5 ms·

This is going to open a huge can of worms when lawyers demand the document history for discovery. You think that the final contract, patent application, user ma

This is going to open a huge can of worms when lawyers demand the document history for discovery. You think that the final contract, patent application, user manual, or product specification you wrote is what matters? When the lawyers, regulators, law enforcement, and litigious people want to get you, you'll have to defend every edit back to beginning of time. "Yes, we know what the final contract says, but based on your edit on January 7, 2003, at 5:21 pm and 0.210403 microseconds, your real intent was ...". "And then on June 12, 2006, you took out some words that have a bearing on this lawsuit -- obviously you were trying to cover things up." I was quite surprised to learn that during patent litigation for example, the history and changes made to your application do matter. I assumed that the final patent as issued is what matters and everything else is irrelevant. Well, lawyers have made it matter, and now things will be 10,000 times worse when they want to find something to argue. So great, now we have to worry about how someone might interpret every single edit rather than the final document.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
simonh 6y ago
Then use something else. That doesn’t mean those of us who find such a feature valuable shouldn’t have tools with these capabilities.
- cantrevealname 6y ago
  > Then use something else. Sure, until that feature is built into almost everything and it becomes mandatory to use it. Filing an income tax return? You must use this online system that captures every edit and every keystroke. There is no other way to file. When people complain about lack of privacy when using credit cards and bank cards, would you dismiss it by saying, use something else -- just use cash? I could list a hundred things that you can no longer pay with cash.
  - mcherm 6y ago
    Look, if you can assume that the legal system will start caring about specific edits along the way to the final draft, and you can assume that essentially all tools will start tracking the history of these changes, and you can assume that the trivial fix (copy paste the final version into a new document) will be underlined either technically or legally, then I can assume that Congress will change the law to make these inconsequential details no longer matter. (It's highly unlikely that Congress would actually do a useful thing, but then the sum total of all your assumptions was also highly unlikely, wasn't it?)
  - simonh 6y ago
    Where on Earth did that come from?
  - oauea 6y ago
    Did you miss the (2014) in the title?
    - o-__-o 6y ago
      Has case law determined an outcome yet? I can’t think how in the world it would rule in favor of the plagiarist though. Just more of a reason to write your document in notepad or on a collaborative system you control. You don’t control the hardware, then someone else can walk off with the software (or output of the software)
parasubvert 6y ago
Version history isn’t exactly new in legal docs. IANAL but I’ve worked on redlining legal contract terms commercially. Almost every legal (or otherwise collaborative) document has “track changes” enabled on its source document for the last 25+ years, which captures every keystroke in Word or WordPerfect. I cannot recall there’s ever been a subpoena for the track changes source. It’s generally immaterial. Negotiation proceedings are not the contract, the contract is what was signed and both parties have a copy as paper, image, or PDF. Computer forensics are often about determining whether a final image was altered after mutual acceptance. This is also why important documents get notarized.
- dannyw 6y ago
  When there is ambiguity, can context during negotiation proceedings be bought as evidence to clarify? Obviously no lawyer worth their salt is going to clarify ambiguity via email instead of redlining the contract with a change, but post-contract ambiguity can often be discovered.
  - o-__-o 6y ago
    You control-v a bunch of code from a copyrighted source. You then change all of the code semantics, syntax, etc. While not your lawyer example, a very common example developers would follow while infringing on code. I can think the same for someone writing a manuscript or other large work of writing
- chaboud 6y ago
  This is why, when you start to discuss it in writing, you To line your in-house counsel into a new thread that you mark privileged and confidential. Discussions of legality and regulatory compliance are discussions you should have with the guidance of your lawyer, and it would be exceptionally rare for a court to be willing to break legal privilege. How do you know you're doing something really funky? Even your lawyer doesn't want to put it in writing.
Xorlev 6y ago
https://support.google.com/a/answer/9381067?hl=en https://support.google.com/a/answer/9381067?hl=en Approvals ends up solving some of this by freezing changes to approved documents.
LordAtlas 6y ago
According to lawyer friends of mine, they do not use Google Docs for any official work because storing confidential client documents on somebody else's storage opens up serious liability issues. Plus Word is better at tracking management anyway.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

simonh 6y ago

Then use something else. That doesn’t mean those of us who find such a feature valuable shouldn’t have tools with these capabilities.

cantrevealname 6y ago
> Then use something else. Sure, until that feature is built into almost everything and it becomes mandatory to use it. Filing an income tax return? You must use this online system that captures every edit and every keystroke. There is no other way to file. When people complain about lack of privacy when using credit cards and bank cards, would you dismiss it by saying, use something else -- just use cash? I could list a hundred things that you can no longer pay with cash.
- mcherm 6y ago
  Look, if you can assume that the legal system will start caring about specific edits along the way to the final draft, and you can assume that essentially all tools will start tracking the history of these changes, and you can assume that the trivial fix (copy paste the final version into a new document) will be underlined either technically or legally, then I can assume that Congress will change the law to make these inconsequential details no longer matter. (It's highly unlikely that Congress would actually do a useful thing, but then the sum total of all your assumptions was also highly unlikely, wasn't it?)
- simonh 6y ago
  Where on Earth did that come from?
- oauea 6y ago
  Did you miss the (2014) in the title?
  - o-__-o 6y ago
    Has case law determined an outcome yet? I can’t think how in the world it would rule in favor of the plagiarist though. Just more of a reason to write your document in notepad or on a collaborative system you control. You don’t control the hardware, then someone else can walk off with the software (or output of the software)

parasubvert 6y ago

Version history isn’t exactly new in legal docs. IANAL but I’ve worked on redlining legal contract terms commercially. Almost every legal (or otherwise collaborative) document has “track changes” enabled on its source document for the last 25+ years, which captures every keystroke in Word or WordPerfect. I cannot recall there’s ever been a subpoena for the track changes source. It’s generally immaterial. Negotiation proceedings are not the contract, the contract is what was signed and both parties have a copy as paper, image, or PDF. Computer forensics are often about determining whether a final image was altered after mutual acceptance. This is also why important documents get notarized.

dannyw 6y ago
When there is ambiguity, can context during negotiation proceedings be bought as evidence to clarify? Obviously no lawyer worth their salt is going to clarify ambiguity via email instead of redlining the contract with a change, but post-contract ambiguity can often be discovered.
- o-__-o 6y ago
  You control-v a bunch of code from a copyrighted source. You then change all of the code semantics, syntax, etc. While not your lawyer example, a very common example developers would follow while infringing on code. I can think the same for someone writing a manuscript or other large work of writing
chaboud 6y ago
This is why, when you start to discuss it in writing, you To line your in-house counsel into a new thread that you mark privileged and confidential. Discussions of legality and regulatory compliance are discussions you should have with the guidance of your lawyer, and it would be exceptionally rare for a court to be willing to break legal privilege. How do you know you're doing something really funky? Even your lawyer doesn't want to put it in writing.

Xorlev 6y ago

https://support.google.com/a/answer/9381067?hl=en https://support.google.com/a/answer/9381067?hl=en Approvals ends up solving some of this by freezing changes to approved documents.

LordAtlas 6y ago

According to lawyer friends of mine, they do not use Google Docs for any official work because storing confidential client documents on somebody else's storage opens up serious liability issues. Plus Word is better at tracking management anyway.