Free Software Mag Interviews Sys-Con Publisher 279
NW writes "Tony Mobily, editor of the Free Software Magazine recently interviewed Fuat Kircaali, founder and publisher of Sys-Con Media. The interview revolves around the recent controversy surrounding the article written by Maureen O'Gara attacking Pamela Jones of GrokLaw."
Slashdotting != DDoS (Score:4, Interesting)
In Korea, only old people call a Slashdotting a cyber attack.
Huh? Does this man use his own dictionary? (Score:4, Interesting)
Either that, or he's purely in the business-as-in-corporate side of things and not the business-as-in-journalism side of things. If that's the case, he shouldn't have been asked to approve O'Gara's ("I decided to publish the article"), or anyone else's works, that job should go to people with editorial responsibilities.
Here's my "favorite" example of confusing statements:
In one part, speaking of Pamela Jones being a blogger not a reporter, he says "The reporter's job is to report news." In another, speaking about O'Gara's hack job, he says "I decided to publish the article. It was published because it was an accurate news story." Are you as confused as I was?
My least-favorite part, if true and I sincerely hope he's mistaken (I think he's confusing a DOS attack with the
"The reason why we decided to pull it [O'Gara's hack job] was that when the content, style and the language of the story was perceived as offensive by a group of the readers, a denial-of-service attack was launched against our entire company, interfering with all of our publications and all of our readers."
discussion with Fuat Kircaali (Score:5, Interesting)
unethical ... and cowardly and disloyal (Score:5, Interesting)
"The reason why we decided to pull it [O'Gara's hack job] was that when the content, style and the language of the story was perceived as offensive by a group of the readers, a denial-of-service attack was launched against our entire company, interfering with all of our publications and all of our readers."
Leaving aside the incredible moral blindness of missing what was wrong with the O'Gara article, this guy admits he is willing to dump "entertaining" and "accurate" reporters because of a DOS attack. Nice guy to work for
What a piece of work is Fuat Kircaali.
Maureen O'Gara did accuse PJ of being a thief (Score:2, Interesting)
A) The Victim
B) A willing accomplice
C) Herself, but not really Pamela Jones
D) All of the above, more wild accusations to come in our next mogwash piece.
Completely apart of the deliberate slurs and slants, criminal accusations make for straightforward Defamation cases.
Mr. Kirkaali says that PJ should not fear thieves, but seems blissully unaware that his own jourmalist accused Pamela Jones to be a thief, and published it on-line.
Maybe he need someone to explain Remedial Ethics 101 to him.
Reminds me of something earlier in the SCO saga (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:A Chilling Effect (Score:1, Interesting)
How, precisely, was ANY part of that "news" or even relevant to ANYTHING to do with the SCO story?
Obviously, this guy hasn't been following along, and has made this decision for monetary reasons.
However, I still hope to clue him in, and would hope that people would be less hostile towards him, but rather do their best to help him to learn what was so upsetting about the piece.
As for the denials, well, actually they shouldn't be talking about this at all, but instead be talking with a lawyer. It's not good if they don't understand why the piece is so chilling.
Re:legal issues, as always (Score:3, Interesting)
Who is Fuat Kircaali? (Score:1, Interesting)
By Maureen O'Gara
Friday May 13, 2005 - A few weeks ago I went looking for the elusive asswipe who allegedly publishes the Sys-Con family of bird cage liners.
The now-famous opinion-shaping open source leader Pamela Jones, aka PJ, doesn't give conventional face-to-face interviews. Never has, near as anyone knows. All communication is virtual. Only one person in the world has ever claimed to have met her - in the pressroom at LinuxWorld in Boston complete with a Pamela Jones badge - and described her as a fortyish reddish-blonde who giggled a lot.
Oh yeah? Wonder what cold crème she uses.
Fuat Abdi Kircaali is a 61-year-old Jehovah's Witness who lives in a shabby genteel $2.2 million mansion in desperate need of an interior decorator on a heavily trafficked commercial road at 3001 NE 36th Street in Lighthouse Point, Florida. Lighthouse Point is in Broward County and Broward County is spam-scam country.
See, even though Kircaali treats Linux "magazines" like they were Kleenex and publishes hit-pieces regularly, one number it left with a journalist led to this home address and - wouldn't you know it but - he cosigned for the $1.76 million adjustable rate mortgage with his apparent live-in girlfriend and Senior Vice President of advertising, Carmen Gonzalez.
Fuat and Carmen have lived in this little piece of property since February, 2003.
Now, this isn't your usual anonymous Florida McMansion. It's practically a self-contained village where spammers launch billions of V1-a'6rA emails upon the world from their garage, porn directors fuck the mouths off of white trash girls and people know each other's business.
But Washington Mutual didn't know much about Fuat when they gave him a mortgage except that he had a computer, worked at home (maybe sometimes) for a lawyer, and liked yachts. Oh yes, and fucking his Senior Vice President of Advertising.
He was also missing and had been for weeks.
Nobody there knew where he was.
He had up and disappeared one day, and the yacht skipper was worried about him. He said his son, Fuat Abdi Gonzalez Jr. had dropped by and he didn't know where she was, and that some Linux zealots that "nobody knew," as the webmaster described them, had tried to DoS his website 5 times while he was gone - the SCO license he had had installed on his site - something nobody else in the internet seemed to feel a need for - was more expensive than the server.
FUCKING HIS SR. VICE PRESIDENT OF ADVERTISING.
TO BE CONTINUED.
Incidentally... (Score:5, Interesting)
FIrst amendment rights ... (Score:3, Interesting)
[alas, to many, the answer is yes, but I digress
Did you look behind the couch? When I lose something, that's where I usually first look.
