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SCO Uses 3rd Parties To Spread Claims In Germany
kryonD writes "According to this Computer Weekly article, SCO is no longer allowed to spread their FUD in Germany. This wasn't even a court or government order, but an out of court settlement with a small company. They even get 'fined' EU10,000 by the company for every breach of the settlement. Although, it appears from the article that SCO is side-stepping the agreement by commissioning 3rd party firms to spread their FUD for them. The settlement happened last month, but this is the first I have heard of it. I wonder what made them back down so quickly."
We mentioned the settlement earlier this month (including prohibitions on making certain claims); the news is the attempt to circumvent it.
Fine SCO every time someone writes another article about them. They're being so damn frivolous that it pains me to hear anything else about them short of their ultimate demise.
It's this kind of behavior that helps us see why they're afraid of showing code. They think that as soon as they do someone will find a clever way around their claims, just as they would do if put in the same position. Now, that doesn't change the fact that a lot of someones will probably find a lot of clever ways around their claims, but isn't that exactly what they should want if they were living in the same world as the rest of us?
There was Cowboy Neal at the wheel of a bus to never-ever land.
If SCO isn't allowed to spread FUD then wouldn't commissioning other companies to do it also not be allowed?
The only way it would be legal is if the other company was acting on its own. If SCO paid them to say they were not acting on behalf of SCO, wouldn't that be illegal too?
The settlement disallows employees of SCO making claims agains Linux, but by commissioning an advertising company the company becomes employeed by SCO in some sort of sense... the article said that it was a borderline tactic, but methinks that if it wound up in court SCO would be penalised.
I drink to make other people interesting!
Q.
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I don't think SCO should be completely ignored as long as they're still alive and kicking because their FUD machine is a dangerous thing, but maybe they should be limited to one weekly roundup instead of their near-daily coverage.
Are they going to sue every PR firm in Germany? Seems a little unrealistic, don't ya think?
I guess not always. But it seems like it sure should have been in this case, and if the settlement had that loophole then shame on Univention's lawyers for letting that slip.
Another interesting point, too. According to the Groklaw article about the settlement, the per-offense fine is only about 10,000 euros. That's not a lot, really; just a tiny extra bit of marketing budget for the FUD machine. Is that really all the teeth the settlement has?
Welcome to the Panopticon. Used to be a prison, now it's your home.
"They think that as soon as they do someone will find a clever way around their claims, just as they would do if put in the same position"
That's a pretty goofy way to look at it.
You and SCO want to have it both ways. Essentially, you're claiming something infringes, but you don't want to admit what infringes because you realize your claims are so flimsy that they can be coded around quite easily.
SO which is it? If Linux is so tainted with SCO's patents and copyrights (as they claim), they could show infringement tomorrow. But if the infringement is so trivial, they I understand why they don't want to show it; they'd be the object of scorn and ridicule the world over.
SCO will die, and we will all be laughing and applauding. Get over it.
They could "work[] to create legal conditions" the same way they are here, through litigation. If TSG succeeds in their litigation here in the US they would have effectively created legal conditions (i.e., precedent indicating Linux infringes TSG copyrights) which would pressure Linux users to purchase licenses from TSG.
There was Cowboy Neal at the wheel of a bus to never-ever land.
What the Linux community needs is a solid defeat of their suits - not a lucrative buyout triggering golden-parachutes for the execs.
If all it takes is a couple empty threats to sell for tens to hundreds of millions of dollars, it's the wrong message to send.
I just thought of this, with the number of times the summary said, "FUD".
Can we really call the crap SCO is spewing, "FUD"? At this point, no one fears them, everyone is certain they are making this stuff up as they go, of that there is no doubt.
I think the term adds too much credibility to SCO's statements.
Do we at slashdot have a double standard here? As a firm Linux advocate, I dislike SCO as much as the next /.-er, and consider them a danger to the open source community. But we must remember that freedom of speech should extend to our enemies as well as us, or we're no better than hypocrites when we protest against the censorship of the next bit of free speech that's squashed by the DMCA.
There.. in the title and everything... IANAL
But if SCO agrees not to spread propaganda and then used proxies to spread propaganda didn't they just violate the agreement?
SCO seams to have a very... creative interpretation of laws as they apply to them and others.
I've recently had the opratunity to read vareous text files on how to steal, rip off, blow up, etc etc etc by the crooks that use and perficted those techniques.
