12.16.09
Microsoft Uses the Hire-a-Shill Approach to Remove Guilt of Copyright Infringement
Summary: In the face of bad publicity and admission of crime, which the British press wrongly describes as “theft” (it’s copyright infringement — not stealing — as the code gets duplicated, not misplaced), Microsoft blames someone else
A COUPLE of days ago we wrote about Microsoft's latest copyright violation. It is not “theft” or “stealing”, but big news sites like The Guardian and The BBC promote the propaganda line that code can be “stolen”. Here are the opening words that are misleading:
Microsoft admits stealing code from startup
Microsoft has suspended a new internet messaging service in China, after it emerged that the site was partially based on code stolen from a rival startup.
The site, Juku, launched in November is similar in concept to other online messaging systems like Twitter. But earlier this week the team behind Plurk, a young internet company based in Canada and popular with users across Asia, accused Microsoft of directly copying as much as 80% of the code to run the program.
Microsoft admits code theft for Chinese blog Juku
Microsoft has indefinitely suspended its Chinese microblogging service MSN Juku after admitting that it “copied” code used to create the site.
A vendor contracted to work for the software giant was caught lifting code from a rival Canadian start-up, Plurk.
This is a crime, but it is not stealing. The crime is copyright infringement.
As pointed out here, Microsoft is already blaming someone else, a company it hired in this case. Plurk isn’t buying it.
Plurk though don’t seem convinced they had this to say in regards to the incident:
we have a very hard time believing, given the size and scope of the undertaking, that there was no active involvement or development taking place directly within Microsoft itself on this service,
The mainstream press may hardly ever cover this, but Microsoft often blames its PR agencies for bribes and misconduct like AstroTurfing or spying on people. This is essentially what’s happening here because Microsoft’s official response is an attempt at blame-shifting. Microsoft is 100% liable for work it ‘externalises’. █
“I thanked Rose for all of his trips to Seattle and his willingness to distract a lot of time for the lawsuit.”
–Bill Gates
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