__/ [ Rex Ballard ] on Friday 16 February 2007 17:13 \__
> Roy Schestowitz wrote:
>> __/ [ Robert Newson ] on Wednesday 14 February 2007 21:48 \__
>> > Rex Ballard wrote:
>> > ...
>> >> Even if Susan was an IBM employee,
>> >
>> > In the early days of Groklaw, /Pamela/ stated that she was a paralegal.
>> > Then the site states that she is a journalist with a paralegal
>> > background. Now it is quiet on the matter (unless I've not spotted it
>> > recently).
>
> The most important thing to keep in mind is that she never claimed to
> be anything other than an individual, posting as an individual,
> exercising her first amendment rights. She never claimed to represent
> IBM, she never claimed to be a spokesperson for IBM. She had some
> opinions on the case, which she never claimed to be anything more than
> the opinions of a casual observer.
>
> SCO is now trying to claim, after losing all other summary judgments
> in this matter, that somehow IBM has directly financed Groklaw as an
> IBM corporate project? I'm not even sure that there is a precedent
> for any of this. At best, SCO might be able to initiate a separate
> lawsuit against Groklaw for "damage to brand". In all likelihood the
> Jury would find for the defendent who would countersue that her 1st
> amendment rights to freedom of the press and free speech had been
> impaired.
>
> The only difference between a newsgroup and a Blog is that in a
> newsgroup those who disagree with you can do so in exactly the same
> forum. With a Blog, your critics establish their own blogs and
> counter your arguments there.
>
> In fact, it SCO would ONLY have a case if somehow IBM conspired with
> all of the backbones to have O'Gara's site blocked from access - in
> which case O'Gara would have the right to sue IBM, not SCO. From the
> first day of the trial to today, SCO has opined and pontificated on
> their site about this case, trying to make their case to the public
> (and influence the Jury pool?). IBM never attempted to stop them from
> doing so. Now, in an 11th hour attempt to save a case which has
> clearly hit the skids, SCO wants to claim that IBM has somehow allowed
> an IBM employee to express her opinion on matters of public record in
> an open forum using a public web site?
Bob Sotur does this for IBM and he's among the prominent nowadays. But there
is /total/ disclosure. Bob even promotes pro-ODF stories in Digg and
sometimes submits a few. This is fine. Even Sun takes pride in its many
corporate blogs. Irving (W.B.?) from IBM, who will soon retire, is probably
the most senior IBM person who blogs on a weekly basis. They don't do any of
this under a fake identity. They don't get paid by the company to do this
(and certainly not behind the scenes... think Microsoft and Wikipedia).
> SCO must really be desparate. IBM has been asking a bunch of nasty
> questions about SCO's funding, because it is becoming more and more
> appearant that SCO was getting financing arranged by Microsoft
> executives to allow SCO, which didn't have deep pockets, to go after
> IBM, who did have deep pockets. If IBM were merely awarded legal
> costs, it would wipe out every asset SCO has. Even worse, IBM doesn't
> WANT the SCO company.
I wonder if IBM's attitude towards UNIX has changed, rather than its attitude
toward (or fear of) GNU/Linux. SCO has clarly misrepresented the UNIX camp,
which some (including myself) could perceive as predatory.
> IBM didn't ask for a summary judgement dismissing ALL of the
> complaints, because IBM could prove that the ones they didn't have
> dismissed were fraudulent claims. If SCO doesn't want to disclose
> their funding sources, the remaining charges could be turned into
> criminal charges, and the Judge could actually impose criminal
> penalties against the past and present officers of SCO. If IBM gets
> evidence that the lawsuit was an attempt to manipulate the stock
> price, this, combined with the profits made from their stock sales,
> could result in criminal charges against all of the parties involved.
> And if these are ill-gotten gains, and IBM is intitled to damages,
> McBride and his friends won't be going to "Club Fed", they will be
> going to some place like Fort Leavenworth.
>
>> Robert, in one of the comments in Groklaw (yesterday), an item from SJVN
>> was pointed out. He met her. She's definitely real. That said, have a look
>> at this article:
>>
>> http://news.yahoo.com/s/cmp/20070215/tc_cmp/197006171
>
>
>> This is madness. She's clearly a real person. I correspond with her on a
>> daily basis and there's stuff beyond Groklaw. The media is just trying to
>> extend reality into some imaginative and faraway vocation that'll create
>> drama. FWIW, it's not a one-person project because there's a whole
>> community working behind the scene. As such, the article misses the point
>> /entirely/. OCRing documents, for instance, is not the work of a single
>> person.
>
> Keep in mind that none of the documents being published or disclosed
> are illegal.
> They are all a matter of public court record, and as such, are public
> domain.
> They are not sealed documents. They are not documents that can
> legally be
> protected under any trade secrets agreements. To try to prevent
> disclosure
> of these documents would be to attempt to revoke the first amendment.
>
>> The Register has an article that actually exposes some nasty stuff from
>> O'Gara's work. What I didn't know is that sys-con got DDOS'ed quite
>> heavily after it published the article and it even gradually deleted all
>> of O'Gara's articles.
>
> O'Gara was just exercising her right to free speech. She had her
> blog, and in that blog she expressed her opinions. It was her right
> to do so. SCO excercised their right to agree with O'Gara and
> disagree with Pamela Jones. Now, SCO wants to repeal the first
> amendment rights to free speech and freedom of the press - because
> they don't like the disclosures.
Well, they use a poor (albeit a convenient) hypothesis. PJ is /not/
affiliated with IBM. I am sure that she grew to become fond of IBM over the
past few years, but she isn't employed. She does some paralegal stuff for a
living.
> If they didn't want their dirty laundry shown in public, they should
> not have started flinging mud at the fan in the first place.
The tougher they become, the more aggressive their opposers will become.
Microsoft has been making the same mistake recently.
> I think that some of the top people at SCO are realizing that they are
> right between the cross-hairs of both IBM and Novell. With no way to
> pay the settlement, and no way to collect the royalties already
> collected fraudulently, it might not be too much longer before McBride
> and his friends are on a plane to Bermuda.
>
>
>> http://iuron.com - help build a non-profit search engine
>
--
~~ Greetings
Roy S. Schestowitz | Useless fact: A dragonfly only lives for one day
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