SCO Asked O'Gara To Smear Groklaw 96
Posted
by
Soulskill
from the par-for-the-course dept.
from the par-for-the-course dept.
I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes "PJ of Groklaw has found some really interesting documents coming out of the never-ending SCO trial. Specifically, in SCO v. Novell, SCO doesn't want the jury to find out about the email Blake Stowell (then a PR guy for SCO) sent to Maureen O'Gara that asked her to 'send a jab PJ's way.' For those who don't remember that far back in the SCO saga, the 'jab' was when O'Gara wrote an inaccurate, rambling and irrelevant 'exposé' on PJ which got O'Gara fired for violating journalistic ethics after angry readers complained to the publisher — an act which caused Ms. O'Gara to tell SCO, 'I want war pay.' For those wondering how they can keep going after that final judgment against SCO over a year ago, it's hard to do the saga justice without glossing over everything, but the short version is that SCO ran to bankruptcy after they were mostly dead, but before becoming completely dead. That automatically stopped all the cases against SCO due to standard bankruptcy court rules, then SCO effectively re-litigated a bunch of issues via bankruptcy court rules. Currently, they're accusing Novell of 'slander of title' over copyrights that two different courts have ruled SCO does not own, and we're waiting to see if a jury will reach the same conclusion. They're also trying to use the company's lawsuits as assets and to sell them to various SCO insiders so that the legal wranglings can continue even if nothing is left of SCO. From the very start, SCO has always been the type to fight dirty."
Ö'Gara fired? (Score:5, Informative)
How can Mrs. O'Gara be fired when her publisher touts her as:
"Maureen O'Gara the most read technology reporter for the past 20 years, is the Cloud Computing and Virtualization News Desk editor of SYS-CON Media."
at http://maureenogara.sys-con.com/ [sys-con.com]
sys-con being the slimeballs^Wpublisher where the PJ hit piece was published 5 years ago and for which she was supposedly "fired".
Re:Fighting dirty is one thing (Score:5, Informative)
Bernie Madoff was pointed out repeatedly to the SEC and they did absolutely nothing.
If I have learned anything from the SCO case is that regulators are mostly lazy asses that only go after "high profile" celebrities (like Martha Stewart) to make it *look like* they're doing something. Nailing the Ivan Boeskys of the world comes once every 15 years. In between, it's business as usual.
Real thieves wear shiny suits and everyone looks the other way.
--
BMO
O'Gara's style: destroys notes after story (Score:4, Informative)
In O'Gara's transcribed testimony she states that after she writes a story she destroys the notes that were used.
That is not what journalists are supposed to do. What it indicates is that the "journalist" wants the story to replace the notes rather than the story be supported by the notes.
Full deposition
http://scofacts.org/Novell-OGara-deposition.pdf [scofacts.org]
http://scofacts.org/Novell-OGara-deposition.txt [scofacts.org]
Page 29
1 O'Gara
2 Q Do you have the notes of the
3 short phrases still?
4 A No.
5 Q What is your practice of the
6 short phrases, if you will, in terms of
7 whether you keep them or not?
8 A I throw everything out.
9 Q When do you do that?
10 A If not when the story is
11 written, then every week, and I've been
12 doing that since 1972.
Re:Ö'Gara fired? (Score:5, Informative)
Interesting - looks like they un-fired the bitch when nobody was looking.
The announcement of her firing is dated May 10, 2005. According to Sys-Con's archive [sys-con.com], they did stop publishing her for a while, but she came back exactly one year and one day later. And it's also worth noting that the editors who forced her out are no longer working at Sys-Con.
Self-dealing (Score:3, Informative)
The judge needs to nail SCO to the wall for abuse of process.
They're also trying to use the company's lawsuits as assets and to sell them to various SCO insiders so that the legal wranglings can continue even if nothing is left of SCO.
Two words: fraudulent transfer.
An attempt to evade justice, or the ruling of the courts, by fraudulently transferring property after the case was initiated against them.
