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When the Judge Distrusts Your Lawyers

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Re: When the Judge Distrusts Your Lawyers

#81

Post by pimmen »

alexasmyths wrote: post #76
pimmen wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I were to present to you individual cases of people being knowingly screwed over by Uber, is your argument then that if millions of other people benefit it's all worth it? Lets say many people are angry that Uber kept it hidden that their personal information was hacked and feel knowingly screwed over, to start with. Are you going to let Uber off the hook because a nice ride at a nice price is more than enough com…

There are tons of 'individuals' who have been screwed over by most large organizations. Does that make them all evil. Many organizations have kept hacks secret. We also don't know about hacks which have not yet been made public or won't be. We don't know what was compromised - moreover - this is something that probably a very, very small team in Uber will contend with - it's not necessarily systematic. Google steals…

Your defense basically boils down to "what about other companies?" or comparing the bad things Uber does to all the value it delivers. Maybe I'm missing something?

I can tolerate a company doing something bad, taking responsibility and paying its dues. I cannot tolerate a company where illegal and unethical activities are going on all the time yet management covers their own asses (Kalanick left, the board didn't formally fire him). If Kalanick had resigned when that self driving car, driving around without proper permits, ran that red light for example it would be easier to not get the feeling this is systemic.

Re: When the Judge Distrusts Your Lawyers

#82

Post by alexasmyths »

pimmen wrote: post #81
alexasmyths wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are tons of 'individuals' who have been screwed over by most large organizations. Does that make them all evil. Many organizations have kept hacks secret. We also don't know about hacks which have not yet been made public or won't be. We don't know what was compromised - moreover - this is something that probably a very, very small team in Uber will contend with - it's not necessarily systematic. Google steals…

Your defense basically boils down to "what about other companies?" or comparing the bad things Uber does to all the value it delivers. Maybe I'm missing something? I can tolerate a company doing something bad, taking responsibility and paying its dues. I cannot tolerate a company where illegal and unethical activities are going on all the time yet management covers their own asses (Kalanick left, the board didn't for…

This position is based on perception, hype, PR and spurious press reports.

Uber is generally not any worse than most other organizations - and so, yes, we all have to live with this ambiguity.

+ Hacks happen all the time. The vast majority are not reported.

+ All companies engage in aggressive capture of others IP. Google and FB are both notorious for working with companies long enough to find out their 'secret sauce' and then copying them. Uber's mistake - in your eyes - was naming the group dedicated to it, whilst at other companies, it's common operating procedure.

The fundamental difference between Google, FB and Uber mostly boils down to PR - that - and the fact that Uber has to actually employ large quantities of people in irregular situations.

I don't like Uber - but I feel safer with them than Google - who knows everything about me and will do as they please with that information.

Re: When the Judge Distrusts Your Lawyers

#84

Post by alexasmyths »

pimmen wrote: post #77
alexasmyths wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Where’s your professional integrity is what I’m asking." There are millions of happy Uber drivers and 10's of millions of happy Uber customers, it's beyond pale for you to even ask this question. Uber treats is drivers reasonably well or else nobody would be driving for them. "to mess with people’s lives in likely illegal ways?" 99.9% of Uber is just connecting drivers and riders, that's not 'messing with people's l…

I care about the 0.1& too. I don't believe in knowingly messing with people for the benefit of everyone else. And if the last part of your argument is "why care about anything less than the worst things in the world?" I don't agree with that thinking, plain and simple. A company that big and influential being that completely disrespectful towards regulators, tax payers, riders, female engineers, drivers, competitors…

"A company that big and influential being that completely disrespectful towards regulators, tax payers, riders, female engineers, drivers, competitors and investors is something we need to seriously mind."

This is both wrong and naive.

The only game that Uber has not played well lately is one of PR.

Uber - for all it's issues - treats female staffers basically the same as most other companies. The average person working at Uber, Google, Exxon or Maytag for that matter is not going to see some radical difference.

