23 ms·

How to deal with receiving a cease-and-desist letter from Big Tech

• smallfryty 3y ago
  If you are a small fish like me and you get a c&d from a fortune 500 even when you are right you may still stop. Any lawyers that can help beat vorys bullies?
• lazlobarclay 3y ago
  thanks for this, it was a great read
  • louisbarclay 3y ago
    Thanks brother. By which I mean, you are literally my brother
• Mordisquitos 3y ago
  Given the acknowledgement that cease-and-desist letters from Big Tech may be for the purpose of bullying, false, and fully unenforceable, I'm disappointed that the possibility of referring the sender to 'Arkell v. Pressdram' [0] didn't even get mentioned. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_Eye#Libel_cases https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_Eye#Libel_cases
  • louisbarclay 3y ago
    Love it - will add a section with more innovative approaches like this e.g. was just chatting with a fellow cease-and-desist receiver, Mohammed Shah, who finds comfort in using a different misspelling for the name of the lawyer harassing him, every time he replies Great for morale
    • cjs_ac 3y ago
      Private Eye also does this, and not only in legal correspondence. > The magazine often deliberately misspells the names of certain organisations, such as "Crapita" for the outsourcing company Capita, "Carter-Fuck" for the law firm Carter-Ruck, and "The Grauniad" for The Guardian (the latter a reference to the newspaper's frequent typos in its days as The Manchester Guardian). Certain individuals may be referred to by another name, for example, Piers Morgan as "Piers Moron", Richard Branson as "Beardie", Rupert Murdoch as the "Dirty Digger", and Queen Elizabeth II and King Charles III as "Brenda" and "Brian", respectively.[0] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_Eye#In-jokes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_Eye#In-jokes
• MR4D 3y ago
  This is a vey well written article - I highly recommend anyone who owns a firm to read this - even if you don't work with Big Tech, it is still very useful.
• alexpetralia 3y ago
  Great compilation of tips
• localhost3000 3y ago
  Used to periodically get a c&d email from FB lawyers for some harmless software I published. Always completely ignored it, not even responding to acknowledge receipt. It eventually stopped. I figure they gave up and focused their efforts on targets who showed they would be responsive to threats. It was 100% bullying.
  • pydry 3y ago
    Was it trademark related?
  • louisbarclay 3y ago
    super useful to know - could I interview you about this to add to the guide? you can find contact details on my personal site louis.work
  • dawnerd 3y ago
    Similar back when apps on profiles were a thing. Apparently doing things like creating a scoreboard for pokes was against the terms.
  • londons_explore 3y ago
    Even acknowledging receipt gives them a lot of power. Remember that they probably have a list of hundreds or thousands of C&D's to send, and if you don't respond they would probably need to file a john doe lawsuit to get your identity from your ISP, and it's unlikely that all that effort is worth it to them.
    • ericmcer 3y ago
      It would be funny if legal teams at huge companies have OKRs and evaluations. “You hit your target of 250 C&Ds this quarter great work”. Justifying your paycheck is scarier when thinking about the legal dept.
      • litenboll 3y ago
        Do you know they don't? Otherwise I would assume they have dumb incentives like that. In my previous company the legal team measured the number of "takedowns" of countefeit merch etc. as a key number. I assume this helped to hurt their effort to prevent counterfeit in the first place.
• zanfr 3y ago
  easy, there is a convenient device called a trashcan this is where such letters go
  • systems_glitch 3y ago
    Remember, though, that in many places ignoring something can put you at risk for a default judgement at a later date. It'd be nice if we could just ignore troll trash :/
    • patmcc 3y ago
      Ignoring a court summons or lawsuit or something, sure, that's risky, don't do that. Last thing you want is a default judgement. A C&D letter? Nah, you're 100% safe (legally) to throw that in the garbage.
      • dragonwriter 3y ago
        The main potential legal impact of a C&D letter is that, to the extent that notice is relevant to the existence or degree of liability, itay give you enhanced liability after the letter than what you had before. Other than that, yeah, its just basically a formally-written “please stop” letter. Of course, there's always a possibility that the party sending it follows through on the at-least-implicit threat of litigation.
• lgleason 3y ago
  The best thing to do is to know that law and your legal rights. Anybody can write a cease and desist. It is a first step towards a lawsuit, but given how inexpensive they are to write they are an easy way to intimidate small businesses.
