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LANCOR v. OLPC Case Continues In Nigerian Court
Posted by
timothy
on Tue Jan 01, 2008 06:40 PM
from the get-your-passport-and-account-numbers dept.
from the get-your-passport-and-account-numbers dept.
drewmoney writes "According to an article on Groklaw: It's begun in a Nigerian court. LANCOR has actually done it. Guess what the Nigerian keyboard makers want from the One Laptop Per Child charitable organization trying to make the world a better place? $20 million dollars in 'damages,' and an injunction blocking OLPC from distribution in Nigeria."
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Why don't the Nigerians just (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Why don't the Nigerians just (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:Why don't the Nigerians just (Score:5, Funny)
My name is Prince Anonoomosa C'ow-Ard of the Nigerian Royal Family. Recently my family has been driven from power by Marxist revolutionaries. I need your kind help to move my family's enormous stash of TWO HUNDRED MILLION mod points out of the country. In exchange for your help I am willing to offer to you ten percent of this sum, deposited into the comments of your choice. As a gesture of good faith on your part, please mod this comment up.
Parent
Re:Why don't the Nigerians just (Score:5, Funny)
(No, I'm not really Nigerian.)
Parent
Dollars $ Dollars (Score:5, Funny)
Q: How do you pronounce "$20"
A: "Twenty dollars"
Q: How do you pronounce "$20 million"
A: "Twenty million dollars"
Q: How do you pronounce "$20 million dollars"
A: "Twenty million dollars dollars"
You're welcome.
Re:Question Mark (Score:5, Funny)
Q: Should the word "Nazi" be capitalized?
A: Yes.
Q: Do you hold article comments to the same grammatical standards as the articles themselves?
A: No.
Q: What do you call someone who does the above for no reason other than to attract attention and cause disruption?
A: A troll.
Parent
Re:Question Mark (Score:5, Funny)
Q: Should tutorial be the new fad?
A: Yes.
Q: Does it seem weak and unimaginative?
A: Yes.
Q: Then why persist?
A: In the mere hopes that it offends at least one person.
Parent
Re:Question Mark (Score:5, Funny)
Q: Is "it offends at least one person" a single hope?
A: Yes.
Q: Should "hopes" therefore be "hope"?
A: Yes.
Q: ??
A: Profit!!
Parent
Re:Question Mark (Score:5, Insightful)
Q: Should you place a comma in the sentence "Tutorial, continued..."?
A: Yes.
Q: When using the dash as a separator for an unordered list, should you place a space character between the dash and the first character of the list item?
A: Yes.
Q: Should the sentence following a sentence ending in ellipsis be capitalized?
A: Yes.
Q: Can someone "trend towards perfectionist"?
A: No. One can either trend towards perfectionists or trend towards perfectionism, the latter presumably being your intended meaning.
Q: Should you place the period inside or outside quotation marks?
A: Inside.
Q: Are there any exceptions to the above rule?
A: No. Exceptions exist for exclamation or question marks (depending on whether the mark applies to the quote alone or to the whole sentence), but never for commas or periods.
Q: Are any of the above rules relevant to Slashdot comments?
A: No, as I stated previously. The objective of communication rules is to facilitate maximally convenient communication between parties, and the rules vary depending on the medium and circumstances. In the case of Slashdot comments, the time required to analyze and correct spelling, grammar, punctuation and stylistic errors is unjustifiably high compared to the meager benefit it provides to the readers. Slashdot articles themselves, which are more formal than comments, have a greater time period to be written and checked, and are read by more people, have a justifiably higher standard applied to them. Still, they will have a lower standard than a formal academic paper. Similarly, in cases where communication speed is much more important than rigorousness, such as instant messaging or online game chat, it is perfectly acceptable that the sentence "lol kthxbye" has a better cost-benefit ratio than the sentence "That was amusing; all right, thank-you, and good-bye." The very definition of a "Grammar Nazi" is not simply one who uses formal grammar, but one who expects its use in situations where the expectation is not justified.
Parent
expect anything different? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:expect anything different? (Score:5, Insightful)
The silver lining of this truth is that the fewer computers Nigerians have the better off the rest of the world is. It would have been difficult and politically incorrect to boycott Nigeria from the OLPC, with a litle luck they just might boycott themselves.
Parent
Re:expect anything different? (Score:5, Insightful)
For all you people that want to pick on Nigeria, not everyone that comes from there is a scammer or a crook. As it happens, my girlfriend is from there (emigrated to the U.S. about 25 years ago) and is a remarkable individual. I consider myself lucky to have her. As an American, I tend to get irritated at all the foreigners here on Slashdot that like to make uninformed generalizations about the United States and its people. Anyone who's ever read any of my posts along those lines knows that. Conversely, I figure it's only fair not to paint everyone in a given country with the same brush, even if they do it to us with monotonous regularity.
