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Burst.com and Microsoft Settle 226

Posted by timothy from the legal-shenanigans dept.
prostoalex writes "Microsoft and Burst.com announced a tentative settlement, where Microsoft will pay Californian company $60 mln for allegedly stolen multimedia streaming software. Robert X. Cringely provided the recap of the court case back in 2003 (and Slashdot discussion ensued). According to Burst claims, Microsoft entered a non-disclosure agreement with the company to learn about Burst's multimedia streaming technology. Later the technology, for which Burst has 37 patents, has been found in Windows Media Player. When aksed to present the archives of the e-mails and all communications within the company for the trial, Microsoft somehow presented all the documents that preceded before the deal and the documents that followed it. The e-mails during the 35 weeks that negotiations were held mysteriously disappeared. In court Microsoft claimed the e-mails were erased from employee's desktops, e-mail servers and server backups. The technology was not interesting to Microsoft, lawyers insisted, so the electronic trail of communications was erased."
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Burst.com and Microsoft Settle More

Burst.com and Microsoft Settle

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  • How does one... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by maotx ( 765127 ) <maotx@@@yahoo...com> on Saturday March 12, 2005 @06:07PM (#11922209)
    In court Microsoft claimed the e-mails were erased from employee's desktops, e-mail servers and server backups.

    I don't know how Microsoft's IT structure works but I know at where I work we have snapshots of all of our data done every week and held for a month. Then at the month limit we archive our data for another year. Not to mention the nightly incremental backups. Essentially we can go back to any time of a week for a month, then in month increments and recover that snapshot.

    I guess what I'm getting at is how exactly does a company lose "uninteresting" data spanning a period of 35 weeks unless it's intentional?

    It would be near impossible for someone to cover ones tracks without going through only God knows how many tapes and erasing said data.

    • Re:How does one... (Score:5, Funny)

      by kegwell ( 789687 ) on Saturday March 12, 2005 @06:14PM (#11922257)
      Micro$oft is just too embarrassed to admit their Exchange server crashed. ;-)

    • Re:How does one... (Score:3, Interesting)

      by multiplexo ( 27356 )
      My company has a similar policy. Online snapshots, local tape duplication in our libraries and off-site vaulting for six months. And we keep enough spare tapes on hand so that if our company is ever sued we can do a full backup of every system as it existed at the time of the lawsuit and send that offsite. I could understand if MIcrosoft had no e-mail backups, at one of my old jobs we very deliberately did not back up our mail spool, this was to give people the incentive to move things out of their inboxes

    • Re:How does one... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Jason Earl ( 1894 ) on Saturday March 12, 2005 @06:17PM (#11922279) Homepage Journal

      It's quite simple. The loss of the data wasn't unintentional, rather it was deliberate. Microsoft simply went in front of a judge to see if he would buy the story, when he didn't and a jury trial was emminent, Microsoft wisely settled. Microsoft's, "the dog ate my homework," defense was a long shot, but Microsoft spends a lot of time in the court room, and it can't really afford to roll over every time someone sues.

      • Re:How does one... (Score:4, Interesting)

        by pete6677 ( 681676 ) on Saturday March 12, 2005 @07:38PM (#11922759)
        I think Microsoft realized that settling was a better option that facing obstruction of justice charges and then probably losing anyway. In this day and time, it's pretty much expected that big companies will pay out the occasional settlement for some wrongdoing, but criminal charges tend to result in a drop in stock price, along with possible jail time for certain executives.
        • Sure, some occasional wrongdoing is 'acceptable,' but, let's face it, Microsoft is a little beyond occasional in their wrongdoing. I don't see why they can't just clean up their act.
          • On the basis that they are working to make a profit, the sum total of monies earned from unlawfully acquired technology would logically have to exceed the sum total of monies lost from settlements. It is the only reason they could possibly have for not cleaning up their act.

            If (and it's a big if) that is correct, then it would seem to follow that the penalites are simply too small to deter a company the size of Microsoft.

