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Monster Cables picked the wrong guy to threaten (2008)

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Re: Monster Cables picked the wrong guy to threaten (2008)

#171

Post by rzzzt »

derefr wrote: post #165
dmurray wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The term to search for this is barratry and there are laws against it in some jurisdictions. Realistically, you will not win a judgment on this to compensate you for your time dealing with a single cease and desist letter. If someone shows a really excessive pattern of it, perhaps a judge or a bar association could be convinced to make an example of them.

I guess that does address my concrete question as given. But I think I was less imagining a countersuit that literally just "seeks damages for wasted time and effort"... and more imagining a countersuit that can somehow "rope in" the claims in the original suit, so as to force those claims to be evaluated and case law to be created upon that evaluation — whether the original claimant likes it or not. Imagine, by anal…

In Kurt Denke's response he writes:

  > As for your requests for information, or for action, directed to me: I 
  > would remind you that it is you, not I, who are making claims; and it 
  > is you, not I, who must substantiate those claims. You have not done so.
Which party would bear the burden of proof in step 3? Does it get reversed or stay as if the step 1 threat went to court?

Re: Monster Cables picked the wrong guy to threaten (2008)

#173

Post by thaumasiotes »

sandworm101 wrote: post #169
MisterTea wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I had no idea Monster sold anything other than over priced guitar cables... Basically, someone asked themselves "how do I port the audiophile scam to the home entertainment space?" And monster cables was born. When Monster first came out it became a meme. Their advertisement was laughable and remember joking with tech savvy friends about how all wire was vastly inferior to the alien technology monster used in their…

The sad part is that, once upon a time, those crazy claims mattered. There were once good and bad cables. But over the last centry all the best practices were universally adopted (twisted pairs, shielding, consistent conductors made of soft copper). Monster now sounds like a car company shouting about seatbelts and crumple zones, things we now just expect but were once important to look for when selecting cable. Give…

> Have fun trying to reclaim a warranty from the discount chinese numbered company that tops your amazon search.

I remember seeing someone else raging about how a Chinese company on Amazon had no accountability because the business address field was filled with unintelligible gibberish and there was no way to find the company.

So I looked it up. Not only was it very easy to find the address, it was obviously the address of the owner's personal home. So even if the company did go out of business, odds are good you could make contact and ask for redress.

People will assume anything.

Re: Monster Cables picked the wrong guy to threaten (2008)

#174

Post by eek2121 »

favorited wrote: post #101
hallway_monitor wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think I speak for a lot of people when I say I’m disappointed you didn’t end up extracting a couple thousand dollars from the HOA. Then again, maybe there’s less hate for HOA’s here than in other spaces. This is typical HOA behavior!

I totally understand that, but theirs is genuinely not an HOAzilla – they just took a stupid approach to this particular problem. It's honestly the prototypical example of how to run an HOA – low fees (no outside management), providing community features (pool, tennis courts, paved private roads, etc.) basically at-cost, and even hiring folks from the community to help out (teens as lifeguards, retired folks as maint…

You honestly should have searched to see if they had a trademark. Unlike copyright, trademarks have to exist. I suspect you were probably played. They appeared nice, sure, but they don't appear nice to me. If it were me, I'd have' pointed the domain at a certain picture involving ladies and cups. I've dealt with bullies myself, even in the legal system (IANAL, but do run a few successful small time ventures), and it always blow my mind what people will say. I recently had a guy from India that claimed I had a security vulnerability, and that I owe him a bounty. I have no bounty and the vulnerability did not exist (I suspect he misunderstood the issue completely...the issue was not an issue at all, it was as designed). When I didn't respond he followed up multiple times, and threatened to sue (I am in the U.S.) He finally gave up. The issue he was referring to was his misunderstanding of modern email standards. It wasn't an actual issue, nor did I ever offer any type of bounty of actual security stuff (I would, but most of my stuff is OOTB, if someone did come to me with an actual issue I'd definitely give them something)

If plaintiffs had to pay the fees for defense prior to settlement or judgement, most of this would disappear. Sadly, nobody has the balls to implement that.

Re: Monster Cables picked the wrong guy to threaten (2008)

#175

Post by thaumasiotes »

derefr wrote: post #165
dmurray wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The term to search for this is barratry and there are laws against it in some jurisdictions. Realistically, you will not win a judgment on this to compensate you for your time dealing with a single cease and desist letter. If someone shows a really excessive pattern of it, perhaps a judge or a bar association could be convinced to make an example of them.

