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JCC Patent Troll Sues Podcasters; Could End Podcasting

Discussion in 'Community' started by Narutakikun, Jan 19, 2013.

  1. Narutakikun

    Narutakikun Jedi Knight star 4

    Registered:
    Nov 8, 2012
    A Patent Troll called Personal Audio, LLC, which won $8 million in a lawsuit against Apple regarding a patent on downloadable playlists, is suing popular podcasters Adam Carolla and How Stuff Works, claiming that they own a patent on the idea of podcasting. If they win, they could require podcasters to pay them licensing fees, which would basically put podcasting as we know it out of business:
    http://9to5mac.com/2013/01/10/paten...top-podcaster-adam-carollas-ace-broadcasting/

    Seriously, patent lawsuits are going to absolutely fracking kill innovation in tech - which is pretty close to America's only big remaining innovation-driven industry. This madness needs to stop. I know it's not a big hot-button issue like gun control or gay marriage, but Congress needs to get moving on patent reform right-fracking-now before it gets any more out of hand than it already is.
     
    Seerow likes this.
  2. Rogue_Ten

    Rogue_Ten Chosen One star 7

    Registered:
    Aug 18, 2002
    oh no not adam carolla and how stuff works

    my... innovation... [​IMG]
     
  3. Fire_Ice_Death

    Fire_Ice_Death Force Ghost star 7

    Registered:
    Feb 15, 2001
  4. Juliet316

    Juliet316 Chosen One star 10

    Registered:
    Apr 27, 2005
    Blame Disney. Their the king of copyright and Patents.
     
  5. Rogue_Ten

    Rogue_Ten Chosen One star 7

    Registered:
    Aug 18, 2002
    *innovates*

    *forgets to wipe, thus inadvertently providing job growth in a trickle down effect throughout the day*

    :_|the market... its so beautiful:_|
     
  6. Rogue_Ten

    Rogue_Ten Chosen One star 7

    Registered:
    Aug 18, 2002
    seriously tho nobody better touch my uhh yeah dude or my liberation radio podcast that i havent even listened to yet because its so new

    JOB CREATORS
     
  7. Kiki-Gonn

    Kiki-Gonn Jedi Grand Master star 6

    Registered:
    Feb 26, 2001
    Agreed, Apple could afford to fight that forever and just wait them out. I guess the amount was so small, for them, that they just paid to make it go away. Which is probably part of the problem right there.
     
  8. Stackpole_The_Hobbit

    Stackpole_The_Hobbit Jedi Master star 6

    Registered:
    Jul 31, 2002
    Granted I haven't read the link, but as podcasts have been around, what, ten years? I'm going to go ahead and say they should've jumped on this sooner if they want to actually win anything.
     
  9. Aytee-Aytee

    Aytee-Aytee Jedi Master star 5

    Registered:
    Jul 20, 2008
    What exactly did their king of copyright and Patents do? :p
     
  10. Juliet316

    Juliet316 Chosen One star 10

    Registered:
    Apr 27, 2005
    They are so obsessed with holding onto the Mouse, that they've gone to court and/or lobbied Congress to keep extending the years of copyright after a creator of anything dies. Right now it's at 70 years, and I wouldn't be too surprised if it's been extended again since last I checked.
     
  11. Rogue_Ten

    Rogue_Ten Chosen One star 7

    Registered:
    Aug 18, 2002
    yeah podcasts havent been around 70 years
     
  12. Ender Sai

    Ender Sai Chosen One star 10

    Registered:
    Feb 18, 2001
    Juliet, you made a net-tard's mistake re: their/they're/there. That's Lee's point.

    Rogue, how exactly is this a valid critique of market-based economics? The plaintiff is bringing the suit to argue that it owns the right to digitally distribute spoken word content. There's no way you could argue a concept like this evolved from one person at their company having a lightbulb market and I'd point out most if not all podcasts are free.
     
  13. Rogue_Ten

    Rogue_Ten Chosen One star 7

    Registered:
    Aug 18, 2002
    *WHOOSH*

    criticizing capitalist buzzwords, not market-based economics itself, at the moment. do try to keep up, old friend ;)

    thread thanks for reminding me to listen to my liberation radio podcast and my uhh yeah dude podcast. liberation radio was good and mildly informative and uyd is still the 2 live crew of comedy podcasts
     
  14. jp-30

    jp-30 Manager Emeritus star 10 VIP - Former Mod/RSA

    Registered:
    Dec 14, 2000
    Oh no. How will people ever figure out how to distribute audio files free of charge?
     
  15. Narutakikun

    Narutakikun Jedi Knight star 4

    Registered:
    Nov 8, 2012
    The real problem is neither capitalism nor the idea of patents per se, but the failure of our patent system to adapt to modern realities. The system we have was designed for, and worked fine for, steam engines or automotive windshield wipers. It simply doesn't work well for non-tangible, yet technically complex, things like software design, and the fact that it doesn't, coupled with the fact that the people at the Patent Office generally don't understand code very well, results in the granting of ridiculously overbroad patents, or the patenting of ideas that are really too obvious to warrant a patent.

    This needs to stop. It's going to strangle the one really big new innovation-driven industry this country has managed to create in the last 40 years. That cannot be allowed to happen. Republicans claim to be pro-entrepreneurship and Democrats claim to be pro-technology - well this is both of those things brought together in one neat little package, so let's see all those bozos put their money where their mouths are and do something about this problem.

