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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."
Actually, as a person following this case, the thing that is sealed, and that O'Gara is filing to have unsealed (digression: I've not read the motion, so I can't say exactly what she's asking to have unsealed. But given her past writings on the subject I pretty sure I know what she's after), is an internal IBM memo that SCO contends shows evidence of IBM fraud in their dealings with oldSCO's project to port unixware to itanium. IBM claims to have provided the memo on accident, and that it is a privledged document that should not have been given to SCO. SCO basically agrees that it's not admisible evidence, but touts it as evidence that they need more discovery before IBM's summary judgement motions should be heard.
I'm all for open records, but in this case I don't want the seal to be lifted, and here's why.
SCO has been chomping at the bit to release this letter. They have made many references to it in their filings. They even read bits of the letter *aloud* in open court - the judge has since ordered that the transcript be sealed. But there were journalists there, and O'Gara (even though she was not there) has basically reported what was said --- despite the fact that SCO basically violated a court order when they read it.
This whole sorry business seems like a SCO orchestrated attempt to try and make IBM look bad, and I'm wholeheartedly against it. SCO's misconduct should not be rewarded; the seal should not be lifted.
You say
Linuxgram part of G2News and claims to "broken most of the key stories in Linux since it was started several years ago." Her version of "news" includes stuff like this tidbit where she breathlessly reports that some guy -- shown two pieces of code with no background or research (and under a non-disclosure agreement no reputable journalist would sign) -- declares them to be the same. That and numerous similar examples show that her "inside information" is obvious; she's sucking up to SCO by spinning the story their way. In return, they give her "inside information" -- which amounts to trivia like this; who they hired for a lawyer or how much they plan to charge for SCOSource -- so she can claim an exclusive story. This isn't journalism, it's pandering.
Kind of reminds me of the old Daily Show slogan, "When news breaks, we fix it."
Except for O'Gara it's more like, "When no news breaks, we invent some."
===== Murphy's Law is recursive. =====
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.
It's a double-edged sword, but if you learn more about it, you might realize it does more good than harm.
What?
With the possible exception of the O.J. trial, this must be the most embarrassing court case the U.S. has had to suffer through in front of an international audience. It took the German legal system, what, a week to bitch-slap SCO? And they didn't even dare try any of this crap in countries like Britain.
So just what will it take for an American judge to finally throw this whole pile out? Why does SCO get to spread rumors that hurt the business of RedHat, IBM, and Novell for months and months without one single bit of hard evidence? This is not a game, it is about real money that is being lost because of FUD, real damage to product images and real smears to reputations. Just why does the judge get to wait forever to get something, anything done?
If P.J. has convinced anybody of anything, it is that the rest of the democratic countries can thank heaven that they are not stuck with the 18th Century anachronism we Americans pretend is a real, functioning legal system. Care to hazard a guess how much the lawyers have made on this already?