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Microsoft Legal Documents To Be Destroyed 42

Posted by timothy from the oh-probably-just-some-unimportant-stuff dept.
el-schwa writes "The Salt Lake Tribune has a story that talks about the old Micrsoft vs. Caldera anti-trust lawsuit. During the trial Microsoft tried unsuccessfully to get 937 boxes of controversial documents kept private. Now it appears that Caldera is no longer interested in paying for storage on the boxes, and they are scheduled to be destroyed."
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Microsoft Legal Documents To Be Destroyed More

Microsoft Legal Documents To Be Destroyed

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  • why not make them electronic documents? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Numeric ( 22250 ) on Wednesday October 30, 2002 @04:10PM (#4567962) Homepage Journal
    I can't believe a "tech" company would not convert these documents into some electronic form.

    Scan -> Save -> ? -> Profit

  • Ill chip in 20 bucks for a good cause. (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Unknown Poltroon ( 31628 ) <unknown_poltroon1sp@myahoo.com> on Wednesday October 30, 2002 @04:11PM (#4567968)
    SOmeone feed em through a sheet feed scanner.

  • Well, let's just pave the way for M$ to return to the old ways. By all means Caldera, don't offer anyone the chance to base a future court case off of those documents.

    BTW - your distro sucks.

  • During the trial Microsoft tried unsuccessfully to get 937 boxes of controversial documents kept private.

    How 'bout we call it the 'CalderGates' scam? Or maybe the 's' isn't needed and would avoid confusion?

  • Obligatory 1984 comparison (Score:5, Insightful)

    by infornogr ( 603568 ) on Wednesday October 30, 2002 @04:23PM (#4568109)
    "For some reason they were nicknamed memory holes. When one knew that any document was due for destruction, or even when one saw a scrap of waste paper lying about, it was an automatic action to lift the flap of the nearest memory hole and drop it in, whereupon it would be whirled away on a current of warm air to the enormous furnaces which were hidden somewhere in the recesses of the building."
    • I would have to say that Orwell makes another point in this story that is even a better comparison to the current situation:

      "And if all others accepted the lie which the Party imposed -if all records told the same tale -- then the lie passed into history and became truth. 'Who controls the past,' ran the Party slogan, 'controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.'"
    • "For some reason they were nicknamed memory holes. When one knew that any document was due for destruction, or even when one saw a scrap of waste paper lying about, it was an automatic action to lift the flap of the nearest memory hole and drop it in, whereupon it would be whirled away on a current of warm air to the enormous furnaces which were hidden somewhere in the recesses of the building."

      Dude, you just violated copyright!

      • Re:Obligatory 1984 comparison (Score:5, Informative)

        by Twirlip of the Mists ( 615030 ) <twirlipofthemists@yahoo.com> on Wednesday October 30, 2002 @05:20PM (#4568729)
        Dude, you just violated copyright!

        Christ. Just because there's so much misinformation out there, and just in case some ignorant and innocent soul takes you seriously, let me clear this up.

        Title 17 of the United States code defines fair use rights in chapter 1, section 107. It says, in part and in summary, that you can make fair use of a copyrighted work for purposes of criticism and comment as long as you use only a small fraction of the work. Infornogr's quoting of 1984 was not a violation of copyright under United States law, or the law of any other country signatory to the Berne Convention.

        And clonebarkins, you're not funny.
      • hehe, but seriously didn't the copyright on 1984 expire?
        • hehe, but seriously didn't the copyright on 1984 expire?

          Thinking it has is a reasonable, rational, and nieve assumption. Seriously it SHOULD have expired.

          1984 was written in 1949. It is therefore still under copyright. US and several other countries set copyright at life of the author + 70 years. From that point of view we could say that we are "lucky" that George Owell died almost immediately after writing it, in 1950. The copyright on 1984 will therefore last till 2020. That is, assuming copyright isn't extended again, as it has been extended 14 times before in the US.

          Don't hold your breath.

          -
          • Well I didn't know about the US, but it is out of copyright here (NZ). We 'only' have life + 50 yrs here - I think that's the copyright rules in most countries (don't quote me on that though).

            There are copies of it on the web - I have seen an Aussie one around.
          • US and several other countries set copyright at life of the author + 70 years.

            Actually, the situation is much more complex in the US, and the summarized form much different. The actual rule in the US is that copyright lasts 95 years from publication. That only applies to works printed before 1979 (? thereabouts), and the author + 70 years applies to works printed on or after 1979, but the first book to enter copyright under author + 70 will be in 2050, so it's mostly moot.

  • Hilarious (Score:3)

    by 4of12 ( 97621 ) on Wednesday October 30, 2002 @04:27PM (#4568160) Homepage Journal

    how quickly Microsoft and its antagonists can get worked up by someone lazily and recklessly waving about the possibility that some old dirty laundry is about to disappear...

    IIRC, there have been some funny stories about shredders running long into the night at various places and times (Arthur Anderson's Enron task force, the McDougal's savings and loan, Iran Contra, etc.) Probably a lot more that I'm missing.


    • IIRC, there have been some funny stories about shredders running long into the night

      Yup, you do RC. It pisses me off! How come your Government [which, let's face it, means big corporations] gets privacy and the Average Joe gets snooped on by amenities engineers, neighbours, bent cops, and bent cops++ [pronounced "Effbee Eye"]?!?!?

      If I had my way all shredders would include a scanner and mobile phone to upload faxes to a government database for monitoring in case there's any chance of a remote possibility of lawbreaking! Or liberalism. Or socialism. Or accurate political journalism. Or dissenting opinions...

