Now Altnet Goes After File Sharing Spies For Patent Infringement
from the who-else-can-you-piss-off? dept
It looks like Altnet/Brilliant Digital is trying to piss off just about everyone no matter what side of the file sharing debate you're on. Earlier this year they claimed they owned a patent on the right to identify a file using a hash, and promptly threatened to sue every other file sharing network out there. Many thought it was amusing that the company that basically runs Kazaa was threatening people over intellectual property. Now, though, they've gone after folks on the other side of the debate and have sent threatening letters to all the companies that spy on file sharing networks - usually on behalf of the recording industry. There are any number of reasons why this is ridiculous, starting with the central point that this is yet another ridiculous software patent that never should have been granted. Meanwhile, at least one of the companies being threated, BigChampagne, claims that Altnet has no clue what they're talking about, since they don't use a hash to identify files.