OT: DRM company threatens Apple, others, demanding: Stop NOT using our product!

[blue2blue]

 

Yeah... you read that right.

 

 

Apple, others draw legal threat over media players A California company that makes technology designed to prevent ripping of digital audio streams has accused Apple , Microsoft , RealNetworks and Adobe Systems of violating federal copyright law by "actively avoiding" use of its products. Media Rights Technologies and its digital radio subsidiary BlueBeat.com said in a press release Thursday that it had issued cease and desist letters to the high-tech titans . It argues that the companies have manufactured billions of copies of Windows Vista, Adobe Flash Player, Real Player and Apple's iTunes and iPod "without regard for the DMCA or the rights of American intellectual property owners."

But wait -- there's more!

 

 

DMCA refers to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act , a controversial 1998 law that generally makes it illegal to circumvent technological protection measures that control access to copyrighted works. The law says circumvent means "to descramble a scrambled work, to decrypt an encrypted work, or otherwise to avoid, bypass, remove, deactivate or impair a technological measure, without the authority of the copyright owner." MRT, based in Santa Cruz, Calif., argues that its X1 SeCure Recording Control technology has been "proven effective" as such a protective measure by plugging the "digital hole" that allows even copy-protected music streams, when played back, to be captured and potentially copied. The company says that because the companies are avoiding use of its purportedly effective product, they are violating the DMCA. " We've given these four companies 10 days to talk to us and work out a solution, or we will go into federal court and file action and seek an injunction to remove the infringing products from the marketplace," CEO Hank Risan said in a phone interview Friday. According to the MRT, the companies in question are responsible for 98 percent of the market's media players, which are in turn used by CNN , National Public Radio , Clear Channel , MySpace , Yahoo , YouTube and others.

Legal and business analysts all but laughed outright.

 

http://news.zdnet.com/2100-9588_22-6183105.html

 

 

 

OK... Mr Bill Gates or whatever you call yourself -- you've got ten days to answer our demands or Microsoft is ashes!

[blue2blue]

I figure, by this token, you all owe me plenty of money for not listening to my music all these years.

 

Heck, you probably didn't use X1 SeCure Recording Control not listen to it, too -- so, if you don't watch out, you might end up owing double.

 

I suggest you settle up with me, now, before I bring the whole thing to the attention of Media Rights Technologies, Inc.

 

You don't want to tangle with them, I'm thinking.

 

[offramp]

These gus should hook up with Monster Cable.

[blue2blue]

I'd say they've shot right past Monster cable... in terms of sheer chutzpah, if nothing else.

 

I mean... giving MS, Apple, Adobe, RN, et al, 10 days to answer their demands.

 

That's just... precious.

 

 

[the-good-way]

hmmm.... threatened to sue, the press covers it

 

hey! I get adverts pretending to be really official looking documents

 

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I wonder if counsel will get sanctioned if they bring this nussiance suit to fruition

[blue2blue]

I doubt they will and I strongly suspect thet would (get somehow sanctioned, probably with some form of court costs at the very least) if they did.

 

But sometimes supposedly bright lawyers (and no one is suggesting that these yobbos are anything close) do some amazingly boneheaded things. I still can't get over the old Mp3.com debacle. I mean, I'm a college drop out, but I predicted that they'd lose their case off the top simply because they'd clearly violated black letter law that had statutory penalties attached. The judge slammed them with a summary judgment before the lawyers could even open their briefs (or whatever it is they do when they're warming up their arguments). The summary judgement cost literally hundreds of millions of dollars and forced the sale of the once-high flying company to the soon-to-be-in-serious-trouble-themselves losers, Vivendi Universal.

 

 

Anyhow, I just thought this was pretty amusing.

[Anderton]

Amusing in a very sick kind of way, yes.

[Synonym Music]

The judge slammed them with a summary judgment before the lawyers could even open their briefs (or whatever it is they do when they're warming up their arguments).

 

Ah, so that's where they warm them up.

 

[the-good-way]

 

But sometimes supposedly bright lawyers (and no one is suggesting that these yobbos are anything close) do some amazingly boneheaded things. I still can't get over the old Mp3.com debacle. .

 

 

you mean the UMG, et al v MP3.com?

