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MS Word File Reveals Changes to SCO's Plans
jfruhlinger writes "Ah, the joys of 'track changes' in MS Word: metadata in a document obtained by Cnet reveals some earlier plans by SCO's legal team. Among them: to sue in February (their original target date), to sue Bank of America, to 'impound ... all Linux software products in the custody or control of Defendant through the pendency of these proceedings', and to accuse in court 'Linus Torvalds and/or others' of 'inclusion into one or more distributions of Linux with the copyright management information intentionally removed.' Good stuff." Also, SCO has announced a few new licensees including Computer Associates.
If all Sco's operating officers are put in jail whos going to write all the checks for the lawsuits? Also at what point does the Bar association of Utah step in and say if you sco lawyers do this anymore kiss your licenses goodby?
"It's so convenient to have a system where everyone is a criminal" - A. Hitler
I'm sure that EV1 is very happy now about their investment and partnership with SCO. Maybe next time they'll partner with a more popular group like the KKK.
Here in Canada, it's so cold outside that I swear I saw a SCO lawyer with his hand in his own pocket. Sassan
Ironically, UC Berkeley is also going to be a licensee!!
Also, SCO has A HREF
What's a href and why are you yelling?
If there was a question as to whether this is just an SCO fishing expedition, I think the question has now been answered
I'm surprised SCRO don't just take the list of Fortune 100 companys they sent the notificiation to, and using mailmerge.
Not often you see 'joy' and 'MS Word' in the same sentence.
FYI... here's a free app that removes MS Word metadata (useful for sensitive docs for distribution)
http://www.docscrubber.com/download.html
-fren
"Where are we going, and why am I in this handbasket?"
Are they even trying anymore?
There's a Mercedes gap too. I want one and can't afford one, but it's not government's job to do anything about it.
With SCO being all about their Unix IP, you would think they would prefer to use their own product when writing legal proceedings, instead they use Microsofts....
Memories become legend, Legend fades to myth, and even myth is forgotten by the time that age comes again.-Robert Jordan
This link's for you.
The Army reading list
Thats funny, SCO screwed by their biggest contrib.
I know this feature of word has let me find out some interesting things before. You would not believe some of the things people write in their resumes.
Im glad
I'd be interested to know how many companies got the warning letter from SCO and tossed it in the circular file instead of replying to it.
If I'm not mistaken, SCO filed suit against DC because they never received a response to their letter. I wonder how many more they'll file based on lack of replies.
This is scandalous. There's no official confirmation yet, but apparently CmdrTaco of Slashodt.org fame leaked the source code to the story. The file contained a href and then something.
Will this be the end of Slashdot?
Anyone able to find a link to the word file? I'd like to see this for myself in its entirety. I did a quick search on Google and didn't turn it up.
Never underestimate the dark side of the Source
Damn moderators.. Even they don't read articles anymore..
So, this to me seems like another example of security breaches that can get companies, organizations and governments into trouble because of their use of Microsoft products.
.doc formats for certain information transactions and instead relying on standard ascii text encoded files.
So, last time I heard, certain agencies are prohibiting the use of
Visit Jonesblog and say hello.
"Next week we'll be covering one of the more amusing cases in IP. Make sure to read the case study on SCO before coming to class. It's Chapter 11, which isn't altogether lacking in irony."
More that its ironic that MS is bankrolling SCO to try and torpedo Linux, but their own technology is making it easier for the other side to obtain shreds of information we probably shouldnt be privy to.
"Old man yells at systemd"
Shareholders have already unseated Eisner and Lord Black because of stupidity/criminal self-dealing. Here's three more to add to the list.
Is bloated, closed source, evil empire produced Word a good or bad thing ?
Tired of being "punished" by the Slashdot $rtbl since 2002. I'm now over at http://soylentnews.org/ .
~Darl
IANAL. But suppose a case is brought to court that includes, as part of its collection of evidence, a Word document that tracks changes in much the same way that the Word document in the article apparently did. Could a prosecutor who, for example, sees among the "invisible ink" Neo-Nazi writings by the accused, be able to use that as evidence against him? Could he furthermore deduce "motive" and "intent" from that evidence? On one hand, he is able to glean the evidence simply because something *WAS* there. But that's just the problem: It was in the past, but it has been editted out and substituted by the weekly grocery list of the accused. Would he then be able to point to the "change log", so to speak, and build his case on that?
