Re: Did the pirates make it too easy?
With the SCO case though, SCO's main financial backer wasn't interested in getting settlement money. They wanted to spread FUD about Linux to eliminate competition with their own OS and it dovetailed in with their own direct FUD campaign.. SCO's own plan was to get bought out by IBM before the case made it to trial, as they didn't really have any evidence.
The money that SCO extracted from various small and mid-sized retailers, utilities, and other non-IT companies that paid them to go away was not large and was a pittance compared to their legal fees. When SCO did go to court against companies like Chrysler who had the money and inclination to fight, they got their arse handed to them.
The biggest scandals in the SCO case were how a certain very large software company was financing SCO via the back door, how certain US courts behaved in a disreputable manner to favour people with the "right" connections, and how when when SCO declared bankruptcy the names of certain SCO supporting IT columnists (none in the Reg though) turned up in the records being listed as having received substantial sums of money from SCO.