Follow LA Observed on Twitter here
Anyone can sue anyone else for any amount of money - and yet a $2.2 billion software piracy suit by Santa Barbara-based CYBERsitter does kind of take your breath away. The company, which has developed a content filtering program that blocks certain kinds of content on the Web (parents use it to prevent their kids from getting onto porn sites), alleges that the Chinese illegally copied portions of its code to block access to Internet sites through a program called Green Dam Youth Escort. From the press release:
According to CYBERsitter's attorney Greg Fayer, "This lawsuit aims to strike a blow against the all-too-common practices of foreign software manufacturers and distributors who believe that they can violate the intellectual property rights of small American companies with impunity without being brought to justice in U.S. courts. American innovation is the lifeblood of the software industry, and it is vital that the fruits of those labors be protected at home and abroad."
The suit was filed in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles today against the People's Republic of China, two Chinese software makers, and seven big computer makers. Coincidentally, the Chinese government's Web censoring system was lifted on Monday and all of a sudden Internet users had access to sites that had been banned for months, including YouTube, Facebook and Twitter. For a while anyway. From the LAT:
Cautious excitement spread on some social-networking platforms that authorities were expanding Internet freedoms. But by the time most Chinese woke up the restrictions were back. Error messages once again flashed across computer screens for sites blocked by the nation's censorship filter. "It seemed just like a dream," said Michael Anti, a social critic and one of hundreds who tweeted about the development on Twitter. In many respects, it was.
Mark Lacter created the LA Biz Observed blog in 2006. He posted
until the day before his death on Nov. 13, 2013.