I just read this "analysis" on zdnet about SCO and the Linux indemnification issue it spawned. The article seems fairly attrocious in terms of its analysis throughout, but I had a particular question about this statement:
"As far as I can tell, the best time to get indemnification is the point at which you are acquiring a solution that involves the use of intellectual property that doesn't belong to you. Imagine, for example, buying a car and finding out a couple of years later that the inventor of the windshield wiper was suing you for the misappropriation of the patent. Wouldn't you want the company that sold you the car to accept responsibility for the claims?"
I didn't think that scenario could happen, that the consumer would have liability for misappropriated IP, in this case patent or in the SCO case (apparently) copyright. Only the vendor would.
Even SCO seems to be making the distinction between a car buyer and a Linux customer. At the Harvard talk Darl McBride piggy-backed on Eben Moglen's example of a customer going to Barnes and Noble and buying a book. Of course we can't sue you for going home and reading the book. SCO's argument is that they can sue you if you turn around and make copies of the book for all your friends. SCO thinks that with Linux there is no such thing as buying and reading a single copy of Linux, that because in a typical situation you make copies of the software to put on multiple machines that this is what makes you take on copyright infringement liability.
I don't think that the SCO analogy is impervious to challenge itself, but it does differentiate their argument from the zdnet analogy, which would seem to imply that after you take your car home you somehow replicate a copy of it for your spouse, with windshield wipers and all.