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Ellen Pao owes Kleiner Perkins $276,000 for lawsuit costs: judge

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Re: Ellen Pao owes Kleiner Perkins $276,000 for lawsuit costs: judge

#71
post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is there any award at all? I keep hearing that defending a case can bankrupt a person or company that doesn't have deep pockets even if they are successful. Why do these guys get reimbursed?

Why does she have to pay the legal fees incurred by the defendants because she tried to extort money? Is that what you're asking? She has to pay because she lost, and they weren't doing anything wrong.

    ...she tried to extort money? ...she lost, and they weren't
    doing anything wrong.
Sorry, sarcasm doesn't carry well over the Internet...

Are you saying that because she lost that implies that she was engaging in extortion?

Re: Ellen Pao owes Kleiner Perkins $276,000 for lawsuit costs: judge

#72
post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(downvote at will, rephrased to make it a bit more polite) As far as I could tell, people were relatively content with Reddit even when it had bad stuff, but people started getting noisy when the censorship started. Comes down to a debate on censorship, which is admittedly quite divided. I don't condone hate speech, but its also sometimes tricky to separate hatred from a rational opinion about something. Ultimately y…

No it wasn't, it was creating cesspits of hate when left to itself. Considering the amount of good communities on that website, the last thing I would want is for it to be overrun by such negativeness.

I agree on the cesspits of hate, but I think the good in people always overwhelms the bad. Or at least, I hope. :)

Re: Ellen Pao owes Kleiner Perkins $276,000 for lawsuit costs: judge

#73
post #66

One thing is for sure, Ellen Pao is not liked in Reddit.

Because of the ban on groups which actively harass others? Or is there another reason?

I think its because of the censoring of stuff which is critical of her and her husband and less about the banning of fat hate subs - See: https://twitter.com/arrington/status/609065906900066304

It especially does not help the fact that her husband was at the helm of a massive scheme that defrauded untold amounts of public workers in regards to their pension

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buddy_Fletcher

http://nypost.com/2015/02/18/case-builds-against-former-ny-h...

Who you are friends with says alot about you. Who you are married to says much, much more.

Re: Ellen Pao owes Kleiner Perkins $276,000 for lawsuit costs: judge

#74
post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I get that people will probably disagree, but she just seems to not make very good business decisions. Maybe I'm way off base, but I've read a bunch of well qualified lawyers say that juries are just plain unpredictable, and that no competent lawyer can "guarantee" to win. In that light, even if the $1M settlement wasn't what you're asking for, I would think it paints a better picture of you than losing and having to…

Anyone care to explain something that I might be missing? Perhaps her primary concern isn't a cash payout.

Were that the case she wouldn't offer to drop her appeal for $2.7 million.

Re: Ellen Pao owes Kleiner Perkins $276,000 for lawsuit costs: judge

#76
post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(downvote at will, rephrased to make it a bit more polite) As far as I could tell, people were relatively content with Reddit even when it had bad stuff, but people started getting noisy when the censorship started. Comes down to a debate on censorship, which is admittedly quite divided. I don't condone hate speech, but its also sometimes tricky to separate hatred from a rational opinion about something. Ultimately y…

No it wasn't, it was creating cesspits of hate when left to itself. Considering the amount of good communities on that website, the last thing I would want is for it to be overrun by such negativeness.

> "it was creating cesspits of hate when left to itself."

'it' is humanity. If you can't handle looking at a true reflection of humanity then you're worse than the bigots, IMHO.

If we plug our ears and hum, "la la la" to the uncomfortable opinions held within pockets of society, we remove all possibility of discourse on the topic. No one should ever be so sure that they're right and others are wrong to take that leap. Even with racism, sexism, fat-hate, and so on.

Re: Ellen Pao owes Kleiner Perkins $276,000 for lawsuit costs: judge

#77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(downvote at will, rephrased to make it a bit more polite) As far as I could tell, people were relatively content with Reddit even when it had bad stuff, but people started getting noisy when the censorship started. Comes down to a debate on censorship, which is admittedly quite divided. I don't condone hate speech, but its also sometimes tricky to separate hatred from a rational opinion about something. Ultimately y…

Freedom of speech does not apply here. Reddit is not a forum owned by the public, it's a business. Reddit is within their rights to remove any content as they see fit. Yeah, people complain once they realize walled gardens like Reddit start censoring whatever they choose only /after/ they get too big to stop. Same goes for closed ecosystems like the App Store and Google Play. Guess you should have read the fine print…

> I yearn for the days when the Internet was truly open.

When was that? Back in the early days, ISPs and hosts would shut down sites with very little provocation. I remember big outcries around sites being taken down by their ISP and/or having their domains seized by the FBI for file sharing and/or hate speech.

In fact, you could argue that the internet is more resistant to censorship now than it was back then. The ISPs in the early days had fewer customers and more competition, making them vulnerable to bad press. They pretty much had to act on any crank who complained about objectionable content hosted on their servers. ISPs today are bigger and have de facto monopolies (TWC and Comcast), so they don't respond so much to bad press. While that may be bad news for customer service, it's good news for the conspiracy theorist who wants to discuss which Rothschild is behind 9/11. Also, ISPs don't have to take sites down as often as they used to because most of them are hosted through third party companies like wordpress and google (blogspot).

Re: Ellen Pao owes Kleiner Perkins $276,000 for lawsuit costs: judge

#78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anyone care to explain something that I might be missing? Perhaps her primary concern isn't a cash payout.

Were that the case she wouldn't offer to drop her appeal for $2.7 million.

Her offering a high or higher number doesn't imply that she was only out for cash. Perhaps that amount was what she considered sufficient to punish KP appropriately.

And for the record: Consider this statement as me playing the race card.

But look: I wasn't on the jury, and I haven't reviewed the court records, and like everyone else here I'm playing armchair quarterback.

Re: Ellen Pao owes Kleiner Perkins $276,000 for lawsuit costs: judge

#79
post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is there any award at all? I keep hearing that defending a case can bankrupt a person or company that doesn't have deep pockets even if they are successful. Why do these guys get reimbursed?

Why does she have to pay the legal fees incurred by the defendants because she tried to extort money? Is that what you're asking? She has to pay because she lost, and they weren't doing anything wrong.

Correction: when you sue someone and lose, that does not necessarily mean you were extorting them. In fact, it almost necessarily precludes extortion, since extortion is the act of threatening to reveal a damaging secret unless you are conpensated. It also doesn't necessarily mean that the defendants did nothing wrong, as in the example of failed lawsuits against the NSA.

Re: Ellen Pao owes Kleiner Perkins $276,000 for lawsuit costs: judge

#80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Freedom of speech does not apply here. Reddit is not a forum owned by the public, it's a business. Reddit is within their rights to remove any content as they see fit. Yeah, people complain once they realize walled gardens like Reddit start censoring whatever they choose only /after/ they get too big to stop. Same goes for closed ecosystems like the App Store and Google Play. Guess you should have read the fine print…

I've seen 8chan and after that I do not yearn for a fully open Internet.

No one is forcing you go to (\d)chan.

Hate speech is an easy target. But the censoring and anticompetitive practices have spread further than that.

Google, Apple, Facebook, can change their ToS to bring down potential competitors. They can remove your app for any reason, block access to their APIs, and ban you for posting content that leads to your own external page. It's happened plenty, and Reddit is no exception. These guys want you to live in their closed ecosystems where they control who the winners and losers are and what information is seen.

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