Their earnings are down. They sued two of their own customers. Laura Dido is no longer brainwashed by them. They have been revealed to be sock puppets of Redmond. And they use Word, which revealed their alternate evil plans. This is by far the funniest SCO week ever.
I would have loved to have seen them try to impound all that equipment. BOA would have destroyed them outright.
Anyone know who SCO banks with?
...like two smitten children fumbling and tumbling over themselves.
I think they're like two monkeys banging away on a keyboard instead... Hey maybe they'll create the next Longhorn source by the time the courts settle.
# fuser -v
#
This is getting beyond utter stupidity! The only thing Bank of America would have to do is remove any offending code or recompile their apps without using offending libraries. It's not that hard.
So far we haven't seen a single line of proprietary code from SCO - anything and everything they have shown us was and still is available in public domain. Just because they copied it from public domain and put it in their shitty product doesn't make it their invention.
As far as BoA is concerned, I think Darl remembered he had an account with them where he stashed his millions. Talk about sticky situation:
Darl: All your Linux are belong to us!
BoA: OK, *click*, all your assets have been frozen until further notice...
somehow this happened.
* SCO Group Inc (The) SCOX 11.66 +0.07 (0.60%)
How? What idiot would buy stock now? Microsoft, in a last ditch attempt to give them a shread of crediability? People willing to take a million to one odds that they win any of these lawsuits?
SAILING MISHAP
Doesnt this prove what many of us knew? Stupid, evil people use stupid evil applications...
In seeking relief from the courts, the original version of the document also said that it sought: "impounding all Linux software products in the custody or control of Defendant through the pendency of these proceedings;"
What kind of drug were they on when they thought that a court would allow them to impound all "linux software products" (impounding the hardware would be easier) before the trial had been decided? Proving irreperable harm to SCO would be very hard, and taking all of these computers from BofA would cause incredible harm. No judge would allow such a thing.
Which makes me wonder... who even suggested this - SCO management or their lawyers? Is the management that clueless/reckless?
HIV Crosses Species Barrier... into Muppets
Caldera?!!! What's vulcanism have to do with UNIX? Cmdr Spock was half human!
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
these latest cases in SCO is suing their former clients make sense and bring clarity to SCOs assertions.
Imagine it from SCOs point of view. They see a flood of customers running from Unixware to the free linux. They want to stop that. They think, Linux came up to speed so quickly to an enterprise level something smells fishy. There would be tonnes and tonnes of kernel, network and library issues to have ironed out. Yet people are making seemless conversions.
Ergo they realize people are copyying the code to speed the results. Now who to sue. You could sue your clients who are copying the libraries for comaptibility. or you could sue linux because they are not your customer.
So you decide to sue linux, assuming linux copied stuff just like your clients did. Your corporate culture despises Open Source so its not hard to get the blinders on, make rash accusations.
You find some smoking guns and start down that road. Then you decide to draw in IBM since they were selling the migration as a bussiness model and they just stiffed you on your last best hope for a collborative bussniess.
but then suddenly you realize you made some mistakes, maybe there was not as much copying as you thought. And what ther eis will vanish the moment its revealed. So if there is a case here its against IBM for assiting the copies and porting for clients to linux. And since linux is a disperse target, go for the end users without licences indemnities.
Finally you bite the bullet and realize your after the wrong smelly fish. Its not linux or IBM since they have the manpower to and skill to make honest clean versions. its your clients who would not have had the manpower to do the conversions without cheating. Some lazy programmer copied code to speed the library conversions. Sue the clients!!!
While I'm doubtful of copying in the kernel, since its a hotly scrutinzed area, I would not be surpise to find copying in underfunded corporate backwaters such as migration libraries, in which core, boring compatibility issues in uixware had to be translated to Linux and some programmer got lazy or pressed for time.
Maybe SCo is finally going to create a winable case.
On March 4th SCO, within 24 hours of publication, I received word from Steven J. Vaughan at eWEEK.com that SCO had confirmed that the memo is legitimate.
Headline: "Computers Purported To Be Used For Something Besides Serving Webpages"!
Film at 11.
Liberal (adj.): Free from bigotry; open to progress; tolerant of others.
..Down on the farm, we call that karma.
Never by hatred has hatred been appeased, only by kindness - the Buddha
I cannot believe companies are caving in to SCO and paying these bogus licensing fees. Can you believe Questar's logic?
