Class action lawsuit filed against Lenovo over Superfish • Hacker News Board

Re: Class action lawsuit filed against Lenovo over Superfish

#131

Post by appleflaxen » Mon, May 11, 2015, 6:26 PM UTC

btilly wrote: post #83

bradleyjg wrote: post #55

A year or eighteen months from now look for a settlement in the case. Each of the affected class members will be entitled to a $5 discount on an anti-virus product plus up to $25 if they can provide detailed documentation showing actual economic losses. Any money left over after the coupons and payments are made will be given to a charity hand picked by the plaintiff's attorney. There will also be injunctive relief i…

This is true, but do you know why it happens? The US has a protection against double jeopardy. If you've been sued once for something, you cannot be sued again (and again, and again) for the same thing. In most cases this is a good thing. It means that once the case is done, it is really done. But companies have learned how to take advantage of it. If they think they are going to have to fight a class action lawsuit…

Double jeopardy is a criminal law concept, and this is an issue for civil court.

It only applies to the extent that individuals at Lenovo receive criminal charges. Then they are only on trial once.

But if they harmed 10 people the same way, then all ten people can absolutely sue to cover the damages they sustained.

Re: Class action lawsuit filed against Lenovo over Superfish

#132

Post by btilly » Mon, May 11, 2015, 6:32 PM UTC

neurotech1 wrote: post #124

btilly wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is true, but do you know why it happens? The US has a protection against double jeopardy. If you've been sued once for something, you cannot be sued again (and again, and again) for the same thing. In most cases this is a good thing. It means that once the case is done, it is really done. But companies have learned how to take advantage of it. If they think they are going to have to fight a class action lawsuit…

They can be sued multiple times for multiple instances of the same injury type. This has been known to happen involving ADA accommodation & injury lawsuits where a state contracted provider doesn't learn their lesson the first time. The original lawsuit specifies plaintiffs, injury and covered time period, and usually requests an injunction to "prevent" future injury. The original lawsuit is settled, but the provider…

Right. The class action lawsuit is for all actions of the specified type over the specified period to members of the specified class who do not opt out. You do other wrong things, and you can get sued again.

I would love to see more information about the terms for the second lawsuit. Certainly you hear about cases with large settlements. But you don't hear about the routine cases. I don't know the mix.

That said, I do know that there are class action lawsuits which never really fix anything, no matter how many times they happen. As an example, consider printer ink. Every manufacturer has received class action lawsuits for their printers claiming to be out of ink when they are not. They have all settled them with coupons that are redeemable for amounts that are pretty meaningless. (About enough to cover one extra refill of ink.)

Did behavior change? I currently have a printer that was purchased last year, sees only light use (every month or two we'll print a few pages), and which has claimed to have run out of ink twice. It is on my mind because the second time last week. I know that there is no way it actually used up the magenta ink. But it is currently unusable.

And it works! No matter how bad my experience is, I'm not motivated to buy another printer because I have no reason to believe that any other consumer printer will be honest with me. And even with the printer lying to me, I simply don't do enough printing for it to be cost effective to buy an expensive printer that I would trust.

Re: Class action lawsuit filed against Lenovo over Superfish

#133

Post by TeMPOraL » Mon, May 11, 2015, 6:33 PM UTC

seanp2k2 wrote: post #118

rebootthesystem wrote: post #42

Rule #1 of buying any pre-packged Windows computer: Clean install the OS from original MS disks, not from what might come with the computer. If you are running a business the cost is insignificant when compared with the aggravation and risk of crapware. This is also the reason we still build our own desktop computers: You know exactly what's in them, you can service them and generally get more performance and quality…

It's also amusing to me how many of the people who do this will install Windows from a "cracked" distro, as that is now more secure than what most manufacturers provide out-of-the-box. Sad when random ISO from public torrent tracker is more trustworthy than Official Disk Image from publicly-traded corporation.

It's the same as with anti-piracy warnings and ads you can't skip on original movies. The pirates don't have financial incentives to milk you, and they have all the incentives to get the best version working as soon as possible. So that's why you often get better stuff from them than you can buy.

