DailyDirt: Drinking The Most Expensive Coffee

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

Some people really like to drink coffee and are willing to pay nearly any price to do so. There are probably cheaper ways to get caffeine into your system, but if you like the taste of coffee, you might want to try some exotic procedures that are meant to make the coffee drinking experience just so much better. Here are a few links on some cups of coffee you might want to try if you have the money.

• You've probably heard of the civet-poop coffee (aka Kopi Luwak) which is supposedly really good. But why not try a similar coffee from an elephant? Black Ivory Coffee isn't really that expensive. A pack that brews about 30 cups of coffee only costs about $275 (without shipping and handling). [url]
• The ISSpresso machine is how astronauts get coffee (that isn't instant coffee) on the International Space Station (ISS). The cost of getting a ticket to ride on the ISS is the hefty part. [url]
• Starbucks coffee is significantly more expensive in China. Chinese customers are simply willing to pay more for a cup of joe because it's a luxury (and transportation costs are a bit high, though not ISS high), but the market for over-priced coffee might be drying up. [url]

If you'd like to read more awesome and interesting stuff, check out this unrelated (but not entirely random!) Techdirt post via StumbleUpon.

Filed Under: astronaut coffee, beverages, black ivory coffee, caffeine, coffee, elephants, food, isspresso, kopi luwak
Companies: starbucks

Keurig's Coffee DRM Already Cracked By Competitors; Will There Be A Lawsuit?

from the wait-and-see... dept

Earlier this year, we wrote about Green Mountain Coffee Roasters, maker of the infamous Keurig single cup coffee makers, and its plan to DRM its next generation coffee pods. The original pods were going off patent, and competition was rising. So, of course, the solution is to come up with something new... and lock it down to make it less useful for consumers. When that story went viral, Team Keurig tried to spin the story, claiming the DRM would provide "interactive-enabled benefits" and would improve users' safety. Of course, when the system finally started showing up a couple months ago, people quickly realized it had nothing to do with safety, and the "interactive-enabled benefits" seemed to consist mainly of being able to distinguish a carafe-sized pod from a single cup-sized pod. Oh yeah, and to block out competing pods so that Keurig pods can be priced artificially high. Interactive! Enabled! Benefits!

Except... as RomanOnARiver alerts us, it appears that Keurig competitors have already figured out ways to crack the DRM. TreeHouse Foods very quickly announced that it would be able to break the DRM. Meanwhile, Mother Parkers' RealCup has just announced that its pods are compatible with Keurig's DRM. It's a little unclear from the press release if Mother Parkers cracked the DRM or came to a deal with Green Mountain, though it sure sounds like it was internal work:

"We are very pleased that our focus on innovation, quality, and freedom of choice has led to new technology that will produce authentic tasting coffee and tea products in all K-Cup type single-serve brewers, both old and new styles," said Bill VandenBygaart, Vice President of Business Development for Mother Parkers. "Standard size capsule brews, as well as larger carafe and multi-serve formats, will soon be available for independent brands of single-serve capsules. Consumers will be the ultimate winners by having the best tasting coffees and teas available."

TreeHouse had already sued Green Mountain over the new DRM, but the bigger question is if Green Mountain would try to stop anyone from reverse engineering and cracking the new DRM. That would present an interesting legal fight...

Filed Under: coffee, drm, keurig, pods, realcup
Companies: green mountaint roasters, keurig, mother parkers, treehouse foods

Total Wipes A Total Failure: Sends Increasingly Ridiculous DMCA Notices To Wipe Out Unrelated Content

from the because-that's-how-the-dmca-rolls dept

TorrentFreak has a fun, if ridiculous, post about the near total failure of a digital music distribution company named Total Wipes to "wipe out" certain content via entirely bogus DMCA notices. In what appears to be one of the more egregious attempts out there to issue automated DMCA takedowns without anyone bothering to look at the sites in question, Total Wipes tried to remove all sorts of websites in trying to "protect" a track called "Rock the Base & Bad Format." It appears that, as a part of that, any site that its automated systems turned up that had both "rock" and "base" on it was targeted for takedown. That was especially problematic for news stories about the death of DJ E-Z Rock, whose most famous track was "It Takes Two," done in partnership with Rob Base. Note the problem: Base and Rock. That meant that Total Wipes targeted news stories about Rock's death. It also targeted stories about rock climbing and a "rock" music festival on a military "base." The TorrentFreak story has more examples, including a broad takedown attempt against sites with the word "coffee" in their URL, including: Cariboucoffee, cartelcoffeelab, clivecoffee, coavacoffee, coffee.org, coffeeandtealtd, coffeebean and coffeegeek. Google, thankfully, rejected each and every one of those requests, and hopefully that puts Total Wipes into some sort of DMCA notice holding cell, requiring any of its takedowns to get extra scrutiny. But, of course, as always there is no real punishment for filing false notices, which is why there are so many stories about these kinds of takedowns.

