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wearing my investigators hat The question that I can't see a satisfactory answer to is "why?". With Techcrunch onboard the Crunchpad might have worked out, it
by ErrantX 16y ago
wearing my investigators hat
The question that I can't see a satisfactory answer to is "why?". With Techcrunch onboard the Crunchpad might have worked out, it probably would have made money even if it was not a long term success. They sacrificed a highly vocal technology blog with a generally loyal following and lots of PR goodwill for, well, not a lot as far as I can see.
Working through the evidence now and nothing in there really springs out as explaining it.
EDIT: ok, it appears that they honestly thought the product was strong enough on it's own to survive a divorce from Techcrunch. Still not clear why he wanted the split though...
On a related note the email to the girlfriend from a FG employee is troubling discovery/disclosure; such material is often covered under privacy laws, despite the fact that he was using a company account. I'm surprised to see "personal" correspondence accepted to civil court and, particularly, allowed to be published.
- nl 16y agoThat email to the girlfriend was directly relevant - it said (a) how they were working at Techcrunch offices and (b) how Techcrunch were "suckers" I'd note they didn't publish the email from the girlfriend which that was in reply to.
- ErrantX 16y agoIt was predominantly personal. I have seen much less personal mail, pertinent to a case, rejected for such reasons.
- redrobot5050 16y agoYou have no privacy rights in a company owned email account, ever. They own every word you type, every email you send. How hard would it have been for that employee to have used his personal gmail account from his workstation?
- ErrantX 16y agoThat is completely untrue I am afraid, at least in the UK, US and most of Europe. There are quite strong laws to protect against accessing "personal" email (or, rather, using it in court). (trust me :) I work in computer forensics so we have to know these things)
- redrobot5050 16y agoFrom a work account? It might depend. Our company's policy forbids those kinds of things based off disciplinary action. From the company's standpoint (not law enforcement) they own everything.
- ErrantX 16y agoAh, yes, that is where it becomes a grey area. Legally speaking this is very complex; because clearly under investigation (i.e. civil discovery) work email will be accessed. How they can use that mail then becomes difficult; UK courts will pretty much summarily reject anything with overly personal communication - no matter what the source - unless the personal communication is directly relevant to the case. US courts are more lax but similar. From the company's standpoint (not law enforcement) they own everything They like to claim so :) The distinction that happens is that the company could turn to you and say "we have evidence of you using your company email for personal communication" and discipline you - so long as they followed all sorts of guidelines to make sure that they complied with the law. They couldn't, though, then say "we see you are having a sexual relationship with X at Y company...." UNLESS they entered the investigation with the aim of proving such a relationship (in which case I think they probably would need a civil discovery allowance). It's a legal minefield that is an absolute pain on a daily basis :) (I much prefer criminal matters where everything on a computer is fair game) [it's worth pointing out that if I am investigating a corporate computer and come across personal mail/details I am generally not allowed to communicate that with the company hiring us]
- chc 16y agoMy guess: Chandra saw dollar signs, didn't want to share the dollar signs with Arrington and decided that he just wouldn't.
- bl4k 16y agoThat is true. He likely mistook the hype and attention around the Crunchpad to be because of his own work, not the work of Techcrunch.