Are You Ready for the SCO Blitz?

eibhear writes "Over on Groklaw, PJ has a theory that SCO is about to embark on an astroturfing campaign, based somewhat on Darl McBride's repeated comparison of the Slashdot and Groklaw styles of blogging at the recent SCOForum conference. PJ reckons: 'an astroturf campaign depends upon a non-moderated site, which explains McBride's sudden fondness for Slashdot.' '" The whole thing is really fishy, but the story is really worth reading just to see the weird battle occurring between SCO and Groklaw now.

Comments

Re:Damnit

[garcia]

SCO doesn't have to realize anything. The investors that keep pumping money into SCO are the ones that need to realize it and pull the fuck out.

SCO vs. Groklaw

[moexu]

I think Groklaw is the biggest thorn in SCO's side. The media has been pretty content to just print whatever random press release SCO throws at them without doing much (if any) verification at all. Groklaw has been consistenly documenting SCO's actions, court filings, and contradictory statements to the press, which makes it much harder for SCO to try their case in the media rather than a courtroom.

Groklaw is also something that SCO could never have forseen because it's never been done before. Hundreds of volunteers donating their time to get court procedings and transcribe them, research and debunk questionable claims to the press, and write thoughtful articles explaining the technology being used so those who don't have the background can understand what's going on. It's the power of the open source model applied to law. It's anti-FUD, and it's been the worst possible thing for SCO's media campaigns. Go PJ!

SCO angry because no one listening to its spin

[Anonymous Coward]

As in politics, corporations do not like it when they fail to control the "message" and public discourse on the message. The fact that sites like Groklaw exist and flourish is one of the few things that gives me hope these days. Sure, Groklaw has a point-of-view. But it is also chock full of raw legal documentation of a lawsuit that is near and dear to us all. I don't need to read SCO's "spin" on their latest court filing. I can read it in all of its raw legalese and see directly that it's full of sh*t...

They already tried a blitz. Didn't work.

[Animats]

SCO has been issuing press releases at a considerable clip lately, trying to make their legal losses scroll off. It's not working. SCOX is down to $4 again.

They have $61 million in cash, no debt, and a market cap of $62 million. Think about that. If they just shut down and paid out their cash, stockholders would be right where they are now. The stock price is so low that it indicates the market assumes management will blow the cash doing something stupid. Given management's behavior over the last year, that's a reasonable assumption.

How do you Astroturf *SCO*?

[smclean]

I don't understand how SCO hopes they can do any "astroturfing" of their cause. How can they create an impression of a grass-roots campaign from where they stand? What "little guy" gives a damn about SCO and their stupid IP lawsuits?

Does anyone have any ideas on how SCO can hope to create the impression of grass-roots support for them? I don't see any feasible ways that someone could come along and post something which would make me, or any informed person see SCO as anything but a company exploiting IP and the legal process to extort companies out of money.

It's amazing to me that it's even legal for them to offer Linux licenses before establishing in a court that Linux in fact contains their IP. It's like selling the Brooklyn Bridge.. and having it be legal, because the buyer didn't bother to find out if you owned it.

I wonder if...

[talks_to_birds]

...Pamela is really just getting closer to her own inner troll?

She starts off with this self-referential, circular narative about "blows != violence", but then brings up "sending Enderle over the top" and then she mentions guns and how she really wants to keep Enderle calm, and then she comes full circle and no that's not what she means and suddenly she's *really* talking about "blowhards" and "step-by-step".

Why bother with the entire prologue, except that it makes good "press" when written by someone who's now a "journalist".

And she ends up with a long monologue about how poor Groklaw (center of the known universe) is about to be astroturfed (the latest "attack!" "attack!") by that dreadful SCO.

All this angst really comes from the ongoing facts that:

1. Pamela remains *very* uncomfortable with her awkward relationship to OSRM, but doesn't want to talk about it (shall we deflect discussion *away* from OSRM and Pamela? There's an idea).
2. Pamela absolutely will not compromise on "it's my damn blog and I'll censor^W delete posts^W^W run it like I want" despite how it plays to any larger audience outside of Groklaw itself
3. there are still a whole bunch of people who are still worked up about these issues; see the Yahoo! Finance SCOX board, where the discussion about all of this continues unabated after a full week since the OSRM study popped up
4. fewer and fewer people are even bothering to try to discuss *any* of this at Groklaw itself, so Pamela's "Groklaw's being attacked" "Groklaw's being attacked" meme is succeeding

So, Pamela's got issues, and a lot of people have issues with Pamela, but to hear her tell it it's all Enderle's and McBride's and SCO's fault.

Pamela's backed herself into a corner. Period.

As for SCO itself, fuck 'em.

SCO clearly isn't going to get anything past anyone here, and anyone (Pamela included..) who thinks that /. is going to be fooled by any such BS from SCO is smoking something I don't want any part of...

Finally, no, I'm not an SCO astroturfer:

http://www.finchhaven.com/TSCOG/index.html

I've done my work in the trenches; have you?

t_t_b

Re:I wonder if...

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd have to say I agree to an extent in the critique, but I'd phrase it differently:

Number one: PJ is taking this stuff way too seriously, and way too personally.

