title: An overarching overreach link: https://onemoretech.wordpress.com/2012/05/08/an-overarching-overreach/ author: lembobro description: post_id: 2669 created: 2012/05/08 10:04:17 created_gmt: 2012/05/08 14:04:17 comment_status: closed post_name: an-overarching-overreach status: publish post_type: post

An overarching overreach

If you were to listen to the mainstream press (and their "experts") yesterday's events in the Oracle v. Google were confusing and uncertain. Heh. For the real story you need to go to a source who actually knows what he's talking about: Mark Webbink of Groklaw. I think this paragraph from Mark's report yesterday about says it all:

Don't let anyone fool you. Today was a major victory for Google. That's why after the jury left, our reporter says that Google's table was laughing, and Oracle's mighty glum. And I see some journalists are surprised or confused, because they have been listening to a steady flow of Oracle FUD from the wrong people. Remember the headlines about this being a $6 billion dollar case? It never was and now it never will be. Oracle attorney Michael Jacobs was reported to have visited the press room at the courthouse during the trial for a talk with the gathered journalists. So did a PR person from his firm. I mean, come on, fellas. And that doesn't even count the huge stream of misinformation from ... well, you know. And look at the outcome. Not what you were told to expect, is it? Live and learn, y'all. Live and learn. If a person is paid by Oracle, why would you take it as necessarily so? And here's why the API decision matters so much.]

The comment that "some journalists are surprised or confused, because they have been listening to a steady flow of Oracle FUD from the wrong people" resonates with my own experience of press cluelessness over specialized cases when I was lawyering in the federal courts over 30 years ago.

Copyright 2004-2019 Phil Lembo