ACCC Asks SCO To Explain Themselves

An anonymous reader writes "The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) governmental organization has issued a request to SCO to provide information regarding complaints filed with it, according to The Age. This deals with issues regarding SCO's IP claims, and statements regarding the need for commercial Linux users to obtain a Unix licence. With any luck, that'll be Slashdot's daily dose of SCO news..."

Comments

Alternative Link on SMH.com

[Sir Haxalot]

here

Now there's a surprise.

[Channard]

We hear about it in October. Do I get the impression this is not being treated witha great deal of seriousness?

No surprise there. The only time I've ever seen a goverment 'watchdog' group do anything was when they took the franchise away from a region rail operator in the UK. By and large all they seem to do is go 'Stoppit. Or we'll cry.'

Re:Now there's a surprise.

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, the ACCC tends to really kick arse. For instance, they just told Qantas they couldn't merge with Air New Zealand (thank god... look what Air NZ did to Ansett). If you breach the Trade Practices Act, they don't ask you to stop (or cry)... they prosecute.

Personally, I think the delay with the SCO issue has been that it's just not as important as some of the other major cases they have been dealing with lately (i.e. Pan Pharmacueticals and the ever popular kicking the sh*t out of Telstra). Now that the guns are turned on SCO, I suspect that SCO is in for an interesting time indeed.

For instance, when I lodged my complaint with the ACCC, the person who answered the phone already knew all about the issue. This implies that lots of complaints were lodged and that the ACCC has a large body of evidence already.

It's popcorn time...

Re:Now there's a surprise.

[hype7]

No surprise there. The only time I've ever seen a goverment 'watchdog' group do anything was when they took the franchise away from a region rail operator in the UK. By and large all they seem to do is go 'Stoppit. Or we'll cry.'

Maybe that's how it works in the UK, but here in Australia businesses are often complaining about how sharp the teeth are of our ACCC.

Google search for ACCC blocks searching Australian sites turns up a bit over 2000 hits. The last big one I remember was when it stopped QANTAS from buying a stake in Air NZ.

-- james

Re:the ACCC...

[sholden]

So why do Australia's biggest companies campaign so strongly against it?

Having the ability to deny companies that want to merge with or buy out each other doesn't seem to correlate with having very little power.

Only a month ago, they refused to allow Qantas and Air New Zealand to merge. Today they won in the high court against Visy Paper for anti-competitive practices.

Re:You are subpoenaed to appear before Kangaroo Co

[vidarh]

The earliest recorded usage was in the US in 1853. There's absolutely no indication the term originated in Australia, though there is apparently some evidence linking it to the California goldrush, where it may have been used as early as 1849. Many Australian prospectors took place, and one explanation for the term is that it was coined by Australian prospectors referring to the way claim-jumpers were prosecuted outside the legal system. In other words: It was likely a termed coined by Australians to refer to the (lack of) justice in the US.

Zero lines.

[leonbrooks]

The "80" they showed weren't owned by SCOX, in fact they may get into breach-of-copyright trouble if certain BSD developers complain about SCOX filing off the copyrights and BSD licence banners. Which might explain why they're - to quote Linus - "playing it like the Raelians".

SCOX's claim, if you can believe this, is that because IBM, SGI et al created JFS (which I don't use), NUMA (which I don't use) etc while they were licencees for the UnixWare sources, SCOX controls the rights to those technologies. This despite at least IBM's contract explicitly leaving the rights to such works in IBM's hands even if they had been derived from the UnixWare sources (which they weren't).

I'm sort of wondering if/how SCOX got any rights to even use any of the listed technologies, since they don't hold any of the patents on them, but IBM do.