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GP isn’t asking whether it's legal to sue software companies for the acts of users. He’s asking if it's right and/or sensible. There are many, many corporatio

GP isn’t asking whether it's legal to sue software companies for the acts of users. He’s asking if it's right and/or sensible. There are many, many corporations that sold services to Backpage. If the red line is built around awareness of wrongdoing, you are just going to create an incentive for corporations to stop being socially active and an incentive to remain ignorant to customers' backgrounds. Yes, we may want to regulate certain influential industries to require them to do due diligence on their clientele. No, I don't think it makes sense to penalize these players before this regulation is put in place due to the perverse incentives.

will_brown 8y ago
>GP isn’t asking whether it's legal to sue software companies for the acts of users. He’s asking if it's right and/or sensible. Ok...but it’s a much narrower issue because it’s not about a software vendor being sued for the acts of their customers. It’s being sued for selling your goods/services where you knew or should have known the buyer was going to use your good/service to commit a crime. So in the extreme case, if a mass shooter told their plans to an arms dealer and the arms dealer sold the gun anyway...then yes, I don’t think many people will argue with the intent of the law. Here the facts can be blurred a little more, where SF will say we just built a data base we didn’t know how it would be used, and if we did know how it would be used then we didn’t know that use was a crime, and if we did know it was a crime we felt defense xyz would apply. No one is saying anything about due diligence. “Know or should have known” is a legal term of art and I think everyone is implying it creates an impossible burden for tech companies to comply with. And these aren’t regulations being “put in place” as you suggest, it’s long established Law.

will_brown 8y ago

>GP isn’t asking whether it's legal to sue software companies for the acts of users. He’s asking if it's right and/or sensible. Ok...but it’s a much narrower issue because it’s not about a software vendor being sued for the acts of their customers. It’s being sued for selling your goods/services where you knew or should have known the buyer was going to use your good/service to commit a crime. So in the extreme case, if a mass shooter told their plans to an arms dealer and the arms dealer sold the gun anyway...then yes, I don’t think many people will argue with the intent of the law. Here the facts can be blurred a little more, where SF will say we just built a data base we didn’t know how it would be used, and if we did know how it would be used then we didn’t know that use was a crime, and if we did know it was a crime we felt defense xyz would apply. No one is saying anything about due diligence. “Know or should have known” is a legal term of art and I think everyone is implying it creates an impossible burden for tech companies to comply with. And these aren’t regulations being “put in place” as you suggest, it’s long established Law.