This year the JOY award (Jerk of the Year) has two awardees. Can we give it up for ... SCO (Santa Cruz Operations), and the RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America)! Congrats! First up: SCO SCO's pathetic attempt to claim ownership to Linux is just jaw-droppingly lame. 1) Before they began spouting these ridiculous claims, guess what? SCO's top officers have been doing nothing but selling off their stocks. Umm, c'mon how obvious can this be. Apparently they've got a lot of confidence in their claims. Red flag, anybody? 2) They say pieces of code in Linux are from UNIX System V (for which they own the license). Although they haven't released all the examples they've supposedly found (saving it for the courtroom), the ones they have found have been proven to be very flaky - an indication to the nature of their claims, built upon lies, smoke & mirrors. 3) In response to Bruce Perens' picking apart their presentation, they respond with an open letter, in which the original article is completely misquoted and taken out of context. This is getting more blatantly absurd by the day. fin: I hope IBM stomps these fools into the ground in the courtroom. In fact, this is so totally unethical I hope these guys go to jail - and not the white collar kind, but the pound me in the ass prison (sorry). It really makes me want to hurl just reading about this stuff, so I try not to. If you want more details, here's a website that gives continual updates and a detailed scoop. This is such a mockery of the American legal system, of businesses, of consumers, admittedly each of which are far from perfect, but this is the kid who has chocolate smeared all over his face and fingers, pointing at some other kid claiming loudly and vehemently that the other kid ate the candy - bold lies, no conscience whatsoever. Our next friend: RIAA The RIAA has a legal (by the letter, but arguably not in spirit) claim to music. While I'm no advocate of music piracy, the bullying tactics employed by the RIAA are enough to sour any sympathy they might have with the public. They consistently produce claims that are ridiculous - its insulting and incredibly patronising the way they're treating the very people who've been putting money into their pockets for so many years. What makes it worse is that these people are nothing but middle men - they don't create the music, they don't listen to the people who buy the music, they don't promote good will (inflated CD prices), pretty much they have no redeeming quality for anyone. They just sit in the middle and make a hat-load of money. Their claims are inflated and reek of a legalistic self-righetousness - stomping over businesses, the public, the government in a messy fit of indignation. Yes, it'll make you wanna puke. 1) Instead of identifying consumer trends wisely & going with it (a la Apple's iTunes) they're going with the communist China approach of "You've violated us - now you will die." They're haphazardly handing out subpoenas - strongarm scare tactics. I've never heard of anyone doing anything like this before. 2) 12 year old girl sued for music downloading. 3) a google search for riaa tactics will reveal pages upon pages of stories of how disgustingly they've gone about this whole thing. 4) the RIAA has kindly offered an amnesty program. Thanks guys. You're the best. From the article about the 12-yr-old girl: "Nobody likes playing the heavy and having to resort to litigation," said Cary Sherman, the RIAA's president. "But when your product is being regularly stolen, there comes a time when you have to take appropriate action." Aww poor Cary. Cause you worked so hard to write that song all by yourself, and now the bad people have come and stolen it from you. The irony is after ripping off the American people for so long, they can't stand to have a taste of their own.