"Our usage of (Linux) is so small and isolated that's why we went ahead and signed the contract.,"
The more companies that pay the more Linux looks like a tainted OS that is no longer Free.
I knew the whole IBM v SCO thing wasn't going to be a quick and dirty affair. I knew SCO would be getting help from Microsoft to fund its legal offensive. I never thought companies would be dumb enough to pay for IP which is contested. For the love of God why are they paying? Say Fuck You to SCO and let them sue you if they want money. No judge will pass judgment against you or even let the case go forward until SCO can prove via the IBM case their IP claims. Who are the lawyers for these companies that are saying its better to pay? Fire their asses and hire someone with a clue.
If you wanna get rich, you know that payback is a bitch
Actually, this data, eventhough hidden from view normally, can be entered in a case directly against SCO. There was a similar case where Laywer A was attempting to setting with Laywer B, and there client was going to settle on a much higher amount, but Laywer B had them decrease it ... and you guessed it, they were using MS Word, so the orginial text of the higher amount was saved, and got sent to Laywer A, who noticed it, and then was able to force Laywer B and his client to settle on the higher amount. I could see this being entered as SCO was attempting to sue anyone, once there was ANY shred of proof the company was connected to Linux. This might just be another nail in the box for SCO, and for once, I have to say thanks to Micro$oft because there "feature" (and I use that term lightly) might just help SCO loose.
This signature was left intentionally blank.
(Sorry for the anonymous post... none of this is confidential but I'd still like to keep my name separate from it...)
1. We use AIX. Heavily. Like most banks do.
2. We're rolling out Linux right now. I'm personally involved in this deployment, and we have made a big deal out of it, going as far as making a presentation at the last LWE about our Linux plans.
I work in a company that uses a mix of code as well as we write our own. Some of it is under BSD, others LGPL, and of course, GPL. I myself encourage this, but I always push that we need to obey the licenses. What I have found funny is that 2 people here are weak coders and basically like to steal GPL based code and say that putting it in a product we will give us a leg up. I have been fighting a huge battle on it and have finally won. But it was a close battle. In fact, the management wanted to go with the others, but it was myself and a lawyer who convince them to simply change the model.
I suspect that This goes on more than most realize. I would suspect that a number of small companies are "getting a leg up" in this fashion. So no, do not mod down.
IALOS...
I think there are a couple of interesting items.
The first question, is would the deleted material allowed in court? Since it was a draft of a legal plan, it would seem pretty clear that the content should ordinarally be protected by attorney-client privelidge? Especially if accidentally passed.
The next question, is, now that it has been exposed, are there actions that can be taken against, SCO or thier lawform for either releasing confidential information, or the actual content of the confidential information?
I can already hear lawyers screaming around the world, and this has to be good for Adobe...
Lawyers should not be providing editable documents like word files. Final format documents like PDF, or signed PDF would seem to be a lot better thing to be passing around legal documents.
You keep using this word anymore. I do not think it means what you think it means.
....we'd appreciate if Chrysler could respond promptly.
Yours Truly,
Darl McBride
FUTURE CEO, CHRYSLER^z^z^z^z^z
OWNER, BIG BLUE^z^z^z^z
KING OF UNIX^z^z^z^z^z
"KING KERNEL"^z^z^z^z^z
CEO, SCO Inc.
I've been a linux user for years, and I had no idea that Autozone, Daimler-Chrysler, and BofA all used linux on a widespread basis.
I'll just bet PHB's are thinking more about Linux, thanks to all the SCO press.
I love irony.
A half-dead 90 year old man with no pockets, and an 800lb gorilla standing behind him.
Forget thrust, drag, lift and weight. Airplanes fly because of money.
"Blake Stowell, SCO's director of communications, acknowledged that the leaked memo is real." -- eweek
Belief is the currency of delusion.
Since you brought up Microsoft and EV1...
There is a Case Study on Microsoft's web site here. This discusses the addition of several Windows-based servers to their Linux environment.
So, are they bed buddies? You bet.
-m.
CA Says It Didn't Pay SCO No Stinking Linux Tax
The Linux faithful have been hammering Computer Associates as a heretic since the British publication Computer Weekly quoting the SCO Group's CFO Bob Bench identified CA Thursday as one of SCO's rare Linux licensees.
