uU.S. Patent Office: No, Patent Troll Company Does Not Entirely Own Podcastingr

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  (Emily)

  
  
  
  “Podcasting” might as well have been the word of the year in 2014, when “Serial” shot the form straight to the top of the pop-culture buzz charts for a few months. But while everyone in America was plugging in earbuds and trying to decide whodunit, the U.S. Patent Office had the more important end of the challenge: deciding who actually owns the patent for the idea of podcasting.
  

  In short? Score one for the good guys. The decision addresses a few very specific elements of the patent claim, but no, the U.S. Patent Office found, this company does not actually have the exclusive ownership of releasing episodic audio content over the internet in a regular, updated way.

  
  

  The matter came to a hearing at the Patent Office last December. Personal Audio, your basic “non-practicing” patent troll entity, claimed that they owned a patent on the tech that allows podcasting to work, and therefore lots of big, powerful companies with deep pockets — like CBS and CNN — owe them money.

  
  

  The Electronic Frontier Foundation, which often represents people and companies trying to assert their rights in the digital world, stepped in and challenged Personal Audio’s claims last October, and the issue went to a hearing in December. The Patent Office released the result of that hearing today.

  
  

  In their decision (PDF), the Patent Office works its way through the very, very specific arguments about wording and meaning. It is not unlike reading a geometric proof, in the way it builds a clear argument of facts and existing rulings. Ultimately, however, the dry legalese ends up with one result: the patent troll does not own podcasting.

  
  

  “Petitioner [the EFF] has shown by a preponderance of the evidence that claims 31-35 of [the patents] are unpatentable,” the order concludes. “Because this is a final written decision, parties to the proceeding seeking judicial review of the decision must comply with the notice and service requirements.”

  
  

  “We have a lot to celebrate here,” EFF Staff Attorney Vera Ranieri said in a statement. “But unfortunately, our work to protect podcasting is not done. Personal Audio continues to seek patents related to podcasting. We will continue to fight for podcasters, and we hope the Patent Office does not give them any more weapons to shake down small podcasters.”

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


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by Kate Cox via Consumerist

uNice People Doing Nice Thing For Fellow Starbucks Customer Explain Why They Couldn’t Be Nice Fasterr

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  (With permission from kara.mary.alice on Instagram)

  
  
  
  Proving that heroes can come in every shape, size and age, an elderly couple not only returned a man’s wallet after he’d left it at Starbucks, but wrote a note to him explaining why they weren’t able to catch up with him in time, and expressing concern that he’d been upset when they saw him walking off without it.
  

  Consumerist friend Kara posted a photo of the typed note posted on the board near her local Los Angeles Starbucks, near where the milk and straws are offered.

  
  

  “Just when you thought kindness was dead,” she writes of the letter. “Frances, you are a gem.”

  
  

  Frances writes that she and her husband would’ve caught up to the man named David if they could’ve, and they would’ve written their note by hand as well, but they’re older and such things don’t come so easily. Despite that, Frances didn’t leave the note unsigned, scrawling a wobbly yet legible autograph in addition to the typed closing.

  
  

  
  

  Dear David,

  
  

  My name is Frances and my husband and I found your wallet at Starbucks. We tried to catch up with you when we noticed you left it behind. We are older and could not catch up. Please excuse this impersonal typed note but our arthritis is very bad and [we] can not write very well anymore. We noted you were very upset when you left the store. We hope you are oak and the return of the wallet is helpful. We do not want a reward so have not included our address.

  
  

  Sincerely, Frances

  
  

  
  

  David sounds ecstastic about the return of his wallet, choosing to post Frances and her husband’s letter on the board with his response, so all can see how the good people of this world go about spreading warm, fuzzy feelings.

  
  

  “If you wrote this please contact the manager on duty. I would like to thank you personally!” David wrote by hand on the note.

  
  

  Now we can all go ahead and enjoy the weekend with renewed faith in our fellow humans. Happy Friday, y’all.

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


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by Mary Beth Quirk via Consumerist

uFDA: Antibiotic Use In Farm Animals Grew In Spite Of Regulationr

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  (Great Beyond)

  
  
  
  Back in 2012, the FDA banned “extra-label” non-medical use in animals for the cephalosporin class of antibiotics, which are commonly used to treat humans for pneumonia, urinary tract infections, and other maladies. Not only did this restriction fail to curb the use of cephalosporins, but a new FDA report shows that the drug use increased following the ban.
  

  The report [PDF] shows that cephalosporin use in 2013 was at 28,337 kilograms, up from 27,654 kg the year before; an increase of nearly 2.5%.

