It was about a year ago at a Carl Galletti Conference in Las Vegas (Carl is an expert direct response marketer), that one of the presenters came onto the pulpit and explained to everyone how that if they use mp3 audio ontheir website, that they are are violating a license and that they owe money to the inventor of that technology.
Anyway, jump forward to 2006 and a patent has been granted to a relatively unknown California Web-design firm for an invention its creator says covers the design and creation of most rich-media applications used over the Internet. Balthaser Online Inc, the patent holder, says it could license nearly any rich-media Internet application across a broad range of devices and networks.
Meaning that all these new videos that many of us are posting can equal a payment to the patent holder.
"How broad is the patent? Here's what the patent abstract says it covers: A host computer, containing processes for creating rich-media applications, is accessed from a remote user computer system via an Internet connection. User account information and rich-media component specifications are uploaded over the Internet for a specific user account. Rich-media applications are created, deleted, or modified in a user account, with rich-media components added to, modified in, or deleted from the rich-media application based on information contained in a user request. After creation, the rich-media application is viewed or saved on the host computer system, or downloaded to the user computer system over the Internet. "
Balthaser says he will probably sell the patent rather than try to enforce it himself.
This is the kind of stuff that goes on in the wild wild West called the net.
It seems copyright and trademark law is all screwed up when it comes to the digital age.
Just look at Google's caching system. Is this an infringement on my content? Who told them that they can house my data on their computer? Who say that they can crawl my pages with spiders for that matter? And even if I use protocols to ask them to stop crawling my site, they will still come.
Of course, we all accept this intrusion because they bring us our web lifeblood- traffic. But the engines and other web entities seem to have redefined what is right and wrong as far as copyright. And hey let's not even get into Big Brotheresque Privacy issues.
I am far from an attorney. But it seems that the engines have paved the way for more and more people to just turn a blind eye to what would otherwise be a major lawsuit in the world of brick and mortar. Will Balthaser make any money from holding video technology users hostage. Doubtful.
Should he? I have no idea. And I bet none of us want them to. And that is the way it goes in the wild wild West.
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