Spotify Sued For Patent Infringement 151
An anonymous reader writes "Celebrated online music player Spotify just entered the US market a few weeks ago, and already it's being sued for patent infringement. Welcome to America! The patent in question is a very very broad patent on distribution of music in a digital form, which basically describes how anyone would ever distribute digital music. The company suing, PacketVideo, has no competing product. It just wants money from the company that actually innovated."
Look at the bright side: (Score:3)
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Yes, but probably there will be various other patents to practically prevent that.
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Spotify (Score:4, Insightful)
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DRM-free or I'm not interested. I haven't pirated a thing since I started being able to buy music from Amazon, Walmart, 7Digital, etc. But no one has put all the pieces together yet, and Spotify looks like it could if it wanted to - why not let me buy the music at the same time I use the rest of the service? If their app is strong and their syncing/streaming excellent, their recommendation algorithms solid, etc., they'll keep me as a customer even after I've paid for my whole collection.
Re:Spotify (Score:5, Informative)
If you buy a track on Spotify it will be downloaded as a DRM free MP3.
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As another one already pointed out, you can buy the songs for 1$/song DRM-free.
The mobile app indeed is strong and stable, I have yet to see issues with it in the weeks I've been heavily usin
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The recommendation algorithm sometimes gives 'interesting' choices. (eg: it recommended Tokyo Hotel when listening to Rammstein) however it seems to either being improved by the engineers or auto-learn what you like to listen to. So far the Pandora "Music Genome" algorithm is the best in the field and goes unmatched.
As another one already pointed out, you can buy the songs for 1$/song DRM-free.
Herein lies the only problem I see with Spotify. The UI is a mess and there's lots of stuff that takes a long time to figure out (like clicking on the name of a song, album, or artist takes you to another page entirely with a new set of tabs, and the back forward buttons are not so obvious). Even worse is I still haven't found the option to buy songs, or any sort of "recommendation algorithm". All I see is a search box, a list of the top 100, and "other artists like this" (or something similar).
Maybe the fr
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Sounds like you are interested, actually.
Re:Spotify (Score:5, Informative)
I suppose artists should be celebrating getting 0.00029c per play [informatio...utiful.net] than nothing at all, right?
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The good news that Rebecca Black is getting a whole lot more for 'friday'. Why because she vanity published it with Arc who assumed she wouldnt make money on the song. :D
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Well given that they would normally get 0c per play of a CD or iTunes track then I'd imagine so.
Assuming a ~$1 track price on something like iTunes (and this 9p to the artist as per your linked article), the break-even point is about 300 plays, but the assumption (pretty fairly IMO) is that far more people will hear your stuff on Spotify than would buy it on iTunes, so in reality it's probably a pretty decent deal.
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Actually its a very good deal. The number quoted above is from 2009 so its old. Spotify is from same country that gave you Pirate bay - Sweden.
Here in Sweden the musicians income from Spotify was about 1/3 of the musicians income from selling their music. So from beeing a small sum 2009 they 2010 got a huge sum of money from Spotify and if this trends continues Spotify may become the major source of income from selling their music. This trend will be the same in other countries too when spotify gets establ
Re:Spotify (Score:4, Insightful)
(This is all IMO obviously)
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If as an artist you end up making money, then that's great but it should never be a driving factor in the creation process.
I just felt a great disturbance in the free-market-libertarian-slashdot Force.
As a musician, I totally agree. As a slashdot member, I'm bracing for the ensuing Liber-tard backlash you are about to receive.
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Where is this dungeon where these people are being "forced" to do anything? I keep hearing about it, but all I see is people who choose to do something that everyone knows rarely makes money for the vast majority of people who do it. It's the same thing for people who aspire to be pro athletes. Yes, there are a handful who make ridiculous sums, but the vast majority don't make a living wage, either because they don't get picked up by a team at all, or because they simply aren't good enough, etc.
People try t
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I don't believe anything was said about forcing artists to work for free. Simply that if they are going in to it for the money, they are doing it for the wrong reasons.
