Quote:
Originally posted by quiet
for the adult internet business, it all boils down to the homegrown lawsuit. doesn't matter how many secret deals may or may not have been done with acacia by certain companies.
we need to see their patents invalidated in this lawsuit. i think it can be done.
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I don't see how there could possibly be any other outcome as long as the patents are challenged. Their claims are so broad and ridiculous that they are bound to collapse under scrutiny. I think Acacia is simply flinging as much crap at the wall as they can think of and praying for something to stick.
All data on the internet is made up of the same bits and bytes, You could easily write a program to read any random data, say a zip file or a Word document, and display it as video the same way a Winamp visualization plugin does for an MP3. Also, until the data is decompressed by some form of viewer, it is nothing. You can't prove a given file is an audio or video file until you play it. Data is not inherently a video or audio stream, it has to be interpreted as such by software on the receiving end. Data lines are just another method of transfer. If your surfer right-clicks and downloads a file, he is not streaming video. He is storing data for later use by a viewing program. The same goes for zipping up a video file. Now, is that data still a video? If you open a zip file in Realplayer, it won't work. What if you put the video on a disk and mail it to a customer? That has the same effect as a right-click save does. The video is not viewed in transit, it simply sent from one location to another for use at another time.
The patents are a joke. The problem is that every little lawsuit they win will be more precedent on their side. That's why we need strong and organized opposition to Acacia's blackmail.
SpaceAce