SCO Vs. Groklaw

Conrad Mazian points us to an article in Forbes reporting that the SCO Group is trying to subpoena Pamela Jones of Groklaw. Except they can't find her. A few days ago PJ posted a note on Groklaw saying that she is taking some time away from the blog for health reasons; she didn't mention any SCO deposition. SCO's lawyers apparently believe that "Pamela Jones" does not exist and that Groklaw is penned by a team of IBM lawyers.

Comments

Does it matter?

[ZachPruckowski]

As far as I know, everything hosted on Groklaw has been a matter of public record, and the blog has been clear in its anti-SCO bias from the get-go. There's no gag order in place, is there? And there's no rule that says you need to be honest on the Internet. I mean, since the info is true, does it legally have any bearing if PJ is one of IBM's lawyers, a real person, or the Easter Bunny?

Also, if Groklaw was run by IBM lawyers, why would it get involved in the Sony rootkit fiasco? I mean, IBM wouldn't want to come out against Sony if they could avoid it (supplying the PS3 with parts as they are) and also, why have your lawyers handle stuff like that?

Re:Does it matter?

[mikesmind]

by all accounts PJ is who she claims to be

If you look back at the writing she did when Groklaw started, then compare it to what it is today, I believe it shows the normal progression of someone getting better at what they do. Also, her personality comes through in her writing. A team of lawyers or some ghost writer would have to be pretty darn good to pull this one off. No, my opinion is that PJ is who she says she is. She's the real deal.

I'd be stoked

[WasterDave]

I'll be absolutely stoked if IBM made the whole thing up. Best ... astrotuf ... ever!!

But somehow I don't think so. Somehow I think she's just kinda knackered.

Dave

did yall check the whois for groklaw?

[Anonymous Coward]

tooo funny!
Registrant:
      Domains by Proxy, Inc.
      DomainsByProxy.com
      15111 N. Hayden Rd., Ste 160, PMB 353
      Scottsdale, Arizona 85260
      United States

      Registered through: GoDaddy.com, Inc. (http://www.godaddy.com)
      Domain Name: GROKLAW.COM
            Created on: 26-Sep-02
            Expires on: 26-Sep-09
            Last Updated on: 06-Dec-05

go check out http://domainsbyproxy.com/

awesome.. ;)

-dirtbag

Re:did yall check the whois for groklaw?

[Anonymous Coward]

So... even though the registration information is private, we do know a little bit. It seems that the DNS, website, and email are hosted by UNC.

$ dig +short -t NS groklaw.net
ns2.unc.edu.
ns.unc.edu.
$ dig +short -t MX groklaw.net
0 mail.ibiblio.org.
$ dig +short groklaw.net
152.46.7.81
$ dig +short vhost.ibiblio.org
152.46.7.81

<ConspiracyTheory>
The directory of ibiblio.org is Paul Jones. Perhaps that's the real PJ :)
</ConspiracyTheory>

Re:This is silly

[christurkel]

No, you dont have to meet an author face to face when publishing a book. Lawrence Watt-Evans, an author friend of mine, met his editor for the first time last year after five years of dealing with him. This is not uncommon. Publishers know about telephones, email, etc.

Re:Timeline

[numbski]

Have you every seen someone mess with a cat? Poke at it, prod at it harass it? Perhaps you're just playing, and the cat starts to get wound up...

Now someone else comes along, perhaps its owner, reaches down to pet it...cat bites owner.

Why? Misdirected aggression. Taking things out on whatever is near it just because it is so intensely focused on something troubling it, that it can only focus on that trouble.

Funny. The solution to misdirected aggression in a cat is to put the cat in a dark room, no lights, no noise. Nothing to further agitate it.

Seems we need to toss Darl in a dark room, no lights, no noise...

Statistical analysis

[Goonie]

There's a large amount of work that's been done on statistical author identification. I wonder whether somebody who knows how it works could analyse the Groklaw archives to determine whether the same person wrote all the posts (though you might need to process the text first to remove quotations).

I'm not a regular reader of Groklaw - it's become abundantly clear that SCO is unlikely to win and the case is just going through extended death throes - but on the occasions I've done so PJ's writing style seemed pretty consistent.

