7 ms·

Copyright Industry Madness Takes 6 Years To Catch Up With The Worst Satire Of It

63 points by zoowar 14y ago

blacktulip 14y ago
So if M$ patented this technology, does it mean that other companies can not use this kind of shit to limit their users? If so this would be a good thing.
- Falkvinge 14y ago
  The odd thing here is that the satire description predates the patent monopoly by six years, and may count as prior art.
  - Bud 14y ago
    Please let this happen, so that we may all come to believe more fervently in the goddess of karma.
  - anothermachine 14y ago
    That's ridiculous. Saying "wouldn't it be cool" isn't prior art. Describing a working system is.
    - michaelfeathers 14y ago
      Maybe the law has changed but I heard that a patent for a waterbed was once refused because Robert Heinlein had described one in a novel.
- zalzane 14y ago
  of course not, microsoft would just licence the patent to other parties
finnw 14y ago
Related HN thread: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4762303 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4762303 An early version of the joke email (suggesting they actually took about 11 years): http://lists.sucs.org/pipermail/jokes/2001-November/001176.html http://lists.sucs.org/pipermail/jokes/2001-November/001176.h...
thenomad 14y ago
Hmm. Sounds like great technology - but how exactly are they going to tell that your Kinect is pointing at the same room in which people are watching video, as opposed to, say: 1) A towel draped over the aforementioned Kinect? 2) The wall? 3) The hallway outside the room where the movie is being played? 4) Exactly half of the room, with the people who would bring your movie to an Unauthorised Number Of Viewers sat in the other half?
- zoowar 14y ago
  My dog isn't going to like being called a pirate.
- jentulman 14y ago
  5) Not having a kinect
- knowaveragejoe 14y ago
  They would require you to set up authorized viewer's faces beforehand I imagine. I see this as being years away at best though. They would have to build infrastruture around the movie delivery system for it to work - you'd have to register viewers faces and demand they set up the room correctly(well lit?), and of course, people would have to be cool with paying for that overhead. A competing service could easily continue doing things the way they do today, and thus get more customers, more money, and in turn pay content companies more. If it makes content companies more money, then I don't see them adopting the facial recognition model.
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
DanBC 14y ago
This kind of copyright stuff is not new. People have created view once video tapes that cannot be rewound. People have created limited life DVDs that begin to self-destruct when they come into contact with air. Disney[1] used to oppose video for this very reason - you couldn't tell how many people were watching and so you couldn't charge them each a fee. [1] I used to be able to find references to this. I can't now. There's a bunch of stuff that happened in the 1980s which feels harder to find than it should.
- bediger4000 14y ago
  There's a bunch of stuff that happened in the 1980s which feels harder to find than it should. Amen, brother. For a long time, Ed Greer (http://articles.latimes.com/1989-02-03/news/mn-1871_1_ed-greer http://articles.latimes.com/1989-02-03/news/mn-1871_1_ed-gre...) was not mentioned on the internet. He's finally arrived, and his message is: "Never become too good at something you hate. They'll make you do it the rest of your life." I used to have that article pinned to my bulletin board, but it finally disappeared. No Ed Greer for years. But hey, he's back!
rayiner 14y ago
I get tired of these screeds. If you're so upset by restrictions, etc, stop consuming Big Content. Otherwise admit the basic fact in play: those companies have such a captive audience because everyone wants their content so bad that they can get away with sorts of crap and people will put up with it. Copyright isn't to blame here. You see the same thing in other industries where branding is paramount (think LV bags).
- lucian1900 14y ago
  That means opting out of a large portion of modern culture.
  - aes256 14y ago
    I've often wondered if there ought to be some kind of access to culture defense for copyright infringement. The creators of copyrighted works reap the benefits of their work becoming integral parts of popular culture; their status as culturally significant works afford them a wide range of pecuniary and non-pecuniary benefits. At the same time, there is a negative externality associated with a copyrighted work becoming part of popular culture; insofar as one must stay abreast of developments in popular culture to continue having meaningful discussions with friends, to understand the terminology other people use, and indeed to make their own original contributions to popular culture.
    - magicalist 14y ago
      There definitely is. That's a large part of the essence of fair use -- which allows commentary, parody, and reporting on copyrighted works without any say by the copyright holder, as well as use in education and research (and, with the first sale doctrine, allows libraries to lend books, music and movies to the public for (more or less) free).
      - magicalist 14y ago
        Too late to edit, but it's also the point of having all works eventually enter into the public domain (and a powerful argument for shorter copyright lengths).
anothermachine 14y ago
If only there were a way to obscure the Kinect's ability to measure the room.
dman 14y ago
Time to redecorate if you have a living room with mirrored walls
gojomo 14y ago
Sorry, the industry still hasn't caught up with my 'worst satire' of it from 10 years ago: "DRM Helmets: An Idea Whose Time Has Come" http://www.oreillynet.com/1540.html http://www.oreillynet.com/1540.html I must admit, though, that the Kinect-viewer-surveillance patent is an encouraging step. (Could a future Kinect add a visible-spectrum laser to temporarily blind unauthorized audience members?)
bpatrianakos 14y ago
Sorry but this actually isn't as bad the article wants you to believe. First off, they base the whole thing off a Mashable article which is just a hyperbolic paraphrasing of the patent filing meant to attract eyeballs and enrage those who are blindly and without question ant-copyright no matter what. And this author took the bait. This technology may be used for this purpose but I doubt it will be any time soon. Patent filings are incredibly vague often times and a system that detects how many people are in front of a box doesn't necessarily have to be used to prevent people from watching movies with their friends even if it can. This article just seems like catnip for people who want go off about how dumb the copyright industry is and how much they hate copyright in general. The copyright system may be fucked and it'd be hard to argue otherwise but in this case, in the context of this article let's just take off the tinfoil hats and slow down here.
- robotico 14y ago
  Good comment! Although it seems like it MAY have that application, the facts seem to be conveniently parsed. That being said, after trying to watch some football on the internet today and being told I need a cable subscription, it seems like the more people try to prevent piracy, or in this case just legally not paying subscription fees, the more it pushes people towards it. Or worse yet (for medial companies), people decide that it's not worth the effort or even pirating it, and decide to just do something else, as I did. Sure, some people would be encouraged to buy cable, but some it certainly just hardens their resolve not to pay for the crap they put on TV. I like sports, but I'm not paying for 90% Honey Boo Boo and America's Top Model to watch the 10% football and other worthwhile content that they have on!
  - jackfoxy 14y ago
    Yes! "decide to just do something else" Write software, play a musical instrument, have your kids act out a scene from Shakespeare after dinner. Seriously...unending consumption of entertainment, even when it is infotainment (and maybe that's actually worse) is not beneficial to culture, or to you.
safeaim 14y ago
Here in Norway, the norwegian version of RIAA are trying to get radio playing in rental cars acknowledged as "playing of music in a public space". http://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&js=n&prev=_t&hl=no&ie=UTF-8&layout=2&eotf=1&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.aftenposten.no%2Fdigital%2FRadiolytting-kan-gi-dyrere-leiebil-7032053.html&act=url http://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&...

