Judge Petitioned To Unseal SCO-IBM Court Records

An anonymous reader writes "Groklaw is reporting that Maureen O'Gara has applied to the judge to open all and any filings or transcipts that till now have been sealed by the Utah district court hearing the SCO Group's $5 billion suit against IBM. Groklaw's Pamela Jones notes that 'O'Gara believes the public can't understand the case, because of the sealing' and some of the Groklaw.net members seem to agree that, that since in the U.S. any citizen has a right to review court records in order to monitor the performance of a judge, that O'Gara's 'motion to intervene' will most likely succeed." An anonymous reader writes that Jones last night said of the request "that she is 'of two minds' about the filing: 'I'm crazy wild to read everything. But on the other hand, the court and the parties wouldn't seal things without a reason that seems good to them. I believe in privacy, personally, and I don't think the public has a "right" to know everything.' The legal filing to unseal everything has not yet become available via Pacer."

Comments

I'm of the mind....

[Spytap]

I'm of the mind that if it affects me in any way, I should have the right to reviewmy government's decisions.

As pointed out by PJ on Groklaw

[Savet Hegar]

Just because someone sues you....that doesn't mean that all of your private information and trade secrets should become public information.

Re:As pointed out by PJ on Groklaw

[TykeClone]

If it did, then it might cut down on the number of lawsuits.

Re:As pointed out by PJ on Groklaw

[daft_one]

If suing a competitor opens up all their trade secrets, I'd personally suspect that would make for more lawsuits rather than less. But what do I know.

Re:As pointed out by PJ on Groklaw

[TykeClone]

If suing a competitor opens up all of your trade secrets, it would reduce the number of lawsuites.

That's what I was (inelegantly) attempting to say.

Not to be a jerk ...

[Ralconte]

But this is more corporations are people to BS. There's no need for privacy here. SCO and IBM are companies, no one wants to watch them shower, or see their mental records, 'cause they don't have bodies or minds.

We still know nothing about what SCO allegeds was stolen. If we knew, the Open Scource community could remove and rewrite offending parts in a few months. (I guess, IANA programmer) Why are people proud that FUD is the only thing they can produce?

Re:Not to be a jerk ...

[frank_adrian314159]

Removing corporate personhood would hurt consumers in many ways as well.

You don't need personhood to do this - just corporate entityhood. What's the difference? Personhood entitles one to various "human rights" such as freedom of speech, rights to participate in the political arena, etc., that are not actually required for a corporation to operate as an economic entity. In short, why do you need to be a person for me to sue you?

This blurring of lines between personhood and "corporate economic function" has hurt people in that it gives certain "economic supermen" (e.g., vast resources, live forever, etc.) undue influence in the polity and hurts the economic world by making it easier for corporations to use political and judicial influence to distort the economic plane. It was a bad decision that will lead to capitalism's downfall (and perhaps that of enlightenment era governance, as well).

Re:Not to be a jerk ...

[Anonymous Coward]

Removing corporate personhood would hurt consumers in many ways as well. For instance, if GM makes a faulty product that injures you, if a they're not a person, who do you sue? You'd have to go after every individual, who is not going to have the funds available to pay for your damages anyway. Or, you could sue each individual shareholder.

As someone who has had to sue "shell" corporations on behalf of defrauded clients, I assure you that being able to proceed directly against the directors, officers and shareholders of corporations is precisely what needs to happen. We actually have doctrines that permit it in certain circumstances, but the truth is that the corporate form is so abused that elimination of it altogether would be to the general benefit of the public. Nobody has ever PROVED that we need corporations, or limited liability companies of any kind. The reality is that such entities reduce personal responsibility. If the shareholders, directors and officers of GM couldn't hide behind the corporate form when they make a faulty product, you'd better believe they'd be much more careful. Companies that weren't careful would simply disappear when the marketplaced defunded them.

Re:Not to be a jerk ...

[dbIII]

Removing corporate personhood would hurt consumers in many ways as well ... faulty product ... who do you sue?

You go after the company or it's directors in every country other than the USA which is the only place where this wierd corporation anthromophification exists.

It's also worth pointing out that the corporations have the right ot privacy now but the individuals don't. Don't beleive me? The corporations get to see your credit rating, but they can stop you finding out things about them.

Public Can't Understand?

[ggeezz]

I believe a portion of the public (many of whom are here) understand that SCO's case is ridiculous. Really it's just the extent of the ridiculousness that's being sealed off right now.

The part of the public that doesn't understand the case is not going to read these documents anyway. This would however allow experts to analyze the case more effectively, which will in turn benefit the general public's understanding of the case. All in all though, you've got to be in favor of these documents being opened up.