  
  

  Cephalosporins were not the only class of medically important drugs to increase in use in 2013. Tetracyclines, which are frequently used to treat bacterial infections and acne, are by far the most widely used drugs. In 2013, more than 6.5 million kg of tetracyclines were used on farm animals, an increase of 9% over the previous year.

  
  

  In a recent Frontline report on antibiotics in farm animals, veterinary scientists in Texas explained that they had hoped to reduce the use of the more important cephalosporins by increasing the use of tetracyclines.

  
  

  “We actually saw that resistance went up, which is not what we hypothesized,” said one researcher. “Our viewpoint historically has been that, sure tetracyclines aren’t that important for human health so why worry about them in animal agriculture? But they may be more important than we think, not because of their use in human medicine, but because they can expand resistance to critically important drugs.”

  
  

  In all, livestock-related sales of antibiotics deemed medically important to humans were up 3% in 2013, to more than 10,100 tons, accounting for 70% of all medically important antibiotics sold in the U.S.

  
  

  “Use of medically antibiotics to produce meat and poultry is troubling,” writes Avinash Kar of the Natural Resources Defense Council, “because when the antibiotics are routinely given to herds and flocks of animals, some bacteria become resistant to the antibiotics. When these ‘superbugs’ multiply and spread, they threaten people’s health by contributing to the growing crisis of antibiotic resistance.”

  
  

  According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, more than 2 million people in the U.S. fall victim to drug-resistant pathogens every year, with some 20,000 dying as a result.

  
  

  In late 2013, the FDA issued voluntarily guidelines for the drug industry, asking them to remove non-therapeutic uses — like growth-promotion — from approved uses of their livestock antibiotics. For the most part, the drug companies agreed, though some manufacturer continue to actively market the growth-promotion benefits of their antibiotics.

  
  

  “The data released today shows us that use of human antibiotics on the farm has continued to rise, including the use of cephalosporins,” says Steve Roach, senior analyst for Keep Antibiotics Working. “This reaffirms just how timid FDA’s approach to addressing the problem of antibiotic overuse really is, and suggests that it may have limited impact.”

  
  

  Given the time it takes for the FDA to put together these reports, we won’t have numbers for 2014 until sometime next year. That data will show whether the 2013 guidelines have had any impact on antibiotic use or if, as the drug industry itself predicted at the time, it won’t significantly change the numbers.

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


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by Chris Morran via Consumerist

uFeds Give Amazon Approval (Again) To Finally Test Delivery Drones In U.S.r

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  It’s finally time for Amazon to take its delivery drones to the sky for testing with the government’s approval: While the Federal Aviation Administration already granted the company permission to test a PrimeAir prototype last month, Amazon had complained that the time the feds took to sign off on the testing rendered the earlier design obsolete.

  
  

  This new approval [PDF] means Amazon — which had complained last month over the FAA taking more than six months since it’d originally petitioned for drone testing in July — will be sending its new designs up into the air soon, reports Reuters.

  
  

  As long as Amazon’s drones stay under 400 feet and fly no faster than 100 miles per hour, Amazon is good to fly them outdoors for tests, the FAA says in its letter.

  
  

  Amazon has been working on this idea to deliver packages to Prime customers by air with small, self-piloted aircraft since 2013, an effort that we can only imagine will finally set off the robot revolution and enslave humankind to machines ever after.

  
  

  Amazon gets green light from U.S. regulators for new drone tests [Reuters]

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


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by Mary Beth Quirk via Consumerist

uJudge Says An IP Address Is Not Enough To Identify A Movie Pirater

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  (Rich Renomeron)

  
  
  
  Since the dawn of online piracy, media companies have been serving subpoenas on Internet service providers to try to compel them to match up IP addresses of alleged pirates with the names on the accounts tied to those IP addresses. Unless the ISPs put up a fight, courts frequently grant these subpoenas, but one federal judge in Florida has said that a mere IP address is not sufficient to identify someone as a pirate.
  

  In March, the makers of the documentary Manny, a film about Filipino boxing superstar Manny Pacquiao, filed a complaint [PDF] with the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida.

  
  

  The lawsuit identifies only a single John Doe defendant who allegedly violated the filmmakers’ copyright by downloading and sharing the film via BitTorrent. The only identifier used for the defendant is an IP address.

  
  

  It’s worth noting that this isn’t the only lawsuit being filed by producers of Manny. A PACER search for just this particular District Court found 40 cases listing Manny Film as the plaintiff. TorrentFreak reports that the producers have filed more than 200 such claims thus far.

