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With GE Vice Chairman Bob Wright claiming that internet piracy is putting America’s “overall economic health at risk,” and NBC/Universal general counsel Rick Cotton saying, “…intellectual property crime runs to hundreds of billions [of dollars] a year,” the shrillness of the anti-sharing camp is now almost beyond the range of human hearing. (However, you can still read Cotton’s position in PDF form.)
But AT&T is listening. James W. Cicconi, an AT&T senior vice president, announced this week that the the nation’s largest telephone and Internet service provider would broaden its policing of customers from allegedly cooperating with a domestic spying program to include development of “anti-piracy technology that would target the most frequent offenders.”
Will customers revolt? Probably not.
From the LA Times:
AT&T’s decision surprised Gigi B. Sohn, president of Public Knowledge, a digital rights advocacy group.
“AT&T is going to act like the copyright police, and that is going to make customers angry,” she said. “The good news for AT&T is that there’s so little competition that where else are the customers going to go?”
Also, AT&T will soon enable you to see a roller-skating dog on your phone, so why worry about all this stuff? It’s all good.
Relax.
Microsoft’s deal with Linspire inspired (Or should I say “linspired?” No. No, I shouldn’t.) a lot of coverage this week which reverberated in an echo chamber of questions, guesses and speculation. But not all of it was noise.
Here is a grand buffet of some of the most illuminating analysis and reportage of the week.
Patent threats bad for Microsoft business - Red Hat
By Alastair Otter
18 June, 2007Microsoft going around threatening customers with patent litigation does not make good business sense. This is according to Red Hat’s Middle East and Africa channel sales manager, David Postel, who was speaking in Johannesburg last week.
Postel said that Red Hat customers do not have to worry about the threat of patent litigation because not only was it unlikely that this would happen, but the company also provides protection for customers against the possibility. He said that customers were protected at two levels.
“In the first instance Red Hat will repair or replace any software found to infringe patents. And Red Hat will also pay to defend any customer that does have to face ligitation,” said Postel.
Ubuntu, Red Hat reject Microsoft patent deal
By Martin LaMonica and Richard Thurston, CNET News.com
Red Hat Remains Unmoved
“Red Hat said there would be no such deal. Referring to previous statements distancing itself from Microsoft, the company insisted: “Red Hat’s standpoint has not changed.”
“The company referenced a statement written when Microsoft revealed it was partnering with Novell, saying that its position remained unaltered. Red Hat director of corporate communications Leigh Day added: “We continue to believe that open source and the innovation it represents should not be subject to an unsubstantiated tax that lacks transparency.”
Many open-source followers argue that Red Hat, as the largest Linux vendor, would have a lot to lose from partnering with Microsoft.
Microsoft’s Linux patent threats dismissed as baseless
By John Fontana
“The reality is that they are not going to sue a single customer,” says Jim Zemlin, executive director of the Linux Foundation. “It would not be in their business interest. Microsoft is not going to sue their customers.”
But Zemlin says the contracts are hurting Linux “only in the fact that Microsoft uses them to create a perception of risk that in reality is not there.”
Microsoft Freshman Course: How To Monetize Patents
Posted by Charles Babcock
Yes, this activity can be interpreted as support for Microsoft’s patents, but please note as well that money is changing hands, $440 million in the case of the Novell pact. Microsoft will spend that amount in give-aways of support for Novell’s SUSE and spend that on other aspects of the deal. It’s a boon for Novell at a time when its business plan is limping.
For Microsoft, doing so strengthens a weak competitor, which helps it fend off future antitrust accusations, while theoretically weakening a strong one, Red Hat.
Interview conducted by Robert Krátký 11 June 2007 for ABCLinux, a Czech site
Q: What is your take on the Novell - Microsoft deal? Should Red Hat be a party to such agreement sometime in the future, what would that mean for you?
A: Personally I think it’s a bad idea and that Novell are going to get stung by the GPLv3, and rightfully so. The license is designed to keep the software free, if it fails to do this then it needs fixing, so GPLv3 hopefully will fix this flaw.
If Red Hat did deals with Microsoft I’d hope they would find a better way to do things, to co-operate on things that help end users but not to compromise the freedom of the code or play any funny games.
Q: Do you share some people’s fear of Microsoft’s threats (concerning patents and intellectual property)?
A: I don’t think they are the biggest danger. As Microsoft has been finding out recently it is the patent trolls, and organisations with buried patents in interesting areas that are the biggest threat in the USA. The real answer to that problem however is to pull the USA back into line with the majority of the world which simply does not recognize patents on software but respects them as literary works subject to copyright law. Also therefore we have to make sure the continuing US attempts to spread bogus patent law into the EU are defeated.