Re:Statistical analysis

[bersl2]

This article about her experience at LinuxWorld 2005 in Boston comes to my mind whenever doubts are cast about her existence.

Re:So what?

[thedarknite]

Apparently, they want to be able to show in court that there is a direct relationship between herself and IBM. Although I don't see how that will help them at all.

Also this little snippet doesn't make much sense either if SCO are claiming that PJ is an IBM shill.

The SCO vs. IBM lawsuit won't go to trial until a related case, SCO vs. Novell (nasdaq: NOVL - news - people ), has been decided. That case, which is scheduled to be tried later this year, is the one for which SCO is attempting to take a deposition from Jones.

Given SCO's history of harassing her...

[Anonymous Coward]

It wouldn't surprise me in the least if they stepped it up before actually trying to serve her, knowing she couldn't be found if they did that.

If you have any doubts as to SCO's character, this sums it up:

http://linux.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=148847&c id=12476453

"PJ", very interesting..

[Polarism]

While I have always personally thought Pamela to exist in the flesh, the timing here is rather interesting. Whoever he or she is, they have made great efforts to create as small of a footprint as possible on the internet. I usually pride myself in being able to find information on things that are quite hard to find information about, and i'll tell you what, it wouldn't surprise me if there is no "Pamela Jones".

Hopefully I'm wrong and she exists.

Re:"PJ", very interesting..

[Anonymous Coward]

You know, coincidently just two or three days ago I wanted to put a face to the name "Pamela Jones" and tried to look her up also. For someone with such a high-profile website, it sure is odd that Google Images turns up absolutely nothing.

You'd think that at least one geek would have had his or her picture taken with "PJ from Groklaw", or at least one person who interviewed her would have taken a picture to accompany the article. But no matter what you search for, you cannot find a photograph of this woman.

In fact, not a single person who has responded to this thread has actually met her in person, seen her at a conference, or even bumped into her in passing. A few people have stated that they have had email communications with someone claiming to be PJ, but it could be anyone on the other end of that conversation for all they know.

One person mentioned her Wikipedia entry, but this also contains no real details. She wrote a few articles that were published on some websites (places that do not really go to great lengths to confirm someone's identity), and she was listed among 50 or so other _contributors_ to a little-known O'Reilly book (again, this means nothing, as contributors of this nature are often not paid).

Even on a regular Google search, you don't turn up even a single blog post where someone says something along the lines of "I had lunch with PJ from Groklaw today...". Of all the people who have ever interviewed her in connection with the SCO case, not a single interview was conducted in person.

And now this -- a few days after SCO comes looking for her, she disappears due to some mysterious health problem.

I have to agree that this looks really suspicious, and it would not suprise me in the least either if it turns out "Pamela Jones" doesn't really exist.

It won't help one bit, of course.

[Xenographic]

I don't think it will help SCO at all. I think it's just a dirty trick they're using to punish PJ for speaking out against what they've been doing. But we all knew that, huh?

I hope that when she feels better again, she finds some good way to respond to this deposition without giving SCO any opening to make all of her personal details public (like Maureen O'Gara once attempted to) and without opening herself up to any other form of harassment.

And I don't blame her one bit for being sick. Just thinking about the crap they're pulling now is enough to make me sick. She has every right to feel like a psycho ex is stalking her :(

How about an alternative conspiracy theory?

[michaelmalak]

However, I will say that the timing and content of her blog post is totally consistent with someone trying not to be found

Instead of giving credence to SCO's conspiracy theory, how about the one that presents itself at face value -- that she really is ill, and SCO wants to kick her while she's down?

I can confirm PJ's existence.

[marklyon]

I have had direct communication with Pamela regarding PACER - specifically watermarking of documents obtained on PACER.

Her anger with me over my desire to label my documents with my website's URL is not the type of thing that a group of corporate attorneys at IBM would care about.

Re:Work Product Privilege

[Anonymous Coward]

Just because an attorney speaks to someone else about a case does not automatically give the right for the opposition to subpoena that person for that information.

