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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

#251

Post by midislack »

Ajedi32 wrote: post #121
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…

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.…

Stealing secret plans from companies under the guise of being the POOR VICTIM!

Re: SimulaVR Has Been Subpoenaed by Meta Platforms, Inc

#252

Post by midislack »

Ajedi32 wrote: post #153
HillRat wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Facebook is very much the aggressor -- in response to the FTC suit, their immediate response was to try and use the courts to strong-arm hundreds of competitors into giving up massive troves of highly sensitive commercial secrets without any kind of formal protection, such as limiting document review to FB's outside counsel. It's ridiculous, it's abusive, it's overbroad, and it's transparently an effort to burden Fac…

What would you have had them do instead? Again: > naturally, one of the primary (only?) things Meta can do to demonstrate this is to subpoena...well...its competition...to demand documents which might help them in court

They don't have a right to see secret documents other people have. We'll see.

Re: SimulaVR Has Been Subpoenaed by Meta Platforms, Inc

#253

Post by nickstinemates »

danielmarkbruce wrote: post #222
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"

Not quite the same.... There isn't a state licensing requirement to be a software developer. Any person off the street can start writing software tomorrow and call themselves a developer. There are a good number of jobs where someone needs to know a lot about the law, has taken courses or read a lot about it, makes decisions on legal matters on a day to day basis, but cannot call themselves a lawyer. A couple example…

I think making assumptions about operating models, how easy something is or isn't to gather, etc. is inappropriate. In the same way a random 3rd party may make assumptions about you or your life based on these posts. They don't know you or anything about you.

Unless you have some unique insight into the situation, your assessment of the simplicity of dealing with this subpoena is not useful.

Obviously, SimulaVR feels differently or they wouldn't have written a blog post about it, wouldn't be in these comments, and we wouldn't be talking about it. And they'd know how onerous it is, given it affects them and they've said it is.

Re: SimulaVR Has Been Subpoenaed by Meta Platforms, Inc

#254

Post by nirvdrum »

tannhauser23 wrote: post #191
M4v3R wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From the article: We've also been commanded to drop everything we're doing and go tesify on these matters _in person_, thousands of miles away from us, by the stated deadline :| So it's not just a matter of writing "we don't know". They have to produce a lot of material and then travel 1000's of miles to show up in the court in person.

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…

I'm not typically one to point at the HN guidelines, but you could have made your points and been informative without the insults. It's not helping anything and leading to otherwise unnecessary defensive back-and-forths.

Re: SimulaVR Has Been Subpoenaed by Meta Platforms, Inc

#255

Post by danielmarkbruce »

nickstinemates wrote: post #253
danielmarkbruce wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not quite the same.... There isn't a state licensing requirement to be a software developer. Any person off the street can start writing software tomorrow and call themselves a developer. There are a good number of jobs where someone needs to know a lot about the law, has taken courses or read a lot about it, makes decisions on legal matters on a day to day basis, but cannot call themselves a lawyer. A couple example…

I think making assumptions about operating models, how easy something is or isn't to gather, etc. is inappropriate. In the same way a random 3rd party may make assumptions about you or your life based on these posts. They don't know you or anything about you. Unless you have some unique insight into the situation, your assessment of the simplicity of dealing with this subpoena is not useful. Obviously, SimulaVR feels…

It's a forum, it's basically for speculation. Short of being rude, virtually nothing is "inappropriate". Saying something is "inappropriate" just suggests one doesn't have a reasonable response to the points made.

I've gone through it, from both sides. For a small company or individual, it's just not something to panic about or assume will consume an enormous amount of time. That isn't "unique" insight, lots of people go through this, the US is a litigious place. To be clear, they are not on trial.

Re: SimulaVR Has Been Subpoenaed by Meta Platforms, Inc

#256

Post by ajross »

bombcar wrote: post #120
ajross wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I told you: The recipient pays as part of their civic duty. If you want protection under the law for your own grievances, you need to be prepared to assist the court in the adjudication of the grievances of others. And the practical reason is that poor people have the right to petition courts for redress of grievances too . You're upset because Zuckerberg happens to be rich, so this seems unfair. But what if the star…

At some point, yes, otherwise it can and will be abused, just like patent lawsuits already are. There are cases of this already happening in the case of poor people, otherwise vexatious litigants wouldn't exist. I wonder if the judge even knew that one of the list of companies was "small company mctinypants" or just assumed all were massive and huge.

Once more: it's just a subpoena. OP is looking at a few thousand dollars of legal fees and maybe a trip to wherever the court is. If you're operating a profit-seeking company in a legal regime that provides the protection that ours does, you simply have to be able to bear those costs. If your VC's or angels won't pay it, they aren't serious investors.

Re: SimulaVR Has Been Subpoenaed by Meta Platforms, Inc

#258

Post by Bloedcoin »

arrosenberg wrote: post #186
Bloedcoin wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You paid for a phone with Google. That was your decision. There are other options. And while you mind, billions are really happy to have a very secure and relativity cheap phone.

How can you determine it is cheap when Google is anticompetitively subsidizing the cost with advertising and data collection? You could be getting hosed and never know it.

Because android itself is free but I'm not seeing a lot of companies or you taking the time and effort to make an ad free Android phone for the same price or cheaper.

Re: SimulaVR Has Been Subpoenaed by Meta Platforms, Inc

#259

Post by vineyardmike »

mlyle wrote: post #195
whimsicalism wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right, so you can imagine this evidence would be useful to Meta if the boundaries were drawn differently than how you are imagining.

At the same time, you can imagine that SimulaVR wants to assert "we are not proof META isn't a monopoly". Further, they probably don't want to provide key market information that could aid an aggressive monopolist from leveraging their way into SimulaVR's space.

Simula may not want to hurt meta (a competitor) when that competitor is burning billions in cash to prop up a VR market. They may benefit from a growing consumer awareness and UX research.
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