IBM Patents Idea of Making Your Data Crappier Over Time

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LOL this is stupid because its already the case. Look at any picture took 5 or 10 years ago. The tech to create the pictures is getting better thus looking back it all looks aged. IBM has some great ideals but some really stupid ones. 😉
 
Unless I missed it, I haven't noticed any comments which include information about U.S. and INTERNATIONAL COPYRIGHT LAW(S).

As an artist, after I create my original artwork (a painting, a drawing, a photograph) -- whether it is digital or not, I AM THE COPYRIGHT OWNER by default.

From what I understand (and, I may be wrong?), nobody has the right to alter or reproduce my artwork without my express, written consent. If they do, they are breaking U.S. Copyright laws!

Imagine, for example, what would happen if IBM degraded the quality of every web-occurance of Coca Cola's logo, or Apple Computer's logo! The 'stuff' would hit the fan, for sure!
 
Think DRM... when your digital files start aging and you have to buy them all over again. Interesting huh?
 
supere989 wrote: "I can tell by the comments that nobody understands what this does. For example if you have a .doc that has not been accessed in say 12 months it gets shipped to the aging server which then transforms it to lets say a .pdf which makes it a smaller file, but the editing ability is removed, etc. This is not to degrade your data, but to allow you to keep more of it for an extended amount of time."

And what is novel about going through your files and converting them to another format and saving space at the expense of some other feature like editability or sound/video quality? This is what many have done manually for years. And what, this is worthy of a patent?
 
How about instead, old files are compressed, in 7-zip files or something (good for word documents in mass). However, I can see how that won't help music, photos, and videos, which are already compressed most of the time.
 
Perhaps we could recycle dead data, in the form of carpet patterns or wallpaper even! Set up another recycling business.
 
People seem to miss the fact that businesses are required to store large amounts of data for specific amounts of time for audit purposes. When a document reaches its lifespan it is shredded either in house, or for large businesses, by another company. This would effectively make every accounting and operations department more efficient and less expensive.
 
This will take off as a business app. Companies want to age/destroy data according to a schedule to minimize data storage costs and more importantly protect against liability by destroying "smoking guns." Huge market potential.
 
Planned Obsolescence. Why let consumer's buy an mp3 once and have them keep it forever? Why not make it degrade in quality so they have to buy it again and again? And they'll be less likely to complain compared to slapping a time limit on it. They would just notice in a few years that the "new" version sound better than theirs. Whelp, may as well throw down another $100 to revamp the entire collection. Sometimes, I really wish the economy would just f-ing collapse entirely, then we could start from scratch.

We used to build things that could LAST.... but now disposable is the way, and it's draining everything we got.

(Side: Don't get me wrong, I am well aware how bad a full collapse would be... but one can daydream a setting where all the variable are perfect and it works out.)
 
IBM being so intelligent has predicted that some idiot is going to have this idea soon or later, so he'll even be willing to buy the patent for implementing it!!!
 
The hysteria in these posts is laughable. Look elsewhere and you'll see that the IBM patent appears to be more to do with applying an aged appearance to copies of images and documents. The original data would not be affected. Granted, there seems to be no good reason to do this, but it's not a silly idea because it's from IBM; it's just an idea that someone there had, and it makes sense to patent it in case someone else comes along with the same idea.

Creating a patent for something does not mean that now all your data is going to start to degrade outside of your control. What's the panic? And it would not be an admissible defence in a court of law to say, sorry, my emails and documents from 10 years ago have now degraded and are not readable.

That's not to say that patented ideas would not be applied unilaterally by companies against 'the people'. Google, Facebook, Apple - all are friendly-faced companies which now they are big have applied unfair restrictions against us, or granted themselves ownership of our own data, or keep records on us that are far more detailed than they have told us they are. And these are companies we 'like', to use a probably copyrighted word.

It seems that when companies age, they also become more difficult to understand.
 
In a sense, documents already age implicitly because the technology to read them becomes obsolete. This can involve hardware and software. Already it is difficult to read 5 1/2 inch floppies and in 20 years it may be difficult to access the CD's we all use today. And some of the old document formats of the 70's and 80's are not readable unless you still have working hardware and software to read them. I think even old style word-perfect documents are almost inaccessible and I have heard that some of the oldest MS word files have be deprecated and that you must use old versions of word to read them.

It is a known problem and there are people trying to solve this in order to preserve these old documents. It's much like efforts to preserve and restore really old movies so that they can be enjoyed and appreciated by modern audiences.
 
Briliant - aging does away with the need for DRM. The problem with digital copies are that they're perfect. The author of the work would only get paid once for their effort if all subsequent copies were made for free. With automatic deterioration, there is incentive to buy a "new" copy. That would also create a monetary market for "used" copies, as recent copies would be good enough for those who don't care to pay for new. This is all very similar to the book market.
 
DUH! Well, why not just go back to storing data on floppy's, we get the same out come - albeit a bit hit and miss - and can again get more revenue from a defunct invention. Perhaps we can improve the 1.44 floppy to become a 1.4 TB monster floppy. Imagine the glee when you stuff the floppy in the drive and get a good old R\W error (sorry can't not read the Monster Floppy - one or more sectors are damaged) and realise the stunning effect of loosing 1.4 TB's of data! By the way what ever happened to OS2? umm... who invented that again?
 
Seriously why does this Wolfgang Gruener have a job? He didn't include a link to the patent and his summary is complete and utter rubbish and led the readers into uninformed hysteria. You really think IBM is that stupid? Come on.
Read the purpose of the idea in the patent people:
"When it is desired to print-out an image, for example, of a how a person would look now when only an image of that person at a younger age is available, there are applications that apply known aging characteristics and functions for people such that, given an old photograph, an aging application can modify the image of the person and present an image of that person as he or she would look today."

This tabloid journalism really lowers the credibility of Toms Hardware. This guy should really not have a job.
 
I agree that headline is catchy... its is also misleading. IBM is most-likely leaving out the details of what they are trying to do. In any case, this patent should be VOID! This has been done before. Where, you ask? We have file systems that keep track of file creation date and file modify date and file access date. With this meta-data plus a little more such as file-owner and a flag "needed by OS" and/or "do not archive" the file-system or other program can look at files and age them. EXISTing programs do this now, and have been doing this for 20 years. For example, after a year of not being touched, one system would copy file to a tape and delete body of file. Another program would crank up the jpg compression level to make file smaller. This could easily be done for .DOC, HTML, and other markup languages... after first year filter remove markup for fonts; after 2nd year remove markup for font-size; after 3rd year remove markup for BOLD, UNDERLINE, and ITALIC; after 10th year all you have left is plain text.
 
An invention for inventions' sake. See, we can do this! It may be a cool technology for technology's sake, but, not all inventions are useful (except in very rare cases). Maybe, Richard Nixon could have use this for his tapes when Watergate was flying. Other than that, your points are well taken. I do not want my old documents "aged". Imagine, trying to show your grandson what your grandfather looked like?
 
I would say that IBM is thinking ahead, they are up to something serious.
Maybe it's for artificial intelligence, which the aging storage emulates the effect of human brain memory.
 
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