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How to deal with receiving a cease-and-desist letter from Big Tech

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Re: How to deal with receiving a cease-and-desist letter from Big Tech

#151

Post by baobabKoodaa »

hodgesrm wrote: post #123
baobabKoodaa wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you have not received a C&D before then the reason to consult with an attorney is to evaluate the risk. The poster you are responding to just explained that most lawyers are too guarded to offer a useful evaluation of the risk, thus rendering their advice useless or low value.

That is a bad reason not to consult with a lawyer. Hire a good one who knows the business you are in.

And how exactly is a normal person going to evaluate which lawyer is a "good one" and which is not?

Re: How to deal with receiving a cease-and-desist letter from Big Tech

#152

Post by KieranMac »

ncallaway wrote: post #131
KieranMac wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem with this advice is that this is a very niche area of law. Unless the people you know have had prior experiences with data-access/web-scraping legal issues, a generalist recommendation is very unlikely to be helpful here.

> If you don’t know anyone that would be in the area of law that you’re looking for, ask for _any_ attorney recommendations, then ask those attorneys for recommendations for people in the area of law you need. Attorneys know attorneys. I’d still recommend starting with your network, then asking those attorneys who they would recommend for the services you need. Or ask them if they know anyone that might be able to re…

There are probably two dozen specialists on this issue nationwide. A properly targeted Google search will outperform your personal network of attorneys (and their network of attorneys) 99.9% of the time.

Re: How to deal with receiving a cease-and-desist letter from Big Tech

#153

Post by primitivesuave »

strix_varius wrote: post #126
primitivesuave wrote: post #122

I got multiple C&Ds for publishing public information, provided directly from the US government as giant CSV files (PPP loan data, provided under FOIA), through a web interface that made it easy to search loan recipients and analyze distribution of COVID relief funds. Many of the C&Ds came from people who were later indicted for defrauding the government, some of them in hilariously inept ways.

This sounds like interesting research - could you share a link to your results?

Absolutely - I created the website pppwatch.com, which currently has searchable aggregates of the data from the official SBA data source [1]. The individual loan search is down right now, not because of any C&D letters, but simply to save some money on the search cluster while I have been revamping the site in my free time with some new analysis.

1. https://www.sba.gov/funding-programs/loans/covid-19-relief-o...

Re: How to deal with receiving a cease-and-desist letter from Big Tech

#156

Post by JohnFen »

SoftTalker wrote: post #147
KieranMac wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are certain tasks that you would never do yourself, such as surgery. And there are certain tasks like changing your oil where anyone with patience and diligence can do it themselves. It's just a question of whether you want to spend the time to learn it and do it. Responding to a C&D letter from a Fortune 50 company, I would posit, is more like performing surgery than changing your oil. The cost of being wrong…

Right, that's the "I could do myself" part. Though I've generally been disappointed with the legal services I've hired. Law and medicine seems like most professions, there are some really good practitioners and a lot who are mediocre but have passed the minimum required qualifications, and it's hard for an outsider to immediately spot the difference.

> Law and medicine seems like most professions, there are some really good practitioners and a lot who are mediocre

This is accurate, in my experience. It's what makes initially finding a lawyer (or doctor, or therapist, or auto mechanic, or etc.) a painful experience. You have to expect to go through a few before you find one that works for you.

Then, when you find one, treasure them for the pearls that they are.

Re: How to deal with receiving a cease-and-desist letter from Big Tech

#157

Post by kelnos »

Ooof, this was pretty depressing to read. It seems like your options are:

1. Ignore the letter: not recommended, as that will likely end in a lawsuit that you'll probably lose.

2. Comply: maybe not with everything (like if they ask you to do ridiculous things like give them a look at your finances), but at least stop doing what you're doing that triggered the whole thing in the first place.

3. Engage a lawyer and fight: but you're probably going to lose, unless you're independently wealthy, and/or can rally some legal-aid services that specialize in digital rights, as well as journalists and other powerful entities to help you.

And in all cases, if it's an entity like Meta, they've likely already disabled your existing accounts and banned you, and you'll never get them back.

Re: How to deal with receiving a cease-and-desist letter from Big Tech

#158

Post by nl »

feoren wrote: post #149
phasetransition wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As the (non lawyer) who fell into managing all US legal firm interactions for my day job, I support this list. If you are comfortable with legal documents; have a law dictionary to understand what specific language means; and read historical case law on the topic in question, you will be well prepared to have a seat at the table with your attorneys.

> read historical case law on the topic in question Is this even at all accessible to anyone who isn't already in a major law firm? I'm assuming it requires some sort of thousand-dollar subscription to an exploitative publishing house?

> I'm assuming it requires some sort of thousand-dollar subscription to an exploitative publishing house?

Assuming you are in the US, all case law is public domain (although documents used in cases aren't)

https://guides.loc.gov/case-law/databases-online-resources

Re: How to deal with receiving a cease-and-desist letter from Big Tech

#159

Post by JohnFen »

HeyLaughingBoy wrote: post #105
Culonavirus wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A coworker's wife's friend is an attorney. So he's "his family's attorney" now, because of course he is. My landlord is a dentist, so he's my dentist now, because of course he is... That's how it mostly works... I guess :P

The only time I've ever needed a lawyer was for a small side business I had at the time. One of our customers had an unpaid invoice that was past 90 days, and they were not responding to phone calls. Happily, my business partner's brother was a lawyer and she asked him to send out a dunning letter. We had the money within days :-)

> she asked him to send out a dunning letter

Honestly, I think that about 1/3 of the value I get from my lawyer is the power of his letterhead.

The rest is explaining contracts to me, explaining risks and exposures of things I'm planning to do or that have been done to me, educating me about aspects of law I need to know on a daily basis, and such.

A tiny percentage is helping with large things like selling my business, negotiating major contracts, defending me against legal attacks, and that sort of thing.

Re: How to deal with receiving a cease-and-desist letter from Big Tech

#160

Post by njarboe »

gwright wrote: post #38
mysterydip wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's the proper course of action if you don't have an attorney?

I'm going to avoid the snarky "hire an attorney" answer but once you get past that necessary first step I do have a few tips: * get comfortable reading legal documents, this will allow you to have more intelligent conversations with your attorney * don't let your attorney make your business decisions, one of their jobs is to point out risks, one of your jobs (owner/ceo/leadership) is to figure out how to mitigate ris…

I once heard that a good attorney figures out how to do what you want to do, a poor one tells you what you can't do.
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