My Public Apologies to the DLA Piper Rudnick Gray Cary
I was writing my previous post in a hurry. This you should not find surprising considering my situation coupled with the recent discovery of an unusual bit of code inside DLA Piper Rudnick Gray Cary pages. As a result of this I’ve made a serious mistake for which I want to apologise on my own accord. In that posting I somehow implied that Stelios Hadji-Ioannu could be superior, or could even own DLA Piper Rudnick Gray Cary. This is obviously wrong. After researching for some time on the Internet I came to realise that DLA Piper Rudnick Gray Cary is indeed an enormous legal conglomerate flying at such heights that Stelios with his low-flying easyJet can only dream of.
For those who are in the dark as I was just the day before here goes a brief resume of my discoveries about DLA Piper Rudnick Gray Cary mainly derived from their own website.
The most amazing fact is that this law firm is actually lead by no other than Senator George Mitchell.
Just for the record:
Senator George J. Mitchell was a US Senate Democratic majority leader for about six years (1989-1995) as well as a chairman if the Northern Ireland peace negotiating group in 1996-1998 and a chairman of an international fact-finding committee on violence in the Middle East that produced a recommendation, widely known as The Mitchell Report. In business he is a Partner and the Chairman of the Global Board and Co-Chair of the Government Controversies Practice Group in DLA Piper Rudnick Gray Cary, chairman of the board of the Walt Disney Company and serves on the board of Staples, Inc. etc, etc.
For more information see: DLA, Staples, Inc., Disney
The man of such high standing would have been made a Sir in Britain sometime at the very beginning of his career, something that Stelios can only aspire to and only in his dreams. Or perhaps I am wrong again. Considering that a head of a twin Virgin business empire, Richard Branson had been given a knighthood already, we may, just for the sake of symmetry, possibly see Sir Stelios in the nearest future (will I have to bow to or stand up in his presence then?).
But now back to business. Some may wonder why it is so scandalous that a law firm keeps a small piece of inoffensive programming code on its web pages. Where is the issue?
Let me explain. Firstly, as we have seen, this is not just some small and virtually unknown law firm. We are dealing with an internationally renowned entity that is lead by someone who may be adequately described as “the pillar of the community”, who already secured his place in history. Institutions like this just must be particularly careful about what they do and what they publish. Things that can pass on John Smith’s homepage will not pass on a website associated with Senator George Mitchell. Again, Quod licet Jovi non licet bovi in reverse.
But there is something much more serious than this. The EVALUATION VERSION stamp could only find its way into the code if at one stage an evaluation version of software was (or still being) used in process of designing or serving web pages at the DLA Piper Rudnick Gray Cary web servers. I refer my reader to the following passage from their own Copyright Notice page:
The copyright in these pages (including without limitation all text, graphics and computer code relating thereto or associated therewith) and all other intellectual property and proprietary rights therein belongs to DLA Piper Rudnick Gray Cary US LLP and DLA Piper Rudnick Gray Cary UK LLP and all rights are reserved.
(my emphasis).
Even without the use of trial version of a third party software this copyright statement is plain wrong. One can not claim copyright to everything, including computer code, and have this bit in that very code:
Coalesys WebMenu for ASP.NET NN6/Moz1 DHTML script
Build 86 COPYRIGHT 2000-2005 Coalesys, Inc.
without apparently running into some sort of a legal contradiction. Bad enough on its own, but now consider, this is a trial version!
There is nothing wrong with using trial versions of software as such. After all, trial versions are released exactly for this, for trying software before buying a full version. Normally one is supposed to download or otherwise obtain a trial version in order to evaluate if this software is good enough. If it is not, one must cease using it and delete all copies of it after the trial period is over. Alternatively, if one finds it useful and wishes to use it for whatever purposes one has to buy it and only after this one can start using it “for real”, in this case, in production environment.
