Stupid Patent of the Month: Alleged Cult Leader Wants to 'Improve Performance'

from the can-we-improve-the-performance-of-the-uspto dept

In April, Mexican federal police arrested Keith Raniere, taking him from the $10,000-per-week villa where he was staying and extraditing him to New York. According to the NY Daily News, Raniere, leader of self-help group NXIVM (pronounced "nexium"), is now being held without bail while he awaits trial on sex-trafficking charges. Through NXIVM, he preached "empowerment," but critics say the group was a cult, and engaged in extreme behavior, including branding some women with an iron.

This was not the first controversial program Raniere was involved in. In 1992, Raniere ran a multilevel marketing program called "Consumer Buyline," which was described as an "illegal pyramid," by the Arkansas Attorney General's office. More recently, he has collected more than two dozen patents from the U.S. Patent Office, and has more applications pending—including this one, which is for a method of determining "whether a Luciferian can be rehabilitated."

The USPTO has granted Raniere protection for a variety of curious inventions, including a patent on "analyzing resonance," which eliminates unwanted frequencies in anything from musical instruments to automobiles. Raniere also received a patent on a virtual currency system, which he dubbed an "entrance-exchange structure and method." He applied for a patent on a method of "active listening," and received patents on a system for finding a lost cell phone, and a way of preventing a motor vehicle from running out of fuel. NXIVM members reportedly identified their levels with various colored sashes, which helps explain Raniere's design patent on a "rational inquiry sash."

Today, we're going to focus on Raniere's U.S. Patent No. 9,421,447, a "method and apparatus for improving performance." The patent simply adds trivial limitations to the basic functioning of a treadmill, like timing the user and recording certain parameters (speed, heart rate, or turnover rate.) Since most modern treadmills allow users to precisely measure performance on a variety of metrics, the patent is arguably broad enough that it could be used to sue treadmill manufacturers or sellers.

Given Raniere's litigation history, that's not such a remote possibility. NXIVM has sued its critics for defamation—enough that the Albany Times-Union called NIXVM a "Litigation Machine." And Raniere sued both AT&T and Microsoft for infringement of some patents relating to video conferencing. The latter suit ended very badly for Raniere, who was ordered to pay attorneys' fees after he couldn't prove that he still had ownership of the patents in question. So it's worth taking a look at how Raniere got the ‘447 patent.

Raniere's Law â„¢

Raniere has never been shy about proclaiming how special he is. His bio on a website for Executive Success Programs, a series of courses run by NXIVM, explains that he could "construct full sentences and questions" by the age of one, and read by the age of two. Raniere was an East Coast Judo Champion at age 11, recruits are told, and he entered college at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute by age 16. The honorifics continue:

He has an estimated problem-solving rarity of one in 425,000,000 with respect to the general population. He has intellectual patents pending in the areas of human potential and ethics, expression, voice and musical training, athletic performance, commerce, education and learning, information processing and human modeling. He also holds several technological patents on computer inventions and a sleep guidance system.

Raniere may be able to convince NXIVM followers that he is a one-in-425 million level genius. A new article from Vanity Fair explains that, inside NXIVM, Raniere's patents were often used as evidence of his brilliance. But how did Raniere convince the US Patent and Trademark Office of his inventing abilities?

Ultimately, he didn't really have to. Taking a close look at the history of Raniere's patent application shows how the deck is stacked in favor of a determined, well-funded applicant. For someone who's determined to prove they're a great inventor, and is reasonably well-funded, the patent office can ultimately be cowed into compliance.

In this case, Raniere's original patent application claimed a "performance system" with a "control system" and a sensor for monitoring "at least one parameter." His examples went beyond exercise: he intended to patent humans making mathematical calculations at increasing speed, or a weightlifter decreasing the time between repetitions.

Appropriately, the examiner rejected all 13 of his proposed claims. But nothing stops patent applicants from coming back and trying again—and again—and that's exactly what Raniere did. To his bare-bones description of a "performance system" he added this dose of jargon:

Wherein said control system includes a device to determine a point of efficiency, said point of efficiency occurring when the linear proportional rate of change in [] at least one parameter of the subject being trained varies rapidly outside of the state of accommodation and the range of tolerance.

Whew! That's a lot of verbiage just to explain that the same "performance system" is measuring how fast changes occurs. The patent would be infringed by any treadmill that could measure a changing variable. Even though earlier patents had described essentially the same thing—Raniere's lawyers insisted that his idea of measure the "rate of change" was "completely different" from a system that used a "precalculated range."

