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SimulaVR Has Been Subpoenaed by Meta Platforms, Inc

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Re: SimulaVR Has Been Subpoenaed by Meta Platforms, Inc

#241

Post by giobox »

cortesoft wrote: post #182
Ajedi32 wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eyeroll . Meta did nothing wrong here. This isn't them going after their competition; they're the defendant in this lawsuit. As the article says: > In fairness to Meta: the FTC is the one who initiated this fight, leaving them with the burden of demonstrating it isn't behaving "anti-competitively". So naturally, one of the primary (only?) things Meta can do to demonstrate this is to subpoena...well...its competition.…

> Meta did nothing wrong here Doesn't this depend on whether Meta is actually guilty of what the FTC is accusing them of? If they are, then clearly the wrong thing they did was behave anti-competitively. If they are guilty of that, then it is fair to blame them for being dragged into their defense. While everyone has the right to defend themselves, it is fair to be upset at having to be called in the defense of someo…

I'm not defending Meta, but what constitutes anti-competitive behaviour is often hard to define and requires a court process to ultimately decide - it's not a binary state one can easily recognize having entered or exited. If it was, many kinds of legal issue wouldn't need nearly as much court time.

Until a Court process says otherwise, Meta have done nothing wrong here.

Re: SimulaVR Has Been Subpoenaed by Meta Platforms, Inc

#242

Post by kanetw »

tannhauser23 wrote: post #232
kanetw wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We aren't throwing a hissy fit lol. We're just stating the facts and are working with our lawyers to resolve this.

You made a site complaining about the subpoena and came to Hacker News to complain about it some more. Look, I get that you guys are a small shop but you should not be surprised to be asked to provide evidence in an antitrust litigation over the VR market. I'm guessing you haven't seen a subpoena before - they are all like this, and your attorneys will be able to negotiate something much less burdensome. So get off H…

We made our weekly blog post about it (because it's worth talking about, IMO) and someone else posted it on HN. It blew up and we're responding to comments as necessary.

We're letting our legal counsel handle the actual details, the rest is just talking about it.

Re: SimulaVR Has Been Subpoenaed by Meta Platforms, Inc

#243

Post by bbarn »

I get the arguments that Meta is forced to defend it's claim it's not being anticompetitive, but isn't part of a small business like SimulaVR's sole competitive advantage being secretive with it's plans because it doesn't have to publicly state everything it's doing?

Wouldn't this take that away from them? Is it not a simple enough point to object to the subpoena on?

Re: SimulaVR Has Been Subpoenaed by Meta Platforms, Inc

#244

Post by throbintrash »

meesterdude wrote: post #36
throbintrash wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm just saying there are no ethical companies of that size so it's a disengineous point to bring up. the deeper realization is that is not fair (nor conducing to good social outcome) to try and hold an entity such as Meta (formerly facebook) to individual person standards such as being ethical. this is more important in other discussions around rights of corporations (and other comparalby powerful institutions) in c…

> so it's a disengineous point to bring up. In the public eye, Meta is particularly unethical. It's a large part of their current downfall. So I don't agree with you that it is a disingenuous point.

facebook tried to provide equal and fair (market driven) access to political influence through their ad-platform; and they will be punished for doing so (see the Cambridge Analytica scandal, and subsequent relentless waves of bad PR against them).

political influence is not open, nor fair, nor market driven. is power driven; and the power is trying to re-assert this harsh truth.

and when I say "the power" I refer to the powerful people and their institutions who can make a political example a lá Julian Assange; the kinds of institutions and secretive traditional societies who can make somebody commit "suicide" in a federal prison; or get somebody in a presidential seat. facebook is in for a rough ride.

powers who would ally with china in secret "in order to better all of society". powers whose only competence is keeping power, but not making power nor doing anything good with it. powerful institutions (of autonomous self-maximizing money) who know war, and war is what they will use their power for (and whence their power comes).

in another point in history I would be meeting some assassins pretty soon for daring to publish this in a semi-public forum. now all I get is dissuaded ("You're posting too fast. Please slow down. Thanks.") and buried in with the noise/spam and the garbage ([shadow]banned).

