Bonum Certa Men Certa

Did Microsoft Buy FUD From Barnes and Noble? Did Microsoft Simply Pay a Bribe? If So, Is That Legal?

Dollar



Summary: News updates about Android/Google defence in the face of aggression and market distortion from Microsoft and from Oracle

THE wide range of bribe types includes gentle bribe [1, 2, 3, 4] and lobbying.



Not every bribe is being referred to as such; this is the art of buying influence short of classical bribery. Sometimes it is being painted with the "just politics" or "just business" brush.

"Sometimes it is being painted with the "just politics" or "just business" brush."We recently alluded to the Barnes & Noble deal, about which Jay Lyman writes: "with the deal in place, Barnes & Noble is no longer putting pressure on Microsoft to explain exactly where it asserted IP rights over Android."

This is a trick that Microsoft pulled before. It's like buying terror, paying the reluctant victim some money to stop fighting against extortion and thus paving the way to more of it. As the same source put it, "Microsoft has bought a share of Barnes & Noble's Nook e-reader business."

Nice way to pass a bribe -- "buying a share". Barnes & Noble was important in this battle for Android freedom (gratis) and Microsoft has just neutralised it. It may make "business sense" for both sides to make such a transaction, but it's akin to a bribe that helps Microsoft further distort the market.

As SJVN put it:

So, did Microsoft do the deal just because they realized that if their anti-Android patents would be ruled to be FUD? No, but it did have a heck of a lot to do with it. As Alison Frankel, senior writer at The American Lawyer, commented, “Microsoft paid B&N, the patent defendant, a sum of money that exceeded the marketplace value of its investment. How often does a patent plaintiff pay the defendant in a settlement? Especially when that defendant is on the ropes and urgently searching for a strategic investor?”

I know the answer to that one: Never.


Yes, but it's a bribe. The "b" word oughtn't be a taboo.

On another front, APIs in Android are leading to copyright madness. "Irrespective of my opinion on the subject," writes one analyst, "what will the impact be should APIs prove copyrightable? It is likely to be extensive, cascading and a lesson in unintended consequences. Even parties with no intention of asserting their intellectual property rights concerning APIs – think authors of permissively licensed programming languages, as one example – will presumably be required to commit to non-enforcement, contractually. And obviously those parties wishing to realize another revenue stream, limit competition or both will ramp up legal actions around unlicensed usage of the APIs in question. It’s difficult to fully predict the downstream effects, but given the accelerating servicification of the world, a decision in favor of copyrightable APIs is likely to be at least as damaging as the patent system is today."

Here is what Simon Phipps wrote while the Microsoft boosters used it against Android. Joe Mullin said that headaches loom, whereas the FSF issued this statement and Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols mocked the case, calling it a "Dead lawsuit walking":

Oracle’s case is as dead now as when it began. Like SCO with its insane attacks against IBM and Linux, Oracle doesn’t have a leg to stand on in its Google litigation.


Later on SJVN remarked on this whole copyright nonsense and the Against Monopoly Web site used it to show how outdated copyright law is becoming. To quote:

The courts continue to get to make copyright and patent law. The latest involves Oracle which is suing Google over Oracle's Application Programming Interface (API) as well as other lesser elements.


It has become more apparent that copyrights law -- not just patent law -- is an impediment to software freedom and programming in general. Tech dinosaurs use those antiquated laws to hold back progress.

Recent Techrights' Posts

This Saturday It's Gonna be 3.5 Years* Since Russia Invaded Ukraine. No Microsoft Protests Against Microsoft Having Provided Russia With Services.
Companies do not have consistent policies and enforcement of "corporate values" is somewhat of an egg salad
Slopwatch: Sites Gone Rogue, Google Promoting Lies, and DDoS Attacks by Plagiarism Giants
Charlatans and frauds engage in a war against artistic industries, mislabeling plagiarism as "AI"
End of the Smartphone Era? No.
Maybe the media should focus on producing accurate, factual news
Latest Is Not Greatest: The Case of "Foldable" Tech
don't be shamed into abandoning old things just because the "fashion industry" of Apple and Samsung tells you to
 
