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There's a firm in Southern California that's suing restaurants / small theaters / community organizations / etc after bulk-scanning web sites for embedded video

There's a firm in Southern California that's suing restaurants / small theaters / community organizations / etc after bulk-scanning web sites for embedded video that lack links to caption files. It's all ADA abuse, lawsuits in the $5k-$7k range. A huge percentage of those sued don't have the means to fight back, and settle. The company that's suing people had some incompetent coder write their scanner, so it only parses the TRACK tag from a video container in certain circumstances. I was able to defend an organization by demonstrating this. A vigorous countersuit is in the discussion stages.

Forgeties79 4y ago
I genuinely do not understand how they can sleep at night. Thanks for pushing back.
- plussed_reader 4y ago
  "If it were wrong it would be illegal."
  - littlestymaar 4y ago
    - ccvannorman 4y ago
      This "wonder" you find yourself with is a result of the mismatch between observable data, statistics, and our intuition. On the news we may read about Arson (or other "angry actions" by individuals) but this is highly negative selection bias - the actual incidence rate is near zero. Because we have a lot of data like this (negative news that you are exposed to) we tend to over-estimate the incidence rate of arson (e.g. 1% instead of 0.001%) So, when you ask the question "Why isn't $action provoking more $arson here", the answer is simple: statistically speaking, each individual is extremely unlikely to do arson (or similar), so even though they've been perturbed, the incidence doesn't really go up. Another way to say it: Everyone knows the ROI on arson is negative, no matter how upset you are, crime is never worth it as a response, because you have zero upside. So almost everyone (overwhelming majority) don't do this (but we might think they would, again because we're exposed to negative bias news data)
    - tehwebguy 4y ago
      > companies doing that Doing which, making services unavailable to disabled people or suing those that do? I mean if my health insurer, for example, couldn't accommodate a disability of mine, especially something as common as low vision or hearing, I'd certainly feel like getting revenge but doesn't everyone feel that way about every health insurer every year or two? If you meant the other way around, like if someone sued me because I was the one essentially locking people with a disability out from using my service I'd probably just take a really logical approach to handling it (for instance, making the accommodation they request). From what I've read the most common outcome in these cases is that the defendant is ordered to make the accommodation. Getting sued or even just threatened with a lawsuit is pretty scary though, if anyone here is facing threat of lawsuit I'd suggest you consult with several attorneys right away but also find a YouTube attorney to set your expectations of the process. It's super easy to get fleeced by your own attorney unless you direct them pretty intentionally.
      - angst_ridden 4y ago
        I believe in making things accessible, and strive to do that on all my projects. I object to abuse of the ADA. Businesses / organizations should be given an opportunity to remediate their web sites before an automated script files an erroneous lawsuit.
        jibe 4y ago
        It should be an easy legal fix - you have to give notice and ~120 day window to fix before you are allowed to file a lawsuit. Also, not sure private parties should be plaintiffs here.
        drc500free 4y ago
        Without private action, they would need funding for enforcement. To have funding for enforcement, they would have to either levy fines against offenders or raise taxes. Those are non-starters for getting the legislation passed, and the opponents hope that they can later claim that the private action is an abuse of the legal system.
    - galangalalgol 4y ago