Re: SimulaVR Has Been Subpoenaed by Meta Platforms, Inc

#245

Post by whateveracct »

MikusR wrote: post #240
whateveracct wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's only technically correct. I'd say given the words I said around "Linux," your response is pedantic at best. Android is in no way what I want. And is it Open and Free? Can I do whatever I want with it? Can I install NixOS Mobile? Jailbreaking doesn't count since we are talking about official product offerings. If I can't run my own software from source + make my device completely decoupled from Meta, it isn't a…

https://developer.oculus.com/blog/unlocking-oculus-go/

So - their discontinued model?

Re: SimulaVR Has Been Subpoenaed by Meta Platforms, Inc

#246

Post by danielmarkbruce »

zinekeller wrote: post #224
nickstinemates wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> you can get all this stuff done in an hour "I am not a developer, but adding multi tenancy to our product is as simple as adding a tenantid to every field in our database! Should only take a day or two"

Yeah, even if you're willing to defend your competitor you will still need to screen your documents to see which needs to be sealed and which documents that are under an NDA with an unrelated party that can be excluded. An hour is definitely too short for this, even if you have 100 lawyers (because the bottleneck is you and your knowledgeable employees and your lawyers won't likely to know the breadth of third-party…

They are a small startup.

They won't have hundreds of parties which they have documents under NDA and many NDAs have carve-outs for court orders anyway. All their docs are likely in Google Drive, Box or MSFT's thing, they can literally do it in an hour. If they try to do it in an hour it might take them 2.

Re: SimulaVR Has Been Subpoenaed by Meta Platforms, Inc

#248

Post by wtetzner »

Brian_K_White wrote: post #233
tannhauser23 wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This shows that SimulaVR is run by a bunch of children. Every subpoena says this, but you work with the attorneys to figure out the time and manner that works best for the deposition. I routinely flew thousands of miles to do depositions in places that worked best for the deposed. And complaining about how the subpoena's asking for tons of documents. Again, every subpoena does this; you have to negotiate with the att…

So what if they are children? Fuck children? They received a letter that looks important and official to them, and looks to them like something they have to comply with. Are you giving legal advice to ignore letters from lawyers?

> Are you giving legal advice to ignore letters from lawyers?

The only advice I saw them give was to hire lawyers to help them deal with it.

Re: SimulaVR Has Been Subpoenaed by Meta Platforms, Inc

#249

Post by midislack »

onepointsixC wrote: post #122
dsign wrote: post #27

This is not Meta demanding to see some privilege information that exists in Simula's drawers, but rather commandeering the entire competing organization to do market research for Meta. It is clever and evil, and nothing anybody says after this will make me think that Meta is not anti-competitive nor that they have an once of ethics. As a consumer, I doubt I will ever again consider their VR products; I rather give my…

This seems like a wildly emotional response that is completely out of line with what is being asked. The FTC is suing Meta, and it has a right to get other companies to admit that they are in fact competitors to Meta in the VR Space. SimulaVR is being pretty bad faith in claiming that: "Meta sells reasonably good gaming headsets to customers who want to be entertained in VR; we're selling general-purpose productivity…

Facebook's asking for too much, business plans from over 100 companies? LOL

Re: SimulaVR Has Been Subpoenaed by Meta Platforms, Inc

#250

Post by jijji »

kanetw wrote: post #210
ncallaway wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right, but hiring a legal representative is going to be very expensive for a small organization. It’s not just the few hours they’ll be testifying, or giving deposition. A reasonable corporate representative is going to need to do quite a bit of prep work and review of relevant materials. So, that’s both a legal cost, and a productivity cost for whoever is collecting those documents and briefing the corporate represe…

Yep. It's easily going to be in the 5 digits.

you can call an attorney and pay an hourly fee usually between 100 - 400/hr to talk with an attorney about your case or pay a retainer fee for 10 hours... attorneys that throw out 5 digit numbers when asked for a price are rip offs
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