Caldera vs. Microsoft Court Documents To Be Shredded

Geste writes "As now being reported in this brief story and on my local (Seattle) NPR affiliate, 3 million court documents from Caldera's unfair competition suit against Microsoft are to be shredded in Utah. The timing relative to Microsoft's recent licensing of SCO Unix IP is undoubtedly a complete coincidence. "

Comments

Why...

[Xeth]

...Is it even legal to destroy cour documents? To save space? Couldn't they digitize them? This just seems like a way to hide information, and information like this could hardly have a good reason to be hidden.

Re:Why...

[jdray]

In the case of civil suits, I suspect that only judgements and relevant information (in summary) is kept, because, in civil suits, once the judgement happens, it rarely matters later why it happened.

In the case of suits that are being dropped, no court would care.

Has anyone bothered to read the article yet?

[MmmmAqua]

Because I just did, and a few things just leap right off the page:

1)In October, the company persuaded U.S. District Judge Dee Benson to order their destruction.

Because, as we all know, in October Microsoft and SCO were already in collusion to cause this big ruckus. Or maybe SCO was just tired of shelling out the cash to store the documents related to a long-finished case, and was trying to save a little money.

2) However, just as the shredding was to begin, Sun Microsystem's attorneys halted it with a subpoena. The company, seeking evidence that might help in its own antitrust suit against Microsoft, eventually pulled out 40 boxes of the computer giant's secret internal communications for digital imaging.

That's funny, by reading the /. post, it somehow seemed that I should find a picture in the article showing Darl McBride feeding reams of paper, all entitled "Damning Internal Documents of Antitrust Violations", into an industrial-strength shredder while Bill Gates, dressed in a Halloween Satan costume, danced in glee in the background. Funny how /. doesn't mention that some of the documents are being preserved.

3)Meantime, the shredding and pulping of the remaining records has been under way for about two weeks.

So, if /. thinks this is somehow important or damning to Microsoft or SCO, why wasn't this mentioned two weeks ago? Or in October, when SCO obtained permission to shred the documents?

Look, guys, I'm all for the downfall of Microsoft and the phoenix rise of Linux (and OS X, but hey, I'm weird), but couldn't we try for maybe just a teensy bit of objectivity?

::adjusts asbestos underwear::
Okay, flame away.

try READING the article

[dh003i]

Because most of the mindless masses can't be bothered to actually RTFA, I'll quote relevant excerpts:

The 937 boxes of court-ordered documents
.
.
.
Sun Microsystem...seeking evidence that might help in its own antitrust suit against Microsoft, eventually pulled out 40 boxes of the computer giant's secret internal communications for digital imaging.

In other words, not all of the legal documents are being destroyed. Most of those 937 pages of documents may just be legal thickness, with little relevant information...obviously, Sun thought so, as they only scanned in 40 of 937 boxes of documents.

Irrelevant of the fact that SCO and MS are a bunch of lying cheating fucks, it's unreasonable to ask anyone to spend thousands of dollars to continue storing documents that are useless to them.

You have a problem with these documents being destroyed? Get a court order to stop it, and scan in anything that you think is important. IBM may very well have cause to do so, as may the OSI. Undoubtely, the timing is obviously suspicious, but I doubt there's anything of particular value in the 897 remaining boxes of legal documents. If there is, then those interested in it should pay for the storage of the documents, not a corporation which has absolutely no use for them.

take the lens cover off your mind, please.

[twitter]

In other words, not all of the legal documents are being destroyed. Most of those 937 pages of documents may just be legal thickness, with little relevant information...obviously, Sun thought so, as they only scanned in 40 of 937 boxes of documents.

You expect Sun to fight for free software? Nope, they only care about java and other Sun stuff.

Irrelevant of the fact that SCO and MS are a bunch of lying cheating fucks, it's unreasonable to ask anyone to spend thousands of dollars to continue storing documents that are useless to them.

SCO did not think $1,500/month was an unreasonable price between the 2000 settlement and six months ago. All this shows is that SCO changed their business model in October of 2002. That must be the date that they gave up fighting M$ and being a software compnay once and for all. This silly Linux suit came shortly thereafter.

Important evidence of Microsoft's anti-competitive behavior and longstanding hatred of free software is going to be destroyed. I imagine that the EU, which is also investigating M$ anti-trust, will not be amused and it's just one more reason to get away from M$ junk. They have to burn these records because they are lying to you.