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Microsoft vs. Burst.com
rocketjam writes "Robert X. Cringley has an interesting story on one of Microsoft's many little-known legal cases. Burst.com is suing Microsoft, claiming MS negotiated in bad faith for over a year before stealing Burst's patented technology for increasing the efficiency of video and audio streaming. After Microsoft submitted all emails associated with the their dealings with Burst to the court, Burst's lawyers discovered a 35-week gap of missing mail during a critical portion of the negotiations. When the judge learned the Sun vs. Microsoft antitrust case had revealed that MS keeps backups of all emails on over 100,000 tapes stored offsite, he ordered them to come up with the missing messages."
That totally boggles the mind that companies/individuals still think that they can play the "electronic ignorance" game with the court and legal computer experts. It seems as if the time of being able to pull the wool over the courts eyes due to the lack of knowledge of technology is slowing coming to an end.
What's even more amazing, in this case, is that it is Microsoft playing "oops, backups? whats that?"
Am I the only one who thinks there should be real penalties for this kind of behavior? I mean, I understand you are supposed to try to win a case and everything, but failing to produce evidence on demand from a court should be punished, especially when the culprit has a history of presenting false and misleading information in court, and encouraging its legal agents to lie under oath. Why the fuck is it that we don't hold Big Faceless Corporations to the same standards of culpability as we hold individuals? If a small business pulled this shit in court, you'd get it up the wazoo, but when Microsoft does it, it's like the judicial system has no memory from one incident to the next.
If you check the related links at that article, you will find another interesting theory by Cringley, who cites any number of cases where MS has ripped off companies, pretending to be interested in buying their technology, but only flirting long enough to steal it. I normally don't like Cringley, but this time he seems spot on.
It's Anne Grabowski's birthday! Ice cream cake in Bldg 4-R break room!
Last chance to sign up for this year's Secret Santa/Hidden Hannukah Harry! RSVP with Roger McGillicuddy before December 12th.
Just wanted everyone to know that Bill and Valerie Trammel had a beautiful 8lb, 7oz baby girl at 8:30 last night at Cyprus Creek Memorial Hospital. So let's all welcome little Hortence into the world! Yay!
And so on...
"Yes, your honor, we felt that those e-mails were important enough not to erase from Microsoft's permanent record, but the ones relating to the negotiations for which we were under a legally-binding non-disclosure agreement were just, so, pointless, you know?"
Instead of communism what I think is worth looking at is Adam Smith's original vision of capitalism. As you likely know, Adam Smith wrote "Wealth of Nations" which laid out the core principles of a capitalist system. However, Adam Smith's vision was not contained in this one book. Rather, Adam Smith always maintained that to build a sustainable and socially beneficial economic system that you needed the basic capitalist system ("Wealth of Nations", 1763) together with the moral system which he detailed in "Theory of Moral Sentiments", 1759.
Because Adam Smith was never able to integrate the two systems of theory that he laid out, morality and capitalism, into one integrated system, there has always been controversy on how to build a sustainable moral economic system. In "Theory of Moral Sentiments", Smith emphasizes that it is sympathy that is a fundamental human motive, while in "Wealth of Nations", Smith instead says the motive is "self-interest". Obviously there is much ground between these two sides of human nature.
Business places a large emphasis on having a strong legal system. As without such a system, many business transactions would cost more, or simply be impossible. It was the Common Law, and strict adherence to it, that enabled a new era of business to flourish. And the Common Law is based on a moral system, much of which was laid out in religious teachings. Thus we can see that morality is the foundation of easy, low-cost, flexible human collaboration and exchange. Put another way, without a strong legal system, based on our moral system, there is no foundation for a mutually beneficial society.
The world has seen how a ruthless amoral company like Microsoft has flourished in a societal and business environment that has no underlying moral foundation. No matter what the cost to the individual and to society, because of Microsoft's monopoly, we are forced to pay the Microsoft tax. Not merely do we have to pay the tax, but in our brief lives, we also suffer the cost of the dearth of innovation that exists under the shadow of a monopoly. And it is not just Microsoft, but nearly all companies that extract money from their customers and deliver far less value than was promised. And today's governments deliver just a miniscule fraction of every tax dollar back to the people in the form of tangible goods and services. The rest disappears because of corruption.
Needless to say, we see in today's world that there is an ever increasing growth of corruption. This increase is due to the fact that the business world and legal system have dropped nearly all adherence to a moral system. Everything is amoral money-centric self-interest. And thus we end up with a corrupt system, an inefficient system, large-scale society ills and the widespread looting that is going on today. Ever wonder how Microsoft is accumulating cash so fast? Immoral monopoly pricing certainly helps. And the energy companies make Microsoft look like a beginner. Furthermore, because there is no care for the welfare of our fellow human beings, nor even any care for Nature herself, we have created vast environmental problems that have a profound negative effect on th