Google/Oracle judge orders payments to bloggers be revealed
This will be interesting. Judge Alsup has concerns that some evidence that was presented in the case may have come from from statements made by paid influencers. He feels that:
"...the parties and/or counsel herein may have retained or paid
print or internet authors, journalists, commentators or bloggers who have and/or may publish
comments on the issues in this case. Although proceedings in this matter are almost over, they
are not fully over yet and, in any event, the disclosure required by this order would be of use on
appeal or on any remand to make clear whether any treatise, article, commentary or analysis on
the issues posed by this case are possibly influenced by financial relationships to the parties or
counsel. Therefore, each side and its counsel shall file a statement herein clear identifying all
authors, journalists, commentators or bloggers who have reported or commented on any issues in
this case and who have received money (other than normal subscription fees) from the party or
its counsel during the pendency of this action. This disclosure shall be filed by NOON ON
FRIDAY, AUGUST 17, 2012.
I look forward to seeing who's on the list as there may be some surprises.
So far there's only been two individuals immediately implicated, one each by Oracle and Google. Oracle confirmed that Florian Mueller was paid to post favorable articles (no surprise) but the known Google-paid blogger has not yet been officially named. Any guesses?
Comments
It looks like Oracle wants to say EFF is the mysterious entity paid to blog in support of Google. That must be the "receiving money via a third party" that Oracle wants to claim. Mr. Mueller also implied the EFF was paid to blog, mentioning two articles from the EFF opining API's shouldn't be open to copyright as his evidence of it. He then quickly backed off accusing them of being dishonest tweeting:
"Just to be clear, I don't mean to smear the EFF. The EFF itself now mentioned donation(s) from Google to Wired. Google will have to disclose", as tho it's equivalent to his payments from Oracle. Perhaps it is.
As clarity he's saying EFF made a statement to Wired about receiving Google donations, not that Wired received Google donations. In any case the general feeling from news organizations is that Judge Alsup at least strongly suspects something that he wants the parties to disclose.
In the Wired article an EFF attorney says:
"Google has donated money to the Electronic Frontier Foundation, but has not paid them to blog about the lawsuit."
http://www.wired.com/wiredenterprise/2012/08/paid-bloggers/