Plurk’s official response to Microsoft’s apology • Hacker News Board

Re: Plurk’s official response to Microsoft’s apology

#61

Post by palish » Fri, Dec 18, 2009, 3:24 AM UTC

mbreese wrote: post #39

srj532 wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Microsoft did not steal the code. an Employee or contractor did. They, the individual(s) that stole the code is who is guilty here. As soon as Microsoft was made aware of the situation they pulled the offending code/software immediately.

Wrong Wrong Wrong. Microsoft is guilty of it because they are the ones who published the code/product as their own. They hired someone to do the work. Yes, that person ripped of Plurk, but Microsoft failed to verify their contractor's work. That makes them culpable. Plurk was ripped off by Microsoft. Full Stop. Now, Microsoft has it's own options with respect to that contractor, but their swift response doesn't erase…

Are you kidding? If I hire a contractor to do work, and that work is done (meaning I can look at and interact with the product) then I'm not going to waste valuable time "verifying" that product against every other product on the market. Especially against other "beta" products that only a niche few (relatively speaking) have heard about. That would be a dumb use of time. Why? Because even if the contractor did rip off the code, (which should be so unthinkable as to not even be an issue,) all I have to do is say "hey, the contractor did this, not me -- I've pulled the plug and fired the contractor." End of discussion. That's exactly what Microsoft did, and now Plurk is pushing the issue too far.

Plurk did get a ton of free PR from this. For thousands or tens of thousands of people, this will be the first time they've heard of Plurk. To claim that Plurk was somehow "damaged" amidst all of this is just stupid. Yeah, they were ripped off. But nobody got rich off of it. There is no money to chase down. Plurk could net themselves way more money (or rather, any money at all) by trying to generate new profits by taking advantage of all the free PR they got. But they're throwing a hissy fit after Microsoft has done their part in fixing the issue (pulling the plug on a product that wasn't even released yet anyway). As others here have said: what a waste.

Re: Plurk’s official response to Microsoft’s apology

#62

Post by jsz0 » Fri, Dec 18, 2009, 5:52 AM UTC

Sounds like Plurk should taken the horrible burden off the CEO from doing public relations all by himself. He's not very good at it. They've gone from exploited underdog to greedy lawsuit trolls pretty quickly here. Whatever small amount of traffic Microsoft's regional site took away from Plurk was totally offset by the free publicity. They should have sent Microsoft a Thank You card.

Re: Plurk’s official response to Microsoft’s apology

#63

Post by marsmatrix » Fri, Dec 18, 2009, 6:26 AM UTC

I suspect the company was immediately inundated with "helpful" legal advice when this went to press.

While everyone at HN (and probably the Plurk founders) would settle and go back to writing tech, suing Microsoft is every trial lawyer's dream. I think it's only fair for Microsoft to settle since they did have the service up for a few days but a full lawsuit is clearly OTL.

That said, I'm sure both companies will come out unscathed. The one group I see being hurt by this incident are the Chinese contractors. There were a large number of posts here and on /. stereotyping Chinese hackers as cheaters immediately after this incident.

Really, people, think about what you're saying.

Re: Plurk’s official response to Microsoft’s apology

#64

Post by dangrossman » Fri, Dec 18, 2009, 10:01 AM UTC

NikkiA wrote: post #46

mbreese wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wrong Wrong Wrong. Microsoft is guilty of it because they are the ones who published the code/product as their own. They hired someone to do the work. Yes, that person ripped of Plurk, but Microsoft failed to verify their contractor's work. That makes them culpable. Plurk was ripped off by Microsoft. Full Stop. Now, Microsoft has it's own options with respect to that contractor, but their swift response doesn't erase…

Lets also remember that that is the 2nd time in 6 months MS has been caught out on this kind of thing, and the 2nd time they've used the 'but a contractor...' excuse...

When your company hires some 30,000 contractors a year, using that "excuse" twice seems quite legitimate.

Re: Plurk’s official response to Microsoft’s apology

#65

Post by roundsquare » Fri, Dec 18, 2009, 11:31 AM UTC

jamesbritt wrote: post #60

TallGuyShort wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you've hit the nail on the head - and that's exactly why Plurk is going about it the way they have: They're not expecting a proper legal repercussion to take place - they want publicity for themselves, and bad press for MS. In his previous blog post he begged for this to become viral.

" they want publicity for themselves, and bad press for MS. In his previous blog post he begged for this to become viral." But the upshot is that it's creating bad press for Plurk, because they're now coming off, in the words of another poster here, as petulant. I read Microsoft's statement, then saw the Plurk comment, and I thought they came off as a bit childish. Microsoft seems to have done the proper, stand-up th…

Seems like they misjudged. They wanted to balance out between getting sympathy and wining too much. Looks like they crossed that line.

Re: Plurk’s official response to Microsoft’s apology

#66

Post by mbreese » Tue, Dec 22, 2009, 7:39 PM UTC

palish wrote: post #61

mbreese wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wrong Wrong Wrong. Microsoft is guilty of it because they are the ones who published the code/product as their own. They hired someone to do the work. Yes, that person ripped of Plurk, but Microsoft failed to verify their contractor's work. That makes them culpable. Plurk was ripped off by Microsoft. Full Stop. Now, Microsoft has it's own options with respect to that contractor, but their swift response doesn't erase…

Are you kidding? If I hire a contractor to do work, and that work is done (meaning I can look at and interact with the product) then I'm not going to waste valuable time "verifying" that product against every other product on the market. Especially against other "beta" products that only a niche few (relatively speaking) have heard about. That would be a dumb use of time. Why? Because even if the contractor did rip o…

This is the risk you take with using contractors. When you hire someone to do the work, you are the legal owner. This includes the good and the bad. The good being you can make money from it. The bad being that you now have a potential legal liability. When something is done work-for-hire, it is legally just like you produced the work in-house. So from the outside world, Microsoft is the entity that is legally responsible. The contractor is responsible to only Microsoft (and I'm sure their contract includes a provision to deal with this).

What you're describing is a legal nightmare. In this case, imagine that Microsoft didn't pull the plug. What would happen then? Would Microsoft say "Oops, sorry, it was the contractor's fault. But we paid him, and got our code, so we're going to keep using it." They didn't pull the plug out of the goodness of their hearts. They did it because they are legally liable for it, and the longer it was in the wild, the worse their liability.

The rest of this is PR. Plurk maybe pushing this a bit far, but that is a PR decision, not a legal one. From a legal perspective, they might have been injured enough for a lawsuit.