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Microsoft Sues Brazilian Official for Defamation
The Importance of writes "Larry Lessig is reporting that Microsoft is threatening a defamation lawsuit against Sergio Amadeu, President of the National Institute of Information Technology (ITI) of Brazil, for comments he has made about Microsoft's business practices, "accusing the company of a 'drug-dealer practice' for offering the operational system Windows to some governments and city administration for digital inclusion programs. 'This
is a trojan horse, a form of securing critical mass to continue constraining the country'." Additionally, "To Amadeu, this will be a decisive year to win the 'strategy of fear, uncertainty and doubt', as he classifies the business model of Microsoft." Microsoft's complaint claims that this is "an excess in freedom of speech and freedom of thought, by means of the dissemination of information." Read a translation of the complaint [PDF] and the original article, "The Penguin Advances [PDF]." Lessig notes that this may be defamation in Brazil, but would not be considered defamation in the United States."
....when he reads "The Penguin Advances" PDF linked in this article.
"In order to avoid that someone would appropriate the improvements to make a closed version, Torvalds has created a special use license that forbids the original code or any subsequent modification made upon it to be closed"
I recently commented on how the Roman Church has used effectively the over-zealous Brazilian laws on libel and difamation to fight any churches that make inroads on what they consider their home turf. Now it seems that Redmond is taking some clues from Rome.
If MS sue'd this brazilian guy and succeeded wouldn't that create legal ground for RedHat (or some other linux company) to sue MS over the cancer statement?
I think that he was just commenting that Microsoft used the same approach that drug dealers do -- to give away cheap or free product to produce a dependence, and then to take advantage of that dependence.
It's hardly unreasonable or untrue (though it might well be damaging) and would be entirely legal under US law.
May we never see th
This is another marketing scheme by Microsoft employees to get Microsoft in the news and on Slashdot.
I certainly would never have known that a government official in Brazil compared Microsoft marketing people to "drug-dealers", if it weren't repeated in the quiet privacy of a Slashdot story.
Without a lawsuit, most Brazilians would never have heard what the official said. Now millions of Brazilians will know. What will be their reaction? Consider this. Less than two months after the September 11, 2001 bombing of the World Trade Center, at the costume parties celebrating the Brazilian equivalent of Halloween, many Brazilians came as Osama bin Laden. Brazilians and people from other countries think that the U.S. government is arrogant and out of control. Since 3 movies and 35 books published in the U.S. say this too, it can be said that the feeling is strong. Microsoft's legal action will be seen as more arrogance from the United States, probably.
My guess is that it is likely that this new move by Microsoft will only help sell Bill Gates Halloween masks. It certainly won't help sell Microsoft products.
This is true and sheer genius. Dunno about Brazilian law, but this might even be usable in a US court.
May we never see th
Yes, but the thing is -- once you use GNU/Linux, you don't *want* to use other stuff -- but that's okay, because you can download all the GNU/Linux you want for free and will always be able to do so.
Microsoft tries very hard to get product lock-in at a customer, then extracts more money than the initial purchase appears to be.
May we never see th
Truth is not a defense to defamation in Brazil.
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
Maybe you were joking but people who say windows are evil still live in the Dark Ages; RL (and, indeed, the WWW) is graphical, not text-based, (thank god!), therefore there are many times when you want (especially when displaying pictures) a GUI. Before I get flamed, I do not want to get rid of CLIs as they have their uses and many of us could not do without their flexibility (to do things that no one has made a GUI for).
Windows (& WIMP in general) seem to be the easiest to use and most efficient GUI paradigm ATM--also systems like XWindows (with different DEs) tend to be very flexible and customisable (unlike alternative paradigms).
Joe Llywelyn Griffith Blakesley
[This post is in the public domain (copyright-free) unless otherwise stated]
Stuff that you'd get away with saying in the USA, you can get sued for in most other countries. US firms have picked up on this and are a lot more litigious about such things outside the US. So are American celebrities, reprint tabloid stuff outside the US at your peril. It might be safe to call a certain actor's sexuality into question in the US, but do it in Australia or the UK and you'll wind up in court. Neither country has a "right" to free speech (except for politicians protected by parliamentry privilige, who really don't want to share that privilige with their critics).
Funny thing about defamation law. You don't have to prove that you're reputation has been damaged. It is accepted that this is almost impossible to reliably prove (it isn't like Slashdot Karma). Hence the law assumes that, because you've gone to court over it, your reputation must have been damaged. Also plaintiffs do not have to pay defendant's legal bills in most countries, hence defamation is a good way for rich plaintiffs to get the little guy, because the little guy, even if what he said was true, will still have to pay sizable legal bills.
