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Class action lawsuit filed against Lenovo over Superfish

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Re: Class action lawsuit filed against Lenovo over Superfish

#151

Post by acdha »

Silhouette wrote: post #122
acdha wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Microsoft's trying to create a premium “Signature Edition” category with that as the selling point: http://www.microsoftstore.com/store/msusa/en_US/cat/Signatur...

Thanks for sharing. I hadn't seen that before. Apparently they do still include Windows Defender, which is described as "free anti-virus protection that never expires". Although it's a Microsoft product, I would place it close to third party junkware on the scale: in my experience, it often turns out to be the culprit if performance degrades over time, every now and then an update will completely break a box requirin…

I prefer Windows Defender to the alternatives since it's just as [in]effective and tends to lower performance less than the non-free alternatives. That said, the only times I use AV are when there's a non-negotiable company policy since it's been a losing game for decades.

Re: Class action lawsuit filed against Lenovo over Superfish

#152

Post by DannyBee »

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…

"This is true, but do you know why it happens? " Because class actions were not created as vehicles for consumer action, but for efficient justice. They are a judicially created way of doing things to make 20-30 lawsuits involving the same thing, sane. That's it.

Even the main justice who created them "could not conceive of a modern function or a coherent theory for representative litigation."

Even then, rule 48 was opt-in until 1966, when a federal court rule change (IE not a law, just the court rules made up by a few federal judges) changed to make them opt-out.

This is what sprung up the industry you see today.

The rest of what you describe is simply a symptom of not building a coherent platform for mass-action, but instead a way to simplify lawsuits that involved 40 or so people.

Re: Class action lawsuit filed against Lenovo over Superfish

#153

Post by Crito »

rosser wrote: post #138
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…

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, beca…

There actually are two sides of this story.

First off, the lawsuit was justified, but not because of the temperature of the coffee. The coffee was being served at industry standard temperatures (defined in terms of what _other_ companies in the industry serve their coffee at), despite what many claim. The primary problem is that their coffee cup design was defective, and was prone to collapsing.

In response to the lawsuit, McDonald's has not changed the temperature of their coffee. If you order a black coffee at a McDonald's today (or at many other shops), it may very well be just as hot as the coffee that disfigured Liebeck in 1994. So for the love of god, don't spill coffee on yourself! Coffee as cool as 140F can cause third degree burns in mere seconds. That is well below what anybody serves coffee at. Coffee is dangerous. It's just that simple.

http://www.burnfoundation.org/programs/resource.cfm?c=1&a=3

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liebeck_v._McDonald%27s_Restaur...

Where did this meme of "Liebeck v. McDonald's was actually 100% reasonable, and anyone who thinks otherwise is a fool" come from?

In the immediate aftermath of the lawsuit, many Americans became extremely critical of any personal injury lawsuits. It appeared as though if it continued, the livelihoods of personal injury lawyers might be threatened. So an informal propaganda campaign was launched, featuring some selective truth (the burn photographs) and some lies (the idea that the coffee served to her was way hotter than coffee you and I are used to). These sort of lawyers are extremely good at being convincing, that is pretty much their job after all, and in a non-adversarial context it is not suprising that they are able to convince most people.

Re: Class action lawsuit filed against Lenovo over Superfish

#154

Post by tedunangst »

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.

Were you buying their consumer line?

Re: Class action lawsuit filed against Lenovo over Superfish

#155

Post by pbhjpbhj »

Kurtz79 wrote: post #63
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…

Law triumphs again! (as in "Lawyers") Still, it's better for this to be in the open, with all the bad PR associated to it, so that companies will think about it twice before pulling similar stunts in the future.

>so that companies will think about it twice before pulling similar stunts in the future //

Is that how it will pan out though. I'd imagine it's more likely to be that Lenovo get away with paying a little of their profits out in the class action but still overall profit from the whole deal. Then companies will be encouraged to do so long as when they factor in the cost of the lawsuit they still come out on top.

IMO penalties should be such that a company doing this sort of thing makes no profit and is at a very real risk of having to be liquidated if they already weren't making a profit. For large companies the payout should be measured in $100 millions as that's the only sort of level of fine that will be noticed.