I personally do not care who or what PJ is. Getting an opposing view and bringing to light some of SCO's idiotic movements and actions was interesting regardless or who performed the analysis. SCO started this campaign with the media and FUD and I truely believe it was a major part of their overall game plan (remeber the SCO claims of millions lines of code and having enough evidence to fill up a truck load). Groklaw and other forums exploited and poked holes in SCO's attempts to sway the publics opinion.

Ethics Rules and Devil's Advocate

[logicnazi]

I don't know whether it should have any legal effect but if true it would certainly cause credibility problems for IBM with many people, perhaps including the judge. Moreover, we don't know all of what has been stated in depositions. If IBM or other companies have made claims incompatible with the facts behind groklaw that could be problematic.

Additionally there are ethical guidelines with real force that prohibit attorneys from using lies in the course of their representation. Remember in one state it even went so far as to create problems for prosecutors who wanted to give advice to undercover officers. Since she appears to have made claims that would be lies if she was an IBM lawyer this might be problematic for her and any lawyers who participated in the scheme.

In order to play devil's advocate for a moment wouldn't blogging about the sony rootkit and other issues provide important cover for really being an IBM lawyer? If IBM was going engage in such deceitful tactics they would be betting much on the truth not being discovered so criticizing sony wouldn't be problematic. Besides, do you really think the reason people do or don't buy the PS3 has much to do with Sony's rootkit fiasco?

--

However, having said this these very considerations make it extremely unlikely this blog is written by IBM lawyers as such. For starters it would be idiotic to put someone who was actually involved in trying the case in such a position where gag orders, conflicts of interest and rules about not suborning perjury might become incompatible with keeping the secret. Secondly, the very fact that it might run afoul of these ethics guidelines makes it very unlikely that the IBM attorneys would be doing it.

A more interesting question is whether PJ receives any financial remuneration from IBM. It is a far more plausible story that PJ is in fact a lawyer/para-legal who genuinely has many of these views but was paid by IBM so they could devote more time to them. In this case they would not be acting as legal consul so most of the ethics rules I've mentioned would not apply and this would be a much better explanation of the choices of subjects than a blog run by a corporate committee.

In this case, absent some PR effects of depositions to the contrary by IBM I'm unsure if there would be any legal repercussions. But who can say until we know what SCO is trying to subpoena her for.

To be Clear

[logicnazi]

Yes, wikipedia lists her as author of several books and gives us her name as Pamela Jones but is curiously devoid of any actual identifying information or biographical information. Compare to the page on Tim O'Reilly where we learn where and when he was born and how he did in college despite a much shorter entry than the one on Pamela Jones.

Everything is public record!

[Anonymous Coward]

Why do they need Pamela?

Everything posted was public record. Unless and until they prove any slander, libel or any falsehood, they have no need at all of Pamela personally!

Prove it! Then subpoena her!

Re:A slight to EFF?

[LuYu]

...thanks to the efforts of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a San Francisco group that defends bloggers.

That was also my first reaction when I read that. It is obviously an attempt to marginalize the EFF by making it look like a stupid hippie organization from SF that defends kooks on the Internet. I always thought the defense of Free Speech was everybody's responsibility, and the Constitution is not exactly new technology.

This should come as no surprise as the reporter is Daniel Lyons (ugh... human resources... what a creep). PJ appears to have gotten after him in this Groklaw article (which points to this Forbes.com article). And has mentioned him in several other articles(no, I am not going to read and comment on all of them for this post -- do it yourself). He refers to PJ's criticism in today's posted article:

Jones also has criticized some journalists who cover the lawsuits, including this reporter, accusing them of being biased in favor of SCO.

As an interesting side note, the reference Groklaw and Forbes articles mention this odd little tidbit:

Another beneficiary could be John Wall, chief executive of Vista.com , a Redmond, Wash., company that last August struck a licensing arrangement with SCO.

Does anybody else find it interesting that there is a Redmond, Washington based company named, of all things Vista.com that invested in SCO at the beginning of the lawsuit? We all know that MS used Baystar as an investment front for the SCO litigation, but this makes it appear that MS had as many as three fronts set up to invest money in SCO right before the lawsuit (MS's purchase of a SCO license was the third).

Considering Windows Vista is MS's new "killer" product which incorporates hardware DRM to defend MS from Linux, could "Vista" mean a broad plan to attack FOSS in general?

