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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

#191

Post by cmdrfred »

thedrbrian wrote: post #106
smeyer wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>If you've been sued once for something, you cannot be sued again (and again, and again) Double jeopardy doesn't prevent someone from opting out of a class action lawsuit and suing separately. >hot coffee lawsuit The hot coffee case wasn't a class action lawsuit.

Also the hot coffee lawsuit wasn't as stupid as people make out. The McDonald's coffee really was hot and gave Stella Liebeck some nasty burns.

It's just as stupid for people who believe in personal liberty and responsibility and it didn't make companies serve coffee any colder.They just put 'Hot Coffee' on the lids now, what a huge win.

Re: Class action lawsuit filed against Lenovo over Superfish

#192

Post by daurnimator »

javajosh wrote: post #117
lamuerteflaca wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not true. The customer will see the company getting punished which is worth a lot more. They will think twice about doing something idiotic next time. This is what I call using your lawyer powers for good (and profit).

The analogy is getting your car stolen and telling the police, who find the car, keep it for their effort, and let you keep (one of) the floor-mats. You are saying that this is fair because the thief ended up in jail.

Better than nothing....

The main point is that it makes a clear punishment for the company; so that others think before doing it themselves. If the cost of loosing the case is high enough, all manufacturers will learn to be cautious about including 3rd party software on their laptops.

Re: Class action lawsuit filed against Lenovo over Superfish

#193

Post by blhack »

bhauer wrote: post #41
davis_m wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not necessarily. Many of the higher end and business models come without spyware of any kind, not just this particular piece of software.

> Not necessarily. Many of the higher end and business models come without spyware of any kind, not just this particular piece of software. I like that you said spyware , whether intentionally or not. Most people call these programs "crapware," "junkware," "bloatware," or third-party pre-installed software. Though generally speaking this third-party junkware isn't expressly designed to be spyware . Nevertheless, with…

I've never heard "crapware" "junkware" or "bloatware", definitely not "third party pre installed software".

Everybody, included non technically literate people call this spyware. This is where names like "spybot search and destroy" come from.

Re: Class action lawsuit filed against Lenovo over Superfish

#194

Post by neurotech1 »

michaelhoffman wrote: post #3
belorn wrote: post #2

Going through the list of complaints, it really sound as it should have been a criminal procedure, not civil. One then wonder why that isn't the case here.

In the U.S., private prosecutions are not usually allowed. Additionally, government officials with prosecutorial authority have some amount of discretion in choosing which cases to prosecute and limited resources that prevent them from prosecuting every possible case. A private citizen cannot force prosecution, no matter how meritorious the case.

US Judges in civil cases can be obligated for the court to be informed that a crime has been committed, which is then referred to the prosecuting authority. The prosecuting authority still has discretion and is not forced to prosecute the matter.

I found a reference to a case in Utah. http://e-discoveryteam.com/2011/04/10/judge-refers-defendant...

Re: Class action lawsuit filed against Lenovo over Superfish

#195

Post by hurin »

tedunangst wrote: post #160
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?

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.

> What would the criminal charges be?

Not a lawyer but quoting from the document.

  COMPLAINT FOR:
  1) VIOLATION OF COMPUTER FRAUD AND ABUSE ACT (18 U.S.C. § 1030, et seq.);
  2) VIOLATION OF FEDERAL WIRETAP ACT (18 U.S.C. § 2510, et seq.);
  3) VIOLATION OF THE STORED COMMUNICATIONS ACT (18 U.S.C. § 2701, et seq.);
  4) VIOLATION OF CALIFORNIA INVASION OF PRIVACY ACT, PENAL CODE §§ 631, 637.2;
  5) VIOLATION OF CALIFORNIA BUS. & PROF. CODE § 17200, et seq.;
  6) TRESPASS TO CHATTELS;
  7) COMMON LAW FRAUD; and
  8) NEGLIGENT MISREPRESENTATION

Re: Class action lawsuit filed against Lenovo over Superfish

#196

Post by CamperBob2 »

Crito wrote: post #153
rosser wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 l…

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).

Exactly. The other effect is to move the Overton window. Prior to the propaganda campaign, those of us who would have said Liebeck wasn't even entitled to compensation for her actual medical costs would have been branded as unsympathetic and a bit cold-hearted. Now, we'd be considered baby-eating monsters with opinions too radical to be a part of public discourse.

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.

It's like the old adage, "Don't make enemies with people who buy ink by the barrel," taken to the next level. Lawyers ru(i)n almost everything in America.

Re: Class action lawsuit filed against Lenovo over Superfish

#197

Post by hatmatrix »

rshaban wrote: post #7

"Notably, Lenovo did not preinstall the Superfish program on any of its computer models that were marketed to businesses or more sophisticated computer users." That's a particularly damning accusation.

But Superfish was directed to consumers with the intent of personalisation, which is generally not in line with business users (though in practice, many people use business machines to do their personal shopping).

Re: Class action lawsuit filed against Lenovo over Superfish

#198

Post by btdollar »

tedunangst wrote: post #162
pbhjpbhj wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ou…

Well, the CFAA has a handy little "choose your own adventure" like section listing the various naughty activities, where you could be guilty of a.2.B or a.7.A, etc. Which combo do you think Lenovo is guilty of?

What a self-serving law. All it deals with is atomic data and financial institutions. How in the hell does this ever get applied to people downloading too many webpages?

Re: Class action lawsuit filed against Lenovo over Superfish

#199

Post by e40 »

charlieflowers wrote: post #139
e40 wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Macbook Pros and run Windows in a VM (VMware). With the SSDs on my Mac, it's literally faster than the beefy machine with spinning disks I had running Windows 7.

With Mac's Spaces, I can switch to another screen running Windows with Control-Rightarrow (using a non-Mac keyboard here). It's really seemless and I've never found a single drawback to it.

Re: Class action lawsuit filed against Lenovo over Superfish

#200

Post by e40 »

tedunangst wrote: post #154
e40 wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Sometimes. It's been about 6 months since the last one and I don't remember the model, though. We've been moving to Macbook Pros, mostly, with the odd Dell thrown in here and there. I don't like the Dells, though. The wifi on them always sucks and we need to get USB wifi dongles to make wifi reliable.
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