Microsoft's complaint claims that this is "an excess in freedom of speech and freedom of thought, by means of the dissemination of information."
Holy context Batman. I love how the submitter is so blatantly trying to get everyone riled up with that quote (oh no, thought crime!), when in fact that quote is actually just a direct translation of Article 12 of the Brazilian Press Law. (Microsoft is directly quoting the law when they use it in the complaint).
Correct me if I am wrong, but a few years ago Bill stepped down as CEO and became a top chairman of Microsoft? Of course he still has plenty of sway in it, but I distincly remember service and Public Relations taking a downhill fall not long after this happened.
I guess what I am trying to say, is has anyone else noticed this as well? After the CEO switch Microsoft decided to start dumping on its customers and users in a way previously unheard of in the software industry. With Microsoft allegedly funding SCO and now this, it makes me wonder what is going on behind the curtains of Microsoft. Bill was a cool guy on a personal level. A great coder, even if he has some sneaky buisness practices. But I could never -ever- see him stooping the these recent lows.
"We're breaking out the ramen noodles. . . "
"Really? Is it someone's birthday?"
This is illegal in brazil? There's no difference between an analogy and a statement of (alleged) fact? Pretty strange methinks. So you can't have an opinion, even if it's based on data that can be verified, and use an analogy to describe your opinion. Seems like normal conversations might get a scosh weird then, how can you discuss various things there without going to court every other day?
Here nearly everyone uses pirated copies of Microsoft Windows and Microsoft Office in Home PCs.
:(
Microsoft complains with piracy to make us Windows dependent, the price of a OEM copy of Windows costs more than most of the people here uses to live for one month.
For us doesn't make any sense to pay for a OEM copy witch we will not have assistance, and almost all "normal"(non-geek) will need to pay for assistance when a virus infect windows, most of them pays for geek neighbours to reinstall a copy of pirated windows when this happens.
Of course in companies in Brazil most windows copies aren't pirated, this is the market they wants, companies and government computers.
But i'm quite happy that now we have a law here that says that open source will be always the first choice in govern departments, this is making the Microsoft President of Brazil going crazy, all declarations i've seen from him sens desperate actions.
I'm using Linux for 1 year, i still have winXP but for 8 months i didn't used it for more than 1 hour for week, i feel nice to stopped using pirated software, when people here understand that piracy isn't normal things will be better. Government actions to make Microsoft stop to learn our people to use pirated copies would be nice too.
Sorry my bad english, aspell doesn't work for everything
And guess what?
It's worse in a court of law. You know, that place where Microsoft was convicted of violating the law for, among other things, illegally using drug-dealer-like business strategies to maintain their monopoly....
accept Bill G admitted using "drug dealer like tactics in selling Windows" in the past...
y =c net
"Although about 3 million computers get sold every year in China, but people don't pay for the software," he said. "Someday they will, though. As long as they are going to steal it, we want them to steal ours. They'll get sort of addicted, and then we'll somehow figure out how to collect sometime in the next decade."
from:
http://news.com.com/2100-1023-212942.html?legac
I've read that it was also quoted in Fortune Magazine in July 1998 but I haven't found an online link yet.
-- "Someone's gotta go back for a shit-load of dimes."
Actually, I think MS will have a large problem suing mr Amadeu. They can afford the lawyers and the best judge money can buy, but they can't afford the press coverage such a lasuit would generate. Many people share the views of mr Amadeu and would probably be on his side, and become even more hostile to Microsoft.
Even if Microsoft manages to buy some of the press, there is a significant risk that some website like groklaw may emerge and start digging up annoying facts on Microsoft and its business practices.
The question is will Microsoft be smart enough to realize this.
God is REAL! Unless explicitly declared INTEGER
Microsoft were directly quoting Brazilian law when they said that. It's Brazil who thinks that there are limits to what you should be allowed to think; Microsoft are merely taking advantage of it.
I wonder what would prompt MS to sue down there for what is a realtively tame statement considering their own slanderous statements and "studies"? If it is easier to sue against lies, perhaps the Linux community should consider doing a law suit against MS for many of their statements AND their studies. They would then have to prove it in court. I wonder how IDC/Gartner/etc would handle being sued as well?
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
That's precisely what happened to pseudo-historian David Irving in British court. When he sued a genuine historian for a few unpleasant pages about him her book, the publisher fought back. He ended up having to supply video tapes he had made of speeches to seedy little Holocaust denier groups. He not only lost his suit, he ended up providing valuable ammunition for his critics.
