Jordy Blog

SCO Stock Dives

SCOX is down almost 72% so far today –a result of failed litigation. (It turns out they never owned the copyright to Unix after all. Who would have thought?)

Anyway, that’ll teach ‘em. SCO might not be around a year from now, but Linux will.

Viva open source!

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SINU – SCO is Not Unix

You gotta love this:

Lindon software company SCO Group was dealt a heavy blow Friday when a judge ruled it doesn’t own the rights to the Unix code it has accused IBM of putting into the open-source Linux computer operating system.

In a 102-page ruling, U.S. District Court Dale Kimball tossed out SCO’s claim that it owns the Unix and UnixWare copyrights. At issue: whether SCO purchased all rights to Unix from Novell in 1995, or whether Novell retained ownership while granting limited licensing and development rights.

“If the parties intended to transfer Unix and UnixWare copyrights as well, they could have easily demonstrated that intent while they were making the distinction for Unix and UnixWare trademarks,” Kimball wrote in Friday’s ruling. “There is nothing in the text of the [Asset Purchase Agreement] that would support an interpretation of ‘all copyrights’ to mean only Netware copyrights.”

Kimball’s ruling stands to torpedo SCO’s slander of title lawsuit against Novell and could also fatally undermine its bigger, $5 billion claim against Big Blue.

Joe LaSala, senior vice president and general counsel of the Waltham, Mass.-based software maker, said in a statement Friday that the ruling “vindicates the position Novell has taken since the inception of the dispute with SCO” and “eliminates SCO’s threat to the Linux community, based on allegations of copyright infringement of Unix.

Darl McBride, chief executive officer of SCO, did not return a telephone call seeking comment Friday.

SCO has spent tens of millions of dollars in court since first filing against IBM in March 2003. The software company accused IBM of damaging the value of its version of the Unix operating system by removing source code from two of its Unix products and illegally dumping the code into the freely distributed Linux system, which resembles Unix. IBM denies the claims and has filed a countersuit.

Earlier this year, U.S. Magistrate Judge Brooke Wells rejected SCO’s argument that IBM programmers had destroyed potentially damaging code evidence soon after SCO filed suit.

In an 2006 ruling, Wells barred SCO from pursuing most of nearly 300 claims against IBM, ruling that the Utah company had failed to provide specific evidence of Unix code it claimed IBM had misappropriated into Linux. Even so, at the time, McBride vowed to see SCO’s complaint to trial.

SCO has blamed competition from Linux for the protracted slide in its revenues and operating losses. In June, the company said it had an operating loss of $1.1 million in the quarter ended April 30. A year earlier it lost $3.9 million.

Revenue slipped to $6 million from $7.1 million.

SCO is also pursuing a parallel lawsuit against auto parts retailer AutoZone for infringing on its Unix copyrights. It accuses AutoZone of running versions of Linux that contain SCO code.

Basically, SCO vs Everybody has no merit.  Of course we all knew that all along, but it’s good to hear it from the judge.  :)

Hollywood Hates You

I’ve been meaning to blog about this ever since I saw Joshua Steimle’s excellent post on the court ruling against CleanFlicks, CleanFilms, Family Flix USA, and Play It Clean Video. The skinny of it is that U.S. District Judge Richard Matsch ruled that the distribution of edited movies (which have been scrubbed of objectionable content) violates copyrights. Here were his words:

“This court is not free to determine the social value of copyrighted works. What is protected are the creator’s rights to protect its creation in the form in which it was created.”

Now don’t get me wrong, I agree with the ruling, but I can’t help but find the case, brought to the the table by the Directors Guild of America (DGA), utterly despicable. Why? Because any other industry would offer its customers what they want. There’s definitely a market for sanitized videos, and studios could easily serve that market with their own self-sanctioned sanitized versions. But they don’t. Studios could offer alternatively rated versions on the same CD at almost no additional cost. But they don’t. Studios could enter into some kind of licensing agreement with film sanitizers. But they don’t. The very least Hollywood could do is turn a blind eye to the film sanitation industry –after all, these companies bought legitimate copies of each movie and are only using edited copies to reach a valuable market segment that Hollywood refuses to accommodate.) But they don’t.

Why do they do none of this? It’s because Hollywood hates you. Unlike any other industry on the planet, it doesn’t want to give you what you want, even though you’ll pay extra for it. Instead it wants to jam profanity, graphic violence, and sex down your throat and the throats of your children, whether you want it or not. Any option (legal or not) to view a film without Hollywood’s insertion of mind-numbing filth undermines it’s evil control of content and culture, and that’s the issue here.

Of course, the DGA claims it’s a different issue:

“Audiences can now be assured that the films they buy or rent are the vision of the filmmakers who made them and not the arbitrary choices of a third-party editor.”

My response: “Thank you from protecting me from those malicious sanitizers! My children will finally be protected from accidentally viewing a nudity-free ‘Titanic’! Thanks to your bitter reluctance to give your paying customers what they want, society can finally rid itself of the harmful effects that occur when children aren’t exposed to graphic violence and soft porn on a regular basis. Again, thank you Hollywood for looking out for me and mine!”

Obviously I’m pretty ticked about this. I’ve got a lot more to say about it, but this rant is already getting too long. For now let’s just say this: Hollywood and the DGA must not want you to be happy with their product. Put differently, the studios must value other interests or agendas more than you and your money. And if you’re not willing to be a full participant in Hollywood debauchery, the studios (even Disney) will hold you in contempt, even claiming that they are protecting you from products that you seek out and buy at a premium. In short, the film industry wants you to be unhappy.

Netflix Sues Blockbuster

Netflix is suing Blockbuster, almost immediately after receiving a long-awaited business model patent. I personally hope the courts reward Netflix; Blockbuster’s imitation is just too flagrant… Plus I just hate Blockbuster. :)