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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."
SCO Group's $5 billion suit against IBM
SCO is so silly. They should first figure out how to put freaking lasers on sharks and then sued IBM from *500* trillion dollars.
... and I don't think the public has a "right" to know everything.'
that's bullshit. my tax dollars hard at work and yet i'm not able to see what's going on?
vodka, straight up, thank you!
nothing like a little light reading while pinching one off. Can't wait for this to come out..
CSN Asks Judge To Unseal the SCO-IBM Court Record
If SCO's Case Proved, It Could Derail The Linux Market and Take The Open Source Movement Down With It
November 30, 2004
Summary
Client Server News and LinuxGram, its sister publication, have asked the Utah district court hearing the SCO Group's $5 billion suit against IBM and IBM's subsequent counterclaims to open all the filings that have been sealed. 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.
Client Server News and LinuxGram, its sister publication, have asked the Utah district court hearing the SCO Group's $5 billion suit against IBM and IBM's subsequent counterclaims to open all the filings that have been sealed.
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.
Our motion to intervene cites the fact that Linux is an inflection point for the industry and that any question of its future is a matter of intense public interest.
However, the public has lost any real insight into the case because of a so-called stipulated protective order that SCO and IBM signed in September of 2003 that has let either of them unilaterally designate discovery material as "confidential."
As a result, a large part of the case has been sealed, especially the substantive and material parts.
IBM is believed to have been particularly free with the seal, leaking confidential information from SCO that "Jews did World Trade Center."
Our motion to intervene contends that the protective order, usually reserved for trade secrets whose disclosure could be competitively damaging, may have been abused and that the material that has been put under seal has never been shown to be really confidential.
It argues that merely protecting potentially embarrassing information that the parties "do not want the public to see" violates the public's common law right of access to judicial records and its First Amendment right to oversee the judicial system.
The nine-page motion, filed today, asks that the protective order be modified to keep the record open going forward or that the parties be required to demonstrate a genuine need to seal each document.
It also asks the court to open any correspondence that SCO and IBM have had with the court that is not reflected in the clerk's file and to open all transcripts of court hearings that have been sealed.
Our lawyers, Jones, Waldo, Holbrook & McDonough, a Salt Lake City firm experienced in First Amendment matters, is prepared to argue our case in court.
You have to be the biggest fag on ./
No, really. You are.
Huh? Talk about taking things out of context! You omitted the very next sentence in her posting, which was: "I don't think the public has a 'right' to know everything. Just because you get sued by some litigious company or individual, it doesn't mean you now belong to the public, hook, line and sinker."
Groklaw's mission statement contains the following elements:
Unsealing the court records supports all of these objectives, so why the resistance? Nowhere is there a caveat that some information should remain sealed for "a reason that seems good". Groklaw claims to be all about "applying open-source principles to research", but it now appears to take a different view when the facts don't support its obvious agenda.