Filed Under: automated takedowns, coffee, copyright, dmca
Companies: total wipes

DailyDirt: Correlations With Living Longer

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

Lots of people say they'd like to live longer. So longevity has been studied extensively, and a vast number of correlations have been found. The list literally goes on and on and on. This doesn't mean anyone has discovered the cure for death, and these correlations often have no causation logic behind them whatsoever. Drink a glass of wine every day, eat no meat, restrict your calories drastically, and read some of these other correlations.

• Women who have kids later in life (33+yo) have a higher likelihood of living longer. The researchers note there is no causality here, but that women who are capable of having children in their 30s (and beyond) just seem to live longer as well. [url]
• Being short is not generally a desirable trait, but how about when height inversely correlates with longevity? Several studies show that short people live longer than tall people, and there are some reasons for this correlation -- but don't amputate your feet just yet.... [url]
• Serious coffee drinkers who ingest 4-5 cups of joe per day seem to live longer than people who drink just a cup or less. However, drinking more than 5 cups of coffee has diminishing returns, and the notable catch to this correlation is that non-coffee drinkers actually live longer than coffee lovers. [url]

If you'd like to read more awesome and interesting stuff, check out this unrelated (but not entirely random!) Techdirt post via StumbleUpon.

Filed Under: aging, causation, coffee, correlation, health, height, longevity

Keurig Begins Demonstrating Its Coffee DRM System; As Expected, It Has Nothing To Do With 'Safety'

from the it-has-to-do-with-expired-patents dept

Back in March, we told you about how the famed makers of the Keurig single-cup coffee brewing "pod" contraption was about to launch a new version with DRM. A competitor, Treehouse Foods, was taking Keurig makers Green Mountain Coffee Roasters to court over this attempt to block them out of the market. To say that post got a lot of attention would be a bit of an understatement. Green Mountain tried to hit back by claiming that the new DRM was about adding "interactive-enabled benefits" and safety to the single-cup coffee space. Because, you know, it was so unsafe before. And, besides, who doesn't want more "interactive-enabled benefits" with their first cup of java in the morning?

Keurig has now started demonstrating the new system, and it's exactly what everyone feared: a DRM system to make coffee pods more expensive and to keep out competitors' refills.

When the Keurig employee tried to use an old-model pod, one without a new ink marker on the foil top, the brewer wouldn’t run. "Oops!" read a message on the touchscreen display, explaining that the machine only works with specially designed pods and directing the user to a Keurig website and helpline. The employee wouldn’t elaborate on how it worked, except to say that the ink is proprietary and inspired by counterfeiting technology used by the US Mint. Ian Tinkler, Keurig’s vice president of brewer engineering, went into a bit more detail, explaining that an infrared light shines on the ink marking and registers the wavelength of the light reflected back.

What about those promised interactive-enabled benefits? As far as I can tell, they appear to be the following:

With its new machine, Keurig is combining its two main product lines, the single-cup brewer and the carafe-brewing Vue.... The anti-counterfeiting system doubles as a way to distinguish between carafe-size pods and regular ones. If the sensor detects the green dot that marks carafe cups, it brews a large pot. If it detects the ring of black symbols on the standard pod, it brews a smaller cup. If it doesn’t detect a Keurig-approved marking at all, it tells you "oops!"

Yes, the "interactive-enabled benefits" will apparently maybe kinda save you from having to push a button or flip a switch between "cup" and "carafe." Of course, it could do that same thing without a bogus code designed to block out competitor refills and just compete on the quality of its coffee. But, who wants to do that?

