Fergie's Tech Blog

Sony to Spy on P2P?

Massimo Cotrozzi writes on zone-h.org:

An attempt to patent an innovative file sharing system from Sony have been denied by the UK Patent office. In an answer from the patent office, after translation from a somewhat criptic language, unless you're an english lawyer, we understood that Sony is trying to introduce in the market a new media file sharing & social networking system which is supposed to collect information about the users collecting and redistributing the media, posing a big threat over the principle of p2p, anonymity.

We are talking about a system because it is probably related to some hardware device, as we could understand from the document. The patent was refused because it was not introducing "novelty" - whether you do it in software or in hardware, it's not something new, except for the programming that lies within, which is not subject to patent. While this seems to let us think Sony is about to release a new box (sorry, a new station) dealing with multimedia, and that it looks like Sony believes p2p will be at the heart of the future media market, some questions are rising among the community.

posted by Fergie @ 8/18/2006 12:06:00 AM