Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Coding Cloud Heroku May Face Lawsuit Over Bait-and-Switch Claims

wired.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 100 posts

Re: Coding Cloud Heroku May Face Lawsuit Over Bait-and-Switch Claims

#71

Post by OGinparadise »

jacques_chester wrote: post #70
OGinparadise wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Collaboration is rarely rewarded once lawyers get anywhere near an issue and opting to collaborate (i.e.: admit fault and try to fix it) more or less wins you no points in court, in the U.S. Might, in part, have to do with how lawyers get compensated. A short case or a quick settlement will result in very little compensation for them. Over the course of years and decades that matters so we see everything analyzed to…

The careful decomposition of problem domain into solution domain followed by recursive search of the solution domain is the lawyer's job. If they don't analyse to death, they are breaching their fiduciary duty. Don't like the legal method? Don't hire a lawyer. Try doing it yourself. See how far you get when the other guy's lawyers have done the exhaustive analysis and found the deciding element buried in a logical no…

Yeah, other developed countries are all going downhill for not being overlawyered up like in US.

It's a system set by lawyers for lawyers so of course you need a lawyer more than in many other countries. "Everyone" sues over everything

Re: Coding Cloud Heroku May Face Lawsuit Over Bait-and-Switch Claims

#72

Post by jacques_chester »

OGinparadise wrote: post #71
jacques_chester wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The careful decomposition of problem domain into solution domain followed by recursive search of the solution domain is the lawyer's job. If they don't analyse to death, they are breaching their fiduciary duty. Don't like the legal method? Don't hire a lawyer. Try doing it yourself. See how far you get when the other guy's lawyers have done the exhaustive analysis and found the deciding element buried in a logical no…

Yeah, other developed countries are all going downhill for not being overlawyered up like in US. It's a system set by lawyers for lawyers so of course you need a lawyer more than in many other countries. "Everyone" sues over everything

The overlawyered US is the richest and most powerful country on Earth by a country mile.

Re: Coding Cloud Heroku May Face Lawsuit Over Bait-and-Switch Claims

#73

Post by OGinparadise »

jacques_chester wrote: post #72
OGinparadise wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, other developed countries are all going downhill for not being overlawyered up like in US. It's a system set by lawyers for lawyers so of course you need a lawyer more than in many other countries. "Everyone" sues over everything

The overlawyered US is the richest and most powerful country on Earth by a country mile.

"The overlawyered US is the richest and most powerful country on Earth by a country mile."

Thanks to the lawyers, no doubt. I am sure you didn't meant to say that if we pass some tort reform and limit some nonsense lawsuits (IP, malpractice etc) the country will lose it's wealth /power rank.

Re: Coding Cloud Heroku May Face Lawsuit Over Bait-and-Switch Claims

#74

Post by chc »

jacques_chester wrote: post #66
chc wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't believe any decision was made to misrepresent the product. The product just evolved and the product documentation didn't. The end result is the same — the product was advertised with inaccurate claims — but this appears to be more a case of neglect than a deliberate misrepresentation.

It's not a criminal matter. Mens rea -- "guilty conscience", the intention to act unlawfully -- is a component of crime. But it's not necessary for lots of civil legal matters. For example, if we both enter into a contract, you can hold me to my end. If I fail to hold up my end without intending to fail, then you can still insist that I make right or seek remedies for my failure. (IANAL, TINLA).

That all sounds right to me, but I think you've mistsken my meaning. The point wasn't that they lack mens rea, but that the decision to misrepresent the product can't have been made before the acquisition because that decision was never made at all. It was misrepresented by reality gradually changing out from under initially truthful statements.

Re: Coding Cloud Heroku May Face Lawsuit Over Bait-and-Switch Claims

#75

Post by jacques_chester »

OGinparadise wrote: post #73
jacques_chester wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The overlawyered US is the richest and most powerful country on Earth by a country mile.

"The overlawyered US is the richest and most powerful country on Earth by a country mile." Thanks to the lawyers, no doubt. I am sure you didn't meant to say that if we pass some tort reform and limit some nonsense lawsuits (IP, malpractice etc) the country will lose it's wealth /power rank.

The rule of law is a key part of the mix of institutions, geography, culture and luck that have made the USA the richest country that has ever been.

And with the rule of law comes lawyers. I know it's fashionable to hate lawyers, but they're a necessary profession.

Law is a field in which small details can have very large consequences once the full line of reasoning is unfolded. Because of the importance of exhaustively covering all lines of argument to the maximal possible depth, lawyers are required to do so.

They don't do it to bill you more. It is their legal duty.

If you don't like that lawyers are required on pain of loss of income, loss of profession and potentially loss of personal liberty to give you the fullest and most complete service that they are able to give you, then you are entitled to represent yourself.

