example, without patents, companies that develop new drugs would quickly disappear (unless someone can offer a reason why anyone would spend hundreds of millions of dollars to develop a new drug knowing you would never be able to recoup your costs).
Well, a large fraction of drug development is paid for by public money anyway, and most drugs are paid for by public money in a market that can hardly be called "free". In fact, quite a number of economists believe that we'd be saving a lot of money if all drug development was paid for by the government and we did away with drug patents altogether. Furthermore, a free market tends to develop the wrong drugs: drugs that make money are not the drugs that we have the greatest need for.
So, your drug example is actually an example where patents don't work.
As for the problem of screwing people who thought of ideas independently, that is just another balancing act. Sure, it would be great if we could come up with some certain way of proving that someone developed an idea independently from others. But do you have any idea how difficult this would be to implement? The problem is with burdens of proof.
Why are you stating the obvious? I was simply pointing out that the guy was wrong in his assumption that because he patented it, he somehow owned the idea in any moral sense.
As for the problem of screwing people who may have thought of the idea first but didn't patent it, Congress used a phrase most of us learned on the playground: "you snooze, you lose." That made sense to me when I was six and it still makes sense now.
Yes, and that's about the level of thoughtfullness you seem to have regarding patents: that of a six year old on the playground.
Re:What happens to the world... (Score:2)
In Australia, we have a system called the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme [health.gov.au]
It significantly subsidises drugs for Australians but, equally important:
Yeah, that works. (Score:3, Insightful)
Should it be? Or should it be determined by need?
There is no place in the world more AIDS-ridden than Africa. However, Africa is a poor continent, and can't pay up full price. Nevermind it has the world biggest market for these drugs.
Guess what, patents are being used to make sure they don't get any medicine at all [aegis.com].
Admit i
Re:What happens to the world... (Score:5, Insightful)
Heh. They already have. The remaining ones arent developing any new drugs, they're developing new proprietary versions of aspirins that arent better than the old ones except they're patented. Then they send the doctors on golfing trips so they'll prescribe new expensive versions of the same old shit instead of cheap generics.
Well, except the ones that are developing various organ enlargment pills.
I'd place a bet that we'd get more useful medical research done if we scrapped the patent system, kicked the pharmaceutical corps out and relied on public and charity funding for research.
Re:What happens to the world... (Score:3, Funny)
People suffering is fine. The economy suffering is a big concern!
Re:What happens to the world... (Score:2)
Patents just prevent prevent society from benefiting from your research for a couple of decades.
Re:What happens to the world... (Score:2)
My view on patents was that their only use is to prevent anyone else from working in a particular area of research. If I invent gadget-X and don't patent it, then the world gets gadget-X. But if I patent it, then I prevent anyone working independantly on the same ideas from working. If I patent it, then gadget-X will not be widely available nor available at a reasonable price until the patent expires. Nor will Gagdet-X ever be i
Re:What happens to the world... (Score:2, Informative)
Re:What happens to the world... (Score:2)
I can't believe you think you're a scientist. The word is "opportunist".
Cheers
Stor
Re:What happens to the world... (Score:2)
You sound like a communist: "property should be free", wake up and realise that in this capitalist system that property is not free.
Re:What happens to the world... (Score:5, Insightful)
Don't be a dope. He didn't say that property should be free, he said that "intellectual property" isn't property. He's also quite correct. The term itself was concocted in the 19th century to make the ownership of ideas sound less absurd. Ideas can't be property, as their very nature fails the definitions of property. First and foremost, they cannot be scarce; i.e. if I you express your idea to me, we both have the idea-- sharing doesn't diminish it. What we have currently is a system of [patents/copyright/etc] that allows intangible things like ideas, music, and stories to be treated as if they were property. This is provably true: when one buys song from its writer, what you're transferring is the copyright-- you likely already have the song. Same thing with patents. This isn't about capitalism vs. communism. It's about free market vs. gov't granted monopolies. There has to be a balance and currently the USPTO isn't doing a good job.