Music and art and writing (far more so than other jobs like accounting, programming, politics, etc) requires much more of a personal and emotional investment than just simply plugging in formulas or flipping the right switches in the right order. If all you want is to make money, then it's certainly possible to simply produce some mass-market
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Your kidding of course. The problem here is there is money in artistry. Someone is walking away with the bucks, it should be the artist. Not that that is the motivation but certainly if the art makes money then the artist can devote full time and not have to worry about waiting tables while some gallery owner or record distribitor buys that next Bentley.
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Lets see .00029c per play thats $2.90 for a million plays. Nice bonaza.
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Rebbecca Black is no more an "artist" than that pretentious art major who used to live down the hall from you in your college dorm. Pop music has its place. Not everything has to be art. No one will ever compare Michael Bay to Stanley Kubrick, for example. But I'm pretty sure Micheal Bay isn't TRYING to be Kubrick.
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Going by this pretty graphic you've posted it appears the lower rates are for streaming. How much is an artist paid for radio play?
As for the "worst" comparable listing to having a cd is the Amazon download. It's comparing the cost of a track vs. an entire album. Let's say an average cd has 10 songs. That's only 124 full albums someone would have to sell to "make minimum wage" which actually ends up being a better deal than any of the physical copies this is trying to say wins out.
Good looking FUD though.
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Those numbers are over a year old, when Spotify was still very young and few people signed up for the Premium service.
Today, these numbers, and by extension band income, have improved to the point where at least Fono (The association for independent Norwegian record companies) have reversed their stance from ~the time you specify, and now recommend artists embrace Spotify.
The deals Spotify sign are secret, so we don't know exactly how much they're getting - but income is improving and will likely improve ev
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For a few years it has almost completely stopped music piracy in scandinavia and in other european countries
No it hasn't. It might have decreased, but it certainly hasn't stopped. I would say that me and my friends still download as much music as before.
Now instead of sending each other mp3 files as file transfer people are just pasting spotify links in IM conversations here.
No one has *ever* sent me a Spotify link, but I stil get sent torrent-links to albums my friends believe I might enjoy.
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I just got it yesterday. Sure it probably stopped music piracy, but I can tell you that after one day of using it, it will also stop music purchasing. I'm never buying another track again, as long as this service is available, legitimate, and free.
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And no, you can't record the incoming music as it's streamed over an encrypted session or from the local cache, which is also encrypted. The key to decrypt the data is only availble online from their servers and not stored by the client software.
I guess you mean you can't "save" the stream?
You can certainly record it as is streams in. Just grab Audacity, select Stereo mix, and Record to your hearts content.
How legal is this? I don't know, I mean, it's streaming to my computer so I guess I can save it. It's like recording a TV show on a VCR tape right?
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Why would you go through the hassle of recording and re-encoding streams from Spotify? If you want free music on your hard drive, just head over to the Piratebay or whatever file sharing service you prefer and grab what you want.
The point of services like Spotify is to provide users with free or cheap music to users in such a way that artists are compensated and the music industry can be profitable, allowing it to create new music in the future. If you're interested in that, than a service like Spotify is g
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Plus it may be legal this way.
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i can record anything that plays through my speakers. ever heard of stereo mix?
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how would it be inferior? however i agree it would be too tedious to do for more than a couple of songs.
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You'd be taking a song that was put through lossy compression, and putting it through lossy compression again (unless you store it as WAV or FLAC) ; some quality loss is inevitable, and the original quality might not be up to your standards either.
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It's inferior in two ways. The first is described already by Dr_Barnowl below: you're lossy encoding an already lossy encoded file, which results in inferior audio quality.
The second thing is that you have to manually edit the recording to the desired length, so you'll end up with a file that hasn't got the same start / stop moments (ie length) as the original file, so you'll have more problems automatically getting metadata from services such as freedb.
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It worked fine for me on Ubuntu, but on Mint I started getting annoying time synch issues where sometimes the songs would play as if they were on fast forward. I've had to start using a Window machine for playing music. The same thing happens when I use the WINE version strangely enough.
On the bright side (Score:5, Insightful)
The more these patent trolls do their thing, the closer we get to legislation that puts an end (or at least seriously hampers) such behavior. Unfortunately, such legislation tends to have unintended consequences but seriously, this is getting out of control and something needs to be done. I can see this as another case where the "loser pays" idea may have an impact.
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Sorry, MyFirstNameIsPaul. It seems I may have inadvertently infringed on your subject title. Please, don't sue me.