You can find Groklaw-like records of Irving v. Lipstadt at
The Nizkor Project
--Mike Perry, Inkling blog , Seattle, editor: Eugenics and Other Evils
Unfortunately, that's not true in Brazil - or a number of other countries (Britain, for example). TRUE, but uncomfortable, criticism, especially of government officials (though often extending to others with enough resources to sue) is a common theme.
Truth ("justification") is a complete defence to defamation in the UK.
I'd agree that there have been cases where juries have reached the wrong verdict. I'd also agree that the wealthy and powerful use threats of legal action to intimidate people who have spoken the truth. However, the law is still that truth is a complete defence to slander and libel.
Sure, but not to sue a government official. The system of government work there basically ensures everyone's somebody else's friend. That's why they work for the state to begin with - they knew someone. I don't think a foreign corporation will be able to buy judges. That's what's kept many american firms out of brazil in the past decade. At least, that's the perspective from the american side. Could be different over there.
One potential answer, as China and others are pursuing, is complete dissociation from Windows software. Even so, that process is hindered by Microsoft's wanton economic power, and, as the case of Amadeu today points up, breaking up is hard to do when one is stalked by a jilted billionaire.
No: the answer is obvious. Nations seeking freedom from Microsoft should classify it as an enemy combatant.
Let us not be heard to use the "T" word; there's no need for exaggerration. As a monopolist enjoying state sanction, Microsoft is closer in its modus operandi to the closed-market model of communism than to the religious and ethnically-motivated jarring violence of terrorism. Its goal is not destabilization but the reverse: entrenchment of its interests at the expense of society and governments. Whereas terrorists seek to spread panic and fear, Microsoft seeks to retrofit the old Soviet model to the 21st century, attaching the suction pods of hopelessness and stasis through total, umbilical dependence. In that sense it and terrorism both contravene the striving, evolutionary essence of capitalism. Both raise their middle finger at freedom.
Declaring Microsoft an enemy combatant would have multiple benefits. As a baseline, the corporation would be stripped of all legal rights, including manufacture, distribution, marketing and, of course, speech, assembly, and due process. Economic gains would be realized swiftly through massive competitive opportunities, while under-capitalized island resort real estate markets would rapidly absorb displaced Microsoft millionaires; certain senior Microsoft executives might need to be sheltered for a certain period at Guantanamo Bay, but only as a preventative courtesy.
As Americans have learned since 2000 in our exciting transformation into a post-democratic society, rights are a matter of perspective: they begin and end arbitrarily, entirely subject to the whim of leaders. Why should the nations of the world, arrayed against Microsoft in what could be called the War on Error, any longer suffer Redmond to dictate the cost, performance or security of their information systems? Why remain under the thumb when all that is required is a shift in semantic nomenclature?
Amadeu, meanwhile, should be given the Nobel Peace Prize.
I have been saying the same things, referring to windoze as "digital crack", calling it a Trojan horse, and accusing microsoft of "corporate homicide".
COME AND SUE ME, TOO, microshaft! Regime change begins AT HOME, and I call on ALL nations to review their policies of allowing cabinet officials and low-level functionaries and administrators to have power to hamstring their nations and governments and being BOUGHT OFF by microsoft. Reminds me of the dictators, gangsters and pirates, from Capone, Coll, Galante, Lansky, Nitti, and Lupo the Wolf, as well as Aragona, Baughe, Bodulgate (the reincarnated version is working at the behest of US intelligence communities, I suspect...), Boggs, (but not Chevalier de Grammant), Every, Gibbs, North, Cheng 1 (you retain a modern version in China), and others who could be fashioned into examples of microshafts global piracy hunt to steal the hearts and minds of governments and their treasures (independence, indigenous tech teams, sovereignty, privacy, and more...), and deny them their right to SLAP, KICK, IMPALE and dump microsoft on its ASS when the time comes to "just say no" to microshaft.
I have equated microshaft of being a risk to national, government, military, corporate, personal, AND global security. I have incessantly implored China to switch to Linux, or at least rid themselves of microsoft, for microsoft (yes, lower-casing/deprecation INTENTIONAL, as always, with me) is SURELY a USA National Security Agency (and other unamed/disavowed agencies') BACKDOOR into foreign governments.
Why the HELL ELSE has the US & UK (look to "common heritage") steadfastly played one hand publicly with "reigning in" irksomesoft and then letting the henchmen and leadership of ms get away with so MUCH CRAP.
It is obvious, fortunate, and the RIGHT THING that other agencies within even the US government, as well as other nations' governments, community and business infrastructure have openly and quiely brought Linux and Open Source into their view.
It is NOT enough to "mention" Linux to microsoft. You have to PURGE yourselves of that amoral, no, IMMORAL feckless, dirtwad whining corporation that is too greedy and stupid to straighten up its act.