            Given that, it would seem to make sense to fine companies a percentage of the net w

        • Re:How does one... (Score:3, Insightful)

          by Jason Earl ( 1894 )

          Exactly. Microsoft floated the one gambit that had any chance at all of getting them off the hook with Burst. If they could have gotten a judge to buy into their story then Microsoft had a chance at trial. Once that scheme fell through settling was really the only option.

          Still, Microsoft forced Burst and Burst's attorneys to put up an expensive fight. This litigation went on for a long time. By taking the litigation this far Microsoft has shown that it is not a "soft" target. If you aren't well-fina

          • More importantly they stole technology, made tons of money off of it, and paid a miniscule portion of it back as "punishment". With punishment like that who needs rewards.

            Crime pays that's for sure.
            • exaclty!

              Microsoft: we don't have a email record because we weren't interested in the technology.

              Judge: but you were interested enough in it to integrate the technology into your own products?

              Microsoft: oh, we were interested in using it, just not paying for it.

              Unfortunately, they were never punished. They settled the case. Proving once again that you can flaunt any law so long as your pockets are bigger than your foes.
      • Isn't that called perjury?

    • Re:How does one... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by DNS-and-BIND ( 461968 ) on Saturday March 12, 2005 @06:37PM (#11922372) Homepage
      Duh.

      MICROSOFT LIED

      Of course, they got caught, and settled out of court for an appropriate bribe (err...settlement)

      You'd be surprised how often this works. The cost of further litigation only enriches the lawyers, not the shareholders involved.

      PHB1: How much is this gonna cost us?
      Accountant1: $XX
      PHB2: Let's lie and say we lost the emails. How much will this cost us?
      Accountant1: The same as if we bribed them (settled)
      PHB2: OK, let's see if this 'dog ate my homework' defense actually works...sometimes it does!

      (time elapses)

      PHB1: It didn't work. Release the bankers!
      Accountant1: OK!
      PHB2: We sure have fulfilled our obligations regarding our shareholders!
      PHB1: Amen, brother.
      Accountant1: Whatever you say!

      • Re:How does one... (Score:3, Insightful)

        by bigberk ( 547360 )
        SEC1: You are being charged with fraud, come with me sirs.

        PHB1: I did not intentionally participate in any wrongdoing. I had no idea my underlings were conducting shady business. We run a tight ship here.
        Accountant1: I'm just a dumb fucking accountant and I'm not accountable to anyone. And there's no conflict of interest in my line of work. I take a shit on GAAP daily.
    • I guess that depends on how things are configured. While I agree that it's unlikely that data from the specific time period only was missing, there are lots of reasons why emails in general would not be backed up.

      1) If emails are deleted as they are read, then during a weekly or daily backup, the emails will not exist to be backed up.

      2) If the email is downloaded to the local machines and off the server, no email on the server to back up. Of course there are "agents" and other kinds of ways to insure
      • "Now, again, I think it's odd that they can recover email from before and after, but not during... but there are legitimate reasons why mail would be missing"

        Not all of it.

        Every email concerning Burst for 35 weeks? I don't buy it.

    • Re:How does one... (Score:5, Informative)

      by mapmaker ( 140036 ) on Sunday March 13, 2005 @12:48AM (#11924158)
      Microsoft claimed that they deleted the emails intentionally because Burst's tech was worthless, so there was no point in saving the emails.

      This story almost worked, but then Burst's lawyers remembered that during the SUN/MSFT trial, Microsoft testified that ALL company email was backed up off site. So the judge ordered Microsoft to search the backups for the missing emails.

      Skip ahead half a year, and Microsoft claims in sworn testimony that they can't search the backups, because each company employee can choose which backup server they wish to archive on, and the company doesn't keep a master list of who's emails are on which server.

      Burst's lawyers then start subpoening the backup site employees, and get testimony from the woman in charge of email backups. Her name is Candy Stark. Candy's testimony was "Oh yeah, of course we've got a master spreadsheet that matches employees to servers. How else could we search the backups? Here it is right here."

