Slashdot Mirror
Germany Muzzles SCO
skyryder12 writes " We have news from Germany. It seems, according to Computerworld, that SCO Group GmbH (SCO's German branch) agreed, on February 18, 2004, to an out-of-court settlement between it and Univention and will refrain from saying in Germany some things it says in the US constantly. There are four things they have agreed not to say in Germany, on pain of a fine of 10,000 euros per offense -- that's about $12,500 USD -- and one thing they can't say unless they present proof within a month of the settlement date. Story at GrokLaw"
SCO gets to try on a muzzle... this is happy news. My only question is if this settlement favours Univention or SCO? I guess if you look at it one way, it favours us all because we don't have to listen to SCO whine and complain in Germany. Oh wait a minute... their website can be reached from Germany, so does that count as an offense?
As a British guy, I hope we get similar things brought in in Britain soon.. SCO needs to be stopped once and for all, and this seems like a fine (excuse the pun) way to do it.
tim
Now, what will make the remainder of my day great is a falling SCO stock price. Now I just have to wait for the markets to open...
I'm sometimes disappointed at the trial by media
There is no "trial by media" ever, as the media is not capable of doing what the government does. All that happens is that people in the media exercize their first-amendment rights like anyone else.
It seems to me that if the US courts did something like this to a small business man, someone on slashdot would relish pointing out that the slashdot crowd would cheer if it happened to Satan rather than a small businessman, as if that was some kind of a proof of hypocricy.
If I am wrong, someone please help clarify.
Link
/PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- The SCO Group, Inc. ("SCO") (Nasdaq: SCOX - News), the owner of the UNIX(R) operating system and a leading provider of UNIX-based solutions, today announced an intellectual property licensing agreement with EV1Servers.Net, a dedicated hosting division of Houston-based Everyones Internet (EV1.Net). Under the terms of the agreement, SCO will provide EV1Servers.Net with a site license that allows the use of SCO IP in binary form on all Linux servers managed by EV1Servers.Net in each of its hosting facilities."
Quote: "LINDON, Utah, March 1
Lesbian Nazi Hookers Abducted by UFOs and Forced Into Weight Loss Programs - -all next week on Town Talk.
More like that it's slightly insensitive for a german to sing it since it's the last part of their former anthem and glorifies germany for being superior to everything.
S.U.S.E
I hate to be an ass but it's SuSE or Suse, not S.U.S.E., it's not an acronym, it stands for nothing.
So telling SCO they have to shup up now instead of six months ago doesn't appear to be doing much that hasn't already happened.
The real question is why Darl has felt it necessary to deprive us of his rather unique insights into intellectual property ownership.
How do you see this as racism. I would much more be willing to be called an engineer than a lawyer. I believe the vast majority of /.'ers would also. This is a compliment to the german quality of engineering. Why does any comment about a particular people have to be racist? Maybe if you would quit looking for the politcally correct way, you may see something that broadens your mind instead of your sense of style.
Stay tuned for new sig...
Enforcement of consumer law under the Enterprise Act
Yes, nobody likes SCO but it's obviously censorship. Not only that, but it's biased censorship since Germany has invested a lot in using Linux now. They wouldn't want anything to come out that would make their choice to use Linux look bad.
I don't mean this as a troll, but it seems to me that if the US courts did something like this to a small business man (rather than to Satan), the slashdot crowd would be screaming about Ashcroft and free speech rights.
Two issues here: even an ACLU liberal like me won't argue that free speech is so absolute as to preclude laws against slander or libel. And most of us would be willing to have limits on threatening speech, although this is more subject to abuse.
The second issue is that "free speech" is very much an American idea. That's not to say that freedom is unknown in Europe, but Europe is far more willing to restrict speech that would (generally) be considered protected in the U.S. Germany, especially, is far more willing to subjugate free speech to social order, as a result of seeing the particular zeal with which certain very bad ideas were formerly so lovingly embraced by German listeners.
I'm referring, of course, to Germany's Nazi past: as a result, Germany law holds social order -- the protection of ideals of democratic government -- to be more important that a right to the exhortation of Nazi "hate speech", including not only speech in favor of Fascism but also Fascism's ugly underpinnings, such as racist and anti-Semitic speech, and minimization of Fascism's consequences, such as Holocaust denial.
Other European nations are also more leery of speech that is too stark a reminder of history, as we saw with France's restriction of eBay's sale of Nazi memorabilia. Britain, too, is less concerned about free speech, but limits speech less through hate-speech laws than through far easier to get judgments against libel and slander.
One of the strongest arguments of free speech advocates in the U.S. is that the best antidote to "bad" speech is not suppression, but instead the "free marketplace of ideas": "bad" speech is supposed to generate counter-arguments against what it advocates, allowing a free people to freely weigh both sides of the question and -- presumably -- end up even more strongly against the "bad" speech. (I keep using scare quotes around "bad" not because I'm a fan of hate speech, but because this argument for free speech presumes that it is up to each listener, and not a government, to determine in his own conscience what speech is "bad".)
