If You Can’t Beat ‘Em … Sue ‘Em?
By David Golding
| 
Print This Post
I just read the latest news about Microsoft and it just adds to my angst for the company (they’ve been on my blacklist of companies for 10 years). Reuters this morning reported:
“Microsoft signed a deal with Novell, one of the providers of Linux, in which Novell paid it a lump sum in return for a guarantee that Microsoft would not sue Novell’s clients for what it calls a violation of its own patents in the Linux program.”
So now, Microsoft will let you pay them for free software. These companies don’t pay for anything other than the guarantee that Microsoft won’t turn around and sue their clients for using Linux.
Wow.
Looks like Redmond is the big bully now, if you hadn’t already thought so. They’re just roaming around threatening litigation on people. They likely wouldn’t win these “patent infringement” cases anyway; back in the 80s, they duked the same battle out with Apple over the same thing, but at that time, they were on the other side claiming you couldn’t patent the idea of a place to dump your files (“recycle bin” vs. “trash can”). And as you know, Microsoft won the case: they could copy core elements of Apple’s patented operating system. Now they want to threaten others that producing GUI elements is a violation of their own patents.
Why are they going about it this way? Because they know that when the chips fall, they wouldn’t win. So they sell the “you don’t have to go to court at all” scenario cause that’s all they can get.
Ethically, what a travesty. Using the court system, making threats, and converting it into cash is more like the mafia than reputable businesses. Or have we gotten so low that when we can’t beat a competitor, we just sue them for whatever we can drum up?
If you take your cues from Microsoft, remember this new principle they’ve added to the strategy books: if you can’t beat ‘em, sue ‘em.
Regulating the Internet
By David Golding
| Print This Post
I’m fed up with the unregulated nature of the internet. I love the freedom of websites to post all sorts of useful information, but come on… We have to draw lines somewhere. The obvious problem, and it’s a vicious, terrible one, is pornography. Pedophiles run free on the internet and countless families are being torn apart by pornography addictions. Folks say that there’s freedom of speech rights and all, but aren’t there also freedom rights as to what you want to view and what you don’t want to view?
I was made aware of a project about a year and a half ago calling for creating a clean port 80. I think this is the most valuable solution at the moment.
But the greater problem is this: so much of the internet is run by so many political communities that I foresee the impossibility of satisfying everyone. This last week, I’ve watched all sorts of message boards react to posts in such differing ways that it makes me believe that the internet community can never come to an agreement on anything. All in all, the sites with the most traffic have the most power and the most pull, and if they believe in something, then that is what will stay. Since there’s hardly anything to regulate their decisions, then it follows that the internet isn’t really a truly democratic community, but a monarchy of high-traffic sites.
