I have two fundamental problems with this. The first is that this ruling flies in the face of “safe harbor” concepts that most law contains (including Swedish law, as I understand it) and these men are being prosecuted for providing to what amounts to a search engine, they did not host any of this “illegal” content in the first place. It’s a short trip down a slippery slope to lawsuits against ISPs for providing the bandwidth that allowed the download to happen and against the companies that provided the software that encoded to media that made the files small enough that moving them became practical. It’s the same reason I’m against outlawing guns. Outlawing something, particularly something useful, because it can be used to cause harm is stupid. It only punishes people who want to obey the law, and has no impact whatsoever on people who would be using those tools for doing something that was already illegal. What’s next? Outlawing hatchets because you can murder someone with them? Outlawing telescopes because you can peep on someone with them? If someone wants to do those things, they will find a way to acquire the tools they need to get it done, via legal means or not.

The second problem I have with this is that the “illegalness” of the content they “provided access to” is debatable. It arguably falls under a “fair use” -like umbrella, particularly according to Swedish law. Again, that is only if I understand it correctly, but it’s totally possible I’m wrong. And the “damages” are completely imaginary, predicated on the assumption that “unauthorized downloads = lost sales”, which they don’t. The whole thing just smacks of the judge either getting paid off or buckling under political pressure.

In the end, it’s just more collateral damage as the behemoth that is old media goes through it’s death throes. Your back is broken, you no longer control distribution. You don’t get to have all the eggs in your basket anymore. Since you refuse to evolve, just fucking die already. Content is effectively free now, and no number of legal “victories” will change that. Quit treating your customers like criminals and give them a reason to pay you, and you might still survive.

My company is relatively small, but rapidly growing. We currently have 40 seats of Trend Office Scan, and couldn’t be happier with it. It is manageable, featureful, unobtrusive, and affordable. I’ve recommended your products to countless people. However, we may not be renewing it when our licenses are due for renewal in April. Why might that be?

Your company has opened a lawsuit against Barracuda networks claiming patent infringement, due to their redistribution and use of Clam AV within their network security products to do SMTP and FTP transfer virus scanning. I’ve researched the publicly available information on the lawsuit, including the patent which Trend claims is being violated. In my opinion this lawsuit is without merit, and frankly smacks of the “patent trolling” which is currently so common amongst IT organizations that are struggling to keep up with the changes of the industry. Specifically in this case, the democratization and commoditization of software due to the success of Open Source Software. Not only is there likely prior art for the “technology” in the patent, it is a patent that
should not have been awarded in the first place given the obvious nature of the “innovation” that it contains. In my opinion, the fact that other vendors have decided to settle other allegations leveled at them by Trend out of court is irrelevant. For companies the size of Symantec, absorbing the costs of settling on a licensing agreement is easier than fighting such allegations, regardless of their merit. For a company like Barracuda, this is likely not a feasible option. This is completely secondary to the already questionable nature of software patents in and of themselves.

I find this practice reprehensible, completely violating the spirit of the patent system. Rather than encouraging innovation, it stifles it. Rather than protecting the upstart inventor, it protects the incumbent corporations. It is a practice that I will do everything in my power to discourage. As someone who recommends, specifies, and purchases computer systems and software for my organization, and several other large organizations, part of that power is my power to not do business with companies who participate in such practices. Upon execution of this lawsuit, Trend Micro joined that shameful group of companies.

While I cannot guarantee that Trend Micro’s choice to pursue this lawsuit will make us change to another anti-virus and security vendor, I can guarantee that I will strongly recommend it. I have also begun to contact the people to whom I’ve recommended Trend products and rescind that recommendation. Regardless of the quality of the product, I will not do business with a company who so abuses the current flaws in intellectual property law if I have any other choice. In this case, I do.

I urge anyone reading this who is currently a Trend Micro customer to write a similar email or letter.