[clug] Time to contact the ACCC

Mark Harrison m.harrison at anu.edu.au
Tue Aug 19 13:03:24 EST 2003


SCO has a presence in Australia according to their web site:
The SCO Group Australia and New Zealand

     56 Berry Street
     North Sydney
     NSW 2060 Australia
     Tel + 61 2 9440 7577
     Fax + 61 2 9440 7588
     anz_info at sco.com

(from http://au.sco.com/) so it might be best to lodge complaints against 
that particular office of SCO rather than the general "SCO" which might not 
mean anything to Australian law. Of course, the Australian office might 
claim that they have not done anything. Even so, just because a company is 
not Australian, it does not mean they do not have to abide by Australian 
law when doing business here. That also works in reverse - Australians cant 
violate US companies IP (not that anyone has with regards to SCO) because 
of international treaties, so the idea that "they are from the US so this 
does not concern me" as said below, probably wont hold up.

Mark.

At 12:16 PM 8/19/2003 +1000, Steven Hanley wrote:
>On Tue, Aug 19, 2003 at 12:12:40PM +1000, James McNeill wrote:
> > I don't see what the ACCC can do.
> >
> > SCO is in the US. SCOs court case(s) are in the US too.
> >
> > the 'A' in ACCC stands for 'Australian'. SCO Headquarters will freeze
> > over before they *voluntarily* abide by Australian consumer laws. Unless
> > SCO has an australian entity, the ACCC can do very little.
> > The only thing they could do would be to protect australian companys &
> > individuals from SCO, if SCO sued them over breach of software licence.
> > For that to happen SCO would need to prove their case in an australian
> > court, which won't happen untill they've done it in an US court, which
> > won't happen.
> >
> > As frustrating as it is, i can see very little that we can do directly
> > aginst SCO. I doubt very much that the australian market holds any sort
> > of sway with the SCO administration.
>
>That holds sway, except when they send cease anddesist sort of letters to
>australian owned and run companies, which I imagine they have done.
>Companies receiving letters from them would I imagine have some avenue to
>say this is complete bullshit, one avenue may simply be the companies
>learning that it has no affect on them as they are not US companies, I am
>not sure and IANAL.
>
>         See You
>             Steve
>
>--
>Men are from Earth. Women are from Earth. Deal with it.
>sjh at wibble.net http://svana.org/sjh
>You are subtle as a window pane standing in my view
>but I will wait for it to rain so that I can see you
>    Anticipate - Ani




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