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I heard that the Congress will take care of that legislation you're talking about right after they agree on raising the debt limit...
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It seems to be easier to develop a cool idea, patent it, never develop it then sit and wait for someone else to do a similar idea so you can sue them.
This goes against the original idea of patents which was to give small companies a fighting chance at developing a new product.
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By the way, I have no indication whatsoever that legislato
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By the way, I have no indication whatsoever that legislators in the US or Europe are of the opinion that the current patent system is hurting innovation. Is anything happening on that front?
It is not hurting the business or lawyers and the market control of big corp, therefore, nope.
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Hopefully things like this: http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/441/when-patents-attack [thisamericanlife.org] will help.
There will be no patent reform... (Score:2)
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> The more these patent trolls do their thing, the closer we get to legislation that puts an end
Maybe, but remember that big and powerful companies such as IBM, Microsoft, etc have lots of patents, so don't expect software patents to die anytime soon.
> "loser pays" idea may have an impact
Against small patent trolls, maybe; against Microsoft? Unlikely!
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The more these patent trolls do their thing, the closer we get to legislation that puts an end (or at least seriously hampers) such behavior
Boy are you naive. This is the system working as intended.
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Nice Intro to Software Patent Issue (Score:4, Informative)
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A better introduction is This American Life episode 441.
http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/441/when-patents-attack [thisamericanlife.org]
The best show on radio, ever.
--
BMO
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I'm glad someone else heard that show. I'm thinking that if the problem of patent trolling has reached the rather staid waves of public radio, there's a chance that it might gain some serious traction in the broader population.
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I'm still listening but I'm already disgusted and not surprised.
Software = algorithms = math = non-patentable
Copyright a user interface, sure, to a point
Trademark an icon, go ahead
Patent mathematical operations? No.
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The point of this story is patenting stuff that you never make. Software being not patentable is completely untrue and unfair to people who write software for a living.
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Whenever this is brought up, people like you hop up and down and behave as if removing patents from software would leave software completely unprotected. Software got along fine for decades without patents. It even got along fine without copyright protection until the 80s.
Now it's the only thing on the planet that is protected by patent and copyright. This is unique and contradictory.
You patent mechanisms. You copyright art and literary works.
Pick one, and one only, please.
Copyright seems to protect sof
Actually, this is for DRM protected music... (Score:5, Informative)
Reading Claim 1, of which all the others are dependent, this is for the distribution of music using a user-specific DRM system. Also, the claim is incredibly long which != broad BTW. Remember, do one thing differently and you're golden. Reading the claim and with such specific nuggets like the music having to include a "core" that includes "at least one object identification code, object structure information, a consumer code and an encryption table", and at least one "layer" around the core containing "the actual music information" etc and I wonder if anyone would actually do it that way anyway. That was probably the way PacketVideo did it, who have actually be around for years doing video meida streaming going back to the 56K modem days (and probably before). And they are innovators, not a troll.
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Except for that IPO th
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I suppose artists should be celebrating getting 0.00029c per play
Yeah you're golden...except for the hundreds of thousands you'll spend on lawyers trying to convince a jury that you don't infringe. Especially when both the Judge and the jury members probably still believe you have to have annual internet cleanings [about.com].
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Encryption over the internet? no one had send audio via SSL prior to that date?
Read the claim again (or, more likely for you, for the first time). The way it does encryption is more specific than just SSL.
Innovation will kill you in the U.S. (Score:1)
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China? The ones who make knock-off Jeeps and iPhones? Innovative? Once I start seeing Chinese engineered vehicles and electronics with widespread adoption in Europe and America, then I'll think China is innovating. Until then, leave the innovation up to South Korea and Japan in that region.
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Somebody in China is going to innovate eventually. Someone's got to.
It's a self-perpetuating problem (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh yeah, and anything creative the individual come up with is now property of the corporation, adding to the cycle.
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So now they have to work for a giant company who has a mountain of patents in its vault just so they have protection from being sued out of existence by companies like the ones they work for.
