Slashdot Log In
Alan Cox Files Patent For DRM
Posted by
kdawson
on Mon Jan 15, 2007 07:42 AM
from the counter-troll dept.
from the counter-troll dept.
booooh writes "Alan Cox has filed a patent for DRM (Digital Rights Management). From the filing: 'A rights management system monitors and controls use of a computer program to prevent use that is not in compliance with acceptable terms.' According to the patent pledge of Cox's employer Red Hat, they will not license this technology if the patent is granted. And it can probably be applied to the DRM that is in Vista. This forum has a few more details.
This discussion has been archived.
No new comments can be posted.
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
Full
Abbreviated
Hidden
Loading... please wait.
Illegal iTunes? (Score:5, Funny)
FrostWire (Score:5, Interesting)
Parent
Re:FrostWire (Score:5, Funny)
How obedient of you, you deserve a treat.
*pats domesticated ape on the head*
Aww, isn't he cute?
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Unlike you, I can see the justification for the way folks behave against music since I view the laws as having been bought illegally. The
I'm sorry that the music industry successfully b
Re:FrostWire (Score:4, Insightful)
Is this honestly the best troll you could come up with ? What is wrong with you people - don't you even try anymore ?
Trolls aren't what they used to be. But then again, I guess being made into a twisted parody of nature enslaved to Morgoth by a second rate hobbyist fantasy author and be forced to remember your time as a relatively benign mythological being from Scandinavian folklore all your miserable existence would do that to you, I guess. And the movie trilogy, which makes mockery of both your original and Tolkien-corrupted nature, would certainly not help.
See ? That's a troll. It combines trivia, imflammatory opinions, and a condescending tone with at least some creativity. That's how it's done. "Go fuck yourself, loser"... Bah.
And moderators: The best comments are always, invariably, drawn out as responses to the worst trolls (sometimes the story itself). Slashdot needs quality trolls. A quality troll is one that hits where it hurts, and provokes people to answer in detail with eloquence and passion. It helps hone your own views to the razor's edge as only a worthy foe can. Without them, Slashdot would be nothing more than a bunch of people congratulating each other over their l33tn3s. "Go fuck yourself, loser" is not a good troll, it doesn't mentally challenge even the dimmest-witted steroid-using old boxer. So mod up good trolls, and mod down garbage like the post I answered to.
Slashdot needs (+1, Troll) besides (-1, Troll).
Parent
Trivia? (Score:3, Informative)
You do realize the origin of "trolling" stems from the fishin
Wow! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Wow! (Score:5, Interesting)
Assuming the PTO behaves as it has in the past, this patent will be granted and it will be up to litigation to sort out prior art. It will be up to Alan and Red Hat to pick who they want to attack first. If they pick somebody big, there is a serious danger that they will retaliate against Red Hat. Think about what IBM did to SCO. Every single SCO product has a patent claim infringement case against it.
If Red Hat is smart, they'd work out a deal with a friendly party who is willing to spend the money and litigate against them first. IBM or Novell might be candidates. The idea here would be that the "defendent" would want the courts to reach a common outcome with the plaintiffs and both sides would cooperate insofar as they would force the court to pick between precedents that are favorable to both sides.
Parent
Re:Wow! (Score:5, Insightful)
Or the patent system will work and the patent won't be granted (prior art).
Or the patent system will work and the patent will be granted because it is narrow in scope (only covers a specific type of DRM) which won't hurt DRM in general because no one implements it in the patented way. (If they do, prior art kills the patent)
Parent
Re:Wow! (Score:4, Interesting)
Parent
Re:*All* claims must be meet for patent violation (Score:5, Interesting)
Parent
Re:*All* claims must be meet for patent violation (Score:5, Informative)
You don't have to take my word for it. Read this: [iusmentis.com]
Something infringes a patent if it has all the elements of a claim in the patent, or performs all the steps of a claim. It does not have to match all the claims, a single one will do. However, it is important that it matches all elements in that single claim. Most patent courts take this requirement quite strictly and will not easily ignore an element in a claim unless it is clearly irrelevant. One often-heard argument against ignoring an element is that patent writers are aware of the strict interpretation and so would not put in an element unless necessary. Therefore, an element that is present in the claim must have been deemed necessary and so may not be ignored.