The examiner rejected Raniere's application again, noting that an older patent for an exercise bike attached to a video game still fulfilled all the elements of Raniere's new, jargon-filled patent.

But Raniere simply paid $470 to file a "request for continued examination," and kept pounding his fist on the proverbial table. Raniere, or his lawyers, bloated Claim 1 up with yet more language about the point of efficiency occurring "just prior to the subject no longer being able to accommodate additional stress" and entering a state of exhaustion, and claimed now that it was this more narrow description that was his stroke of genius.

"Nowhere in [earlier patent] Hall-Tipping is it suggested that the user be exercised to the point of exhaustion," pointed out Raniere's lawyers, this time around.

Rejected again, they had an interview with the examiner before coming back with yet another $470 "continued examination" request. Then Raniere loaded up Claim 1 with almost twice as much language about the system repeating itself, and re-measuring new "points of efficiency."

This went on and on [PDF], with Raniere continuing to change language and add limitations. Eight times, the examiner threw out every single one of his claims. Finally, after he added language about the "range of tolerance" being plus or minus two percent, his claims were allowed.

In his specification, Raniere was typically un-self-effacing. He crowed that he had created "Raniere's Maximal Efficiency Principleâ„¢" or "Raniere's Lawâ„¢." (The guy is clearly into branding.)

Unfortunately, this is par for the course. Determined patent applicants get an endless number of chances to create a piece of intellectual property that just barely avoids all the other patents and non-patent art that overworked patent examiners are able to find. The strategy is: find a basic process, and slowly add limitations until you get a patent. That's how we get patents on filming a yoga class and Amazon's patent on white-background photography. The fault lies not so much with the examiner here, but with the Federal Circuit for interpreting patent law's obviousness standard in a way that effectively prohibits the Patent Office from relying on common sense.

So what's the solution? We need the Federal Circuit to apply the Supreme Court's decision in KSR v Teleflex more faithfully and allow the Patent Office to use common sense when faced with mundane claims. We also need to defend the Alice v. CLS Bank ruling so that examiners can reject patents that claim abstract ideas implemented with conventional tools (like treadmills). Patent law should also be changed so that applicants don't get an endless number of bites at the apple.

Reposted from the EFF's Stupid Patent of the Month series.

Filed Under: keith raniere, nxivm, patents, performance, stupid patent, stupid patent of the month, uspto
Companies: nxivm

Rime's Denuvo Defeated: Developer Gets To Work On DRM Free Version As Performance Hit Details Emerge

from the that-was-fast dept

As we had recently discussed, Tequila Works, makers of RiME, had promised pissed off customers that once the game was cracked and its Denuvo DRM defeated, it would release a Denuvo-free version of the game via a patch. The crack of the game came about almost immediately after this statement was made, because of course it was. To their credit, Tequila Works made good on its promise of a patch, while also blaming the use of Denuvo on Grey Box, its publisher.

But there's a secondary story here. The actual impact DRM has tended to have throughout its history has been mostly to annoy legitimate customers by either keeping them from playing the game they purchased at all, or by resulting in negative impacts on game performance. For RiME, it appears the issue is the latter, and the person who cracked the game is offering details of how Denuvo tried desperately to turn the dial on its software up to eleven, almost certainly impacting performance of the game.

In a fanfare of celebrations, rising cracking star Baldman announced that he had defeated the latest v4+ iteration of Denuvo and dumped a cracked copy of RiME online. While encouraging people to buy what he describes as a “super nice” game, Baldman was less complimentary about Denuvo. Labeling the anti-tamper technology a “huge abomination,” the cracker said that Denuvo’s creators had really upped their efforts this time out. People like Baldman who work on Denuvo talk of the protection calling on code ‘triggers.’ For RiME, things were reportedly amped up to 11.

“In Rime that ugly creature went out of control – how do you like three fucking hundreds of THOUSANDS calls to ‘triggers’ during initial game launch and savegame loading? Did you wonder why game loading times are so long – here is the answer,” Baldman explained. “In previous games like Sniper: Ghost Warrior 3, NieR Automata, Prey there were only about 1000 ‘triggers’ called, so we have x300 here.”