Of course, that story at the Verge also reveals why Keurig/Green Mountain Roasters is really doing all of this:

In September 2012 key patents on its K-Cups expired

*Ding* *Ding* *Ding*. We have a winner. None of this has anything to do with safety or benefits. It has to do with doing anything possible to avoid competing in the marketplace. There are lots of ways to play in a market and compete. One is to try to add more value than your competitors. Another is to try to block your competitors by taking away value. I never understand companies that seek to do the latter, but that's what Keurig has decided to do.

Filed Under: coffee, coffee drm, coffee pods, competition, drm, keurig, patents, single cup
Companies: green mountain coffee roasters, keurig, treehouse foods

Keurig Insists Coffee DRM Brings 'Interactive-Enabled Benefits' And Is For Your Own Safety

from the I-got-this-scar-from-my-coffee-maker dept

As we recently discussed, Keurig is busy making plans to embed new technology in their new "Keurig 2.0" line of coffee makers that will reject unsanctioned (read: less expensive, competing) coffee pods. The technology would also presumably prevent the use of manual re-usable filters, which are usually found for between five and fifteen bucks online. Keurig's CEO announced the plans to reject "unlicensed pods" last fall, but somehow nobody seemed to really notice the effort until an annoyed competitor pointed it out in a lawsuit (pdf).

Needless to say, Keurig users and the general public weren't particularly enamored of Keurig's plans to lock down their brewing options, with countless users taking to Twitter to complain. The company didn't seem prepared to handle the media reaction to their plans for java-based "DRM." Nor did they seem prepared to give anybody a straight answer, even though their own CEO already confirmed the pod-blocking functionality. As such, Keurig simply started insisting to anyone that asked that the new technology delivered "interactive-enabled benefits":As you might be able to tell, it appears the company is unwilling to directly acknowledge the fact that they're locking out competitors' less expensive pods. More creative attempts to get Keurig to explain these advanced interactive benefits also proved fruitless:After a few days and clearly a few meetings, Keurig released a public statement that attempted to flesh out their non-answer. While still refusing to admit something their own CEO already acknowledged, Keurig decided to push the mystery added benefits angle a little harder, even going so far as to claim that blocking you from getting cheaper competing product is about your safety:

"To make brewing a carafe possible, and to continue to deliver everything Keurig lovers already enjoy – high-quality beverages, simplicity, and variety – our new Keurig 2.0 system will feature specially designed interactive technology allowing the brewer to read information about the inserted Keurig pack. With this interactive capability, Keurig 2.0 brewers will “know” the optimal settings for the inserted Keurig pack, for a perfect beverage every time, whether a single cup or a carafe. It’s critical for performance and safety reasons that our new system includes this technology. For those of you who currently own our K-Cup or Vue systems today, we are so happy to have you as part of our family. Rest assured that your brewers will still function as they always have and that your favorite beverages will still be available."

In other words, we must be able to lock competitors' pods (and manual refill units) out of the market to keep you safe from the dangers of potentially lower costs and dreaded coffee-related injury. It's also impossible for us to embed this obnoxious technology in older units, so those will continue to function as you prefer them to -- without us interfering in your purchase options. Sure, you're losing purchase options and will have to pay more for coffee, but isn't the security of knowing your family is safe from the dangers of coffee-related hazards worth it?

Filed Under: coffee, drm
Companies: keurig

Keurig Will Use DRM In New Coffee Maker To Lock Out Refill Market

from the who-wanted-paying-customers-anyway dept

The single coffee cup craze has been rolling now for several years in both the United States and Canada, with Keurig, Tassimo, and Nespresso all battling it out to lock down the market. In order to protect their dominant market share, Keurig makers Green Mountain Coffee Roasters has been on a bit of an aggressive tear of late. As with computer printers, getting the device in the home is simply a gateway to where the real money is: refills. But Keurig has faced the "problem" in recent years of third-party pod refills that often retail for 5-25% less than what Keurig charges. As people look to cut costs, there has also been a growing market for reusable pods that generally run anywhere from five to fifteen dollars.