Uber aggressively pursues the IP of other companies the same way as any other company. Google will interview individuals, and make 'fake BD deals' with companies expressly for the purpose of gleaning (i.e. stealing) IP - this is common. It doesn't make it right - but it would be naive to indicate that this is something Uber is doing.

+ Uber is screwing over riders? How exactly? The reality is that millions of happy, recurring users flail this argument as emotional hyperbole. Uber is extremely well liked by it's users. "Oh this evil company screws over it's customers" - just as every day considerably more people opt to use it over alternatives ... I mean really.

+ Drivers - for the most part, they've been as good as any company. They change policies, which is normal, it's just that their policy disputes are public, whereas you don't see it with other groups.

Uber is mostly similar to any other high tech organization but they have access to considerably less information that entities such as Google and Facebook.

Re: When the Judge Distrusts Your Lawyers

#85

Post by [deleted] »

leggomylibro wrote: post #34
pimmen wrote: post #30

I just don’t get why engineers want to work for Uber. They have treated their drivers poorly (eg. under paying them and fighting benefits other cab companies have to pay), their riders poorly (eg. not telling them their personal data was stolen), their engineers poorly (eg. giving zero fucks about sexual harassment without the press getting involved), local governments poorly (eg. dodging law enforcement and regulato…

Integrity is a rare coin these days, but to be fair, it won't buy you much. I still think it's worthwhile because...you know, be nice to people. But I'm fortunate to be in a position where I can be a sucker like that without serious consequences. I know that having integrity in the current market hurts me a bit, but I can afford it. Maybe not everyone has that sort of option - maybe Uber's extra $20k keeps their mort…

[deleted]

Re: When the Judge Distrusts Your Lawyers

#86

Post by enraged_camel »

olliepop wrote: post #12

> Uber has a team dedicated to collecting trade secrets from competing companies. Allegedly, the people involved use disappearing-message apps, anonymous servers, and secret computers and phones to communicate without leaving a trail. If true, then this is absolutely unreal. Add it to the growing list of dodgy Uber tactics: Ride-hailing company (Uber) hit by revelations it used custom-built tool to deceive law enforc…

Like I said in another (heavily downvoted) post, it’s time for the corporate death penalty.

Re: When the Judge Distrusts Your Lawyers

#87

Post by zebraflask »

skarap wrote: post #47

> Once a judge catches a lawyer in a lie the judge will question everything the lawyer says. Not a lawyer, but isn't is taken for granted that lawyers (along with everybody else) are lying in courts and that it's the jurors and judge's job to find out who is lying?

Absolutely not. The exact opposite. That's why this is such a problem for Uber's legal team.

Re: When the Judge Distrusts Your Lawyers

#88

Post by rdiddly »

pdkl95 wrote: post #62
rdiddly wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's not ignore the group dynamic though either. People's moral convictions can be somewhat flexible when it comes to fitting in and blending in with a group, including a company. Yes it's true that if your personal ethics are strong enough, you'll resist or exit a group whose ethics conflict with your own. It's also true that if the company has good ethics, you won't have to. Meanwhile the weak-minded as Obi Wan mi…

> both individual and group ethics have to fail However, they don't have to fail at the same time or in a single step. This type of problem can creep in slowly over years as the "normalization of deviance"[1]. Richard Cook presented[2] a very useful model for how this type of problem creeps into complex system. The pressure from economic and workload concerns never goes away, so unless there is a proactive, explicit…

Good links, thanks!

Re: When the Judge Distrusts Your Lawyers

#89

Post by jackvalentine »

YawningAngel wrote: post #71
jackvalentine wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting... superficially it looks like patent protection without having to disclose the patent and have it eventually expire. Is that an accurate statement?

You can independently reinvent it, you just can't steal it.

What happens if for example, unsolicited someone from the competition tells me the secret?
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