Or in this case, 128-bit numbers are songs:
Articles by Tim Lee 
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In October, I wrote about the five stages of DRM failure. At that point, I wrote that the MPAA was just moving from the anger stage to the bargaining stage. Now, it’s looking like they’ve reached the bargaining stage in earnest:
In his speech to industry insiders at the posh Beverly Hills Four Seasons hotel, Glickman repeatedly stressed that DRM must be made to work without constricting consumers. The goal, he said, was “to make things simpler for the consumer,” and he added that the movie studios were open to “a technology summit” featuring academics, IT companies, and content producers to work on the issues involved. He also pointed to the $30 million MovieLabs project that the studios are currently funding as proof of their commitment to interoperability.
Speaking to Ars after the speech, Glickman acknowledged that the plan was still in the early stages. I asked him specifically about DVDs, which are currently illegal to rip under the DMCA, and how the law would square with his vision of allowing consumers to use such content on iPods and other devices. “You notice that I said ‘legally’ and in a protected way,” Glickman responded, suggesting that some form of DRM would still be required before the studios would sign off on such a plan. He noted, however, that no specific plans have been made.
The Wall Street Journal reports that Vonage has asked the Federal Circuit to send its patent case back to the district court to consider whether the Teleflex decision renders Verizon’s patents invalid. As I argued last week, at least one of Verizon’s patents should be extremely vulnerable to challenge under Teleflex:
The third patent at issue is patent 6,359,880, “Public wireless/cordless internet gateway.” The patent describes a variety of prior systems that allow telephone calls to be made wirelessly. Some use cellular technology to achieve coverage over large areas, while others serve as a gateway to a traditional phone line, and only work over limited areas. The patent also discusses the existence of several Internet telephony applications that allow Internet users to engage in voice communications via the Internet. However, the patent argues, no prior systems have combined wireless calling with Internet telephony.
In this sense, the patent is a precise analog of the patent at issue in KSR v. Teleflex, due to be decided in the next two months by the Supreme Court. In that case, KSR held a patent that covered the combination of two otherwise obvious components: a gas pedal and an electronic sensor. Here, as in Teleflex, Verizon admits that both VoIP and wireless calling were well-known technologies at the time the patent was filed. However, they claim, no one had thought of having both features in one system.
Vonage should have a pretty strong case that the wireless calling patent is obvious. For the other two patents, they’ll probably have to rely more on Teleflex’s general theme of “common sense,” which doesn’t seem like quite as much of a slam dunk but can’t help but strengthen their hand somewhat.
Ed Felten reports on the high-def video cartel’s hopeless campaign to keep a 128-bit key that can be used to unscramble HD-DVD and Blu-Ray discs secret.
I’m not going to post the key here, because I don’t especially want to get a takedown notice myself, but a little searching is likely to turn up dozens of copies posted around the web. As Felten points out, once the key has been posted to a significant number of websites (and “significant” here probably means about a dozen), it becomes counterproductive to continue to pursue it, because sending out takedown letters only generates more publicity (like this post!) which in turn causes more people to hear about the key and get a copy for themselves.
The whole incident makes me feel nostalgic for my college days, when I had friends who got T-shirts with the DeCSS algorithm printed on them. It took four years for the DVD CCA to formally concede that suppressing the DeCSS code was impossible. Hopefully the people in charge of the AACS keys will give up sooner than that.
One of the most convincing critiques of Steve Jobs’s February letter on DRM was that Apple had refused to sell DRM-free music from smaller labels even when those labels requested it. It’s not clear why Apple refused to sell DRM-free music to smaller labels—whether it was a matter of administrative convenience, or whether Apple liked the lock-in effect of DRM. But regardless, Apple appears to have addressed that criticism with an announcement to smaller music partners that starting next month they’ll have the option to sell their music DRM-free if they want to. Good for Apple. Now we’ll just have to wait and see how much longer the other major labels persist in shooting themselves in the foot.
The Supreme Court handed down both of the big patent cases today, smacking the Federal Circuit down in each of them. Here is the court’s 9-0 decision in Teleflex that “The Federal Circuit addressed the obviousness question in a narrow, rigid manner that is inconsistent with §103 and this Court’s precedents.” And here is the court’s 7-1 holding in Microsoft v. AT&T that “A copy of Windows, not Windows in the abstract, qualifies as a“component” under §271(f).”
As I predicted, the court did not take the opportunity to rule that software is unpatentable. However, in footnote 13, the majority carefully reserved judgment on whether software could be a component of a patented invention:
We need not address whether software in the abstract, or any other intangible, can ever be a component under §271(f). If an intangible method or process, for instance, qualifies as a “patented invention”under §271(f) (a question as to which we express no opinion), the combinable components of that invention might be intangible as well. The invention before us, however, AT&T’s speech-processing computer, is a tangible thing.