      This past Thursday was when the hearing was to take place that would seal the fate of the Microsoft executives who'd given false testimony about said backup list. It was also probably going to result in the judge ordering Microsoft's backup servers seized by the court and searched by a third party. Not surprisingly, Microsoft settled 1/2 hour before that hearing was to start. Surprisingly, and unfortunately for BRST shareholders like me, the amount they paid to settle was a pittance.

      If you'd like to really dig into all the dirty detail of this lawsuit, go dig into the posts at Yahoo's BRST message board, or check out burstinvestors.com [burstinvestors.com] which is a site set up by one of the longtime BRST shareholders.

  • A missing email! (Score:3, Funny)

    by ackthpt ( 218170 ) * on Saturday March 12, 2005 @06:08PM (#11922217) Homepage Journal
    The technology was not interesting to Microsoft, lawyers insisted, so the electronic trail of communications was erased."

    Strange, I found this one in my box a few years ago...

    To: Windows Media Player Department Head
    cc: Department of Things That Actually Work The First Time Head

    This patented technology for increasing the efficiency of video and audio streaming looks great. Since we're such a big company and with our Bucket o' Lawyers we could drive anyone into the ground for having the temerity to sue us for IP theft, let's just co-opt it like we do everything else.

    By the way, how is it going with that project for selectively deleting emails from all mailboxes, archives, backup servers, backup tapes? Why don't you pick something out and just give it a test run.

    -Bill

  • Shows the fluidity of the law (Score:4, Insightful)

    by filmmaker ( 850359 ) * on Saturday March 12, 2005 @06:08PM (#11922219) Homepage
    Microsoft should see its day in court for this. This case was so clearly predatory and demonstrates the continued belligerence of Microsoft and its corporate strategy. I'm not sure if Burst.com decided that it was too expensive to take this to court, or if Microsoft simply made them an offer they couldn't refuse. Just shows how fluid the law is when there's enough money in the equation. With settlements being the de facto standard response to criminal corporate behavoir, it's no wonder anti-social companies like MS are more and more common - meaining known to the public to be criminals. What really blows me away is the public acceptance, or at least apathy, of companies like MS because it's more practical to look the other way.
    • "With settlements being the de facto standard response to criminal corporate behavoir."

      Much like music piracy, this wasn't theft. It's not a legal issue per se, it's a civil issue. Hence why it was a lawsuit and not criminal investigation. Cash settlements don't usually end criminal investigations.
      • Cash settlements don't usually end criminal investigations.

        Worked for Michael Jackson at least once before. If victims refuse to testify or recant, it's pretty hard for even the best prosecutor to get a confiction. And with enough money (or intimidation, or both) victims can be made to do those things.

      • ...it's a civil issue.

        MS history and monopoly status should make this more then civil.

        Cash settlements don't usually end criminal investigations.

        Consider Michael Jackson -- cash can stop criminal investigations from even starting.

        Closed settlements are bad for criminal investigations, and we only allow them to discourage long trials. This is almost ideal for large companies: a game few can afford, or sealed settlement.

      • Cash settlements don't usually end criminal investigations.

        That all depends upon who is paying whom.

  • It's interesting... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by xeon4life ( 668430 ) <devin AT devintorres DOT com> on Saturday March 12, 2005 @06:10PM (#11922228) Homepage Journal
    How they attack Microsoft, as their patents can apply to many other multimedia streaming. Who knows what else can be targeted? WinAmp? Hopefully not.

    Companies that exist for the sole purpose of patenting ideas and sitting on them disgust me.

    • Re:It's interesting... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 12, 2005 @06:40PM (#11922392)
      well you're wrong. Burst was not just a patent company, they developed and produced a product, they did not just patent ideas.

      Perhaps you should be worrying about Microsofts actions and seeming lack of punishment instead.

      Microsoft disgusts me.
    • RTFA ... they didn't just sit on it. In fact at some point Microsoft was in negotiations to buy SAID technology. They must have been out actively marketing it, then got hamstringed by one potential buyer.
    • Companies that exist for the sole purpose of patenting ideas and sitting on them disgust me.

      Huh?

