I’m not particularly a fan of software patents. Apple have just been sued by a company called IP Innovation over their use of tabbed interfaces in Mac OS X. Yes, that’s right, over tabbed interfaces.

“AppleInsider is reporting that an Illinois-based company and its Nevada partner have filed a lawsuit against Apple Inc., alleging that Mac OS X 10.4 ‘Tiger’ infringes an interface patent relating to the OS’s nearly universal use of tabs. The suit was filed in the patent troll’s and forum shopper’s favorite venue: Marshall, TX. The patent in question is 5072412, which was originally issued to Xerox in 1987, but is now owned or licensed to IP Innovation LLC and its parent Technology Licensing Corporation. ‘Category dividers triggered by Spotlight searches, as well as page tabs in the Safari web browser, bear the closest similarity to the now 20-year-old description’ of the patent, according to the article. IP Innovation is requesting damages in excess of $20 million and an injunction against future sales and distribution of Mac OS X 10.4. Software patent reform can’t come soon enough!”

The patent filing dates back from 1987 and if you take a look at it, clearly describes something which isn’t exactly considered amazingly innovative nowadays. I’m struggling to think of a single graphical application that doesn’t make use of some form of multiple ‘workspaces’ as they are referred to in the filing. IP Innovation simply bought the intellectual property rights from Xerox, who pretty much invented most of the concepts of the graphical user interface as we know it today.

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Secret Notes is reporting that big record label EMI is planning to release tracks to the iTunes Store without DRM protection on them.

EMI is scheduled to make the announcement in London at a news conference that will feature Apple CEO Steve Jobs, The Wall Street Journal reports. Jobs created a stir earlier this year when he published an open letter to the music industry calling on it to abandon DRM.

We know that EMI have been eyeing up this move for quite some time and with Steve Jobs support for ditching DRM in his open letter, it appears that EMI want to try the non-DRM route.

EMI, the world’s third largest music label, has seen only mediocre success with its digital strategy, a result that some analysts believe compelled the label to take the bold move of dropping DRM. The firm had reportedly attempted to sell DRM-free music in the past but met resistance from online music stores who demanded “insurance” payments to guard against potential lost sales from the possible increase in digital piracy that DRM-free music might yield.

This is a pretty big story and a very bold move by EMI. They are the first major label to even get this far and if this does come to fruition, it has the potential to cause a chain reaction.

At very least, consumers will become aware of the fact that they will be able to buy tracks from the iTunes Store and play them on non-Apple approved devices. Once they realise this, consumers might start to demand more and more tracks without DRM, recognising the benefits of interoperability.

I’m a opposer of DRM in any shape or form, so I’m quite pleased by this development. Whether or not it will have repurcussions beyond EMI or if it will just be a small ripple we have yet to see.

UPDATE: you can listen to the audio of the announcement here.

Google have just posted on their official blog about ‘improving their privacy practices’.

One of these things involves so-called ‘anonymising’ their logs, which apparently involves:

We will change some of the bits in the IP address in the logs as well as change the cookie
information. We’re still developing the precise technical methods and approach to this, but we
believe these changes will be a significant addition to protecting user privacy.

Up until now, Google have just kept their logs for as long as they wanted - and in fact that isn’t going to change here. What will change is that 18-24 months afterwards, they will remove bits of the IP address and cookie information such that data won’t necessarily be tracable to one user any more.

Our engineers are already busy working out the technical details, and we hope to implement this new data policy over the coming months (and within a year’s time). We’ll communicate more as we work out these details, but for now, we wanted you to know that we’re working on this additional step to strengthen your privacy.

You can read a bit more in-depth about exactly what this anonymsing step is and involves in this PDF document.

So what is this? A PR stunt by Google to try and shake off some of the ‘evilness’ they’ve acquired in people’s minds (Google.cn, anyone?) or is a genuine attempt to try and protect Google’s users.

I think it’s mostly the latter. Google have been stubborn in the face of subpoenas before and this move would mean that it would be more difficult for legal processes to get their hands on data, but the time restriction also means that Google can do what they want with the data (and it’s also a compromise).

In fact, in a sense it kind of doubles as a PR stunt as well. If Google are subject to some kind of legal process that compells them to reveal data, they can turn around and say “well, we do this”.

Whatever it is, I’m all for Google being more transparent about how they operate. To me, this seems like a ‘good thing’.

Steve Jobs has just posted an open letter to the world on the Apple website, talking about various issues surrounding DRM, addressing concerns about iTunes + iPod lock-in, and interestingly, saying that if they could, they would remove DRM from the iTunes Store.

The third alternative is to abolish DRMs entirely. Imagine a world where every online store sells DRM-free music encoded in open licensable formats. In such a world, any player can play music purchased from any store, and any store can sell music which is playable on all players. This is clearly the best alternative for consumers, and Apple would embrace it in a heartbeat. If the big four music companies would license Apple their music without the requirement that it be protected with a DRM, we would switch to selling only DRM-free music on our iTunes store. Every iPod ever made will play this DRM-free music.

Apple are apparently feeling the heat from judgements in places like Norway, where the iTunes + iPod lock-in has been declared illegal by the Norwegian government. I think Apple see the threat here, that if one country takes out iTunes, other markets could follow suit and that could be disastrous for Apple. Therefore, if Apple manage to get rid of the DRM, then iTunes can no longer be a problem, as it won’t lock you into an iPod anymore (assuming they offer downloads in a standard format, like MP3).