Re: Class action lawsuit filed against Lenovo over Superfish

#134

Post by btilly » Mon, May 11, 2015, 6:35 PM UTC

appleflaxen wrote: post #131

btilly wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is true, but do you know why it happens? The US has a protection against double jeopardy. If you've been sued once for something, you cannot be sued again (and again, and again) for the same thing. In most cases this is a good thing. It means that once the case is done, it is really done. But companies have learned how to take advantage of it. If they think they are going to have to fight a class action lawsuit…

Double jeopardy is a criminal law concept, and this is an issue for civil court. It only applies to the extent that individuals at Lenovo receive criminal charges. Then they are only on trial once. But if they harmed 10 people the same way, then all ten people can absolutely sue to cover the damages they sustained.

It also applies for class action lawsuits. With minor twists. See http://epic.org/blog/2014/03/sometimes-in-class-action-settl... for more.

Re: Class action lawsuit filed against Lenovo over Superfish

#135

Post by drak0n1c » Mon, May 11, 2015, 6:40 PM UTC

mahouse wrote: post #97

rdsnsca wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is one of the selling points. It has been over 5 years since Apple has sold a computer with any third party software on it.

Out of curiosity, what 3rd-party sw did Apple bundle over 5 years ago?

Java

Re: Class action lawsuit filed against Lenovo over Superfish

#136

Post by zamalek » Mon, May 11, 2015, 6:40 PM UTC

lessthunk wrote: post #24

.. reinstall any computer you get from scratch; Firmware Bios spying is of course much harder to get rid from.

At this point I wouldn't put BIOS/NIC spying past Lenovo. They've sternly defended their bad decision and continue to pre-install Superfish.

I used to think RMS was paranoid with his fully open source stack, Lenovo has me questioning that belief.

Re: Class action lawsuit filed against Lenovo over Superfish

#137

Post by rhino369 » Mon, May 11, 2015, 6:42 PM UTC

I wonder how the good the CFAA case will be.

The software was pre-installed on the machines. I guess it probably depends on what the user terms were for it. The statue requires "without authorization."

I'm surprised there isn't a negligence or products liability claim in here. Because one of the biggest problems, isn't' that they MTTM attacked HTTPS to inject ads, but they did it in a way that was recklessly insecure.

Re: Class action lawsuit filed against Lenovo over Superfish

#138

Post by rosser » Mon, May 11, 2015, 6:44 PM UTC

btilly wrote: post #83

bradleyjg wrote: post #55

A year or eighteen months from now look for a settlement in the case. Each of the affected class members will be entitled to a $5 discount on an anti-virus product plus up to $25 if they can provide detailed documentation showing actual economic losses. Any money left over after the coupons and payments are made will be given to a charity hand picked by the plaintiff's attorney. There will also be injunctive relief i…

This is true, but do you know why it happens? The US has a protection against double jeopardy. If you've been sued once for something, you cannot be sued again (and again, and again) for the same thing. In most cases this is a good thing. It means that once the case is done, it is really done. But companies have learned how to take advantage of it. If they think they are going to have to fight a class action lawsuit…

Anyone who trots out Liebeck v. McDonald's as an example of a "bad" lawsuit is just demonstrating that they're operating from a position based more on opinion than fact.

Liebeck sued McDonald's for actual costs of her medical treatment. McDonald's refused to pay for her injuries or admit fault. The jury awarded the massive punitive damages ($160,000 in actual damages and $2.7M in punitive) of their own volition, because the company's behavior was so egregious, was just one incident in an ongoing chain of similar ones (and for which they'd settled previous claims), and was obviously responsible for the third degree burns she suffered beneath her clothing.

Please check your facts next time.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liebeck_v._McDonald%27s_Restau...

Re: Class action lawsuit filed against Lenovo over Superfish

#139

Post by charlieflowers » Mon, May 11, 2015, 6:47 PM UTC

e40 wrote: post #94

mhurron wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In 18 months no one will remember this. Honestly, corporations face basically no repercussions from customers because of doing stupid or outright malicious things.

Absolutely not true. I control purchasing for my company, and have caused to be purchased a bunch of Lenovo's. No more, though.

What will you switch to? I lost faith in almost all other laptop manufacturers due to poor quality.

Re: Class action lawsuit filed against Lenovo over Superfish

#140

Post by pekk » Mon, May 11, 2015, 6:48 PM UTC

e40 wrote: post #94

mhurron wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In 18 months no one will remember this. Honestly, corporations face basically no repercussions from customers because of doing stupid or outright malicious things.

Absolutely not true. I control purchasing for my company, and have caused to be purchased a bunch of Lenovo's. No more, though.

I will continue to order as many Lenovo machines as I need. It is more important to me that the vendor serves my needs than what HN thinks about them. I'm not buying something crappy for my purposes because HN is mad.