    As for Apple getting involved, one can hope for the best, but I don't expect much. I still don't know why Google didn't find a way to get involved when Apple and Microsoft started coming after their Android licensees. And where has that ended up? Now that Android is, effectively, neither free as in speech nor free as in beer, the whole point of making it open has been obviated. Which is one way we got to Samsung basically being the only Android phone maker of any significance. Was that the dream?
     
  16. Narutakikun

    Narutakikun Jedi Knight star 4

    Registered:
    Nov 8, 2012
    I don't know. Maybe a way less convenient way than we've got now. Anyhow, what happens in five years when another patent troll comes up with a phony-baloney claim on the new way of doing things? Wherever they smell an easy payday, patent trolls will continue to try to cash in, until someone in the government changes the laws that allow this kind of thing to happen.
     
  17. Rogue_Ten

    Rogue_Ten Chosen One star 7

    Registered:
    Aug 18, 2002
    *whoosh*
     
  18. Rogue_Ten

    Rogue_Ten Chosen One star 7

    Registered:
    Aug 18, 2002
    the answer was "torrents", narutakikun. we were looking for "torrents". would also have accepted "the massive file-sharing infrastructure already extant on the internet"
     
    JoinTheSchwarz and Ender_Sai like this.
  19. Ender Sai

    Ender Sai Chosen One star 10

    Registered:
    Feb 18, 2001
    Also, lol @ US copyright and patent law. Pffft. Most powerful nation on earth? More like... second most. Yeah.
     
  20. Narutakikun

    Narutakikun Jedi Knight star 4

    Registered:
    Nov 8, 2012
    Also, remember that podcasts are free, so they are a net liability for Apple. On songs, Apple gets its 30% cut. On podcasts, they get zip. So any costs they incur supporting them represent a loss.

    Now, that loss was acceptable as a loss leader when Apple was trying to convince people to buy portable audio players from them. Offering the widest possible variety of content to be played on iPods gave people that much more reason to buy one. But now the market has changed; Apple's star portable products are more along the lines of pocket computers, and sales of non-Touch iPods have been slowly but surely heading south for years.

    All of which means that Apple really doesn't have much financial incentive to get involved in this lawsuit. People will buy iPhones, iPads, and Touches whether podcasts exist or not. So incurring legal costs in defending podcasters from a patent troll just adds another cost to what is already an unnecessary expense for them.

    I mean, if Apple cared about podcasts, they Podcasts app they shipped last year wouldn't suck. Or at very least, they would have fixed it as fast as they fixed Maps. The more conspiratorially-minded might even think that Apple intentionally produced a godawful Podcasts app to try to get people to stop listening to them so they could get out of that market and stop losing money on it. I personally wouldn't go that far, but neither am I going to delude myself into thinking that Apple gives a damn whether podcasts go out of business.
     
  21. Narutakikun

    Narutakikun Jedi Knight star 4

    Registered:
    Nov 8, 2012
    Technically you can still get shows that way, but it's way, way more inconvenient than what we have now, and it's that threshold of inconvenience that will destroy podcasts as a medium. Yes, I know that people download music via torrent. But that's a different paradigm - you download an album once, and you're done. It doesn't require keeping up with it weekly, or sometimes even daily. I'm a very heavy podcast listener - I'm subscribed to 68 separate shows. You know how big a pain in the ass it will be to keep going to some shady torrent site somewhere - or worse, to 68 different shows' websites - to download torrents of those shows to listen to? It will make keeping up with them an awful chore, instead of just being able to do it by hitting the "Refresh" button in iTunes.

    Making getting podcasts that much of a chore will basically destroy them. You don't have to make getting them impossible in order to do that - you just have to make it inconvenient enough that most people will give up on it and entertain themselves otherwise instead. Which will destroy the medium as anything viable.
     
  22. Ender Sai

    Ender Sai Chosen One star 10

    Registered:
    Feb 18, 2001
    Erm, what?

    When I had an iPhone 4, I just downloaded Podcasts through the user unfriendly iPod app. Now, with an Android phone, I dl them directly from Smodcast/Sidepodcast/BBC F1 and play them through Poweramp.

    Note: I access them without iTunes.

    I think you're overthinking this?
     
    jp-30 likes this.
  23. Rogue_Ten

    Rogue_Ten Chosen One star 7

    Registered:
    Aug 18, 2002
    well then i guess ur ******

    btw how the hell do you have time for 68 podcasts?
     
  24. Ender Sai

    Ender Sai Chosen One star 10

    Registered:
    Feb 18, 2001
    Yeah I listen to 3 x Formula 1 podcasts - Red Bull Racing's official one; BBC 5 Live Checkered Flag, and Sidepodcast. Plus, Kevin Smith ones: Fatman on Batman; Hollywood Babble-on; Jay & Silent Bob Get Old, and the Secret Stash.

    Occasionally I get D&D ones too, but only if the Penny Arcade guys are on it and don't judge me bro.
     
  25. Rogue_Ten

    Rogue_Ten Chosen One star 7

    Registered:
    Aug 18, 2002
    whoa. i feel silly with with just the two, and one just debuted and is still in trial period who knows if ill keep up with it