      This is essentially a legal protection money racket. People running a racket never leave you with nothing left to lose. Most obviously because they can't come back for more. But also because people with nothing left to lose will burn down al Capone's house and not care that they are about to be killed in some horrible way. These legal rackets know if they hit you for something you can afford to pay and keep your business running, that you aren't likely to throw it all away for empty vengeance. Cameras are everywhere now.
      - orangepurple 4y ago
        Cameras don't work if the neighborhood transformer is down for unscheduled reconfiguration
        hedora 4y ago
        These days, they do. Batteries and solar panels cost less then running a cable.
      - littlestymaar 4y ago
        > Cameras are everywhere now. They clearly aren't, and there are around a hundred arson committed each day in average in the US so it doesn't look like the sheer number of surveillance camera is enough of a deterrent for the typical criminal.
    - verisimilitudes 4y ago
  - rat87 4y ago
    It is illegal, that's why they sued.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- yieldcrv 4y ago
  In their minds they are just chasing alpha to sleep at all. They have probably been burned along the way and just passing the trauma forward. Everyone has to save themselves.
- drc500free 4y ago
  It's no different from not having curb cuts on your sidewalk. Culturally tech companies have gotten away with selling non-compliant products and websites, and feel like it's unacceptable to be required to follow regulations because everyone has level-set their expectations around not doing that. A competent regulatory scheme would have had the government enforcing this from the beginning, instead of depending on private action that seldom happens, but here we are. Uber ignores taxi regulations, AirBnB ignores zoning regulations, and everyone ignores accessibility regulations.
  - Handytinge 4y ago
    For the non Americans: A "sidewalk" is a footpath adjacent to a road. A "curb cut" is ramp from footpath to road.
  - extantproject 4y ago
    > If people followed the law, they wouldn't get sued. non sequitur
    - drc500free 4y ago
      Great point, and I just edited that out on re-read because I realized it's simply not true. In fact, it's the core problem with using private action as an enforcement mechanism. You pass a specialized regulatory problem to a generic court and waste everyone's time with cases like this one where the companies may in fact be perfectly compliant - but first you need to spend money teaching the judge what the facts are.
  - jacobsenscott 4y ago
    > A competent regulatory scheme would have had the government enforcing this from the beginning If there was a regulatory scheme (competent can't really be defined) at the beginning of the internet we would all still be using aol dial up at best, there would be 3 content creating entities at most, and we would be paying for monthly "bundles" of web sites.
    - 4y ago
- sangnoir 4y ago
  Discriminating on disability is not cool, and it also happens to be illegal. If people on HN can complain about how some websites are unusable with Javascript disabled (by choice), I think those who depend on screen readers[1] have a more cogent case, as they don't have options. For all the hate the "bloated" web frameworks get, the one thing they usually have out of the box is accessibility. 1. Or other assistive tech.
- jbirer 4y ago
  We often assume that most people have empathy / conscience. It's simply not true.
ronsor 4y ago
Can you list their IP addresses so I can firewall them... and drop the ranges from my BGP tables?
- angst_ridden 4y ago
  I'm afraid I don't have that information. I believe they did their scan last July.
chriscjcj 4y ago
Is it Potter Handy, LLP? I think this article from yesterday might be related: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/crime/san-francisco-and-los-angeles-d-a-s-will-appeal-to-revive-lawsuit-over-fraudulent-disability-claims/ar-AA13bT93 https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/crime/san-francisco-and-los-a...
- angst_ridden 4y ago
  I'm not at liberty to give specifics right now.
punyearthling 4y ago
That's pretty specific - maybe a California thing - but I'd heard as an engineer, you just had to show an attempt was made at making your site accessible. Targeting specific ADA violations is odd to me.
