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Groklaw Shifts Gears, Now Stressing Preservation
Posted by
kdawson
on Tue Jan 06, 2009 03:36 PM
from the think-of-the-posterity dept.
from the think-of-the-posterity dept.
dan of the north notes a change of direction at Groklaw. Pamela Jones (PJ) writes: "I think we need to use this time to perfect our work and ensure Groklaw's preservation. It will require shutting down the daily articles and News Picks, at least for the forseeable future, but I'm convinced it's important to do it. One of the core purposes of Groklaw has always been to create a reliable record for historians and law schools to use our materials to teach and inform. ... I choose to make sure our work as fully reliable, comprehensive and, to the degree humanly possible, permanent. ... Groklaw's collection of materials is really valuable. I'd like to ensure that it survives. ... We've covered the SCO litigations since May of 2003, and it's the only complete record of this important phase in IT history."
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Only complete record? (Score:3, Insightful)
If Groklaw has the only complete record of the SCO ligitation then some court archivist should be looking for work.
Re:Only complete record? (Score:5, Insightful)
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It would be nice if they did a dump of their database or something and put it up as a torrent. Let the information be free. Even if someone mirrored the site, they would probably still go to Groklaw.
Re:Only complete record? (Score:5, Informative)
The record of SCO also includes press coverage, lawyer biographies, etc. It also spans across multiple litigants and across multiple courts in multiple jurisdictions. No single court will have a complete archive of SCO filings, and none will have press coverage and commentary. So yes, groklaw is the ONLY archive that includes the complete story.
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Re:Only complete record? (Score:5, Insightful)
In addition, many of the press releases, blog entries, etc. that SCO posted over the years have been withdrawn from their web site and/or revised.
In many cases, Groklaw made a copy of the relevant pages at the time that they were relevant, so that later revisionist history could be seen for what it was.
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Re:Only complete record? (Score:5, Insightful)
It is not that original materials are not available -- rather Groklaw has collected the materials from multiple cases, multiple courts and converted documents to text.
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Re:Only complete record? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Only complete record? (Score:5, Insightful)
Not to mention analysis, reaction, and discussion. No court record includes that.
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Im troubled (Score:2, Interesting)
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We can only hope,
But unfortunately we are more likely to have them appointed to the Attorney General's office than commit suicide.
Re:Im troubled (Score:5, Insightful)
Which trial are you referring to? There are multiple cases still pending.
What cases? The only one that matters, SCO already lost. They do not own the copyrights that everything else rests on.
They're appealing that, but a decision already exists. And given that, there are no cases currently "pending" that I know of - Novell had already waived IBM's licensing responsibilities, and they reiterated that after winning their case against SCO. So SCO has no basis on which to sue IBM. And they owe Novell a bunch of money - probably more than they can afford and stay in business.
There might be a few minor claims remaining related to financial things that SCO has against IBM, but it's no longer a major case even if so. More of a minor business dispute.
If SCO somehow wins its appeal, then sure. But the one case upon which everything else hinges is already decided; it would need to actually be overturned for any other cases to go forward. And judges don't like to overturn other judges without a really good reason. (And as PJ points out, it's not like SCO can present any further evidence - the new judge looks at the same evidence.)
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Lanham Act violations (Score:3, Informative)
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I would like to hope that they cover software patent cases, RIAA/MPAA cases and any other relevant technology law cases that might come up in the future.
SCO Who? (Score:4, Informative)
While the corpse is still twitching, we are waiting for the formal burning, so its good that Groklaw keep up with the formalities.
And while it has been good to follow along, I agree it will be more for academia than for the casual web user.
Good Luck to PJ.
It's a post-Groklaw web now (Score:5, Insightful)
Those were halcyon days, back when Groklaw was in eveyr technorati's bookmarks, and all nerd-rage found a unifying enemy in SCO. 6 years later, Linux is free and clear, the Alex de Tocqueville institute is forgotten, as is Dan Lyons, Daniel Wallace, Maureen O'Gara, the Yankee Group, and the guy who did tech news and SCO-shilling who is so forgotten I can't even find him on Google anymore (a testament to how old this stuff is: I read about him every day and I can't even remember or find his name).
Back then, it was the few and informed fighting against the ignorance of an entire market of empty-headed, buzzword-filled suits. It stoked my ego to have a "cause" to fight for, even if it was exclusively by arguing with trolls on the internet.
But the job's done. I'm not aware of any rampant corporate FOSS-phobia (every big player's got their hands in the pot, now). SCO's dead. Linux lives. And it survives merely on its merits, not because of any inherent philosophical superiority. Technorati and business pro's alike (it's a Venn diagram; I know) choose the best tool for the job. The old arguments are, for the most part, dead.
