Bonum Certa Men Certa

Microsoft-Funded Press Belittles Microsoft Crimes

"Just keep rubbing it in, via the press, analysts, newsgroups, whatever."

--Microsoft, internal document [PDF]



Wedding bouquet



Summary: Irresponsible and biased reporting (spinning) from people whom Microsoft pays, who also have no problem with just an apology as penalty for crime

YESTERDAY we wrote about the reaction of Microsoft's pseudo-journalists to its crimes against Plurk, noting in part that one of them expects and almost hopes that Microsoft is "to pay through the nose for this one."



A Bing-sponsored Microsoft-oriented Web site (TechFlash) takes a rather unusual stance, which is very disappointing

Microsoft has knowingly infringed on other companies' (and individuals') identities when it chose the name "Bing" (a failed experiment of rebranding as it turns out) and it receives sympathy now that it's sued over the name "Bing" (well, covered by a Bing-sponsored "news" site):

The St. Louis Business Journal has details of the suit, filed this week in St. Louis Circuit Court. The suit (PDF, 9 pages) notes that Bing! Information Design has used the "Bing" name since 2000, and it has an application pending to register the mark.


Why did Microsoft choose a name that it knew very well was already taken? Microsoft also willfully infringed on i4i patents [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10] and almost bragged about, as internal E-mails reveal. This is the same company to which software patents do not apply, as we noted back in September. It's a repeat offender, but this behaviour still assists the agenda against Free software (Microsoft wants a lot of patents out there).

Moving on a little, on the same day TechFlash also suggests that Microsoft should get away with crime and receive no punishment for what it did to Plurk. No kidding!

Over the years, I've covered countless Microsoft lawsuits, many of them involving some very legitimate and serious claims against the Redmond company. In some situations, the little guy emerges victorious. In other situations, Microsoft comes out on top. But in general, these cases are a relatively minor annoyance for Microsoft, and a huge undertaking for the smaller players taking the company on.

That was in the back of my mind this morning as I read that Plurk is "thinking of pursuing the full extent of our legal options available" after Microsoft admitted that one of its vendors basically copied Plurk's site.

Clearly, Plurk was wronged, and Microsoft (through its vendor) acted improperly. But here's my question: What damages would Plurk claim in a lawsuit against Microsoft?

Microsoft has apologized and taken down the site.


If Microsoft wanted "quick code", then it could pay for it, so there are clearly damages in the form of lost/potential business. The above seems like classic Microsoft spin, which requires blind obedience to actually subscribe to.

Apology after a crime does not undo the crime. What kind of lesson is Microsoft hoping to teach here? That crime pays off until/unless you get caught? That it's okay to commit crimes as long as you apologise at the end? As the OOXML blunders showed, Microsoft may as well send out the message to today's kids that committing crime (especially white-collar crime) is perfectly acceptable as long as you make a lot of money and wear a suit. The 'Microsoft press' did cover up the OOXML crimes by comparing it to just a baseball game. "Oops! So we cheated, so what?"

“As the OOXML blunders showed, Microsoft may as well send out the message to today's kids that committing crime (especially white-collar crime) is perfectly acceptable as long as you make a lot of money and wear a suit.”Microsoft takes someone's code and now its apologists spin it as Microsoft doing the victim a favour. Ab-so-lutely amazing! Microsoft has already attempted to blame someone else after taking the proprietary code from this very small and poor company. The attitude from Microsoft and from TechFlash is very telling indeed! And using the 'Microsoft press' Microsoft is still trying to blame someone else and now saying (probably for PR purposes) that it reconsiders the 'proxification' of jobs. Wonderful.

It is worth remembering that Microsoft was never punished for its GPL infringements, either. Here is another new take on the issue:

Lots of people got a good ironic laugh from the news that Microsoft, which has repeatedly complained about "piracy" in China, got caught blatantly copying code from a small startup named Plurk.


We wrote about these lies from Microsoft twice this month [1, 2]. Marcel Hilzinger (Linux Magazine) summarises the latest incident with the following headline: "Microsoft China Rips Off Competitor’s Code"

Steve Ballmer should be having trouble sleeping at night: the countless companies who work under contract from Redmond Software can hardly resist the temptation to take a little code from an outside project.


What keeps Steve Ballmer awake at night is GNU/Linux (and Free software). Peer-reviewed and peer-produced software products are technically better, not just more affordable.

"[If I ask you who is Microsoft's biggest competitor now, who would it be?] Open...Linux. I don't want to say open source. Linux, certainly have to go with that."

--Steve Ballmer, February 28th, 2008



Comments

Recent Techrights' Posts

Moral Standards From the Masters of Linux
They get hung up on minor language issue and promote this crazy theory that racism will go away if only everyone spoke a little differently (no matter where he or she came from)
Hopping From One Set of Buzzwords to the Next
Rotating hype and vapourware
Currys PCWorld Hates GNU/Linux Even Though It Runs the World
If more and more people choose to remove Windows, then Currys PCWorld will feel the financial impact of its dumb policies
The Register MS Takes More Money to Boost Slop Hype, This Time From Snyk, a Notorious FUD Source
At some stage or at some point they might even decide to stop doing so
 
