Pirated Software Could Bring Down Predator Drones 123
Pickens writes "Fast Company reports that Massachusetts Superior Court Judge Margaret Hinkle will soon issue a decision on an intellectual property-related lawsuit that could ground the CIA's Predator drones. Intelligent Integration Systems (IISi) alleges that their Geospatial Toolkit and Extended SQL Toolkit were pirated by Massachusetts-based Netezza for use by a government client and is seeking an injunction that would halt the use of their two toolkits by Netezza for three years. The dispute goes back to when Netezza and IISi were former partners in a contract to develop software that would be used, among other purposes, for unmanned drones. IISi's suit claims that both the software package used by the CIA and the Netezza Spatial product were built using their intellectual property and according to statements made by IISi CEO Paul Davis, a favorable ruling in the injunction would revoke the CIA's license to use Geospatial. If IISi prevails in court this would either force the CIA to ground Predator drones or to break the law in their use of the pirated software. But there's more. Testimony given by an IISi executive to the court indicates that Netezza illegally and hastily reverse-engineered IISi's code to deliver a faulty version that could cause predator drones to miss their targets by as much as 40 feet. "
Sarah Connor? (Score:4, Funny)
Did someone come back in time and start IISi in order to delay the deployment of Skynet by a few years?
Brilliant!
Linux? (Score:4, Funny)
Predator drones should use only open source software created by the community at large...
so all of us can help contribute to their accuracy and make sure they kill the right people...
Uhh.... wait... what?
The CIA might need to break the law?!?!? (Score:3, Funny)
Medieval units (Score:2, Funny)
... by as much as 40 feet
It's a good thing drones don't have feet then.
Re:Eminent Domain (Score:3, Funny)
If the CIA really needs the IP, they could just declare it as eminent domain. Problem solved.
Maybe IISi could license the software to the CIA? Surely a government contract is worth a pretty penny (especially in this situation). On the flip side, if IISi's headquarters is accidentally hit by a drone using the pirated software it would be just a tad ironic (the CIA could just cliam the software was trying to get home while in 'homing pigeon' mode).
Re:Bad headline (Score:4, Funny)
* a former bat boy for the Boston Red Sox was one of the law clerks who made copies of the lawsuit before it was submitted to the MA courts.
Re:Eminent Domain (Score:4, Funny)
Re:The lawsuit was dropped... (Score:3, Funny)
Hit 40 feet left of their buildings you mean.
Re:Eminent Domain (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Linux? (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Linux? (Score:3, Funny)