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Skype Founders Reach Settlement With Ebay and Others

Ryan Whitwam — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 20:27:58 -0600

It looks like you can expect Skype to continue functioning as normal. A settlement has finally been reached with the parties, including eBay and Skype founders, Niklas Zennström and Janus Friis. The legal battle started when eBay agreed to sell a 65% stake in Skype to Silver Lake Partners on September 1st. The founders sued, claiming that eBay was engaging in copyright infringement. As it turns out, eBay never actually owned the core technology behind Skype, called Global Index..

According to the settlement, Zennström and Friis, will join the investor group that is purchasing Skype. They will contribute software from their new venture, Joltid. In return, they will receive a 14% stake in Skype. When the sale is completed, eBay will be paid a cool $1.9 billion. Though, this is much less than the original purchase price for Skype. Though, the online auction house will also retain 30% of Skype.

Getting all the technology under one roof again should settle the issue of Skype’s intellectual property once and for all. Do you use Skype on a regular basis? Were you worried about its future?

IP Rights Fairy Tale

Quinn Norton — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 15:00:00 -0500

Not very long ago, in a land not at all far away, there was a little company called Blueport. It held the copyright on a piece of software that the US Air Force liked using for logistics. Blueport protected its software with a time bomb—a bit of code that made the software self-destruct when the license expired. That date was approaching, and Blueport wanted to negotiate a new license with the USAF—and you know, get paid.

Instead, it got a bit of the ol’ shock and awe. The Air Force not only didn’t pay up, it paid big contractor SAIC ($2.5 million in lobbying in 2007) to reverse engineer Blueport’s program and disable the time bomb. The Air Force also paid SAIC to rewrite the program, and by rewrite I mean simply cut and paste any of the original code that seemed useful.

Unsurprisingly, Blueport sued. The facts of the case were never disputed—the government not only violated copyright, it turned the DMCA out on a street corner. But the Air Force had an ace up its sleeve—the “Uh uh, no you don’t” defense. It asked the judge to throw out the case based on sovereign immunity. Sovereign immunity is a legal principle that states that no one can sue the government unless the government gives them permission. In the 18th century, when the country was just a wee whippersnapper, we passed the 11th amendment to create sovereign immunity.

It doesn’t have anything to do with who’s right, just who’s allowed to sue. The government can waive immunity, but nothing in the DMCA or copyright law says, “Yeah, OK, we’ll play by these rules too.”

At the same time this was occurring, the government was arresting people for DMCA violations, using trade negotiations to force DMCA laws on other nations, and generally moralizing about the whole thing a lot.

But that was that. The government cannot ever be sued for violating its own DMCA or infringing on copyright. So there are your rights when dealing with the government—a pretty grim little fairy tale.

Quinn Norton writes about copyright for Wired News and other publications. Her work has ranged from legal journalism to the inner life of pirate organizations.

Getting Away (from DMCA)

Quinn Norton — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 13:32:48 -0500

Summer is upon us, and it’s a perfect time to take a fair-use vacation.

Here in America you can buy plenty of DVDs, but if you want to copy them for personal use or run them on Linux, it’s another story: You’ll be breaking U.S. law. To make that backup of your kid’s favorite Disney movie before it gets covered in blue marker, consider going somewhere you won’t go to jail for the act.

Who doesn’t love a Caribbean island? Imagine yourself on a beach in Antigua with a drink that comes in a hollow coconut. Beautiful women walk by. The sun begins to set, and you’ve just finished importing your DVD collection to a hard drive.

Antigua and Barbuda is home to SlySoft, the maker of AnyDVD, a program that sits in the background of your computer and quietly removes copy protection from DVDs, including HD formats. As SlySoft was doing its thing in 2007, in the United States the AACS Licensing Authority was threatening to sue Digg for publishing a number—the HD DVD encryption key.
Or maybe you’re a do-it-yourselfer who can’t take the heat.

Consider a trip to Norway, where you can roll your own DRM breaker. In 2002, Norwegian courts acquitted Jon Johansen of charges stemming from the creation of DeCSS, which stripped copy protection off DVDs so he could play them on his Linux box. By contrast, back in the U.S., a court convicted 2600 magazine for linking to DeCSS.

Perhaps you’re a pedagogical type with a penchant for long days and vodka. Russia’s your spot. In 2001, Moscovite Dmitri Sklyarov presented a flaw in Adobe’s eBook security at Black Hat in Las Vegas. This information didn’t stay in Vegas—Adobe had him arrested. Back in Mother Russia, telling people how to circumvent Adobe’s weak protection isn’t illegal. After a harrowing ordeal, Sklyarov was allowed to return home, where he continued his research in peace.

Turns out none of these vacations is about piracy. They violate the DMCA, not copyright. The fact is, you can go almost anywhere in the world and you won’t run into these restrictions. So have fun on your trip! It’s your computer.