Those triggers are callbacks from the game to Denuvo's servers to verify it's legitimacy. This increase in triggers was almost certainly designed to make the game harder or more laborious to crack, though that obviously didn't work. But, as Baldman continues, the shocking 300k triggers just in the launch and loading screens was only the start. After a mere thirty minutes of gameplay, he recorded two million triggers. It's worth noting that RiME's rollout didn't go off as smoothly as the developer wanted, largely because of performance issues being reported by those who bought it. Baldman attempted to explain why at least part of those woes were likely this roided-up version of Denuvo mucking up performance.

“Protection now calls about 10-30 triggers every second during actual gameplay, slowing game down. In previous games like Sniper: Ghost Warrior 3, NieR Automata, Prey there were only about 1-2 ‘triggers’ called every several minutes during gameplay, so do the math.” Only making matters worse, the cracker says, is the fact the triggers are heavily obfuscated under a virtual machine, which further affects performance.

It seems pretty clear that whatever the percentage of the performance troubles RiME had that are the result of Denuvo, that percentage number is not zero. The DRM is having a performance impact at some level and it seems likely that having it ramped up so high would only increase the draw on power it needs to run. Denuvo is already denying that its software was responsible for the performance issues, but that should be easily cleared up now that Tequila Works is releasing a Denuvo-free version.

What remains unclear is why any developer or publisher would use Denuvo any longer. Pissing off your legitimate customers for protection that can be measured in hours is no way to build a customer base.

Filed Under: denuvo, drm, performance, rime
Companies: grey box

How Do You Manage The Performance And Reliability Of Web Apps And Services?

from the we-want-to-know dept

For providers of online apps and services, great success equals great responsibility. As users come to rely on something, the consequences of it failing become dire, and the importance of maintenance and performance monitoring grows.

So Techdirt and our sponsor New Relic have a question for all the developers, entrepreneurs, technicians and others out there: how do you tackle this challenge? Not only does a growing user base make it more important to closely track the performance of a web app, it makes it more difficult too. How do you make sure your service is running smoothly? How do you identify major failures or performance issues as they happen? What are the biggest challenges therein, and what tools do you use to overcome them? We're also interested in any feedback you have on New Relic's own performance monitoring tools.

We're opening these questions up for your feedback on the Insight Community. Remember, if you have a Techdirt account, then you're already a member and can head on over to the case page to submit your insights.

In exchange for your insights, we're offering some perks. Firstly, anyone who signs up for New Relic and installs the service will receive a free Nerd Life t-shirt. The basic account is free and comes with a 14 day trial of the pro service, and there's no commitment or credit card required.

Additionally, one best response chosen by New Relic and the Techdirt editorial team will receive a free one-year Watercooler subscription on Techdirt (regular price $50). The subscription includes access to the Crystal Ball and the Insider Chat, plus five monthly First Word/Last Word credits, and can be applied to your own Techdirt account or gifted to someone else.

The case will be open for four weeks, with the best response announced shortly afterwards. We look forward to your insights!

Filed Under: apps, insight community, performance, reliability, services, web apps

DailyDirt: Analyzing The Olympics

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

Despite the ridiculous restrictions on watching the Olympics, there are still plenty of statistics about various events for data nerds to collect and crunch that might provide some useful insights. By studying athletic performance over time, we can tell when technologies like fancy swimsuits are giving too much of an advantage or when a change in training and technique have made vast improvements. Here are just a few projects that are diving deep into Olympic data.

• Various economic figures can be used to try to predict how many medals each country will earn in 2012. The USA is expected to get somewhere between 99 and 113 medals, and China is predicted to come in second place with 67-98 medals. [url]
• The London Eye will be lit up like a mood ring during the Olympics, based on Tweets and a bit of sentimental analysis to gauge positive and negative commentary of the Games. The analysis is sponsored by an energy company, so it'll be watching for words like "Olympics", "London 2012" and the hashtag #energy2012. [url]
• Researchers from the Center for Sports Engineering Research at Sheffield Hallam University in the UK will be studying the 2012 games to look for significant changes in athletic performance. They've developed a "performance improvement index" to quantify things like: how sprinters are running faster than ever before or that javelin throwers are in a performance plateau. [url]

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

Filed Under: data, economic data, games, medals, olympics, performance, predictions, sentimental analysis, statistics
Companies: twitter

Copyright Maximalists Just Won't Quit: Pushing New Monopoly Rights For Performers Through Sneaky Treaty Agreement

from the they-never,-ever-stop dept

One thing that is important to understand about IP maximalists and their strategy for continually expanding monopoly powers against the public's fundamental rights is just what a comprehensive, multi-pronged strategy it is. It's not like they just try to pass a law like SOPA and are done. They're constantly working a comprehensive global strategy. Part of that means trying to get similar laws passed around the globe. But, at the same time, they're often working on a whole slew of international agreements as well. And while we're now all aware of the big treaties -- like ACTA and TPP -- there are all sorts of other things going on all the time.

