Some of the very heavy hitters of the blog world have now given their two cents. I like Mike Arrington’s quote:
Tim O’Reilly needs to muzzle his lawyers immediately and respond publicly, personally and immediately to the situation, because I sense that a lynching is about to occur in the blogosphere.
4 hours after Tom’s post and the tech blogs are really starting to bubble.
I’ll be selling “Web Sue.0” T-Shirts at this conference and on the back will be the whole text of the cease and desist. Anyone interested in buying one?
EDIT: And a fantastic quote from Rick Segal:
Rarely do you get to watch somebody build up an amazingly positive reputation only to watch it explode, live, on the Internet.
No. 2 spot on Techmeme now!
Further Update: Mary Gilmartin points to O’Reilly’s reply where they state they approved of the legal letter.
I’ll take 4 (will they make them in xtra small for little Enrique?)
In fairness, this is nothing to do with O’Reilly: CMP are the bad guys here.
I’ve read the C&D letter a few times. They mention O’reilly four times in it and open the letter that they are working with O’Reilly. They are using his name to add more weight to their C&D and if anything they are the ones brining O’Reilly into this. They mention their partnership with O’Reilly twice in this letter. People will genuinely assume that the letter represents both parties. They could have stated that this has nothing to do with O’Reilly but they chose not to.
O’Reilly approved the letter (fact)
What got under my skin about the letter is the insinuation that IT@Cork was trying to profit from the use of Web 2.0.
Fact is IT@Cork is not for profit and has no other aim than bringing the Cork IT community together. Saying otherwise undermines the integrity of the people on the IT@Cork committe, many of whom I know well (from my time in business and as a member) and they are all fine people.
I hope it backfires on O’Reilly. I just signed up for their Safari online books account. It will make me think twice about renewing that subscription.
Yeah, I noticed that when I read O’Reilly Radar yesterday, thought I must say that wasn’t a definite conclusion I could pull from the wording of the letter. Hmmm… comment, if possible, retracted.
But what would be interesting is what Tim himself has to say on the matter, which we’ll have to wait a while to discover.