Gemini Links 14/08/2025: Drought, Climate Experiments, and LLM Slop Considered Detrimental
Links for the day
Links 14/08/2025: Second-hand ThinkPad and Enhanced Surveillance on Chipsets from the United States
Links for the day
Links 14/08/2025: Data Brokers Hiding Opt-Out Pages From Google, "Fight Chat Control"
Links for the day
FSF Infrastructure Under Constant Attack
The disconnect (literally) has had an effect on credibility
Feels Like The Register MS is Trying to Diversify a Bit
If The Register MS goes back to being The Register US (or UK), that will be a nice improvement
Gemini Links 14/08/2025: Reading Journal and LLM Fatigue Revisited
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, August 13, 2025
IRC logs for Wednesday, August 13, 2025
Internet Relay Chat and Gemini Protocol Help Us Relive the Net of the Dial-Up Era
The kids were alright
"GPT-5" is Another Microsoft Dead Cat Trying to Bounce
The hype, the momentum (or the inertia) is wearing off
Microsoft Windows Losing Its Grip Near Turkey and Russia
The 'corridor' nations connecting Iran to Europe
Slopwatch: LinuxSecurity, Google News, and Serial Slopper (SS)
The slop, the bad, and the ugly
Links 13/08/2025: The “Incriminating Video” Scam and Corruption in South Korea
Links for the day
Gemini Links 13/08/2025: Movie Memories and Mystery Machine Bus
Links for the day
"AI" Hype or LLM Slop is Not About Efficiency, It's About Lowering Standards
It does not seem like IBM is genuinely committed to the same goals (or commitments) as the original Red Hat
Links 13/08/2025: GitHub Trouble and Openwashing by Microsoft OSI With the Typical Buzzwords
Links for the day
If Free/Libre Software is Adding Trillions in Value to the European Economy, Then the European Commission Must Crush Software Patents
Further to what we wrote yesterday
Microsoft Swallows GitHub Losses
Only Microsoft knows how much money it has already lost on GitHub
Gemini Links 13/08/2025: Climate, Coffee, and Deploying Troops in Washington DC After Pardoning 1,000+ Insurrectionists in Washington DC
Links for the day
The Register MS Lowered MS Focus This Week
We hope The Register recognises its errors and tries to make up for them
Learning Ethics From Jeffrey Epstein's Enabler/Client/Ally, Coca-Cola, and Microsoft Accenture
Whatever merits vocabulary changes initially had are being tainted or obscured by later iterations, which tell us to avoid word like "normal", which apparently offend some people (so they argue)
Personal Attacks From Rust People Serve to Confirm They Have Lost the Argument
"The discussion I find around the net so far has no technical merit and centers around ad hominem"
Physical Meters and Purely Mechanical Meters Aren't Dumb; It's Dumb to Mock or Dismiss Them as Antiquated
I've learned a lot this week, both online and over the telephone
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, August 12, 2025
IRC logs for Tuesday, August 12, 2025
GitHub Will End Up like XBox and Skype
It is not likely that the XBox franchise will survive the next 5 years
Stones Thrown in Glass Houses
Projecting? You bet!
As Europe Gets Increasingly Serious About Software Freedom and Digital Sovereignty It Needs to Enforce a Ban on Software Patents ASAP
many councils in Europe move to Free software and US policy/companies cannot be trusted
Windows 12 in Bahrain (Microsoft "Market Share" Down to 12%, an All-Time Low)
They really ought to get away from Windows even faster
The Web Needs 'Pest Control' When It Comes to LLM Slopfarms
The goal is to discourage more sites becoming slopfarms
Microsoft Can Now Stop Reporting the GitHub Layoffs (Even When They Happen)
GitHub's original staff will see the true cost of becoming "b0rged" - something that Microsoft earned a bad reputation for
How to Get Very Bad or Even Malicious Code Into Linux? Write it in a Language That Linus Torvalds and Most Other Linux Developers Don't Understand.
One point nobody brings up is, what if code gets committed while evading audits and scrutiny?
Links 12/08/2025: Wikipedia Fails at UK High Court, Perlmutter Still Fights to Squash the Slop Lobby
Links for the day
Gemini Links 12/08/2025: Field Recording and Digital Legacy
Links for the day
Links 12/08/2025: WinRAR Zero-Day, SonicWall Does More Harm Than Good
Links for the day
Links 12/08/2025: More Sabotage of Underwater Cable Ahead of Russian Alaska Summit
Links for the day
Richard Stallman Will Not Miss Microsoft GitHub, It Was Only Good at Harvesting a Lot of Code for Plagiarism-as-a-Service
investors are apparently willing to lose money for buzzwords
Slopfarms Slopping Away at "Linux" and Spreading Microsoft Misinformation
Slopfarms don't comprehend this as they lack actual comprehension, they're just parrots
Links 12/08/2025: Science, Hardware, and Ukraine Excluded From Negotiations About Its Future
Links for the day
GitHub the Company Has, in Effect, Just Died (Time to Look for Alternatives)
To Microsoft, what's left of GitHub after dismantling/folding it is some "training set" (people's code, without permission to "train" i.e. misuse under the guise of "GenAI" plagiarism)
Linux Foundation Says "Housekeeping", "Hung", "Normal", "Native Feature/Support" and "Girl/Girls" Are Offensive Words
Bombing people is OK, just use the right "terms"
It Looks More Like Microsoft GitHub Layoffs
GitHub is just losing loads of money
Gemini Links 12/08/2025: Meditation, OpenStreetMap, Smolweb, and More
Links for the day
Google News is Dying: Most of Its Top Stories Now Are LLM Slop With Slop Images (i.e. 100% Fake 'Content')
Google News has been drowning in this sort of stuff for quite some time
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Monday, August 11, 2025
IRC logs for Monday, August 11, 2025
Our Predictions Were Right: GitHub Dying as Losses Pile Up (as a Company It Cannot Continue to Exist, It's Not 'Free Hosting')
GitHub always lost money