SAP scored an own goal this week when it admitted to hacking into an Oracle website and stealing code. This is pretty bizarre behaviour in plenty of ways, but I like the way that their PR guys, desperate to find some way of spinning this, described the theft of software as “inappropriate downloads”, making it sound as if this act was in a similar category to a rogue employee downloading a favourite music track to his laptop.

I am always impressed (and sometimes amused) by the software industry’s creative marketing ability, but usually this happens when a software product’s features are exaggerated a tad, and I feel this is taking PR spin to a new level. What next? Using the same logic, defendants in murder trials should perhaps get their defence lawyers to rename them trials of “inappropriate demise”?

SAP scored an own goal this week when it admitted to hacking into an Oracle website and stealing code. This is pretty bizarre behaviour in plenty of ways, but I like the way that their PR guys, desperate to find some way of spinning this, described the theft of software as “inappropriate downloads”, making it sound as if this act was in a similar category to a rogue employee downloading a favourite music track to his laptop.

I am always impressed (and sometimes amused) by the software industry’s creative marketing ability, but usually this happens when a software product’s features are exaggerated a tad, and I feel this is taking PR spin to a new level. What next? Using the same logic, defendants in murder trials should perhaps get their defence lawyers to rename them trials of “inappropriate demise”?