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Legal Issues

by Mike Masnick

Thu, Dec 7th 2006 5:00pm





HP Pays California $14.5 Million For Pretexting... But Will Use The Money To Fight Piracy?

from the say-what? dept

So the press is all abuzz with the news that HP has settled the civil suit filed against it for its little pretexting adventure. They're paying $14.5 million to the state in exchange for no civil suit from the Attorney General's office. The company still could face other charges, including from the federal government, but we'll see. Still, there's a very odd part to the settlement. Most of the money will go to a fund to help California fight intellectual property violations. Technically the fund is for both that and privacy issues, called the "Privacy and Piracy Fund." We can understand the privacy part -- since that's what HP violated -- but we're still scratching our heads over the piracy part. What do intellectual property violations (which, again, aren't really "piracy") have to do with the fact that HP used social engineering fraud tactics to spy on a whole bunch of people both inside and outside the company?

6 Comments | Leave a Comment..


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  1.  

    Hmm...

    identicon
    Aaron, Dec 7th, 2006 @ 6:05pm

    Wonder if HP would consider this a bargain for the information they obtained?

    [ reply to this | link to this | view in thread ]

  2.  

    Mark Hurd must have a friend...

    identicon
    nonuser, Dec 7th, 2006 @ 6:19pm

    who's a genius at negotiation. This likely takes care of a longstanding complaint against the AG's office from another important California constituency.

    [ reply to this | link to this | view in thread ]

  3.  

    Part of a pattern

    identicon
    nedu, Dec 7th, 2006 @ 10:27pm

    Remember last week's news?

    MPAA Kills Anti-Pretexting Bill (Dec 1, 2006):

    A tough California bill that would have prohibited companies and individuals from using deceptive "pretexting" ruses to steal private information about consumers was killed after determined lobbying by the motion picture industry, Wired News has learned.

    This looks like the same pattern.

    [ reply to this | link to this | view in thread ]

  4.  

    It has nothing to do with HP's deeds

    identicon
    Shohat, Dec 7th, 2006 @ 11:06pm

    They just wanted some good digital cause to donate the money to, and both Privace and Piracy are problematic issues. Pretty simple .

    [ reply to this | link to this | view in thread ]

  5.  

    Re: It has nothing to do with HP's deeds

    identicon
    Anonymous Coward, Dec 7th, 2006 @ 11:20pm

    Privacy is a 'problematic issue' because of companies like HP to begin with. And to think that there isn't some special-interest motive behind this is pretty ignorant (IMHO).

    [ reply to this | link to this | view in thread ]

  6.  

    duh

    identicon
    Paul, Dec 7th, 2006 @ 11:51pm

    Pretexting is basically pirating private information, duh.

    /sarcasm

    [ reply to this | link to this | view in thread ]


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