Google Dispute with Belgian Press Partly Settled with Technology
A long-standing dispute between Google and the Belgian Association of Newspaper Editors (Copiepresse) over Google's right to store archives of Belgian papers' content appears to have either subsided or been settled today, after publishers finally took Google's suggestions and embedded a tag in their pages that prevents archiving.
Perhaps for several years, Google's corporate Web site gave instructions to publishers about how to include tags in their pages instructing Google's crawlers not to archive their content. A Web site in a foreign country - for which, under Belgian law, Google qualifies - is prohibited from making archived copies of newspaper content without a valid license.
Analysis: The Supreme Court Rulings and Their Impact on Software
Last Monday, the US Supreme Court issued two landmark rulings, whose importance lay in the legal foundation of their final judgments. On the surface, the justices ruled that exported installation files are exempt from US patent law protection, and that it's okay for someone to make and market a better gas pedal.
But the foundation of the AT&T v. Microsoft ruling was that abstract renderings of software, such as source code, don't count as the software itself - thus, you can't patent source code. (You can copyright it, but that's another matter.) And in the equally important KSR v. Teleflex ruling, if someone sees an obvious way to improve a patented device, it can't be considered patent infringement if he markets that improvement. Thus conceivably, software that improves the operating efficiency of some other patented software - for example, a third-party filter for a codec - can't be considered an infringement of the patent holder's rights.
US Internet Radio Providers Forced to Restrict Streams to US Listeners
Forced to comply with US federal statutes on providing music to foreign listeners without a license, Pandora and other American streaming Internet radio services began actively enforcing restrictions on streaming to IP addresses outside US boundaries this morning.
As a result, Pandora listeners in Canada and elsewhere began receiving apology notices instead of music, including a description of efforts Pandora and others are making to secure international performance rights - a topic to which countries elsewhere have apparently not assigned a very high priority.
Judge Upholds $1.53 Billion Patent Verdict Against Microsoft
Microsoft's hopes that Monday's historic pair of US Supreme Court rulings - including a Microsoft victory over AT&T - would lead to a revisiting of a $1.53 billion ruling against it in favor of Alcatel-Lucent, were dashed yesterday afternoon. US District Court Judge Rudi Brewster upheld the jury verdict from last February, as a penalty to Microsoft for having acquired its license to use MP3 technology in its Windows Media Player from the wrong supplier.
Microsoft was one of multiple companies, including Apple, that were sued by Alcatel (Alcatel-Lucent's predecessor) for using what it claims to be its technology without a license. Lucent's own predecessor, AT&T Bell Laboratories, was the co-creator of MP3 along with Fraunhofer Labs, which may have contributed technologies to the 1992 collaboration that dated back to 1987.
Internet Radio Back Royalties Postponed
An attorney representing Internet radio interests reports that the due date for 2006 performance royalties has officially been moved back to July 15 from May 15, due to a technicality created by an alteration in the ruling of the US Copyright Royalty Board.
That alteration, which rolls back the rate of 2006 back royalty fees to become more commensurate with what satellite radio pays to the SoundExchange organization for performance royalties, apparently gives streaming music providers a 45-day window from yesterday to file a formal appeal, according to attorney David Oxenford. Online providers have already indicated their willingness to do so.
Microsoft: Malware Signatures to be Rolled Into Online Updates
At a conference for its business customers in Los Angeles this morning, Microsoft Senior Vice President for Server and Tools Bob Muglia revealed that, as part of the company's upgrade of Systems Management Server to become "Systems Center Configuration Manager," the company will begin deploying malware signatures - perhaps on an as-discovered basis - as part of its online updates and patches sent to Windows Server customers.
The revelation came as the company unveiled two new product lines: Forefront for enterprise-oriented security tools, and System Center, which will not only envelop the old SMS but also Microsoft Operations Manager as well. MOM, as she was affectionately known, will now be called System Center Operations Manager; and through this common console, as product manager Kuleen Bharadwaj demonstrated, administrators will be able to poll Microsoft's network for Forefront support as often as policy may dictate, not just for patches but also for virus, adware, and other malware signatures as well.
AACS LA Versus Digg, Google in DMCA Showdown Over Leaked Key
Beginning two weeks ago, attorneys for the licensing authority for the Advanced Access Copy System used in both Blu-ray and HD DVD issued letters to multiple Web sites and services, including search engines, demanding they remove direct references to a 32-hexadecimal digit code they claim is a processing key that could be used to circumvent DRM protection in HD DVD discs.
"It is our understanding that you are providing to the public the above-identified tools and services at the above referenced URL," reads one letter sent by AACS LA's attorneys to a representative of Google, "and are thereby providing and offering to the public a technology, product, service, device, component, or part thereof that is primarily designed, produced, or marketed for the purpose of circumventing the technological protection measures afforded by AACS (hereafter, the "circumvention offering"). Doing so constitutes a violation of the anti-circumvention provisions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act."
Can Yahoo + Right Media Lead to a Viable Web Business Model?
The problem with making the Web work the way publishers want it to is establishing a business model for it. Everything that drives users to the Web thus far has been free, even though that's not always how those users perceive it - they're paying someone for what they read or download, they're just not paying the publishers.
