FIDDY

I agree with you Amp... both more appropriate and potentially much more lucrative for them... Unfortunately the big boys have limitless legal budget to bury those fuckers.

I think Azathoth is right... they are establishing precedent with small players and working the bugs out before they go after big boys.

Another one of my fans, eh?

I think I'll add a line to my site saying, "Because a company called Acacia is claiming 2% of all income related to video downloads, all members should understand that NONE of the monthly membership fee is for video downloads. If I were to drop video downloads tomorrow, I would not adjust the monthly membership fee $.01. If you don't know what I'm talking about, it doesn't matter. I just needed to put this notice up to establish the fact that none of my income from this site is traceable to video downloads."

I think you're joking Unseen...but I wonder if something like this might have more than a snowball's chance in hell of working..."Join Blah Site and get 50 pics for $39.95 a month, plus ten MILLION video clips absolutely FREE!" :evil-laug

No, not joking. It doesn't mean I'll do it. I'll discuss it with my attorney first. But, if I can prove that people don't join my site for the video anyway, then they'll have a very hard time putting a dollar value on the downloads, and without a dollar value, 2% doesn't mean squat.

My site (http://www.girlsdotcom.com) is a photography site. I doubt if anyone keeps their membership for the video.

moron

Hey,

did anyone here even read the Acacia Research Patent? Or rather the Patent they got when buying USA Video, Inc.? Patent Numer 5,130,792 awarded to USA Video, Inc.

I am no Patent Lawyer, but I hope there is some logic in the laws regarding Patent, so that a Patent can not be stretched for miles. In the Abstract the Patent states: "Due to the compression of the program, the time required for electronically transferring the program to the remote location is much less than the viewing time for such program."

This means, just creating a video with your digicam, compressing it, putting it on an ftp server, and letting people download it is _ONLY_ infrigine that patent if the download speed is faster than the viewing speed. Of course, with the Internet getting faster and faster each day this will more and more be the case, but it is not for every single video and not for every single user, so it can't be so easy for Acacia to prove that all your videos available for download from your sites fall under this patent.

Also, the only reason why this Patent actually might work with normal streaming video sites on the web is this silly paragraph at the end of the patent: "While the invention has been particularly shown and described with reference to a preferred embodiment, it will be understood by those skilled in the art that various changes in form and detail may be made therein without departing from the spirit and scope of the invention."

Again, I am no Patent lawyer but I do not know how much they can stretch this patent. The patent talks about "telephone lines" all over the place. It also describes quite exactly how a video is ordered and says it is via telephone too. But again, this damn last paragraph probably removes all these problems.

The patent sadly also describes an implementation of 2-way video conferencing, which I am very surprised about.

Isn't there something in the law that states if you do not try to go against people using your patent you lose it? Just like it is with trademarks? I mean, if you sit there, for over 10 years, doing nothing against people using the stuff in your patent, and then you suddenly go running after people, isn't this against the law somehow?

The problem is simply that the patent office didn't know what they were patenting back in 1990. Noone ever would get such a patent today. You must be very specific nowadays.

The problem they will face is that a court knows that and the first court decision can backfire due to a judge revoking the patent.

Hey again,

Forget my post .. They have plenty more patents than I thought. Bought from all over the place.

Don't you guys think that if even companies like LodgeNet license their stuff that this can't be so easy to fight?

I'm afraid he is onto nothing.

This is a legal US and International Patent, granted by the US patent office and is legal and binding.

There is one way and one way only to get it turned over and that is through the courts and this is Acacia's gamble.

Have they come after the porn industry at random, did they just throw some names into a hat and go for them? No they're professionals who have been through the court protecting patents and know the system.

Look at the way they are being challenged by this industry. IMPA are the best we have put forward, where are Cyber Erotica, Adult.com, Private, Score, Bang Bus and a lot more Multi million dollar companies (If I included you in that list wrongly I appolagise, just trying to illustrate a point) . All sitting it out waiting for IMPA to win so they can carry on doing business without paying royalties or helping towards attorneys for those who are fighting FOR THEM.

Acacia chose this industry because they knew it was an easy target and has anything happened yet to change their mind?

You want to shout and swear at Acacia, fine but put your hand in your pockets and put up some money. Before Acacia put their hands in your pockets and take it from you.

I'm assuming you have some evidence on this and given it to IMPA.

This is the kind of thing they need to bring this down.

i agree with charly where are all the market leaders? Are they all folding like CE ?

They are lawyers who know what would happen if they had nothing to back it. They would end being sued for extortion, I gusee you will be joining the IMPA team to fight this.