Keurig's solution to this problem? In a lawsuit (pdf) filed against Keurig by TreeHouse Foods, they claim Keurig has been busy striking exclusionary agreements with suppliers and distributors to lock competing products out of the market. What's more, TreeHouse points out that Keurig is now developing a new version of their coffee maker that will incorporate the java-bean equivalent of DRM -- so that only Keurig's own coffee pods can be used in it:

"Green Mountain has announced a new anticompetitive plan to maintain its monopoly by redesigning its brewers to lock out competitors’ products. Such lock-out technology cannot be justified based on any purported consumer benefit, and Green Mountain itself has admitted that the lock-out technology is not essential for the new brewers’ function. Like its exclusionary agreements, this lock-out technology is intended to serve anticompetitive and unlawful ends."

The plan was confirmed by Keurig's CEO who stated on a recent earnings call that the new maker indeed won't work with "unlicensed" pods as part of an effort to deliver "game-changing performance." "Keurig 2.0" is expected to launch this fall. French Press and pour-over manufacturers like Chemex have plenty of time to get their thank you notes to Keurig in the mail ahead of time as users are hopefully nudged toward the realization they could be drinking much better coffee anyway.

Filed Under: coffee, drm
Companies: keurig, treehouse foods

DailyDirt: The Next Big Food Is... Weird

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

Food fads are fascinating, especially when they turn previously disgusting biological curiosities into expensive delicacies. Lobsters were once only served to prisoners and lowly servants, but now these crustaceans are highly-priced entrees. Casu marzu is a traditional Italian cheese that contains live insect larvae (with an aftertaste that can reportedly last several hours). The maggots can jump about 6 inches, so diners should be careful to block these bugs from jumping into their mouths if they don't want to eat them. Casu marzu has a questionable legal status (for health and safety reasons), but it's sometimes available on the black market for a hefty markup in price. Here are just a few other menu items that might (or might not) be appetizing to you.

• Civet poop coffee is a delicacy, and you really need to know that your coffee beans have been partially digested by a civet cat from Indonesia. So if you're wondering if your coffee is fake, there's a test that can verify the flavor components of real Kopi Luwak. [url]
• Whelks can refer to any number of unrelated shellfish, but the commonly eaten ones are a particular kind of sea snail of the species Buccinum undatum. Whelks could become the next oyster in the seafood industry, or they could just remain unappetizing snotwinkles, as they're called in Canada. [url]
• In the early 1900s, the US faced "the meat question" -- a crisis over whether or not meat production could match the growing demand for meat products in the US. A seriously debated solution involved importing African hippos to the US -- in the same way that cows, pigs, sheep and poultry were introduced to the Americas -- and trying to convince Americans to eat hippopotamus meat. [url]

If you'd like to read more awesome and interesting stuff, check out this unrelated (but not entirely random!) Techdirt post via StumbleUpon.

Filed Under: coffee, delicacies, edible, fads, food, hippopotamus, kopi luwak, meat, seafood, shellfish, whelks

The Greatest Response To A Cease And Desist Letter, Probably Written While Drunk

from the cc:-mr.-bucks dept

This year certainly had its share of ups and downs in terms of lawyerly antics, but in our minds, 2013 shall forever be known as the year of the snarky cease and desist response letter. Back in June, we broke the news of the now famous response to a cease and desist letter received from the Town of West Orange, New Jersey, which went viral worldwide thanks to the power of sarcasm. A few months later, we wrote about an equally entertaining response to a cease and desist letter received from the American Bankers Association, rife with Spice Girls lyrics and Valley girl lingo.

It’s been a while since we wrote about one of these treasures, so we figured we’d close the year out with a bang. We discovered yet another amazing response to a cease and desist letter, and this one may be the greatest of them all — if only because we think its author might have been drunk while writing it….

Jeff Britton, the owner of Exit 6 Pub and Brewery in Cotteville, Missouri, received a cease and desist letter from none other than Starbucks, specifically from Anessa Owen Kramer of Honigman Miller Schwartz and Cohn, over a beer named “Frappicino.” As the world knows, the lords of coffee sell a frozen drink (a coffee Slurpee?) by the name of “Frappuccino.” Yes, the names are similar, but to be confused enough to think you could order the nectar of mall-hopping teenage girls at a bar, you’d have to be pretty drunk.

Rather than cower in fear over the legal consequences threatened by America’s coffee monarch, Britton decided it would be in his best interests to write a response on his own, without the assistance of legal counsel, because he didn’t need no stinkin’ lawyer. Here’s what he posted on the Exit 6 Facebook page:

So quick little story. Last week I received a cease and desist letter from the attorneys at Starbucks. Apparently there was a beer on Untappd that someone named “Frappicino”. 3 people had checked into said beer. 3. Starbucks [didn't] like that. So I got a letter. They wanted me to remove the beer and promise never to use their names again. They also wanted my written response and guarantee. Here is their letter. And also my response.