- nnf 4y ago
  Showing an attempt might or might not help you with a judge, but the attempt alone doesn’t release you from your accessibility obligations.
roenxi 4y ago
> It's all ADA abuse... The HN gestalt confuses me on this one. The other week the EU had that charger standardisation law and the mood on HN was undeniably positive. Now we have a comment that Californian web accessibility laws are being enforced and the top voted comment is decidedly negative. These laws are remarkably similar in intent and likely outcome. What is different here? Is it the same people but you're all drawing a distinction that I don't see? different people and a US vs EU thing? Hardware vs Software? When there is a law saying that websites are supposed to be accessible, suing websites that aren't accessible doesn't seem like abuse to me. This sounds like the intended outcome. Enforcing laws isn't a pretty business.
- comte7092 4y ago
  Does it actually confuse you or is that a rhetorical question? On the one have you have global manufacturers being required to switch from one well established standard to another, it’s a requirement that barely touches on their resources as a firm and has more to do with their business strategy. Contrast that with organizations that are likely well meaning but barely have the technical competence to put up and maintain a website. What they are currently doing is at the limit of their technical capacity. The two situations couldn’t be more different.
  - dereg 4y ago
    Do you see how many qualifiers you added to this? What if it significantly touches on their resources as a firm? What if the company is “global” but revenue is primarily domestic? It’s always easy to carve these lines in the sand ex post facto. Good legislation lays out a set on consistent principles and enforcements, ex ante.
    - comte7092 4y ago
      Hacker news commenters are not legislators, it is therefore entirely reasonable for commenters to draw those lines however they see fit for the purposes of discussion. Further, it is drawing lines on the basis of number of employees/operating revenue/etc (the use of the word “global” in this case is clearly a colloquial reference to a very large firm along these metrics), is already a very common and well understood basis for drawing such lines, so such and insinuation on your part that this is some ex post facto finger pointing is without serious grounding.
Gordonjcp 4y ago
Interesting. I had an email from a Californian law firm, claiming that my website was not sufficiently accessible for vision-impaired readers and I could be sued in California because of it, and would I like to pay them for their legal assistance in making it meet ADA legislation? I suggested they consider Arkell v. Pressdram, and haven't heard a cheep from them since. The site looks perfectly okay with javascript and styling turned off (it's a forum, it's all text, there are some photos), so I expect it'll be fine in any practical screen reader. The demographic for the forum (people who want to repair and operate very old Range Rovers) already probably doesn't really include partially-sighted people, who would not be allowed to drive anyway if their vision was so poor they couldn't read text on a screen with reasonable adaptations. I don't expect I will ever travel to California anyway, so I'm certain I've heard the last of them.
camillomiller 4y ago
Currently in Germany there’s a wave of lawyers letters making the rounds. They claim a website violates the privacy of some dummy client when they accessed the website and their IP was transmitted to Google’s servers to download Google Fonts from the cloud. I’ve been putting in some extra hours this week to help scared clients localize their Google Fonts. The wave started after an half-assed sentence from a court in Munich back in January decided that Google Fonts server seeing a user’s IP number is a punishable privacy violation.
- slyall 4y ago
  I have a small website that happens to be hosted in Germany since a German company donated a server. We had to add an "Impressum" with our contact details to make sure we didn't get hit with a letter demanding money from one of the law firms that specialise in shaking down sites that are missing them.
