April 11 patch to Internet Explorer will affect streaming media
Some time ago, Microsoft lost a patent case dealing with the way ActiveX is used to open streaming media (sound and video) on Internet Explorer. A company called Eolas claims they have a patent for the method of making the content display and they were partially upheld in court. Up to now, Web sites could cause Media Player, Flash, and other embedded applications to automatically start up when you view the site with IE. This is how a lot of advertising is presented. At the monthly patch time of April 11, Microsoft will alter IE. Active content that is embedded in HTML pages in certain ways will not be able to receive user input (for example, keyboard or mouse events) until the user clicks to either activate or continue loading the control. Microsoft gives a description of the problem and a workaround here.
There seems to be some confused commentary on the Web about this event. For example, an article in ZDNet could be interpreted as meaning that only Windows Media Player is affected. Also, there seems to be a misunderstanding about how this will affect the advertisers who use the ActiveX method to present ads. This type of ad is not going away as some seem to think. The advertisers may suffer some inconvenience as they change to JavaScript instead of ActiveX but I don’t think the ads are going to disappear. However, some sites may no longer work the same way.
This whole business is another example of how the patent office and the courts have no clue about how to deal with software and programming. In my opinion, the patents in question are frivolous and should never have been granted.
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