There we go with DLA Piper Rudnick Gray Cary. They are using computer code generated by a trial version not even on a test computer but in the production environment! If this is the case, first thing to note, they are contradicting the ethics of shareware and trialware distribution, regardless of the fact whether the trial period is already over or not. Perhaps they are just not aware that such ethics exist. Well, not a good excuse! Secondly, in normal circumstances developers use trial versions when they are “not sure”, i. e. there are serious doubts about the suitability, usability, functionality or security of the software in question. It certainly means that developers of the DLA Piper Rudnick Gray Cary website at the time they used Coalesys software were not sure whether this software is good enough to buy it. At the same time someone decides that it is certainly good enough to use it in production! Obviously there must have been concerns about the quality of the aforementioned software – otherwise they would just acquired a legitimate license and used a full (not trial) version. Following this logic you, as a user of the DLA Piper Rudnick Gray Cary website are forced to rely on usability and security of a piece of software that is not considered worth buying by the developers of this website. Remember, this is not an ordinary homepage – this is a corporate website of an organization that keeps thousands if not millions of highly confidential files, private information concerning their clients and sensitive legal information somewhere on their computers. If this attitude applies to their internal network as well – I would not trust them even with my credit card number, regardless of the fact that their internal network might not be directly connected to their web servers. Corporate body that allows this on their website clearly does not have sufficient security vetting procedures in place in respect of software they use.
What could be even worse for a reputation of a law firm is the fact that a licensing of trial software usually defines a trial period and in this case it is 30 days. The earliest cached version of a page from the DLA Piper Rudnick Gray Cary website that contains trial signature code I was able to find in Google cache is dated by the 5th of May this year. Admittedly, I did not have time to figure out if for this particular case using a computer code generated by a trial version beyond the trial period of the software itself is legitimate or not. They may or may not be in breach of the Coalesys License Agreement after the 5th of June. But in fact it does not matter a jot! I am not a lawyer and at the end whilst they are, so let them bother with establishing exactly how deep they are in this trouble. The mere fact that I can legitimately ask this question is enough!
Now, to bring you back – remember, we were not talking about John Doe’s website. It is DLA Piper Rudnick Gray Cary, Senator Mitchell’s firm.
Most likely the DLA Piper Rudnick Gray Cary will try to shift the blame. Possibly they will blame it on some sort of a mistake made by their webmaster or worse, a web development company they outsourced web site design and management to. They may even succeed in making others responsible for their mistakes but gosh, this won’t be easy having in mind that they already claimed everything on their website to be their copyright and hence making themselves alone responsible for all of its content.
So, my proposition still stands. With this level of carelessness, negligence, incompetence and possibly worse the DLA Piper Rudnick Gray Cary must accept easylaw.com at least as an honorary title (see my previous post on this matter). This must not be a difficult decision to make in view of the fact that Staples Inc is already using the Easy Buttonsm.
As far as the apologies go: DLA Piper Rudnick Gray Cary are competent and well-managed law firm that has an excellent web design team (?), I am sorry.
tags: copyright, dla piper rudnick gray cary, evaluation version software, easy button, easymobile, lawyer, senator george mitchell, shareware, staples inc, virgin, walt disney, trial software
June 22nd, 2006 at 7:32 pm
[…] Self-proclaimed man of the people Stelios Haji-Ioannou - now Sir Stelios - has been branded a “rich bully” by a London businessman who has obtained a court order against the EasyJet founder to prevent him from interfering any further with his pizza business. […]
June 22nd, 2006 at 11:50 pm
[…] I shall publicly state that the importance of my earlier mention of the possible knighthood for Mr Stelios Hadji-Ioannu was grossly exaggerated. Mentioning it passim I did not intend this to become a suggestion or representation but what initially was thought as an ironic remark turned into a correct prediction after all. Mr Hadji-Ioannu has been knighted in the Queen’s 80th Birthday Honours list and now he is Sir Stelios. Inasmuch as I personally don’t share the fascination with this pointless confetti of monarchy I am also extremely pleased and going to congratulate Sir Stelios wholeheartedly. Sir Stelios received his Knighthood (Knight Bachelor to be precise) for services to Entrepreneurship (as if entrepreneurship really required any servicing). Surely achieving this honour seven years after his twin-rival Sir Richard Branson with his Virgin was not Easy. I assume most of the time it required such truly entrepreneurial qualities as crudeness, cruelty, greed, cinicism, lack of principles, selfishness and so on an so forth, since otherwise how would one survive in this dog-eat-dog business world especially starting from the position of a self-proclaimed underdog? Well Sir, now when the goal is achieved and you can bear your knightly title with pride it is perhaps the time to switch the priorities and remember some things of a higher order like for example the most appropriate for the occasion knightly virtues (for those unaware of the concept here is a link to a website with an easy introduction to the Seven Knightly Virtues presented in easy-to-digest form). These include (among others) qualities as Justice, Generosity, Nobility, Kindness, Compassion and the like clearly incompatible with most of today’s business practices. My hope is that just to keep the appearance Sir Stelios will have to adhere to at least some of them. If this will be the case we might find some common ground or anyhow will be fighting at the same level. A noble opponent is exactly what I was looking for. […]