What we did when a patent troll asked for our help • Hacker News Board

Re: What we did when a patent troll asked for our help

#71

Post by the_bear » Wed, May 09, 2012, 7:51 PM UTC

jarrett wrote: post #61

the_bear wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this is a great summary, but it misses one key point. There's a big difference between refusing to buy a product from someone you find unethical and refusing to sell a product to someone you find unethical. The difference how this impacts all of the other potential buyers/sellers out there who are ethical. Google and Facebook ban people's accounts all the time for doing things they find disagreeable, and they…

If Google and Facebook have clear TOS terms forbidding the middle figure and pseudonyms, then I don't see anything wrong with them enforcing those guidelines. (Provided of course they don't ban people who they incorrectly deem to be in violation, which is a whole other can of worms.) Likewise, if you have clear TOS terms regarding prohibited activities like patent trolling, then patent trolls should just refrain from…

This isn't a hypothetical situation. Google was actively banning accounts for using fake names during the early days of Google+. It was in their terms of service, but that didn't matter. People were outraged. The HackerNews community in particular was outraged. Sure they have the right to do it, but that's no way to treat your customers.

Re: What we did when a patent troll asked for our help

#72

Post by jeremyarussell » Wed, May 09, 2012, 7:55 PM UTC

monochromatic wrote: post #63

jeremyarussell wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right, hence the reason they do technically have that right, but don't expressly have that right.

Not really... it's not a right that they have. They have the ability to do it, but it's not a right that was ever granted to them, and they're breaking their oath when they do it. I have the ability to sneak into my neighbor's house and steal his things. It's implicitly built into the system where I live next door to him, and he's not always home. But I sure don't have the right to do that.

I'm not sure if your argument is valid. The two seem very different from each other. One is the chance to save someone from prosecution, the other is a chance to take something from another.

I almost want to call this a Straw Man argument, you are using an argument that is unrelated but you draw up similarities to make it seem that my argument is wrong.

I might be wrong too though.

Re: What we did when a patent troll asked for our help

#73

Post by technomancy » Wed, May 09, 2012, 8:09 PM UTC

moldbug wrote: post #40

the_bear wrote: post #14

(I work at the Less Annoying CRM) Since a few people have brought up similar points, I'd like to address them here. My gut instinct was to tell the patent troll to fuck off. I still wish we had done that. But that would set a terrible precedent and turn us into something that I hate: the App Store Pretty much everyone here hates how arbitrary and opaque the approval system is in the App Store. It seems like there's a…

The App Store isn't evil because it filters. It's evil because it's a monopoly filter. If there were lots of competing App Stores with their own beliefs, filters, prejudices, ideologies, etc - no problem. Of course this is exactly the case in the CRM industry. So your conscience should be patting itself on the back, not beating itself up, when it tells a patent troll to go fsck a porcupine. This is exactly the purpos…

> Patent trolls aren't illegal, but they're evil

If you use Douglas Crockford's JSON library, then arguably its license could make you turn them down on legal grounds: http://dev.hasenj.org/post/3272592502/ibm-and-its-minions =)

Re: What we did when a patent troll asked for our help

#74

Post by pirateking » Wed, May 09, 2012, 8:20 PM UTC

Clicked link excited to read a tale of a cowboy startup, sticking it to the man and laying waste to patent troll scum. Instead was a story of cowboys settled on the ranch, freely doing business with all types of trolls. Not what I wanted to read personally, but it is a path that many large, successful companies have followed.

Re: What we did when a patent troll asked for our help

#75

Post by FuzzyDunlop » Wed, May 09, 2012, 8:22 PM UTC

kkowalczyk wrote: post #66

mcherm wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> using the law of the land to justify going against your personal conscience I don't see it that way at all. Their personal consciences recoiled at providing support for a patent troll and they recoiled at imposing censorship based on the content of a client's messages. They had to reconcile these two opposing attacks of conscience.