  
  

  A week after filing this particular complaint, the judge ordered Manny Film to show good cause that the court could rely on geolocation technology to identify the actual defendant, and to show that there was reason to believe the defendant would be located in the district covered by the court.

  
  

  In response [PDF] Manny Film contended that its allegation that the “subscriber of the IP address used to infringe Plaintiff’s movies, is the infringer is plausible… because Defendant is the most likely person to have committed the infringement. Indeed, by paying for the Internet, Defendant is the most likely person to use it, particularly at such a consistent and reoccurring basis as has occurred here.”

  
  

  The plaintiffs also questioned the judge’s previous ruling in a case involving a porn company known for being a copyright troll. In that lawsuit, the judge had remarked that the “Plaintiff has not shown how this geolocation software can establish the identity of the Defendant. There is nothing that links the IP address location to the identity of the person actually downloading and viewing Plaintiff’s videos, and establishing whether that person lives in this district.”

  
  

  Manny Film argued that the IP address isn’t intended to be the sole identifier of the pirate. That information will come from Comcast when they provide the court with the name associated with that IP address.

  
  

  “[A]ll other courts to consider this issue have specifically disagreed,” with this judge’s stance on the issue, contends the response.

  
  

  But in the judge’s order dismissing the complaint [PDF], she cites several cases where the court held there was no definitive reason to believe that the name associated with an IP address was indeed the person doing the pirating.

  
  

  Reasons given by those other courts include the fact that the IP address is shared among all people using the network and there’s no way to show that it’s the account owner — and not their family member, roommate, guest, or someone squatting on their connection — responsible for the piracy.

  
  

  The judge ruled that Manny Film was unable to show that identifying the owner of the IP address would identify the pirate.

  
  

  “Even if this IP address is located within a residence, geolocation software cannot identify who have access to that residence’s computer and who would actually be using it to infringe Plaintiff’s copyright,” writes the judge.

  
  

  [via TorrentFreak]

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


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by Chris Morran via Consumerist

uHome Depot’s ‘Spring Black Friday’ Stupidity Is Backr

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  Retailers really love the concept of “Black Friday.” They love it so much that they’re trying to expand it in all directions. Instead of the day after Thanksgiving and the kickoff to the Christmas shopping season, Black Friday is now a year-round event that is an inclusive alternative to “Christmas in July.” Now it’s a spring event, too.

  
  

  Reader T. sent along an e-mail that he received from Home Depot, which included several promotions that included the Black Friday thing. You can see that graphic at the top of this post. Here’s what shoppers saw when they clicked on it.

  
  

  

  
  

  Yes, that is some very festive mulch, but that doesn’t explain why it’s called “Black Friday.” The sale being advertised runs from Thursday, April 9 until Sunday, April 12. That’s four days, only 25% of which are actual Fridays.

  
  

  We looked back in our archives and found that Home Depot was a pioneer of alternative Black Fridays, having pummeled customers with e-mails about it in early April of 2013.

  
  

  From the point of view of home improvement retailers, a Black Friday sale in the spring kind of makes sense. That’s a hot time to sell outdoor items like patio furniture and garden supplies. Great, but why does it have to be called Black Friday? We asked this question about an almost identical spring Black Friday concept that Walmart and Lowe’s tried last year, and Petco, Target, and Meijer.

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


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by Laura Northrup via Consumerist

uLowe’s Will Stop Selling Pesticides Blamed For Honeybee Decliner

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  (Karen_Chappelle)

  
  
  
  Jumping on the anti-neonicotinoids bandwagon with Portland is home improvement retailer Lowe’s, which says it’ll stop peddling the pesticide many critics say is to blame for declining honeybee populations.
  

  Other retailers including BJ’s Wholesale Club and Home Depot took similar steps last year, reports Reuters, choosing to pull the pesticide also known as neonics, which are used on many U.S. crops as well as lawns and gardens.

  
  

  Scientists and other critics of the stuff say bees are dying because of neonicotinoid pesticides, which is bad news for all the plants that honeybees pollinate, including plants that make food consumed by Americans. Basically, bees are free labor and really good at their jobs. Without them, it’d be a lot harder to make sure those crops get pollinated.

  
  

  A study released in 2014 by Friends of the Earth and Pesticide Research Institute showed that 51% of garden plants bought at Lowe’s, Home Depot and Walmart in 18 cities in North America contained neonicotinoid pesticides at levels that could harm or kill bees.

  
  

  Lowe’s says it will start phasing out neonics in shelf products and plants by the spring of 2019, pending the availability of alternatives.

  
  

  Lowe’s to eliminate pesticides that hurt crop pollinating honeybees [Reuters]

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


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by Mary Beth Quirk via Consumerist