      Burst didn't to that. Burst didn't do anything close to that. Burst is not Rambus, or SCO, or that company that claimed a patent on GIFs. They were trying to sell their technology to Microsoft, and then Microsoft stole it.

  • New version of Clippy (Score:5, Funny)

    by bigtallmofo ( 695287 ) on Saturday March 12, 2005 @06:11PM (#11922237)
    The missing emails were actually attributed to a rarely-used update to Outlook's Clippy-assistant:

    "It looks like you're being sued. Would you like me to delete all correspondence related to the lawsuit?"

    • I know you are trying to be funny but I have worked on exchange/outlook solutions where the ability to permanently delete all email, copies backups etc from/to an employee or on a certain topic at the click of a button has been highly desirable. So much communication is electronic these days that if it 'disappears' then its a case of he said she said and your legal team are already up and running with a major head start.

      • Re:New version of Clippy (Score:3, Interesting)

        by rs79 ( 71822 )
        As long as we're talking about dubious American corporate practices... I lived in Los Angeles once and was paid to port an accounting package from unix to pc. It was a litttle unusual as you could go in after the fact and juggle all sorts of stuff in rather odd ways.

        I was told it was for the movie industry and it was explained to me they would take out 10K in the morning in cash, buy tons of drugs then needed to put it on the books as various production expenses while putting whatever cash was left over, b

  • Proper Usage (Score:4, Informative)

    by rincebrain ( 776480 ) on Saturday March 12, 2005 @06:11PM (#11922241) Homepage
    The reason they couldn't find the e-mails is that they didn't "aks" the right question.

  • Trivial software patents are bad... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Rattencremesuppe ( 784075 ) on Saturday March 12, 2005 @06:12PM (#11922243)
    ...unless Microsoft is sued?

    Double standards, anyone?

  • Yet another case MS doesn't take the fault (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 12, 2005 @06:14PM (#11922256)
    Seriously, this is getting tedious.

    This case had all the indications that MS workers would finally be found guilty of perjury and sent to jail.

    And if they were found guilty of perjury, I would really like to see the crooks doing hard time. In fact, I wish some DA picks up the leads (even after the settlement) and investigate what would possibly be the most blatant case of lying to a Court Judge we have notice of.

    Then comes money and it's all forgotten. Now they can go on and do the same thing to the next victim they can find.

    Someone define Justice for me, please.
    • "Someone define Justice for me, please."

      Easy, it's also known as the Golden Rule: Whoever has the gold makes the rules.

      Microsoft has enough money to buy themselves out of the jaws of justice time and time again. The only way that won't happen is if a) someone goes after them where the motive isn't money and they can't be bought (sort of like what IBM is doing to SCO right now); or b) the government starts enforcing illegal monopoly regulations, and illegal business practices, or the like.

      Until eithe

    • It will never happen. MS has too much political clout to have anybody that works for them be tried for crimes.
    • This case had all the indications that MS workers would finally be found guilty of perjury and sent to jail.

      Well, it just ain't gonna happen.

      Something needs to be done, and it's damn sure our fucked up (both teams) government isn't going to do it.

      I propose to put my money where my mouth is.
      I'll offer $5.00 to anybody who kills a Microsoft employee. $10.00 if they're in management.

      Like it or not, I defy anybody to come up with another solution that actually has a chance in hell of working.
  • As long as you have enough money you are above the law?

  • great company (Score:5, Funny)

    by zerkon ( 838861 ) on Saturday March 12, 2005 @06:17PM (#11922273)
    I don't think I want to buy software from a company that randomly loses data... oh wait I dont
  • to losing emails. This isn't the first time. Surely there is a law for doing this. It seems like their get out of jail card. Whoops, we lost the emails so there goes *your* case. In any case, didn't Burst keep a copy either?