I'm inclined to agree with this analysis, but furthermore, I can't see what alternative to it allows a people truly to be free, and I worry that suppression of hate speech in Europe -- and Germany in particular -- is just a tacit acknowledgement that these countries don't really believe that all the demons of their past have truly been put to rest, that they fear that Fascism might again prove irresistibly seductive if allowed to be advocated freely.
But I'm an American, not a European, and I have the luxury of living in a land that has never been touched by Fascism or Communist Statism, where Democracy -- however unevenly applied to minorities or women or the poor -- was at least the ideal to which we pledged ourselves. And of course, the U.S. has not been shy about restricting free speech in its colonial possessions, as a perusal of our laws in the Philippines or Cuba makes clear.
Lest we forget, not only Germany, but Italy, Portugal -- until 1974, and Spain -- until 1977 --, were Fascist, and Eastern Europe -- including East Germany -- languished under Communist Statism just as tyrannical until the 1990s. With that perspective, it's perhaps more understandable that Europeans feel they must -- to paraphrase the U.S. doctrine in Vietnam -- restrict freedom in order to save it.
Opinions on the Twiddler2 hand-held keyboard?
Well, I don't think so - I mean I doubt they were nervous about this SCO nonsense in the first place. Actually, I work for a Germany-based big corp and there is work on transitioning from SCO UnixWare to Linux as they clearly see that:
1. SCO will die soon
2. Linux will not
Real life is overrated.
No, I believe he's right:
Corporations have the same rights as INDIVIDUALS under U.S. law.
Therefore, the more money an individual has, the more he can influence the judicial system through lobbyists.
Of course I am basing my understanding from a paper I read some time ago, but that did seem to be the gist of it.
I don't know the meaning of the word 'don't' - J
Probably a marketing stunt to get some free press. BTW, I doubt EV1 is a "fortune 1000 company" (whatever that is).
And check out webhostingtalk.com and EV1 forums for hordes of unhappy people.
Melius mori in libertate quam vivere in servitute.
Nom there needs not be an exception based on content, but there should be an exception possibly based on itnet, ie, sayign somethign with the intention to cause hatred or such, this can be seen as extending the idea of slander and dangerous speech a bit.
At any rate, free speech is here for individuals, not for coorperations or other non natural identities, and one of the biggest dangers to free speech is failing to differentiate between the individual and organisations (including corporations) in this.
Luckily, in the USA law exists and purely commercial speech is not protected. Such laws are a lot stronger in Europe, tho have become a lot less strong in the last decade.
I see Yahoo is doing its typical head-in-sand journalism. No mention of this anywhere, but what the top story?
SCO Signs Intellectual Property License Agreement with Leading Dedicated Server Provider
Makes me sick.
I agree with your comparison of the differences between how the U.S. handles free speech and how European countries handle it. However, being a Canadian, not an American or a European, I don't have an attachment to either.
I can appreciate the European approach as it discourages people from promoting undesirable or baseless ideas such as hate doctrine. However, the risk is where to draw the line. How do you decide what's acceptable and what's not. Even more important, who decides where the line is to be drawn. It's an approach that can be very susceptible to abuse unless there are some very clear checks and balances. The risk is that you could lose some good by supressing the bad.
On the other hand I can also appreciate the American approach. As a thinking person I like to hear both sides of an issue and make an informed decision so the less restrictive laws in the U.S. are very appealing. However, I don't know if the average U.S. citizen would consciously analyze both sides of an issue like SlashDotters do. Especially since the U.S. media packages issues into easy to digest sound bites that conveniently fit between commercial breaks. There is often more attention given to advertising and ratings than any kind of meanful discussion.
Without doing an in depth comparison on the impact, good and bad, of the two approaches it's difficult to see which one "works" and which one doesn't. In fact, it may not be a case of which one works but instead which one works for your people and in your culture. What works in the U.S. might not work in Germany and vice versa.
Some of what I say is fact, some is conjecture, the rest I'm just blowing out my ass...you guess.
I know that views like yours are common in the USA. However, many of us here in Europe look to the USA and don't much difference in the level of "free speech" in either place. True, there are a few laws in a few countries in Europe that go against "free speech" in the strictest sense. But in the USA you have something we don't have so much of - increadable social pressure to conform to what society thinks is right.
For instance, we don't have any type of speech that is publicly ridiculed for being "Un-european". We don't have ridiculous over-reactions like that of your country to the exposure of a woman's breast. And what is "free speech" if your actors cannot give their personal opinions about current events when accepting awards?
First of all, I'm aware that history books in the USA do a bad job at this, but you really should differentiate between fascism and nazism.
Fascism was the system in place in Italy, Nazism was the system in place in Germany and has a lot in common with it, but there are a few very significant differences.