CA senior VP of product development Mark Barrenechea says that Bench's claim is nonsense. CA has not paid SCO any Linux taxes, he said.
Drawing up short of calling SCO a liar, Barrenechea claims that SCO has twisted a $40 million breach-of-contract settlement that CA paid last summer to the Canopy Group, SCO's biggest stockholder, and Center 7, another Canopy company, and has turned it into a purported Linux license.
As a "small part" of that settlement, Barrenechea said, CA got a bunch of UnixWare licenses that it needed to support its UnixWare customers. SCO, he said, had just attached a transparent Linux indemnification to all UnixWare licenses and that is how SCO comes off calling CA a Linux licensee.
But when CA agreed to that settlement, Barrenechea said, "It was not CA's intention to become a Linux licensee. It has nothing to do with CA's product direction or strategic direction," he said.
CA has absolutely no sympathy for what SCO is doing, Barrenechea said, and in fact, he said, reading from a formal statement, it stands in "stark disagreement with SCO's tactics and threats."
Barrenechea and CA's Linux chief Sam Greenblatt are worried that CA will be tarred with the SCO brush and that CA's considerable Linux ambitions will be damaged by a disaffected, if not hostile, open source community when in reality CA has "nothing to do with SCO's strategy and tactics," they said.
CA was the mystery company SCO was thinking of when it announced last August that an unidentified Fortune 500 company had supposedly become a Linux license. SCO privately described the deal as "significant."
CA couldn't disassociate itself from the rumors that identified it as that licensee because of an NDA that the Canopy side had insisted on hedging in the $40 million settlement with, Barrenechea and Greenblatt said.
Barrenechea said that SCO now regards that NDA as being off because of the legal discovery that's been going on in SCO's $5 billion suit against IBM.
See, SCO lawyer Mark Heisse in a letter dated February 4 to IBM lawyer David Marriott at Cravath Swain identified CA, Questar and Leggett & Platt as Linux taxpayers.
According to that letter, which is up on the Groklaw site, Heisse owed IBM a copy of the CA agreement on CD.
Barrenechea said that SCO was dropping CA's name to associate itself with the "third-largest software company in the world" and build support for its "lost cause."
But according to Barrenechea, not only are SCO's IP ambitions doomed, but its Unix interests are a "trailing negative" on the road to dropping from 10% of the market to 3%-5% in a few years and then "SCO will be irrelevant,"
he said.
By the way, CA doesn't have enough UnixWare licenses to cover all its Linux servers, Greenblatt said.
In answer to CA's contentions, SCO said its lawyers think that CA has a Linux license.
Meanwhile, Bench also told Computer Weekly, whose story was picked up by sister paper InfoWorld and maybe other properties in the IDG stable, that SCO had signed between 10 and 50 Linux licenses.
I think they are hoping to tie up the courts to the point where they are too busy to throw the book at the SCO executives while at the same time counting on their legal carpet-bombing strategy nets them some settlement profits.
They have a few more tricks up their sleeve...from another news(.com)^2 article:
Linux, which runs well on inexpensive Intel processor-based servers, has become increasingly popular despite SCO's actions. Linux has even spread to the Web site of the U.S. District Court in Nevada, where SCO filed its suit against AutoZone, according to site monitoring firm NetCraft.
Soooo...if the courts threaten to dismiss SCOs case and/or charge them with fraud, they can just sue the court system itself!
The big statue of Joseph Smith in the center of Salt Lake City has his back to the Temple and his arms outstretched towards the Bank across the street. This observation isn't meant as a slight against Mormons in general, but it is strangely symbolic of the attitude of some Mormons.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Yet, but it wouldn't make SCO suffer a fitting fate.
I think public humiliation, stock delisting, and bankruptcy would be a more fitting end.
I tried to buy a license. They refused to sell me one because I wasn't incorporated yet. I told them I was starting a small enterprise with a Linux web server that did not as yet exist, but was in the works. They even refused to give me information on what their product was and if it would protect me from a lawsuit. The only thing I got was this form letter.
Dear Mr. [name witheld to protect me from getting sued],
Thank you for your inquiry to obtain an SCO IP license. At this time, we have announced the license availability for commercial users only. If you wish to pursue a commercial IP license, please enclose the following information.
Corporate Name, Corporate Phone and Address, Corporate officers names and titles, distribution of Linux and release/rev information. Once we have received your updated information, we will contact you with the purchase requirements.
