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Comments: 107 +- Your Rights Online: Skype Founders File Copyright Suit Against eBay on Friday September 18, @02:33PM
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Saif writes to let us know that Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis, the founders of Skype, have filed a copyright suit against eBay for altering and sharing the peer-to-peer source code behind the calling service. The founders managed to maintain ownership of the source and licensed it to eBay in their 2005 deal and are now seeking an injunction and statutory damages which could total more than $75 million per day. "Mr. Zennstrom and Mr. Friis have developed a reputation for litigiousness in some legal circles. They filed three separate lawsuits against Pamela Colburn, an investment banker who represented them in the original sale of Skype, in the United States, the Netherlands and Britain. In May, a British judge dismissed the case and said the two men's reason for pursuing the matter in his country 'remains inexplicable.' The buyers of Skype have not publicly addressed the founders' lawsuit against eBay in Britain or their potential legal liability."
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News: Skype's Legal Situation Clears 49 comments
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Basically (Score:5, Interesting)
They sold Skype to eBay.
But managed to maintain ownership of a chunk of code because eBay's lawyers were fucking retarded.
They now claim eBay has altered that code, thus infringing on their copyrights.
Why are now suing for damages that could be up $75,000,000. Per day.
My question - how do they know the source doe was altered?
Re:Basically (Score:5, Interesting)
Copyright law -- is there any chaos it can't cause?
Parent
Re:Basically (Score:5, Funny)
Copyright law -- is there any chaos it can't cause?
There's plenty, but don't you worry - it's covered by patent law.
Parent
Re:Basically (Score:5, Informative)
My question - how do they know the source doe was altered?
You dont need the source code to see changes. Assembly code is always available via debugger like ollydbg or others. Also, these guys are the ones who created kazaa/fasttrack and skype's algorithm, they probably have the technical intelligence to check it themself too or just hire someone to do it.
Its pretty hard, one could say almost impossible, to hide the algorithm changes since all the code is available as assembly.
This is just about eBay's stupidity on the point of purchase, because they didnt buy the whole thing.
Parent
Re:Basically (Score:5, Insightful)
Changing the code was perfectly legal, so long as they only used it internally or developed a compiled product with it. That's why they licensed the source code in the first place.
However, distributing the code is not legal. It sounds to me like someone at Ebay was dumbass enough to think that minor changes would be enough to alter the copyright, making it theirs and therefore distributable. In fact, depending on the license they agreed to, it may have legal to distribute the altered portions only, or not at all. Either way, to make re-distributing the code legal would have required a substantial re-write, basically just using the Skype code as a guide and not much more than that.
The Skype founders may be overly-litigeous bastards, but on the surface it sounds like they are in the right on this one.
Parent
Re:Basically (Score:5, Interesting)
you've clearly never tried to look at skype's code then. It has multiple levels of code obfuscation.
Last I checked the majority of the program's contents are encrypted. The loader decrypts it into memory, and also deletes the boot-loader from memory. Additionally, the the program will try and detect if you are running it in a debugging environment and jump into random pages. This in turn is hard to detect because seemingly random jumps are all over the code from checking checksum's on itself (to make sure you didn't put in software debugging).
I'm not even explaining this fully-
from: http://blogs.securiteam.com/index.php/archives/355 [securiteam.com]
read: http://www.blackhat.com/presentations/bh-europe-06/bh-eu-06-biondi/bh-eu-06-biondi-up.pdf [blackhat.com]
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I must say I haven't tried looking at it and while I know that Skype has lots of obfuscation and different layers of protection, the guys who developed it most likely know also how to get around it. And these protections were in Skype even before the sale to eBay.
Re:Basically (Score:5, Informative)
You are probably right about the originators being able to tell. I should have quoted what is different about this animal.
When you said, "Assembly code is always available via debugger like ollydbg or others."
I thought to myself: yeah, for my programs, but skype is a different animal.
But if you already know this, then I can only hope someone else on /. found it interesting (I know I did when I first read it).
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
I'm so sick of people fawning all over eBay like they did nothing wrong here. EBay gave a dear sum of money to Skype to license the code, but didn't get full rights toit. Their mistake. I bet they try and pass the buck and blame the lawyers and their ilk.
Oh, and totally off-topic, but does anyone know a 24-hour chapel where they do weddings? My grandfather is making my aunt elope.
