Fuck Acacia
 

:1orglaugh sure

if quality vids had never been seen before maybe this would work....but who wants to download a flash movie to jerk off too?
not me.....:2 cents:

I'll try to have some samples up in the next few days...
As you can see we are working on the site. I wanted to get this out though before hand.

- 1) The quality is comparable to the source material.
- 2) Flash is used as a player nothing more nothing less, there are no long downloads. While the move could wait to play for download it does not have to. When running in stream the stream starts very quickly.
- 3) For those not on broadband the file sizes are smaller than other encoding methods.

Sounds good to me so far...

good luck :)

Uh, this doesn't steer clear of the Acacia patents at all. How can you claim that you are not streaming video?

If Zone-Adult has come up with a way that works around Acacia, more power to them... but in reading through their page, and some understanding of the patent, it doesn't seem to work around the patent.

If a webmaster purchases their system, good for them, since Zone-Adult said it would contribute some of the proceeds to IMPA, but you may end up having a little less money in your own pocket when Acacia decides to just sue this same webmaster that thought they were protected in using the Zone-Adult "solution".

Whoever is Zone-Adult's patent attorney should make some kind of statement that they think this doesn't violate Acacia's patents.

In reviewing the Acacia patents, two things have come to our attention.

First, the Acacia patents specifically mention that the receiving device has end-user controls to influence the playback of the media. Our solution does not.

Second, their patents specifically refer to the fact that the received media is to be available for playback from storage.

Our system does not allow for the media to be stored on the recipient?s computer.

Otherwise, our system is essentially the same as transmitting data of any type from one computer to another through digitization (1's and 0's) and TCP/IP. Acacia holds the patents for neither.

Of course, we can be sued as well as anyone, but that's why we're making donations to IMPA. We also firmly believe that these patents will be invalidated in litigation due to the finding of prior art.

from your own page

"This encoding system offers higher compression resulting in extremely fast playback across multiple file sizes"


i suggest you read their claim

The end user has no control other than to start the movie.
*Initiate a data connection*

Obviously the user can end the movie (closing the browser/player/computer/power/modem).

Interesting ...
will be watching your results.
good luck

ACACIA CAN LICK MY SWEATY NUTT SACK!

I'm going to pick at this because of how its being touted (as an Acacia patent fix/killer)

But from reading the site, if the Acacia matter didn't exist - this system sounds pretty cool :thumbsup (if there was a full featured player anyway). I mean streaming over flash at 40% smaller filesizes than current methods? Woo nice.


Anyway here are some questions for ya Keta:


This doesn't sound very good?... you hit play and it plays all the way through? No stopping or going back? Ugh.


Cache = stored, if someone REALLY wanted to, they could play it back no? Is it in downloaded to the browser cache?


From the site:
...and allows for file size to be at least 40% smaller than currently available QuickTime, MPEG, Real Media, or Windows Media solutions.

That's not compession?


Sounds good...

But I guess the question is - will you & your company stand behind that claim, or dodge it with a very specific liability waiver/disclaimer in the EULA? :winkwink:

Also, is the attorney that has been advising you a specifically an IP attorney? Could we get his name? I'd like to know who to hire if/when Acacia comes knocking if we opt'd to use this system.

goBigtime...

Thanks for seeing a bit past the Acacia situation into where some of the real merits of the system; anyway quoting from both the website and the follow up post is a bit misleading as the website discusses features that are optional to the entire package and may or may not cause the solution to fall further into Acacia?s coverage.

Let me address your questions though.

[i]- First, the Acacia patents specifically mention that the receiving device has end-user controls to influence the playback of the media. Our solution does not.
This doesn't sound very good?... you hit play and it plays all the way through? No stopping or going back? Ugh.[i]

We can add full control into the system as desired by the customer, but we feel that this is one of Acacia?s key points to there patent claim and one of our points where we can create a system that does not infringe on there technology. The end decision to use these controls will be up to the customer purchasing the encoding package. Of course basic start stop is enabled as a function of the program itself.

