The Viacom lawsuit against Google has received a lot of publicity. The Washington Post has has an article by one of the lawyers - an article that implicitly raise the question: Why do the courts tolerate the twisting of the plain meaning of words?

The worst example of this is the SCO lawsuit againsts IBM on the grounds that somehow Linux infringes on source code to which SCO holds the copyright. This lawsuit has being going on for years - the judge has repeatedly held against SCO's claims; SCO has repeatedly refused to provide evidence for its claims; and it is clear that SCO executive and lawyers have repeatedly lied to stockholders about the strength of and evidence for their claims. Yet the legal system treats the claims and liars with dignity as if they were serious plantiffs. There are laws against making misrepresentations to stockholders. Perhaps if the SCO executives and lawyers went to jail - which is where they belong for harassing IBM with a meritless and expensive lawsuit - that would send the right message to Viacom. It doesn't seem enough that somewhere down the road years from now a court will rule that Viacom's claims have no merit. Or even that they repay Google for its legal costs. Certainly SCO won't ever repay IBM: they've bankrupted the company by giving all of its assets to the lawyers who agreed to pursue a meritless lawsuit to the bitter end.