  - nicbou 4y ago
    You can just tell them to sod off. The Impressum requirement is for German commercial websites. If you are not bound by this law, you don't have to obey it.
    - iggldiggl 4y ago
      1. The legal definition of what's "commercial" under that law and what's not isn't necessarily quite as straightforward as a layman might think. (For one, that law doesn't literally say "commercial" ("gewerbsmäßig"), but rather "geschäftsmäßig" ("business-like"), which apparently can be interpreted to not require an intent to make money, but instead to include anything you plan on regularly doing). 2. Assuming you're referring to the Telemediengesetz, there's a second law (Medienstaatsvertrag) which mandates an imprint for anything that's not strictly for "personal or family purposes". Depending on who you ask, those two terms also require a rather narrow reading, so anything beyond a strictly private family diary (careful not to make references to any outside persons or businesses, though, because those entities will then have a legal interest in being able to identify you in case you malign them!) or family pictures or your private Dropbox replacement (ideally all the above should be password-protected and therefore not accessible by the general public anyway) might again already be in a grey area. 2b. Additionally, blogs can enter another grey area where depending on what and how you're blogging about, they might be classified as a journalistic service offering and therefore require an extended imprint, too.
pupppet 4y ago
Would love to hear more about your defense, have a client in the same boat.
hedora 4y ago
See also, Scott Johnson. He files bogus shakedown suits over wheelchair accessibility throughout the state. Happily, the first hit is this article: https://www.cbsnews.com/sacramento/news/attorney-scott-johnson-ada-lawsuit-tax-fraud/ https://www.cbsnews.com/sacramento/news/attorney-scott-johns... It's nice to see karma at work.
- iancmceachern 4y ago
  If I could invest in any abstract concept, it would be karma. We need more of it.
- Linosaurus 4y ago
  Article from 2019, I wonder what came of it. Seems trial date is January 2023. He’s still doing it, but possibly some pushback from the legal system regarding standing (do you really intend to come back there) https://www.sanjoseinside.com/news/__trashed/ https://www.sanjoseinside.com/news/__trashed/
  - lupire 4y ago
    > pushback from the legal system regarding standing well that's just cold.
- pnw 4y ago
  That is nice karma. I hope the prison has an ADA accessible ramp.
- lupire 4y ago
  He was punished only because he got greedy and under reported taxes on his legal grift.
cma 4y ago
Why doesn't the government instead subsidize an auto-captioning device or software for deaf users, so every site, even foreign and outside jurisdiction would work?
- kursemaster 4y ago
robocat 4y ago
How is the law firm profiting? As a New Zealander, I think only the government can enforce similar laws. I am unsure whether a private citizen could get representation here, or whether there could be any civil penalties.
- nicbou 4y ago
  They send an Abmahnung, which is similar to a cease and desist, but can include costs. You can refuse the cost and prepare for a possibly expensive battle, or pay the costs and call it a day. Usually, you are guilty of the minor crime you're accused of, so they have a case.
  - robocat 4y ago
    If you refuse, is there a second level of "extortion" from the lawyers?
    - nicbou 4y ago
      They can take you to court. You can call their bluff if you believe that you have a case. The problem is that your lawyer will never tell you "just pay them" if they can suggest that you have a chance in court. That's how they get paid after all.
- abigail95 4y ago
  The NZ Human Rights Act provides the same mechanism for people to sue private companies that don't provide accessible services.
devoutsalsa 4y ago
Reminds me of an SF attorney who teams with a guy in a wheelchair to sue locations that don’t have ADA compliant facilities. “Wheelchairs of Fortune” https://web.archive.org/web/20220209194711/https://archives.sfweekly.com/sanfrancisco/wheelchairs-of-fortune/Content?oid=2163370 https://web.archive.org/web/20220209194711/https://archives....