This is just like trying to transfer your bank account balance and your house to another family member, after someone sued you for damages you caused them, or for not paying a huge debt.
If the transfer occured after the case started, the courts can generally recognize it as fraudulent, unwind the transfer, and penalize you.
It would definitely apply if you as an individual attempted to evade judgement in such a situation.
The courts need to stop treating corporations as above the law, and apply the same rules.
Re:SCO needs to more than die. (Score:5, Informative)
As I recall, it was proven that Microsoft arranged the Baystar investment by eWeek [eweek.com].
As for whose money sits in the Baystar Capital investment pool, there is no public disclosure requirement of such things for private equity firms and hedge funds. And it's a large fund, so it's clearly not just Microsoft people's money, but given the nature of the relationship documented between Baystar and the Microsoft people who brought this deal to them, I can assure you there's some money from senior Microsoft people there, at the very least.
In any case, the guys at Baystar realized they were pawns in a big game after a short while and pulled out what they could. See this story [cnet.com].
Basically they wrote off $37M of their investment for some common stock in SCO (hahaha). Which went on to finance SCO's legal actions for several more years before they finally went kaput.
Baystar, having invested over $1.5B in equity deals since inception, this was a relatively small write-off. Probably an annoying blip in their overall results, part of the price of cultivating their relationships with Microsoft senior executives.
Re:Self-dealing (Score:4, Informative)
Unfortunately, they're actually getting approval for at least some of this from the bankruptcy court. (The mobile business they claimed would eventually keep them afloat even with the UNIX business sinking? Selling it to Darl for $50K, and with the court's approval).
Re:SCO needs to more than die. (Score:1, Informative)
"Whoever is." When using who(m)ever, the subject is always "whoever," and unless the verb is "is" or another linking verb, the object is "whomever." Linking verbs like "is" take objects in the nominative form (the form used for subjects) because they refer to states, not actions. This posting has been brought to you by the International Union of Grammar Nazis. Enjoy your day!
Re:Assumed competence (Score:5, Informative)
This was after Markopolos sent a 19 page memo to the SEC with 29 red flags that something was amiss with the Madoff operation. Some of the red flags that Markpolos listed were trivially easy to verify. For example, Madoff listed that he traded on the Chicago Board Options Exchange. However the volume of trades that Madoff was reporting meant he would have to do more trades on certain days than were posted on the entire exchange on those days. And not a single broker from the exchange remembered making a trade with Madoff ever. The SEC never talked to anyone on the exchange or verified the volumes.
Re:Ö'Gara fired? (Score:2, Informative)
Are you talking about the resignation of the editorial staff [slashdot.org] that happen after the Fuat Kircaali interview? [slashdot.org]
Fuat Kircaali being the publisher of the Sys-Con properties, and the interview and resignations occurred later in the week after the start of Maureen O'Gara's, uh, "furlough".
Re:Ö'Gara fired? (Score:5, Informative)
The fact that they rehired her later is no surprise. Back then, it was clear to everyone that SYS-CON had no clue why O'Gara's behavior was massively unethical, and only fired her because they got a lot of complaints (plus a claimed DoS, though their web sites never seemed to be down at any time). The editorial staff of the Linux branch of SYS-CON already didn't like her, and they all left over the issue.
Re:Can PJ take legal action against Maureen O'Gara (Score:3, Informative)
Can she? Sure, you can effectively sue anyone you want in this country for just about any reason you can dream up. Would she win? Who knows. But the truth is PJ has way too much class and dignity to draw out a fight in the court systems for this. In every article she writes she always takes the high ground and always attempts to point out the FACTS of a case and uncover the truth. She puts a great deal of emphasis on truth -- taking great pains to uncover all details and facts of a particular argument.
Conversely, at every opportunity, SCO has used sneaky, underhanded, backroom tactics. They have used rumor, inuendo, lies and gossip. The fact that these folks are LDS mormons freak me out because they are the exact opposite of what I always knew about mormons.
Re:Can PJ take legal action against Maureen O'Gara (Score:3, Informative)