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Can't advise you on a 24-hour chapel, but I can advise you not to quit your day job.
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y grandfather is making my aunt elope.
The hell? Just tell him to pound sand.
Re:Basically (Score:5, Interesting)
With all the shit ebay has pulled over the years, and I'm not just referring to ridiculous fee increase, but all the ways they have given third parties veto power over auctions (e.g. try selling a copy MS windows on ebay and watch the auction be disappeared because MS thinks all copies of windows sold by individuals are pirated and ebay just lets them cancel auctions independently) its basically a case of ebay getting hoisted by their own petard (live by arbitrary and unfriendly contracts, die by arbitrary and unfriendly contracts).
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
If Skype did this to anyone other than EBay, I would be kind of pissed. EBay has engaged in a lot of really anti-user policies of late, mostly because they (legally) garnered a monopoly in the online auction world. A lot has changed though over the last 10 years though and EBay doesn't have the same power they did in 2000.
Regardless, yeah it's pretty shifty what Skype did. I bet in talks they TOLD eBay they were buying everything, but held back copyrights and the eBay lawyers skimmed over it. Nobody would p
Not exactly ... (Score:3, Informative)
What's most interesting about the lawsuit is a single disclosure early in the lawsuit complaint. Not only does Skype not own the core P2P technology underlying the service, but they don't even have access to the source code (emphasis added):
A source code version of the GI Software is licenced by Joltid to Joost, allowing Joost to be the first company to successfully deliver television and other video content in real-time over a peer-to-peer network. An executable-only object code form of the GI Software was licensed by Loltid to Skype, a well-known Internet-based company that provides users throughout the world wiht free or low-cost telephone services over the Internet. Skype did not obtain a license to the GI Software source code, however, and the license it did obtain was terminated based on SKype's breaches of the license agreement.
I don't know enough of either suit to definitively make heads or tails out of it, but it appears that the code Skype is suing eBay over may not even be theirs to begin with.
KaZaaM! (Score:5, Funny)
kazaa/fasttrack founders suing for copyright violation? it's hard to know just where to begin...
- js.
They should have left negative feedback... (Score:5, Funny)
They should have just left negative feedback. Isn't that the policy for a bad transaction on eBay anyways?
Re:They should have left negative feedback... (Score:4, Funny)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Sellers can't leave negative feedback.
Summary must have been written by a lawyer (Score:3, Funny)
You can see he has a key with "(TM)" on it
Damn unicode... (Score:4, Insightful)
If we can't get it working, can we at least have the editors strip the unicode out of the summaries?
Re: (Score:2)
Wait - Slashdot has what now? When did we get those?
$75 million per day since 2005? (Score:4, Insightful)
I'll be generous... 2006 to 2009, 365 days per year minus about 100 days for the remainder of 2009, at $75 million per day. That's $102 billion...
eBay bought them for $2.6 billion in 2005. Revenue, according to a quick google lookup, has been about $1.1 billion in the years 2006 to 2009.
This seems ridiculous? Or am I reading this wrong?
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
At least, if eBay loses, it has a chance to pay the fine in its lifetime. You don't want to be holding a PayPal card if it comes to that, though.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I believe it is $75 million from the time they illegaly distributed the source code, not from the day of the deal. When exactly that would be I have no idea, but the British version of this lawsuit goes back to March of this year.
Using a March start date, you're still looking at $13.5 billion, but that is based on the maximum statutory damages (which these litigious copyright owners do not set, btw). More than likely if eBay loses it will be substantially less than that, but still very significant.
If eBay
a few days late, no? (Score:2)
The AP reported this [mercurynews.com] a few days ago.
And today, they report [mercurynews.com] that they are suing the potential buyers of Skype as well.
Scam-ola (Score:2)
And today, they report that they are suing the potential buyers of Skype as well.
The reason the developer/owners are doing this is that they want to cash cow back. They are really trying to intimidate anyone thinking of buying Skype, and intimidating the current owners to sell to them.
Some people. (Score:2)
Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis, who became billionaires after selling Skype to eBay in 2005,....
Take your money, buy an island, fill it with beautiful naked women or use the money to start something else and add more value to the economy.
Suing just enriches the lawyers - they don't need any help - and it doesn't add anything of value to the economy.
