Microsoft Tries To Prevent Further Discovery 178
An anonymous reader notes the considerable irony in Microsoft asking for relief from further discovery in the Windows Vista Capable debacle. This is the lawsuit that was recently granted class-action status, and Microsoft wants the wheels of justice to stop while it appeals that designation. It's easy to see why Microsoft wants to prevent further digging around in their and their OEMs' email archives, with stories like this one from the NYTimes (registration may be required) revealing Redmond's highly embarrassing internal emails to a mass audience.
Re:What does this mean for me? (Score:2, Informative)
IANAL and all that....
Generally, to protect your email from discovery, write an email retention policy (timestamp on implemention date), and follow it without exception. If your policy says you delete all emails after 30 days - do it. Up until you are served with a discovery request, anything you have destroyed as a part of your retention policy is no problem. Of course, once you get that discovery request and the matching "you are being sued" notice, do not destroy a thing.
Check with YOUR lawyer before you rely on this foolish advice
Registration-free LINK (Score:5, Informative)
http://biz.yahoo.com/nytimes/080309/1194753587951.html?.v=4 [yahoo.com]
Class != current members (Score:4, Informative)
why stop now? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:I don't get it (Score:3, Informative)
I guess I wasn't clear enough. People seem to be taking it as if I were making one of the claims in my post. No, those are conflicting claims I see windows supporters or linux detractors making. I say they can't have it both ways.
all the best,
drew
http://zotzbro.blogspot.com/ [blogspot.com]
Re:What does this mean for me? (Score:5, Informative)
If your company is publicly held, the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 imposes strict requires on document retention, including email. You can't just adopt a policy and stick to it. If your policy is not in compliance with Sarbanes-Oxley, you will be in big trouble should anyone sue you and ask for email or other documents that should have been retained.
Re:I don't get it (Score:5, Informative)
It's deceptive, if not outright false advertising.
Here's a car analogy for you. Imagine a large car company starts advertising a new model of car. The ads feature a soft-top coupe with aggressive sports styling, leather trim, 19" chrome wheels, big twin turbo v12 engine, 6 speed flappy-paddle gearbox, and is capable of 200mph.
You walk into the showroom, and the cars look like they do in the ads, or even better, but they are expensive. The salesman says "no worries" - this is the top model. There are much cheaper ones that are almost as good - you still get most of the features of the top model.
"Great", you say. "I'll take one!"
The salesman tells you that they are all in shipping crates out the back, so you can't look at it now, but they will deliver it to you.
The next morning you find a new car in your driveway. It looks like a Hyundai Excel, has a 4 cylinder engine, 14" wheels with plastic hubcaps, cloth trim, and a 4 speed manual gearbox.
You take it back to complain, but the salesman says "How did I mislead you? It has most of the features of the top model - seats, wheels, a steering wheel, seatbelts, a handbrake, lights, a horn, a gearbox, and it drives on the road. And it's capable of doing 200mph, if you can get it into a cargo plane that moves that fast..."
Re:ahoj (Score:2, Informative)
Or was the Titanic really a Royal Mail Ship [wikipedia.org]?
Re:It's only fair (Score:3, Informative)
If you look at the section E-mail communication retention policy and storage [com.com] in an article on it at TechRepublic, it seems that SOx dictates that email needs to be retained indefinitely.
Re:It's only fair (Score:3, Informative)