63 points by zoowar 14y ago

So if M$ patented this technology, does it mean that other companies can not use this kind of shit to limit their users? If so this would be a good thing.

Falkvinge 14y ago
The odd thing here is that the satire description predates the patent monopoly by six years, and may count as prior art.
- Bud 14y ago
  Please let this happen, so that we may all come to believe more fervently in the goddess of karma.
- anothermachine 14y ago
  That's ridiculous. Saying "wouldn't it be cool" isn't prior art. Describing a working system is.
  - michaelfeathers 14y ago
    Maybe the law has changed but I heard that a patent for a waterbed was once refused because Robert Heinlein had described one in a novel.
zalzane 14y ago
of course not, microsoft would just licence the patent to other parties

finnw 14y ago

Related HN thread: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4762303 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4762303 An early version of the joke email (suggesting they actually took about 11 years): http://lists.sucs.org/pipermail/jokes/2001-November/001176.html http://lists.sucs.org/pipermail/jokes/2001-November/001176.h...

thenomad 14y ago

Hmm. Sounds like great technology - but how exactly are they going to tell that your Kinect is pointing at the same room in which people are watching video, as opposed to, say: 1) A towel draped over the aforementioned Kinect? 2) The wall? 3) The hallway outside the room where the movie is being played? 4) Exactly half of the room, with the people who would bring your movie to an Unauthorised Number Of Viewers sat in the other half?

zoowar 14y ago
My dog isn't going to like being called a pirate.
jentulman 14y ago
5) Not having a kinect
knowaveragejoe 14y ago
They would require you to set up authorized viewer's faces beforehand I imagine. I see this as being years away at best though. They would have to build infrastruture around the movie delivery system for it to work - you'd have to register viewers faces and demand they set up the room correctly(well lit?), and of course, people would have to be cool with paying for that overhead. A competing service could easily continue doing things the way they do today, and thus get more customers, more money, and in turn pay content companies more. If it makes content companies more money, then I don't see them adopting the facial recognition model.

deleted 14y ago

[deleted]

DanBC 14y ago

This kind of copyright stuff is not new. People have created view once video tapes that cannot be rewound. People have created limited life DVDs that begin to self-destruct when they come into contact with air. Disney[1] used to oppose video for this very reason - you couldn't tell how many people were watching and so you couldn't charge them each a fee. [1] I used to be able to find references to this. I can't now. There's a bunch of stuff that happened in the 1980s which feels harder to find than it should.