Re:"knowing everything"

[kaustik]

Your tax dollars are also hard at work doing things like fighting terrorism and hunting down child rapists. Perhaps we should publicly publish all of this info as soon as it is available as well?
Have you ever thought that perhaps they have a reason for this? And that maybe even that reason is favoring your hero in this battle? Probably not, but just bringing up the idea.

Re:"knowing everything"

[Mr Guy]

This may shock you, but it's not all about you. While I'm unable to comment about the particulars of THIS case, there's lots of information that comes up in court that's none of anyone's damn business but the parties involved.

Re:"knowing everything"

[Jaywalk]

my tax dollars hard at work and yet i'm not able to see what's going on?

Your tax dollars are hard at work in a civil suit? Okay, so we're paying the judge to listen to this side show, but I don't think you're thinking this through.

If I wanted to make your confidential material public, all I'd need to do is launch a spurious lawsuit and then have a journalist ask for it. Then it's all public knowledge. Courts seal stuff for a reason, and part of the stuff at issue in this case is IBM's proprietary software.

Do your "tax dollars" entitle you to peruse IBM's source code? And do IBM's tax dollars entitle them to peruse yours?

Re:"knowing everything"

[delcielo]

The point is that your tax dollars don't entitle you to IBM's trade secrets, or SCO's for that matter.

Just because they have to reveal these things to the judge in order to resolve their dispute doesn't mean that you automatically are entitled to the product of their work.

Re:"knowing everything"

[Anonymous Coward]

Just because some yahoo sues you, does not mean that everything that can be asked for, from you, should be public.

There should be due process in letting out secrets of parties that have not been criminally convicted. Allowing this would add another form of intimidation for the likes of SCO.

Not mentioned in /.

[museumpeace]

But various new sources have mentioned that Ms. Jones resigned from OSRM because SCO had systematically smeared her participation in that organization. No hard feelings between her and SCO could have crept into any of her announcements about that fine purveyor of THE Unix OS.

Re:Not mentioned in /.

[killjoe]

Of course there are hard feelings. Don't we all have hard feelings over what SCO is doing. They haven't smeared me and I hate them too.

Honestly how many people here don't have hard feelings for what SCO has done.

Re:Not mentioned in /.

[budgenator]

There is no love lost between PJ and SCO or PJ and O'Gara, She has admitted it openly. Kind of like the Finacial analyst stateing he owns a stock he's rating. What we have to decide is will PJ be un-objective because she biased, or more objective. The indications I've seen is PJ is being excutiatingly objective; and O'Gara seems to have a problem with critical thinking.

Re:Not mentioned in /.

[raidient]

"Since she left OSRM she's had many job offers and I recall she recently took one."

I am suprised that she has the time for a job, given all the post & account deletions she has been doing lately.

Re:Not mentioned in /.

[NutscrapeSucks]

An example of this can be seen in the above quote and the claim that "OSRM has claimed that the Linux kernel infringes 283 unidentified patents" despite the fact that OSRM has been very public in stressing that this is a POTENTIAL number

Noted Anti-Linux FUD site slashdot.org had a very similar headline: Linux Violates 283 Patents, says Insurance Company

But, I'll ask you, why would a company issue a press release about (potential) patent infringement, especially when they stand to make money from it, if not to stir Fear, Uncertaintity, and Doubt?

Companies don't issue press releases to articulate nuances, they do it to hype and sell. When Steve Ballmer started running around repeating the 283 Patents number, that was a huge marketing victory for OSRM.

Ultimately it's very odd that PJ or her allies feel that the OSRM thing is a "systematic SCO smear" or a conspiracy among tech journalists. Many well-meaning people on Groklaw and Slashdot warned that OSRM would end up serving as a FUD machine.

Re:"knowing everything"

[techsoldaten]

Some records should be sealed. For instance, if evidence is brought up in a trial that represents a trade secret (the formula for some bizarre compound, for instance) no one needs to be looking at it outside the trial.

The records sealed in the SCO case, of course, probably have nothing to do with anything important and will simply be used to try and smear IBM. I kind of want to see them, but I also realize there's not going to be anything there.

Bother. I am so sick of this case and all the empty threats.

M

Publicity in court

[31415926535897]

I worked at a law firm 4 years ago (in their IT department) and the whole legal system wrt this filing has confused me a lot. I always thought that trials were supposed to be public, but that certainly doesn't seem the case anymore. As of 2000, you had to have some sort of ID or know someone with an ID to get into a courthouse (and if you were coming as a guest of someone with an ID, you had to go through a security check, where as they could just walk in). It seems like most cases you hear about are closed to the public, and occationally the judge will allow some sort of video feed out to the press. It doesn't really bother me all that much because I don't have a huge interest in going and watching a bunch of trials, but I don't ever want to be put in a position where I'm tried for something and nobody is allowed to know anything about the case (as has happened to certain 'enemy combantants' in the last couple of years).

