Techdirt. Stories filed under "kazaa" Easily digestible tech news... http://www.techdirt.com/ en-us Techdirt. Stories filed under "kazaa"http://www.techdirt.com/images/td-88x31.gifhttp://www.techdirt.com/ Mon, 19 Dec 2011 13:53:00 PST Ex-Morpheus & Kazaa Execs Team Up To Become Patent Trolls Mike Masnick http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20111219/02381817122/ex-morpheus-kazaa-execs-team-up-to-become-patent-trolls.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20111219/02381817122/ex-morpheus-kazaa-execs-team-up-to-become-patent-trolls.shtml the two big file sharing apps after Napster was shut down. They were both built on the same basic platform (which came from Kazaa), and at some point the two actually got into a fight, leading Kazaa to shut off Morpheus, and years later there were still some lawsuits going on. However, it appears that two former execs associated with those two file sharing systems have teamed up... to become patent trolls who are now suing Google, Amazon and others for infringement.

Kevin Bermeister is being described in the article linked above as a "founder" of Kazaa, but I'm pretty sure that's not true at all. Bermeister, instead, founded Brilliant Digital Entertainment, which was an attempt to build a questionable business model into Kazaa, which originally looked a lot like adware. Brilliant Digital ended up buying Kazaa much later in the process. He's teamed up with Michael Weiss, who was the CEO of Streamcast, in this patent trolling adventure that they're calling PersonalWeb Technologies (based in -- you guessed it -- East Texas). While some are making it out like it's a big deal that these former "pirates" are now trying to enforce patent claims, it's really not new or surprising. Bermeister has been doing this for a while. In fact, all the way back in 2003, he claimed a patent on identifying files with a hash and threatened to sue every other file sharing company. In 2004, he even sued the RIAA for violating the patent. In 2006 he... sued Weiss' Streamcast for patent infringement. I'm not sure how that lawsuit turned out, but apparently the former adversaries are now on the same side of things.

The folks over at M-CAM have taken a look at the patents that PersonalWeb is now using to sue, and has found them lacking. Turns out that a bunch of them are continuations -- the sneaky trick of patent holders to change an earlier patent application later, such that the eventual patent still has the earlier priority date, even if the invention wasn't really described until much later. This has been used repeatedly in the past by companies to see what others are doing, patent it, and then be able to pretend they came up with it first. The M-CAM analysis is not kind, especially to the examiner who approved some of the patents, Khanh B. Pham. They declare:
After reviewing PersonalWeb's patents, we propose that the USPTO indeed mold a "Pham" award to best commemorate the ultimate, the outrageous, the most horrifically unacceptable patent examination performance of the current patent system.
So there's that.

If you're interested, here are the patents in question:
  • 8,001,096: Computer file system using content‐dependent file identifiers
  • 7,949,662: De‐duplication of data in a data processing system
  • 7,945,544: Similarity‐based access control of data in a data processing system
  • 7,945,539: Distributing and accessing data in a data processing system
  • 7,802,310: Controlling access to data in a data processing system
  • 6,928,442: Enforcement and policing of licensed content using content‐based identifiers
  • 6,415,280: Identifying and requesting data in network using identifiers which are based on contents of data
  • 5,978,791: Data processing system using substantially unique identifiers to identify data items, whereby identical data items have the same identifiers


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]]> the-lessons-of-copyright-and-patents http://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20111219/02381817122 Wed, 4 Aug 2010 07:48:45 PDT Kazaa Returns As Expensive, Crappy DRM'd Music Service Mike Masnick http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100804/00042210485.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100804/00042210485.shtml record labels and music publishers and promised to go straight. That was in 2006. Since then... nothing. Until now, when it launched its new "authorized" music service. You might think that, given the four years between it announcing plans for a legit music service and the actual launch, there would be enough time to actually create something new or compelling. Instead, it appears that it's launching a service that would have been state of the art back in... 2006 when it settled those lawsuits. From Jon Healey's review:
I haven't had much time to explore Kazaa, but my first impression is that the Web-based service is miles behind the competition. It's as if the company locked its technologists in a room four years ago and they've just now emerged, having missed the growth of social networks, the explosion in smartphone usage and the death of music DRM. The service costs $15 a month -- 50% more than Rdio, MOG or Rhapsody -- and doesn't have a mobile app. Instead, it offers unlimited streams and tethered downloads (that is, songs wrapped in electronic locks to deter copying) that can be played only by Kazaa's proprietary plugin for Windows Media Player.

It also has only rudimentary social-media features, most notably the ability to play other users' playlists and to watch a continuously updated list of what other users are playing. And although there are a handful of "editor's picks," there's no preference engine to recommend tracks based on a user's tastes -- a major handicap when it comes to discovering music. Essentially, users are left to search for tracks or artists they already know, or take unguided tours through the library's eight genres.
Seriously. Windows Media Player DRM. Didn't that die out years ago?

Healey also notes the amusing fact that Kazaa's relaunch happened to come the same day that Kazaa's original founders, Janus Friis with Niklas Zennstrom, launched their latest startup, Rdio, which is also an authorized music streaming service. While I've played around with Rdio and find it to be a pretty weak offering -- overall, it sounds miles ahead of the "new" Kazaa. It really does make you wonder what Kazaa has been doing for the past four years.

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]]> good-luck-there... http://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20100804/00042210485 Thu, 16 Aug 2007 23:23:00 PDT Michelle Santangelo Sues Kazaa, AOL And Anyone Else She Can Think Of For Her Getting Sued By The RIAA Mike Masnick http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20070816/164905.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20070816/164905.shtml fight back against a bogus RIAA lawsuit. This was fantastic, as many others simply settled, rather than going through the trouble of fighting the questionable charges (especially in cases where parents were sued for the actions of their kids). A year and a half later, the RIAA finally admitted it didn't have any evidence against Patti Santangelo and dropped the case (and tried to get out of paying her legal fees), but then quickly sued her kids instead. This wasn't a huge surprise. The RIAA had been secretly investigating her kids for some time. However, the response of the kids has been a bit questionable. Patti's son Robert's response included every argument in the book against the RIAA -- including a number of weak ones that could hurt his case more than help it. There are a few strong arguments that can be used against the RIAA. Including a bunch of very weak ones probably doesn't help. Now, Patti's daughter Michelle is taking a similarly broad approach, not in responding to the RIAA, but in blaming everyone she can possibly think of for the fact that she was sued by the RIAA. She's filed lawsuits against Kazaa, AOL and the guy who installed Kazaa on her computer, saying they were all complicit in getting her to share copyrighted content, without warning her of the consequences. This is an incredibly weak argument that hasn't gotten very far in the past. This lawsuit just makes it look like she doesn't want to take responsibility for her own actions.

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]]> questionable-lawsuits http://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20070816/164905