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IBM Subpoenas SCO Investors, Analysts
Bigfishbowl writes "Forbes has an interesting article about IBM sending subpoenas to large SCO investors in an effort to compel discovery. An IBM spokesman says IBM is frustrated by SCO's reluctance to produce proof of its allegations. '"It is time for SCO to produce something meaningful. They have been dragging their feet and it is not clear there is any incentive for SCO to try this in court," he says.'"
I am by no means in hell a lawyer, but it seems like IBM is trying to determine whether something much of Slashdot suspects is verifiably true: that some sort of sinister third party (Microsoft comes to mind) is morally and financially behind SCO's actions.
The question is whether a "Microsoft is behind this whole sham" argument will be as well-received in a court room as it has been on Slashdot.
I am so not a lawyer that I don't even know whether it would be admissible.
Or, for that matter, whether my analysis is entirely incorrect.
If people involved with the legalities of this case were getting as frustrated with SCO as I've been. Nice to see that this seems to be the case.
Everything will be taken away from you.
At this stage of the game, IBM is publicly stating they doubt TSG is serious about entering a court room. With that in mind they seem to be trying to hurt TSG where it hurts: the wallet. Have you seen SCOX performance lately? Beautifully mimicking a swan dive. Good riddance to bad trash
BTW, 5th post?
If thou see a fair woman pay court to her, for thus thou wilt obtain love
This is a little OT, but SCO told the names "offending" files in a court doc at groklaw. They don't say what parts of the files are "theirs", but they've narrowed it down to about a 1/5 of the kernel. :-)
To all the Microsoft Conspirators... I thought Microsoft and IBM just signed a huge Xbox 2 chip deal? Maybe I am too idealistic and the proper way to act is to sue your business partners. Maybe thats why I don't own a big company :)
Lets just hope that SCO doesn't have a royal flush :)
X(7): A program for managing terminal windows. See also screen(1).
I certainly hope they find documents that prove that Darl &Co. just went into this madness for quick money, using an illegal pump and dump scheme. It'll make the SEC's job much easier.
Maybe we deserve this world ?
Even better, the confidentiality agreement between the people who've seen the code and SCO can be breeched in court. I'm sure DiDio never envisioned being called to the stand when she went on her publicity tour.
But this knife cuts both ways -- OSS trolls like ESR could receive subpeonas from SCO in retailation.
This is a test. This is a test of the emergency sig system. This has been only a test.
It's no coincidence that IBM's move came soon after the RBC and BayStar announcements. It's a warning to other potential investors, invest in SCO and endure the gaze of IBM's army of lawyers. With Worldcom and Enron still fresh in their memory, watch them blink first. Anyone care to bet on another anonymous mass purchase of SCO licenses?
The idea here is to do to SCO what they are trying to do to the OS movement - make the public afraid to touch them. I mean, if buying SCO stock means you risk getting a subpeana, who is going to do it? So what if ESR gets one - I'm sure he'd be happy to give SCO a piece of his mind. The goal is to make your average wall streeter afraid to touch SCO with a 10 foot pole, and there's not a whole lot SCO can do that they haven't already done.
To make laws that man cannot, and will not obey, serves to bring all law into contempt.
--E.C. Stanton
Big companies like IBM, Microsoft, et al don't act in a single-minded way like we individuals tend to.
That's because when individuals act the way big companies do, we call them things like "nut cases" and "psycopaths." An individual that dumped toxic waste into a river or FUD into the media (at what would be a modest rate by corporate standards) would be locked up. An individual who was insulting someone while kissing up to them would seem (at best) socialy maladroit.
This is what makes corporate characterization of hackers as social outcasts so ironic. The most nerdly hacker is still an order of magnitude more sane & sociable than the average mega-corp.
-- MarkusQ
Where was the freaking C&C warning?
Look, Chris baby, let's put this kindly: it was SCO who replied to a request for source code (requested for code comparison purposes) who printed it out, then scanned it, then PDFed the scanned image, then shipped the PDF. I'm sure that trick was the basis for endless merriment in Lindon, with backslapping and congratulations all around.
You'll allow me, I hope, to quietly contemplate the prospect of the Court ordering SCO to pay for manual transcription and proofreading of all 150,000 pages?
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
Why would IBM need that information, unless they intended to go after somebody for securities fraud?
"Freedom means freedom for everybody" -- Dick Cheney
I don't see why Eric wouldn't want to testify. I'd like to. I sure don't have anything to hide with regard to this case, and I can't see how he would.
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
The author of this piece, Daniel Lyons, should use the by line, "SCO Mouthpiece." He is the same hack who wrote the "Linux's Hit Men" article about the FSF plus there was another recent piece of SCO FUD that I've managed to flush out of my memory.
