Microsoft sues Brazilian official over an ANALOGY

[Commie Pinko Dirtbag]

Article in Portuguese, on a Free Software-oriented site in Brazil. I know automatic translators suck, so here's the crux of the matter:

http://www.softwarelivre.org/news/2479

Microsoft attempts to intimidate Brazilian Government

(...)

We all already knew MS doesn't admit losing and dislikes free competition, but the software giant really overstepped all acceptable limits this week. In a clear case of intimidation against the Government of Brazil, the monopolist company initiated a lawsuit against the authority in charge of Free Software deployment in Government, Sergio Amadeu, president of the National Institute for Information Technology.

The Brazilian official received a court notification of a lawsuit brought by the company against alleged statements of his, on weekly magazine Carta Capital, in which he allegedly says the company's practice of donating software to governments is like those of drug dealers. This statement, attributed to him in the magazine article, is not original. The CEO of Sun and many other Free Software proponents use this analogy: "The first dose of proprietary software distributed gratis is like a drug; after it creates dependence on its users the company starts to charge."

But why only the Brazilian official was sued?

(...)

It's an ANALOGY, you IDJATS! Don't you know what an analogy is???

Edit: More... also in Portuguese, unfortunately, from the magazine's site. Doesn't add much, only confirms the affair: http://agenciacartamaior.uol.com.br/agencia.asp?id=1940&cd_editoria=004&coluna=reportagens

[burythehatchet]

1. AS I post this message on my Mac

I can say F.U. Microsoft, with absolutely no qualms.

[KuroKensaki]

3. Mac, eh?

Because Apple doesn't know -anything- about monopolistic corporate practices.

[cprise]

5. What on earth are you talking about?

[chenGOD]

8. He's confusing monopolistic with proprietary

Yes Apple uses a proprietary OS, but they are certainly not monopolistic (can't be with like ~5% of market share).

[pagerbear]

2. Actually, it's a simile

...used to create an analogy.

[mrfrapp]

4. Right

Does this give us permission to sue Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer for saying "Linux is a cancer"? Notice how unlike in this Brazillian case, Ballmer didn't even have the decency to dress it up as an analogy.

[Tina H]

6. In this situation, does the real problem lie with . . .

Microsoft, or with Brazilian law. I think the kind of suit described in your post would get MS in trouble if similar events transpired in the US. Other countries have much stricter libel-type laws.

Maybe that is why the Brazilian court hasn't sanctioned the MS lawyers and closed the case???

If this is the case, then Brazil should reform its libel laws. I mean, you can't have overbroad and/or powerful libel laws and then count on the good grace of potential plaintiffs to prevent bad results. It just doesn't work like that.

[Commie Pinko Dirtbag]

7. AFAIK you can't sue over analogies here either but gotta confirm

Let me see if I have a chat with a lawyer I know later. He's not at the office right now.

[Tina H]

12. In the US, I think you can sue over analogies . . .

if and only if they strongly-enough imply some factually untrue thing.

My understanding is that it would be difficult to show that an analogy strongly implies some factually untrue thing. That is why we don't see a lot of US suits based on similies, analogies and the like. that is why, in the US, you can say things like "Linus Torvalds' (and friends) creation is a cancer." This implies a negative opinion, but it doesn't strongly imply anything factually untrue about Linus and his works.

[Guy_Montag]

9. Even if it's a spurious claim...

you still have to pay the lawyers to fight it.:shrug:

[Commie Pinko Dirtbag]

10. It's a moderately high government official. He'll just laugh.

REAL stupid. I like it. The more negative propaganda the merrier. :evilgrin:

[Tina H]

11. The usual rememdy against "frivolous" suits . . .

is to sanction the lawyers bringing the claim.

For some reason, MS doesn't seem to be worried about these sanctions in Brazil. To me, this means one or more of the following things are true:

1. MS is about to get sanctioned big time in Brazil (thereby paying off the defense legal fees);

2. Brazil doesn't have frivolous suit sanctions in its law and needs to add them.

3. The suit is not frivolous under Brazilian libel law. Here again, Brazil would need to fix its laws (as suggested in my previous reply).

4. there is more to this libel suit than what is related in the sketchy, poorly-translated articles we are examining on this thread.