Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Woman wins 12-year legal battle against Google

abc.net.au

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

111–120 of 220 posts

Re: Woman wins 12-year legal battle against Google

#111

Post by jeroenhd »

MichaelZuo wrote: post #94
bluGill wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is no right to that. Things that make it impossible should be looked on with suspicion, but the right does not exist. If you were willing to live like 1930 you could have plenty of free time, but 1930 means electric was a luxury most people didn't have.

If there is no right for individuals to have a productive life with plenty of free time per day than a huge number of HN comments on topics such as politics, housing, social welfare systems, healthcare, transportation, etc... are obviated. Which doesn't seem like an appealing proposition to accept.

There are specific laws indirectly governing work-life balance, such as maximum hours worked consecutively, certain contract stupilations being null and voice because of general law, regulations regarding sick pay, and protections against discrimination, but I don't think there are many countries that explicitly state the right to a productive life with free time.

Rights to housing, welfare, and healthcare are generally handled independently. I'm not sure if there is a "right to transportation". Most rights originate from a basic "right to a happy life" ideal, but are split up and spelt out in particular sub-rights that are easier to enforce in court.

Article 8 of the ECHR and similar human rights conventions seem to come close, but that's mostly used against governments and laws.

I don't think it's a bad idea to introduce such a right, but it needs to be carefully worded or it will cause a lot of trouble.

Re: Woman wins 12-year legal battle against Google

#112

Post by jeroenhd »

DannyBee wrote: post #43
numbsafari wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just because it can’t scale, doesn’t mean it isn’t wrong. There is no right to a scalable business model. If you can’t figure out how to do your business without doing it right, you shouldn’t be doing it. Our local coal fired power plant has been yelling for decades that they can’t possibly make a profit and meet all the environmental obligations. Well… guess what.

This is a fun quip, but are you literally suggesting that someone should have to read every webpage indexed by a search engine? That is what the comment you are responding to suggests doesn't scale. If so, that seems, way off the deep end to me, and you know, slightly different from your local coal plant killing everyone through pollution. If not, what precisely is your okay (If non-scalable) solution to the problem…

If you can't build your product within the bounds of laws and morals, your product sucks or you don't have what it takes to build such a product.

Re: Woman wins 12-year legal battle against Google

#113

Post by gspencley »

jeroenhd wrote: post #95
arp242 wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Posting messages and making up that a friend's wife committed suicide is not really "stalking" or "persistently and obsessively harassing". Immoral and possibly illegal? Perhaps. But that's not the same thing. Also, Duffy was ripped off by Kasamba. I think the crux of the matter is: even if you did something wrong, do things like that really need to be preserved on the internet under your real name for the rest of yo…

> Also, Duffy was ripped off by Kasamba. Can you really be ripped off by psychics? It's not like you can sue a church because your prayers haven't been answered, so I'm not sure of religion or spiritualism can be a "rip-off". If someone tells you they'll talk to your dead ancestors for money and you don't believe them, who's to say who's speaking the truth? The best you can do is use reasoning like "there's no scient…

> Can you really be ripped off by psychics? It's not like you can sue a church because your prayers haven't been answered, so I'm not sure of religion or spiritualism can be a "rip-off".

Well, I would suggest that both are a "rip off" in the sense that they offer claims without evidence.

But a distinction that I see between religious services and psychics is that religious services are not offering financial transactions in direct exchange for services. They ask for donations, and they may make claims such as "God answers all prayers", but you are typically not offering a religious leader money in exchange for some sort of quid pro quo like having a prayer answered.

A lot of "psychics" offer their "services" as "entertainment" in order to avoid claims of fraud. But the fact remains that a lot of people still believe.

My wife and I are performing magicians, and we make it clear that what we do are parlour tricks. And yet I've performed "mind reading" tricks for people in the past who were absolutely convinced that what I did was not a trick even though I presented everything as "magic tricks." It's fucking insane and deeply uncomfortable. I totally get why Penn & Teller stay away from mentalism entirely. And I think this is your point: if someone is determined to accept a faith based belief system, can they really be "ripped off" when reality doesn't deliver their fantasy.

In my opinion, it depends what you offering and the audience / demographic that you are targeting. Magic tricks for entertainment presented as tricks is one thing. A "psychic" (even one that offers a "disclaimer" that it is entertainment) who knows full well they are catering to people that want to believe it is "real" know what they are doing. It gets particularly heinous when these con artists prey on grieving people who just lost a loved one. It's hard not to view a con artist presenting bullshit to a mother who just lost her 12 year-old daughter in a car accident as not ripping them off.

Re: Woman wins 12-year legal battle against Google

#114

Post by ezoe »

munk-a wrote: post #75
code51 wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But how can you notify Google of anything? Even when you report an important bug, bots and "product experts" just shrug it off. The only "notification" for Google is a lawsuit it seems.

If a few people pursue a lawsuit against them I'm pretty sure they'll get more responsive. TBH Google is notoriously awful to communicate with - I don't know if you've ever dealt with one of their B2B products but they even hate talking to companies that pay them 10k a year.