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Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Where does one shop for "beautiful naked women"?
Red light District
Can I claim accelerated depreciation for them on my taxes?
No. Women never get depreciated, only under appreciated.
How many "beautiful naked women" can one purchase for $2.6 billion (less the cost of the island, of course)?
More than you can afford.
Finally, what should the founders of Skype do if their tastes run more towards beautiful naked men?
There's an app for that.
(Just kidding)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Beautiful naked women aren't bought - they are leased. Finding them is relatively easy - they will seek out the cash. Lease and operations rates are typically high, but very manageable if your bank account balance looks like a phone number. Since you can only lease BNW, they are always deductible provided sufficient accounting creativity.
If the founders are looking for men, the same applies, however overall costs tends to be greater.
Re:Some people. (Score:5, Insightful)
If I wanted to buy a person. I would take the amount of money they would need in a life time to support a family, and multiply it by 10. That should allow you to find a naked woman to by. Beauty is subjective. Let's say for here: http://www.livingwage.geog.psu.edu/counties/12086 [psu.edu] (Miami-Dade, Florida). So about 3 million dollars. For 2.6 billion, you could have about 867 naked women MAX
For a minimum, I'ld look at what porn stars get paid. A good porn start can make about 750K/year. Assuming that you want top quality women for the rest of your life (50 years), you could have 69 women minimum (rotating the old ones out and new ones in as they age and your preferences change).
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
Damn I forgot my factor of 10 in the first calculation. The second one is a better way to look at it anyways.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Can I suggest you contact your local ACORN office? They can help you set up a tax dodge for the island and probably arrange women through their contacts in Tijuana...
Brilliant Hack (Score:5, Insightful)
Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis were clearly not content to hack compelling software. Their travails sound like a Gibson novel. As far as I can tell, they made themselves the monarchs of Skype. One day, some enterprising journalist will tell us how the fuck they managed to sell Ebay an empty XBOX 360 box for billions of dollars.
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This might be.. (Score:2, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
Erm. Why not just use Skype? It works in Linux, Windows, and Mac.
... and the iPhone, Windows Mobile, Nokia, and PSP...
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For values of "works" equal to "appears to work while looking a hell of a lot like malware" [slashdot.org] anyway.
Perhaps the OP wants something more trustworthy than a black box labeled "trust us" and signed by people whose deviousness is pretty well substantiated by this here story.
Re: (Score:2)
This might be a little bit off topic, but... Is there any good skype alternative? Something that works in linux, windows, and mac?
Magicjack works for me.
Gotta love the irony. (Score:5, Insightful)
eBay / PayPal routinely shaft sellers out of PayPal payments, sweetly telling the post-coital shaftees to, "Read your user agreement, you explicitly agreed to accommodate our shaft."
Apparently those Kazaa guys' lawyers were skilled at placing a StealthShaft(TM) in the contract.
Take it eBay. Take it.
Genius! (Score:5, Insightful)
The Skype founders must be genius negotiators if they managed to sell their company to eBay for billions of dollars yet keep rights to the source code that runs the business. Either that or eBay's lawyers must be the world's biggest idiots.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
"Either that or eBay's lawyers must be the world's biggest idiots."
So that's where the IBM lawyers that negotiated the MS-DOS contract ended up.
Re:what a horseship contract (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
>> Shame on Ebay for making this possible when they bought Skype with a bajillion of their shareholders money.
Hello AJ, how have you been? I just found you stuck inside the word billion in that post.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
conclusion: put them all in a room, with their laywers. on the titanic. hit an iceberg. it's a start.
Unfortunately, the Titanic sank in 1912. A chubby red-haired woman survived, but a floppy haired blonde guy froze in the water. There was a movie about it a few years ago.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
1) if you "buy" an outfit, you should get the code that made it.
2) if you didn't, you should have modification rights.
3) if you "sell" an outfit, you should spend your money and not try to steal the sumbitch back.
conclusion: put them all in a room, with their laywers. on the titanic. hit an iceberg. it's a start.
If you spend millions to buy something and never have anybody who understands what you are buying read the contract, you deserve what you get. Read the fine print... http://www.mevis-research.de/~meyer/MISC/di/a.htm [mevis-research.de]
Re: (Score:2)
firing squad. Then charge their families for the bullets used. It's what THEY would do if they had the chance.