For example, it appears that some folks have been pushing -- somewhat below the radar -- another treaty agreement to create a new form of intellectual monopoly: performers' rights (pdf and embedded below). There's a meeting planned for June in China to try to push this through.

As you hopefully know, in the US copyright is affixed to new and creative works as soon as they're put into a fixed form. But the copyright goes to whoever does that "fixing" or, on large productions, generally whoever is considered the "producer." The specific actors in, say, a TV show, don't get any specific rights in their performance. This makes sense. They're paid to do a job, which they do. However, some countries grant performers a copyright in their performances, and this new treaty is an attempt to push such rights for "audiovisual performers". As far as I can tell, this gives the performers in a work special new rights to stop how others use it. So, imagine a situation where someone wants to create a mashup video -- and they even get permission from the copyright holder to use it. Under this treaty, they'd then also need to get permission from everyone who appears in the video too, or they'll be violating that person's "audiovisual performance rights".

There are a variety of serious problems within the specifics, but just in general, why is this needed? It seems to serve no legitimate economic interest. All it does is create yet another category of monopoly rights that will certainly be abused to limit people's abilities to express themselves. It also almost guarantees that more new audiovisual works will be locked up and lost to culture. Already we have a serious problem with orphan works where the copyright holder can't be found. Imagine what happens when you need to find not just the copyright holder, but every single performer in the work and then secure a license from each of them. Yeah, basically every video will quickly become too expensive to ever use for anything, and thus it will be locked up.

Beyond that, there are some significant concerns in the details. Article 5 establishes "moral rights" in association with the economic rights. In the US, we've more or less (quite thankfully) ignored the requirement of the Berne Convention rules that say we need to recognize moral rights (to get around this, the US gives "moral rights" to a very, very tiny subset of artists). Moral rights, of course, are an idea built off of copyright, but rather than being about the economic incentives, they're about letting people stop the use of something because they don't like how it's used. We see people try to misuse copyright law all the time today because they don't like how a work is being used. The proper response is to let people know that's not allowed -- not to create new moral rights instead.

The agreement specifically states (in a footnote) that it shall apply to digital content online, including the requirement that performers have "the exclusive right of authorizing the direct or indirect reproduction of their performances." In other words, forget making videos that include performances with anyone who hasn't "licensed" you their performance right. How can the folks behind this not realize what kind of ridiculous problems this will cause? Take a video at a party of some people dancing -- and unless you've "licensed" the work from every dancer, you may be in trouble.

And, like pretty much every IP-related treaty these days, this one includes a stupid, technologically-illogical clause demanding anti-circumvention laws -- with no additional requirement that the only circumventions that apply are those that actually violate the other rights in the agreement. Instead, it's the same overly broad anti-circumvention clause that takes away your fundamental rights.

The whole thing is quite ridiculous, and just shows the nature of maximalist thinking. All they look to do is to create more and more monopolies that limit free speech and communication. It's really all about making the lawyers happier by creating more and more regulations for the kinds of things people do every day. Hopefully countries are smart enough to reject such a totally ridiculous concept, but from what we've heard, US officials are all for this garbage.

Filed Under: acta, china, maximalist, moral rights, performance, sopa, tpp

Massive Hike In Fees For Venues Playing Music In The UK

from the this-won't-help dept

We've seen this time and time again. The various music collection societies around the globe have been trying to squeeze out more and more cash -- either by extending what counts as a "public performance" or by massively jacking up the rates on existing licensees. We saw this recently in Australia, where rates went up by ridiculous amounts. To a lesser extent, we've seen something similar in Canada with its 1,300% fee increase. And, now, something similar is coming to the UK, where PPL massively increased a bunch of its fees:

Bills for a typical ­wedding bash will soar from £30 to £380. Pubs which can now pay as little as £8 a night will have to fork out around £10,000 a year up front for a public ­performance licence.

The fee for nightclubs will zoom from £167 to a mind-boggling £6,667 for each event.

If you're playing along at home, that last case describes a fee increase of 3,900%.