Re:What happens to the world... (Score:5, Insightful)
No, what I said was that it fails the definition of property because sharing doesn't diminish it. If I share a kilo of flour with 9 other people, I only have 10% of what I had before. If I share my idea for a better fireplace with 9 other people, we all have the idea. I'm not reduced to making a "10% better fireplace", or only making "10% of a fireplace" because I shared the idea.
Also, scarcity doesn't diminish the fact that something is property. I don't know where you get your strange assumptions from.
And I don't know where you got the idea that I said scarcity diminishes property status. What I said was that ideas, unlike real property, cannot suffer from scarcity in that they are infinitely replicable using no physical resources.
Now, we're also not talking about government granted monopolies: if you look at your dear US constitution, you'll find that patents and copyrights are provided by the people for the people for the purposes of advancement of technology and science.
You do know that patents and copyrights are monopolies (albeit for limited times) granted by the government, don't you. A monopoly need not be perpetual. If no one else can copy my invention for 20 years, I have a 20 year monopoly on that invention. I'm not saying that they should be abolished, only that they should be reasonable.
Re:What happens to the world... (Score:2)
Well, unless someone else has the exclusive rights to those thoughts.
Re:What happens to the world... (Score:2, Interesting)
In this world, there are people who give to give, and there are people w
Attention: Parent is a rerun (Score:3, Informative)
Re:What happens to the world... (Score:2, Funny)
phew (Score:5, Funny)
I read it the same way (Score:5, Funny)
Holy panic attack, batman!
And I'd only just figured out how to do text shadows today!!
Re:I read it the same way (Score:2)
Re:I read it the same way (Score:2)
That's interesting. I wonder if it's being dropped (see other post) because it's not implemented anywhere, or if it's not implemented anywhere because it's being dropped.
It's such a pretty effect.
Re:I read it the same way (Score:2)
.title {
font-size: 18px;
font-weight: bold;
margin: 0;
text-align: left;
height: 22pt;
padding-left: 4px;
z-index: 2;
position: absolute;
color: #2A2A2A;
}
.titleshadow {
font-size: 18px;
font-weight: bold;
margin: 0;
text-align: left;
height: 22pt;
z-index: 1;
padding-top: 1px;
padding-left: 5px;
position: absolute;
color: #5A5A5A;
}
Just use absolute positioning and z-orders and offset things a few pixels.
And I thought... (Score:5, Funny)
And I thought CSS was dead..
I mean how many times do they have to crack it before they realise that the cats already out of the bag?
Its been circumvented so many times, how can they hold a straight face while that file for legal action against 321studios?
*shakes head*
-- Jim.
Re: And I thought... (Score:5, Insightful)
I guess when the whole trade secret [slashdot.org] thing stops working, it's time to patent!
I use Gordian Knot [sourceforge.net] to encode DVDs (uncopyrighted religious movies that just happen to be CSS 'protected' ;), and it takes more effort then I'd like. I have to make decisions, for crying out loud!
The only effective way to stymie the illegal copying of DVDs is to make the purchase price attractive enough that they'd rather just buy it. In my opinion, if you appeal to the lazy in people, you win.
321 studios (Score:5, Funny)
Wow, after seeing the MPAA issue hundreds of subpoenas, it somehow didn't occur to me that DVDCCA didn't actually sue 321 studios, but a company named 321 Studios.
Kudos to these guys for the choice of name. It's almost as if they expected to be sued and wanted to make a good joke out of it. Well done!
Re:321 studios (Score:5, Funny)
Remembers me of Douglas Adams, who said that Branwell Bronte "died standing up leaning against a mantelpiece, in order to prove that it could be done".
I knew I read this somewhere before (Score:2)
from: http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=48662&cid=493
"Did anyone else think hat the MPAA was suing three-hundred and twenty one different studios?"
Re:321 studios (Score:5, Funny)
It was actually only 78 studios, but some of those companies had 8x speed burners.
Re:321 studios (Score:2, Funny)
34*8+44*1=316
35*8+43*1=323
Evidently 37 studios had 8x burners, but 4 of those studios only ran them at 4x speed for some reason...
