Comments on: Commentary: Far Too Early to Evalulate Possible ‘Peregrine’ PPV Patent

By: Virtually Blind - Virtual Law | Legal Issues That Impact Virtual Worlds » Blog Archive » Commentary: Virtual World Patent Applications are Varied, Numerous, and Sometimes Scary

Wed, 25 Jul 2007 18:37:12 +0000

[...] Since there weren’t any facts to analyze when this hit the bitstream (and still aren’t) VB provided only general comments. Here’s a quick recap: lots can change between application and issuance. And in any case, there’s nothing to analyze here. Virtual World PPV’s application might be an overbroad joke or it might legitimately cover some cool new invention. Nobody knows, and nobody will for a while, because it hasn’t been published. [...]

By: Prokofy Neva

Prokofy Neva — Mon, 23 Jul 2007 18:59:59 +0000

Benjamin, I don’t *make* the noise, I *report on it*, so your condescending little muets here are out of order. I only blogged about it after getting dozens of people sending me links and Twitters and notecards and speculation and *set up the questions that need to be asked*. That’s more than fine; there’s nothing illegitimate about it. Or do you believe that societies and media should only be run by cautious lawyers who only publish information after they’ve weighed whether there is news in their view?

Because this is the second time you’ve weighed in with a very ominous concept — that what you as a cautious and very constrained RL lawyer should get to decide what is news, and when is news, and elevate yourself to guru status in this regard.

Sorry, but that’s bunk. Just as the raid on Lisae Boucher’s porn was news — and news the public had a right to know as it indicated Linden raising of the bar on the standards for “broadly offensive”, so it is news when FlipperPAY tries a gambit like this.

We all know that patents are pending. The broad public isn’t as stupid as you imagine. That’s why so many gimcrack plasting pieces of junk say “patent pending” on them. We all know that these things take time, that it’s just a maneuver. That likely the only thing it’s calculated to do is to put some fear into competitors, possibly less resourced with “crack lawyers” and the FIC at their back, so that they don’t attempt to poach or encroach on this territory now carved out by what amounts to a dog pissing along its borders.

And seriously, you still aren’t grasping what is at issue. It’s not whether the gambit can succeed, or even that it is tried. It’s that a supposedly altruistic coder living by the ethos of making code for public utilities always open to the public, or at least the small community of coders with skills, has openly broken faith with that code. Those sorts of moral codes or beliefs or situational ethics or whatever are as important as law.

By: Benjamin Duranske

Benjamin Duranske — Thu, 19 Jul 2007 14:51:24 +0000

My first thought was porn, too. And with any luck, that’s the only time in my life I’ll type that exact sentence.

By: csven

csven — Thu, 19 Jul 2007 13:45:17 +0000

wrt your fourth point, as it turns out, the lack of information may also mean that a patent was filed back in 2005 when video first became available… and when systems similar to what I *believe* is being discussed first appeared in the XXX systems the popped up in SL.

Here’s the fun part. Let’s say this patent goes through. Let’s further assume that the patent holder was *not* involved in the other systems that might qualify as prior art, and that someone out there – some Anonymous coder – was using his method to deliver pornographic content (perhaps violating copyright in the process).

Does this person come forward? Do they get rooted out? This could be interesting for other reasons as well.