[i]- Our system does not allow for the media to be stored on the recipient?s
computer.
Cache = stored, if someone REALLY wanted to, they could play it back no? Is it in downloaded to the browser cache?[i]

Yes if someone really wanted to they could, you could set up a secondary recording program and record the output (which is far out of the reach to do this properly of the averge computer user). The key point in my example though is that our system is not designed to allow the user to play back at there leisure which again is another key point to the Acacia patent. The system does not store. Now I am sure that there are ways around our protections, just as there are ways around anything but our goal was to design a system that in its normal usage did not infringe on the patent and created more difficulty in stealing and distributing this content untraced.

We can though prevent it from hitting the cache...thats easy


[i]- Otherwise, our system is essentially the same as transmitting data of any type from one computer to another through digitization (1's and 0's) and TCP/IP. Acacia holds the patents for neither.
...and allows for file size to be at least 40% smaller than currently available QuickTime, MPEG, Real Media, or Windows Media solutions.[i]

Two answers taken out of context for 2 different situations (which gives me a question to research tomorrow when they diagram the compression do they speak of on the fly compression something to look into might be another needle to stick into them). To answer your question yes this is compression as a matter of fact our system is re-compressing compressed data. But Acacia does not have claim on compressing data and decoding it on delivery they outline a very vague outline of a process to deliver media.

This is one of the reasons that we are donating to the IMPA. We also believe that there patent infringes on a number of pre existing pieces of work? (see Paul Mace?s .GL system, which dates back prior to 88)

Don't forget to answer this one:


Anyway, I'm picking at it because of how it's being marketed (As a way to get aorund the Acacia patents). If you want to market it like that (and have people believe your), back it up - have the attorney that is advising you back it up.





Like I said, it SOUNDS GOOD with or without Acacia on the scene.

But you better be VERY careful about specificially suggesting that the system is not covered by Acacia's patents.

If you or your attorney is so sure about this, have your attorney put it in writing & include a scanned copy of that statement on his letterhead for you to use as additional promotional material.

But I would be willing to bet that is just not going to happen.


I do applaud your efforts here though, and Acacia aside, the video over flash sounds very interesting (IF the filesizes can really be 40% smaller for compareable quality).

...Although it's been around for a bit... Wildform/Flix But the sample qualities on their site were awful :(... I suppose that could be because they were samples though. They mention broadcast quality on that site.


I'd be really interested in seeing the filesize & quality comparisons to similarly encoded mpegs & wmvs using your system.

meh

Hmm actually this doesn't look too bad at all...

http://www.wildform.com/flix/flix_players.php

That player has a quicktime skin on it obviously, but I bet if you wanted a control-less player, they have one there as well.

In fact... lol...

http://www.wildform.com/flix/flix_powerplayers.php


So you can get FlixPro for $149 and Flix PowerPlayers (and select your own player type(s) for your visitors/members) for $25.


How much is your system?

Sorry all you who think this is a way around Acacia, let me tell you something.

IT'S NOT

Why is very simple, you only have to look at Ryan's attitude. He says we are going to spend more on fighting than Acacia will want for royalties.

He's thinking that until he is stopped in a court of law he will continue to squeeze with this case.

Then when he has been stopped he will look back at all the money he collected by frightening people and deduct the money spent and what is left is his profit.

How much simpler can it be? Whether or not he is open to an extortion charge is up to the lawyers and judges to find out. For instance did he know this patent was bogus, did he know it had prior art, did he know it not being enforced made it invalid, did he know before he sent out those packages that he would lose in court?

Did he know when he was taking money on the V-Chip technology, it was a patent that would lose in court? While he was charging 21 million for the royalties. Can the companies who paid the money, be approached to see if they were victims of extortion?

Is this criminal or just bad business.

How are we going to find out?

Stand up to them in court.

I hope that you are also reading SightSound's patents (and there is ANOTHER company out there with broad scope on digital video).