Doesn't have to be CSS. (Score:5, Interesting)
No. (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Doesn't have to be CSS. (Score:5, Informative)
Very interesting.... (Score:2)
Devil's Advocate (Score:5, Interesting)
It is not generally possible for idea A to be both a patent and a trade secret. But it is possible for one part of program B to infringe on patent C, and for another part to violate trade secret D.
Or it could be that DVDCCA is admitting that their earlier suit was wrong.
(Or it could be that they're full of s**t...)
Re:Devil's Advocate (Score:2)
It's also kind of hard to have something be a trade secret when it's being printed on T-shirts.
Unrecognized Patents (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Unrecognized Patents (Score:5, Informative)
There currently aren't any laws which recognize patents from other countries as being valid in any other country (at least to my knowledge). However, there is such a thing as a world patent filing through WIPO [wipo.org] that files patents under the Patent Cooperation Treaty [wipo.int]. The WIPO does not grant any rights to a filer of the patent other than the right to re-file the patent as a national stage application in each of the countries that are selected during the filing of the PCT application while retaining the original filing date of the PCT application as a priority date. Basically this just allows for an easier way to file a patent application in multiple countries at the same time.
Re:Unrecognized Patents (Score:5, Informative)
Btw, I live in Sweden. In my country, you are allowed to build a patented device for your own use or research (on the device itself). Specifically, the law says that non-professional use is exempt. (section 3.3.1)
Re:Unrecognized Patents (Score:2)
FFII [ffii.org] shall be supported in order to avoid EU patent legislation and we have to join forces in order to correct the mistakes of the Us system.
software patents are a danger to society.
Another Story with No Useful Information (Score:5, Insightful)
Although, as usual, there is no information as to what patent DVDCCA is claiming infringment on, or what components of DVD Copy and DVD X COPY DVDCCA claims infringe upon that patent. So, until we get more information about this case I suspect the large portion of discussion here will be needless bitching and moaning about patents, lawyers and law in general, with the occasional bad joke about someone patenting suing people and how they are going to sue DVDCCA.
Wait until more facts come in before you assume that DVDCCA is wrong in this case.
Re:Another Story with No Useful Information (Score:5, Insightful)
So you seriously believe that the DVDCCA would license CSS to 321 studios?
After all they tried to suit 'em hard (as usual) for making it software which made it possible to backup your DVDs.
After they lost that case, yeah, they're probably eager to license them the technology.
I salute 321 studios for what their doing, and I despice DVDCCA and the likes of them, for trying to make it unlawful to backup your own media.
I say fuck the DVDCCA, and that's not just a gut reaction.
Re:Another Story with No Useful Information (Score:4, Informative)
As another poster pointed out, CCA will not license it 321. In fact, the conditions CCA imposes on the software makers are much more restrictive. The software maker cannot, for instance, provide and option to skip over the ads and trailers in the DVD.
Re:Another Story with No Useful Information (Score:2)
Re:Another Story with No Useful Information (Score:2)
What is more insteresting however, is that little detail: once upon a time, CSS was supposed to be trade secret, now it's patent. It can't be both.
This means that eihter a) this lawsuit is pure rubbish or (more interesting) b) lawsuits against people publishing DeCSS were brought under false pretense. This may have very interesing legal effects. Fo
Re:Another Story with No Useful Information (Score:2)
The fact remains that we don't know exactly what the DVDCCA is claiming infringment on. Your assumption that the previous trade secret law suit and the current patent law suit are based upon the same piece of technology is unfounded. Until we know more details we can't say for sure if DVDCCA has a valid case or not.
Also, just because a big company is suing a small company about DRM does n
Not a contradiction (Score:4, Insightful)
This is not necessarily a contradiction. The CSS algorithm (or business model!) could be patented and published, and the player keys could still be a trade secret.
Patent approach not surprising (Score:5, Interesting)
The trade secret approach would be dead in the water. Trade secrets provide protection against leaks, where employees disclose information that they shouldn't, but not protection against people reverse engineering, rediscovering, or reimplementing something.
The only thing left is patents.
It would be interesting to see if this approach works. If the case is won by the DVD CCA, it provides a strong argument against the DMCA -- patents alone would provide sufficient protection for at least some copy control technologies. If it's lost, then they've lost one more layer of protection.