I guess that does address my concrete question as given. But I think I was less imagining a countersuit that literally just "seeks damages for wasted time and effort"... and more imagining a countersuit that can somehow "rope in" the claims in the original suit, so as to force those claims to be evaluated and case law to be created upon that evaluation — whether the original claimant likes it or not. Imagine, by anal…

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

If someone threatens to sue you, you can sue them to establish that their suit is groundless.

Re: Monster Cables picked the wrong guy to threaten (2008)

#176

Post by maxglute »

sandworm101 wrote: post #169
MisterTea wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I had no idea Monster sold anything other than over priced guitar cables... Basically, someone asked themselves "how do I port the audiophile scam to the home entertainment space?" And monster cables was born. When Monster first came out it became a meme. Their advertisement was laughable and remember joking with tech savvy friends about how all wire was vastly inferior to the alien technology monster used in their…

The sad part is that, once upon a time, those crazy claims mattered. There were once good and bad cables. But over the last centry all the best practices were universally adopted (twisted pairs, shielding, consistent conductors made of soft copper). Monster now sounds like a car company shouting about seatbelts and crumple zones, things we now just expect but were once important to look for when selecting cable. Give…

>Have fun trying to reclaim a warranty from the discount chinese numbered company that tops your amazon search

Well it's not fun because most of them have very painless warranty claims - hammer the product with a 1 star review and applie for replacement, most will just give you full refund, no / barely any questions asked. Anything to keep their top Amazon search positions and reviews. I remember when Amazon was slammed with MPOW bluetooth products, I had minor hinge issue after almost a year on a set of cans and they just shipped me a new one, didn't even need photo evidence of destruction of old device. That's been my experience with multipe "Chinesium" products on Amazon, and essentially why Amazon > Aliexpress for the RMA premium. Buy from a top ranked product where seller doesn't want to compromise position with bad reviews, pay a few bucks extra on Amazon, get faster shipping and no question asked exchanges/refunds because seller already have it built into margins.

Re: Monster Cables picked the wrong guy to threaten (2008)

#177

Post by olelele »

stego-tech wrote: post #6

It was this story that clued me into BJC as an entity in the first place. Gladly shelled out a couple hundred bucks for solidly-built custom speaker interconnects a few years later with them, and have zero regrets. As far as legal tactics go, I’m very sympathetic to his position and wish more folks would fight to the finish instead of settling for nuisance values.

After working with audio professionally I've developed a strong antipathy towards a lot of the audiophile industry. BJC has good prices and seem very legit in my eyes. The pricing seems to reflect actual production costs and not mumbo jumbo alignment in the copper fields...

Re: Monster Cables picked the wrong guy to threaten (2008)

#178

Post by gorkish »

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #54
gorkish wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s technically not an all or nothing deal with hdmi/dvi. That is to say that bit errors do indeed manifest as image artifacts, though normally imperceptible. I think some people understand that error correction is normally present in digital audio, so they naturally assume that video would be the same. But that is not quite true. For one thing there weren’t cheap chips that could do that at gbps data rates when DVI…

> I think some people understand that error correction is normally present in digital audio The only such error correction I'm aware of is when reading data from a CD, which at this point is a tiny part of digital audio. Is there something I'm missing?

Error detection is present in S/PDIF PCM (including when transported on hdmi) and is also an inherent byproduct of most audio codecs when a digital bitstream is being used, which is normally the case today.

FEC and other types of error correction or recovery is ubiquitous in wireless audio and communications applications including phone calls, Bluetooth, VoIP, wireless microphones, and digital radio. Responsibility for the error correction is sometimes part of the underlying transport mechanism and sometimes incorporated directly into the codec. Encryption & privacy requirements for audio also mean that we solved these problems long ago. IIRC that the WWII SIGSALY encrypted telephone between the US and UK required and implemented error correction.

Re: Monster Cables picked the wrong guy to threaten (2008)

#180

Post by devilbunny »

Cornbilly wrote: post #63
jaredandrews wrote: post #36

I had no idea Monster sold anything other than over priced guitar cables... About 15 yeard ago, I knew a guy who exclusively bought Monster... well he had two of them, one from the guitar to the pedal board and another from the board to the amp. But it wasn't because of their alleged improved sound quality or whatever, it was because they had a lifetime warranty. Dude had bought two monster 1/4inch cables and gotten…

A few of my friends did the same. They could easily run to Guitar Center and swap broken cables before a gig. That could easily be worth the added cost.

It’s why Snap-On sells so many tools. They will send someone to you with the new tool if one breaks.
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