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What's to stop two smaller companies making a "court case" where they sue each other for small bucks with the desired outcome (following robots.txt is a legal way to access a site with a crawler). This would then set a precedent that would benefit others as a whole.
"my lawyer advised me that it had never been tested in court, and the legal costs alone of being a test case would bankrupt me" What's to stop two smaller companies making a "court case" where they sue each other for small bucks with the desired outcome (following robots.txt is a legal way to access a site with a crawler). This would then set a precedent that would benefit others as a whole.
What's stopping Facebook from setting up a puppet company to sue to obtain their desired precedent ?
This seems like a huge hole in the "let's let the courts decide the law system".
What would have happened if he had done it from a company based in the Seychelles for example? Would that be a way to protect against Facebook aggressively suing with no grounds?
What would have happened if he had done it from a company based in the Seychelles for example? Would that be a way to protect against Facebook aggressively suing with no grounds?
My guess Facebook would still sure and obtain an injunction on the site being distributed in the US, probably shutting down access in the US.
I've been wondering about this problem too recently when looking at some frivolous patent lawsuits... The problem is that for quite a few case even if the law is on the side of the startup, the cost of applying the law and winning the lawsuit are too high...
Sorry but I side with Facebook, a freely available public graph of millions of users could have been used for re-identification attacks. Frankly you should never share your friends list publicly.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
My guess Facebook would still sure and obtain an injunction on the site being distributed in the US, probably shutting down access in the US.
But how can they do this if the dns server and server are not hosted in the US? I've been wondering about this problem too recently when looking at some frivolous patent lawsuits... The problem is that for quite a few case even if the law is on the side of the startup, the cost of applying the law and winning the lawsuit are too high...
Also, if you have any assets in the US they can be seized.
In this case, the plaintiff is accusing the defendant of defamation for linking to web pages the plaintiff argues are defamatory. (Aside: compared to the US, defamation law in Canada is weighed much more strongly toward the plaintiff than the defendant.)
Lower courts have decided that simply linking to a defamatory web page does not constitute defamation, unless the link is provided for the purpose of endorsing the defamatory material, in which case it is the endorsement of the link that constitutes defamation, and not the link itself.
The problem in Canada, as in the US, is that governments have not kept up with legislation governing the legality of various internet-specific activities, like hyperlinking and so on. That has left the courts to try and decide through precedent how to handle these conflicts.
[1] http://www.scc-csc.gc.ca/case-dossier/cms-sgd/sum-som-eng.as...
"my lawyer advised me that it had never been tested in court, and the legal costs alone of being a test case would bankrupt me" What's to stop two smaller companies making a "court case" where they sue each other for small bucks with the desired outcome (following robots.txt is a legal way to access a site with a crawler). This would then set a precedent that would benefit others as a whole.
It usually takes in-depth briefing by sophisticated lawyers to generate a precedent of any meaning. This takes a lot of money and effort. Unless parties invest a lot into a case to give a court detailed guidance, the court will usually take the path of least resistance and dispose of the case on minimalist terms that have no precedential value for future cases.
In addition, courts do not permit collusive cases and are pretty good at sniffing them out.
In theory, one could file a low-level case and wind up with a helpful precedent. But this is highly unlikely. Of every 1,000 such cases filed, maybe 1 would have a slight chance of ever resulting in anything meaningful. That is just the reality of the litigation process. It takes a lot to generate meaningful precedents and that is why organizations that take on this burden (e.g., EFF) are needed to pour the vast resources into the process that it typically takes to get such results.