It only recently occurred to me that this might be intentional. Large companies like Microsoft, Apple, and Google clearly lose more than they gain from the current system, so why don't they throw their weight around Washington to have software declared unpatentable? Perhaps it's because the patent minefield might kill
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Arms race is exactly it. Recall that interview with Peter Chou from HTC a week ago or so where - over the bust-up with Apple he notes HTC's purchase of S3 and acquisition of some 200-odd patents. He's clearly disappointed to have to play this retarded game just to participate in the US market but nonetheless the way he characterises that acquisition sounded, to me, exactly as if he was counting up rounds of ammunition.
"We have over 200 pate^H^H^H^H warheads. Do you feel lucky?"
"Celebrated" my ass (Score:2)
US Patent laws are crap.
But who "celebrated" this thing? PR bullshit.
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I've used (the paid version of) Spotify for a couple of years now and I absolutely love it. I can listen to an uninterrupted ocean of music all day long (both at work and at home), keep offline copies of playlists on my cellphone for running etc. and recently I've started to discover a lot of new music by simply browsing recommendations, different labels and so on inside Spotify. I'd say it's pretty rare to see a Party in Norway these days where the music doesn't come from Spotify. (They also have a native
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Lots of people love it. I never used it, but most of my music-loving friends do. Though if it's only now expanding into the US, and you happen to live in the US, then that could easily explain why you haven't been exposed to it yet.
Sums it up nicely (Score:2)
They manage to tiptoe through a minefield of copyright law only to have a troll sneak up and beat them over the head with a patent suit.
The solution is simple.. (Score:1)
Just don't bother doing any business in the US if you can happily avoid it..
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Yes, because turning your back on 150-200 million of the most willing and able paying customers is a good business plan.
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Of course, not necessarily but if you want to trade high technology in the US, you obviously have to do a thorough cost:benefit analysis.
Benefit of US custom - Drain of constant legal battles over the fact you used a linked list, put files in a tree structure, let a portable device communicate with something, had a rectangle with a round corner... and so on.
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Or, in a more realistic view, come here, do business and most likely never be confronted with these sensational sort of stories that blow up on niche web sites like slashdot.
Well, the patent's not THAT broad. (Score:1)
The patent in question is a very very broad patent on distribution of music in a digital form [google.com], which basically describes how anyone would ever distribute digital music.
Leaving aside why in hell the link is "distribution of music in a digital form" instead of "patent in question", it doesn't describe that at all.
A brief skim of the claims makes clear the first thing you'd guess from the abstract: that encryption is a necessary part. I think a subset of anyone most definitely would distribute music without encrypting it. In fact, I'd be surprised if any of the many outfits now offering DRM-free music purchases are encrypting their downloads -- encryption does seem rather po
central memory device? (Score:2)
not sure but...what happens if spotify uses a cloud...aka...a "decentralized" memory device?
or if it was more than one device that it comes from....aka...part of a song comes from device A....another part from device B and so on.
gawd...I hate these trolls
Fuck all patents and patent holders (Score:4, Insightful)
Seriously, I'm sick and tired of this.
I'm absolutely convinced that we suffer way greater from all the damage those patent trolls cause and the general barrier that the pure existence of patents pose than the potential issues of a total removal of patents would cause. I have yet to see any conclusive argumentation why we actually need (in the meaning of: the society as a whole) patents. There might be slight issues with innovation in certain areas during the transition but I'm sure that this wouldn't outweigh the benefits of not having to employ hordes of lawyers or being afraid to get sued to hell and back all the time.
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I'm absolutely convinced that we suffer way greater from all the damage those patent trolls cause
Especially here on slashdot, where we spend a great deal of the workday talking about these issues.
Anyway, patents have turned America from "land of the free" into "land of the constrained", and I'm glad that at least someday I can move my business to Europe where the rules are not so ridiculous.
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We are working hard to change that! Barely a month passes without some idiot endorsing the idea to introduce software patents or the like.
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Patents are designed to protect those who invent something with the intent to actually create the thing they are trying to patent. Since these patent trolls have not actually been trying to create a product to make use of these patents, they should all lose the patents in question. That's it, end of story, and the system needs to start enforcing that idea where people or companies MUST put in some effort to actually implement the patent in a product themselves, or sell it to someone who is. If a co
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It was the intend to protect those that invented something new.
Nowadays it's usually used to block competition, even if the holder of the patent is in fact the user of it.