You will also note that quietly buried in the body of the article is that Forbes was also served with a subpoena. This is undoubtedly because of Mr. Lyons' articles.
They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither safety nor liberty.
Ben
They say it was the hand that Wild Bill Hickock was holding when he was shot in the back of the head.
Ahem, she did.
Ahem, Not according to Salon
Or, if you don't want to access the "premium" content, search for DiDio in this page
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
You folks are going to have to help me, because I'm a Linux newbie, but just before SCO shut down the ftp site, I downloaded the SCO linux kernel files (at least, I'm guessing that's what they are; I downloaded all the files starting with kernel-source[stuff here].rpm, which was 10 files, roughly 123 MB.) Would SCO object if I posted the files for download? Is it illegal? I'm betting not, since they were still licensed under the GPL when I downloaded them. So, if these are the real kernel files, and SCO would be pissed at them being posted freely, and it's not illegal under the DMCA or something, yeah, I'm going to post all the files. Can anyone tell me if these files would be useful to anyone, most of all IBM?
A subpoena usually asks for (a) some one to show up and testify or (b) a bunch of documents. These sound like the document kind.
So, anybody know what documents IBM asked these investors/analysts for?
"We reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals." --The American President (20.1.2009)
Stop the Slashdot effect! Don't read the articles!
First, if SCO stalls much longer on discovery, Cravath will be in a good position to move for a dismissal. They might get it, too. Maybe even a dismissal with prejudice, so SCO can't refile, or summary judgement in IBM's favor.
Independent of this, it looks like IBM is gearing up for a securities-fraud counterclaim. Cravath has pointed out in legal filings that SCO has made statements publicly that are inconsistent with the positions they take in court. Ordinarily, that's OK. But when the stock price spikes and insiders are cashing out, that's not OK.
There's also the potential of a false-claim-of-copyright claim. That's rarely used, but here, it's clearly appropriate.
This is going to crank for a while, but unless SCO comes up with something a lot better than what they've shown so far, they're not going to win.
It's a warning to other potential investors, invest in SCO and endure the gaze of IBM's army of lawyers.
I like it. Call it the "IBM Basilisk Effect" - watch your potential investors turn into stone when IBM lawyers look at them.
"These laws they're passing won't even compile anymore, let alone execute." - anon
Sorry hit submit instead of preview, I got flustered and the buttons are so close together.
Some of thoes files don't contain any UNIX System V source code, only "UNIX methods" which is a vague way of saying that it may have appeared in a textbook. That is why IBM feels that simply giving filenames is insuffecent since even if there is not one pice of SysV code in thoes files SCO can still claim that some of the algorithims are similar to thoes in SysV and thus there is still a copyright violation, even though these alogrithims are taught to students in classes and SCO dosent have a patent on them.
The last point is the major weakness in SCO's case and why Novell can now just flick them away like the tiny fly that they are.
Did Glenn Beck rape and kill a girl in 1990? gb1990.com
With all this media attention focused on them it would be foolish for sco to pump and dump. If (as some people believe) they are getting backhanders from microsoft to rubbish linux then maybe that is financially rewarding enough and they don't need to resort to something as crude as pump and dump to fill their pockets.
I've been wondering when someone was going to try this for quite a while. "Dumping", selling a product below cost in order to force your competitors out of business, is illegal for good reasons.
I'm not sure whether it's illegal or not (as so many of our economics-related laws are irrational), but if it is, it is most definitely not illegal for good reason. Economists tend to get hot under the collar whenever their government engages in the economically self-destructive practice of protectionism under the spectre of dumping. Any first year economics student can explain precisely why dumping is good for the economy that is being dumped into in essentially every real world situation[1]. Any Linux enthusiast can as easily explain why the same is true of operating systems[2].
Consider the example of Netscape - Microsoft has spent nearly ten years attempting to dump it out of existence. Microsoft's price for IE remains at zero (not to mention their correlary anti-competitive attacks), and still Netscape lives on (and a host of other browsers, including ones with non-zero prices have poppoed up). And that's just looking at the browser producers - the rest of the world, the browser consumers, like 99.99% of the population and a similar percentage of businesses, are ECSTATIC about the browser wars. How different would the world today be if Netscape, Opera, Mozilla, Konquerer, and IE all cost $99, and had never been free?
[1] DUMPING
Selling something for less than the cost of producing it. This may be used by a DOMINANT FIRM to attack rivals, a strategy known to ANTITRUST authorities as PREDATORY PRICING. Participants in international trade are often accused of dumping by domestic FIRMS charging more than rival IMPORTS. Countries can slap duties on cheap imports that they judge are being dumped in their markets. Often this amounts to thinly disguised PROTECTIONISM against more efficient foreign firms.