A narrative is forming around Microsoft’s patent FUD campaign, and it’s not a paean to their business acumen, nor an ode to their brinksmanship. The real story is more of a folktale-in-progress that turns on a simple dramatic question: What is Red Hat going to do?
FOSS activists like these at BinaryFreedom.info see Red Hat as an “important domino” and say,
Don’t let Red Hat fold! | binaryFreedom.INFO
We have seen Microsoft’s FUD cause our comrades to pay for patents and intellectual property that doesn’t exist and if Red Hat caves in, many more will follow. Let’s rally our support behind Red Hat to make sure it doesn’t happen! […] Let’s make sure that everybody at Red Hat knows they have the FULL backing of our community if they stand up to Microsoft’s FUD and they have NO backing from us if they don’t.
You can almost hear the Disney witch-cackles and see the wicked rubbing together of hands as this insight developed into a strategy.
Given the eroding credibility of the DOJ these days, it’s hard to tell whether this should instill as much confidence in Micro$oft as it seems to.
Microsoft Finds Legal Defender in Justice Dept. - New York Times
In a brazen attempt to undermine Microsoft’s recent patent infringement sabre-rattling (and perhaps to call attention to an ambitious open source documentary project) a shadowy (compliment) outfit called Digital Tipping Point has started a Sue Me First, Microsoft wiki for open source users to line up for a chorus of bluff-calling.
As of today at 9:45 AM, EDT, the Sue Me First, Microsoft wiki had 906 signatories supposedly just itching for some hot patent litigation
DTP’s Christian Einfeldt says on the wiki “We are asking that people include their name, email address, version of GNU Linux disto(s) being used, and a short statement explaining why you are using that distro.” and adds that although he is a lawyer, he is no way offering legal advice and does not practice patent law.
Some of the comments people are leaving attached to their names are pretty funny.
Digital Tipping Point also has a nice collection of over 400 short films and videos about the free and open source software movement available at the Internet Archive.
There’s a lot happening on the M$ patent front. Here is a quick roundup.
Two from InformationWeek:
Three Scenarios For How Microsoft’s Open Source Threat Could End — Microsoft Takes On Open Source
CEO Of Open-Source Software Vendor SugarCRM Speaks Out
From Computerworld UK:
An interesting spin from the Open Source Industry Austrailia (OSIA)
Microsoft Admits Patent Weakness
Open Source Industry Australia Limited (OSIA) welcomes this week’s admission by Microsoft in magazine articles, including Fortune magazine, that the atents it has identified against open source are liable to be struck out as invalid.
Eben Moglen offers up this tidbit via the Seattle Post Intelligencer.
Free Software lawyer discusses Microsoft patent claims
Eben Moglen, legal counsel to the Free Software Foundation, discussed the details of the draft General Public License Version 3 — including its defenses against the Microsoft-Novell deal —
And Groklaw, of course, is all over it.
Moglen: SUSE Vouchers Have No Expiration Date! (Unlike MS’s Patent Bullying)
Moglens slides and notes regrading Suse Vouchers.
This story is evolving quickly. Check back for updates as the patent war escalates or unravels, whichever happens first.
From InformationWeek:
“It’s certainly a lot more likely that Microsoft violates patents than Linux does,” said Torvalds, holder of the Linux trademark. If the source code for Windows could be subjected to the same critical review that Linux has been, Microsoft would find itself in violation of patents held by other companies, said Torvalds.
Geesh. Maybe he shouldn’t be such a shrinking violet.
For those who pay attention to software patent issues, Microsoft’s recent grousing that free software violates at least 235 of its (as yet unnamed) patents doesn’t amount to much more than an absurd attempt to scare users away from demonstrably better competition.
Sophisticated software makers and patent attorneys know better and eagerly await the day when Microsoft is forced to put up or shut up. Until then, the sabre rattling (and resulting eye-rolling) is expected to continue and increase in intensity throughout the summer.
As untennable as it seems, exploiting a ‘better safe than sued’ attitude has become the strategy of choice for self-styled protectors of so-called Intellectual Property. It’s interesting to see how suing your customers (or threatening to) has become the new marketing strategy for Microsoft and the Recording industry.
Update: Here’s some timely video of Eben Moglen discussing Microsoft’s “Summer of Fear” at last week’s Red Hat Summit.
Quicktime | Real
Real Stream | Ogg Theora
The death of software patents?
Wikipedia Tries Approval System to Fight Vandalism
More on GPL-compliant patent settlement
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