Directors in charge of that section that authorised or actioned the activity should be barred from being directors again and where appropriate face criminal charges. In Lenovos case if they can ever afford to do this again and if the controlling elements (or those who should have exercised control according to the org chart) aren't prosecuted under eg CFAA then the punishment will be too small.

Re: Class action lawsuit filed against Lenovo over Superfish

#156

Post by tedunangst »

belorn wrote: post #102
rayiner wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Probably, although I'll note that cy pres awards are under intense scrutiny these days in the various Courts of Appeal. Besides that, is the result unfair here? Did the average claimant even suffer $5 in economic losses?

There is several different economic losses to calculate here, each surpassing $5. There is the cost of removing the malware, and cleaning up any damages it caused. This is normally done by estimating how many hours a professional would spend on it, and the wages they would demand. Second, is the for-profit claim of "TRESPASS TO CHATTELS". If someone goes and steal a car to run a taxi service, one would look at the il…

Didn't Lenovo release an update that removed the program? The relevant question for the court is probably, how many hundreds of dollars did the average Lenovo customer spend on professional Superfish removal? And the answer is probably zero.

Re: Class action lawsuit filed against Lenovo over Superfish

#157

Post by kazinator »

pavel_lishin wrote: post #92
tgbrter wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it possible that the "cyber" laws are designed to be effective towards individuals.

But corporations are individuals! Could two wrongs make a right?

Corporations are not people. They are arrays of people.

Specifically, they are C-style arrays of people.

In C, if you try to qualify (const or volatile) an array, it's actually the element-type that gets qualified.

(The straight syntax doesn't support it at all; the above applies if you try to create an typedef for the array type and then use it as a declaration specifier, side by side with qualifiers.)

In the same way that qualifiers on C arrays slide down to the elements, certain attributes, including responsibilities, have to shift from corporations to the member individuals.

Re: Class action lawsuit filed against Lenovo over Superfish

#158

Post by pbhjpbhj »

rhino369 wrote: post #111
mikeash wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then I guess the followup questions are: why aren't criminal charges being brought, and (if they're actually not) why aren't punitive damages being awarded?

Punitive damages would occur after any trial victory. This is just the very first step, essentially a legal accusation. As to why the government hasn't tried to indict for criminal charges, there could be many reasons. The case might not be good. They might be waiting. They may think it's small fry stuff. The doj doesn't go after everyone.

So who is responsible in the DoJ for deciding that it's OK to let company directors do arms length crimes and they're going to look the other way.

Is there any question as to what Lenovo actually did, are they denying they exceeded their authorisation in accessing computers and MitM-ing things like bank transactions? If the facts aren't in dispute there then surely the only thing the court would need to do is work out how long the directors who authorised/oversaw [or negligently didn't oversee] this are going to be put in prison for.

Re: Class action lawsuit filed against Lenovo over Superfish

#159

Post by acdha »

abetaha wrote: post #98
acdha wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Microsoft's trying to create a premium “Signature Edition” category with that as the selling point: http://www.microsoftstore.com/store/msusa/en_US/cat/Signatur...

Thanks for the link, I did not know that cleaner/pristine Windows install are available out of the box. Out of curiosity, if these laptops are the same price as the one laden with "crapware", why are'nt consumers buying these instead? Is it awareness that they are available?

My guess is that it's a combination of limited selection and higher prices. The OEMs seem to be treating this as a premium feature so it's simply not on the radar for the people looking to buy the cheapest (i.e. ad-ware subsidized) PC.

Re: Class action lawsuit filed against Lenovo over Superfish

#160

Post by tedunangst »

mikeash wrote: post #88
rhino369 wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is essentially the difference between Criminal law and civil law. Civil suits are typically designed to make you whole. You get what you actually lost. Sometimes putative damages can be awarded, which can look at the egregiousness of the actions of the plaintiff. I don't know if those are available here.

Then I guess the followup questions are: why aren't criminal charges being brought, and (if they're actually not) why aren't punitive damages being awarded?

What would the criminal charges be? The best outline for a prosecution I've seen goes something like "CFAA, mumble mumble, spying is bad." What specific law was broken? Lay out the case. For bonus points, pretend you're the defense attorney, and then outline the defense's case.
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