I'd have to see the patents, but I'm a little doubtful that they really have CSS patented. The mechanisms involved are not revolutionary. Patents don't protect an end product -- just a particular process that yields that end product -- so I'd be suspicious that a patent would either not cover the work being done or would not be valid.
Re:Patent approach not surprising (Score:2)
This doesn't seem to hold for at least some of the software patents out there. Amazon managed to patent "one click shopping". This means nobody else can implement one click shopping, even if they use an entirely different process (source code) from what Amazon does.
If what you say was true (which I wish it was), software patents wouldn't give you any protection you don't already have using copyrights, but for
Re:Patent approach not surprising (Score:2)
In theory you could also impliment one click shopping as long as the process is slightly different from amazons, but who would want to? One click shopping is a stupid idea.
Re:Patent approach not surprising (Score:5, Interesting)
I'd argue that an encryption system which was already broken half a decade ago by a teenager is NOT useful. CSS's only application is legal - to invoke the DMCA. However, the protection to copyrighted works already applies to movies under regular copyright law - they didn't need CSS to get legal protection for their works.
If CSS really were useful it would have been unbreakable - and then they wouldn't need all these lawsuits to prevent DVD copying - since their technical control would be enough. Of course, making an unbreakable encryption system where the decryption keys are embedded in millions of devices that cost under $100 to buy is impossible. The best they could hope for is digital sigs - so they could at least control the authoring of content (as is done with game consoles) - then only the public key is in the open and susceptible to hacking. It doesn't prevent modding, but in the DVD market modding is not going to be significant.
Re:Patent approach not surprising (Score:2)
Re:Patent approach not surprising (Score:5, Informative)
First, the truth is that CSS was not reverse engineered, rediscovered, or reimplemented in a legal way. It was leaked. The Xing DVD player failed to implement its contractual obligation to obfuscate the CSS algorithm and key. This failure played a crucial role in the public discovery and publication of this information. It was Xing's failure to guard the trade secret information that allowed it to leak out and led to DeCSS.
Second, the algorithm was not broken by a teenager. Rather, once it was extracted from Xing's software, professional cryptographers were able to identify weaknesses in CSS that let disks be played even without a player key. Some cryptographers have opined that it might have been possible to break the algorithm even without access to the trade-secret source code. But this opinion comes with 20-20 hindsight. It is absolutely the case that no one broke CSS before the source code was published, despite claims that it was absurdly weak.
Both patent and trade secret (Score:4, Informative)
Of course the same thing cannot be both patented and a trade secret, but the method that CSS uses to "protect" content can be patented, while the actual keys used can be trade secrets. RSA used to be patented, but the secret keys people used were secret anyway.
Buncha Hooie... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Buncha Hooie... (Score:2)
Re:Buncha Hooie... (Score:4, Insightful)
If I were an an admin I'd remove this post entirely.
Why? It seems more honest to me to openly show bias than to hide it behind rationalizations as is often done. I am glad you are not an admin.I completely disagree with the analysis given by the ex-employee, but it gives me insight into the company and situation not present in the many posts done by non-ex-employees. Speaking of honesty, are you perhaps an existing employee and that is why the post offended you? Moderation should clearly not be done on the basis of whether you like / agree with the position taken.
Re:Buncha Hooie... (Score:3, Informative)
Better piece of advice. Try not using your real name as your Slashdot name in the first place. Then you won't have to worry about AC or not.
~MEOW~
Software: simultaneous patent and trade secret (Score:4, Funny)
Our store-bought legislators have allowed software to be patented, copyrighted, trademarked, and be a trade secret all at the same time!
The algorithms in a patent may not actually work as described, because there is no requirement to prove them for correctness or submit a working program. There may be subtle modifications required to get it to actually work. However, if you implement a working program that does the the same thing you can be sued for infringement.
Second, the patent language is usually so obfuscated with legalese, redundancy and excess verbosity that the patent is of little use to someone who wants to build a working program.
The lack of a requirement to publish source code, combined with the obfuscated patent language, allows software to effectively remain a trade secret even after it has been patented.
