• Voytrekk@sopuli.xyz
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    9 days ago

    “System and method for storing broadcast content in a cloud-based computing environment”

    What a bullshit patent. Twitch and other streaming services have been doing this for longer than this patent have existed most likely.

          • Nastybutler@lemmy.world
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            9 days ago

            Pied Piper was threatened with a lawsuit by a patent/IP troll. When Richard went to talk to him during his “everything can be solved by just talking it out” phase he learned the guy was also the owner of music copyright for an old song that he used to threaten musicians.

            His solution was to find an older example of that song (using their software) and threaten the guy with losing his copyright on the song that was his main moneymaker.

            So in this one case talking it out face to face did pay off. Unlike talking to Ed Chen

            • SpaceNoodle@lemmy.world
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              9 days ago

              Thanks, I remember now!

              Yes, that show is notably fiction, though so firmly rooted in the reality of Silicon Valley that it was at times almost painful to watch while working and living there. Also everyone started calling me Gilfoyle.

      • ☂️-@lemmy.ml
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        8 days ago

        the rothschilds can stand as scum of the earth on their own, without patent trolling once.

    • forrgott@lemmy.zip
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      9 days ago

      Yeah, the fact such a nonspecific patent was granted in the first place shows pretty clearly there’s something wrong with the system!

  • DaddleDew@lemmy.world
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    9 days ago

    I wish the damages they had to pay were enough to bankrupt them. “Companies” that do this sort of stuff are purely parasitical in nature should be taken down.

    I’d even argue that when it is blatant like that law practicing licences should be revoked and the higher management of the company jailed for attempted extortion.

  • mindbleach@sh.itjust.works
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    9 days ago

    Fuck software patents. You don’t have to make anything - it’s not a specific mechanism - it’s just claiming an idea.

    With real patents, tiny workarounds are treated as completely different. Nintendo’s sturdy and reliable d-pads from the Game & Watch through the N64 used a hollow cross pivoting atop a dome. Some years later, Sega put the dome on the cross and had it pivot on a divot.

    That sort of silly bullshit distinction is endemic to mechanical design patents. But I only know one case where it happened in software patents, and it’s why image and video codecs are such a clusterfuck. IBM patented arithmetic coding - assigning short codes to frequent values. JPEG and ZIP software had to dance around this for decades, by using Huffman coding, which does the same god damn thing, but slightly worse. When the patent finally expired and ultranerds were free to improve on arithmetic coding, Google tried doing the same bullshit with their improvements, which is part of why JPEG XL went nowhere.

    And that’s for hard math! I had to sit and think about describing what arithmetic coding even does, instead of instinctively explaining how to balance binary trees. Namco infamously patented the idea of minigames during load screens. Any minigame! And then they used it, like, once. Warner patented the idea of hyping any NPC that beats you, so you won’t be allowed to do that until 2033. Nintendo’s trying to patent the parts of Pokemon they copied off Megami Tensei.

    Imagine if Nintendo had patented sidescrollers. How many games would not exist, if they decided to own that concept? No iteration, no competition, just a handful of Marios and the worst Zelda. The very first third-party example would be Braid. A whole genre, wiped out, because a piece of paper says going left to right is theft.

    • GreyEyedGhost@piefed.ca
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      9 days ago

      I’m willing to accept the idea of software patents, provided they follow the premise of “novel to an expert in the field”. So if you walk up to a software engineer, ask them how to do something, and they cobble together something that more or less performs the desired task in a similar manner, then the patent is rejected.

      I figure 10 or 20 software patents would have made it past this kind of test. Rounded corners on rectangles? No. Gif compression algorithm? No. But maybe there are 10 or 20 truly novel ideas that were patented.

    • Chakravanti@monero.town
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      9 days ago

      Force FOSS or your brain will literally be physicallyeaten” by Matrix parasites.

      You think I’m exaggerating a movie reference. I’m not. That will be your literal future if the planet don’t go Dune-Firefly.

      Just Sayan. Take your pick. If you don’t stop raping girls with patents, Check out and Sniff my Snow Crash “Patent.”

  • Luminous5481 [they/them]@anarchist.nexus
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    9 days ago

    Pocket change when it comes to Valve

    Pocket change when it comes to a Rothschild as well. This isn’t going to discourage them, that family is the dictionary definition of old money.

    • deliriousdreams@fedia.io
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      9 days ago

      Apparently it’s not the Rothschild family but an independent patent troll based in NY?

      I’m genuinely asking because someone else in another thread claimed they were of no relation and I can’t seem to confirm that.

    • Saledovil@sh.itjust.works
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      9 days ago

      Even if it’s actually the Rothschilds we’re talking about, that doesn’t mean these guys are from one of the branches of the family where the money is. The Rothschilds got rich in the 18th century, so that’s quite some time for wealth and influence to wane.

  • Blackmist@feddit.uk
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    8 days ago

    I don’t have a massive amount of love for Valve (I like physical copies of my games, damn you), but patent trolls can go fuck themselves with a rusty pickaxe.

    Especially over a patent as nebulous as this:

    “System and method for storing broadcast content in a cloud-based computing environment”

    Motherfucker, that’s called a “file”.

    • trash@leminal.space
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      8 days ago

      I whole heartedly agree, but I have a bit of love for Vavle because of the work they have put in regarding gaming on Linux.

