telecom, Internet Patent Claims Stir Concern

By TERESA RIORDAN

IMAGINE being able to set up a tollbooth on the Internet. Now imagine
collecting a small fee every time anyone in the United States clicked
on the Web to watch a video of a car advertisement, to listen to an
audio clip of a garage band or to review an updated credit card
statement.

Sound far-fetched? Acacia Research Corporation, an obscure but
well-financed company in Newport Beach, Calif., has a portfolio of
patents that, it claims, allows it to do exactly that.

Acacia holds five patents covering streaming video and audio. The
earliest one, numbered 5,132,992, was issued in 1992.

In 2002, the company began sending out letters demanding licensing
fees, largely from the lucrative online pornography industry. But of
late, it has stepped up pressure on financial and educational
institutions and news organizations, including The New York Times
Company, which has received a letter from Acacia relating to its
corporate Web site. In June, Acacia sued nine cable and satellite
companies, including Comcast, DirecTV and EchoStar Communications. In
late July, it sent out more letters demanding licensing fees from
educational organizations that offer Web-based classes.

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/16/technology/16patent.html

[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: To read NY Times articles, many Digest
readers use our group reading name: operator10 and password
operator10 in order to preserve their own privacy and prevent spam.
PAT]

On Thu, 19 Aug 2004 00:47:12 -0400, Telecom Digest Editor opined:


The New York Times may be originator of some things but it's hardly
the originator of spam. Unless you can prove otherwise you are
slandering the company unduly.

[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: They certainly willingly sell their
subscriner list (computer subscribers at least) to all sorts of
outfits who *do* spam us. I am sure they don't personally send out
spam, but they close their eyes to spam from companies which buy
their mailing list. And why do they need to give cookies out to
people who read their web pages? PAT]

n article < XXXX@XXXXX.COM >, XXXX@XXXXX.COM
says:



The Times's privacy policy says this about email:

E-Mail: If you so elect at registration or in the E-mail Preferences
section of our Member Center, The New York Times on the Web will
periodically send you promotional e-mail about services offered by The
New York Times on the Web and its advertisers. Additionally, the
e-mail address provided by you at registration may be used by The New
York Times on Web to contact you regarding (1) account status
(including confirmation of registration), (2) major changes to the Web
site and or to the Subscriber Agreement and Privacy Policy, and (3)
participation in user surveys, asking for feedback on the Web site and
existing or prospective products and services, as well as information
to better understand our users. User surveys greatly help us to
improve our Web site, and any information we obtain in such surveys
will not be shared with third parties, except in aggregate
form. (Effective as of August 21, 2002).

The E-Mail This Article feature is an easy way for New York Times on
the Web users to send articles through e-mail. The e-mail address(es)
that you supply to use this service will only be used to send the
requested article.

We use e-mail links located in the Site Help area our Member Center to
allow you to contact us directly with any questions or comments you
may have. We will use your e-mail address to respond directly to these
questions or comments.

Except as permitted by this policy, The New York Times on the Web does
not send unsolicited e-mail.

The site also says:

Programs From Our Partners: During the registration process, new users
who select to register for certain featured offers from our partners
will begin receiving e-mail from these companies. You will only receive
e-mail messages from these companies if you elect this opt-in service.
In addition to providing these partners with your e-mail address,
certain partners may also receive other information collected on the The
New York Times on the Web registration form but this will be noted on
the Additional Information page, linked from the Programs from our
Partners area of the Registration page. The New York Times on the Web
may use this information as set forth in this privacy policy. Should you
decide to discontinue your e-mail subscription or would like more
information on these companies, please see our list of partners that
have participated in this program.

YesMail: Users who selected to register for YesMail during The New
York Times on the Web registration process became YesMail members. If
you selected this option, YesMail uses the information collected on
The New York Times on the Web registration form to provide targeted
e-mails to you on behalf of its advertisers. The New York Times on the
Web may use this information as set forth in this privacy policy. You
will only receive e-mail messages from YesMail if you elected this
opt-in service. Please contact membercare@yesmail directly if you no
longer wish to receive e-mail messages from them.

In other words, they will give your name to spammers IF YOU TELL THEM
TO. Otherwise, they will not.


Michael D. Sullivan
Bethesda, MD, USA
Delete nospam from my address and it won't work.

[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Any number of times I have received
spam where the sender (a) claims it is not spam or (b) it *might*
be con

In article < XXXX@XXXXX.COM >,






Data point:

*I* have _never_ gotten any spam to an e-mail address given only to the
NYT. Going on 4 years now.

NO ONE _I_ know has ever gotten any spam traceable to having given an
address to the NY Times. This encompasses 40+ NYT-online subscribers.