Refer to my website for more info.

Acacia is not the only ones targeting websites for the license of patents that involve digital a/v, streaming a/v.

You may think you have a technical way around Acacia's broadly interpretted patent, but take a look at SightSound, their patent is more specific, tho, it does involve the charging of a fee for the downloaded file

Please email me (at my website) your IP/Patent attorney so that i can also send to him the prior art leads that I am finding.


Fight The Patent!

fight the power

Acacia got no J

Flash is client software. Playback occurs on the client machine, not the server. The media file is still downloaded, though it can begin playing before the download is complete.

Sorry to say it, but this does not solve anything, IMHO.

I never claimed anything different...
Although I am attempting to encode on the fly into the flash application at the moment, with various success.

I have also stated where there are differences in the Acacia patent to our product (we are actualy closer to the walter patient than there's). No my solution will not cause Acacia to go away, but we feel that in its current incarnation it does not infringe on the copyright, I do advice everyone to make there own judgement to weight the pro's and the cons and to consult there own legal team. I do not dispense legal advice nor would I.

I also believe that prior art exists and the IMPA will tear down this, which is another reason we will be donating. Considering that the transmission of any data over the net is compressed and decoded and we where doing this WELL before 1991.

My goal is to give an alternative, I have done so...
My goal is also to support the IMPA I will be doing so.

sightsound scares me more than Acacia

I am making no claims about the sightsound system at this time as I have not analyzed it in full, although I prefer them to Acacia as a company I can say that.

FUCK ACACIA THEY CANT DO SHIT TO ME!!!!!!!!

try to fuck with me,
http://www.siccash.com

bring it!

Our price is based on encoding time, I will have to look at our price sheet and that is at the office, but we are looking at around 50$ per encoding session.

there is another one on the horizon, i am doing my research, then i will be writing up an article about it.

SightSound is more specific, but yet still broad. Their lawsuit against CDnow is based on their patents of a service that people pay for a download of audio OR video.

SightSound tried to go up against MP3.com, but they were able to dismiss them because they say they don't charge for downloads, so therefore not covered under a patent.

Whether SightSound will try to broadly extend their patent to include adult sites that have a membership fee for downloading content, that includes video, remains to be seen.

I have contacted SightSound's CTO and author of their patents to get his opinion on Acacia (no response yet), who by date-stamp, pre-dates them...so it is such a complicated story...that Acacia is somewhat the root to be dug up.... SightSound can be dealt with later if there is an issue, currently, they are tied up with CDnow.

I applaud you guys in your attempt to try to find an alternative, but i think you are trying to be too specific in looking for the loopholes....to a patent and to their position that is based so broadly.

patents are supposed to be narrowly defined so that innovators like yourself can learn what they are doing, and to make yours different. if it weren't for the broad scope of their patent claims, then your method would truly be an alternative and wouldn't violate a patent.

As soon as you start to collect money for your software, is when you will be a real target for Acacia.

the real answer is to find the prior art... i don't believe there is any alternative loophole that you can think of to get around their patents, i am sure that acacia has thought of them all... it all comes down to proving that their patents were based on what was commonplace, prior to when the patent was filed.

Fight The Patent!

to add to Ravener's post...

this is how you violate their patent (in my opinion):


You have digital content, that is compressed into a flash file, the file is stored on a server, you are using the web server to deliver the file to the remote user who uses the flash plugin to play the video.

Acacia's patent is talking about the system.. the end to end idea... that can use other people's technology. Macromedia won't be sued necessarily by them, since they just make one piece of it. It is the end user (the website) that uses a system of individual pieces to achieve the viewing of the video.

THIS is what Acacia thinks they have patented.

I don't think your loophole of saying that your video streams immediately, with no ability to stop or pause, is the loophole. And from a practical matter, pointed out by another poster, it would be an inconvenience to the user if they couldn't pause, or FF, or RW, etc....