bediger4000 14y ago
There's a bunch of stuff that happened in the 1980s which feels harder to find than it should. Amen, brother. For a long time, Ed Greer (http://articles.latimes.com/1989-02-03/news/mn-1871_1_ed-greer http://articles.latimes.com/1989-02-03/news/mn-1871_1_ed-gre...) was not mentioned on the internet. He's finally arrived, and his message is: "Never become too good at something you hate. They'll make you do it the rest of your life." I used to have that article pinned to my bulletin board, but it finally disappeared. No Ed Greer for years. But hey, he's back!

rayiner 14y ago

I get tired of these screeds. If you're so upset by restrictions, etc, stop consuming Big Content. Otherwise admit the basic fact in play: those companies have such a captive audience because everyone wants their content so bad that they can get away with sorts of crap and people will put up with it. Copyright isn't to blame here. You see the same thing in other industries where branding is paramount (think LV bags).

lucian1900 14y ago
That means opting out of a large portion of modern culture.
- aes256 14y ago
  I've often wondered if there ought to be some kind of access to culture defense for copyright infringement. The creators of copyrighted works reap the benefits of their work becoming integral parts of popular culture; their status as culturally significant works afford them a wide range of pecuniary and non-pecuniary benefits. At the same time, there is a negative externality associated with a copyrighted work becoming part of popular culture; insofar as one must stay abreast of developments in popular culture to continue having meaningful discussions with friends, to understand the terminology other people use, and indeed to make their own original contributions to popular culture.
  - magicalist 14y ago
    There definitely is. That's a large part of the essence of fair use -- which allows commentary, parody, and reporting on copyrighted works without any say by the copyright holder, as well as use in education and research (and, with the first sale doctrine, allows libraries to lend books, music and movies to the public for (more or less) free).
    - magicalist 14y ago
      Too late to edit, but it's also the point of having all works eventually enter into the public domain (and a powerful argument for shorter copyright lengths).

anothermachine 14y ago

If only there were a way to obscure the Kinect's ability to measure the room.

dman 14y ago

Time to redecorate if you have a living room with mirrored walls

gojomo 14y ago

Sorry, the industry still hasn't caught up with my 'worst satire' of it from 10 years ago: "DRM Helmets: An Idea Whose Time Has Come" http://www.oreillynet.com/1540.html http://www.oreillynet.com/1540.html I must admit, though, that the Kinect-viewer-surveillance patent is an encouraging step. (Could a future Kinect add a visible-spectrum laser to temporarily blind unauthorized audience members?)

bpatrianakos 14y ago

Sorry but this actually isn't as bad the article wants you to believe. First off, they base the whole thing off a Mashable article which is just a hyperbolic paraphrasing of the patent filing meant to attract eyeballs and enrage those who are blindly and without question ant-copyright no matter what. And this author took the bait. This technology may be used for this purpose but I doubt it will be any time soon. Patent filings are incredibly vague often times and a system that detects how many people are in front of a box doesn't necessarily have to be used to prevent people from watching movies with their friends even if it can. This article just seems like catnip for people who want go off about how dumb the copyright industry is and how much they hate copyright in general. The copyright system may be fucked and it'd be hard to argue otherwise but in this case, in the context of this article let's just take off the tinfoil hats and slow down here.

robotico 14y ago
Good comment! Although it seems like it MAY have that application, the facts seem to be conveniently parsed. That being said, after trying to watch some football on the internet today and being told I need a cable subscription, it seems like the more people try to prevent piracy, or in this case just legally not paying subscription fees, the more it pushes people towards it. Or worse yet (for medial companies), people decide that it's not worth the effort or even pirating it, and decide to just do something else, as I did. Sure, some people would be encouraged to buy cable, but some it certainly just hardens their resolve not to pay for the crap they put on TV. I like sports, but I'm not paying for 90% Honey Boo Boo and America's Top Model to watch the 10% football and other worthwhile content that they have on!
- jackfoxy 14y ago
  Yes! "decide to just do something else" Write software, play a musical instrument, have your kids act out a scene from Shakespeare after dinner. Seriously...unending consumption of entertainment, even when it is infotainment (and maybe that's actually worse) is not beneficial to culture, or to you.

safeaim 14y ago

Here in Norway, the norwegian version of RIAA are trying to get radio playing in rental cars acknowledged as "playing of music in a public space". http://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&js=n&prev=_t&hl=no&ie=UTF-8&layout=2&eotf=1&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.aftenposten.no%2Fdigital%2FRadiolytting-kan-gi-dyrere-leiebil-7032053.html&act=url http://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&...