Well, I've read most of the replies here, and I would like to give a weird example, which is related, and you tell me what you think.
I used to study in the Technion in Israel, which states that any type of research or development that a student does, is owned by the Technion itself.
Now, imagine that you go about and create this really cool distributed computing tool, or an ultra-fast SQL server that would put Oracle out of business. You go about and create a website for your project, in it you distribute documents and code from your project, cause it's a scientific project. Basically, the project is owned by the Technion, but anyone can access it. Now, imagine that a SCO employe goes about and gets into the site, reading about the cool things, and decides: "WOW, that would really fit nicely in our code". Then, takes the code, puts it in, and uses it. Now, we have a funny situation, the code made by the SCO employe is based on a FREE piece of code, which by law, is owned by the Technion.
Is the Technion now allowed to ask royalties from SCO? Is the Technion allowed to ask royalties from ALL THE LINUX USERS IN THE WORLD??? Something to think about, no?
A Call to arms: I call to all the computer science geeks and students out there, download the code, and compare any pieces of the code that SCO refers to any academic code in your university. Find a simple piece of code that would be similar to what SCO wrote, and boom, the law suit is gone, cause they stole the code from someone else. Bring enough evidence and cases, and the US court will make mince-meat out of them.
Well, I guess someone had to think of going on and sueing DoubleClick, but I say: lets go on. Lets sue companies like eBay that have their banners all over the net for: "Disruption of purchased service from a 3rd party", or better yet, why not we go about and sue Casino On-Net (888.com) for having their cookies and banners all over the place for the same reason.
If the users of computers see a message and can't tell that it's a fake one, then I say: "Let them go to that site".
I must admit that most people aren't computer aware to such an extent, but comm'on, lets be reasonable. Advertisement companies will do anything to catch the eye of a potential customer, and the includes putting wrongfull teasers, mis-leading leads and some times, down right double-meaning ads. If a campgain includes a mis-leading teaser, which then shows you the real thing, it just proves that it did it's job RIGHT !!!
Now, I do admit that DoubleClick had surpassed in the mis-leading campgain issue, and that their tactics are questionable. But if you would see such a campgain on a bill board, you will think nothing of it.
This reminds me of a campgain I saw in the UK a while back, for Burger-King. Where they had this hill-billy sitting in a car, and mumbling something that no one understood. And you had to sit tight, watch till the end, and see that it's an ad for Burger-King.
I think that the law suit should be changed from mis-leadin information, to a breach of contract. The reason is that DoubleClick's contract states that a site will not be permitted to create a
mis-leading banner, nor advertise something which is not rightfully theirs. So, DoubleClick is in breach of their own User-Agreement, and that is a breach of ethics. This should be the thing that needs to pointed out, not just say: "You posted misleading banners, and created FUI interface".
L.S
Slashdot Mirror
Well, I've read most of the replies here, and I would like to give a weird example, which is related, and you tell me what you think.
I used to study in the Technion in Israel, which states that any type of research or development that a student does, is owned by the Technion itself.
Now, imagine that you go about and create this really cool distributed computing tool, or an ultra-fast SQL server that would put Oracle out of business. You go about and create a website for your project, in it you distribute documents and code from your project, cause it's a scientific project. Basically, the project is owned by the Technion, but anyone can access it. Now, imagine that a SCO employe goes about and gets into the site, reading about the cool things, and decides: "WOW, that would really fit nicely in our code". Then, takes the code, puts it in, and uses it. Now, we have a funny situation, the code made by the SCO employe is based on a FREE piece of code, which by law, is owned by the Technion. Is the Technion now allowed to ask royalties from SCO? Is the Technion allowed to ask royalties from ALL THE LINUX USERS IN THE WORLD??? Something to think about, no?
A Call to arms: I call to all the computer science geeks and students out there, download the code, and compare any pieces of the code that SCO refers to any academic code in your university. Find a simple piece of code that would be similar to what SCO wrote, and boom, the law suit is gone, cause they stole the code from someone else. Bring enough evidence and cases, and the US court will make mince-meat out of them.
Well, I guess someone had to think of going on and sueing DoubleClick, but I say: lets go on. Lets sue companies like eBay that have their banners all over the net for: "Disruption of purchased service from a 3rd party", or better yet, why not we go about and sue Casino On-Net (888.com) for having their cookies and banners all over the place for the same reason. If the users of computers see a message and can't tell that it's a fake one, then I say: "Let them go to that site".
I must admit that most people aren't computer aware to such an extent, but comm'on, lets be reasonable. Advertisement companies will do anything to catch the eye of a potential customer, and the includes putting wrongfull teasers, mis-leading leads and some times, down right double-meaning ads. If a campgain includes a mis-leading teaser, which then shows you the real thing, it just proves that it did it's job RIGHT !!!
Now, I do admit that DoubleClick had surpassed in the mis-leading campgain issue, and that their tactics are questionable. But if you would see such a campgain on a bill board, you will think nothing of it.
This reminds me of a campgain I saw in the UK a while back, for Burger-King. Where they had this hill-billy sitting in a car, and mumbling something that no one understood. And you had to sit tight, watch till the end, and see that it's an ad for Burger-King.
I think that the law suit should be changed from mis-leadin information, to a breach of contract. The reason is that DoubleClick's contract states that a site will not be permitted to create a mis-leading banner, nor advertise something which is not rightfully theirs. So, DoubleClick is in breach of their own User-Agreement, and that is a breach of ethics. This should be the thing that needs to pointed out, not just say: "You posted misleading banners, and created FUI interface".
L.S