Refusing a service to someone you don't like, for whatever reason, is not censorship, so there is no conflict of ethics. The line is less clear when the company is in a position of great power (e.g. Google in search, Apple in smartphones) but it's clear that e.g. restaurant can have a dress code (which is frivolous) and refuse service if you don't comply with that dress code and an insignificant crm business can refu…

I think the difference with the restaurant analogy is that the dress code is applied before you enter and are seated. Thus you'll be turned away outright for dressing improperly.

Compare it to this, where the issue only arose because the customer made clear their intention well after signing up.

I'm seeing the main issue here being that enforcing their own ideals, so they don't serve the customers they want, involves waiting for the to contact support, lest they violate their own ethics re: privacy and data protection.

How many new customers will they get when they earn a reputation of applying a personal and undisclosed set of ethics and ideals to customers any time after they sign up?

Re: What we did when a patent troll asked for our help

#76

Post by Finster » Wed, May 09, 2012, 8:22 PM UTC

I guess I was hoping for an outcome other than, "Well, we decided to go ahead and help him out, anyway. Luckily, he just kind of faded away on his own."

Oh. Okay. That's good, I guess.

Re: What we did when a patent troll asked for our help

#77

Post by chris_wot » Wed, May 09, 2012, 8:30 PM UTC

To be honest, the best way of dealing with this would have been to price the customizations out of the market. You're selling a service, so price it accordingly. :-)

Re: What we did when a patent troll asked for our help

#78

Post by jmathes » Wed, May 09, 2012, 8:45 PM UTC

Eliezer wrote: post #52

Scientology certainly operates in violation of the letter of the law - framing people for murder is illegal, I'm pretty sure - they just avoid conviction by bribing local judges and so on. I don't see why you can't just tell the patent troll to go away. Are they being punished for telling you what they do? Yes, but if patent trolls have to operate furtively, not telling anyone what they do, on pain of being denied se…

I think Less Annoying was most interested in making an easy rule for themselves to follow, in the expectation that they'd have to make similar decisions in the future. "Is it legal," they decided, is easier to answer than "is it unethical." If they decided in the other direction, they'd have to evaluate the ethics of each of their customers. This, in their opinion, would drain their resources. If they're right, they made a decision that increases their ability to assist their ethical customers in doing good. So the net effect of the decision to draw the line at legality might still be positive from a preference-utility point of view.

It's not clear that this is the thinking they were using, and it's a false dichotomy. There might be any number of easy rules to follow that do a better job of approximating ethical judgement than "is it legal." A possible reason not to try for one of these might be because it's impractical. Less Annoying employees are people, and people tend to have irrationally-strongly-held beliefs about ethics. They are in the habit of not questioning the law or other peoples' religions, but this would step outside those boundaries. You end up with a company full of people who think it's their duty to force the company's ethics to be consistent with their own.

Re: What we did when a patent troll asked for our help

#79

Post by squozzer » Wed, May 09, 2012, 8:46 PM UTC

Welcome to the real world -- it's kinda messy but the booze helps you get used to it.

Personally, I prefer a bad decision based on reason than a good one based on emotion. So you get an informal +1 in my book.

Also, it might help you (and apparently a lot of posters) to develop multiple means to achieve desired ends. Does everyone with whom one disagrees deserve the banhammer?

Certain groups have darkened and stained the pages of history with their rigid ways of dealing with undesirables. Divide the world into black and white at your own peril.

Re: What we did when a patent troll asked for our help

#80

Post by eevilspock » Wed, May 09, 2012, 8:49 PM UTC

The First Amendment only protects freedom of speech from government interference. On your private property you are free to limit speech as you see fit, unless state or local laws have broadened free speech rights to work against private actors.

So unless the latter exception applies, your thought experiment is broken early in the chain. You are free to apply your own free speech limitations as long as you are within the bound of other laws, e.g. you're not discriminating in some other way that is illegal.

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pruneyard_Shopping_Center_v._Ro...