  • louisbarclay 3y ago
    Yep, that's true - also something I need to reflect in the guide is it's important to understand which jurisdiction you're under, since that'll affect your rights Usually the terms of service you sign up to make it clear which jurisdiction disputes would be adjudicated in For me, as a UK citizen/resident it was Ireland. Which is great since I've never been there, but I've heard their courtrooms are lovely in the springtime
  • ransom1538 3y ago
    I worked on a controversial app. I generally take the letter then throw it into the trash. I did this for 4 years, never had an issue. Github was the only one that seemed to want blood - then banned me. They would send me weird emails, trying to trick me to admit fault. They would also track new accounts I made (ip) and send taunting letters. They gave up eventually too. Looking back, these companies can send these things out for no cost, looking for you to mess up by replying. If they want to sue you, don't worry, it will happen.
    • JohnFen 3y ago
      > If they want to sue you, don't worry, it will happen. As my attorney once opined: if they really want to sue you, the first thing you'll hear from them will be about the lawsuit they filed, not a C&D.
      • denton-scratch 3y ago
        On the NANAE newsgroup, law firms would often pop up threatening legal action against blocklist maintainers or mailadmins; the standard response was "Where is your writ?".
  • 3y ago
• irisgrunn 3y ago
  How would something like this go with an open source project? Other people could have forked it already, so taking everything down is impossible.
  • rwmj 3y ago
    Someone tried this with an open source project I ran called bitmatch (now bitstring: https://ocaml.org/p/bitstring/latest/doc/Bitstring/index.html https://ocaml.org/p/bitstring/latest/doc/Bitstring/index.htm...). They were running some scanning software that matched bits inside binaries, and felt they could threaten anyone who dared to use the word "bitmatch". Trademarks don't work like that since they only protect a narrow field of endeavour, not "no one can ever use this word". They sent the C&D to my employer which made everything much more complex. I usually would have ignored it, but my employer's legal department was on my back about it, so I renamed the project to bitstring. For years my project was still top of Google search for "bitmatch". (I tried it now and I notice it's a different, Rust project, so the guy still didn't win in the end.)
  • JohnFen 3y ago
    You are not responsible for what other people do, only what you do. If you feel the need to comply with a C&D by, for instance, taking down your work, you take down the repositories you are in control of and don't worry about others who forked the work. Worrying about them is the complaining company's job.
  • louisbarclay 3y ago
    I am completely unclear on whether publishing your project open source gives it (at least, the code, if not any deployed version) any kind of protection if Facebook etc. target it I would love to get a lawyer's take on that, although I guess it would differ by jurisdiction - California and Ireland are probably the two key ones for most big tech
• mvkel 3y ago
  Cease and desist letters are cold emails. It can scary to receive one, but once you unwind what the accusing party has to gain from it, you realize it has as much teeth as a tweet.
  • User23 3y ago
    They can perhaps be used to establish willful infringement if it ever does go to court.
    • KieranMac 3y ago
      Also, notice is a component of many legal claims.
    • deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
• jpm_sd 3y ago
  Suggested edit: in your "handy rule of thumb", delete outside of official APIs or services since (1) official APIs and services are constantly getting redefined and (2) what's stopping them from deciding they just don't like how you're using the official APIs/services?
  • louisbarclay 3y ago
    Good point. And thinking about it, I know cases where people have received C&Ds anyway while only using official APIs and services. Will edit
• JohnFen 3y ago
  This is a great writeup. I am not a lawyer, but I've received several C&Ds for various things over the decades. The first one scared me to death. The second and subsequent ones did not, because I understood what they were: just the company saying "I don't like what you're doing". When I receive a C&D, the first thing I do is talk to my attorney and go over what the C&D is complaining about. If I think I'm doing something that could be legally risky (which does not automatically mean doing something actually wrong), then I change that. Otherwise, my attorney acknowledges that the C&D was received and I ignore it. If they really have a serious beef with what I'm doing, they need to actually sue me. I have yet to be sued.
  • smallfryty 3y ago
    Do you have an ip defense insurance policy ?
  • mysterydip 3y ago
    What's the proper course of action if you don't have an attorney?
    • throwup238 3y ago
      If you eat the stationary that the C&D is printed on, it's like it never existed (IANAL).