That said, I wouldn't advise answering any Nigerian emails that show up in your inbox.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
You should work on your reading comprehension. Try again, and you'll discover that I was making the point that there are not inherent racial differences between (for example) Nigerians, Americans, and Mexicans, but that rather the perceived differences are caused by the fact that we get a skewed sample (immigrants vs. non-immigrants).
Luckily, I don't have to generalize to realize that, because you automatically equate simply mentioning a particular ethnic group with being racist, you're the one who is obse
Re:expect anything different? (Score:5, Informative)
Really, you ought to at least cursorily research subjects before commenting on them.
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
Nigeria, the land of scammers and con artists. no wonder thier country is in the state it's in.
I'm not sure why someone doesn't simply go down there with $50k and bribe a judge to find the plaintiffs guilty of some truly dispicable crime, and watch the problem go away on its own... It would be cheaper than paying actual lawyers and, if my understanding of the current situation there is correct, this is the traditional method of settling legal disputes in Nigeria.
-=Geoskd
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Cut to the chase (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Cut to the chase (Score:4, Interesting)
http://www.cfr.org/publication/9557 [cfr.org]
Parent
Re:Thats just it (Score:4, Funny)
Parent
Fuller version... (Score:5, Funny)
OLPC defense fund (Score:3, Funny)
It is about kickbacks (Score:5, Interesting)
I guess OLPC didn't pay the kickback moneys in pricing the deal now the corrupt are howling foul. Goes to show us in the free world how well we are off when institutionalized corruption is so rampant.
Or is it the government wanting to keep people dumb and stupid so they don't revolt for a democracy?
Would be interesting to see who bribed who to deprive the children from knowledge. There could be one hell of a story in that.
Corruption is part of the culture of Africa (Score:5, Insightful)
You know all those "relief funds" that go to poor/starving/fucked African countries? Yeah, most of those funds end up in the hands of the corrupt government leaders and/or military, who are MORE than happy to let everybody starve if it means more cash for them.
The problems with Africa can't be solved with donations. They can only be solved with armed revolutions. Of course, the U.S. and most of the rest of the world is making too much money off of the exploitation of Africa to actually want to fix things.
Re:Corruption is part of the culture of Africa (Score:5, Insightful)
So, 3.8 million deaths weren't enough [wikipedia.org]?
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Surely you are not serious. Revolutions in Africa just replace one bunch of assholes with another bunch of assholes.
Which is exactly why revolutions won't work. The whole system is fucked. There are only two things that will work and nether of them are pretty.
One is armed conquest. The UN sends in the troops an we take over everything south of the Sahara. We totally clean house. Then for the next hundred or so years we re-educate everyone in africa and teach them how to behave in a civil society.
The next is just as bad. We wall up everything south of the sahara, nothing comes in; nothing goes out. Then we let
Does the third-world really need laptops? (Score:5, Insightful)
Maybe they aren't ready for a mass introduction of technology - they certainly have shown a compunction for abuse so far. Nigeria is already synonymous with Internet-based moneymaking scams. Does the third world have other, more important priorities instead of laptops, such as basic infrastructure, and a stable and responsive democratic government (most of the world's poorest countries are still ruled by dictators). Complain if you will about the governments of first-world countries such as the US, but if so, you likely haven't seen the corruption of others up close. Visit Mexico for a fine example of what happens when a country with significant potential is rife with corruption from top to bottom. Corruption tends to poison and overshadow even the benefits of democracy and capitalism, as it tends to keep power concentrated in very few hands.
On the other hand, perhaps an opening of information can help to educate the next generation - to give them more options, and more information, more hope. Just as wireless technology is leapfrogging the old, expensive landline-based infrastucture in many countries, perhaps an infusion of technology can help jump-start an economic surge in places that need it most. I just hope they choose to use it wisely.
Re:Does the third-world really need laptops? (Score:4, Insightful)
Our culture at one point had an answer to that:But now, quoting Thomas Jefferson is likely to get you put on a suspected terrorist no-fly list.
Parent
keyboard in dispute not used in production devices (Score:5, Informative)
From Groklaw: http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20071203061340580#c652659 [groklaw.net]
----
If you examine the OLPC Wiki's edit history for the West African (Nigerian) keyboard you can see what Adé Oyegbola is on about. To save you trawling back and forth here it is in a nutshell. Note that where I write "create" I am referring to the Wiki entires - these dates may not correspond to the physical devices.