  • Breaking the law for fun and profit (Score:5, Insightful)

    by voisine ( 153062 ) on Saturday March 12, 2005 @06:21PM (#11922311)
    Once again Microsoft learns that laws are now impediment. Everyone complains about their illegal business practices, but why shouldn't they do what's illegal? It's not like they hide it. They simply say, yes we broke the law and we accept the penalty because the penalty doesn't even come close to the amount of money we've made from the illegal practice. Time and again they learn that our legal system is totaly incapable of punishment or correction for mega corporation like them. I say bravo for providing such a vivid demonstration of how broken our legal system is. If it's brokeness is not plainly revealed, it'll never get fixed.
    • Time and again they learn that our legal system is totaly incapable of punishment or correction for mega corporation like them.

      Enron would like to disagree with you.
      • our legal system didn't kill enron, it was the investors once they learned enron's profits were a figment of their anderson accounting firm's imagination.
        • Correct, and Microsoft won't die the death of Enron, because while they do engage in sleazy business practices, there's no evidence they're cooking the books. The lawbreaking is real, but the profits are real too.

          And let's not forget that MSFT's decision to start paying a divided came on the heels of renewed investor scrutiny about overvalued stocks, and enough people asking the pretty obvious question "why doesn't a company with 30 billion in the bank pay a dividend?"

          Microsoft isn't a growth stock anym

    • Re:Breaking the law for fun and profit (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Tenebrious1 ( 530949 ) on Saturday March 12, 2005 @07:10PM (#11922598) Homepage
      They simply say, yes we broke the law and we accept the penalty because the penalty doesn't even come close to the amount of money we've made from the illegal practice.

      No, the legal system is not broken, the settlement shows that the law worked as it should. Microsoft saw that there was a good chance they would lose the case and face heavy fines and penalties, and thus they chose to offer a settlement. Burst could have declined the offer and allowed the law to work, but they chose to take the money and run. That doesn't mean the law is broken.

      In accepting the settlement Burst dropped the claim of copyright infringement. Remember, copyrights are infringed only if it's unauthorized. If Burst accepts the settlement they're authorizing MS to use the code and thus there is no copyright infringement. This time the law worked as it should.

      • Re:Breaking the law for fun and profit (Score:5, Insightful)

        by nagora ( 177841 ) on Saturday March 12, 2005 @07:33PM (#11922730)
        No, the legal system is not broken, the settlement shows that the law worked as it should.

        No it didn't. The law pretends that corperations are legal entities when it wants to protect execs from taking responsibility but when a company comes up in court over and over again it doesn't get three-strikes rules or any of that shit you or I would get. Just one more slapped hand. Again. That's not how the law should work.

        If Burst accepts the settlement they're authorizing MS to use the code

        No, they're accepting that they have to let MS do that or become a company that has no resources other than those needed to fight their case. They look like they would win after a decate or so in court, but maybe they don't want to do that; aybe they're rather get some work done.

        TWW

        • No it didn't. The law pretends that corperations are legal entities when it wants to protect execs from taking responsibility but when a company comes up in court over and over again it doesn't get three-strikes rules or any of that shit you or I would get.

          Uh, actually they are being treated exactly like how you or I would. 3 Strikes laws are part criminal law. What we are discussing with Microsoft and Burst is civil law. There's a big difference between the two types of law and I suggest you look into

    • On the other hand, people cry foul anytime someone is rewarded a huge punitive damage against a company. Now some people and politicians are looking to cap it. Are we going to repeat the mistakes we made with Ford? Remember the Ford Pinto case was Ford decided it costs less for them to get sued over deaths from the Pinto than to do a recall? That's precisely when punitive damages were started.

      So on one hand you have people getting ridiculously wealthy off punitive damages, sometimes more than the damag

  • Really, this is nothing new (Score:4, Insightful)

    by iced_773 ( 857608 ) on Saturday March 12, 2005 @06:25PM (#11922325)
    Remember, way back in the Win3.x days, that whole thing about DoubleSpace and Stacker? These things have happened before, and they will probably happen again.
    • Stacker was actually illegally included in DOS 6.0 as DoubleSpace. See here [vaxxine.com] or here for an english translation [base.com]. They removed it for 6.2 & created DriveSpace for 6.22. DriveSpace was used in almost an identical manner, but was incompatible wiht DoubleSpace, causing upgraders who were using drive compression no end of grief.
    • And the later theft of core DEC operating system technologies for NT, by hiring David Cutler away along with his cronies and taking much of David's operating sytem work on VMS and the Prism development project with him.