Forgeties79 4y ago

I genuinely do not understand how they can sleep at night. Thanks for pushing back.

plussed_reader 4y ago
"If it were wrong it would be illegal."
- littlestymaar 4y ago
  - ccvannorman 4y ago
    This "wonder" you find yourself with is a result of the mismatch between observable data, statistics, and our intuition. On the news we may read about Arson (or other "angry actions" by individuals) but this is highly negative selection bias - the actual incidence rate is near zero. Because we have a lot of data like this (negative news that you are exposed to) we tend to over-estimate the incidence rate of arson (e.g. 1% instead of 0.001%) So, when you ask the question "Why isn't $action provoking more $arson here", the answer is simple: statistically speaking, each individual is extremely unlikely to do arson (or similar), so even though they've been perturbed, the incidence doesn't really go up. Another way to say it: Everyone knows the ROI on arson is negative, no matter how upset you are, crime is never worth it as a response, because you have zero upside. So almost everyone (overwhelming majority) don't do this (but we might think they would, again because we're exposed to negative bias news data)
  - tehwebguy 4y ago
    > companies doing that Doing which, making services unavailable to disabled people or suing those that do? I mean if my health insurer, for example, couldn't accommodate a disability of mine, especially something as common as low vision or hearing, I'd certainly feel like getting revenge but doesn't everyone feel that way about every health insurer every year or two? If you meant the other way around, like if someone sued me because I was the one essentially locking people with a disability out from using my service I'd probably just take a really logical approach to handling it (for instance, making the accommodation they request). From what I've read the most common outcome in these cases is that the defendant is ordered to make the accommodation. Getting sued or even just threatened with a lawsuit is pretty scary though, if anyone here is facing threat of lawsuit I'd suggest you consult with several attorneys right away but also find a YouTube attorney to set your expectations of the process. It's super easy to get fleeced by your own attorney unless you direct them pretty intentionally.
    - angst_ridden 4y ago
      I believe in making things accessible, and strive to do that on all my projects. I object to abuse of the ADA. Businesses / organizations should be given an opportunity to remediate their web sites before an automated script files an erroneous lawsuit.
      - jibe 4y ago
        It should be an easy legal fix - you have to give notice and ~120 day window to fix before you are allowed to file a lawsuit. Also, not sure private parties should be plaintiffs here.
        drc500free 4y ago
        Without private action, they would need funding for enforcement. To have funding for enforcement, they would have to either levy fines against offenders or raise taxes. Those are non-starters for getting the legislation passed, and the opponents hope that they can later claim that the private action is an abuse of the legal system.
  - galangalalgol 4y ago
    This is essentially a legal protection money racket. People running a racket never leave you with nothing left to lose. Most obviously because they can't come back for more. But also because people with nothing left to lose will burn down al Capone's house and not care that they are about to be killed in some horrible way. These legal rackets know if they hit you for something you can afford to pay and keep your business running, that you aren't likely to throw it all away for empty vengeance. Cameras are everywhere now.
    - orangepurple 4y ago
      Cameras don't work if the neighborhood transformer is down for unscheduled reconfiguration
      - hedora 4y ago
        These days, they do. Batteries and solar panels cost less then running a cable.
    - littlestymaar 4y ago
      > Cameras are everywhere now. They clearly aren't, and there are around a hundred arson committed each day in average in the US so it doesn't look like the sheer number of surveillance camera is enough of a deterrent for the typical criminal.
  - verisimilitudes 4y ago
- rat87 4y ago
  It is illegal, that's why they sued.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
yieldcrv 4y ago
In their minds they are just chasing alpha to sleep at all. They have probably been burned along the way and just passing the trauma forward. Everyone has to save themselves.
drc500free 4y ago
It's no different from not having curb cuts on your sidewalk. Culturally tech companies have gotten away with selling non-compliant products and websites, and feel like it's unacceptable to be required to follow regulations because everyone has level-set their expectations around not doing that. A competent regulatory scheme would have had the government enforcing this from the beginning, instead of depending on private action that seldom happens, but here we are. Uber ignores taxi regulations, AirBnB ignores zoning regulations, and everyone ignores accessibility regulations.
- Handytinge 4y ago
  For the non Americans: A "sidewalk" is a footpath adjacent to a road. A "curb cut" is ramp from footpath to road.
- extantproject 4y ago
  > If people followed the law, they wouldn't get sued. non sequitur
  - drc500free 4y ago
    Great point, and I just edited that out on re-read because I realized it's simply not true. In fact, it's the core problem with using private action as an enforcement mechanism. You pass a specialized regulatory problem to a generic court and waste everyone's time with cases like this one where the companies may in fact be perfectly compliant - but first you need to spend money teaching the judge what the facts are.
- jacobsenscott 4y ago
  > A competent regulatory scheme would have had the government enforcing this from the beginning If there was a regulatory scheme (competent can't really be defined) at the beginning of the internet we would all still be using aol dial up at best, there would be 3 content creating entities at most, and we would be paying for monthly "bundles" of web sites.
  - 4y ago
sangnoir 4y ago
Discriminating on disability is not cool, and it also happens to be illegal. If people on HN can complain about how some websites are unusable with Javascript disabled (by choice), I think those who depend on screen readers[1] have a more cogent case, as they don't have options. For all the hate the "bloated" web frameworks get, the one thing they usually have out of the box is accessibility. 1. Or other assistive tech.
jbirer 4y ago
We often assume that most people have empathy / conscience. It's simply not true.