My take on this is, once someone has a binding, legal judgement stating their technology doesn't infringe the Acacia patent, they can honestly claim that as a fact.

Until then, donations made to IMPA are good thing.

Good luck with the software...sounds lika good idea...

you'll have to work on sales and marketing or it will become vaporware....

USA Video has a patent that pre-dates Acacia's patents.

They are claiming the ownership to the process of downloading videos from a (web) server.

USA Video is suing MovieLink.com for patent infringement.

USA Video becomes the THIRD company that FightThePatent.com is tracking.

Imagine the absurd situation that Acacias wins their patent lawsuits and websites are forced to pay their "licensing fees".

USA Video could easily roll through and demand similar "license fees".

USA Video information is being tracked at: http://www.fightthepatent.com/USVO.html

The "Interview with the Vampire" article should be fun reading.


Fight The Patent!

I'll look into US Video havent heard of them before that post.

Mr Popup, my post was designed to guage interest in the package, we are making a series of press releases next week ZAP being one of them, we are also looking to tie this into a full content delivery plugin solution as well, both video and still..

Back to Fightthispatent...

GRASPERT.EXE in my opinion is the prior artwork Paul Mace software bought it in 1988 im sure someone owned it prior to that, just cant think of it off hand.

We can add any playback control, but one of the key features of there patents is the playback control as a matter of fact they state it OVER and OVER and OVER so to leave it out with an option to re-add it once this garbage is over and done with I think is the best call. Honestly it is up to the purchaser of the encoding solution or package solution.

We can keep it out of the cache so it never sits on the clients machine after the stream is viewed the question comes to play then is RAM considered enough of a storage, I and our legal team feel that there patents are looking for a situation where the user can view the same content again and again without going through an authentication procedure (in this case logging into a paysite) with our solution (again this can be changed if desired) we do not follow there path(stated in there documentation) the end user can not replay at a later time without going back to the site, one of the main features of our tool is to prevent the user from having the content other than for view.

More facts about Acacia's specific claims should be coming up soon. Given what I know, i don't think that your method will be the way to invalidate their patent infringement claims.

If you really, really, really believe that you have found the loophole, sell 1 copy of your solution to someone, advertise the sale on this board, and then wait to see what happens.

While you may not be the one served with "information packets" from Acacia, the person that purchased and is using your software would be.

So be ready to help your client defend themselves against Acacia's infringement claims with your method.

Remember, these companies do read GFY, so they already know your "loophole" idea, and probably already created a 30 page document explaining in their interpretation of the their patent, on why you idea is infringing.

i TOTALLY support your efforts in finding a loophole, and in trying to find prior art (i know about GL files as well), but you had better to talk to a really good patent attorney before you make the first sale of your software.

Fight The Patent!

Wait a second your mixing some of the issues up a bit.

1) Asking and begging to get sued will most likely get you sued.
2) This company (Acacia) is baseing there entire game plan against sueing people who can't or will not defend themself.
3) We all know there going to get a good thrashing in the court room.

I have not been served with any lawsuits from anyone let alone Acacia. I make no claims that anyone will or will not be sued by using my technology. I also feel that Acacia will be destroyed in the court room, hence my support for you and the IMPA.

The key point is my system does not follow the flow that they have described there are enough differences that it is plainly obvious the loophole discussed on the controls is one of many, and let me stress that I use the term loophole very loosely.

Sorry to say it but if you extrapolate Acacia's patents they own the entire internet. Im sure they can write a 30 page document on that. know this will not stand.

I have also sucessfully sold this technology to Music and Entertainment companies are you saying there going to sue adult and not them, thats going to make a nice case of discrimination.

What I offer is a system who's merrits are documented on the ZAP page. I do not offer a silver bullet for Acacia, but I offer a system that as there patent is worded mine does not infringe.

Hey,

you seriously think you have an encoding system 40% more efficiant than Microsoft Windows Media v9? Sorry, can't beleive this. If you are talking about the system Flash MX has built in, then its definately not true, since their system is good, but not so awesome that it would beat WMv9.

