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Why I’m Suing the US Government

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Re: Why I’m Suing the US Government

#201

Post by cortesoft »

hiram112 wrote: post #148
ProAm wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How much does your wife charge as a therapist? Everyone needs to make money. HN is a weird place to bemoan prices when many here are seeking unicorn valuations while disrupting industry. Everyone hates laws until its in their best interest to have said laws.

Though I don't necessarily agree with you, I'll upvote you as I think you bring up a good counterpoint that's not being discussed. It's possible that this company's business plan assumed the replacement by obsolescence model - instead of a high upfront cost to recoup their R&D, they expected users to replace it every few years at full cost. This is no different than the vast majority of the bait & switch type schemes…

If their business model is based on assumed replacement, then they should make that explicit when someone buys their product; tell them that they are buying X years of service. A customer has the right to know what they are agreeing to, and having a secret expiration date is not a fair business transaction.

Any business model is fine, as long as all the people involved in the transaction know what they are agreeing to. Bait and switch is NOT acceptable, and just because others do it does not make it acceptable.

If you are going to hide the fact that you expect your product to break in 2 years and the customer will have to buy a new one, then you don't get to complain if someone bypasses your business model and fixes it themselves. You can't use the law to enforce your trickery.

Re: Why I’m Suing the US Government

#203

Post by kevinnk »

thinkMOAR wrote: post #48
emodendroket wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which people are you talking about? This is done pretty regularly but generally judicial review tends to favor conservative interests.

The people, citizens. Though i'm curious what kind of laws are rolled back in the US because a citizen decided to sue to government. Do you have any nice examples (preferably of some law effecting many but sued by just one person?)

Obergefell v. Hodges, United States v. Windsor, Lawrence v. Texas

Re: Why I’m Suing the US Government

#204

Post by [deleted] »

onetwotree wrote: post #100

Good luck! What's kind of cool about this issue is that it attracts support from citizens of all political stripes - whether you're a farmer who just wants to be able to fix his own damn tractor, or a hacker who wants to futz with proprietary hardware, the law is patently bogus. Unfortunately, farmers and hackers have far less political influence than corporations. Hopefully by pursuing this through the courts and wi…

[deleted]

Re: Why I’m Suing the US Government

#205

Post by [deleted] »

onetwotree wrote: post #100

Good luck! What's kind of cool about this issue is that it attracts support from citizens of all political stripes - whether you're a farmer who just wants to be able to fix his own damn tractor, or a hacker who wants to futz with proprietary hardware, the law is patently bogus. Unfortunately, farmers and hackers have far less political influence than corporations. Hopefully by pursuing this through the courts and wi…

[deleted]

Re: Why I’m Suing the US Government

#206

Post by [deleted] »

onetwotree wrote: post #100

Good luck! What's kind of cool about this issue is that it attracts support from citizens of all political stripes - whether you're a farmer who just wants to be able to fix his own damn tractor, or a hacker who wants to futz with proprietary hardware, the law is patently bogus. Unfortunately, farmers and hackers have far less political influence than corporations. Hopefully by pursuing this through the courts and wi…

[deleted]

Re: Why I’m Suing the US Government

#207

Post by EdSharkey »

zekevermillion wrote: post #70
belorn wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What happens if I tinker with a regular car and put a nitrous oxide engine? The safety issues, which are real, could allow someone to plow into minivan on its way to Little League practice. It could explode. It could cause a massive fire. It could go way faster than the speed limit, bypass the limits of the breaks, and go against any number of laws. So... does this mean I could sue Ford if someone modified a Ford car…

I would argue self-driving car software is different. If license terms permit modification, and a modified version is running in a car that causes damage, then there will be an argument as to whether the modifications caused the wreck, or whether it was the underlying software and thus the manufacturer who is responsible. Tesla, quite rationally, would not want to give users a permissive license, given this obvious l…

I'm sure we all could come up with compelling arguments for both sides of this debate.

"It is the socially responsible thing for Tesla to make guarantees about their car software performance and prevent tampering in order to keep our streets safe."

and

"It's my product, I own the car; I have the right to tinker with all of it."

I observe that we constantly have this same debate: can we be responsible and take care of ourselves or do we need some ruling class to take care of us and micromanage our decisions for us? Or philosophically, can mankind be perfected through laws?

Half-measures and exceptions in the self-determination debate always strike me as lacking wisdom. Culturally, we should be strongly predisposed one way or the other.

Re: Why I’m Suing the US Government

#208

Post by kahrkunne »

onetwotree wrote: post #100

Good luck! What's kind of cool about this issue is that it attracts support from citizens of all political stripes - whether you're a farmer who just wants to be able to fix his own damn tractor, or a hacker who wants to futz with proprietary hardware, the law is patently bogus. Unfortunately, farmers and hackers have far less political influence than corporations. Hopefully by pursuing this through the courts and wi…

Really, if you're a farmer who wants to fix his own damn tractor, you're probably a hacker (in the traditional sense of the word). You don't have to work with computers in order to be a hacker.

Re: Why I’m Suing the US Government

#209

Post by astazangasta »

rm_-rf_slash wrote: post #109
astazangasta wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The real problem, of course, is that the Internet today consists almost exclusively of private companies profiting from other people's content. Twitter doesn't pay its users, it makes money off their tweets AND by having them look at ads (yes, this is work). Similarly with Facebook, or with any review aggregator (Yelp, Amazon, Google+), monetizing the free labor of others. The DMCA protects certain forms of property…

Twitter exists as a platform that allows politicians, entertainers, businesses and more communicate more quickly and cheaply with people interested in them than ever before. The profit a user gets out of Twitter depends on what is put into it.

What you're describing as profit is a diffuse social value, public discourse, not a narrowly-defined piece of property that can be monetized and sold (views/impressions/clicks).

I would like to suggest out that the latter is a heavily-defended form of property (belonging to the platform, not the user who does the work of viewing/clicking) that is monetized into the billions, while the former does not directly, probably just because it cannot be defined by terms of contract, and would be exercised on behalf of users, a diffuse unorganized source of power, and not the corporation, a narrow, organized source of power with specific intent.

We might despise users for not having their shit together, and watch happily while large corporations cart off billions and build giant systems of surveillance to further probe us, but this sort of 'vae victis' attitude is I think why 2016 is the debacle that it is.

Re: Why I’m Suing the US Government

#210

Post by unabst »

What we need is the legal right to fork any IP. An open licensing model where no one needs permission. They just need to maybe pay an IP tax that trickles up to the previous contributors that helped produce what was forked.

IP is completely flawed because it grants a monopoly on the fruits of specific knowledge or a work as if they are static end products, whereas in reality anything that is not evolving is dying. So the law restricts progress to the owners of the IP even when we could all contribute. And when there is incompetence or negligence by the owners, we have a situation where something good is ruined or withheld, with anyone fixing it being illegal.

Removing IP is impossible because it's about profit, which is also a right. What we need is a new revenue system based on new principles of an expectation of progress and open contribution. Open source software and hardware is this, but just without any standard profit model backed by law.

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