1. 2006-08-07 OLPC buy KONYIN keyboards
2. 2006-11-13 OLPC create Nigerian layout based on KONYIN layout
3. 2006-11-13 OLPC Nigerian image updated; layout unchanged
4. 2007-03-02 OLPC image updated to show Beta-3 model; layout unchanged (Original Image March 2nd)
5. 2007-08-?? LANCORP sends OLPC Cease & Desist Notice
6. 2007-08-20 OLPC B3 layout revised completely, no longer looks like KONYIN (Revised Image August 20th)
7. 2007-08-21 OLPC replaces B3 with B4 Ng-MP-Alt layout (more dialect symbols) and new image.
So this boils down to prototype XOs that used the KONYIN layout. I'm not sure how many prototypes were made with the Nigerian keyboard (I'd guess not many more than the 300 used at Galadima primary school, Abuja) but the total quantities were B1: 875, B2: 2,500, B3: 100, B4: 2,000, C1: 300 (see Development Schedule.
Since August 2007 with the C1 (pre-production) the West African (Nigerian) layout has been as you see it on the current Wiki page.
So the crux is that LANCORP are upset over those beta prototypes but the production XOs (and all XOs made since August 2007) have not used the KONYIN layout.
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Re:keyboard in dispute not used in production devi (Score:2)
Re:keyboard in dispute not used in production devi (Score:4, Funny)
Parent
Nigeria (Score:5, Insightful)
How do you spell SCO in Nigerian? (Score:3)
Yes, I realize there are over 500 languages being used in Nigeria and their official language is English. I just hope the courts in Nigeria can grind a little faster than the courts in America.
IMO this ploy by LANCOR against OLPC is a carbon copy of the SCO scheme against Linux. I wonder if the company funding LANCOR is the same company that funded the SCO fiasco. [news.com]
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
There is probably nothing of consequence here (legally), but the need to defend themselves will probably put a dent on how much more good the OLPC program can bring to children elsewhere.
The sad thing is that Nigerian children probably need this device as much as kids in Uruguay or Mexico or Armenia, but thanks to some hardass nigerian scammer they might be negatively affected, because this will certainly put a chill on the OLPC d
Re:No Reason to Pity (Score:5, Insightful)
They didn't answer but they still want $20 million dollars.
Parent
Re:No Reason to Pity (Score:5, Interesting)
- "Linux stole unix code!"
- "Oh really? Which lines, exactly?"
- "I'm not telling."
- "Linux infringes 235 of our patents"
- "That's likely, you patented the obvious. We'll see when IBM starts complaining about their patents you likely infringe upon. BTW, Which ones?"
- "I'm not telling."
- "OLPC steals our patented keyboard input method"
- "Oh really? Which ones exactly?"
- "I'm not telling."
I'm reconsidering the real cruelty of the good ol' times where justice was administered by the king, and if you looked like you were making him lose time on useless technicalities you were going to be hanged.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
A hanging (ie: corporate death penalty) may not be totally out of the question. If I recall correctly, LANCOR has to pay court fees if it turns out to be a waste of court time.
Re:No Reason to Pity (Score:5, Informative)
I'm afraid this is just how things go here in Africa, and as someone else pointed out, why it'll probably remain 3rd-world indefinitely. Try give a hand to Africa, and it will demand an arm, and then try kill you for not giving the entire arm. Mod me whatever, but I've lived here all my life and seen this kind of thing over and over, facts are just facts, I wouldn't expect someone who hasn't lived here to get it.
Parent
Re:No Reason to Pity (Score:5, Interesting)
Aid agencies need to be a lot stricter on their staff members and have stiffer penalties for any transgressions - you know, like a bit of gaol time in a dingy cell rather than painting them as a Martyr like the "Chad Children Thieves".
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Their keyboards don't really seem that inventive once you give them a lo [konyin.com]
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Further, countries still have their pride, and for us to come in acting like they "need help" is a kick in the ego. By roughing
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Describe, in your own words, what IP has been infringed.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Die OLPC, Die. (Score:4, Informative)
Not kidding.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Sounds shifty to me.
Seriously, though, don't most keyboards have two shift keys (and a caplocks key)?
Re:Don't do business there (Score:4, Insightful)
"Don't deal with black people" is racist. "Don't deal with African Countries, unless they're white" is racist. "Don't deal with country X that has a history of corruption, and happens to be black" is no more racist than "don't go down Johnson street, there were fifty murders there last year."
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
LANCOR has no point (Score:4, Informative)
Anyway, there is a crucially important difference between this and other forms of dumping which are actually more wrong: This is basically PRIVATE charity, it's not e.g. the US government dumping cheap computers on the 3rd world to subsidise their own industry; rather, it's private individuals using private money.
Parent