Though I wonder if you've really lost them -- after all, the First Amendment says that `Congress shall pass no law' ... and while this has generally been interpeted as meaning that the Government shall pass no law abridging your freedom of speech, in this case, I see no law having been passed. So what are you complaining about when you ask about your First Amendment Rights?
Hers seem to be perfectly functional as well. Did she lose hers too? Freedom of the press belongs to those who own the press. You own your press, and so you have freedom of press, and you used it. What's the problem?As for the story you posted, what did you think the response would be? I'm not talking about the DoS attacks, but just the general reaction from the more `moderate' people? Did you think that people would appreciate knowing who PJ was? Was that news?
As far as the DoS attacks go, call the FBI. You should be able to assign a large dollar figure to the damage being caused, and so the FBI will probably take your complaint seriously. Nail the bastards! Seriously. I don't approve of what you've done, but you've already given yourself enough problems -- we don't need criminals adding to them with DoS attacks.
As for the rest of the world (the people who are saying that you made a poor decision, in varying degrees of articulateness), well, you made your bed -- now lie in it. I don't feel sorry for you. You may have had every right to post the story (or maybe not -- it sort of looked like a threat. But I'll leave that to the lawyers) -- but the bad will you've just gained with a signifigant portion of the community can't be a good thing.
Re:He still doesn't get it (Score:2, Interesting)
If one of his writers had written an article published in one of his magazines, do you think he would let him or her just tilt in the wind?
It's one thing to have one's picture published. It's quite another to have details of one's life published for no related reason in an article (i.e., "he lives here [insert picture of rusted out single-wide mobile home] with his mother and grandfather, and drives this [picture of trashed '79 Cadillac Seville with 4 different sized tires, plenty of car cancer, a completely sagged down roof liner inside, and different body pieces from about 8 different cars]. Why is he writing auditing applications?" blah blah blah, in an e-mail sent to the guy's higher-ups and shareholders right before the shareholder meeting or promotion/evaluation time...
It's fine to publish details about Groklaw, and Pamela's role with it, who Groklaw and PJ are connected to, what those connections might imply.
But it's entirely another thing to go at other things unrelated to what was being discussed.
Does your magazine now publish a social column, where various Linux and Open-Source dignitaries have their pictures taken in their work clothes, details of where they bought their Cheetoes and Mt. Dew, etc.?
What if we were to pry into the backgrounds of Sys-Con's editors, and take publicly available records, tie pieces together with suggestive language, and then wash our hands of it and say, "hey, it's all publicly available information! we're not responsible for any conclusions or actions taken by someone else!" Of course not. But saying, "I thought I smelled smoke" doesn't get you out of yelling "Fire!" in a theater, either.
That's just lame.
Good thing that Sys-Con's linux rag isn't worth reading much, compared to Linux Format, Linux Systems Journal, Linux Magazine, or just about any other Linux-dependent publication.
Re:FIrst amendment rights ... (Score:3, Interesting)
The logic here is that in order for sys-con to provide service, they need a positive revenue stream, which for them comes from getting paid for presents and clicks for ads. If the advertizing companies are canceling their contracts, sys-con will be unable to pay for the servers and bandwidth required to provide the service that allows them to sell ad space. i.e. it becomes a Denial of Service, where the attack is directed at the money aspect rather than the network aspect of that service.
Obviously if the advertisers are pulling or canceling their contracts, sys-con would have to negotiate new contracts either with other advertisers, or re-negotiate contracts with the advertisers who are currently pulling out. Somehow I doubt such contracts would be as lucrative as the ones they had before.
As for whining about first ammendment rights, it is his right to elect to remove a story from his servers. Just as it would be my first ammendment right as a BBS owner to delete messages I find offensive that are being posted on my BBS, or web server, or groupware server, or any other server.
Perhaps MOG should look behind her couch as well.
-Rusty
What does ethics have to do with journalism? (Score:2, Interesting)
To quote Fuat Kircaali, CEO of Sys-Con:
What does ethics have anything to do with professional reporting and journalism?
What indeed. And people wonder why so many CEOs are going on trial.
This notion that being a "journalist" justifies invasions of privacy of all kinds against all kinds of people may be the straw that breaks the camel's back for most Americans, and results in reigning in press abuses. One can only hope. For my part, while I don't normally approve of DoS attacks, in this case, they were probably the only effective sanction for bad corporate behavior.
Re:The Credibility of Groklaw (Score:5, Interesting)
Pointing out the differences between MoG's story and the actual facts is throwing a punch?
including its censorship policy
Whether you agree with them or not, Groklaw's posting policies seem completely clear, at least to me. I've never had any trouble abiding by them, and I post often (under a different name).
Groklaw community regularly attacked MoG in the most vicious and personal terms.
Private individuals posting to a website can freely express their disgust at the actions of a reporter. Perhaps you are new to trolling on slashdot?
If someone was anonymously running a web site attacking me, I sure would want to find out who was behind it.
Even if you did know who was behind a website, you have no need to publish their personal details.
I find it interesting that MoG can't argue any actual facts or issues. She can only resort to personal attacks. MoG doesn't refute PJ's arguments, she just publishes the personal address of PJ's 80+ year old mom, right before Mother's Day, an elderly woman who has no connection to the running of Groklaw; nor does PJ's brother. What do these personal details have to do with the problems in MoG's stories?
If MoG didn't want someone "attacking" her by pointing out the blindingly obvious problems in her earlier stories, maybe she should do some real journalism?
Summary: O'Gara good, but DDoS wins (Score:1, Interesting)
"We stand by everything that O'Gara wrote, and it is the right of every journalist to harrass anyone they like, and the tone of their articles is of no concern as long as their facts are correct.
We removed the story because the DDoS attacks on our site were costing us money."
In other words, the only thing that swayed him were the DDoS attacks. It seems then that this is the only method of influence that he leaves open.