I found it very heartening that in one poor neighborhood, somewhere in Brazil if I recall correctly, that even the rival GANGLORDS created a "no-fire" zone so that the children could make use of the Linux-based libraries set up to give them a future. That hardened criminals can recognize the value of not destroying children reinforces the feeling I have that were I stuck in a 2-person lifeboat faced with deciding to save an undeducated, poor, questionable individual, or giving that seat to gate, ballmer, or some henchman or henchwoman running, directing, advising, or supporting microsoft, I SURE A HELL not let them have that seat over an individual who has YET to cause or encourage global corruption, local destruction of mom and pop shops (forced them to pay for licensing even when they sold naked computers and never sold nor ever held any copies of windoze), lied to juries and courts (faked video testimony), interfered with the existence or operations of peripherals devices manufacturers, etc.
If ever there is an assault on CONUS for whatever reason, it should be a water and electromagnetic tsuname that takes out ms, its backups, and its future. The feckless little campus in redmond has wrought enough damage and it needs to be broken up, it's board enjoined from starting up or sitting on the board of any more technology companies, removed from banking, real estate, and entertainment, and more.
All too many fresh new players with fresh new ideas are anxiously awaiting their turn to play or work on the tech field. So long as they are stymied by microshaft, we shall NOT see innovation (contrary to the assertion of ms about their own "innovations" which really are mostly acquisitions rather than internal, original developments), we shall NOT see choice, and we shall NOT have stable computing.
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
Oh, ahh, my side. Sniff. I cried laughing. Damn funny.
Seriously, this seems like a great way to piss off the southern hemisphere. And while we're at it, let's throw some diesel on the fire! Duh. "Let's see if we can rile 'em up a little bit. He's pissed off now alright, Crikey!".
Dah Fuhrer doesn't let you switch to Linux and then talk about why it's so much better? Are your paperz not in orrderr?
I suppose Microsoft is against free speech as well as software now? You should buy a shrink-wrapped licensed copy of speech from an authorized vendor, and not just copy speech from your friends? Bill, Get a Grip.
And to think that this all because people copied the Altair BASIC paper tape. Jeez, Gates.
Okay, I'm just going to have to keep changing my license key in the registry to "Fuck off, Gates, I'm in a meeting." like always. God, I love doing that.
I'm glad I joined the FSF recently, at least maybe we can keep speech free.
I'm sorry, I have dropped out of the tech support biz for a while, and my MS frustration has been waning nicely. But the news lately is getting my blood up again. MS Antivirus, are you fucking serious? And now no public anti-MS sentiment? The only reason a politician would speak out against anything is if they know that what they say will be popular. He said what he knew the people would agree with, and by and large people have been scratching their heads and saying, "Makes sense." ever since he did. MS had better get used to the fact that people are tired of the monopoly, but mostly the licensing and registration issues, shitty support, and viruses. There is a huge backlash and it is obviously growing. And suing people who are frustrated and sick of the way you do business will not warm hearts or create the gooey "community" that they say they want to grow. Please! MS is not even trying to make us believe that they want a nice community. They don't care, they don't understand it, and they will continue to see their user base hemorrhage because of it.
As far as their support, I'm sure there are people who are smart and don't mind dealing with MS tech support, but I found dealing with them one of the most stupid aggravating experiences of my life. Free Unix systems with loads of documentation and misc@ mailing lists are much easier to solve problems on, if you are willing to work things out for yourself and not cry until MS stuffs a pacifier in your face. A pacifier in the form of a hotfix that is not freely available, or at least not without going through their information gathering process that is thinly veiled as tech support. Why make users jump through hoops to get fixes to your broken fucking software? I know admins are overworked and don't have time to dot the i's. Just patch it, next problem. But that's the pitiful band-aid syndrome that tech support is full of. Instead of pulling out things by the goddamn root and doing it right, it's always patch and band-aid. And the business people don't fucking understand the difference, or care.
That's right, I quit my tech support job and have been working at a dry cleaners. I just do my job and come home tired and ready to relax. I don't spend the weekend guzzling scotch and hating life because my job is so fucking stupid. I have even rewritten my Python game a couple times since then, since I have some mental energy again and am not staring into space in a depressed state. Six years of Windows tech support drove me to professional laundry.
So it's back to school to get my BSEE. I'll design circuits and write assembler and fuck tech support. I did it when I got my AS in electronics, I'll do it again. And this time there is no way in HELL that I will settle for a tech support job. I'll do laundry first.
You can't take away Linux, and you can't make people not bitch in public about your shitty products and business practices. You better ignore it and go on, instead of stirring the embers with a stick, Dipshits. Peckerwoods.