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Burst.com and Microsoft Settle
prostoalex writes "Microsoft and Burst.com announced a tentative settlement, where Microsoft will pay Californian company $60 mln for allegedly stolen multimedia streaming software. Robert X. Cringely provided the recap of the court case back in 2003 (and Slashdot discussion ensued). According to Burst claims, Microsoft entered a non-disclosure agreement with the company to learn about Burst's multimedia streaming technology. Later the technology, for which Burst has 37 patents, has been found in Windows Media Player. When aksed to present the archives of the e-mails and all communications within the company for the trial, Microsoft somehow presented all the documents that preceded before the deal and the documents that followed it. The e-mails during the 35 weeks that negotiations were held mysteriously disappeared. In court Microsoft claimed the e-mails were erased from employee's desktops, e-mail servers and server backups. The technology was not interesting to Microsoft, lawyers insisted, so the electronic trail of communications was erased."
In court Microsoft claimed the e-mails were erased from employee's desktops, e-mail servers and server backups.
I don't know how Microsoft's IT structure works but I know at where I work we have snapshots of all of our data done every week and held for a month. Then at the month limit we archive our data for another year. Not to mention the nightly incremental backups. Essentially we can go back to any time of a week for a month, then in month increments and recover that snapshot.
I guess what I'm getting at is how exactly does a company lose "uninteresting" data spanning a period of 35 weeks unless it's intentional?
It would be near impossible for someone to cover ones tracks without going through only God knows how many tapes and erasing said data.
I'm a virgo and on Slashdot. Coincidence? Yes.
Strange, I found this one in my box a few years ago...
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Microsoft should see its day in court for this. This case was so clearly predatory and demonstrates the continued belligerence of Microsoft and its corporate strategy. I'm not sure if Burst.com decided that it was too expensive to take this to court, or if Microsoft simply made them an offer they couldn't refuse. Just shows how fluid the law is when there's enough money in the equation. With settlements being the de facto standard response to criminal corporate behavoir, it's no wonder anti-social companies like MS are more and more common - meaining known to the public to be criminals. What really blows me away is the public acceptance, or at least apathy, of companies like MS because it's more practical to look the other way.
I Want To Believe
How they attack Microsoft, as their patents can apply to many other multimedia streaming. Who knows what else can be targeted? WinAmp? Hopefully not.
Companies that exist for the sole purpose of patenting ideas and sitting on them disgust me.
Real programmers can write assembly code in any language. -- Larry Wall
The missing emails were actually attributed to a rarely-used update to Outlook's Clippy-assistant:
"It looks like you're being sued. Would you like me to delete all correspondence related to the lawsuit?"
I'm a big tall mofo.
The reason they couldn't find the e-mails is that they didn't "aks" the right question.
It's only an insult if it's not true.
Double standards, anyone?
Seriously, this is getting tedious.
This case had all the indications that MS workers would finally be found guilty of perjury and sent to jail.
And if they were found guilty of perjury, I would really like to see the crooks doing hard time. In fact, I wish some DA picks up the leads (even after the settlement) and investigate what would possibly be the most blatant case of lying to a Court Judge we have notice of.
Then comes money and it's all forgotten. Now they can go on and do the same thing to the next victim they can find.
Someone define Justice for me, please.
Given that Burst holds mostly trivial and evil software patents (send bursts of data when network conditions are good... GENIUS, I'd NEVER have thought of that! (that's sarcasm, BTW...)), this is pretty much one thief and another, much larger, thief, not a "good guy vs. bad guy" thing.
As long as you have enough money you are above the law?
I don't think I want to buy software from a company that randomly loses data... oh wait I dont
The Answer
to losing emails. This isn't the first time. Surely there is a law for doing this. It seems like their get out of jail card. Whoops, we lost the emails so there goes *your* case. In any case, didn't Burst keep a copy either?
Jonathanjk.com
Once again Microsoft learns that laws are now impediment. Everyone complains about their illegal business practices, but why shouldn't they do what's illegal? It's not like they hide it. They simply say, yes we broke the law and we accept the penalty because the penalty doesn't even come close to the amount of money we've made from the illegal practice. Time and again they learn that our legal system is totaly incapable of punishment or correction for mega corporation like them. I say bravo for providing such a vivid demonstration of how broken our legal system is. If it's brokeness is not plainly revealed, it'll never get fixed.
Remember, way back in the Win3.x days, that whole thing about DoubleSpace and Stacker? These things have happened before, and they will probably happen again.
They should have held out for more than a billion. The fact the MS deleted the e-mail says they were horribly guilty. In addition, this is one area that MS is trying desperately to win. It is easily worth several billions to MS.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Is that like in the old story, The Debil and Daniel Wevster?
Good, inexpensive web hosting
After watching the great documentary The Corporation, all of this makes sense, since the government basically has given corporations all the rights of humans, but none of the responsibility or accountability. So Microsoft can blatantly spit in the face of court subpoenas and suffer virtually no consequences. Sad, but welcome to the 21st corporate-centric century.
I aks(axe) you, does this atrocity occur in any other English speaking countries, or is it strictly a product of the U.S. educational systems.
I'd say "aksed" is a product of our edumacation system.
Worked for Michael Jackson at least once before. If victims refuse to testify or recant, it's pretty hard for even the best prosecutor to get a confiction. And with enough money (or intimidation, or both) victims can be made to do those things.
I too have felt the cold finger of injustice.
MS history and monopoly status should make this more then civil.
Cash settlements don't usually end criminal investigations.
Consider Michael Jackson -- cash can stop criminal investigations from even starting.
Closed settlements are bad for criminal investigations, and we only allow them to discourage long trials. This is almost ideal for large companies: a game few can afford, or sealed settlement.
Thanks for putting on the feedbag. Thanks for going all out. Thanks for showing me your Swiss Army knife.
Gods damn it, you ADD children with your IM and SMS vocabularies need to stop making up your own abbreviations when talking with regular people. Appropriate abbreviations for "million" are "mil" or "M". Saying "mln" is just ignorant.
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
Microsoft got off cheap. Very, very cheap.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Here, have a glass of milk. Would you like some cookies too?
C|N>K
It could be just coincidence, but Burst.com is also a company held by Baystar Capital. These are the people responsible for $50 million in funding for the SCO legal case against IBM over Linux. But then you would have to believe that when Microsoft helped Baystar and SCO meet was a coincidence. And don't forget when Microsoft bought $12 million in SCO licenses when they didn't need them.
And who can forget when Sun bought SCO licenses too and then less than a year later, Microsoft and Sun were best friends and settled their lawsuits with each other.
Maybe some of this stuff is a coincidence and then again maybe none of it is. I find it hard to believe that all of it is a coincidence though.
I don't want to take M$ defense here, what they did is bad. But for all of those who say "How could they have deleted emails ?", well there are two school of thoughts around these days:
- keep all emails, so anything can be tracked back
- file anything that you are legally obliged to keep, and delete everything else, making sure that it doesn't even get backed up.
The second strategy has started to be used after the ENRON fiasco. Most companies still use the first one, but you do start to see more and more (still a small number though) using the former.