Amazon sued over Kindle SO screensavers

[The Terminator]

Originally Posted by Giggleton

On the surface it does appear that patent trolls and copyright holders are different but I am still not quite sure. For instance, you say the patent troll prevents others from implementing an idea, wouldn't Stephen King's copyright holdings prevent someone from implementing an idea (copying King's work) that Stephen King had and filed at the copyright office years earlier?

What I mean is why is literature so different than a technological invention?

Every day we make choices.

There's a world of difference. If they were at all comparable the copyright holder on a book would have to;

1) Not ever print the book and sell it.

2) They would sue people who had very similar or just used the general premise of the story.

3. [Terminated]

Authors who copyright their books are not evil, and don't take anything away from people. If all books should have to be free, that means that you assign no value whatsoever to a book, or even a negative value on it, because of formatting or editing? Or are those things worthless also.



Don't feed the trolls.

Back on topic, in my opinion not much will come of this. Or in the most extreme case Amazon will just remove the ads.

[Sil_liS]

Originally Posted by The Terminator

1) Not ever print the book and sell it.

Publishers do this sometimes. They buy the rights to a book and then they don't publish it.

[QuantumIguana]

A Kindle is certainly a computer in a sense, you could easily run DOS or a text-only Linux on it. But a personal computer, I don't know. As a computer, I would put it more like something from the late 80's.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by QuantumIguana

A Kindle is certainly a computer in a sense, you could easily run DOS or a text-only Linux on it. But a personal computer, I don't know. As a computer, I would put it more like something from the late 80's.

The current generation of readers are more powerful then the computers back int he 80s.

[Giggleton]

Originally Posted by The Terminator

There's a world of difference. If they were at all comparable the copyright holder on a book would have to;

1) Not ever print the book and sell it.

2) They would sue people who had very similar or just used the general premise of the story.

3. The work would probably have to be Non-fiction, and written about an event that happened, so others could not use a story that was about that event (E.g WW1)

Authors who copyright their books are not evil, and don't take anything away from people. If all books should have to be free, that means that you assign no value whatsoever to a book, or even a negative value on it, and what about formatting or editing? Or are those things worthless also.

Don't feed the trolls.

Even trolls need to eat, same as copyright holders.

It appears you are having hard times understanding where I am coming from. This is quite understandable. I sometimes wonder the exact thing.

Why should anyone have the option to stop you from thinking in a certain way? This lawsuit (KINDLE SO) should be simply thrown out of court and the paper used to file it should be composted into a vegetable garden.

1. What of Orphan works?

2. This is where the thinking gets interesting. What is a copyright but a stranglehold on the free dissemination of an idea. What does it matter if Stephen King arranged a certain number of letters in a certain way to create a book? Why should I not be able to arrange the same letters in the EXACT same way to create another book? Letters only hold meaning if we allow them to, taken by themselves they are meaningless, but that is beside the point.

Which is, ideas are just as if not more so important than technological invention, indeed without ideas and the freedom to disseminate them we would have none of this technology. You might say we are free enough, but I am not so sure, and the future is full of possibilities as I am sure you are aware, things such as the length of copyright are always capable of being changed, from zero to infinity.

3. I am not sure what you mean??

[The Terminator]

Originally Posted by Giggleton

Even trolls need to eat, same as copyright holders.

It appears you are having hard times understanding where I am coming from. This is quite understandable. I sometimes wonder the exact thing.

Why should anyone have the option to stop you from thinking in a certain way? This lawsuit (KINDLE SO) should be simply thrown out of court and the paper used to file it should be composted into a vegetable garden.

1. What of Orphan works?

2. This is where the thinking gets interesting. What is a copyright but a stranglehold on the free dissemination of an idea. What does it matter if Stephen King arranged a certain number of letters in a certain way to create a book? Why should I not be able to arrange the same letters in the EXACT same way to create another book? Letters only hold meaning if we allow them to, taken by themselves they are meaningless, but that is beside the point.

Which is, ideas are just as if not more so important than technological invention, indeed without ideas and the freedom to disseminate them we would have none of this technology. You might say we are free enough, but I am not so sure, and the future is full of possibilities as I am sure you are aware, things such as the length of copyright are always capable of being changed, from zero to infinity.

3. I am not sure what you mean??

Sorry about #3, I was a little vague. What I meant was, that if someone made a non-fiction book about WW1, the book is going to start and finish the same way no matter who writes it.