    • gwright 3y ago
      I'm going to avoid the snarky "hire an attorney" answer but once you get past that necessary first step I do have a few tips: * get comfortable reading legal documents, this will allow you to have more intelligent conversations with your attorney * don't let your attorney make your business decisions, one of their jobs is to point out risks, one of your jobs (owner/ceo/leadership) is to figure out how to mitigate risk but that is not the same thing as avoiding all risks * learn to draft legalese, it will help minimize your attorney's billable hours
      • mysterydip 3y ago
• jdsully 3y ago
  The premise of this article is that you somehow have to respond to it which is nuts. If the letter is ridiculous (e.g. citing terms of service you did not sign) then you're better off to ignore it and not waste money on legal fees. Also everyone who suggests getting a lawyer has probably not had to hire one in the past. With very few exceptions they will tell you it "depends" and maybe give you a few legal terms you can google. If you are lucky a good lawyer will give you their opinion on the merits of the letter but many will be so guarded it's not useful. A C&D costs the sender almost nothing and is not the same as actually being sued. Very rarely are they serious enough to actually file something. If that does happen you should get a lawyer at that point, but doing it before is just a waste of money.
  • encomiast 3y ago
    Not sure we read the same article. The first point under "Decide how to respond" is "1. Ignore" (although it suggests this is risky if ignore includes continuing what lead to the C&D)
    • jdsully 3y ago
      #1 is to "pause immediately". Much further down in the article they get to the ignore option.
  • hodgesrm 3y ago
    If you have not received a C&D before then the reason to consult with an attorney is to evaluate the risk. A lot of legal trouble arises from assuming you understand something when you actually don't. (Ask me how I know.)
    • phendrenad2 3y ago
      How do you know?
      • hodgesrm 3y ago
        Signed a legal document in support of an open source initiative against patents that had a section that was confusing and hard to understand. I remember thinking it was probably no big deal and anyway the document was for a good cause. A couple years later that section had legal consequences almost derailed a major transaction involving our company. We could have avoided the whole thing by checking with our lawyer first. Moral of the story: never sign any legal document you don't understand.
• phpisthebest 3y ago
  >>It matters if you have money, time, and willpower to go to court. This is why we need some version of Loser Pays law... Especially when there is a huge resource imbalance like a FB suing a lone dev.
• nico 3y ago
  Very good post, also kind of depressing how big companies can easily squash the little guys > It doesn’t matter if you’re right. It matters if you have money, time, and willpower to go to court There are some exceptions to this, but for probably 99% of cases, this is true I’ve personally been on the receiving end of a litigious situation, facing a very wealthy individual. It did not go well for me, and had to swallow my pride/ego. This last bit might be the hardest thing to do It is one thing to rationally know that the world is not fair. But when it happens to you, oh man, it’s not easy at all to take it
  • RajT88 3y ago
    This is why shady tow companies persist. They have more resources than their victims, so it's low risk to behave in super shady ways. i.e. towing cars which they can't legally be towing. Happens all the time.
• smdyc1 3y ago
  We (and our new clients) constantly get frivolous cease and desist notices from a particularly butthurt competitor whenever they lose one of their customers to us. They have a habit of shutting off customer access to their systems and ignoring any requests from customers (who are still paying their bills) for their data.
• User23 3y ago
  > *Apparently there are some legal systems, particularly in Europe, where the costs of taking Big Tech to court are lower. You’d have to ask your lawyer about that. The time and willpower aspects may be similar though. I’m not a lawyer, let alone a European lawyer, but I’ve heard that the drain-their-bankroll-with-spurious-motions technique that’s beloved by shithead corporations and their attorneys when they have no case isn’t practicable in most European jurisdictions. This is because even at the motion filing level, loser pays. So drowning you in garbage motions just gives your lawyer an easy payday. Odds of the US adopting that system?
  • tzs 3y ago
    > Odds of the US adopting that system? In general, not without a major change in the US attitude toward how businesses should be regulated and how individual rights protected to be more like Europe. I'll elaborate in a bit. In specific areas of law the prevailing party can win attorney fees, but offhand I can't recall any areas where it is mandatory. It's up to the court to decide. Whether that is easy or hard depends on the area of law. For example in patent law the statue says attorney fees can be awarded in exceptional cases, whereas in copyright law the statute just says it is at the discretion of the court. The problem with making loser pays apply in general in US civil suits is that the US often relies on civil suits brought by individuals to enforce rights and regulations that in Europe would be enforced by a government agency. Loser pays could discourage individuals from bringing such suits against larger more wealthy entities because a case is almost never completely open and shut.
