A legal attack in Brazil

[Posted June 23, 2004 by corbet]

The recent reports that Microsoft has filed suit against Sérgio Amadeu, the president of the Brazilian National Institute for Information Technology and a leader of Brazil's move toward free software, have upset many in the community. This suit looks very much like an attempt to intimidate a government which has been making increasingly friendly noises about free software. A closer look shows that, while this may be the case, there probably is not too much to be concerned about here.

For the curious, Microsoft's complaint is available in PDF format. That complaint comes down to the following: Mr. Amadeu compared Microsoft's tactics to those of drug dealers, and Microsoft doesn't like it. So Microsoft has filed a a "demand for explanation" aimed at getting Mr. Amadeu to retract his statements, or, at least, to back them up in court.

The "drug dealer" comment was, beyond doubt, over the top. Many public statements made by Microsoft about free software are, beyond doubt, equally over the top, as is Microsoft's reaction in this case. Microsoft seems unlikely to get very far with this particular complaint, especially in the face of public statements like:

As long as they are going to steal it, we want them to steal ours. They'll get sort of addicted, and then we'll somehow figure out how to collect sometime in the next decade .

(Bill Gates, 1998, quoted in News.com). The most likely result of this action may well be to convince more governmental employees that dealing with Microsoft is generally a bad idea. This kind of ham-fisted attack seems unlikely to slow any government's move toward Linux, though it may make the people involved watch their words a little more carefully.

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A legal attack in Brazil

Posted Jun 24, 2004 8:00 UTC (Thu) by bastiaan (guest, #5170) [Link] (3 responses)

Brilliant, that Bill Gates quote!
And the best thing of it all is that Microsofts response to the drug-dealer statement will make more people aware of their questionable business practices. MS is doing our p.r. for us.

Lawyerama

Posted Jun 24, 2004 13:55 UTC (Thu) by hummassa (guest, #307) [Link] (2 responses)

Hello folks. Do anyone has a Portuguese / pt_BR_lawyerese link to the referred PDF? My EN lawyerese is not good enough to understand which (specific) kind of action is this.
Anyway, it's controversial in our case law if firms can be in the passive pole of "Defamation" crime, which seems to be one of the bases for this.
Can anyone help me here?

Lawyerama

Posted Jun 24, 2004 16:33 UTC (Thu) by cross (guest, #13601) [Link]

> Hello folks. Do anyone has a Portuguese / pt_BR_lawyerese link to the
> referred PDF? My EN lawyerese is not good enough to understand which
> (specific) kind of action is this.

http://www.softwarelivre.org/

Lawyerama

Posted Jul 1, 2004 13:55 UTC (Thu) by leandro (guest, #1460) [Link]

> it's controversial in our case law if firms can be in the passive pole of "Defamation" crime, which seems to be one of the bases for this.

Granted, but here it is more of a pressure tatic of menace than a real threat of being eventually convicted.