Or just sitting it out on the sidelines in the hope Acacia will be beaten?

Where have you been for the last year?

Acacia are hoping we don't come together so they can pick us off one by one. Get the Porn Video companies involved, they have money, get the big boys involved. Acacia will spand 10 million toget 1 billion if we let just the present guys at IMPA fight it for us.

But they bought the company that did and in front of a judge that's all that matters.

You really are an idiot or just drunk. They will decide what you pay them and whether you make any money out of the videos on your site or not is irrelvant.

Anyway the money you make, 2% of it would not pay the stamp on the package. They already lost money with you.

Why do you think they picked us? They are already trying to blacken us by what we do.

Stop undersestimating Acacia treat your enemy with respect otherwise he might just win.

We have no leaders.
Everyone is greedy as hell.
They damn well know we make a mint are not united and that no one supports the adult community.
We are the lowest hanging fruit out there for them.
There has never been a united self-regulated body in this industry yet and it seems even this isn't enough to make the largest programs to step up to the plate.

Why are we about to get owned?

Agreed. All said in Nine Lines and totally true.

We don't stand up fot this we will get taken again.

Compuserve are probably now hitting their heads against the wall and screaming "WHY DIDN'T WE DO IT THIS WAY"

This will NOT work. Under the terms of Acacia's license (if you choose to sign it), they get a percentage of your TOTAL gross, from all activity, not just activity related to streaming. In addition, Acacia makes claims regarding their patents that go beyond streaming video.

For those of you that have not read any of my other posts on this topic I will say it again:

The defense group, and the IMPA, believe that the Acacia patents are NOT VALID. We remain committed, and will continue to remain committed, to VIGOROUSLY defending our position in a court of law to have the Acacia patents invalidated.

The defense group, and the IMPA, cannot, and should not have to, carry this burden by themselves. We need your help. Please visit www.impai.org for more information or contact me, [email protected] , or [email protected] if you have any questions or want any additional information.

Hooper you are the first person I've seen who can actually pinpoint a time when they downloaded video before this patent was granted.
Do you still have *any* of the video you downloaded, or do you know the exact BBS you downloaded it from and the approximate date (month and year should be good enough)? Man, having files on floppy that still have the dates would be fantastic, but that's really hoping too much.
Anyway, anyone who can honestly testify that they did in fact use the technology BEFORE Acacia's patent was granted should get in touch with IMPA - it could be that your testimony would be extremely beneficial in the fight against this company.

JMM I sent a little by PayPal the other day and I'll do so again in the future as I'm able to.
Best of luck to you guys and thanks for standing up for the entire industry.

Carrie.. in 1986 I was 11 and didnt have the foresight to archive those videos.. i was too busy rubbing one off to think of much at all ;)

Without reading the rest of this thread:

Someone tried to claim hyperlink, courts kicked it. Civil suits on Acacia will be thru. the roof, then they file bankruptcy.
:1orglaugh The people that have settled with them will be lined up. Each state has there own laws on contracts, mostly
likely there's is not valid in most states. Makes no Diff. what there contract says they will be spending a ton of money in court.
And in this case you will see what goes around comes around. just my :2 cents:

They very well could loose on just what you posted. Intel lost on there 8086 Micro processor, back in the 80's. They didn't have there patient on a shit pot of processor that went out. In other words you have to protect your patients. There are a lot of things that have patients on them that we never hear about. Getting the patients and then protecting them will that something else, cost a lot of money A LOT. Intel didn't think much of it when someone reversed Eng. the 8086 well they got screwed, thought we'll just sue.:Graucho

I was transferring stuff with Remote2 and later pcanywhere and then running in the Early 80's even some Video's, I had on CD's that came from Taiwan, ran them on my computer via Remote2 and pcanywhere for people also. Was no Windows OS then, used Dos 3.1 or 3.3.

Carrie, theres a number of us who were around in the 80's and ran BBS's. I personally had made several ppe scripts for pcboard BBS software to allow for video playback. And I have already been scouring the few BBS's still around that I know of trying to find even one of those ppe's.

IMPA: If you want records of prior art, why not start here and contact the owners of pre- 1991 BBS's...

http://www.dmine.com/telnet/bbslist.asp?alpha=A

And this is what's so fucked up about patents..

They were implemented to protect inventors..

You can't patent anything that you didn't invent, yet you can turn around and buy a patent and enjoy the rewards of that patent even if you had nothing at all to do with an invention...

Kinda makes patents a total farce...