      Check out the many, many articles on the DEC lawsuit with Microsoft, and how they settled for making NT always run on Alphas. Ooops, the Alpha hardware secrets got stolen by Microsoft's bed-buddy, Intel? Too bad how that happens when you focus on building new technologies and prefer to sett
  • This is just like the seventeen minutes of silence on the Nixon tapes during the Watergate break-in investigation. Somehow, when Nixon died, he was "remembered" as a great American. How can we stand for this?
    • Nixons dead?
    • Somehow, when Nixon died, he was "remembered" as a great American.

      He was? [gotfuturama.com]

      • Yeah, he was. The mainstream news decided to focus on the whole of his life and now the Watergate scandal and his resignation in disgrace from the presidency. Millions of people I'm sure disagreed, but if you look for his obituary or other articles written about him, they are fairly glowing.
    • The reason he was remembered as a great american is due to all the good things he did in his life.

      One's life should not be judged by one mistake.

      I really doubt you have led a perfect life either.
      • "One" mistake? The man tried to create an Imperial Presidency, one not bound by the laws of the land nor by the interests of its citizens. Come to think of it, sounds like Bill Gates should grow big jowls and start saying "My Fellow PC-Users" to get the rest of Nixon's act right. He already did the "Only Nixon could go to China" trick by showing up at the MacWorld Expo on screen somem years back.
    • RM Nixon WAS a great American, at least to the
      mega-corporations. He opened up a 1-1/2 billion
      person commercial market (PRC) to USA's products.
      That was, what, thirty years ago? I fully expect
      that the PRC will OWN most of the American economy,
      lock-stock-and-barrel, within 10 years.
      Considering that our high technology, IP, and
      jobs are already mostly their's, all they will
      need to do is cash in all the balance of trade
      IOU's to make the deal complete. I plan on
      studying French history, Chinese language (Mandari
    • Sure he was remembered on TV for a few weeks as a great American, why not? He did do some good things you know. When someone dies you don't normally go on TV and talk shit about them. You remember the good things they did. There's nothing wrong with that. It not like when he died they went around deleting everything bad he did from the history books. It's all still there. Talking about the good things he did is just the classy thing to do.

      When one of your asshole relatives die do you go to the funera

  • Big mistake (Score:4, Insightful)

    by WindBourne ( 631190 ) on Saturday March 12, 2005 @06:35PM (#11922363) Journal
    They should have held out for more than a billion. The fact the MS deleted the e-mail says they were horribly guilty. In addition, this is one area that MS is trying desperately to win. It is easily worth several billions to MS.
    • They aren't getting just $60 million. They're getting $60 million plus undisclosed licensing revenue - a big difference.

      MS will eventually disclose what this amount is on their quarterly reports - it should be fairly simple for someone to determine the extra amount being paid out for royalties and licensing. It won't be a billion, but it'll be many, many millions over a short period.

      Think of a fair, small sum for every copy of Windows or Media Player that has been shipped, and every one that ever will be.
      • They aren't getting just $60 million. They're getting $60 million plus undisclosed licensing revenue

        No, the $60 million IS the licensing revenue. That's all we get (I'm a BRST stockholder). And $20 million of that goes to the law firm that represented Burst. And another $6 million of it goes to Lang as per the terms of his contract. We shareholders got truly screwed by this settlement.

        • The company gets $34million. That's not too shabby, and will go to help Burst create new products/technology to sell.
          • The company gets $34million. That's not too shabby

            It's quite shabby, considering the strong position Burst held in the trial. They really and truly had the goods on Microsoft and let them off the hook for a sum that's pocket change to Microsoft.

            will go to help Burst create new products/technology to sell.

            No, there will be no new product development.

            from an interview [pressdemocrat.com] with Lang (Burst CEO):

            He said instead of hiring more workers to develop more technology, the company will move to enforce its pate

            • Ok, then even better. They're going to use Microsoft's settlement to go after other companies who are infringing on the patent (Probably Apple and Real). Now that the 800Lbs has set an example for everyone, they should be able to parlay that into nice big settlements from the other guys.