The most important one is evident from Muscolini's opinion about Hitler, he thought the man was obsessed with racial issues.
In fact, the system as the USA has today is very close to fascism, it is a system in which big business runs the country, and where the government acts on their behalf. Traditional fascism comes with a fair amount of nationalism and national pride, and usually (but not by definition) results in expantionalism. At any rate it perfectly matches Muscolini's own definition of fascism.
This very aspect of Nazism is what provokes very strong reactions among jewish people specifically, but also among almost anyone who has lived through it in EUrope, and those who were brought up knowing about what happened.
Both Nazism and Fascism heavily lean on glorifying the past, and use a lot of symbolism in order to keep people from looking at reality.
What was forbidden in France is selling things that have been used in such a way by Nazis speicifcally, interestingly enough, you wont see the same vigorous attempts at suppression with purely fascist things.
When looking at the response to nazism in much of Europe, you have to think back to events on sept. 11 and what emotions it triggered in the USA. multiply it a few 1000 times to get to the scale of what Europe experienced under Nazi rule, and you can also count on emotions being proportionally stronger.
Regarding Germany, laws there are not much different from those in the rest of Europe, tho tend to get implemented more strictly (but hey, that is a german thing to do, they do that with lots more then just those rules and laws)
That for example Mein Kampf is not available in Germany is first of all due to the current copyright holders preventing that (happesn to be the government of bavaria if I'm not mistaken) and not because of it being forbidden by law.
Finally, not allowing 'hate speech' as is the case in many European countries is just putting a slightly different line then is done in the USA. Which line is better is up for debate, but neither have absolute free speech.
If there is any possibility of injunction against SCO here in the US, it ought to be pursued. "Burden of proof" is a legal issue that lies with the Plaintiff in the US as well, but given IANAL, I don't know whether you can stop SCO from, for example, creating business harm via sabre-rattling that amounts to libel until they prove anything.
mod parent up - how can anyone be so naive? Reputations get ruined on national television in the USA all the time, with no proof whatsoever. How many times a day do we hear the word "allegations" in connection with some person or company? Allegation basically means "accused without proof".
And the media loves this stuff. They get to tell/sell simple stories that the uneducated public understands, with a good guy/bad guy, never mind if any of it is true.
Making unproven allegations is one of the most basic tried-and-true PR methods. Don't like someone? Sully their name. Don't matter if it's true.
I would think most Slashdot readers would know better.
It will come back to some people in Germany, but not all. Besides news of the fact that they've been forbidden from making these claims is also going around - and will make their claims at lot less credible.
Yes Rackshack is a dirt-cheap hosting provider. I've been with them for 2 years and have been amazed at the service and quality of their offerings. I use their service to host legitimate Business sites.(No Spam).
I have 2 servers at rackshack and the uptime has been nearly perfect. I can't say enough good things about Rackshack/EV1 after having tried so many other hosting facilities. Where else can you get 700 GIG of transfer for 99 bucks a month. The important thing to me is that I have 100% control of the servers. I can install whatever I like.
If anyone can point me to a better deal for dedicated hosting I'd be supprised. Don't bash these guys just because they signed a deal with SCO. I'm sure they paid very little for the contract and the free advertising that will come out of the press release will be well worth the money paid to SCO.
Compare those "left-wing fascists" to the totalitarian state that GWB is trying to implement.
At least the Greens are only trying to get power. GWB already has it! **shudder**
> But why are there so many lawyers in the US? Does it have something to do with culture? Hardly.
Maybe because in the US, punitive damages give lawyers much bigger potential rewards.
What this settlement does not say: SCO agrees not to allege A, B, C, D...
What it does say: SCO agrees not to allege A, B.... unless they have evidence for it. And they agree not to announce having evidence unless they hand over such evidence to Univention within one month after the announcement.
The legal basis for Univention's claims against SCO Germany is Article 1 of the Act against Unfair Competition (UWG). In patent attorney Ralph Beyer's translation:
Relevant caselaw is a decision of the Hamburg Higher Regional Court (OLG) of August 31, 2000 (3 U 272/92, WRP 2001, 956-964) and a decision of the Federal Court of Justice of July 7, 1954 (Johann Maria Farina, BGHZ 14, 282). Under that caselaw it is an "act contrary to honest practices" to assert intellectual property rights in public without actually having them.
Now, what exactly would happen if SCO Germany tomorrow started to make all the assertions mentioned in the settlement again in public?
In that case, Univention could sue them under the terms of the settlement for 10.000 Euro.
However, they could sue them under the above Article of the Act against Unfair Competition and caselaw anyway. All the settlement gives Univention on top of that is an easy way to put a number on their damage claims.
That number however is rather low, compared to what is at stake here. I doubt that this will have much of a deterrent effect on SCO Germany. They can always say that they have evidence now, even under the terms of the settlement.
And this settlement is only between SCO Germany and Univention. Every other Linux company in Germany is free to start their own lawsuit based on unfair competition law.
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