Now, for the most part, such collectives are passing money on directly to musicians, and not to record labels or the like. So you could argue that this means that musicians make more money, so perhaps it's okay. But that's not taking into account the overall impact of such fee increases. They actually harm musicians in multiple ways. First, as you would expect with such a massive increase in fees, many venues simply stop agreeing to pay a license to play music. Many may just not play music at all any more, and what good does that do any musician? Fewer venues playing music isn't helping anyone. It also means that a lot more of these kinds of venues end up going out of business. We keep hearing stories of people complaining about fewer venues being around for music these days, and you can blame ridiculous price hikes like this one for that.

Filed Under: fees, music, performance, uk
Companies: ppl

Senators Unconcerned About Massive Unintended Consequences Of Criminalizing People For Embedding YouTube Videos

from the shame-on-them dept

This is really no surprise, but the same Senate Judiciary Committee that unanimously approved the PROTECT IP Act, despite worries from internet experts and major media about how it would break the internet, has now also unanimously approved the anti-internet streaming bill that makes it a felony to stream certain videos online -- potentially putting people in jail for embedding YouTube videos or just putting up YouTube lip synching videos.

What's really troubling here is that the media and plenty of concerned citizens have directly raised the issues about the unintended consequences of this law. And while Senators Amy Klobuchar, John Cornyn and Christopher Coons continue to insist that (of course) the law is not intended to be used against such people, they have made no move to fix the bill. Even supporters of this bill, who insisted that we were wrong about what the bill allowed, eventually conceded that our argument was accurate and that this bill could be used to put people in jail for embedding a YouTube video or doing a lip synch video.

And that's a huge, huge problem. Of course, no one thinks the bill is for that purpose directly or that it's going to be widely used for such purposes. However, the bill, as written, clearly allows law enforcement to charge people with a felony for that, assuming it meets a few other conditions. But those conditions are pretty minimal (ads on your page? you're in trouble...). The risk here of abuse is a serious risk, and it's incredibly troubling that Klobuchar, Cornyn and Coons failed to change or adapt the bill, and worse that the rest of the Senate Judiciary Committee allowed the bill to move forward in such a broken state. They were clearly made aware of problems with the bill, but directly chose not to make any changes. How do you explain that other than incompetence or corruption?

Filed Under: amy klobuchar, christopher coons, copyright, felony, john cornyn, performance, streaming

Senators Want To Put People In Jail For Embedding YouTube Videos

from the not-understanding-the-technology dept

Okay, this is just getting ridiculous. A few weeks back, we noted that Senators Amy Klobuchar, John Cornyn and Christopher Coons had proposed a new bill that was designed to make "streaming" infringing material a felony. At the time, the actual text of the bill wasn't available, but we assumed, naturally, that it would just extend "public performance" rights to section 506a of the Copyright Act.

Supporters of this bill claim that all it's really doing is harmonizing US copyright law's civil and criminal sections. After all, the rights afforded under copyright law in civil cases cover a list of rights: reproduce, distribute, prepare derivative works or perform the work. The rules for criminal infringement only cover reproducing and distributing -- but not performing. So, supporters claim, all this does is "harmonize" copyright law and bring the criminal side into line with the civil side by adding "performance rights" to the list of things.

If only it were that simple. But, of course, it's not. First of all, despite claims to the contrary, there's a damn good reason why Congress did not include performance rights as a criminal/felony issue: because who would have thought that it would be a criminal act to perform a work without permission? It could be infringing, but that can be covered by a fine. When we suddenly criminalize a performance, that raises all sorts of questionable issues.

Furthermore, as we suspected, in the full text of the bill, "performance" is not clearly defined. This is the really troubling part. Everyone keeps insisting that this is targeted towards "streaming" websites, but is streaming a "performance"? If so, how does embedding play into this? Is the site that hosts the content guilty of performing? What about the site that merely linked to and/or embedded the video (linking and embedding are technically effectively the same thing). Without clear definitions, we run into problems pretty quickly.

And it gets worse. Because rather than just (pointlessly) adding "performance" to the list, the bill tries to also define what constitutes a potential felony crime in these circumstances:

the offense consists of 10 or more public performances by electronic means, during any 180-day period, of 1 or more copyrighted works

So yeah. If you embed a YouTube video that turns out to be infringing, and more than 10 people view it because of your link... you could be facing five years in jail. This is, of course, ridiculous, and suggests (yet again) politicians who are regulating a technology they simply do not understand. Should it really be a criminal act to embed a YouTube video, even if you don't know it was infringing...? This could create a massive chilling effect to the very useful service YouTube provides in letting people embed videos.