The whole patent system is absurd because it achieves the quite opposite of what was intended. In fact only huge, really huge companies are fairly safe due to their immense arsenal of patents that they can use to fight other patent holders. A small company, starting new has pretty much no chance at all to enter really innovative areas beca
I used to work for DWS/PacketVideo (Score:4, Interesting)
I liked working for DWS, they where a small and quirky company with good people. DWS/SDC never sued anybody for this patent, it was mainly a bargaining chip to impress clients. Mind the patent is about DRM, specifically, it's about polymorphic DRM (that is the variant that delivers its own encryption/decryption/obfuscation code together with the content).
Sidenote: DWS/SDC where far flung leftovers of Napster.
But then the inevitable happened, the companies got bought by PacketVideo. The founder/investor and the then CEO (a superb business drummer, though no techie) left the company and American management took over.
During my work there, I was increasingly troubled by the DRM side of business. Eventually I left (and I'd have probably been fired if I didn't), mostly for reasons where management differed with my idea of efficiency and quality. I traveled around the world and I started freelancing, and I can't say it was a bad decision, has been a good life since.
I'm not surprised that PacketVideo eventually started suing people for the patents they hold. It's a small and troubled company that's been struggling for years to "get it right", and as they probably increasingly run out of funds to keep the fiction alive, it gets ever more tempting to cash in some quick buck simply by virtue of sitting on patents you've acquired.
Dear Anonymous, (Score:1)
Stop talking out your rear. PacketVideo has been around for quite some time. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PacketVideo [wikipedia.org]
http://www.packetvideo.com/ [packetvideo.com]
If you think they don't produce products, or even products specifically for that Patent then you're truly too stupid for words.
Active Discouragement (Score:4, Insightful)
On top of that, you're considering not paying the interest on the money you borrowed from the rest of the world. This would of course end people betting on your country as a safe investment. Money flowing into your economy from the rest of the world appears to be something to avoid as well. Reducing the number of people in your country that can actually pay their mortgage or stay employed at all seems to be no cause for concern either.
The only thing I can really see you doing that would cause your status as an ally and first rate investment opportunity to go into decline any faster, would perhaps be to start senseless wars that ran on for decades mainly to keep the price of oil up.
Oh wait...
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You're clearly showing that what works and is successful in the rest of the world is an unwanted development in your country
Uh no. What's clear is that you have more snark in you than understanding. It's not that it's an unwanted development, it's that we insist on being able to profit on anything that happens anywhere to anybody for any reason. Our pharmaceutical companies are making deals for IP protection with suffering third world nations via the Gates foundation. If we can't get you to agree through normal diplomatic means, we'll shit on your country and withhold the water you need to wash the crap away.
As someone is pointing out, this has reduced, almost eliminated the need for music piracy in a lot of European countries, which apparently isn't something you're interested in either.
"Need" for music pir
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10 years from now this will be ancient history much like Eolas, the dotcom bubble, European nations having their own currency and products from China being called cheap knockoffs. America will get it sorted out, the cash flow from all this crazy stuff will find it's way into the economy somewhere and we'll be talking about Gay marriage and drugs again.
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On top of that, you're considering not paying the interest on the money you borrowed from the rest of the world.
Just to clarify the situation, no... if our politicians continue with their radicalized ideology partisan politics shit the plan is strictly to shoot ourselves in the face, with each political party hoping the self-inflicted-wound will mostly injure the opposing political party.
The debt payments are only about 6% of the total budget. If there is no deal.... if the "default" we are talking about happens... the government's cash inflow will be about 60% of what they need to cover all government expenses. The
It works both ways (Score:2)
Google Music is not available outside US/Canada. Amazon is not offering music to non-US/Canada customers. Virtual barriers are all around nowadays in the intellectual property business, and patents are just one tool. And the US and it's laws are not the only reason for that, but I admit that it is non-significant issue - both to import and export.
US has had Pandora and many others which compete with Spotify for a long time, Spotify became mainstream in Europe because it was the first that really offered goo
New Anthem (Score:3)
I propose this as the new US national anthem:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MeXQBHLIPcw [youtube.com]
Seems appropriate.
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So non-innovative, it doesn't bring us the top tech companies in the world...oh, wait...