 

 

The 2 cases might be a little different in who the schlemiel and schlamazl are

 

in that MP3.com were defendants -- so, while, the arguments were crap, they were vainly trying to justify someting management did with a Hail Mary.

 

That might have been a management debacle that got translated to the courts - when drunk on internet dreams those dudes won't listen to legal, QA, or really anybody who doesn't support the "you are going to live next to Bill and Jeff" -- then staff winds up spear catching in a desperate attempt to svae the ship

 

"when all else fails, you can whip the horse's eyes!!!"

 

To know, we'd really have to be a fly on the wall in conference room --but in those days, man I stared down that particular barrell more than once

[blue2blue]

According to Mp3.com's story at the time, their online database of ripped, streamable CDs which would putatively allowed users to play "their music" from anywhere ont he web (once logged into their account, which they'd "stocked" with "their" CD's [by popping the CD into the CD-ROM drive long enough for it to be recognized, thereby adding that album to your "authorized" music list]) was carefully vetted beforehand with their supposed best-and-brightest young intellectual property specialist lawyer. (Who, if memory serves, was a Harvard Law grad. Wonder if he knew Barak?)

 

Now, that always seemed pretty funny to me -- since the crux of the whole business was that they violated very straightforward, black letter law simply by creating the database. (A private individual could have done that legally, maybe -- though he probably would have got in trouble quickly had he tried to "share it"; a commercial entity of any kind was subject to BIG fines for every song they copied in any form. And that's what pinned Mp3.com to the wall, causing several hundred millions of summary judgment to be awarded to a consortium of IP owners. IIRC, Universal Vivendi was the last major player to settle, waiting, some felt, until Mp3.com had little recourse left but to put what was left on the block. UV walked away owning what little was left -- which they were supposedly going to use to build their OWN online music empire. Best laid plans of mice and morons...)

[the-good-way]

yeah,a couple of important parts ring really funny

 

According to Mp3.com's story at the time

 

with their supposed best-and-brightest young intellectual property specialist lawyer [ed : singular?!?!]

 

 

One nice function of that story (and perhaps its purpose)...trying to show a basis that infringement wasn't willful!

(oh, like that didn't com up in meetings )

 

 

Now, that always seemed pretty funny to me -- since the crux of the whole business was that they violated very straightforward, black letter law simply by creating the database

 

I hear ya

 

I think Mp3.com got first mover fever (hey if we are first mover, we can develop the Mo to push the market and weather the legal) and made some dumb plays to secure that -- putting legal, dev, internal finance on the sharp end of the spear

 

At the time, from a tech biz perspective, they may, largely, been one of those solutions looking for a problem (who wants content delivery)

while they did have "user supplied content" (I remember some really cool trumpet tutorials on there) -- that market may not have been mature yet (as far as users having the content and bandwidth) as it has with youtube, etc

[blue2blue]

Agreed.

 

Actually, I think where Mp3.com really cut some new ground was in social networking.

 

Many of the popular features of MySpace were actually pioneered on Mp3.com: user re-designable pages (no CSS, though, and some serious limitations), a "privacy layer" that allowed communication between artists and fans and other artists without exposing email addies, the ability to post one's music (of course) and (to a limited extent) photos, a lively and mostly heavily frequented BB system. (M/S has a lively BB but it is the WORST BB infrastructure I have ever seen in my life, no lie.)

 

 

When M/S added artist accounts, I started noticing the similarities. (And now Soundclick has added many of the same features -- and done it with FAR better programming, by and large.)

[philbo]

This sounds like those 'great ideas' that make it through legislatures from time to time.

 

Stuff like passing a law that declares pi equal to 3 to keep the math simpler.

Or outlawing pointing at fat people.

As these lawyers, products of our fine public education system, multiply in numbers, so does their folly and desperation.

 

It's always amusing to watch....

[the-good-way]

 

As these lawyers, products of our fine public education system, multiply in numbers, so does their folly and desperation.

 

 

 

It sounds like it may, largely, be the marketing team -- I mean hey, to write a C&D you don't have to be a lawyer

A lot of the folly and despertation are people getting themselves in messes by not consulting or flat out ignoring counsel or try to play a dicey "inside line" legal strategy to make their bones -- then counsel gets a bad rep

b/c cleaning up the mess falls on them

 

it's kind of like the old manager in a hot air balloon joke