https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5724442
About the patent lawsuit thing:
As I understand it, Shazam sold their patent to Landmark Digital Services, which are a part of BMI the record label. They kept an exclusive license to make Shazam-like software for phones.
You can imagine BMI wanting it to make money from how a service such as Youtube fingerprints and detects copyright infringement...
And it was this BMI company that were trying to get this blog post explaining the patented algorithm removed from the internet.
One post from the BMI lawyers to Roy in the Netherlands was particularly broad bullying:
> Mr. Van Rijn,
> The two example patent numbers that I sent you are U.S. patents, but each of these patents has also been filed as patent applications in the Netherlands. Also, as I'm sure you are aware, your blogpost may be viewed internationally. As a result, you may contribute to someone infringing our patents in any part of the world.
> While we trust your good intentions, yes, we would like you to refrain from releasing the code at all and to remove the blogpost explaining the algorithm.
> Thank you for your understanding.
> Best regards,
> Darren
> P. Briggs
> Vice President &
> Chief Technical Officer
> Landmark Digital Services, LLC
Roy gave a great talk at Devox about this: http://www.redcode.nl/blog/2012/03/devoxx-2011-talk-freely-a...
I think I heard that Shazam recently got the patent back. I speculate BMI found no-one to license their fingerprinting tech for copyright infringement.
Oh really? What a dolt.
Patents are, by definition, public. (not before they are accepted, though)
Patents are, by definition, public.
That's actually the telling sign of the dysfunctional patent system. Companies want to use patents to prevent everybody else from doing something similar, and in this case, even from just talking about it (which is obviously ridiculous).Patents used to be a framework for sharing technological progress without giving up ownership, i.e. make it easier for everybody else to build on other's progress - that's long gone.
>And second, I’d like to know which patents are in play. Because I just couldn’t think that something this easy (music-fingerprint is a hash, and we do a lookup) can be patented.. Maybe in the States, but in Europe?
Here's the links to the infringement story for those that missed it: http://www.redcode.nl/blog/2010/07/patent-infringement/ http://www.redcode.nl/blog/2010/11/patent-infrigement-part-2...
The result shows he did the right thing not complying, they had no legal grounds for their demands.
I wonder how the work is split between client/server in (actual) Shazam. (I suppose only the key points are sent to the server, but I may be wrong - Siri for example sends the server a compressed audio file of the recorded sound)
Great article, thank you
I mean, did they bought/rent mp3's?
As already pointed here, audio fingerprinting is not a new thing. Although, they might have added some twists in order to were able to patent it.