    • MIDItheKID@lemmy.world
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      8 days ago

      That literally covers all streaming platforms. Go after Netflix lol good luck. Also YouTube? Also basically the fucking internet? Like what the fuck?

    • fonix232@fedia.io
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      9 days ago

      80% of patent work is coming up with ideas and filing them. The remaining 20% is ensuring there’s no prior art, prior patents, etc.

      Besides, patent trolling is not completely negative. The silver lining is that the same system that allows this, also allows e.g. Sony to perpeetum own the patent for interactive TV ads that require the user to yell a word at the TV to ensure they’re watching the ad. Sony owns the patent but never implemented it, nor did they license it to others.

      Now imagine what would happen if you had to implement your patent into a commercial product or lose the rights to it…

      • Luminous5481 [they/them]@anarchist.nexus
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        9 days ago

        Besides, patent trolling is not completely negative.

        The very idea of intellectual property is ludicrous and absurd. The concept of owning ideas is one of the most ridiculous notions that capitalism ever came up with. There are absolutely zero positive benefits to society when it comes to patents. They are the very reason people can’t afford lifesaving medicines and farmers can’t replant their own seeds. Anyone who owns a patent is a leech and should be hanged by the neck until dead.

        • FauxLiving@lemmy.world
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          9 days ago

          This.

          Even the original argument, that patents exists to reward inventors with a period of time where they have the sole ability to sell their product, is gone. Now patents are simply owned by the company or university and rarely the inventor or scientist, they’re allowed to be renewed over and over so that they are effectively eternal.

          It’s a shit system designed to encourage rent seeking behaviors without the risk and cost of having to invent new things.

        • Brosplosion@lemmy.zip
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          8 days ago

          Patents give an incentive to actually do the R&D for new products and projects? How would you feel if you spent millions of dollars and 15yrs designing a product and then some random dude just buys one, reverse engineers it and undercuts you? It basically disincentivizes anyone from doing any innovation since the game theory would be to just wait for someone else to do it and then take it for your own.

          • Luminous5481 [they/them]@anarchist.nexus
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            8 days ago

            Patents give an incentive to actually do the R&D for new products and projects?

            when Sir Frederick Banting invented insulin, he patented it not for greed, but to protect it from the patent system. he famously said, ‘‘Insulin does not belong to me, it belongs to the world.’’

            a hundred years since then, and corporations have patented new forms of insulin that slightly changed the original formula. they sue anyone who tries to make generic insulin, in order to prevent competition. the EXACT FUCKING THING BANTING TRIED TO PREVENT. the patent system is a weapon that has literally taken untold thousands of lives just from that one example.

            patents don’t incentivize shit, and you’re just the latest person without critical thinking skills to fall for that capitalist bullshit propaganda. the patent system exists for one reason, and that’s to monetize ideas so that corporations can choose who gets to improve the world based on who has the biggest wallet.

            • Brosplosion@lemmy.zip
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              8 days ago

              The fact that you consider it so black and white tells me you aren’t thinking critically. Yes, the patent system can and has been abused over its long life. Literally every legal system has and will be. That’s how it goes. The struggle is how to come up with a system that minimizes the loopholes while not entirely crippling the things they are intended to protect.

              Without some protections on human creations you end up with a war of who can steal the most ideas vice who can make the new best thing. You end up putting resources toward protecting your ideas and keeping them entirely secret, which arguably is worse than a public patent everyone can review and be inspired by.

              I’m not arguing that they have no downsides, I’m arguing that the position of “it’s all bad, get rid of it” is reductive, at best.

              • Luminous5481 [they/them]@anarchist.nexus
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                8 days ago

                The struggle is how to come up with a system that minimizes the loopholes while not entirely crippling the things they are intended to protect.

                the “things they are intended to protect” is profits for the rich.

                The fact that you consider it so black and white

                it is black and white. the patent system is a capitalist invention with no benefit to society.

                Without some protections on human creations you end up with a war of who can steal the most ideas

                you can’t “steal” ideas any more than you can copyright them. you think that just because you signed some piece of paper, that nobody else can come along and do it anyway? as a pirate who “steals” all media and video games they consume, let me be the first to tell you that you are out of your mind. the only thing enforcing patents is the monopoly the government has on violence. the same government whose police force started as slave catchers. the same government that refuses to charge the rich and powerful from the Trump-Epstein list. patents exist to protect the profits of the rich and powerful, they do not exist to protect you.

                You end up putting resources toward protecting your ideas and keeping them entirely secret

                the patent system is no different than that. “your” ideas might not be secret, but nobody else can legally make use of them. there’s no practical difference. either way, the benefits those idea bring are restricted to the few people with enough money to purchase access to them.

                I’m not arguing that they have no downsides, I’m arguing that the position of “it’s all bad, get rid of it” is reductive, at best.

                that’s because you either don’t understand the basics of capitalism, or you defend it because it’s the only chains you’ve ever known. or you’re rich and pretending you’re not.

                whatever the case, anyone who has a patent is a leech on society, and all patent holders should be hanged by the neck until dead. when we said “eat the rich”, what we mean is kill them all. sorry if that bit confused you.

  • TheSeveralJourneysOfReemus@lemmy.world
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    8 days ago

    For those unfamiliar, Rothschild has a lot of patents and has a habit of going after various companies to try and get money out of them. They even tried to sue GNOME, as just one appropriate example here

    I am fine with them getting valved out of these criminal tactics you know.