Needless to say, Britton’s response is amazing — he even threw in some legalese, despite the fact that he’s not a lawyer (oh yeah, heretofore, baby). Here are some highlights from his letter (all errors included in the original). You’d have to be drunk to write something like this, right? Who cares, it’s freakin’ awesome:

Exit 6 has proudly sold at least 38 drinks in Cottleville MO and has a strong presence in St Charles county, a suburb 40 miles outside the St Louis metropolis. It has recently come to Exit 6 Pub and Brewerys attention that there were 3 check ins to the beer with a very similar name to the “F Word”. Unfortunately it was only similar to the F Word because we meant to call it the same thing. Lucky for us, we’re poor spelers.

I would like for both Ms Owen Kramer and Mr Bucks to rest assured we meant no deception, confusion, or mistaking in the naming of the beer F Word. We never thought that our beer drinking customers would have thought that the alcoholic beverage coming out of the tap would have actually been coffee from one of the many, many, many stores located a few blocks away. I guess that with there being a Starbucks on every corner of every block in every city that some people may think they could get a Starbucks at a local bar. So that was our mistake.

Mr. Bucks isn’t Ms. Owen Kramer’s co-counsel; no, this “poor speler” is addressing Mr. Star Bucks himself, as if he were an actual human being. We imagine Britton was at least six Frapps in at this point.

We haven’t even gotten to the best part yet. To show Mr. Bucks just how sorry he really was, Britton enclosed a check in the amount of Exit 6′s profits made from its “Frappicino” beer to be applied to Ms. Owen Kramer’s legal fees, which he admits were “probably … more than Exit 6 made last year.” Here it is:

Behold: the legal equivalent of a mic drop. Cheers to you, Jeff Britton! We raise a glass in your honor.

Filed Under: beer, cease and desist, coffee, frappicino, frappuccino, likelihood of confusion, trademark
Companies: exit 6 pub and brewery, starbucks

Small Roaster Beats Starbucks Over Their Charbucks Blend

from the cool-beans dept

If you're like me, you'd be surprised to learn how much legal action exists surrounding sweet, sweet java. See, I love coffee. It's what makes my morning routine work, like the on button of my entire day. On the other hand, once I've worked myself up into a caffeine-driven frenzy, I really hate to see overly-aggressive intellectual property actions. Yet that's exactly what I'm dealing with today, reading about how megalithic Starbucks went after a tiny New Hampshire coffee roaster over one of their blends, Charbucks.

"We're just a mom-and-pop little roastery," said Annie Clark, who with her husband, Jim, owns Black Bear Micro Roastery in Tuftonboro. They were sued in 2001 in federal district court in New York by Starbucks, which alleged Black Bear's use of the name "Charbucks" infringed, blurred and tarnished its famous trademarks.

So why did Black Bear offer a brew called Charbucks? Well, apparently there's something of a public perception that Starbucks roasted beans appeared to be abnormally dark in color, indicating something or other about their quality. In other words, it was a gentle jab at a Goliath-like company from a roasting David. The name only worked to begin with as a distinction between the quality of Starbucks beans and Black Bear beans. That didn't stop Starbucks from suing for trademark infringement, however, and then following up with an appeal when Black Bear won round one in court. Fortunately, the appeals court agreed with the original ruling.

The appeals court noted that "one of the reasons Black Bear used the term 'Charbucks' was the public perception that Starbucks roasted its beans unusually darkly." But it agreed with the district court in finding minimal similarity and weak evidence of actual association between the brands.

"Their sales haven't been hurt," Clark said, noting that Black Bear's haven't changed much over the years. "Their growth hasn't been hurt."

In other words, no harm no foul, particularly given that the name of the brew required customers to make a distinction between the brands. Starbucks has since offered some quotes to sound reasonable about their claim, and indeed it appears they were not seeking any monetary damages, but this was still a silly move to begin with. No need to jump at shadows, Starbucks. Perhaps you've been drinking too much of your own coffee.

Filed Under: charbucks, coffee, trademark
Companies: black bear, starbucks