ronsor 4y ago

Can you list their IP addresses so I can firewall them... and drop the ranges from my BGP tables?

angst_ridden 4y ago
I'm afraid I don't have that information. I believe they did their scan last July.

chriscjcj 4y ago

Is it Potter Handy, LLP? I think this article from yesterday might be related: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/crime/san-francisco-and-los-angeles-d-a-s-will-appeal-to-revive-lawsuit-over-fraudulent-disability-claims/ar-AA13bT93 https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/crime/san-francisco-and-los-a...

angst_ridden 4y ago
I'm not at liberty to give specifics right now.

punyearthling 4y ago

That's pretty specific - maybe a California thing - but I'd heard as an engineer, you just had to show an attempt was made at making your site accessible. Targeting specific ADA violations is odd to me.

nnf 4y ago
Showing an attempt might or might not help you with a judge, but the attempt alone doesn’t release you from your accessibility obligations.

roenxi 4y ago

> It's all ADA abuse... The HN gestalt confuses me on this one. The other week the EU had that charger standardisation law and the mood on HN was undeniably positive. Now we have a comment that Californian web accessibility laws are being enforced and the top voted comment is decidedly negative. These laws are remarkably similar in intent and likely outcome. What is different here? Is it the same people but you're all drawing a distinction that I don't see? different people and a US vs EU thing? Hardware vs Software? When there is a law saying that websites are supposed to be accessible, suing websites that aren't accessible doesn't seem like abuse to me. This sounds like the intended outcome. Enforcing laws isn't a pretty business.

comte7092 4y ago
Does it actually confuse you or is that a rhetorical question? On the one have you have global manufacturers being required to switch from one well established standard to another, it’s a requirement that barely touches on their resources as a firm and has more to do with their business strategy. Contrast that with organizations that are likely well meaning but barely have the technical competence to put up and maintain a website. What they are currently doing is at the limit of their technical capacity. The two situations couldn’t be more different.
- dereg 4y ago
  Do you see how many qualifiers you added to this? What if it significantly touches on their resources as a firm? What if the company is “global” but revenue is primarily domestic? It’s always easy to carve these lines in the sand ex post facto. Good legislation lays out a set on consistent principles and enforcements, ex ante.
  - comte7092 4y ago
    Hacker news commenters are not legislators, it is therefore entirely reasonable for commenters to draw those lines however they see fit for the purposes of discussion. Further, it is drawing lines on the basis of number of employees/operating revenue/etc (the use of the word “global” in this case is clearly a colloquial reference to a very large firm along these metrics), is already a very common and well understood basis for drawing such lines, so such and insinuation on your part that this is some ex post facto finger pointing is without serious grounding.

Gordonjcp 4y ago

Interesting. I had an email from a Californian law firm, claiming that my website was not sufficiently accessible for vision-impaired readers and I could be sued in California because of it, and would I like to pay them for their legal assistance in making it meet ADA legislation? I suggested they consider Arkell v. Pressdram, and haven't heard a cheep from them since. The site looks perfectly okay with javascript and styling turned off (it's a forum, it's all text, there are some photos), so I expect it'll be fine in any practical screen reader. The demographic for the forum (people who want to repair and operate very old Range Rovers) already probably doesn't really include partially-sighted people, who would not be allowed to drive anyway if their vision was so poor they couldn't read text on a screen with reasonable adaptations. I don't expect I will ever travel to California anyway, so I'm certain I've heard the last of them.

camillomiller 4y ago

Currently in Germany there’s a wave of lawyers letters making the rounds. They claim a website violates the privacy of some dummy client when they accessed the website and their IP was transmitted to Google’s servers to download Google Fonts from the cloud. I’ve been putting in some extra hours this week to help scared clients localize their Google Fonts. The wave started after an half-assed sentence from a court in Munich back in January decided that Google Fonts server seeing a user’s IP number is a punishable privacy violation.