Sites like YouTube and MySpace and even Slashdot have proven how it's indeed possible to generate a veritable storm of traffic around the simple notion of sharing pictures or conversation. But there hasn't been a service model attached to these sites' publishers; any revenue they receive is generally for ancillary services, such as promoting a producer's films or selling a portion of space along the side of the page for advertising.
Google Pleads DMCA Defense in Viacom Dispute over YouTube
In its response filed Monday to a complaint against it by Viacom in New York District court, claiming its YouTube division is guilty of copyright infringement against Viacom properties, Google formally invoked the terms of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, effectively claiming it's exempt from responsibility for the content shared over YouTube because it doesn't know what that content is.
While YouTube and its new parent, Google, have been taken to task in the past by former prospective content partners for not having adopted controls against IP infringement quickly enough, it could be the lack of such controls which is providing Google with its defense against Viacom: a "safe harbor" against liability by virtue of lack of control.
Ozzie: Silverlight Supports AJAX...To a Point
The question of how much support Microsoft intends to give JavaScript as a Web development language became murkier yesterday, perhaps inadvertently, when a statement made by the company's chief software architect, Ray Ozzie, was cited out of context by press sources. The citation by itself made it appear that Silverlight, Microsoft's new cross-platform runtime environment for Web applications, would at some point be competing with AJAX as though that technology were exclusively Google's.
The comment in question is as follows: "We're announcing today that we're bringing .NET technology together with Silverlight, and that Silverlight is being transformed into an amazingly powerful cross-platform extension to our entire .NET development and design environment, specifically factored to run in a browser. The Web over the last years has been mostly about AJAX, about increasing the richness of the user experience through the magic of DHTML, and clever browser hackery. But AJAX development has its limitations, and certainly there are better languages than JavaScript to use for many of the sophisticated apps that developers want to build. In this respect, Silverlight changes the game by giving you a new choice for developing incredibly sophisticated, rich Internet applications in the language of your choice."
Michael Dell: Evolving Past the Direct Sales Model
In a memo to his employees leaked to the press like a sieve from multiple sources over the weekend, Dell Computer CEO Michael Dell advised his employees that in the company's coming reorganization, quite a few possibilities are on the table, including a move beyond the direct sales model he himself devised and championed.
"The Direct Model has been a revolution, but it is not a religion," Mr. Dell writes. "We will continue to improve our business model, and go beyond it, to give our customers what they need. We will simplify our organization to make it easier to hear customers and respond to them."
Silverlight Extends .NET Platform to Web Applications
FROM MIX 07 The next round of relatively stable betas for Microsoft's Silverlight Web graphics platform were released today, along with the first of its alphas of a less stable version that tests the graphics-building capabilities of the Visual Studio "Orcas" and Expression Studio betas. This as Microsoft's MIX '07 conference in Las Vegas got under way full steam.
What hasn't been clear in recent explanations of Silverlight technology is the extent to which it's dependent upon the .NET Framework. Depending upon whom we've asked, Silverlight 1) doesn't require the .NET Framework, 2) does require it, or 3) is .NET in another form. As Microsoft product management director Forest Key stated this morning, "Silverlight is a factored version of .NET that is optimized for the Web and simple deployment." Just exactly what a "factored version" is, we're not entirely sure.
SoundExchange: Is Microsoft Backing Internet Radio in Royalties Fight?
Characterizing the estimated $50 million-plus that Internet streaming music providers would not pay in royalties as "a windfall to mega-corporate webcasters," the SoundExchange performance royalties collection firm, in a statement issued late last week, argued that the Inslee-Mazullo bill currently before the US House of Representatives would force performance artists into a position where they would actually owe the services that play their music.
"If passed, the bill would also result in a windfall of more than $50 million to mega-corporate webcasters like Clear Channel and Microsoft at the expense of recording artists across the country," the SoundExchange statement reads. "Because the bill is retroactive, artists would have to write checks to cover refunds to corporations whose CEOs and top executives are paid millions of dollars per year."
Microsoft Wins in Supreme Court; AT&T Ruling Overturned
In a stunning 7-1 decision with extremely broad implications in the field of patents and patentability, the US Supreme Court has overturned a Federal Circuit ruling that was in favor of AT&T, and has apparently affirmed Microsoft's arguments that software coupled with the device on which the software is installed cannot be considered patentable.
Depending on the language of the ruling - which has not yet been released - some of the bedrock principles upon which countless US software patents have already been issued, may now come under question. And in one of the great ironies of our time and industry, Microsoft may have just won the single most important victory to date on behalf of open source advocates.
Yahoo Acquires the Rest of Right Media in Google Catch-up Play
If anyone remembers the old "Max Headroom" television series produced about twenty minutes back in the past, one of its frequent send-ups was a parody of the securities market, in which equity shares were replaced with TV advertising slots. In this semi-sci-fi world, the world's economy rested on the ratings of their countries' leading networks. When a show did well, trading in ad shares for its network rose, and everyone prospered...including those guys living in the streets warming their hands over burning oil barrels and watching sitcoms.
Fast-forward twenty minutes and reality suddenly doesn't appear all that different. This morning, Yahoo - the modern equivalent of the come-from-behind "Network 23" - purchased the outstanding 80% share of an advertising placement service called Right Media, for $680 million. Right Media's business is to present ad buyers with a real-time pool of available inventory, looking for Web sites that are hot right this minute and enabling them to purchase space and time on those sites before their needles start swinging the other way.
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