The civil lawsuit by individual victims won't be effective. If it does, Alphabet and other US-based tech companies should have been behaved better decades ago. For them, this civil case means nothing. Think about it. Are you and all the people you know going to boycott Alphabet just for this particular civil case? No way.

The better solution is make a regulation which makes Alphabet and its boards criminal if they ignored it. But it looks like defamation isn't more important than copyright infringement in US.

Re: Woman wins 12-year legal battle against Google

#115

Post by munk-a »

ezoe wrote: post #114
munk-a wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If a few people pursue a lawsuit against them I'm pretty sure they'll get more responsive. TBH Google is notoriously awful to communicate with - I don't know if you've ever dealt with one of their B2B products but they even hate talking to companies that pay them 10k a year.

The civil lawsuit by individual victims won't be effective. If it does, Alphabet and other US-based tech companies should have been behaved better decades ago. For them, this civil case means nothing. Think about it. Are you and all the people you know going to boycott Alphabet just for this particular civil case? No way. The better solution is make a regulation which makes Alphabet and its boards criminal if they ig…

I didn't say anything about boycotting - I suggested that repeated lawsuits like this one will force a change. Regulation is absolutely the ideal way forward but the US is horrible about effective regulation so the legal system is probably the most practical enforcement method we have.

Re: Woman wins 12-year legal battle against Google

#116

Post by numbsafari »

DannyBee wrote: post #43
numbsafari wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just because it can’t scale, doesn’t mean it isn’t wrong. There is no right to a scalable business model. If you can’t figure out how to do your business without doing it right, you shouldn’t be doing it. Our local coal fired power plant has been yelling for decades that they can’t possibly make a profit and meet all the environmental obligations. Well… guess what.

This is a fun quip, but are you literally suggesting that someone should have to read every webpage indexed by a search engine? That is what the comment you are responding to suggests doesn't scale. If so, that seems, way off the deep end to me, and you know, slightly different from your local coal plant killing everyone through pollution. If not, what precisely is your okay (If non-scalable) solution to the problem…

It's not just a fun quip: it's a moral principle that I really think more people in our industry should come around to.

What we do has consequences. Often times, profound consequences on vast numbers of lives. We have a responsibility, as individual contributors, managers, leaders, and "founders", for the outcomes of our work.

If Google is as smart as they'd like us all to believe, they can find a way to make their business work. Sure, the margins might not be quite as fantastic, but society doesn't owe them maximum return to its own detriment.

It's not my job to solve Google's scalability problems, that's their job. It's my job to hold them just as accountable as my local coal power plant for the choices they make. If Google wants me to love their brand, and support their work, then they should stop being a social and intellectual polluter. It's a lot easier to see and sense the danger of toxic fumes from a power plant than to see and sense the toxic danger of massive social media and tech companies, but they are no less real and no less lethal.

Re: Woman wins 12-year legal battle against Google

#117

Post by bluGill »

MichaelZuo wrote: post #94
bluGill wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is no right to that. Things that make it impossible should be looked on with suspicion, but the right does not exist. If you were willing to live like 1930 you could have plenty of free time, but 1930 means electric was a luxury most people didn't have.

If there is no right for individuals to have a productive life with plenty of free time per day than a huge number of HN comments on topics such as politics, housing, social welfare systems, healthcare, transportation, etc... are obviated. Which doesn't seem like an appealing proposition to accept.

Yes, everyone wants a better life for themselves and they don't want to consider all the trade offs of consequences of that. In particular they often want to force their own ideals on someone else.

Re: Woman wins 12-year legal battle against Google

#118

Post by unmole »

arp242 wrote: post #86
glimshe wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How would that work? Business becomes big by breaking the laws then we change the laws so business stays big?

That's quite literally Uber's business model for large parts of the world. It's rather sad that these kind of "businesses" aren't just banned and prosecuted as criminal conspiracies. I really think that's the appropriate classification for an organisation that goes in to a country, sets up a business it knows is illegal, stokes up violence, and reaps in profit (well, "profit", because it still doesn't actually make a…

> stokes up violence

What now?

Re: Woman wins 12-year legal battle against Google

#119

Post by account42 »

kkielhofner wrote: post #57

As other commenters have noted this is a classic pyrrhic victory. If nothing else I have to respect her because I cannot imagine the tenacity it took to pursue this. I can't speak to the merits or substance of the case but I know I don't have it. It's clear from the article she's a fighter with her initial reaction to discovering this: "She contemplated taking her life, saying it destroyed her career in research." To…

The woman made up shit about some psychics (after finding out the hard way that there is no such thing as a psychic) and then got mad again when she was served some of that same medicine. Sounds more like someone that wanted to avoid the consequences of her own choices rather than a courageous fighter standing up to the big evil corporation.

Re: Woman wins 12-year legal battle against Google

#120

Post by mbrumlow »

code51 wrote: post #67
unsupp0rted wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not so much "be careful with your UI" as "when you're actually notified that your UI is treading on somebody, you better stop (treading on that particular person)".

But how can you notify Google of anything? Even when you report an important bug, bots and "product experts" just shrug it off. The only "notification" for Google is a lawsuit it seems.

I think that is the point. The bots and “product experts” failed to do their job. And as agents for working for Google failed Google.
Post reply on HN