I think the end of Groklaw as a significant force in FOSS started around the time of the "GrokWars." It's obvious to me that if allies have enough time to fight each other (over stupid stuff, at that), then whatever common enemy it was that held them together is either dead or irrelevant.
While Groklaw had some significant voice in the GPL v3 debate, I think that was its last hurrah. Today, we simply don't need Groklaw anymore.
Of course, I would call that success of mission.
Re:It's a post-Groklaw web now (Score:5, Informative)
...and SCO-shilling who is so forgotten I can't even find him on Google anymore
Could it be that you refer to Rob Enderle? Interesting, but old bit about him here [tgdaily.com]
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You got it! Rob Enderle, complete tool-bag.
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As is often case for controversial subjects, the Wikipedia history tells a better story than current entry itself.
Re:It's a post-Groklaw web now (Score:5, Insightful)
I think the end of Groklaw as a significant force in FOSS.... Today, we simply don't need Groklaw anymore.
There's no law that says that Groklaw has to have anything to do with FOSS. It can live on just fine as a site which covers legal developments of interest to its geeky audience... and yes, we do need that. Badly. There is no such thing as too many sources providing clear and level-headed coverage of what's going on in our legal system.
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Re:It's a post-Groklaw web now (Score:5, Insightful)
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Don't you mean that all nerd-rage was distracted from Microsoft's attacks by the front organisation that was SCO?
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Funny, just yesterday someone on slashdot was linking to a security book written by a "senior analyst" at Yankee Group.
Accuracy (Score:5, Funny)
PJ said in the first interview [linux.org] (31 July 2003):
"I was forever reading Slashdot comments about legal news and most of the comments would be way off..."
I'm shocked!
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IANAL, but she might be right.
Call me cynical but... (Score:2, Troll)
Was her mysterious identity ever uncovered?
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Re:Call me cynical but... (Score:5, Insightful)
Doesn't this lend credit to the idea that perhaps PJ was hired solely to cover the SCO trial?
Was her mysterious identity ever uncovered?
Why in hell should a person subject their identity and private information to the whim of the trolls on the Internet in any capacity, just to "prove" they aren't hiding something sinister? Try proving there WAS something sinister, I'll certainly take that complaint more credibly.
Internet anonymity is here to stay (as it should be) as there is no proof positive way to identify other Internet going users without subjecting them to very real risks in meat-space (stalkers, or worse). Come to think of it there are very very few ways to positively identify people in meat-space (even with fingerprints and SSN cards) let alone verify their intentions...
It is ALWAYS up to you, the reader, browser, and consumer to attempt to determine truth and fiction based on your own balance of values, experiences, and interpretations. Use your own trust network to find that out for yourself. Come back and stir the pot once you have something more legitimate than a suspicion about someone else's suspicion about someone else's theory. Second hand truth is better than third hand theory in my opinion.
If you think there is bias in her reporting then go ahead and think there is bias in her reporting. Seek another truth if you believe it to exist. However, in that same stroke, the air of credibility seems to be on PJ's side to many many people. I have found minimal reason to be concerned personally with whether or not she WAS hired. I'm just glad to be informed of her take on the matter.
However, you are perfectly free to be paranoid about her identity all you like, but expecting her identity to be proven in an environment of suspicion is just stupidity. Being proven so you feel better about it is simple idiocy.
Fanatics and conspiracy nuts will always be good at inadvertently burying the truth when it comes out in a sea of accusations anyways because people are blinded by their opinions. So what does it matter? The truth could already have been said.
- Toast
P.S. Nothing personal, I'm having my second Monday of the week here at work...
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And so is the desire to remove anonymity. Both are acceptable.
Anonymity should be an even exchange for credibility as I see it. Since you could meet me in meat-space and I could lie to you about everything from my identity down to my intentions what can you prove simply by knowing my "name" or "address"? Hell, I could even gather up some paid "friends" to spread some good rumors about what my intentions are too (just for good measure). Volunteering your real identity to add credibility to something you say is nothing more than a token gesture to me. The rest of what y
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This is also a classic case of histo
I'm a bit confused by this. (Score:5, Insightful)
I read PJ's post on Groklaw, linked to in the article summary. It seems as if she's effectively defining Groklaw's purpose as being to deal with the threat to free and open-source software brought on by the SCO cases; that being so, if the threat from SCO is over, there's not much to do except to make sure that the tons of archived information is correct, and to work to make it easily accessible to those who might come to need it in the future.
1. Is it really the case that the SCO cases are over? It's true that SCO's cases against IBM, Autozone, and Red Hat are moot if SCO doesn't hold the copyrights they use as the basis for their claim; but SCO plans to appeal the judgment in Novell's favor. Until that appeal is done, it doesn't seem to me to be over.