Just wait... (Score:5, Insightful)
Copyright
Trademark
Trade secret
Patents
Methods
Designs
"Intellectual Property" without further elaboration
Companies would like to try "all of the above". They want all of the protections, while giving nothing in return. What's even worse, is that I think many politicans and such actually believe that they're doing the right thing to "promote the science and arts" by doing so.
Unfortunately, in the capitalistic society money is equated with results - i.e. the more IP protections, the more revenue generated from IP, and thus the more invested in IP, and the higher the investments, the further the science and arts are promoted.
The flaw in the argument is that progress is equated with profit. In that context, the Linux kernel would be "worthless", the only value would be what value IBM, Red Hat, Tivo et al manage to add, not in the kernel itself, since that isn't what generates profit. And yet it's beyond a doubt a great scientific achievement.
In the same way, that music that simply makes your heart tremble with pure joy, is "worthless" unless it generates profit. Or that beautiful painting or statue or carving or any other object made for the art's sake, not for the money's sake.
Yes, money is a means to promote science and arts, scientists and artists need to put food on the table as well. But it is hardly the source of scientific interest or artistic inspiration. Money is simply one part of many - like education, culture, status, access to related works of past and present - in order to realize those desires.
Kjella
The DVDCCA claims patent on CSS? Too late! (Score:3, Funny)
TLA overload (Score:3, Insightful)
Aside: Perhaps it would help if these story write ups contained slightly more than zero information? If we have to read the article to figure out what the story is even about, perhaps
Re:TLA overload (Score:2)
Mathematicians really like this approach too, except they try to name everything a single unicode symbol, going through the latin and greek alphabets (For example pi can be a constant 3.142... or it can be a variable) and sometimes trudging into Cyrillic and Hebrew rather than have multi-character variable names. No doubt the addition of K
don't sue each othe - sue USPTO (Score:5, Interesting)
Patenting software (Score:3, Interesting)
DISTINGUISHING PATENT AND COPYRIGHT SUBJECT MATTER [asu.edu]
Not sure I agree on the hardware equivalent of software test for patents, things are not that cut and dry most times.
Anyone Find It? (Score:2)
DeCSS patented?? (Score:2)
This, by it's nature, contradicts the idea of it being a trade secret since, by definition, it would have to be completely disclosed.
I wonder if this is grounds for DVD Jon to file a lawsuit.
BTW... *PLEASE* when posting to this section, give the patent number involved. It's damn frustrating to guess.
Re:DeCSS patented?? (Score:2)
It is, according to my understanding, done using the application of a simple watermark.
This is akin to applying rot13 to a message and calling it a copy protection device.
GJC
You CAN Have Both (Score:5, Informative)
A patent provides the exclusive right to make, use, and sell the invention listed in the claims section of the patent. Generally, claims are drafted so that theyy encompass functions - HOW the software works. The goal of claim drafting is to describe the invention broadly enogh to get the most possible coverage, but not so broadly as to describe prior art.
It is possible for the same claim to cover several (or many) different implementations. Take for example an automotive rearview mirror. If my claim says the following:
I claim a mirror for use in an automobile, the mirror being generally rectangular in shape and mounted in a central position at the top of an automobile windshield.
then everyone knows that if they make a generally rectangular mirror and mount it in the position decribed, they infringe. BUT - if someone makes a ROUND mirror and/or mounts it on the car door (side view mirror), they do NOT infringe.
With software, if you describe functionality that no one has done before, you can get the exclusive right to implement that functionality in your patent. You MUST disclose the BEST WAY KNOWN TO YOU AT THE TIME YOU FILE YOUR APPLICATION of achieving that functionality. There is no way to claim the implementation you disclose as a trade secret.
HOWEVER - let's say that after your patent issues, you develop a new implementation that still performs the same function. You have patent protection for the function itself. You ALSO have the right to protect the NEW implementation (not disclosed in the patent) as a trade secret.
I am not going to argue the policy of whether this is a good or bad thing. I am just here to tell you that this is the current state of the law in the United States. Save your flames for the SCO threads please.
Re:You CAN Have Both (Score:2)
1) So if DVDCCA patented a particular method of doing CSS, and then came up with a better one later on, they'd have both patent and trade secret protection, the former on the original algorithm, and trade secret protection on the new and improved algorithm, right?