Re: Coding Cloud Heroku May Face Lawsuit Over Bait-and-Switch Claims

#76

Post by jacques_chester »

chc wrote: post #74
jacques_chester wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not a criminal matter. Mens rea -- "guilty conscience", the intention to act unlawfully -- is a component of crime. But it's not necessary for lots of civil legal matters. For example, if we both enter into a contract, you can hold me to my end. If I fail to hold up my end without intending to fail, then you can still insist that I make right or seek remedies for my failure. (IANAL, TINLA).

That all sounds right to me, but I think you've mistsken my meaning. The point wasn't that they lack mens rea, but that the decision to misrepresent the product can't have been made before the acquisition because that decision was never made at all. It was misrepresented by reality gradually changing out from under initially truthful statements.

You don't have to decide to misrepresent in order to be misrepresentative. If your material is wrong, it's wrong, and depending on the jurisdiction you may be on the hook.

Ridiculous? Well consider that it gives a strong incentive to ensure that claims made to customers are somewhat accurate. Reducing the cost of caveat emptor makes society richer by reducing transaction costs and so encouraging trade. Sellers have a strong informational advantage over buyers; in general the cost to them of making a correct statement is much lower than having each customer having to find out the truth independently.

Not that this is the purpose of torts law, which evolved mostly to fill glaring, unjust gaps in the remedies of the older forms of common law. But that is the social and economic function that it has come to serve.

(IANAL, TINLA).

Re: Coding Cloud Heroku May Face Lawsuit Over Bait-and-Switch Claims

#77

Post by DigitalSea »

At the end of the day Heroku are in the wrong here. Performance issues which Heroku basically wouldn't admit until they were outed about them meant that companies would have invested tonnes of time and effort which in turn equals money on trying to fix issues that were caused by Heroku the whole time.

Re: Coding Cloud Heroku May Face Lawsuit Over Bait-and-Switch Claims

#78

Post by elbear »

jaggederest wrote: post #59
jacalata wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's certainly not a disinterested third party that Heroku knows nothing about: http://news.heroku.com/news_releases/heroku-and-new-relic-pa...

Agreed, but it's not the one true monitoring system. I happen to be biased and think it's pretty good, but it's not a first-party monitoring system that they swore on a bible was correct.

Maybe they didn't swear on the bible, but when you use a tool from a company with which Heroku has a partnership, you expect that tool to give accurate readings. I would, at least.

Re: Coding Cloud Heroku May Face Lawsuit Over Bait-and-Switch Claims

#79

Post by seferphier »

kyrra wrote: post #6
redthrowaway wrote: post #2

>Heroku declined our request for further comment. “Unfortunately, we can’t publicly comment on legal matters,” said spokeswoman Dana Oshiro in an email. “Heroku is committed to our customers’ success and focused on delivering the best possible product and experience. We’ll continue to update our customers via our blog.” I don't run a company, and I'm not responsible for maximizing return on my shareholders' investmen…

Seeing that there is a website/lawfirm[1] threatening legal action, I can bet Heroku/Salesforce lawyers jumped on that ASAP and let all their employees that are allowed to talk publicly not to comment on the issue anymore. The US legal system is setup that if a company admits fault in something like this, it makes defending yourself much more difficult. Meaning if a lawsuit is brought about, it's not about proving in…

Agree. Admitting liability in public before the trial started is very detrimental. After you admit liability, the only dispute left is how much you need to compensate the plaintiffs.

Just imagine being arrested. If you tell the police you are sorry- you are going to be found guilty. That is why all lawyers would tell you to remain silent until he arrives to the police station. The risk of admitting liability when talking is too big.

Re: Coding Cloud Heroku May Face Lawsuit Over Bait-and-Switch Claims

#80

Post by Karunamon »

res0nat0r wrote: post #64
Karunamon wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>It really disgusts me how quick people are to bite the hand that feeds them. Really? Because it really disgusts me when a company: * Misrepresents their product (saying it's A when it's actually B) * Privately acknowledges this misrepresentation under the radar * Makes large and ridiculous amounts of bank on this misrepresentation (since you have to throw more dynos at the app to mitigate the lag caused by the misro…

By misrepresents you mean that the end users didn't exactly understand how underlying architecture worked, didn't like the performance, but kept using the service anyway. If every customer I dealt with while working on the EC2 platform could sue because they didn't understand how every technical detail of AWS worked and they couldn't optimize for it...well there would be more lawyers employed by Jeff Bezos than engin…

>By misrepresents you mean that the end users didn't exactly understand how underlying architecture worked

Uh.. no.

Heroku claimed to use intelligent routing, they used random routing. And then covered it up with their monitoring tools.

How in the name of crap can you blame this on the user?! Did you even read the Rap Genius writeup on this problem? If I were in their position, I would be utterly livid.

Post reply on HN