2. Even assuming the SCO aspect of this situation is over, the fundamental issues here haven't been decided. Essentially, the judgment against SCO means that SCO doesn't have standing to bring a lawsuit against IBM. But if Novell were to become evil, then who's to say they couldn't bring such a lawsuit? The fundamental question of whether Linux infringes on UNIX copyrights has yet to be decided on in court (however ridiculous any of us may feel such a claim to be). That was the issue when Groklaw originally got started, and it's still out there.
3. Furthermore, it's not the only legal issue that could threaten Linux or other FOSS projects in the future. Groklaw has at times addressed issues associated with patents and trade secrets, and those aren't going anywhere. And we still have yet to finish cases in which software companies attempt to invalidate the terms of the GPL, to exculpate themselves from appropriating code from projects licensed under the GPL -- also a topic occasionally covered by Groklaw. I understand that it's PJ's blog, and her life, and the focus of Groklaw is whatever she says it is. But it's still sad, because the decision to define the focus of the resource (for that's what its archives and especially its participant base are) narrowly leaves behind a vacuum at a time when there are still real threats to oppose.
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to take your points in order;
1) SCO's cases are moot if they do not own the copyrights. They don't have standing to sue. The cases are dead. Even SCO has admitted as much. Since no new evidence can be submitted on appeals, and SCO has no, none, zero, zip written evidence to support their claim that they got the copyrights, and Novell has reams of evidence that copyrights were deliberately excluded from the sale, SCO is wasting everyone's time. Speculation has it they are delaying long enough for (mis)-manag
We need Groklaw for the next war, not the last.. (Score:5, Insightful)
I understand the need to draw down, but I certainly would hate for PJ to totally throw in the towel. She's accomplished something by harnessing the output of the legal system to an FOSS platform in a way Geeks can understand. That is elegant and original and incredibly, incredibly important. What about net neutrality and invasion of privacy and the next organization that decides, "Who cares about legality, we can get away with it." Groklaw is the 11th commandment. Thou shalt not get away with it. The legal system as it is, is the OS of our society. Groklaw is the repository for documentation of that OS and the ways it can be played with or corrupted, the same way exploits can be carried out in computer operating systems. It's stretching a metaphor naturally.
Re:We need Groklaw for the next war, not the last. (Score:5, Funny)
That's pretty damned scary.
I have finally understood it! Society is running Windows! That's why the legal system is slow, overly complex, buggy, expensive, designed by marketing I mean campaign contributions, applies itself to things that are not legal problems, and not under the control of the average end users! Suddenly it makes sense.
Yeah, that's still pretty scary.
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Yeah but the GP wasn't really right. The court systems are only as open as you can afford. There were real costs associated with obtaining the mountains of court transcripts for Groklaw. Much of that cost was borne by a relatively small number of participants who resided near the relevant courthouses.
Without the persistent action of a small number of people and PJ's tenacity, Groklaw wouldn't have ever gotten off the ground.
In this day and age, it's a travesty court transcripts aren't published for free on
Groklaw isn't the only resource... (Score:5, Insightful)
There's groups like the EFF, sites like Chilling Effects, and individual blogs like NYCL's, news aggregators like Slashdot, magazines like Wired, and many others... I can only begin a list of the categories, let alone the sites themselves.
Groklaw has been a rallying point for part of the online civil discourse, but it's not the only one. Perhaps the community that has grown around Groklaw can keep using it as a touchstone, as they shift their own emphasis to other parts of the web, but that doesn't need Pamela's continued engagement and daily involvement, does it?
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Re:Groklaw isn't the only resource... (Score:5, Informative)
Groklaw is certainly the only thorough one. Many other sites touch on these issues from time to time, but none so frequently and thoroughly as Groklaw. Every single major even in the SCO litigation appears to have been covered, most major documents analyzed and all of the judge's comments and rulings criticized.
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Could be, could be, so perhaps the Groklaw community has an opportunity here, if they can pull together and set up a broader based site that's not focussed on a single lawsuit.
But I've seen and been a part of so many groups like this, though, and I've found that once the original cause is won or lost they rarely hang together.
Drawing a line under the SCO trial and archiving the whole thing will at least retain that focus for a while, and provide a resource for "the next time". The current "net neutrality" d
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COSUARD and Network Neutrality (Score:2)
And yet the same companies that were trying to scam hobbyists into paying business rates are trying to scam websites into paying them twice for the same traffic.
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I would love to see groklaw's present state archived for posterity in a more convenient to browse format for archival purposes (also easier to mirror).
At the same time, I'd love the site to carry on analyzing legal news (PJ and contributors willing) separately.
Submit everything to the Library of Congress (Score:4, Interesting)
Submit all of Groklaw's electronic publications to the Library of Congress.
They're a reliable long-term (centuries) repository of publications.
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And if possible to similar libraries in other countries as well.
