One more reason why the patent system is severely abused. Whoever is behind this probably looked specifically for something they can use against BitTorrent in the patent database.
This reminds me why you should never trust politicians when they say about a new bill: "Oh, but the law is not intended to be used like that", but then don't specifically add in the bill how it can and can't be used, and prefer it leave it more generic.
It's something they said about the new streaming bill that can criminalize lone bloggers the put embedded Youtube videos that violate copyright on their sites.
Now I may be missing a crucial bit of information, but I never got it why one wouldn't rather create a company and/or host the web site servers in some country with less ridiculous patent laws... Just move the servers to Sweden, problem solved. Now, I'm not sure what would happen to the U.S. developers that would contribute infringing code, so to make them safe, you would simply need to erase the records of who contributed what, or keep a system of anonymous nicknames...
In short - you violate a patent if you use, sell or offer to sell something that violates the patent.
So if you moved the company abroad (or were a non US entity in the first place) then you're fine, providing you never wanted to sell to US customers.
The issue is that in reality, few companies (wherever they are domiciled) want to exclude themselves from the US market place. Which despite being not that big in terms of people (Europe, China, India, SE Asia are individually all bigger) it is hugely significant in terms of advertising spend, technology adoption, and funding.
This is what I expect will finally bring some sanity to the American system. After the Americans have the door slammed in their face on a few must-have new technologies because they've become an "intellectual property" banana republic, the public might start thinking about demanding some change.
I wouldn't be surprised at all if this "Tranz-Send Broadcasting Network" would turn out to be owned by a number of holding companies eventually leading to MAFIAA. Maybe they just bought a company with a remotely applicable generic patent merely to attack BitTorrent. It would fit in the style and civility of actions they've exhibited in the last decade.
It's so generic, it pretty much describes every protocol out there which streams media on a network:
1) Flash players - check
2) HTTP streaming on ios using m3u8 files - check
..
..
I'm sure Adobe will be happy to hear about this patent as well. It pretty much describes adaptive encoding in media streaming applications... and it is ridiculously generic.
Where in the claims did you see adaptive encoding? It seems to be describing any sort of load balancing of media servers based on network throughput to the client. Do bit-torrent clients do that? Or do they just throttle their own response to a peer based on the p2p throughput? In any case claim 1 is overly broad and is obvious. I hope someone digs up prior art and gets it invalidated.
IANAL, and (especially) IANA[Patent]Lawyer, but, BitTorrent is such a precise design, I imagine all they would have to do is file a patent for the more specific nature of their work, much like how the mp3 format is patented.
Not only that, but it's ironically in your best interest not to even read others' patents lest you be subject to treble damages. So the original purpose of the patent system (trading temporarily monopoly for disclosure) seems almost moot.
Well, BitTorrent as a system still needs to infringe on the patent claims. Nobody says it does yet. In principle, I could make a patent for producing yellow rubber ducks efficiently, and then claim that the BitTorrent code infringes.
While the patent is probably less far off than my yellow-rubber-duck one, the hint of truth is in there: it is highly likely that the protocol is not infringing at all on the patent.
i.e. you just used the term "software" on the internet, if we applied the patent law for software to that, you'd be found guilty of infringing.
what I'd like to see is a community effort by programmers to create an arbitration process that bypasses the court system. Software disputes should be judged by those who actually know the topic, instead of some judge who has to rely on "expert" testimony that get paid by the patent trolls
You could argue that offering a competing product for free is "anti-competitive" behaviour.
Then again, looking at the Wikipedia page for anti-competitive practices, it ironically includes:
"Patent misuse and copyright misuse, such as fraudulently obtaining a patent, copyright, or other form of intellectual property; or using such legal devices to gain advantage in an unrelated market."
It's causing financial losses to the plaintiff because they cannot charge companies for a similar product/service. Basically because Bittorrent is free they cannot charge any money for their own system.
At least that is the reasoning I see behind the financial losses statement.
Where does this "statistic" come from? What is the basis of your accusation? Do your "facts" include the tens of millions of people that use bittorrent technology for legitimate uses? There are dozens of legal torrent sites, software/OS distros, and even World of Warcraft that use the technology legitimately, you know.
1. The decision on whether a piece of technology is legal is not based on its majority use, but on whether there are substantial non-infringing uses. (first Google result, didn't follow link: http://www.justice.gov/criminal/cybercrime/ipmanual/05ipma.h... "Indeed, it need merely be capable of substantial noninfringing uses.")
2. The vast majority of freeway traffic is in excess of the posted speed limit. You don't hear many arguments to shut down the freeways as a result. [Yes, I know proof by analogy is weak.]
How about HTTP traffic? BitTorrent is just a highly effective content distribution system like HTTP. But unlike HTTP, it scales even if the upstream bandwidth of the initial data server is limited. BitTorrent simply gets all the flak for this property.
Facebook uses BitTorrent internally to distribute new versions of their PHP-code to their server park of tens of thousands machines. Because the single server would be upstream-congested if it wanted to push out a change fast.
> I never said ALL and I never equated it to piracy.
No, of course not. You just said nobody was going to care if patents were being infringed because they use torrents for copyright infringement. No, you never said the word "all", but you did ask why this would change anything, which would be quite strange if you were at all considering, say, Blizzard.
Of course, this is before we even start to get in on your apparent conflation of the end users (who would be the ones committing copyright infringement with the software) and the developers (who would be the ones allegedly committing patent infringement).
And, because it's really not worth starting another comment for it: your automatic assumption that downvotes == people trying to silence the opposition and your subsequent goading are really childish. HN is, for the most part, a sane, sensical, and mature community and it reflects poorly on everyone when you make such baseless assumptions. Have you considered reflecting on what your comment adds or detracts from the conversation? I think you'll find that it adds little while the "everyone is so jumpy about it means I'm right" comment is an inane way to curb conversation.
To me, because everyone is so jumpy about it..it means I'm probably correct....just sayin
One of the greatest mistakes one can make, in my opinion, is believing that opposition equals justification. It's the "I know I'm right because they all think I'm wrong" argument that is a favorite of nutjobs everywhere. Don't get me wrong, there are times when a small minority is more right than a large majority, but this is not one of those times.
wow, you guys gave 3 examples. This is an exception, no the rule. My point still stands.
Now things like FTP, google, and the web are also used for piracy, but I'm not going to say that the majority of sites out there are for pirated materials.
Do these outnumber the pirates? I don't really have the figures to even start commenting on that. But I think it's pretty clear that it'll make some difference if the BitTorrent protocol is found to be infringing on some patents.
And game modders distribute their mods using it, since pushing a several GB download to thousands isn't that cheap, and more importantly everyone can download a newly-released torrent right away rather than maxing out the server's bandwidth.
I've noticed software download sites are starting to use torrents, too. That's actually pretty smart of them, because it would save a lot of money with hosting and bandwidth. I'm surprised they didn't do it earlier.
People may be able to distribute copyright violating material on Bittorrent, but the Bittorrent clients themselves are simply downloaded from normal websites. If they are found to be in violation of this patent it would be pretty simple to just send C&D letters to websites distributing the clients, a far easier task than going after individual Bittorent users.
This reminds me why you should never trust politicians when they say about a new bill: "Oh, but the law is not intended to be used like that", but then don't specifically add in the bill how it can and can't be used, and prefer it leave it more generic.
It's something they said about the new streaming bill that can criminalize lone bloggers the put embedded Youtube videos that violate copyright on their sites.