[NCLUG] Breaking news! SCO is full of crap (big surprise)

[Daniel Miles]

John Wrote:
> Someone breaks into your home and steals every thing of value, you as a buyer
> know where they came from and that they are "stolen". To purchase them is
> a crime even BEFORE the criminal is sentenced.
> 
> Similar theory applies to knowingly buying pirate music and DVD movies.
> 
> A bunch of Linux supporters would like to believe that the same doesn't
> apply to stolen software code.

I don't think that accuratly models the situation, I want to put forward
a different parable:

Someone breaks into your home and steals every thing of value. You find
a person you believe to be the thief of those things. The thief claims
that nothing was stolen (this is the reason the situatino is not modeled
well in physical space, it's easy to prove something was stolen if it's
physical but not so easy if it's intelectual).

At this point, the American legal system gets involved and your claims
against people who bought your things of value are dependent on weather
the things in question were stolen or not, dependent on the outcome of
your trial against the thief.

If the trial finds that the things were stolen, then the buyers are at
your mercy; they have to give you back your things and go after the
thief for lost money weather they *knew* the things were stolen or not.

If, on the other hand, the trial finds that nothing was stolen from your
house (again, this is the reason it doesn't work well with a physical
metaphore for software), none of those people who bought stuff from the
"thief" owe you anything.

Now, assuming the trial finds that nothing was stolen, if you had
sufficient evidence against the "thief" to bring about a trial then the
"thief" sucessfully defended himself and there can be no counter-suit
(or at least no sucessful counter-suit). However, if you tried to charge
buyers for your stuff you're now in deep poo with those people.

I also think it's possible that you could be in deep poo with the
"buyers" for trying to charge them for your stuff BEFORE THE STATUS OF
SAID STUFF WAS DETERMINED, even if the final decision is that it was
stolen. Sure, they will have to pay for your stuff but they might also
be able to sucessfully get you for some sort of harassment.

So what I'm unclear on is, is SCO potentially in trouble for trying to
charge people for a product where their grounds to do so is contested
and pending in court?