September 9, 2003

Your U.S. senators

Your U.S. representative

Dear Congressperson,

I am writing to express my opposition to the SCO Group, Inc.'s decision to sue individual users of the Linux operating system and to request your intervention. SCO is currently involved in litigation over a range of claims regarding their intellectual property interest in Linux, a popular "open source" operating system. None of these cases has yet produced any guidance on whether SCO's claims are valid. However, SCO recently announced that it would begin suing individual Linux-users who refuse to pay a license fee of $700 per CPU for the software, which it threatens to double in the fall.

This strategy smacks of extortion. SCO should establish the validity of its claims before even thinking of harassing individuals. Instead, it is planning to bolster its position in the larger cases by targeting individual end-users who cannot afford multimillion-dollar defenses. This is not an appropriate use of the law.

As a constituent, I urge you to do what you can to stop this bad behavior. Please urge the Commerce Committee to intervene in this abusive practice and stop SCO from punishing innocent consumers to inflate its other legal claims. Thank you for your time.

Sincerely,

Copyright 2003 http://action.eff.org/action/index.asp?step=2&item=2775