I thought the devil had many names. Why is he using the same one more than once this time?

Re:So what?

[susano_otter]

Ah, but remember the moral of that story?

The real villains turned out to be senior officers, one instigator especially, who chose to follow their own lead instead of faithfully supporting the chain of command and doing what they could to make the situation better instead of worse.

Indeed, watching that movie reversed my interpretation of A Few Good Men.

Alias is OK

[cranesan]

It is perfectly legal to assume an alias, as long as you do not intend to use it to commit fraud. Even if she is made up, if there is no fraud involved, no bad.

Re:Forbes again.

[_Sprocket_]

Hey, this is Forbes. They're a known SCO schill, always eager to publish puff pieces by their reporter whats-his-name (Dan's Lying? something like that) that are basically slightly revised SCO press-releases.

This isn't the first time Daniel Lyons has floated the "who is Pamela Jones" line. That particular article also shed tears over O'Gara being called down for her stalking. It is worth noting that both Lyons and O'Gara (for whatever reasons) tend to tow SCO's line in their articles. And both have been soundly criticized by PJ and Groklaw. Anyone new to this should note there's a bit of a nasty history going on here. As the parent pointed out, there's little wonder where this article comes from.

They've lost it...

[Frequently_Asked_Ans]

but when did SCO ever had IT? Well let me just put it this way...

Paranoia is an excessive anxiety or fear concerning one's own well-being which is considered irrational and excessive, perhaps to the point of being a psychosis. This typically includes persecutory beliefs concerning a likely threat, or a belief in a conspiracy theory.

Re:This is silly

[forgotten_my_nick]

The whole thing seems silly. I recall a story a long time ago (2 years ago.. has it been that long?) that basically was an expose on PJ. Which turned out to be a stalker based reporting not showing anything except how creepy a reporter paid for by SCO could be.

It even got to a point where PJ declared that she was not suicidal in anyway (after a mysterious suicide in relation to the SCO case) in the event she was found dead under mysterious circumstances.

This will get you started researching it..
http://www.groklaw.net/articlebasic.php?story=2005 0509145744287

To the layman reading Groklaw/Slashdot it clearly looks like an elaborate pump'n'dump share scheme by SCO (or rather the group that bought them). Having people actively pointing out this is what is hurting it.

The sooner SCO go to jail for what they are doing the better.

Theological digression

[abb3w]

I thought the devil had many names. Why is he using the same one more than once this time?

No imagination. The many names have all been given to him by mankind. Creativity is a manifestation of Creation, and therefore remains the province of God. The Devil lost any ability to create when he fell. All he can do now is mimic, steal and corrupt.

Now, are we discussing Lucifer, or Bill Gates?

SCO is using the court to commit a misdemeanor

[0x0000]

SCO's lawyers apparently believe that "Pamela Jones" does not exist and that Groklaw is penned by a team of IBM lawyers

Well, if they really believe that, why do they keep calling her [unlisted] phone number late at night, panting into the phone, engaging in crude sexual innuendo, and talking about they've got in their "briefs"? They're hot for IBM's legal team? Turned on by men in suits carrying breifcases? What?

For her to show up at court while the SCO pricks are there would de facto violate the restraining order she had to file against them back before christmas - she can't be required to comply with a subpeona which would cause her to nullify the order of another court, can she? The judge in the SCO case could just throw the bums out - the she could legal appear, but it would be moot. "Health reasons" indeed...

She could pay a lawyer to appear on her behalf, but then who is going to cover that cost out of her pocket? This is purely a vindictive move on the part of SCO in attempt to punish Groklaw for daring to have an opinion that runs counter to the M$-mandated opinions they are paid to perpetrate. Hasn't anyone looked at prosecuting SCO? Their actions have clearly crossed the line into criminal behavior.

This is just SCO's way of trying to get around the restraining order - it's harassment under color of Law. "Pricks" is a polite word for those sick, miserable fucks...

And again - since it bears repition: The legal content on Groklaw stands on its own - who wrote it is completely beside the point, and any attempt to introduce the author into the procedings is simply and attempt by SCO to disrupt the court by engaging in personal attacks which must - under the Law - have no bearing on the case. Any competent judge would see this immdediately. Your move, judge.