              I still don't see how the stock holders were screwed. They're in a better position today than if Microsoft passed on the technology and did not infringe on the patents, and better than waiting several more years in the h

  • The Corporation (Score:4, Insightful)

    by mabu ( 178417 ) on Saturday March 12, 2005 @06:41PM (#11922400)
    After watching the great documentary The Corporation [bsalert.com], all of this makes sense, since the government basically has given corporations all the rights of humans, but none of the responsibility or accountability. So Microsoft can blatantly spit in the face of court subpoenas and suffer virtually no consequences. Sad, but welcome to the 21st corporate-centric century.
    • It is usually the company officers (i.e., the board) who have the duty to show the company's affairs are conducted legally. The defense b efore was "We didn't know", know with Sarbanes-Oxley, a board-member no longer has that excuse.

  • The e-mails during the 35 weeks that negotiations were held mysteriously disappeared. In court Microsoft claimed the e-mails were erased from employee's desktops, e-mail servers and server backups. The technology was not interesting to Microsoft, lawyers insisted, so the electronic trail of communications was erased.

    If you learn something under NDA and want to make sure you don't break it, one way of doing that is to forget everything you learned.

    Companies don't have conscious memory, but they do cont

  • If you use Outlook with Exchange Server you can press shift and then delete the email. The deleted messages would then not go into deleted items and will not be in deleted item retention.

    Maybe MS ordered everyone involved to destroy all the emails?

    Of course if the email was on the server during at least one backup cycle it would be possible to restore it.

  • mln? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Dun Malg ( 230075 ) on Saturday March 12, 2005 @06:58PM (#11922490) Homepage
    "will pay Californian company $60 mln "

    Gods damn it, you ADD children with your IM and SMS vocabularies need to stop making up your own abbreviations when talking with regular people. Appropriate abbreviations for "million" are "mil" or "M". Saying "mln" is just ignorant.

  • Re: (Score:2, Funny)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 )
    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • Got off cheap. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Nom du Keyboard ( 633989 ) on Saturday March 12, 2005 @07:18PM (#11922645)
    Microsoft got off cheap. Very, very cheap.

    • Re:Got off cheap. (Score:3, Interesting)

      by mapmaker ( 140036 )
      As someone who's been following this case for two years and bought 22440 shares of BRST, you can not imagine how much I agree with you.

      The most comprehensive discussion of this case is over on the Yahoo's BRST message board. Two days ago over there we were all picking out the color of our Porches. Now we're hoping we can get out with our shirts on Monday.

  • The SCO connection (Score:5, Interesting)

    by div_2n ( 525075 ) on Saturday March 12, 2005 @08:58PM (#11923122)
    It could be just coincidence, but Burst.com is also a company held by Baystar Capital. These are the people responsible for $50 million in funding [com.com] for the SCO legal case against IBM over Linux. But then you would have to believe that when Microsoft helped Baystar and SCO meet [opensource.org] was a coincidence. And don't forget when Microsoft bought $12 million in SCO licenses [businessweek.com] when they didn't need them.

    And who can forget when Sun bought SCO licenses too [computerworld.com] and then less than a year later, Microsoft and Sun were best friends [pcworld.com] and settled their lawsuits with each other.

    Maybe some of this stuff is a coincidence and then again maybe none of it is. I find it hard to believe that all of it is a coincidence though.

  • deleting vs. keeping emails (Score:3, Interesting)

    by dorfsmay ( 566262 ) on Saturday March 12, 2005 @09:32PM (#11923334) Homepage

    I don't want to take M$ defense here, what they did is bad. But for all of those who say "How could they have deleted emails ?", well there are two school of thoughts around these days:
    1. keep all emails, so anything can be tracked back
    2. file anything that you are legally obliged to keep, and delete everything else, making sure that it doesn't even get backed up.
    The second strategy has started to be used after the ENRON fiasco. Most companies still use the first one, but you do start to see more and more (still a small number though) using the former.

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