New Microsoft Dirty Tricks Revealed

Conrad Mazian writes "Robert X. Cringely has an article on the Technology Evangelist web site where he claims that Microsoft destroyed evidence in the Burst vs Microsoft case. Specifically Burst's lawyers had asked for certain emails, Microsoft claimed that they couldn't find the backup tapes the emails would be on, and while this was happening the tapes were in a vault at Microsoft — until they mysteriously disappeared. It's a fascinating story, and even names one person at Microsoft."

Comments

And your point?

[nurb432]

These days when you are as large as microsoft is, it doesnt really matter if you break the law.

If you do, and actually get caught, you get some token fine and you chalk it up as a cost of doing business and move on.

New?

[NoTheory]

As far as i am aware these aren't new allegations, i remember hearing about this back as far as 2 years ago at least. Some casual googling turns up documents from that time period.

link to "Microsoft dirty tricks, part two"

[Anonymous Coward]

Microsoft dirty tricks, part two

Here's the second part

[SEMW]

Cringely posted the story in two parts, but the summary only links to the first. Second part here.

Re:the irony

[truthsearch]

Do you have a longer-lasting cost effective backup solution for truely massive amounts of information? Just the migration from a system that's been in place for decades would cost millions.

Re:Jesus Christ!

[multisync]

- Nth hand unverified, information (My best friend's sister's boyfriend's brother's girlfriend heard from this guy who knows this kid who's going with a girl who saw Ferris pass out at 31 Flavors last night. I guess it's pretty serious. )

According to Cringley:

The former Microsoft contract employee who contacted me on this issue did not do so anonymously, by the way. I know his name and how to reach him. We have talked on the phone more than once. He did not hesitate to name names.

You are welcome to question whether Cringley is being truthful or not, but why should I belive your assertation that the source was a friend's sister's boyfirend's ... whatever?

- this is about stuff along time ago. ... the headline here said somehting about Microsoft's "NEW" dirty tricks? WTF?

I think what is new is our knowledge that Microsoft is being accused of destroying evidence. The allegations are new. Cringley said in the article you apparently didn't bother to read:

Now that the (Iowa) case is settled I'd like to write a little bit about something that happened in an earlier case - Burst v. Microsoft - but was never revealed. I kept expecting it to be revealed in this case, but apparently it was not.

Mind you, there is no date on this blog entry (I couldn't even find a Cringley byline, only a link to an audio version that gives his name), but the comments are dated Feb 15. So the allegations are current.

There is a lot suspect in what's being claimed in the article as well.

There is also a lot that sounds pretty damning, like:

lawyers for Burst.com found in the discovery phase of their case what appeared to be a pattern of message destruction, with Microsoft unable to reproduce ANY e-mail concerning Burst.com over periods of time surrounding specific meetings between the two companies. Burst had ITS copies of the messages where it had been part of the conversation as the two companies worked together under NDA, but Microsoft presented none of these. It seemed logical to Burst that Microsoft, as a company that fairly lives by e-mail, would have atg least a few messages concerning the meetings, either before or after. Eventually Burst lawyers uncovered a mechanism -- a sort of procedural algorithm if you will -- under which Microsoft had consistently and in MANY cases managed to keep all the messages it didn't need to keep and to destroy all the ones it DID need to keep. The survival of ANY incriminating messages, in fact, came only from the breakdown of discipline in implementing this procedural algorithm. Burst revealed this information and the judge in that case, Judge Motz, ordered Microsoft to take heroic measures to search backup tapes for messages that were supposedly lost.

Sorry for the long quote, but I think this lends credibility to what is being asserted by the source Cringley has so far not named.

That's why Burst won the courtcase

[gnasher719]

If I remember correctly, Burst started a court case against Microsoft for patent infringement a few years ago (one of those that we all love on Slashdot), and Microsoft paid them about $60 million in settlements. The court case looked very bad for Microsoft, not because there was any evidence of any wrongdoing, but because Microsoft had "lost" emails exactly for a critical time period, but not others just before or just after that time period. These are exactly the emails that this article is about.

To the courts, it doesn't make much difference whether you say "sorry, we lost these emails by accident" and say the truth, or you say "we destroyed these emails, take that!" and say the truth or not, or whether you say "sorry, we lost these emails" and are in fact hiding them. In each case, the emails are not there, and the courts will assume that whatever they might have contained was not good for you. So whether Microsoft really lost these emails or was just hiding them, it doesn't matter.

Similar, if you are taken to court because someone claims you downloaded music illegally, and you just happen to format your harddisk by accident, you are in deep shit. And it doesn't matter whether there was evidence on that harddisk or not.