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SCO Legally Assaults PJ of Groklaw
Litigious Bastards writes "SCO has just filed court papers saying that they were unable to subpoena PJ of Groklaw. While they apparently sent their crack team of process servers out looking for random people named Pamela Jones, it would appear that they were unable to locate the bright yellow envelope labeled 'Email PJ' on the Groklaw website to ask for directions to serve her in person. They're once again accusing her of working for IBM or Novell, and Groklaw is now hosting over 20 documents PJ claims were planted in the media in an effort to discredit her. As she says, 'And so the stupidest lawsuit in the history of the world just got stupider. And a whole lot meaner.'"
I'd have thought SCO would be bust by now, given the amount of money they must be spending on lawyers, and on how fast their customers must be running from them. Does anyone how they are still able to make money?
I'll probably be modded down for this...
They may have killed themselves, we really don't know. But, in a country where people are killed over parking spaces, I would be careful about seperating delusional paranoria from legitimate concern for one's safty.
At least I've paid her a couple of times and I suspect others have done the same. There are some very convenient donation links on Groklaw and for every donation I have sent so far I have received a friendly "thankyou" email. But even if she *did* work for IBM, that wouldn't change the facts of the case and I would still enjoy reading the legal analysis, which is pretty sound once you take out the sometimes over the top OSS "fangirlism" that I occasionally find a bit annyoing.
Now PJ can file a civil claim and try to get what little is left of SCO. Better yet use discovery to find the individuals who have done this and file against them personally. Slander is possible. They have made a concerted effort to discredit her in the press and since their claims are all false it will be easy to prove. Don't sue a worthless shell, get the jerks and lighten their wallets, that will end this farce the quickest.
Professional Politicians are not the solution, they ARE the problem.
Clearly Groklaw is the biggest of the many sites that go over the minutae of the various SCO lawsuits, so they are probably quite correct in their assertion that it's materially impacting their business - and proves that you do indeed reap what you sow. So, SCO drags PJ into the lawsuit, probably knowing full well that it's almost certainly not going to get them anywhere legally, but that it will buy them yet more delays, something they really seem to like. IANAL, but from what I understand of US law free speech does not extend to those involved in a legal case being able to comment on that case, and that surely has to be the real goal here. By getting PJ involved in the case and getting really, *really* lucky, they might be able to effectively gag Groklaw, or at least limit what they can and cannot post.
Personally, I think getting someone with a detailed knowledge of the case, a legal background, additional protections through being a journalist and despises you and your company onto the witness stand is not a smart move, but then I think SCO & BSF have already proven beyond reasonable doubt that they are not smart. Desperate maybe, but not smart.
UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
Micro$oft has both purchased a very large license for undisclosed Unix IP (can't they get anything that they need from BSD?) and has been implicated at least a little bit in under-the-table assurances to places like Baystar that their "investment" in SCO will be covered when it is lost.
It has probably been worth a great deal to spread IP FUD about Linux until Vista gets up and going. Do you think that they have gotten their money's worth in funding TSCOG's long slow suicide?
... then SCO should be tagged "funny." If you take a look at their stock (SCOX) since 2000, you will notice that they have gone from $94 to a mere $0.89.
I may have been the last serious Linux/GCC/Python user that has not visited Groklaw, but what the hey; it is 0625, I am still at work, and needed to "escape" to something unique on-line.
The lady noted "Forsooth, methinks SCO folk need to get better aligned with truth, justice, and the American way, as the saying goes. But that's the judges' job, so I'll end my comments about this here."
Was this hyperbole, or does she really have significant faith in the American justice system ? And this is not a rhetorical question. Others that read her often may want to answer.
As for me, I have not been certain about the meaning of the "American way" for several years. As a former U.S. marine and Libertarian, I had a tendency to believe that the U.S. Constitution represented the most realistic opportunity for "justice".
It now seems that the implementation does not meet the requirements of the abstraction.
1. Are you legally obliged to make it easy for someone to subpoena you? eg. by replying to an email asking for that information.
IANAL (I do have most of a Paralegal degree, sans only Ethics.)
I am not aware of any statute that requires you to actively seek out a subpoena. However, if you do successfully avoid a subpoena, you'll just wind up with a court summons, or a warrant. Generally, if someone's subpoenaing you it's in your best interest to read that subpoena ASAP, get yourself a lawyer, and talk to the judge. Don't avoid judges; they don't like that, and you don't want to be in the court of a judge who has reason to dislike you.
They have had 2 odd deaths, both ruled suicide, associated with them. One had turned against SCO and the other was convincing her father that SCO was a mess (who then disassociated himself from SCO and the parent). And you think that she is sounding shrill?
Me, If I was SCO's number one enemy, I would not want to be known to them.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
So Microsoft is funding the Baystar investment in SCO that's behind all of this. Microsoft drops chump change and casts a 5-year cloud over IP FUD over Linux at the same time that Microsoft is ramping up their licensing fees, releasing a new DRM-crippled version of Windows called 'vista', and generally consolidating their worldwide windows franchise. In a normal marketplace, doing all of those customer-unfriendly things at once would cost you your customers. But with the SCO cloud hanging over Linux, it's value as a serious alternative to Windows for corporate and government customers has been severely compromised. Imagine for a moment that there had never been a SCO lawsuit. Maybe then HP, Dell, and Lenovo would be successfully hawking Linux desktops and laptops to rapidly growing corporate, government, and personal markets and Linux would be on magazine covers everywhere instead of...vista. So...you can call the SCO lawsuit a lot of things but you what you can NOT call it is a stupid move on Microsoft's part.
SCO has been making accusations against PJ for a long time. They have previously tried to find her and on one occasion they 'outed' her, identifying her as a sixty year old Mormon with a son in New York city. If they can find her and serve her then she will have to pay big lawyer bills with no hope of recovering them because SCO is going bankrupt anyway.
Small correction: PJ is not a Mormon (unless she's met with some missionaries and gotten baptized in the past 3 years). When she was supposedly "outed" (I don't recall her ever confirming any of O'Gara's claims), it was claimed that she is a Jehovah's Witness.
Many of the other people involved in the case (including Judge Kimball, Darl McBride, Brent Hatch, and so forth) are Mormons, but most Mormons (including me) who know about the case are quite frankly embarrassed by Darl's behavior. It certainly isn't in keeping with the teachings of the LDS Church.