Very intresting read if you know how to read between the lines. Basicly they have very unusual/odd interpretations of the applicable laws.
For example one crook has a whole detailed thing on how to get out the door with stuff he didn't buy and create the illusion that he did. (Probably dosen't work anymore).
The intresting part is how he views the applicable laws. He seems to believe that you need to get out the door before you can be stopped for theft. I've observed a few occasions where a crook was cought BEFORE leaving the store. Again IANAL but it sure as heck looks like he was cought dead to rights but I'd have to see how it played out in the corts before I'd know.
The diffrence between the typical crook and SCO is most of what the typical crook is doing is trying to NOT envoke the law no matter how much he believes its on his side. SCO however isn't making any such efforts.
I don't actually exist.
As Joseph Goebbels said, that if you repeat a lie often enough, people will end up believing it.
This is what SCrOtum's plan is, to keep the FUD spewing forth and just the politicians who keep getting elected, it is what the "people" know, because they keep hearing about it.
A computer once beat me at chess, but it was no match for me at kick boxing. Emo Philips
Yes, I know, there is much to not like about European politics and they sometimes have strange ways about doing things. And the taxes, holy cow. But at least they know that the United States does not rule the world.
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
Probably not the big one. This only is a declaratory judgement on SCO's copyrights, which, in the Groklaw web site it mentions, SCO hasn't brought up (yet).
If the judge says there are no copyright infringements, there could still be contract violations, which is what SCO is suing IBM over.
This might get rid of some of the RedHat and Novell lawsuits, but not the original IBM suit.
I mean come on, raise your hand if you're really surprised by this. These people are clearly betting the farm with the claims they're making in the hopes that they'll either be bought out by Big Blue or win the case by dazzling a Judge with bullshit. It shouldn't be news for anyone here to find out that they're willing to violate a legal agreement. After all, they've already torn up the GPL and started shoving US copyright law into the shredder several pages at a time.
--Obyron
Ok, just suppose for a moment that I kept telling you that you may be infringing on my copyright so you owe me money but when you ask me for proof so that you can stop or buy a license from me I say, "No, I won't tell you but I'll be happy to sell you a license." What do you think now, would you just give me money?
If Microsoft were behind this SCO wouldn't be going bizerk.
It dose appear to be a deliberate attack on open souce but let me make this perfictly clear Microsoft is NOT the only company intrested in the failure of open source.
In fact Microsoft is much less conserned about open souce and more about Linux. Attacking open souce and the GPL is a proxy attack for Microsoft like slamming the one button mouse or "all in one" systems is an indirect slam on the iMac and Mac Classic.
However a number of far less successful companys and programmers have discovred that the applications they create can easly be replicated in open source and public domain.
Also many programmers actually believe they have a right to use free code in commertal projects yet those same programmers would never extend the same consideration to anyone else.
I don't actually exist.
Let's win it now. Win it decisively. And then it's done.
A buyout is an encouragement for others to violate the GPL and claim GPL'd code as their own.
I'm guessing legal groups are happy for the whole debacle to continue. After all it's a win-win situation for lawyers. Argh!!! Ghagh!!! The only thing coming close to my dislike for senseless legal stuff is insurance companies. They are what clever people set up instead of casinos - they make much more money - the house still always wins, but the expected return for punters is less - and in the case of motorists - they HAVE to place bets!!!
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>>Ok, so SCO is now under $8 a share, which puts it's market cap around $120 million.>Also, it appears that SCO insiders now own less than 50% of the stock, while institutions own a like 40% and over 10% is in private hands.>I would think that it there are several two and three letter companies that might be willing to pay a significant premium to make SCO go away.
IBM? Forget it. If IBM wanted to pay to make scox go away, IBM would have done so a year ago. Now, IBM has scox on the ropes, and is just about to deliver the knock-out blow. Why would IBM back down now?
"[...] The settlement happened last month, but this is the first I have heard of it. I wonder what made them back down so quickly."
:-) so they have to prove it. But they can't. A German court might have ruined their attempt in the USA. So they backed off just to keep their processes in the US running. The copyright in Europe is slightly different from the US one (only lawyers can explain that).
This is very easy. They run arround in Germany claiming Linux is their property. But not all agreed with them
Also the German Government in pro OSS, Linux. So they can't get any help from them. The US-Government might be closer to SCO. As SCO is fighting for (or against) IP. Ans IP is the only resource which is largly owned by US-Companies but not by the rest of the world.