Thank you for your interest in SCO.
SCO
That was what they sent me in answer to a request about what their product was. I followed up but they did not respond to any correspondance I sent.
I am not an expert in this kind of thing, but if I were a large company thinking about buying a license, I would think twice. Buying a license is more likely to get you involved in a lawsuit and it might violate the GPL, opening you up to a lawsuit from any developer who ever contributed to Linux and void your ability to use Linux and barring you from using Linux. You are better off paying a one time penalty than being bound by a SCO license. Buying a SCO license will not make your problems go away, it will only make them worse. Basically what they are doing is going around saying that WE WILL SUE YOU over copyright violations. But the license (which I later read because they finally released copy of it) only sells a useless/unnamed product called 'IP' and does not give any assurances and only restricts rights of Linux users. Read the fine print, you get NOTHING. It does not indemnify you. They are entirely geared towards going after and exploiting existing Linux users based on fear of a lawsuit, they are not geared at providing a service to potential users or a useful product that does something. Their license does not make a single hard claim to any specific Linux product and does nothing but restrict your rights.
Only an idiot would buy this license. It is completely asinine. DO NOT BUY A LICENSE. It is an open ended legal liability.
"...a document obtained by Cnet reveals some earlier plans by SCO's legal team."
It's good to know that SCO's legal team has a plan and is sticking to it...
I wonder if they have the bankruptcy paperwork already filled out for when the shit really hits the fan?
The race isn't always to the swift... but that's the way to bet!
Man in suit: Hey kid, nice software you have there. What's it called?
Kid: Um, Linux, why?
Man: Because I'm from SCO/Microsoft and I think it looks like my
software now.
Kid: No way, in fact I wrote some of it myself
Man [pushing attorneys in front of him]: Moose! Lefty! Help the kid
find his wallet.
The issue is about whether or not the code in Linux is SCO's code or not. SCO is claiming IBM put some of its code into Linux in order to make Linux "Eterprise Ready". IBM says they didn't do any such thing. A patch removing all of the code SCO claims were put in illegally would be a tacit admission that the code is SCO's. Removing any code SCO claims is theirs would be the worst thing any kernel maintainer could do right now.
I'm a loner Dottie, a Rebel.
I doubt what you say is true for two primary reasons:
1) The interfaces to any modern OS are virtually the same. And particularly amongst Unix-like variants, there are certainly fundamental differences in system code, but experienced programmers will use standard c/c++ libraries that are implemented on pretty much every unix-like OS. So if you're trying to do a port of a simple text-based application, the user interface code is a piece of cake because you're writing VT100 level stuff. And the back-end is generic "C" code that will probably compile on any machine with little tweaking.
2) More importantly, without the source code to SCO, how could customers do all this code stealing? Unless SCO distributes source with their OS, but I never heard that before. So how can you steal what you don't have access to?
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
Yes, ESR gets the math wrong.
Stowell of course is just trying to spin it favourable for SCO. Stowell and McBride are well known liars in my opinion, so why would we trust them?
But forget that, here's another and possibly better SCO story:
Note the word 'insurance'. McBride basically is admitting to racketeering!
I'll bet this will come back to haunt him in court filings in the future.
Belief is the currency of delusion.
The word within CA is that the SCO claim is a lie. The following article is doing the rounds internally - it claims to have been published but I can't find it on the web, if I did I would provide a link instead...
CA Says It Didn't Pay SCO No Stinking Linux Tax
The Linux faithful have been hammering Computer Associates as a heretic since the British publication Computer Weekly quoting the SCO Group's CFO Bob Bench identified CA Thursday as one of SCO's rare Linux licensees.
CA senior VP of product development Mark Barrenechea says that Bench's claim is nonsense. CA has not paid SCO any Linux taxes, he said.
Drawing up short of calling SCO a liar, Barrenechea claims that SCO has twisted a $40 million breach-of-contract settlement that CA paid last summer to the Canopy Group, SCO's biggest stockholder, and Center 7, another Canopy company, and has turned it into a purported Linux license.
As a 'small part' of that settlement, Barrenechea said, CA got a bunch of UnixWare licenses that it needed to support its UnixWare customers. SCO, he said, had just attached a transparent Linux indemnification to all UnixWare licenses and that is how SCO comes off calling CA a Linux licensee.
