SCO Website Using Groklaw's Content

darkonc writes "It looks like they didn't learn from the BSD debacle (where, having sued Berkley for copyright infringement, AT&T found that they were using BSD code without acknowledging it's source). Groklaw has an article detailing how SCO has documents created by and for Groklaw on their site -- without even acknowledging the source. It seems that the defenders of the holy IP principle have hoisted the skull and bones."

Comments

Hipocrisy

[Anonymous Coward]

Pot, meet kettle.

Head of Canopy, Noorda's Daughter killed herself

[ThoreauHD]

http://www.linuxbusinessweek.com/story/48789.htm?D E=1

Happened last week- old news in internet time. But applicable her because SCO's financial backing literally took a bullet to the head. I think the least of their concerns would be Groklaw's stolen pdf files.

Docs pulled from both groklaw and tuxrocks

[wol]

Groklaw notes that SCO was pulling from both groklaw.net and tuxrocks.com. Even accepting that these are legal documents in SCO's own cases, it is amusing that they can't convert their own documents, but have to pull from OSS sites.

So sue them?

[WarwickRyan]

Or doesn't copyright apply to scanned documents and PDFs? It's arguable, as there's as much creative expression there than there is in Britney's latest coaster....

Wow..

[grasshoppa]

...they either a) Have some balls. Or b) are dumb as rocks.

Given their past behavior, I've gotta go with b. For a while, I was expecting ( but certainly not hoping for ) them to pull the rabbit out of their hat and set us all back on our heels. Their claims just seemed too silly not to be justified by *something*.

Now of course, we've all got a pretty good idea what kind of clowns these really are.

Still, to steal from groklaw...whew...that's just stunning in my opinion. You gotta respect the lengths these guys will go to.

Too busy looking over...

[SubDude]

I think SCO must be too buy looking over their mountain of discovery proceeds to add a simple attribution to their legal docs website.

Too busy, too cheap, too lazy... who knows what their excuse.

Perhaps it is simply that SCO does not want to give credit where credit is due.

Subdude

However...they ARE claiming copyright.

[Anonymous Coward]

On the site where they are using Groklaw's and Tuxrock's documents. SCO has claimed copyright of the work.

So not only have they "borrowed" the work of others instead of doing their own (which apparently may be legal as that they are court documents, or may not be legal since the file itself may be copyrighted although the document cannot be etc... etc... ), they are also claiming copyright on the "borrowed" work.

Regards,
Z

That's the 2nd "suicide" in 4 months.

[khasim]

1 in December.
1 in March.
Both people involved in Canopy.

Nothing strange or unusual about that. No sir.

Get it while you can

[Doc Ruby]

Groklaw better sue SCO for copyright infringement, while there's still any money left.

Plagiarism without Citation

[jonathanbearak]

This is like doing a research paper in college.

Let's say I look up some documents on Lexis-Nexus. I have to cite Lexis-Nexis; otherwise it's plagiarism. It doesn't matter where those documents originally came from. My citation must include a reference to Lexis-Nexus saying how I got this information.

If I don't do this, I've committed plagiarism. I would receive an automatic F and face the possibility of further, much more damaging to myself, ramifications.

I don't know about how this might play out in the minutae of copyright law, but in academics SCO would be in serious trouble.

Re:Petty

[Zocalo]

Yes, they are court documents the *contents* of which are in the public domain, but that's not the point. Many of those documents have been manually transcribed, proof-read and reformatted into HTML or PDF documents by various volunteer members of the FOSS community, on their own time. Many of those documents are also provided for the good of all, free of charge and any form of licensing agreements/restrictions by their transcribers, so SCO probably hasn't actually infringed any laws, civil or otherwise.

However, for a company currently in court claiming that the fruits of its labours have been misappropriated to turn around and do exactly the same thing... Well, it's hardly in the best taste is it, even if they are so strapped for cash and/or resources that they don't have the ability to transcribe it themselves. Plus, I wouldn't be at all surprised if IBM's legal team finds a way to let the court know about this to show just how two faced SCO can be.

SCO shoot themselves in the foot. Again. We'll pass on the film at eleven, and proceed with the scheduled reality show re-run...

Re:Court documents

[igrp]

Well, we went over this last night went the story hit Groklaw. To sum it up, from memory:

• There is handwriting on at least one of the scanned documents. It's questionable whether that means that sufficient additional creative content has been added to the non-protected derivative work.
  Personally, I think it doesn't. Comments might but we're talking about markings here. This is just my personal opinion though. This still doesn't rise beyond mechanical duplication, IMHO.
• It could be argued that putting together individual filings, and organizing them qualifies as a copyrightable compilation. (For those who are interested, here's a good basic introduction to get you started).
• This could also be a license violation as Groklaw's articles are covered by the Creative Commons License which requires attribution with republication.

I think it's questionable whether the PDF files count as a transcript which would be necessary since you would have to have a copyrightable work in the first place.

If memory serves me correctly, there was also a general consensus that

a) SCO sucks b) C&D'ing SCO could prove to be a very interesting publicity stunt c) SCO sucks.

Re:Petty

[anagama]

• Scanning didn't create a derivative work. Scanning added no actual content. Plus, as legal filings they're arguably public domain in the first place in which case they'd still be public domain after scanning.

Tell that to Westlaw or Lexis. Both of these companies supply the full text of court decisions, statutes, administrative decesions, etc. etc. All of these are available free at the respective courthouses, gov't offices, libraries where they are stored. Why then would a basic subscription to the state law databases of one state cost around $125 per month? Because the gathering and reformating of this widely dispersed inconveniently printed material has imense value. Westlaw and Lexis do not own the content, but they do own the manner in which it is presented. In a simialr vein, while groklaw doesn't own the content of the documents it has presented, it certainly owns the files it has created.