In Britain we have the British Library, the National Libraries of Scotland and Wales, and the University Libraries of Oxford, Cambridge and Dublin. Dublin is not in Britain, but nevertheless it is one of the British copyright libraries.
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Now that you mention it, I'll go and inform my librarian colleagues at the Netherlands National Library next work day.
Formal recognition of PJ's contribution to law (Score:5, Insightful)
I think this would be a good time to seek some formal honours for PJ. Granted she has all the respect she has earned from the community over the course of the SCO epic, but it would be nice to find some appropriate gesture to show her in some tangible way just how valuable we believe she is as a person.
I don't know what she includes in her formal qualifications, but an honourary doctorate from some high profile law school (whether she has an LLD already or whatnot) would probably not go astray. For that matter, I wouldn't think a Presidential Medal of Freedom would be inappropriate either, but that's just me. PJ has not been just a breath of fresh air, she's been the only air we had. To honour her appropriately for that accomplishment would also be to honour an example of where people exercised their democratic right to resist bullying by people who see the courts as just another business tool.
IMO: somebody should take over groklaw (Score:3, Interesting)
Groklaw is something like an established brand name. Groklaw has been quoted - or mentioned - in many major publications, groklaw has has won many awards, and has an established reader base.
Groklaw is not just about the scox case. Groklaw has covered, in considerable depth, many legal issues relating to IT. For example the OOXML scam.
Although I would welcome PJ to write more articles, I don't think groklaw really needs PJ anymore.
I think PJ is being very disingenuous (Score:5, Interesting)
As a supporter and advocate of open source software, and more importantly, the principle of openness, I don't understand how PJ can come now to the open source community in general, and veteran groklaw readers in particular, with a straight face, and claim that she is suddenly interested in preserving the so-called 'complete' record of groklaw.
This, after she has spent the last five years systematically avoiding transparency in groklaw's operations, and maintaining an iron grip on its contents by blocking access to user's comments from archive.org, and the major search engines such as google, msn, and yahoo via robots.txt. And not only has she blocked outside search engines, but she has also deliberately disabled the ability within groklaw to search for comments by author, thus making it much more difficult to see how her own comments have changed over time, and have sometimes even contradicted themselves.
I think that PJ has, through her own behavior, irreparibly harmed, if not totally destroyed, the value of groklaw as a historical reference, by her relentless exertion of absolute control over every comment posted, quickly deleting all posts that do not sufficiently toe the party line, and literally "disappearing" the accounts of some of groklaw's most valuable contributors when they dared to disagree with her even slightly. As a result, groklaw has become little more than a strident speaker on a soapbox, in the center of a large echo chamber, resounding to the shouts of "Amen!" by the true believers.
Those of you who have followed groklaw from its earliest days will remember one frequent contributor by the handle of "AllParadox", who learned firsthand how groklaw really operates. A retired attorney by his own account, his insightful posts were the product of years of legal experience, both in and out of the courtroom. In the beginning, he was one of PJ's staunchest defenders and advocates, vociferously rebuking any and all criticism of her. Then, something happened, and his posts disappeared. In an instant, he became an un-person, and all who asked about him or mentioned him also ran the risk of being made un-persons by PJ. His own comments about what happened to him on groklaw can be found here: http://messages.finance.yahoo.com/Stocks_(A_to_Z)/Stocks_S/threadview?m=tm&bn=2942&tid=383807&mid=383807&tof=10&so=E&rt=2&frt=2&off=1&p=mq611k_AWrbLlqArvKx.K_r6c55v2m5DOHmUgyxq6.J5PYFCet.LUhM- [yahoo.com]
What is perhaps even more troubling than the heavy-handed censorship of different voices on groklaw, is that PJ reportedly uses a very deceptive practice, sometimes called shadow-banning or shadow-deletion. The way that it reportedly works is to make the posts of a shadow-banned member invisible to everyone except PJ and the banned poster. Because of this, nobody except PJ can see, or know, what exactly is on any given page of the site. The version of groklaw that one ordinary user, "Alice", sees may be very different from the version that another user, "Bob", sees. This alone means that groklaw can never be taken seriously as an historical archive. An archive must have a fixed and immutable content; it cannot change itself depending on who is accessing it.
Moreover, one of the most important aspects of an archive is that it provides us with an accurate record of the nature of the *debate* about controversial issues in the past, and to show how one side won the *argument* with reasons, and persuasion. Seeing how arguments were won and lost can be very informative, and helpful to us as we face new challenges. An archive would be virtually useless if it systematically expunged one side of every argument. Indeed, it would be very Orwellian.
Over the years, when she has been questioned about her management of groklaw, PJ and he
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In other news... "Groklaw DDOS'd by spiders!"
Re:First post!! (Score:5, Funny)
Women want you, men bow their heads, and all of creation wants to be just like you.
Truly, the Übermensch has arrived !!
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