I was looking at old posts and just noticed that you responded so I apologize for this being for an old article.

I can see the logic of your argument but that statement would require that you have control of the stream that you are describing. Since I do not have a twitter account, I know nothing about the service personally. (Although I guess I should look to see what the fuss is about.)

Do you have any kind of permit/deny control of the stream? (ie.block a person from reading it or only allow certain people to read it.) If that were the case then an argument would certainly have some validity.

Ah but the content has to be considered. In your case anyone who owns a computer is an administrator which may be true but by using that as your validation, then anyone would be considered a administrator based on the patent. Saying that using "... an administrator interface to transmit a message from an administrator to a user contact device" would include anyone who has a PC.This can in turn be interpreted as "an administrator interface to transmit a message from anyone (who has a PC) to a user contact device."

Although an argument can be made for this, it belittles the specificity of the patent, thereby weakening the patent itself as the counter argument would be then that the patent using that argument makes it too broad and therefore should be voided since it fails the set of limitations required by the "All Elements" test (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_elements_test) since the term 'administrator' listed as one of the claims no longer precludes anybody and cannot be claimed as a limitation in the patent.

This doesn't necessarily invalidate the patent, but it will weaken the patent claim itself if the concept of administrator is extended outside of the context of the patent. The expected "administrator" would be an administrator of the system as claimed in the patent. Any other argument would weaken it.

Ah but the definition of administrator is either:
    1. One who administers, especially one who works as a manager in a business, government agency, or school.
    2. Law One appointed to administer an estate.

Def. 2 can't really apply in this case so Def.1 is the only definition that could be used. The verb use of administer is:
    1. to manage (an organization or estate)
    2. to organize and put into practice: anyone can learn to administer the test procedure
    3. to give medicine to someone
    4. to supervise the taking of (an oath) [Latin administrare]

Options 1,3, and 4 can't apply in this case either. SO definition 2 is the only one that is viable. Hence an administrator would have to be someone who organizes and puts into practice.

So a lawyer would have to argue that twitter allows someone to organize and put into practice either a process or a protocol that they have control over. He would further have to argue that every single twitter account is an administrator of some sort in order to make his/her case.

Personally, I don't support this, and I hope the patent gets overturned but I can see how it might be argued.

And to add to the argument, before MP3's ever came to the computer, games were the FIRST thing to be pirated. You would think that if pirating was so rampant as the RIAA would have you believe, then the games would have long since been completely wiped out and yet the gaming industry is still going.