Apparently it’s official, the new MyDoom virus is the worst ever, accounting for 1 in 12 emails on the Net at the moment. Which would explain why some mail servers seem to have ground to a halt around the place, at least when I’m trying to send an email to someone there.

What many people might not realise is the virus is also something of a political statement. As well as distributing itself willy nilly, it is programmed to take over an infected computer to launch denial of service attacks on US company SCO Group. The suggesting is this is all linked to something of a storm SCO kicked up last year regarding the open source Linux Software. SCO has been ascerting it owns copyright on some parts of the software. This could be something of an inconvenience for a piece of software that is supposed to be free and unemcumbered by copyright. And which is used, by some estimates, on 70% of the world’s web servers.

There are many people who dispute SCO’s claim, but with the stakes this high, one can see why SCO might give the tyres a kick and try its luck. Reminds me of the company which claimed it had a patent on the hyperlink, and filed a courtcase wanting a royalty from ISPs everytime someone clicked a link on a web site.