Well, it's pretty evident that you're going to believe what you want
to believe so even if the NYT says that they won't send you
unsolicited offers if you opt out when you register you believe they
will so it appears that there's no way to mollify you. You're better
off not registering and using someone else's registration or not going
to NYT links.

[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Any number of companies which send
spam out make that claim, i.e. "you must have mistakenly agreed to
accept our stuff." PAT]

n article < XXXX@XXXXX.COM >,
Joseph < XXXX@XXXXX.COM > wrote:


I suspect it's a matter of being burned so often that eventually you
decide you can't trust anyone, regardless of their reputation or the
testimonials. I mean, how often are you going to be Charlie Brown,
trusting Lucy to hold the football?

Privacy policies can change, without notice. Yahoo added a bunch of
marketing preferences to their user accounts and automatically opted
everyone in as the default. Most account sign-ups that offer opt-in
selections have them checked by default, so if you don't look very,
very closely you opt yourself in to their marketing.

Think about it; why require an email address at all? There's only
one reason, really.

John Meissen XXXX@XXXXX.COM

[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I am well aware, very mindful of the
*excellent* reputation NYT has in many circles. I read it often times
myself. I am also aware of the very good reputation Yahoo used to
enjoy a few years ago before they changed their policy on privacy and
advertising. I am also aware that Yahoo attempts to slip in a spy
cookie when you call their page; I deliberatly reject their attempts
to install 'Avenue A' cookies on my computers when I use Yahoo daily
for news and a free email service. Yahoo never talks about it, except
in an oblique way in their 'privacy notice', but day after day, the
Avenue A spy cookie shows up when I use one of the Yahoo properties.
I only get notice of it because *my* computer and *my* copy of Ad-
Aware tells me Avenue A was sent away. No one who ever uses those
cookies ever bothers to tell you about it; they just slip it in place.
But note how if you attempt to login to a Yahoo site with a heavy
Proximotron filter in place, Yahoo won't even accept your login.

And your point about 'why does NYT even need email addresses' is a
good one also. In the registration process, if you decide to opt out
on receiving notices or advertising it ought to be sufficient to
simply *not* give an email address, rather than have to give it and
then add your opt-out as well. If NYT was so pure in their motives,
why not just put the news on display on the web site and let anyone
go in and read without registration at all? If they want to count the
number of 'hits' each day on their pages, that's understandable, or
if they want to have a *purely voluntary* system of registration (like
a 'guest book' approach) that's okay also. I do not mean to pick on
NYT about this, but as the web grows in size and sophistication I
have seen many, many otherwise good sites fall victim to the lure of
'easy money'. Google, for example, would love to have a crack at
advertising to the eight thousand more or less daily viewers of
telecom-digest.org and have tried to encourage me to get on the band
wagon. They have invited me in, and discouraged me telling readers
here of what I am doing. "Just take this bit of code we send you, and
install it here and there around your site. Don't bother telling the
readers what you did; many will just complain about it anyway." There
are many, very powerful people in the world who want to see the
Internet become a totally commercial thing. There are still a few of
us who want to see Internet stay as a cooperative free thing among
the people. PAT]

As I said you will believe what you want to believe.

See, what I wonder is this: Trademark law says that if you don't
defend your trademark vigorously you lose the legal protection of the
trademark registration. Does a similar rule apply with patents? I'm
sorry, but this would have been a groundbreaking technology in '92,
and I would *think* that they'd have been pursuing licensing fees back
then if they seriously had the patents.

JustThe.net Internet & New Media Services, http://JustThe.net/
Steven J. Sobol, Geek In Charge / 888.480.4NET (4638) / XXXX@XXXXX.COM
PGP Key available from your friendly local key server (0xE3AE35ED)
Apple Valley, California Nothing scares me anymore. I have three kids.

Steven J Sobol < XXXX@XXXXX.COM > writes:


Not really. But since you only have until the patent sunsets to make
any claims, you've got to get the ball rolling eventually. There's no
such thing as dilution of patent.


I'm fairly certain that streaming protocols existed well before 1992,
and I think it's bloody obvious to use one for the things the 'patent'
claims as novel. It's evil to patent an established technique within a
restricted sphere (and criminally incompetent to GRANT a patent), only
because someone hasn't thought to apply standard tools of the trade in
that sphere yet. Patents should be for NEW things.

* -- * PV
something like badgers--something like lizards--and something like
corkscrews.

41+. I have received no SPAM from NYTimes. Just inline ads.

They have begun to use a background protocol that will _eventually_
download huge data files even over the slowest link, so that you can
view high quality advertisements. You may notice a "Applet
TransitionSensor running" message appear briefly in an IE status bar.

I block their popups, and route most of the advertising links to
127.0.0.1, but I haven't figured out how to stop the downloads of the
transitional advertisements.

Clarence A Dold - Hidden Valley (Lake County) CA USA 38.8-122.5