I didn't read this case, but citing slashdot on patent issues is like citing Soviet propaganda to find out about the US Constitution. It is just about the worst place to find reliable information on patents.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Unlike the vast majority of people on slashdot (especially those whining loudest about patents), I actually have real knowledge and experience with them (though I would not hold myself out as a patent expert). I've filed several patents (for my own business and a previous employer) and my wife is a laywer & is admitted to the patent bar. I simply cited the website to end th
Re:*All* claims must be meet for patent violation (Score:5, Interesting)
Yeah, but have any of them actually produced valid, workable DRM software? I get the impression that most of them are invalidated (i.e., "cracked") within days of release. Either that, or like the Sony "rootkit DRM", the DRM was a fiasco that was quickly withdrawn due to its side-effects on customers' equipment.
Cox and RedHat can be making the claim that all previous DRM has been poorly-functioning and/or vaporware, and they're the first ones to have actually implemented it. If so, those who support DRM should support their patent. (Whether software should actually be patentable is an independent issue.)
There's a lot of precedent for patents for inventions that others have attempted. I recently read an interesting history of the invention of the zipper. Many people tried to invent such a mechanism in the 1800s. Their attempts generally worked for a while, but were fragile and required frequent replacement. Finally, someone came up with the zipper that we all know, which both worked and was sturdy enough to last for years in normal clothing. They got a patent on it, despite the fact that many other (poor) zipper mechanisms had already been invented. Theirs was slightly different from all the others, and it actually worked well.
There are many stories like this in the history of technology, with many false starts before someone comes up with a good solution to a problem.
There is another potential problem with this patent, however. It's the way that the US Patent Office now accepts patents without a working model. So it's entirely possible that Cox and RedHat are also patenting vaporware that they can't build. Do we know much about this question?
Parent
Microsoft? (Score:5, Insightful)
Say what? I have just three words for you.
Windows Genuine Advantage.
Parent
Re:Wow! (Score:5, Insightful)
Read the patent application.
It is actually an interesting take on the licensing paradigm. Most licensing programs either start denying you access which leads to loss of data if this happens in the middle of an operation. Alternatively, they kill your program altogether which is again loss of data. Alternatively they check for licensing only when the program starts. In the days of software suspend and 200+ days of uptimes neither one of these is a good idea.
What redhat is patenting is a three pronged approach - OS suspend, component suspend or application suspend when a license violation is encountered. The first one is obvious, the second one and third one are non-obvious until one consideres RedHat aquisition of Jboss. These actually make a lot of sense in a Jboss application.
Overall, I am not surprised that RedHat has no intention of licensing this commercially. If they provide the relevant support, this will give a Jboss based commercial application considerable advantage over BEA and Websphere.
Parent
Hope this works (Score:5, Insightful)
Flamebait?? (Score:5, Insightful)
Read up on TCPA immediately. Consider how much of the design of Vista has been aimed at preventing access to high-quality copies of information protected by DRM. Should the film industry really have been allowed to design an operating system?
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
The threat that "DRM will make your computer useless" is not really relevant. Nothing in TCPA really stipulates that all content must be filtered through DRM or that all content must be encrypted or obfuscated. All pipes between components may be marked trusted or not, and when content marked "
It's not likely to affect Vista (Score:5, Informative)
Re:It's not likely to affect Vista (Score:4, Insightful)
Seems Alan is trying to patent a subpart of DRM which will render it useless if it cannot be used.
Parent
Re:It's not likely to affect Vista (Score:5, Informative)
That said, Microsoft has a whole lot of other patents as well, and some of those are bound to cover code distributed by Red Hat. I just wanted to correct the misconception that holding a patent on something automatically protects your use of that stuff: it doesn't in any way, all it does is give you the right to prevent others from doing that. But it's quite possible you need umpteen other patent licenses yourself to be able to actually do what you describe in your patent application.
Parent
Perfect (Score:3, Insightful)
All Microsoft has to do to get around his patent is make it so that, once DRM breaks your computer, it stays broke. (Until you do something. Like, the infamous "format and reinstall".) (Which, BTW, you can only do once.)
Exactly. It forces DRM to be nasty (unless you licence this patent) and therefore harder to shove down consumers' throats.
Even if Red Hat licenses this patent out for an exorbitant amount of money (which it would have to be, considering DRM really hurts Red Hat's business), it will serve to fund the development of free alternatives to DRM-infested software.
This is good, but with caution (Score:5, Interesting)
But I'm still not that excited. Most on
Re:This is good, but with caution (Score:4, Interesting)
Parent
Pointless waste of money and time (Score:5, Informative)
Not really (Score:5, Interesting)
Parent
Clearly not the Intent (Score:4, Informative)
Far from trolling, this is protection from trolling.