2. That's just flawed, the letter's didn't just happen to go that way. If you want to go into that, then what is code? Just a bunch of numbers, letters and symbols, so should someone else be able to sell Windows or Mac OS?

1. I think we can agree a bit here, I think that out of print books should be free or cheap. Because if you can't buy them as an ebook or as a new paperback the author isn't getting any money anyway.

[geenp]

They don't really want to destroy the Kindles, this is just the usual dance that patent trolls do with the big corporations. Make an extreme demand and settle for a reasonably amount. They're probably angling for a cut of each Kindle sale.

[drofgnal]

You say reasonable amount. from what I can tell nothing would be a reasonable amount. These people are parasites.

[Joykins]

Incidentally I took advantage of my first Kindle SO yesterday. Half-price tacos at a joint so authentic we were the only ones in there speaking English

[theducks]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

I think the worst case is Amazon will have to update all those Kindle SO with non-SO firmware.

I want my $30 back if the push the free non-SO update.

[Joykins]

Originally Posted by theducks

I want my $30 back if the push the free non-SO update.

I don't know that they'd even need to remove the Special Offers altogether. They'd just need to remove them from the screensaver.

Originally Posted by theducks

I want my $30 back if the push the free non-SO update.

Chances are that Amazon will get a bunch of lawyers and engineers together to figure out if they are actually violating the patent then (if so) how to circumvent it without disabling KSO. They will also be prepared to challenge the validity of the patent.

On the issue of patent reform, it is needed but it must be done carefully. A use it or lose it rule isn't as simple as it may sound and denying the right of patent holders to sell patents is also detrimental. As an example, what would you do if you were a startup that could not afford to bring a product to market. The inability to sell it to a larger firm means that your patent has no value. Or maybe you're in the same position, so you're trying to license the patent to a bigger firm. Depending upon the nature of the patent, there may be a limited number of companies to negotiate with and they may just stonewall negotiations until the use it or lose it period has passed.

The system definitely needs to be reformed, but replacing one set of rules with another set of rules is likely to create a system where you're replacing one set of abuses with another set of abuses. After all, people get creative when dollar signs creep into their eyes.

[teh603]

Originally Posted by BWinmill

On the issue of patent reform, it is needed but it must be done carefully. A use it or lose it rule isn't as simple as it may sound and denying the right of patent holders to sell patents is also detrimental. As an example, what would you do if you were a startup that could not afford to bring a product to market. The inability to sell it to a larger firm means that your patent has no value.

Never thought about licensing it? Gives you a lot more control over the rights than a flat- out sale.

IMO, just making patents to sell is kinda like starting a company whose only goal is to be bought out by a bigger company. Its like how toy companies trying to get bought out by Wal-Mart, or tech companies trying to get bought out by Google; the products they made were usually second- rate or non- existent, and they hadn't even tried licensing out what patents and copyrights they had.

Kinda degrades the entrepreneurial spirit, doesn't it? Believing that the best overall outcome is to be consumed by a growing megacorp?

Originally Posted by teh603

Never thought about licensing it?

That's what the second part of the paragraph was about.

IMO, just making patents to sell is kinda like starting a company whose only goal is to be bought out by a bigger company. ... Kinda degrades the entrepreneurial spirit, doesn't it? Believing that the best overall outcome is to be consumed by a growing megacorp?

In a lot of respects, I agree with you. On the other hand, you have to consider how the marketplace, businesses, and the legal system works. This is particularly true if you're developing consumer products. For example: how do you get your product into retail channels? How do you manage the growth of a small business into a potentially large business? When the blood-suckers come, do you have enough money to hire lawyers?

Companies that do only business to business transactions or serve regional markets are quite different, but that's not quite what we're talking about here with Amazon and all. But if we took Amazon out of the picture, would there be as much money to make on ereaders? I somehow find that doubtful, and would think that eink devices would be limited to industrial applications.

[tubemonkey]

Originally Posted by Joykins

Incidentally I took advantage of my first Kindle SO yesterday. Half-price tacos at a joint so authentic we were the only ones in there speaking English

FYI, that wasn't a Kindle SO; it was an AmazonLocal offer. Those offers are freely available to anyone who wants one and Kindle ownership isn't required.

The SO's have really tapered off since the holidays. Instead, we're being spammed by these AmazonLocal ads. My Kindle currently has seven of them right now.