Whatever. It seems like judges are allowed to do whatever they want in their courtroooms, and no other branch of government gets to keep it in check (after all, an appeal judge will support his buddy judge in an appeal of a judicial decision).

In this case, I feel like the information should be made public, mostly because I think it would be great for the public to see that SCO's case is baseless and help clear the name of Linux before decision-makers decide to choose something other than Linux. I also don't see the point of making this case so private, there doesn't seem to be any sort of really good reason to make a case private (strong mafia/mob witness protection type issues, etc.). So, let's hope this filing succeeds.

At what point though

[Johnathon_Dough]

I believe in privacy, personally, and I don't think the public has a "right" to know everything.'

I would agree with this on the surface...at least for things like National Security Issues, Trade Secrets and other things that do not belong in the public domain. But two things come to mind.

One: This is now a public issue, it has been brought into the courts. There is nothing going on here that should not be in the light of day if someone wants to wade through all the court docs.

Two: At what point does the line get drawn between public disclosure? Some things are obvious. How to make a hydrogen bomb, nope, shouldn't come out even if it is part of court documents. But where does the line end?

Is SCO using the thinking (right or wrong) that this is their proprietary information, therefore the public has no right to it? Wouldn't it be no less proprietary if we could all see it? If they win (blech) then it doesn't matter, we still can't "use" it. If they lose, then well, we can and it doesn't matter either.

Or, are they just using court procedure to hide from the public(media) that their case is weak/strong?

Revealing information about a civil suit?

[Anonymous Coward]

Many comments here seem to ignore the fact that this is a civil, not criminal, suit. SCO is suing IBM; the only part the government plays is in providing the judge and courtroom. Why should information be released, just because it is involved in a court case? If you could force someone's private information to be leaked to the public merely by suing them for something, the right to privacy would be severely threatened. Is this what we really want?

Re:"knowing everything"

[captnitro]

Your tax dollars became their tax dollars when you paid them. We don't live in a democracy, we live in a republic.

Those dollars pay for a practical version of justice -- through the courts -- not for the right to see whatever you want. Your tax dollars pay for medicare hospital visits across the country, but nobody thinks you're allowed to storm into the hospital and demand medical records for everyone that paid anything but cash.

I'm not dumb enough to think that funding the battling of two hulking companies are the same as somebody's medical records, but in this case, they probably reached an agreement in order to protect trade secrets, privileged communications, and so on.

Re:"knowing everything"

[DogDude]

that's bullshit. my tax dollars hard at work and yet i'm not able to see what's going on?

Go tell that to a rape victim.

Right to privacy belongs to citizens

[Swamii]

From the article, Pamela Jones of Groklaw states,

personally, and I don't think the public has a "right" to know everything.

In other words, you believe that people don't have the right to pursue information about this judicial government proceeding. That seems like censorship to me -- here I thought Groklaw were the good guys.

Re:Right to privacy belongs to citizens

[ajrs]

would you be so good as to post your last seven tax returns, your drivers liscense, and the titles to any cars and property you own? I know that my tax dollars were used to process those documents, and I have a right to know.

The public's right to know

[fuzzy12345]

The public has a right to know what's done in the courts, full stop.

Recently, courts have taken to imposing publication bans (Read: You've got a right to know, but to exercise it, you'll have to line up for a seat in person, not send your representative, the press), or to sealing documents at the request of either counsel.

I'm of the opinion that, in all but the rarest of cases, the public's right to know what sort of justice is being done in their name trumps parties' desire for secrecy.

I'd like to see the details of all settlements made public, none of this crap about parties using our courts to compel counterparties to agree to secret settlements.

Re:The public's right to know

[Peyna]

If it's a settlement, it was done out of court, and the private dealings between citizens should never been made public if they don't want them to be.

Re:The public's right to know

[Anonymous Coward]

Man, folks aren't joking when they say slashdotters dont RTFA.

1. the sealed documents are NOT settlements or a judge's decision. they are info(trade secrets, code, info concerning upcoming business deals/products, whatever) used to support an argument. which is mostly irrelevant, because from the info we DO have we know that SCO is full of it and that the judge knows this too.

2. the information Maureen O'Gara wants made public is IBM's information. O'Gara, a known idiot, believes IBM's sealed documents contain all sorts of admissions of code theft and lying and stealing candy from babies and killing kittens. her agenda has nothing to do with a public's right to know and has everything to do with her bogus conspiracy theories and desire to hassle IBM.