Also, to me, this can not in any way get you around acacia. Not even slightly. Acacia has a LOT of claims and to make this not infringe on Acacia's patent not a SINGLE claim may fit! The main claims simply state a system which sends stored & encoded video/audio data from one server to one client at a time chosen by the client. There is no specific mentioning that it HAS to be stored on a storage device before viewing or that the player MUST have some kind of controls. And even when it talks about controls, it does not list the controls it must have, and any player needs "Start" and "Stop" even if "Start" is "running the program" and "Stop" is "ending the program"....

Its a nice idea to wrap video around something to make it not stick to the acacia claims, but sadly, its still encoded video sent from A to B and thus falls under the patent in my oppinion.

40% Smaller yes....
We did an encode the other day with a QuickTime where the original was 31 megs and the ZAP was a bit over 3...
Extreme example I agree...

We chose to use 40-60% a good medium number, some time it will be smaller sometimes larger.

WMV also has issues on MAC's we do not have this problem.

If there patent is as simple as you have stated then the Paul Mace Prior Art CLEARLY blows it out of the water...

This has nothing to do with anything built into flashMX as we can make it compatible for lower versions of flash as well.

Also if your oversimplification was the case,

Closed Circut and Early Pay Per View would invalidate it as well.

Hey,

let me know when you have a working version for any flash and show me.

very interested, if its even close to anything WMV can produce then I'll be very amazed that you did something with flash that 100 programmers at microsoft took 5 years to develop.

But people surprise me often ;)

Ketadream,

no it would not.

The patent claims stored content from a server to a client over broadly used communication means and not dedicated systems. Closed curcuit and pay per view systems are all dedicated cables having to be installed, they specifically state that its over phone lines or similar.

The thing is though is that your system does infringe on Aracia's patent. Their patent is for viewing compressed audio/video on demand over cable or telephone lines. The visitor is viewing it on demand everytime they visit that page to view the video. This is why live video does not infringe on Arcacia's patent. Cause you can't just view live video when ever you want. You don't need controls such as play or stop like Nathan said.

If your gonna advertise your product as from your website. You better watch out. You might find yourself in court for false advertising or worse. You gotta relize from your website where content is video/audio is what Arcacia's patent is about.

I appluad you for trying and I think your product is good with out throwing Acacia's patent into the mix, but just be careful with what you say in your advertising on your webpage or on gfy, or you might find yourself in some hot legal troubles. I doubt if someone will find a way around Arcacia's patent, cause it's so broad. You need to do like what FightThisPatent says and find prior art that can be backed up in court.

losers

Then why did Lodge Net Cave?....

Are we really expecting Time Warner to Cave in as well?

what does any of this have to do with lodge net?

they over digitized video on demand in hotels. its only their digital services that seem to infringe, not the video tape stuff.

and anyway, is this about lodge net? no its not, its about adult webmasters.

Lodge net was in counter to your statement that it only involved phone and computer lines.

I am supporting FightThisPatent and the IMPA, I know the only way to make these guys go away is in the courtroom.

I am helping with Prior Art, I have even discussed that issue in my posts.

God Damned Swoit asshole, makes me not even want to read my own topics...

I know you just want to help, I am just saying that your way still infringes in my oppinion and I explained why.

And I still want to see a sample as soon as there is one ;)

Yes, you will get to see it...

Im typing off the cuff and from home, I do not have the Acacia patents and my legal teams findings in front of me, I will give some more specifics if I can on monday.

Has ANYONE been to court against Acacia and WON?
Keep reading all these threads to find one example of this, and so far I can't find any.

Has there been a successful defense against them?

The question to ask is has anyone gone to court against them and at least showed up....

They have won all there cases by default judgement.

USA Video's patent covers this. They started out in the PPV and VOD markets.

Now they are taking their patent and applying it to the internet space.