But when CA agreed to that settlement, Barrenechea said, 'It was not CA's intention to become a Linux licensee. It has nothing to do with CA's product direction or strategic direction,' he said.
CA has absolutely no sympathy for what SCO is doing, Barrenechea said, and in fact, he said, reading from a formal statement, it stands in 'stark disagreement with SCO's tactics and threats.'
Barrenechea and CA's Linux chief Sam Greenblatt are worried that CA will be tarred with the SCO brush and that CA's considerable Linux ambitions will be damaged by a disaffected, if not hostile, open source community when in reality CA has 'nothing to do with SCO's strategy and tactics,' they said.
CA was the mystery company SCO was thinking of when it announced last August that an unidentified Fortune 500 company had supposedly become a Linux license. SCO privately described the deal as 'significant.'
CA couldn't disassociate itself from the rumors that identified it as that licensee because of an NDA that the Canopy side had insisted on hedging in the $40 million settlement with, Barrenechea and Greenblatt said.
Barrenechea said that SCO now regards that NDA as being off because of the legal discovery that's been going on in SCO's $5 billion suit against IBM.
See, SCO lawyer Mark Heisse in a letter dated February 4 to IBM lawyer David Marriott at Cravath Swain identified CA, Questar and Leggett & Platt as Linux taxpayers.
According to that letter, which is up on the Groklaw site, Heisse owed IBM a copy of the CA agreement on CD.
Barrenechea said that SCO was dropping CA's name to associate itself with the 'third-largest software company in the world' and build support for its 'lost cause.'
But according to Barrenechea, not only are SCO's IP ambitions doomed, but its Unix interests are a 'trailing negative' on the road to dropping from 10% of the market to 3%-5% in a few years and then 'SCO will be irrelevant,' he said.
By the way, CA doesn't have enough UnixWare licenses to cover all its Linux servers, Greenblatt said.
In answer to CA's contentions, SCO said its lawyers think that CA has a Linux license.
Meanwhile, Bench also told Computer Weekly, whose story was picked up by sister paper InfoWorld and maybe other properties in the IDG stable, that SCO had signed between 10 and 50 Linux licenses.
SCO worked directly with Orson Wells to facilitate the Invasion of Earth from Mars. When they could not produce Martians they opted to wait for litigation to start to cripple American life and use lawsuits as the new business model and attempt to take over the world.
This memo was copied to Pinky and The Brain.
Older memos may exist in the form of cave art, but Archeolgists have yet to make the solid connection between the picture of a pile of dung to SCOBCE (SCO Before Common Era) and their exclusive licensing of sticks, mud, dyes, and air.
-1 Overrated (Too many big words for me to comprehend)
Clippy was behind all this CRAP!
Don't look know, but SCO has confirmed that ESR's leaked memo linking MS to the Baystar deal is real, although they claim that the memo's meaning is being misinterpreted and that the author of the memo didn't understand the situation. Right.
It's not offtopic, dumbass. It's orthogonal.
Posted by Terry, on Groklaw on why SCO is not currently going after Bank of America:
If you look at the time frame involved it makes sense. In TSG's second motion to amend against IBM they use the DMCA as part of the complaint based on the removal / alteration of copyright material.
In the analysis of some of the files presented on Groklaw it appears that there exist quite a variety of copyright information on the same file depending on its ancestry. If TSG could make a basis of a copyright claim this could trigger certain DMCA violation.
So on 2/6/2004 we have the 2nd amended complaint with DMCA charges in it. We also have TSG with registered copyrights conflicting with Novell. But that's OK, as TSG is working on clarifying this in court. Plus, it is possible for two parties to have valid compilation copyrights that reflect "version" or "derivation" content.
Then, on 2/9/2004 Novell throws a big wrench in the works with the Motion to Dismiss. Up till that time the copyrights were contested, however with the motion to dismiss Novell stated in a legal document that they were not transferred. That line drawn, no party can pursue DMCA charges until ownership is cleared up by the courts.
The BA thing was using the "takedown" provisions of the DMCA. Post official notice of contest on 2/9 in Utah court, no judge in the USA was going to use a takedown based on unclear title against some company like BA.
Then some legal eagle's secretary just recycled the BA complaint to fit the new victim. Wonder who's going to lose their job? The nice thing is that this may help wake up corporate America as to how dangerous the DMCA can be in the wrong hands. Maybe some of the "mainline" press will pick up on this also.