slyall 4y ago
I have a small website that happens to be hosted in Germany since a German company donated a server. We had to add an "Impressum" with our contact details to make sure we didn't get hit with a letter demanding money from one of the law firms that specialise in shaking down sites that are missing them.
- nicbou 4y ago
  You can just tell them to sod off. The Impressum requirement is for German commercial websites. If you are not bound by this law, you don't have to obey it.
  - iggldiggl 4y ago
    1. The legal definition of what's "commercial" under that law and what's not isn't necessarily quite as straightforward as a layman might think. (For one, that law doesn't literally say "commercial" ("gewerbsmäßig"), but rather "geschäftsmäßig" ("business-like"), which apparently can be interpreted to not require an intent to make money, but instead to include anything you plan on regularly doing). 2. Assuming you're referring to the Telemediengesetz, there's a second law (Medienstaatsvertrag) which mandates an imprint for anything that's not strictly for "personal or family purposes". Depending on who you ask, those two terms also require a rather narrow reading, so anything beyond a strictly private family diary (careful not to make references to any outside persons or businesses, though, because those entities will then have a legal interest in being able to identify you in case you malign them!) or family pictures or your private Dropbox replacement (ideally all the above should be password-protected and therefore not accessible by the general public anyway) might again already be in a grey area. 2b. Additionally, blogs can enter another grey area where depending on what and how you're blogging about, they might be classified as a journalistic service offering and therefore require an extended imprint, too.

pupppet 4y ago

Would love to hear more about your defense, have a client in the same boat.

hedora 4y ago

See also, Scott Johnson. He files bogus shakedown suits over wheelchair accessibility throughout the state. Happily, the first hit is this article: https://www.cbsnews.com/sacramento/news/attorney-scott-johnson-ada-lawsuit-tax-fraud/ https://www.cbsnews.com/sacramento/news/attorney-scott-johns... It's nice to see karma at work.

iancmceachern 4y ago
If I could invest in any abstract concept, it would be karma. We need more of it.
Linosaurus 4y ago
Article from 2019, I wonder what came of it. Seems trial date is January 2023. He’s still doing it, but possibly some pushback from the legal system regarding standing (do you really intend to come back there) https://www.sanjoseinside.com/news/__trashed/ https://www.sanjoseinside.com/news/__trashed/
- lupire 4y ago
  > pushback from the legal system regarding standing well that's just cold.
pnw 4y ago
That is nice karma. I hope the prison has an ADA accessible ramp.
lupire 4y ago
He was punished only because he got greedy and under reported taxes on his legal grift.

cma 4y ago

Why doesn't the government instead subsidize an auto-captioning device or software for deaf users, so every site, even foreign and outside jurisdiction would work?

kursemaster 4y ago

robocat 4y ago

How is the law firm profiting? As a New Zealander, I think only the government can enforce similar laws. I am unsure whether a private citizen could get representation here, or whether there could be any civil penalties.

nicbou 4y ago
They send an Abmahnung, which is similar to a cease and desist, but can include costs. You can refuse the cost and prepare for a possibly expensive battle, or pay the costs and call it a day. Usually, you are guilty of the minor crime you're accused of, so they have a case.
- robocat 4y ago
  If you refuse, is there a second level of "extortion" from the lawyers?
  - nicbou 4y ago
    They can take you to court. You can call their bluff if you believe that you have a case. The problem is that your lawyer will never tell you "just pay them" if they can suggest that you have a chance in court. That's how they get paid after all.
abigail95 4y ago
The NZ Human Rights Act provides the same mechanism for people to sue private companies that don't provide accessible services.

devoutsalsa 4y ago

Reminds me of an SF attorney who teams with a guy in a wheelchair to sue locations that don’t have ADA compliant facilities. “Wheelchairs of Fortune” https://web.archive.org/web/20220209194711/https://archives.sfweekly.com/sanfrancisco/wheelchairs-of-fortune/Content?oid=2163370 https://web.archive.org/web/20220209194711/https://archives....