Microsoft Has Issues in Guyana
It's not just Guyana
About 25% of the "Linux" News/Results in Google News Today Are LLM Slop, Almost 20% From the Same Rogue Operators of Slopfarms
Google, which tries to market itself as an LLM giant, apparently fails to understand what's wrong with it
Harassing People on Holiday
There are "no-go areas"; but that assumes all laws firms have ethical standards
The Great, Undeniable Value of Paper Trail, Not Purely Digital Systems
Suppose you have nothing but bits on someone else's computer and "word of mouth"...
The Company Behind Ars Technica, Reddit and Wired Caught Publishing LLM Slop (It Also Admits It Now)
Condé Nast busted
Links 22/08/2025: Lagrange 1.18.8, Wired Magazine and Business Insider Caught Resorting to LLM Slop
Links for the day
Links 22/08/2025: Cisco Layoffs, LA Times Says "AI Hype is Fading Fast"
Links for the day
Gemini Links 22/08/2025: K for Kentucky and Caddy Versus LLM Slopbots
Links for the day
The "End Software Patents" Initiative of the FSF Explains "WHY [to] ABOLISH SOFTWARE PATENTS"
We hope to cover patent-related issues more and more as the big anniversary of the FSF approaches
Freenode Sniffing
The grown-ups left the building
The Only Thing Worse Than Misinformation is Misinformation Sold to Everyone as "Intelligence"
Misplaced trust is worse than none at all
The Register MS Now Openly Admits LLM Hype Does Damage, But It's Also Being Paid to Participate in the LLM Hype (With Paid 'Articles' and 'Webcasts' for Paying Advertisers)
The Register MS gets paid to do this
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Thursday, August 21, 2025
IRC logs for Thursday, August 21, 2025
Enshittification of Airports, Airlines, and Airplanes
If people are willing to tolerate standard declines and enshittification (nowadays sold as "pivot to AI" or "replaced by AI" or "AI layoffs") they will pay for it some other way
Airlines and Their Tricks That Only Work in the 'Digital Age'
People sceptical of the direction technology has taken are not "Luddites"
Open Source Initiative (OSI), Which Became a Propaganda Front of Microsoft and "Hey Hi" (Hype, Misnomer), Wants You to Forget These Scandals
A lot of these issues won't be set aside until there's a resolution
The Culture of Overnight Coding
An industry-wise push-back is needed
Windows Down to New Lows in Guinea Bissau and Many Countries Around It
If Android is accounted for, Windows is down to about 10%
Gemini Links 21/08/2025: Modern Dating, Debian 13, and Apache
Links for the day
Microsoft Has Had About 10 Waves of Mass Layoffs So Far This Year (Not Two as Mainstream Media and Slopfarms Endlessly Claim)
Notice how the MSM (Mainstream Media) never mentions the debt of Microsoft. It is a conscious, deliberate decision.
Links 21/08/2025: Covid Cases on the Rise, "Social Media Trolls", Russia's Attacks Intensify
Links for the day
Gemini Links 21/08/2025: The Attraction of Back Alleys, Initramfs, and BSD ISPs
Links for the day
Links 21/08/2025: Stephanie Shirley Dies and "Groklaw Domain Hijacked?"
Links for the day
Search in 2025 (Age of DDoS Attacks Under the Guise of "AI" "Innovation")
One common concern when things go "live" is that any random bot out there can execute queries, pumping up RAM and CPU usage, as happened when we used MediaWiki and WordPress
Using Slop for Images Does Not Make Your Site Look Advanced or Witty, It Just Makes Your Whole Work Look Like Presumed Plagiarism
Lazy slobs and Serial Sloppers use the guise/excuse of "AI" to plagiarise and spam the Web
Financing of the "Hey Hi" (AI) Bubble by Those Who Profit From Planetary Destruction (Global Warming)
It's about personal gain, too
Richard Stallman Will Speak in Ethereum Cypherpunk Congress
it's good to see that the FSF pays considerable respect to it founder, who is moreover invited to speak at events
(At Least) Second Wave of Mass Layoffs in Microsoft This Month
This is not the first time this month that Microsoft has mass layoffs
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, August 20, 2025
IRC logs for Wednesday, August 20, 2025
IBM Operatives Inside The Register MS and More Shady Money to Follow
The Register MS bites every banknote it can sink its teeth into
On the Internet, Nobody Knows Microsoft and Windows Are Becoming Niche Players Until Data is Shown Correctly, Not Microsoft-Sponsored Articles in Microsoft Publishers
Microsoft controls a lot of publishers and thus it controls information
Slopwatch: Serial Sloppers and Slopfarms in Google News (e.g. Linux Journal and WebProNews)
Google plays an active role (if not deliberately then through utter neglect and carelessness) in plagiarism
Links 20/08/2025: Mass Surveillance Framed as "Artificial Intelligence" (All Old Things Reworded to Misframe Old Computer Issues), Europe Resists Capitulation to US(SR)
Links for the day
Gemini Links 20/08/2025: Trips and Permacomputing
Links for the day
Links 20/08/2025: Oracle Layoffs in India, "AI" Scammers/Profiteers Admit It's a "Bubble", Softbank-Saudi (Oil) Control Tech Companies
Links for the day
Social Control Networks Give You False Metrics to 'Addict' You To Them
Leaving social control media may seem hard, but the same is true for any other addiction
A Lot of What Happened in Twitter Was Bots, Botfarms, and Troll Farms. It's Even Worse Now (Under X.com) and People Are Noticing.
Last month we said the same was happening in YouTube
Microsoft May Have Become - at Least Partially - Like a Boiler Room Scam
Giving imaginary salaries using imaginary tokens based on imaginary value (with restrictions on conversion to cash)
In Vietnam, Microsoft's Search Engine "Market Share" Fell to Almost 0%, CocCoc More Than 5 Times Bigger
Why are people still investing in this company?
All That's Left of MSNBC (Microsoft-NBC) is Microsoft NOW
When plutocrats and large corporations (even deep in debt) buy all the communication channels
The Register MS, Paid to Promote "AI" Hype, Does "Sez" (Says) Pieces
every bubble-funded "news" site tries to make it a story about "AI"
Many Companies Are Run by Liars Who Ride Other People's Money
Or steal it
Before CoreAI There Was Builder.ai
GitHub isn't about "AI" (just a bunch of lies and storytelling for shareholders' patience)
Microsoft Windows in Croatia at New Lows
We've been keeping track of this trend for a while
Using the Best Tool/s for the Job: RSS Feeds and RSS Readers
Use RSS feeds. Reject those "modern" Web things
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, August 19, 2025
IRC logs for Tuesday, August 19, 2025
Gemini Links 20/08/2025: Neovim, XML, and Alhena 5.2.9
Links for the day