In practice, genuine predatory pricing is rare - certainly much rarer than anti-dumping actions - because it relies on the unlikely ability of a single producer to dominate a world market. In any case, consumers gain from lower PRICES; so do companies that can buy their supplies more cheaply abroad.
That is - unless IBM's Linux division has a maintainable monopoly on the OS market (it does not), and the ability to raise its price (it does not), and the ability to drive its competition out (OK, guilty), and there are significant barriers to reentry to the OS market (there are none), claiming dumping is specious at best.
[2] Having the ability to run a variety of operating systems without having to pay for each license makes it easier for the user to satisfy his or her wants. On the business side, a vastly greater number of businesses are OS consumers than are OS producers - thus the business world as a whole *LOVES* OS dumping (if it can be called that).
Stop-Prism.org: Opt Out of Surveillance
A $3 billion lawsuit is more materially damaging than a perfectly legal subpoena.
The subpoenas were a direct result of SCO's actions. If SCO is found to be at fault, IBM will certainly have no liability whatever. IANAL, but this seems the likely outcome to me at this point.
Galileo: "The Earth revolves around the Sun!"
Score: -1 100% Flamebait
Not that this will happen but lets say it did.
This is big company against big company. Think godzilla vs king kong. This is going to be enjoyable to watch. From a safe distance. Anyone know when the first shuttles leaves for mars?
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
What if there were an understanding that if by a certain date IBM hasn't either settled or acquired SCO, Microsoft will acquire SCO? That way the major SCO stockholders have a floor on the stock price, the SCO lawyers have a guaranteed payout based on their contract clause giving them a percent of any buyout price, and Microsoft has very little money upfront where it might embarass them, aside from the licensing fees they've already fronted.
Companies negotiate possible acquisitions all the time, and much of it is done very quietly. The only requirement for disclosure I'm aware of is when one entity actually acquires more than 5% of another's stock. Is there anything else that would prevent a gentlemen's agreement along these lines from being in place? After all, Microsoft is in a good position to argue that SCO has assets uniquely valuable to Microsoft's business, and thus that whatever price it ends up paying is justified - so it will be damn hard to prove the price was really payoff for the IBM/Linux attack.
"with their freedom lost all virtue lose" - Milton
They can't deny that, because over 8 million of the funding (which purchased unspecified SCO "licensing" that they suddenly needed for some reason) is a matter of public record, in their own press releases and in SCO's SEC filings. The only thing the conspiracy theorists are speculating about is whether some of the BayStar or RBC money is laundered Microsoft cash as well.
When SCO was going around threatening end users, I sent a letter to my congressman, Barney Frank of Massachusetts. Here is his response:
====
September 26, 2003
Dear Mr. Minsky,
I share your view that the suits being brought by the SCO Group
against the users of the Linux system are an entirely inappropriate
use of the legal systems for broader corporate purposes. While I have
note been able, obviously, to examine these in detail, the suits do
not appear to me, from what I have read, to have any merit, and in
fact seem to be motivated, as I said, by an effort simply to prevent
the use of Linux for competitive reasons.
There is, unfortunately, a very limited role for Congress here. I
agree with those who would like to see us "stop SCO from punishing
innocent consumers to inflate its other legal claims." But under our
separation of powers doctrine, Congress has no role whatsoever to play
in the pursuit of particular cases. We can pass laws which prevent
certain types of suits from being brought, but it is very, very
difficult to pass those in a way that would be retroactive - that is,
that would apply to existing suits. And the problem with this suit is
not that it is of a sort of legal claim that is inappropriate to
bring, but that it is totally unjustified on the merits. In other
words, the remedy here is for these suits to be dismissed on their
merits and Congress has no role, as I have said, in doing that.
I am prepared to join in expressions of extreme disapproval of what
SCO is doing, and I will be consulting with my colleagues to see if
there is a movement to do that. I hope that will have some impact on
them. All of these lawsuits brought against individuals will of course
be dismissed but I realize that is of little consolation to people
who have had to go through the trouble and expense of defending against
them. It may be that at some point a judge will act decisively enough
in this regard to prevent this proliferation of suits, and while, as I
said, our Congressional role is very limited here, I will be
encouraging anything we can do along these lines.
Barney Frank
I wouldn't be too sure about these claims. Judging from this page, there's been a few million in insider trading since June (unless I've been reading this wrong, which is entirely possible). Quite a bit for such a small company (2.4%). One executive has sold somewhere around $1,595,650 in stock since June...around 125,000 shares of his original 215,000. Sounds like a majority of his holdings to me. Now I don't know much about finance, but I think I can say this with authority: Small amounts to cover tax penalties my ass. That's a fortune, even after taxes.
-Turkey