Parent
I would like to ... (Score:2, Funny)
Making DRM-aware applications even more annoying? (Score:5, Interesting)
As patent law, legalese and such is not my area of expertise, I'm out on a limb here, but doesn't this sound like a patent for saving the state of an DRM-aware application before exiting if a DRM-breaking state occurs, thus making legal DRM-aware applications even more annoying to use?
Re:Making DRM-aware applications even more annoyin (Score:5, Interesting)
Parent
Re:Making DRM-aware applications even more annoyin (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
The Irony (Score:4, Insightful)
note to myself (Score:2, Funny)
How is this supposed to work? (Score:2, Redundant)
Re:How is this supposed to work? (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
Re:How is this supposed to work? (Score:5, Interesting)
There are two possibilities how this could go to court:
1. Mr. Cox finds out that for example Microsoft does actually infringe on his patent, and he tries to do an Eolas on them. You can be sure that he would find lawyers who will happily support him for 60 percent of the proceeds on a no win, no fee basis. Mr. Cox would go down in public opinion quite a lot, but he might not care with $100mil in his pocket.
2. Microsoft starts attacking Linux with patent claims, and Mr. Cox's patent is used as part of the "assured mutual destruction" policy that patents are used for. It won't be Mr. Cox paying for the court case.
Parent
probably not... (Score:2, Informative)
That's stupid (in the sense of *really stupid*) (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:That's stupid (in the sense of *really stupid*) (Score:5, Informative)
Are you sure? This does not seem to be a patent for all DRM, but for a system that saves the state of the application when detecting a condition that violates the rules.
What do you mean?
Red Hat is no patent troll. A patent troll is a company whose only business is patenting and suing for infringement. And that isn't a description of Red Hat by a long stretch.
So everyone that don't like the current implementation of the patent system should refrain from patenting things at all? Let's face it, patents exist and don't seem to be going away. As a corporation, refraining from patenting anything would be an invitation to competitors to sue, as you would have almost no defensive capability. Avoiding infringement altogether is about as easy as walking through a minefield, so in case you are sued, you need some defensive measures to fight off the attacker.
A lot of patents cover the same or almost the same thing. It's a feature of the current implementation of patents, and whose patent is valid is left for the courts to decide.
One could suspect that the system is set up only to enrich lawyers, as lawyers in the patent office earn money proportional to the number of granted patent applications. Then their patent lawyer friends earn money when corporations battle it out in court. A different implementation might require the patent office to not issue patents that cover each other, but then the lawyers would not be able to enrich themselves as much.
Parent
Lets publicize it! (Score:2)
Except that, by bringing it to the public limelight, you've just guaranteed that the aforementioned companies will attempt to get the patent thrown out due to section 102 a or b of Title 35 of the US Code (Patents).
Time Travel Patents (Score:4, Funny)
http://uncyclopedia.org/wiki/Time_Travel_Patents [uncyclopedia.org]
Jolyon
Reminds me of a thought (Score:2)
Go ahead, license it! (Score:4, Insightful)
The key is not to make money, it is to drive home the high cost of DRM, making the downside totally obvious to all. Remember, no matter how ridiculous the terms might be, it really won't be any worse than the copyright industry will do all by themselves in a few years. But instead of using the salami-slice method, the all-at-once/in-your-face method forces everyone to confront the issue here and now.
I think the DRM patent is a really nifty strategy, and presented here on Martin Luther King day, no less!
Whatever (Score:4, Insightful)
MS & SCO (Score:3, Insightful)
Cute, but cannot work I think (Score:3, Informative)
Mr. Cox, you are brilliant (Score:5, Insightful)
Note that (3) is what makes DRM systems very dumb. It also follows that the Operating System must get involved in order to so hide the data.
If the Operating System allows a debugger to run AT THE SAME TIME as the "DRM", its attackable. If the OS allows "unsigned" drivers to run, its attackable.
The OS (for example, Vista) will (eventually) not allow unsigned drivers. It must also "kick out" or "suspend" all non-DRM (unsigned) software when DRM content is played.
This behaviour falls into Mr. Coxs patent.
Now, if (Vista) doesn't implement the scheme, it remains vulnerable. So, the problem must be solved another way.
My suggestion then is to ALSO patent (or disallow) by widely publishing the idea that a hypervisor (VM supervisor) can be used for DRM control as well, and can also be used to suspend, terminate or otherwise control applications that could be used to attack DRM software.
Got that? It's now published.
Prior art != invalidation (Score:3, Informative)
The Inventor's Handbook (http://web.mit.edu/invent/h-main.html) describes this and many other relevant points in a manner far more readable than the patent laws.