This suggests that the court may be leaving the door open to a direct challenge to the patentability of software in a future case.
Update: Having read the decision more carefully, I think the above isn’t quite right. Footnote 13 was discussing whether software could be a component of an invention for purposes of §271(f), which is a separate question from whether software can be patentable subject matter in the first place. Software could theoretically be patentable in general but not a component of an invention for purposes of §271(f).
Vonage has opened up a new front in its war with Verizon, launching a new website at FreeToCompete.com and taking out full-page ads in the nation’s largest newspapers. Corporate PR campaigns tend to use overheated rhetoric, but I can’t really disagree with this:
Today, Vonage is facing one telecom giant — Verizon — in court as they try to to achieve in court what it cannot achieve in the marketplace. We can assure you that whatever the outcome of this legal dispute (which may take several years to fully resolve), Vonage is committed to serving all of our customers and to affordably connect family, friends and colleagues for years to come.
But make no mistake: Verizon’s actions against us have everything to do with limiting your freedom to choose a communications provider — a limitation which may ultimately drive up the cost of phone service for you and other U.S. consumers. (In fact, Verizon recently raised their prices.)
Verizon has chosen to attack Vonage in the courts and threaten consumers’ freedom to choose. Could it be about the money? In a truly fair, free market economy, neither Verizon — nor anyone else — should be able to cripple or eliminate companies seeking to provide more (and better) alternatives.
Unfortunately, I think Vonage faces an uphill battle getting the general public to pay attention to the issue. Patents are a sufficiently complex and esoteric subject that Verizon has plenty of ways to obfuscate the real issues in the case. And it doesn’t help that press accounts of the dispute are so scrupulously even-handed that they give credibility to Verizon’s question-begging claim that Vonage “is trying to shift the subject from their bad and now declared illegal behavior.” It would be nice reporters would plainly state the obvious: that Verizon is seeking a legal monopoly over the VoIP market.
There’s a good article in the LA Times by David Sarno about the Pirate Bay that includes a short quote from me. As usually happens with these things, a 15-minute conversation got distilled down to a couple of short paragraphs, where I basically pointed out that the MPAA’s 2006 “piracy study” wasn’t a study at all, but the MPAA’s summary of a study that they commissioned and refused to release.
The bulk of the article is about the growing popularity of the Pirate Party, which Sarno says has almost as many members as that country’s Green Party. Apparently, the unexpected popularity of the Pirate Party has prompted several of the larger parties to shift their platforms to be more sympathetic to file-sharing.
It’s an interesting question what the United States government will do if this movement proves to have staying power. It’s hard to imagine the United States slapping sanctions on Sweden, especially since they’re now part of the EU and the EU presumably wouldn’t cooperate with an effort to cut one of its members off from trade. And of course, if a country like Sweden gives file-sharing networks free rein to operate, it will be virtually impossible to prevent Internet users elsewhere from taking advantage of them.
Copyright issues generate a lot of controversy. But here’s a cause I think everyone on all sides of the copyright debate can agree on: the presidential debates should be free from copyright restrictions after they are aired. Larry Lessig has a petition up calling on the RNC and DNC to require any television stations airing the debates to release their copyrights into the public domain, or under a CC-BY (or its equivalent) license.
Makes sense to me. The debates are a central part of the national conversation that is our presidential campaigns. There’s absolutely no reason there should be any restrictions on viewing, re-distributing, or re-mixing them. I’ve left a comment expressing my support. You can call the DNC to express your support at (202) 863-8000, or call the RNC at (202) 863-8500.
One advantage the patent system clearly does have over the regulatory state is that you generally can’t go to jail for patent infringement, as you can for selling lobster tails that are the wrong size and packaged in the wrong kind of containers. Over at Ars Technica, I’ve got a story about legislation in Europe that could have taken the first step toward changing that. Fortunately, the good guys scored a partial victory by getting patents removed from the scope of the second Intellectual Property Rights Enforcement Directive.
However, there’s still some scary stuff in there. “Inciting” copyright infringement can still be a criminal offense, opening the door to jailing the creator of the next YouTube or MP3 player. Moreover, it’s a criminal offense to infringe other “intellectual property rights” on a “commercial scale.” These include “geographical indication” rights, meaning that a winemaker from outside the Champagne region of France could not only be sued but thrown in jail for selling his sparkling wine as “champagne.”
What’s not clear is why any of this is necessary. Piracy isn’t an especially serious problem in Europe, and the authorities already have plenty of weapons in their arsenal. Politicians have gotten in the worrisome habit of throwing people in jail just to prove that they’re serious about whatever the problem-of-the-week happens to be.
The Technology Liberation Front is the tech policy blog dedicated to keeping politicians' hands off the 'net and everything else related to technology.