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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

#301

Post by MadcapJake »

marcinzm wrote: post #71
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. It is a perfectly valid point in terms of the impact on SimulaVR which is what this discussion is about. A company is trying to get sensitive information from them. Stating the company is unethical even if all other similar companies are as well is perfectly valid.

How can it be unethical if this is how it's done across the board in the US? Meta's lawyers aren't bringing in some unheard of tactic here. This is par for the course. I'd love to hear some "ethical" means for proving without doubt that you have competitors. Admittedly I wouldn't be a good judge of their usability in court, mind.

The other piece that I think the parent was making is that how can we judge this practice as somehow speaking to the ethicalness of a broader company when the decision making process doesn't work or act like a single mind (which is how we perceive ethics to work, an internal/personal decision wherein you way the good, bad, etc)?

Re: SimulaVR Has Been Subpoenaed by Meta Platforms, Inc

#302

Post by thesausageking »

micimize wrote: post #234

I don't begrudge them their annoyance (or click-through harvesting) but there is a straightforward legal process for objecting to and quashing a subpoena. Seems like it might apply here, at least in part: https://www.klgates.com/Litigation-Minute-Responding-to-Thir... Also RE some speculation in this thread, it seems very unlikely to me that Meta's legal team was looking to get some free market research, but it is in…

If you never been through discovery, it can seem that way, but nothing is straightforward or cheap about responding to a subpoena in a high profile case with a $500B company.

Samsung, Nintendo, and the other parties listed likely will spent $1-2m on these subpoenas. It likely involves thousands and thousands of messages and documents. A lot of back and forth with lawyers ("Each of these 12 employees exported everything with the word 'roadmap' in their email? what about Sandy's personal phone; I see a reference to an SMS elsewhere"), IP council to redact things, and then prep and support for the deposition.

SimulaVR is a tiny startup. It very well could kill them.

Re: SimulaVR Has Been Subpoenaed by Meta Platforms, Inc

#308

Post by micimize »

thesausageking wrote: post #302
micimize wrote: post #234

I don't begrudge them their annoyance (or click-through harvesting) but there is a straightforward legal process for objecting to and quashing a subpoena. Seems like it might apply here, at least in part: https://www.klgates.com/Litigation-Minute-Responding-to-Thir... Also RE some speculation in this thread, it seems very unlikely to me that Meta's legal team was looking to get some free market research, but it is in…

If you never been through discovery, it can seem that way, but nothing is straightforward or cheap about responding to a subpoena in a high profile case with a $500B company. Samsung, Nintendo, and the other parties listed likely will spent $1-2m on these subpoenas. It likely involves thousands and thousands of messages and documents. A lot of back and forth with lawyers ("Each of these 12 employees exported everythi…

yeesh – one would hope that would fall under "undue burden or expense" but yeah I guess you never know how this kinda thing plays out until you've been through the ringer (like everything). Thinking again, I can't believe I included the descriptor "straightforward"

Re: SimulaVR Has Been Subpoenaed by Meta Platforms, Inc

#309

Post by jolmg »

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…

> This shows that SimulaVR is run by a bunch of children [...] SimulaVR needs to grow up and hire lawyers to handle this.

It wasn't SimulaVR who responded to you, so why respond by insulting SimulaVR for the comment of someone else? They've already got legal counsel:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33111249

All SimulaVR did in their blog post is state the facts. They haven't refuted the point you said, and may be already looking into that.

Re: SimulaVR Has Been Subpoenaed by Meta Platforms, Inc

#310

Post by danra »

benreesman wrote: post #170
danra wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> corporate funding of all the open-source projects that wouldn't exist without the megacorps This is a fallacy: It's possible comparable open source contributions could have been made without the graces of the corporates. For example: The giants tend to buy out their competition early, so how could it mature enough to be able to contribute comparably, or possibly better, to open source? IMHO the open source contribu…

There really isn't any way to confirm or refute that kind of argument. What would happen if regulation or social norms or whatever prevented big tech companies from existing? I don't know and (frankly) you don't either. I use emacs a dozen plus hours a day, and GNU wouldn't exist if RMS hadn't been bullied at the lunch room in the MIT AI Lab. Would the world be a better or worse place if he didn't have a personal jih…

Of course, but you don't know either. So your argument that these (or equivalent) contributions wouldn't exist without the megacorps doesn't hold.
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