3. it's a civil suit. IBM is being sued by a corportation, not the government. should all your secrets be aired in public every time some litigious bastards point a lawyer at you?

Re:The public's right to know

[MrHanky]

OK, so let's say there's a kiddie porn case. By your reasoning, the court should have to publish the evidence. This is, of course, illegal, so the court would have to prosecute themselves, and publish the evidence again, ad infinitum. It's not only absurd, but it's an infinite loop.

So, basically: No, you're wrong.

Re:"knowing everything"

[beacher]

Wasn't IBM required to divulge a substantial part of their source code? That alone is reason enough to leave a lot of the discovery material sealed.

BTW.. Remember this is Maureen O'Gara.. She hasn't exactly proven herself to be a friend of Open Source . I'm not exactly sure what she wants out of this.

Groklaw

[Skiron]

PJ 'blogs' the facts, albeit sometimes with a fierce preserve for open source, but nevertheless, the FACTS.

The other news sites 'report' what they decide is 'news', and that 'news' can be swayed by whatever/whoever is paying them to say it.

I have been a posting member of Groklaw for ages now, and I damn well trust an ex-paralegal to investigate and 'blog' the truth, rather than any news reporter ANYTIME.

PJ has done the world of 'IANAL' geeks proud - and I would even say without a doubt without PJ and her blog, the SCO FUD would have worked and we would all be in the shit.

Re:Groklaw

[nathanh]

PJ 'blogs' the facts, albeit sometimes with a fierce preserve for open source, but nevertheless, the FACTS.

Well, no, she blogs her opinion. Sometimes she intermixes facts with her opinion. Sometimes she doesn't. Really, it's just a blog. It's not the fount of all wisdom.

Honestly, if you want a site that gives the facts you'd be better off with scofacts.org, especially something like the SCO Score Card. There is also Frank Sorenson's pages. He has all the court documents, not just the ones that PJ can spin into a story. Frank has been responsible for obtaining the majority of court documents hosted on Groklaw.

The other news sites 'report' what they decide is 'news', and that 'news' can be swayed by whatever/whoever is paying them to say it.

Groklaw is no different. You are just biased because Groklaw says what you want to hear.

I heard an eloquent analogy recently. Science starts with the facts and draws a supported conclusion. Creationism starts with a conclusion and tries to find the supporting facts. I think Groklaw is much more like creationism than science. Now before you jump all over me, that's not to say they're wrong. I think they're right. But they're not approaching the problem in a scientific way. They're using a very religious methodology to "prove" their point.

PJ has done the world of 'IANAL' geeks proud - and I would even say without a doubt without PJ and her blog, the SCO FUD would have worked and we would all be in the shit.

Are you trying to claim that without Groklaw, IBM would have just rolled over and said "SCO is right". I don't think so. None of the companies being sued by SCO would have rolled over. Groklaw provides information to a very niche crowd; the overly interested Linux geeks. It has kept us informed of the goings on. I don't think it has had significant influence outside that tiny niche. I don't think it's existence or lack thereof would alter the conclusion of this SCO debacle either way. SCO doesn't have a case. We all know that. Reality would triumph over SCO with or without somebody's written opinion on a blog.

For instance, sue Microsoft

[dpilot]

Get the Windows source code entered as evidence, then get it unsealed, same as this case.

Sometimes confidentiality is necessary.
Sometimes confidentiality is timely
Perhaps what we're really missing is a review process to determine what needs no sealing, what can be unsealed post-trial, what remains sealed through the appeals process, and what should remain trade secret.

Re:"knowing everything"

[jedidiah]

Its really funny that you people should mention rape victims considering the sort of public humiliation they tend to go through should they successfully press charges.

Re:"knowing everything"

[DogDude]

Its really funny that you people should mention rape victims considering the sort of public humiliation they tend to go through should they successfully press charges.

That's my point. Sometimes privacy is a good thing in regards to court cases.

Wow. Way to totally twist what she said.

[rewt66]

First: Groklaw accused Maureen O'Gara of lying based on eyewitness accounts (note the plural) of a particular hearing in the SCO case. O'Gara claimed that something was said at the hearing that none of the eyewitnesses heard, and O'Gara was not an eyewitness. So, given that, who do you believe?

Second: PJ states that she is torn on this current issue. She would love to be able to read all the documents (including the ~35 that are sealed out of 2-300 that have been filed), but she also sees that merely having someone file a malicious court case shouldn't automatically remove all your right to privacy.

