…fuckery.
Why Is Microsoft Seeking New State Laws That Allow it to Sue Competitors For Piracy by Overseas Suppliers?
from Groklaw - Why Is Microsoft Seeking New State Laws That Allow it to Sue Competitors For Piracy by Overseas Suppliers?
Microsoft seems to be trying to get its own personal unfair competition laws passed state by state, so it can sue US companies who get parts from overseas companies who used pirated Microsoft software anywhere in their business. The laws allow Microsoft to block the US company from selling the finished product in the state and compel them to pay damages for what the overseas supplier did.
You heard me right. If a company overseas uses a pirated version of Excel, let’s say, keeping track of how many parts it has shipped or whatever, and then sends some parts to General Motors or any large company to incorporate into the finished product, Microsoft can sue not the overseas supplier but General Motors, for unfair competition. So can the state’s Attorney General. I kid you not. For piracy that was done by someone else, overseas. The product could be T shirts. It doesn’t matter what it is, so long as it’s manufactured with contributions from an overseas supplier, like in China, who didn’t pay Microsoft for software that it uses somewhere in the business. It’s the US company that has to pay damages, not the overseas supplier.
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As to the argument I’ve seen Microsoft offer that this will get the attention of the overseas infringers and they’ll shape up in no time, I find that a little laughable. It’s the US company that pays, not them. And the booming market currently isn’t the US. It’s China. Do you really think they’ll care?
Meanwhile, back in the US, Microsoft will be able to tie up competitors with civil litigation in Washington State, blocking them from selling in the state while the litigation this bill authorizes proceeds – and you know how long that can take from watching the SCO saga – but a company that sees Microsoft’s overseas partners violating the GPL or the Apache license, for example, can’t sue Microsoft under this new law. Talk about unfair competition. It’s a law that benefits only Microsoft, while disadvantaging its chief competition.
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Of course, Microsoft pushes the bills, saying they’ll help create jobs in the US. Dell, Intel, IBM, General Motors, Wal-Mart, and HP disagree, among others, and the tech firms sent a joint letter to the WA legislators, which was ignored, I guess. “These bills would create a new and unjustified cause of action against many American employers, fueling business uncertainty, disrupting our supply chains and undermining the competitiveness of U.S. firms,” the companies’ letter said.
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Now think about the laws Microsoft is lobbying to get passed. The law would make it possible for Microsoft to block Android sales in whatever state passed such laws if it could find some tie between the Android product and some manufacturer of a contracted part in China or wherever who happened to use a pirated version of Microsoft Word – not to make the part but to write up an ad for it. Ephemeral, much? But can you imagine how much litigation could spring from a law like this? How little it would take to keep litigation in the air forevermore? And you don’t have to even prove infringement in China, just allege it to initiate proceedings.
The law works with any proprietary software, though, not just Microsoft’s. UNIX is proprietary software, is it not? So once unXis owns the UNIX software assets, it could sue anyone using UNIX “inappropriately” in their view under this law just like Microsoft can sue over pirated Word or Excel. Remember Wayne Gray’s big dream of providing an operating system to compete with all current operating systems, a dream that meant he needed to try to get the UNIX trademarks?
I know. But it’s no more far-fetched than what SCO did. If your goal is really FUD litigation, what do you care? How hard would it be to find someone using pirated software in China? Meanwhile, Motorola or Barnes & Noble might see a GPL violation in a Nokia-Microsoft phone and be unable to do a thing under the new Microsoft laws.
Of course it would work just as well to block sales of supercomputer hardware running GNU/Linux instead of Microsoft software. Microsoft is already behind a number of companies nipping at IBM’s heels over high end computers, is it not? How handy would such a law be to tie up sales for years and years, so Microsoft could get folks to buy its own products instead in the interim?
Other good stuff in the article includes Microsoft pulling ideas from the GOP’s playbook and introducing these bills at the last minute without much discussion near the end legislative sessions. Would love to hear the logic of how such a bill “creates jobs”, even in a best case scenario.