“The SCO Group took its intellectual property challenge of Linux
to Harvard on Monday and received a cold reception from area
students opposed to the company’s legal tactics.“In a presentation hosted by the Harvard Journal of Law and
Technology on Monday, Darl McBride, SCO president and CEO, and
Chris Sontag, senior vice president and SCOsource general manager,
defended their decision to pursue corporations and users who
violate what they consider their intellectual property.“The presentation, called ‘Defending Intellectual Property
Rights in a Digital Age,”outlined the company’s decision to sue IBM
for copyright infringement. Last March, officials at the Lindon,
Utah, software company filed a $3 billion lawsuit saying Big Blue
programmers lifted thousands of lines of code from licensed Unix
System V code and used them to bolster the Linux kernel…“Perhaps expecting a more relaxed reception in a region still
celebrating the Super Bowl victory of its New England Patriots, he
found himself in the middle of a crowd that was almost entirely
pro-Linux. Several MIT students asked pointed questions.“The crowd certainly wasn’t happy to hear Sontag say the
software company would continue its legal pursuit of Linux users
violating the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DCMA). While SCO
would ‘likely’ not go after, say, a college student using Linux for
educational purposes, companies that derive profits from Linux use
were fair game, he said…”
Related Story:
Groklaw:
Darl Goes to Harvard – My First Quick Impressions(Feb 03,
2004)