Third: Groklaw isn't just about the facts, and nothing but the facts; it's also about analysis of the facts. But the cool thing about Groklaw is that the facts are there to support the analysis, and if you can make a case that the same facts support a different interpretation, they will listen. They may not agree, but they will listen.

Fourth: Your particular quote has a context, which you didn't provide. The context is that O'Gara stated, "SCO's suit claims IBM improperly incorporated aspects of SCO's Unix operating system in Linux. If proved, it could derail the Linux market and take the open source movement down with it." Well, that statement is in a PR release about filing a motion, not in the motion itself. It also has the problem of not stating how, exactly, even if the Linux kernel goes down in the SCO lawsuits, it will take the whole open source movement with it. OS is much more than the Linux kernel; it's also Apache and gcc and BSD and...

But the point of PJ's comment is that the SCO lawsuits seem almost designed to damage the open source movement, by spreading as much FUD as possible for as long as possible. Note the absense of any concrete claims that can be verified, the presense of lots of widely publicised vague claims that can't really be nailed down, and the constant manipulation of the courts to prevent any concrete judgments from being handed down.

PJ's point, then, is that O'Gara's comment shows what the real game is. (Given her other comments, I don't think PJ is very worried about the judge not getting it, however.)

The public has a right to know.

[hkb]

I believe in privacy, personally, and I don't think the public has a "right" to know everything.'

This case is really about Linux, and Linux is written by "the public". As a (small-time) kernel contributor I want to hear the sealed information relating to arguments in a court case that is attempting to damage the reputation of a project that I am a contributing author of.

Re:Yea, Right.

[Anonymous Coward]

"Companies should never have the same rights as people, they need to be held accountable for their actions. And they wont do that unless business pratices are made open to the public."

Since Visa or Mastercard are companies, does that mean we should have the right to your credit card information that they, as a company, hold? Or do you think there is some information that should be kept private, even though held by a company?

Re:"knowing everything"

[d34thm0nk3y]

There should be due process in letting out secrets of parties that have not been criminally convicted.

This is an example of that due process in action. The judge is being petitioned to unseal the documents and will decide whether or not to do so.

Re:"knowing everything"

[chris_mahan]

It's government by the people for the people. The people collectively own the government and all its assets. Public officials are employees of the public and are thus all public servants, stewarts of our money.

The People, with a capital P, is sovereign in the United States of America.

Preambule to the US Constitution:

We the People of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, ensure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

From Wikipedia

Re:"knowing everything"

[budgenator]

So if I sue your wife claiming she gave me herpes, does that mean that twenty years worth of her medical records should be on the front page of the New York Times? Just because I can't prove we even met doesn't make immune to litiation and discovery. Considering court costs and filing fees, I wouldn't be surprised if the court doesn't make a profit on SCO vs IBM.

Re:"knowing everything"

[avgjoe62]

I don't think Maureen wants to reveal these things (or anything) in this case. She is saying here that there are secrets buried in the sealed evidence that will destroy Linux and the Open Source Movement, but, gosh golly darnit, the judge won't let us see it!

This is just FUD, served up as a news story by a person with a very public agenda. I am sure that Maureen does not expect to see the evidence. She just wants to make a lot of noise about it.

uhh...

[Tharald]

I am sorry, but that is the most ignorant answer I have seen in a long time. And rated "insightful"...

The big question is - who would you entrust with the responsibility to judge what is important, what is not "good" for the public? I consider myself an extremely honest person, yet I would not entrust myself with the discrimanatory power to decide what should and what shouldn't be open to the public.

"power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely"

You will learn (hopefully) the truth of this saying with age.

The whole point here is exactly this: Openness. It is the only thing that works. It does impede some progress in certain cases, but it is the only thing that ensures us against corruption, which WILL come if we dont have checks in place...

-TN

A "right" to corporate "privacy"? Get serious.

[Anonymous Coward]

> I believe in privacy, personally, and I don't think the public has a "right" to know everything.'

Oh, that's just silly.

These are publicly traded companies wrangling over copyright and licensing details. The sealed material doesn't contain "private" stuff that would truly deserve to be kept private (like personal medical records and such). It most likely just contains details about their business operations, contractual matters, and so forth.

If a company has trade secrets, and those secrets end up in court documents, then I guess the company wasn't careful enough now, was it? They should be more careful next time. (I'm reminded of Scientology v. Fishman here.) Companies are abstract legal entities that don't deserve "privacy" like people do. Companies have something much better than privacy -- they have highly-paid lawyers looking out for their interests. If those lawyers screw up and end up releasing "sensitive" information, then I, for one, am not going to shed a single tear.