You have to remember that at the end of the day, this is just a small matter. A last-ditch attempt by a bunch of unimaginative exects in order to get their company bought-out.

Personal attacks and cheap-shots at SCO are strongly distasteful to me, however badly they are behaving. SCO is wrong and they are spreading lies.

It's a simple rule of debate: When people do that, you don't get upset. You show patience and calmly and factually point out why they are wrong and why. Getting all angry and zealous only serves to discredit yourself. People don't listen to two people arguing.

Credibility comes with being calm and factual, not with mud-slinging. The basic attitude is "If you have the facts on your side, there is no point in getting angry".

I used to read Groklaw more than I do now. It seems to have become infested with zealots and fanboys.. And it's lead to what was the most valuable part: Semi-qualified legal analysis of the facts of the case to be drowned out in what seems to be an increasingly personal crusade of sorts..

Oh, and yes, I've contributed too.

Re:I wonder if...

[Ohreally_factor]

She herself posted to the thread from which my post was deleted that public criticism was not welcome and that Groklaw was hers and she could do as she saw fit. She likened herself to Linus and Groklaw to Linux, saying that Linus has had to reject many contributions to protect Linux, and so she must delete certain posts to protect Groklaw. And that we were welcome to start up our own sites if we wanted. Fair enough, though the comparison to Linus was a bit much.

It was a while ago, so I might not be remembering everything, but that's the gist of it, as I remember it.

Interestingly, I read the last piece she wrote on Enderle tonight, and managed to catch sight of the first thread in the comments section. It was entitled "Trolls here please". So I posted before I went out for the evening, voicing my criticism of the deletion of posts, thinking that it would be safe to post in that thread. At least two others felt the same way. When I returned from my evening out, my post and the the two other posts I had noted had been deleted.

So, it was an interesting experiment, but nothing much has changed in the Groklaw comments section. It'll be a while before I read any comments again or post my own.

And oddly enough, it made me appreciate the slashdot moderation system. I get very irritated with retarded mods here, but really, the system works fairly well. It's not perfect, and perhaps there might be ways to improve it, but over the long run, it works.

Re:Non-Moderated, not Slashdot

[MrHanky]

Unfortunately, any post starting with `I know I will be modded down for this, but ...' will be modded +5, insightful in no time.

Re:Non-Moderated, not Slashdot

[jimicus]

Is that so? Let's put it to the test.

I know I will be modded down for this, but:

1. Windows XP is quite a good operating system, and '95 release A wasn't that bad.

2. Apple are going to collapse within 18 months. Fact! You heard it here first!

3. 2004 won't be the year of the Linux desktop. There will never be a year of the Linux desktop because (insert spurious reason here). This is in spite of the fact that I work for a company which, at one time, had probably the largest desktop Linux rollout in Europe.

It's not the editors getting played

[rd_syringe]

The editors don't give a shit if they're getting played. They know every SCO article generates thousands of page hits and hundreds of posts of discussion from loyal Slashdotters, which means more advertising revenue for OSDN.

That's right. Slashdot is a corporate-owned site. That very fact when placed alongside the various philosophies Slashdot typically espouses is very amusing and contradictory. It is the users here who are getting played, every time they excitedly click "Read more" on an SCO article so they can post their knee-jerk response and see another ad in the process, they add another hit to the site logs for Rob Malda to report back to OSDN, so they can use them when shopping for more advertisers. This site is a business now making money off a lot of gullible people. Why should they care if they're getting played by SCO's media schemes?

Note--if you disagree, fine, but reply and tell me. Don't mod me down for it.

Well...

[Anonymous Coward]

Considering that M$ has recently started doing this on Slashdot, I don't see why SCO wouldn't be taken lessons from them. Notice, how anybody who criticises M$, now gets a barage of Anonymous Cowards trying to drown him out?

Re:Uhg

[Master of Transhuman]

"Groklaw turned into this orgy of groupthink with respect to issues of Linux technical and usability merit."

Really? Every time I go there, it's entirely about the law and how stupid SCO is. I don't think I've ever read anything about "Linux usability" there. Maybe I didn't look hard enough, since I don't read *every* post.

"Let's not turn Slashdot into that."

Not likely. Too many Windows trolls post here. Especially the ones that act like they really like Linux, "it's just that Linux [fill in the blanks about usability, installs, and other ruminant evacuation.]" Sorry, these morons fool no one.

Everyone already understands what's going on

[msobkow]

Everyone already understands what's going on. SCO, the RIAA, the MPAA, and a number of other old businesses are led by executive management who just don't get the new service-based models, can't adapt, and just can't accept that if they don't adapt, their business is dead.

So instead they try to plead, whine, and use barratry to protect their pathetic, outdated business models.

What they forget is the problem is the socio-economic market shifts are to blame, not their competitors. If it weren't their "enemies" such as Linux, it would be BSD or some other "product."

Ah well, at this point maybe Darl could at least interest some execs in the media industry. After all, Darl's and SCO's viewpoints on "reality" are about as honest and truthful as "Survivor" or "Big Brother".