Much of the concern over DRM systems has arisen in European countries. Perhaps those unhappy with the current situation should redirect their energies towards persuading the music companies to sell their music DRM-free. For Europeans, two and a half of the big four music companies are located right in their backyard. The largest, Universal, is 100% owned by Vivendi, a French company. EMI is a British company, and Sony BMG is 50% owned by Bertelsmann, a German company. Convincing them to license their music to Apple and others DRM-free will create a truly interoperable music marketplace. Apple will embrace this wholeheartedly.

This sounds like very promsing news for anyone in the anti-DRM camp (like me), and it sounds quite convincing. Clearly, from some of the statistics Mr Jobs made clear in this letter, iTunes could be selling a lot more songs than it is at the moment (only 3% of all music on iPods is bought from iTS) and I guess this is where Apple’s real motive is.

Still, it’s very good news for anti-DRM folks, and it almost looks possible that in time and with some persuasion from other big players in this business, the recording industry will realise that the downfall of DRM is inevitable.

Google’s email service Gmail is in trouble in Europe - or its name is at least.

In the UK, already a trademark dispute means that all new signups get @googlemail.com addresses instead of @gmail.com, and the branding on the actual webmail interface mentions ‘Google Mail’ instead of the shortened form.

According to this report, however, a German entrepreneur, Daniel Giersch, who offers an email service called G-mail is trying to battle Google in the courts to stop using the Gmail name.

However, Mr Giersch is now apparently taking the fight to the EU courts, meaning a judgement in his favour could have repercussions for all EU member states.

The current situation, for the UK at least, is that people who signed up before the name change retain @gmail.com addresses, and new signups get @googlemail.com. Sending email to both domains currently gets through to the right account.

However, it’s not clear at this stage whether this legal battle might cause Google to be forced to move all users residing in EU countries over to a Google Mail address, or if it has more potential issues.

This certainly must be a nasty headache for Google, not to mention Mr Giersch’s service and the confusion Gmail and G-mail must cause to him.

“FreeNation Foundation is the name of the organization we are attempting to form with the idea of starting a new nation.” With that sentence, GhostOutlaw, a member of the FreeNation Foundation, began an interview we held this past Thursday. I wasn’t only interviewing GhostOutlaw though, several others were in on the fun (namely Dpx and Democritus, both established members of the FreeNation community), and many more were watching and contributing their answers to my questions in another IRC channel.

The subject of the interview was the project to found a nation on the ideals of a free culture. The effort has been dubbed the “FreeNation” project, and already has gained support from a wide community that spans the globe. Initially created by The Pirate Bay (a BitTorrent tracker) as an effort to navigate around copyright laws, the project has advanced into a fully-fledged redesign of human culture in an attempt to fix the problems that we have faced up until this stage of our existence.

On “core”

“We are forming an organization that is fluid, and has equality through the ‘ranks’. Today I may be head of a group, tomorrow I might be digging a ditch.”

This equality and community building was always in focus throughout the interview. They have good reason too - the FreeNation community had lashed out harshly when a small group of members (”dubbed as ‘core’ thanks to Brokep, Public Relations of The Pirate Bay” said GhostOutlaw) attempted to push the project forward more quickly by creating their own IRC channel which was password protected. Their secrecy and connection to the Pirate Bay lead to confusion and uproar in a week old project.

“The initial starting of core was a few members who found that some of the IRC chat was a little to spammy to actually have a cohesive discussion,” explained GhostOutlaw. “[We are a] ’structure group’ — we are trying to form the skeleton or structure to allow us to achieve our goals,” added Democritus. “The idea is that when we CAN handle the huge influx of interest, we will actually be able to accept those into our community and give them JOBS!!!”

No one knows exactly what jobs will be available. For now, this “structure group” is focused primarily on releasing a website and rolling out a public relations move that will help encourage increased donations. Although the plans aren’t set in stone as to how the website will be put in place, Dpx said that they “plan to have a wiki and a forum, that much has been decided.”

“But I know it’s island fever and I got it real bad” - The Beach Boys

The overall plan for FreeNation is to buy an island, on which the group will promote a free culture. It was said most concisely by Democritus: “We wish to establish a collective of like minded individuals on an island colony, to provide a place where a new society can be born and raised, to learn from our own mistakes, and those of the past to provide a better future for all of mankind.”

Details were vague, and I was routinely assured that “we are working out what exactly the goals are.” It is understandable - the project has only been around for ten days. Community was stressed as well. GhostOutlaw pointed out that “the end result will be whatever the community wants to be. It’s a community project and a community effort.”

The community was built around the proposition of providing The Pirate Bay a safe haven from copyright laws. When the community took over the reigns, the idea was morphed. As Democritus told me, the idea was now much more focused on creating a new type of society that would promote Free Culture from all angles. When I asked about The Pirate Bay’s connection to the FreeNation Foundation, I was told that “what we have now is a highly evolved form of TPB’s idea. They did want to start a country for servers. They are part of our community.”

Looking forward

The FreeNation Foundation’s proposal is one that will continue to receive accolades and attacks. It’s a dramatic proposal that, whilst not yet successful, shows the power the internet holds in bringing people together. If the foundation achieves their goal, this new open culture will dramatically alter the landscape of culture all over the world.

The plan needs guidance though. As of now, it seems to be in more than capable hands. With the “group-formerly-known-as-core” helping to guide discussion and establish an infrastucture for conversation, the community’s input is relevant now more than ever. “As the community grows, it will shape and change and evolve. We are looking forward to being part of this process.”

Update: Digg here!

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Read more about the FreeNation Foundation by visiting their website and wiki.