Filed Under: amy klobuchar, christopher coons, copyright, felony, john cornyn, performance, streaming

BMI Says A Single Person Listening To His Own Music Via The Cloud Is A Public Performance

from the looking-to-the-sky-and-seeing-unlicensed-clouds dept

There's no time like late on a Friday to send out disturbing missives. Companies who need to let staff go often find it easier to let the week "play out" before handing out the pink slips. Congressmen who need to shove through some questionable legislation often wait until the papers have gone to bed, or at least a majority of the voting citizens.

Martin Berenson, Senior Vice President and General Counsel for BMI has decided there's no time like Friday evening to kick out an editorial about streaming music via the "cloud."

Berenson chooses to couch his arguments in the relative safety of Capitol Records (and others) ongoing legal battle with MP3tunes.com, a "subscription Internet music 'locker' service," before launching a grazing attack on "cloud-computing" in general. While the legality of MP3tunes' actions is still under question, Berenson expresses his concern that its legal arguments could "create loopholes in the copyright law relating to the public performance right."

There's a lot to unpack in this editorial, but what it all boils down to is this: BMI wants a chunk of this "cloud" money.

MP3tunes logically points out (in its arguments against Capitol Records) that a user making a copy on a "dedicated, private, remote storage device" and playing it back to himself is a private performance and, therefore, needs no licensing. Google, the EFF and Public Knowledge have all entered amici briefs (or "broad attacks on the performing right," according to Berenson) stating that, "if a user initiates a stream, it should not be considered a public performance" by the service.

This seems to be a logical thought: one person listening to his or her own music is not a public performance. But, won't someone please think of the licensing? No worries, Berenson has that covered:

As previously noted, BMI argues that the public performing right has long applied to on-demand, interactive streaming. Additionally, it makes no difference if the audience for the transmission is only one person, who may receive the program at a unique time, and that MP3tunes’ attempt to make one to one transmissions into private performances is contrary to established law. We stress that it was only the existence of the unique copy made by each subscriber that was the critical factor that saved Cablevision from being an infringer. MP3tunes cannot evade that essential aspect of the court’s ruling on the grounds it would be more efficient to infringe with one copy in storage for all recipients.

Well, there you have it:

1. The right to collect licensing fees has "long applied" to streaming services, and since it's been there before, it logically follows that it should always be that way, no matter the differences of each situation.


2. It makes no difference if only one person is listening -- it's still a public performance. BMI and their fellow performance rights groups have always been willing to grant individuals the rights of a crowd.


3. Storage efficiency = infringement.

But Berenson's just warming up, and this is where it gets really interesting (and by "interesting," I mean "ludicrous"):

The strength of the public performing right would be threatened by a ruling that broadens the Cablevision court’s private-performance ruling to otherwise-unlicensed services. Cloud computing will no doubt grow tremendously in the future and if MP3tunes’ argument is adopted by the court, unlicensed entertainment services in “the cloud” will steal audiences from existing licensed streaming services (as well as from more traditional media entities), and copyright owners will be harmed by such a ruling.

From that point, Berenson takes a quick run at Amazon's Cloud Drive, mSpot and underdog neo-Luddites, Zediva (in particular, noting that Zediva's DVD player farm "competes unfairly with licensed services" -- which is a totally understandable statement, because the film industry has always been nothing but fair when dealing with competitors and customers).

While Berenson does not specifically attack or threaten Amazon's new service/player, one can only gather from this editorial that the rent-seekers (BMI, ASCAP, etc.) are beginning to formulate their plan to get a piece of this hot, new action, if not already forming an orderly line outside the virtual door. The sentence, "The issues are not confined to MP3tunes," seems to indicate that he considers these services to be next in line for the MP3tunes treatment.

After all, Berenson equates listening to unlicensed music streams to "theft" and there's really nothing more sincere than an "editorial" from a self-interest group. In closing, he offers this baffling line:

These efforts to diminish or circumvent the performing right point up the need for heightened vigilance on our part.

Godspeed, BMI. The more you can do to separate people from their music, the richer you should become. And with an entire nation of individual listeners billable as one (1) crowd, the sky's the limit. (Hence, the "pointing up," I assume.) Just watch out for those pesky "clouds".

Filed Under: cloud, performance, public performance
Companies: bmi