      Ali

      • How come your Government [which, let's face it, means big corporations] gets privacy and the Average Joe gets snooped on by amenities engineers, neighbours, bent cops, and bent cops++ [pronounced "Effbee Eye"]?!?!?

        Ray Kroc (founder of MacDonald's) said it best:

        The organization cannot trust the individual; the individual must trust the organization.

        Somehow, this seems to be a main guiding philosophy in our "culture". It's revolting. Perhaps we should, too.

  • Is there any public information about what the documents contain? There must be at least some general information related to the original dispute and the arguments about whether they could be kept private (obviously Caldera won this point since they have the documents). Presumably these are copies if MS needed to keep the orgininals for themselves, although by now those may be gone.

    Can they be released to a third party for preservation? Even if they can't be released, someone could pay to preserve them if there would be any future value in that. I can understand Caldera not being interested in paying to keep them.

  • ...will want them. Wouldn't that be sweet!

    Support free online books [gutenberg.net]!

    • Why would Project Gutenberg want them? Project Gutenberg's aim to scan an encyclopedia failed on the grounds that there wasn't enough time and volunteers. Maybe with the growth of PG, it could be done, but it sounds like this is much larger than an encyclopedia, and surely much more tedious.

  • Garage@Home (Score:4, Funny)

    by skookum ( 598945 ) on Wednesday October 30, 2002 @04:32PM (#4568224)
    Time for a new distributed computing project, Attic@Home, where you donate a bit of spare storage area to put some boxes...

  • just imagine how much they'd get for them... (Score:5, Funny)

    by The_Guv'na ( 180187 ) on Wednesday October 30, 2002 @04:53PM (#4568435) Homepage Journal

    ...on Ebay!

    Just auctioning them page by page would generate megabucks. Just think about it... Some loons will pay a premium for every page from a file just to make sure it was complete, or just for a single page on the off chance it contained some real gem of info that really gets up Microsoft's arse :)

    1. Obtain, modify, and release a free OS.
    2. Flog legal docs on Ebay.
    3. Profit!

    Ali

  • You want 'em? Take 'em! (Score:3, Insightful)

    by TheSHAD0W ( 258774 ) on Wednesday October 30, 2002 @04:58PM (#4568503) Homepage
    Don't get on Caldera's ass because they don't want to pay to have the stuff stored. They're willing to turn them over. Bug the EFF or someone to go pick 'em up. I'm sure they'll turn out to be very interesting.

  • 'nuff said (Score:5, Funny)

    by tchdab1 ( 164848 ) on Wednesday October 30, 2002 @05:18PM (#4568706) Homepage
    Caldera claimed the helter-skelter of "confidential" stamps on hundreds of documents appeared to have been "done by monkeys." That explains the code too.
    • "done by monkeys." That explains the code too.
      Microsoft originally set out to produce a sequal to Romeo and Juliet.

      But what am I saying, not like I could do any better
      • Microsoft originally set out to produce a sequal to Romeo and Juliet.

        Set an enough of monkeys pounding away at random on enough of keyboards and sooner or later they will commit a violation of anti-trust laws.

        -
  • Perhaps they will destroy some bugs and security holes soon, too!

  • Heh, 900+ boxes...??? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by pdboddy ( 620164 ) <[moc.liamg] [ta] [yddobdp]> on Wednesday October 30, 2002 @06:44PM (#4569419) Journal
    That would take a bit of time to scan, since I didn't see mention of how big the boxes are. There could be hundreds of thousands of pages... I know I wouldn't want to do that amount of scanning, even for the overtime. =P And it definitely wouldn't be a small amount of space electronically either...

  • scanning that much stuff (Score:4, Informative)

    by phr2 ( 545169 ) on Friday November 01, 2002 @05:07AM (#4577108)
    I have some experience with scanning piles of paper. For about $5K you can get a production scanner that does 100 pages/minute or so. That means these 3 million pages would take 30,000 minutes or 500 hours to scan, about 12 weeks full time, assuming you could keep the scanner running flat out, which in my experience is not easy. The work is not very demanding but it's tedious. Despite the automated equipment you're constantly shuffling paper around and there tends to be a lot of pauses in scanning.

    At $10/hour (salary+overhead for some clerical type in a low-wage state) that's about $5K in labor, plus the hardware. Plus there's the matter of 900 boxes of paper--a full trailer load, so another several K$ to get it delivered to where it's being scanned, plus then you have to store it. Overall, you're looking at $15-20K minimum to scan this stuff. It's sort of possible some organization is interested enough to throw that much cash around. I can't see many individuals willing to do it.

    • Overall, you're looking at $15-20K minimum to scan this stuff

      Yeah, but that's assuming that one commercial organization is going to do it. What if 900 slashdotters each took one box and shared the scanning effort with some of their friends, then uploaded it to a central database/web server? I know I'd donate my own time to setting up the database and some web pages to help display the documents. And I'm sure Sun or some other company would gladly provide the server space to hang out some potentially dirty MS laundry.

      Sure, you might get some lousy scans, or a few lost papers/boxes, but it's better than just shredding all the information.
  • Who the heck puts things on paper first any more, especially a software company? Didn't the Microsoft docs all start out as electronic docs, which Caldera should have demanded rather than paper? If the docs were all created on paper rather than MS Word, or whatever, what does that say about MS?

    A missed opportunity for insight into the Microsoft,. Presumably Caldera at least indexed the material. Now if the documents are not sealed, there's nothing to stop Caldera from giving them away FOB. To someone with a really big truck and a lot of time on their hands.

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