Amazon.com has formerly registered its objection to the Google Settlement with the US court that will preside over the Fairness Hearing next month.
In a 50-page legal document, filed yesterday (1st September), Amazon said the agreement was “unfair” to other rights holders, gave Google “an effective monopoly” over scanned in works, and would create “a cartel of authors and publishers”. It also questioned the legitimacy of the “class action” and warned the court that it was being asked “to exercise powers that it does not have” stating that the agreement “restrains competition in ways that ought not be sanctioned by this court”.
Amazon signaled last month that it would object to the deal and just last week the internet retailer sought the court’s permission to appoint prominent copyright lawyer David Nimmer to represent it. In the amicus brief, Amazon concluded that the the agreement was “even arguably unlawful” and that the settlement “must therefore be rejected”.
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One week after suffering a major blow to its infamous “1-Click” shopping patent, Amazon.com has been awarded what’s sure to be seen as its latest bit of highly obnoxious IP. The company has been awarded a patent on the practice of “including a search string at the end of a URL without any special formatting.”
According to the text of the patent, it covers a technology serving the following circumstances: “a user wishing to search for ‘San Francisco Hotels’ may do by simply accessing the URL www.domain_name/San Francisco Hotels, where domain_name is a domain name associated with the web site system.”
There’s smart conversation about the patent’s flaws over at Slashdot, as usual, but the problems here are probably obvious. Filed in August of 2004, the practice no doubt touches on any number of “prior arts” and it’s fairly obvious. Non-obviousness – which you can probably search for via http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/non_obviousness (if you’ll forgive me for saying so, Amazon) is a key criteria in the granting of patents.
Amazon may in the end be one of the leading factors in the eventual overhaul of the internet technology department at the US Patent office.
Amazon.com plans to launch a digital music store later this year, featuring music downloads without copyright restrictions.
The e-commerce giant announced Wednesday that it would offer songs from more than 12,000 record labels in the MP3 format, without the controversial digital rights management (DRM) software. Record labels are beginning to warm up to the concept of offering music downloads without DRM, after waging war with peer-to-peer companies over distributing their copyrighted music and over piracy issues.
“Our MP3-only strategy means all the music that customers buy on Amazon is always DRM-free and plays on any device,” Jeff Bezos, Amazon’s chief executive, said in a statement.
Users will be able to play their music on virtually any device, including PCs, iPods, Zunes and Zens, as well as burn the songs on CDs for personal use.
In making the announcement, Amazon also noted it has teamed up with EMI Music to offer songs from its digital catalog. As part of its digital music store, Amazon will offer EMI’s new, premium DRM-free downloads.
Amazon said it would announce pricing details closer to the launch date. continue reading…
Apple is set to begin selling DRM-free music from EMI starting in May. But it looks like Amazon is gunning to be the first major company to sell those sweet DRM-free tunes.
There’ve been rumors that Amazon could be entering the digital music store game for months now. Now it looks like the company’s been in talks every major record label, possibly in a rush to get a store up and running in the next few weeks.
Apple is hoping to sell unencrypted music, and will likely partner with record label EMI, which has already signed an arrangement with Apple. There could also be some classical tracks available from Universal Music Group.
Superman might have X-ray vision but Warner Bros. home video division might need to hire a few more good eyes to check for mistakes like this. Bonus content on the Superman III Deluxe Edition and Dolby Digital 2.0 mix on the first disc of Superman: The Movie Four Disc Special Edition were accidentally left off of the DVDs included in the Superman Ultimate Collector’s Edition ($99) released a few weeks ago.
Customers can call (800) 553-6937 to get replacements for only those two discs. SIII can only be replaced if it was part of the Collector’s Edition and the disc for Superman: The Movie Four Disc Special Edition can be either from the individual title, the Collector’s Edition or the Christopher Reeve Superman Collection. Other than the omitted material, the discs are otherwise undamaged (which means most people may never even notice any content is missing). The 14-disc Collector’s set includes all the Superman films, including either Deluxe or Special Editions versions of I-IV and Superman Returns, a longer cut of II and bonus DVDs.
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Prices appear to range from $100 to $399, even though the article goes on to quote Microsoft spokesman Lou Gellos as declining to comment on Amazon’s presale, saying that Microsoft is still finalizing its pricing model. Amazon’s site also goes on to estimate an availability date of Jan. 30th, based on informal conversations with Microsoft.