Microsoft's 'Lawsuit Diplomacy' (SLAPPs Riding UK Libel Law and Piggybacking UK GDPR, Inapplicable!) Will Only Give a Worse Image to Microsofters (and Microsoft), Give Exposure to Even More Suppressed Facts and Scandals
Hours ago: Why GNU/Linux is Growing
Microsoft's market is shrinking steadily:
The only way Microsoft can survive rivalry is to sabotage the rival under the false guise of "security" or "secure boot" (it's not about security; it's about not allowing PCs to boot without Microsoft's approval) or by hijacking the rivals via GitHub (then throwing all the code into a plagiarism blender that takes away the licence). Those are the real issues. The people who do both things are Microsoft employees (perhaps both of them), they're in America (yet somehow they believe they can bully people in other continents via poor lawyers with no standards; that's why I reported them to the regulator; they have a track record of working for criminals who target people who merely expose the crimes [1, 2, 3]). We end up dealing with men who strangle women and harass women [1, 2] trying to jointly bully a Microsoft critic, including his wife, his mother and so on (the common theme is disregard for women). Whose utterly terrible idea was it? Could they not envision how badly this would backfire, attracting the attention of NGOs, regulators, and very soon British MPs? They clearly underestimated the response; it has now earned cross-industry attention and many lawyers keep an eye on this. This collectively threatens the reputation of their entire occupation and therefore impacts their ability to operate. There are not many media lawyers left, and not just because the media is perishing and hence there are not many "potential clients". Scraping the bottom of the barrel with ‘hired guns’ as the UK Anti-SLAPP Coalition dubbed them leads to atrocities like those of Mohamed Al Fayed.
Remember they do this while residing very far away from here, knowing it gives them special "Trumpian" protections and makes it harder for SLAPP targets to demand legal costs after the SLAPPs fall through. They chose a "limited liability partnership" (BRETT WILSON LLP), so recovering the costs from the officers can also be difficult). In this case, unlike with Putin's (or Russia's) war criminals, we basically deal with Trumpland's sexist criminals (and assorted bigots) doing SLAPPs. Two judges can see this and two judges (i.e. all of them) already issued orders in our favour (and due to obvious factors), but at what cost? SLAPP is about incurring costs, not about winning (or leveraging projected costs for extortion purposes after other extortion attempts on several levels did not bear fruit). Law firms have labelled what was done to us "abusive litigation" (a technical and legal term!) and even if we strike off a law firm with less than 100,000 left in the bank (plus debt), it won't help restore justice. However, it can help expose a wider issue [1, 2] for years to come. There's already strong momentum in this direction as high-level officials recognise the severity of the problem [1, 2]. This must end. It will end, eventually. "Guns for hire" won't last forever. They metaphorically burn their own bridges.
The tactics shouldn't be unfamiliar. This isn't unprecedented. They already admitted phoning my employer and my wife's employer. They openly admitted committing cybercrimes against me (I reported those to the police several times and gave evidence in person several times). They openly admitted their connections to Microsoft (applying for jobs, getting job offers and so on). This isn't complex to show; the complicated part is squeezing the abundant mountain of evidence into a short outline.
Microsoft (as paymaster if not implicit coordinator) is going to have a very hard time justifying all - or any - of this. Why are Microsoft staff (who get arrested for violence against women) resorting to SLAPP? Some people advised us to sue Microsoft, but it would not be cheap. Either way, writing about what happened and documenting all the details can help protect future 'targets' from similar treatment.
One can hope anyway.
Microsoft crimes aren't the exception but the normal operating procedure. Yesterday I wrote: "Never underestimate how evil Microsoft is. It's hiring stabbers and stranglers. It's a sociopathic cult. If the Web is critical of Microsoft, then Microsoft will attack the Web with chaff."
"The zeitgeist of the 1990s was decidedly pro FOSS and anti-Microsoft," a friend reminds me. "That has all been buried in revisionism. Microsoft was an on-the-way-out PITA as far as all IT people were concerned back."
They also stalk, bully, and do other illegal things to critics. Politicians should learn to treat the company accordingly. Sadly, many politicians continue to treat the company as just another ordinary American firm that "creates jobs" (or gives bribes with money that does not exist!).
Microsoft came to dominate some sectors because of (or owing to) crimes; Microsoft won't just go away without some more crimes.
To be clear, reporting facts isn't illegal in any way - it is in fact a public service (we do this pro bono) - and trying to crush reporters will merely result in even more scandals coming out (we have a cache of material to publish about what else happened in GitHub). The begging and threats are attempts to shift attention away from real scandals.
No amount of Wikipedia manipulation can ameliorate the situation, cover up timelines, or deflect attention from what Miguel de Icaza and Nat Friedman did (he reportedly 'quit' as CEO of GitHub so very suddenly) while we got SLAPPed with likely invalid letters from a serial defamer* (and repeated threats, never followed up by action; these people think courts exist for entertainment or jokes or pranks or extortion).
Miguel de Icaza and his rogue sidekicks can laugh all they want and run (away from Microsoft), but they cannot hide.
Victims of strangulation by their friend and colleague aren't blind to what's happening. This won't end well for Microsoft. Unlike some loser who lives with his dad (and gets arrested at his dad's home; another was arrested outside the home of his boss just like Rick Allen Jones, the engineer of Bill Gates who got arrested for pedophilia at Gates' home), Microsoft has some reputation to guard.
Tossing more and more money into SLAPPs or clogging up the docket with SLAPPs will worsen - not improve - things. It didn't work for Harvey Weinstein, it only became a much bigger scandal which eventually spiralled out of control [1, 2, 3]. In the case of Wikileaks, it still causes further (new) embarrassment to those who besieged Julian Assange after he had published true information. █
"The libel case brought by Prigozhin against Higgins bears many of the hallmarks of a SLAPP, including the singling out of a journalist for tweets linking to articles by several non UK media outlets, which themselves were not subject to any legal action. Discreet Law, a UK based law firm, which has since ceased practice, pursued legal action against Higgins and also explored similar litigation against the BBC, which was later understood to be an intentional strategy by Prigozhin to undermine the basis of sanctions against him." UK Anti-SLAPP Coalition criticises the SRA’s closure of Higgins’ SLAPP complaint and points to need for universal SLAPP protections
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* In order to seem important he loves defaming people way above his level, such as the EFF's cofounder, the OSI's cofounder, the FSF's founder, and the person who made Linux and Git.