2) Someone comes allong and creates a clean room implimentation of the new algorithm. Is that infringment?
3) Someone comes allong and creates yet another clean room implimentation of a CSS
Some more thoughts (Score:5, Insightful)
METHOD FOR MINIMIZING PIRATING AND/OR UNAUTHORIZED COPYING AND/OR UNAUTHORIZED ACCESS OF/TO DATA ON/FROM DATA MEDIA INCLUDING COMPACT DISCS AND DIGITAL VERSATILE DISCS, AND SYSTEM AND DATA MEDIA FOR SAME, #6,684,199
and here is the method they claim:
(a) reading the mixed data from said media;
(b) detecting the predetermined errors from the mixed data;
(c) comparing the predetermined errors to the at least one authentication key or component thereof;
(d) authenticating the at least one of the media and the data in the mixed data responsive to the comparing step;
(e) removing the predetermined errors from the mixed data via a decoding operation resulting in substantially the data; and
(f) outputting the data as at least one of audio, video, audio data, video data and digital data substantially free of the predetermined errors.
They elaborate on a number of those points, but they don't on "detecting the predetermined errors from the mixed media."
I tried but failed to include a snip in here from libdvdcss-1.2.8, css.c (distributed under the GPL) , but here's the general idea:
int _dvdcss_unscramble( dvd_key_t p_key, uint8_t *p_sec )
{
if (p_sec[0x14] & 0x30)
{
some funky math involving pluses, minuses, and bitwise operations
while (p_sec != p_end)
{ do a lot more funky math to determined the correct data, incriment P_sec }
}
return
}
Now, the question I have is this: If they computed the decryption for the entire block, for every block (whether or not it has errors), and not just blocks that had that 0x30 bit on in 0x14, and then decided which of the two blocks was a valid block, the encrypted one or the decrypted one, would they in fact be 'detecting predetermined errors' (as is not very well described in the patent)?
Re:Some more thoughts (Score:2)
Then 321 Studios isn't violating the patent, because 321's software implements a method for "accessing data on digital versatile discs for media licensees and for fair use purposes".
321 certainly didn't implement a method of minimizing piracy, in any case
Re:You CAN Have Both (Score:2)
Re:You CAN Have Both (Score:2)
And you're okay with that? You sleep well at night knowing you're a willing participant in this defective system?
Schwab
Re:You CAN Have Both (Score:3, Informative)
MY participation in the system ALWAYS works to try to make the system better whenever possible.
Not the same thing..... (Score:3, Interesting)
Next they will try to enforce reading books only in approved places such as libraries. It will be illegal to use an unapproved magnifying glass to see the text more clearly. You may read only under an approved light source.....
None of that will stop you using the photocopier, an entirely separate issue.
Re:COPY and XCOPY are old (Score:4, Informative)
In fact, the open source world has been fairly conservative when it comes to such features; for example, Debian does not include CSS as part of its package system (but it does include a package that will download a CSS decoder from somewhere else).
Don't try to advance, whether deliberately or in jest, the incorrect perception that open source is somehow a hotbet of illegality.
MOD PARENT DOWN, IT'S BS (Score:3, Informative)
*sigh* It's posts like this that cause me to loose my faith (if one could call it that) in Slashdot and the moderator system. At best, this post should be mod'ed Funny. At worst it's an anti-OSS troll.
There is no such package as annoydvdcca_utils on Debian or any other Linux distro. Not even Google can find it, as another reply points out. And the only mention of "dvdcp" on Google is some Coupon Program from Netflix.
Re:Patents on standards should not be legal (Score:3, Informative)
Foundation for a Free Information Infrastructure [ffii.org] will start it's second Free Information Infrastructure Conference [ffii.org] in Bruxelles in April 13/14 2004. Please come to Bruxelles. Last year's participants included Lessing, RMS, Mozelle W. Thompsson, Opera, MySQL and many others. The FFII Alliance campaign was very succesfull in 2003.
Re:Something needs renamed (Score:2)
Anyway, not to worry about that one, there must be vast amounts of prior art.