  • ls612 3y ago
    Loser pays has a different trade off. If you have a case which is close on the merits (where you may well win but it isn’t certain) you may want to concede early because you are risk averse about paying BigCo’s legal fees. It isn’t a free lunch. It just shifts the pain points to a different class of cases.
• smashah 3y ago
  We are well within a Digital Age and we are now digital human beings. Adversarial Interop is a fundamental Digital Human Right. Louis has been on the frontlines of this unjustly lonely battle against big evil megacorps (META specifically) for the last few years. If any lawyers are here that care about digital rights as coders then please reach out to louis because a coalition is needed to fight against C&Ds against independent, OSS, interop developers and their users. Thank you Louis for writing this, I wish I saw this last year before nuking my OSS project out of an abundance of abject fear that this $800bn megacorp could ruin my life for what amounts to pocket change. This experience still hurts till this day. RIP & Long Live Aaron Swartz
• 0xbadcafebee 3y ago
  It's sad that most people are less "legally literate" than they are "scientifically literate", when the former affects them more often throughout life. Schools should teach kids how to not get screwed over with the law. Tenants' rights in particular is very important and almost nobody I know understands them, or how brazenly landlords/management companies will rip you off if you let them.
  • NegativeK 3y ago
    Most people I see talking about their legal literacy are best described as cocky and dangerous to themselves and others they give advice to. The same behavior shows up with medical literacy. Maybe schooling could help with that.
    • anticorporate 3y ago
      > Most people I see talking about their legal literacy are best described as cocky and dangerous to themselves and others they give advice to. 100%. I have a side hustle doing etching, engraving, and CNC-type things. The forums and groups for this kind of things are teeming with people who not just believe, but tell others, that copyright and trademark either don't apply to them for $reasons or doesn't even exist for things they found for "free" on the internet.
      • kelnos 3y ago
        That reminds me of people who post blatantly-copyright-infringing videos on YouTube, but put in the description "no copyright intended" (whatever that means) as some sort of defense.
      • 0xbadcafebee 3y ago
        Those people exist at least partly because they haven't received education to the contrary. There will always be cocky, ignorant, wrong people in the world. But they certainly won't get any smarter if we don't teach them.
  • rxvium 3y ago
• codingdave 3y ago
  One thing to be aware of is that letters are not guarantees that they will follow up or take you to court. Especially if they have a weak case - it is just as likely to be a bluff, hoping you'll just stop because they are big and you are small. Ask an attorney to know for sure, but if they have no case and are just being bullies, don't cave in.
  • denton-scratch 3y ago
    > don't cave in That's dangerous advice, if you have anything to lose, and the C&D isn't obviously complete nonsense. Your adversary's lawyer may have causes of action that he chooses not to disclose just now.
    • deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
• tobymather123 3y ago
  interesting. I'm curious why they bother going after so many small developers. There must be some kind of negative effect long-term there on their perception in the tech ecosystem etc. Bored in-house lawyers?
  • ferbivore 3y ago
    Facebook execs have willfully enabled genocide campaigns. It hasn't hurt their ability to hire one bit. Why would this?
• nickdothutton 3y ago
  Big firms issue C&D letters for all kinds of wild reasons. A startup I founded got one because of the colour of our hardware bezels. Note the company writing to us was not even a tech business, let alone a hardware company.
• kyledrake 3y ago
  If anyone has some good tech-knowledgeable attorneys that work with individuals or smaller companies this is a great opportunity to promote them. It's hard to find people that are specialized in this sort of thing on a smaller scale and I've been looking for people/firms that can do this.
• advisedwang 3y ago
  So many comments here about how C&D don't have teeth and suggesting ignoring them. That might generally be the case, but the article here specifically talks about losing your account on the tech company's service as the main thing they are concerned about.
  • prmoustache 3y ago
    problem solved then.
• BonoboIO 3y ago
  Do not enter your real name anywhere and you will sleep way better.
  • imhoguy 3y ago
    Or imitate you live in Russia or other shielded country.
• deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
• KieranMac 3y ago
  As an attorney who has experience responding to Meta’s “anti-scraping team,” I think there might be more opportunities for amicable resolutions than you might expect (depending on the specifics of what you’re doing, of course). Meta is not oblivious to the fact that they’re under significant social and regulatory scrutiny. They sometimes play nice if you’re willing to accommodate certain considerations. Either way, my recommendation would be to find an attorney with industry-specific expertise to address the norms of your industry. C&Ds range from idle shake downs to definite pre-cursors to litigation. Without industry-specific knowledge, it’s hard to know which is which.
  • michpoch 3y ago
    Would you be willing to share some stories regarding particularly FB reacting to someone scraping their data? Are they very stingy? Would they bother with someone non-US based?
    • KieranMac 3y ago
      I can't share client-specific stories because that's protected by AC privilege. But I think the recipients of these letters sometimes have more potential to negotiate than they realize.
  • mthoms 3y ago
    Is there existing case law around browser extensions that only alter the presentation of a web page on the client machine? You know, things like adblockers or extensions that alter a specific site?
    • wbl 3y ago
      It's called a user agent for a reason: it works on behalf of the user.
      • mthoms 3y ago
        I agree. I'm asking if the courts do or do not.
• jksmith 3y ago
  My attorney always said: 1) Good problem to have. 2) If they had something, they wouldn't threaten you, they'd just act. It's the risk/reward ratio. Unless it's worth reacting to, file 13 that shit.
  • tgsovlerkhgsel 3y ago
    If their primary goal was to get you to stop, I'd assume they'd send a C&D first too because it's a lot less headache for them if that makes the problem go away. So I wouldn't see a C&D as a guaranteed sign that they aren't willing to sue, but the threshold for "want you to stop and are willing to sue for it" is much, much, MUCH higher than the threshold for "eh, I'll send a C&D and see if this makes it go away, if not, not worth it".
• wyldfire 3y ago
  > Make sure nothing critical in your life relies on using the platform. It shouldn’t be your primary means of contacting any important people in your life, I don't do anything that could even be perceived as antagonistic towards Facebook. But I imagine it's something I could do. I don't have a Facebook account so I don't care if I get banned. But I do use WhatsApp. I could live just fine without it. but would/could a ban include a ban from Whatsapp? I guess I naively assume they don't know enough from my WhatsApp usage to link it to my identity. But of course a phone number is as close unique identity as they come.
• quijoteuniv 3y ago
  I remember 15 years ago or so someone wrote a pluging for me-tunes that was downloading the lyrics of your mp3 by scraping internet. It was brillant (now standard in placetify). Afew months later he receive a C&D from the fruit people. How sad the big tech can get away with this.
• dartharva 3y ago
  I used the Unfollow Everything extension when I was a teen, it was great. I eventually ended up deleting my FaceBook account altogether; our generation (Z) thankfully feels Facebook to be an old person thing.
• woodruffw 3y ago
  There are sound reasons why this can't be the case, but it sure would be nice if anti-SLAPP laws[1] were also able to cover these kinds of petty intimidation maneuvers by huge corporations. (It would probably be impossible to weave a statute that prevents this kind of bullying while also enabling legitimate uses of C&D letters. So this is entirely fantasy.) [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategic_lawsuit_against_public_participation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategic_lawsuit_against_publ...
  • phendrenad2 3y ago
    There are plenty of laws that only apply to companies over a certain size. Maybe force publicly-traded companies to publish a list of all C&Ds they have sent. Make it transparent who are the biggest bullies. A lack of imagination is no excuse here.
• tgsovlerkhgsel 3y ago
  As far as I understand, companies in the US really don't like actual litigation due to discovery: They'd be required to provide documents relevant to the case if requested. This not only risks making embarrassing documents part of the public record, but is also incredibly expensive since their lawyers have to review all the documents, and it can be a lot - and they generally can't recoup those fees. If they really want you to stop, e.g. because you're putting their core business at risk, they might consider it, of course. But they won't do it for random bullshit. They do have infinite resources to crush you - but even they don't have enough resources to do it to everyone who ignores their C&D. Also, I would expect the likelihood of getting sued (by a company that's acting rationally - small businesses where you've personally pissed off the owner can be different) depends on whether they can achieve their goal. If for example their goal is to keep you from publishing details about a security vulnerability and public embarrassment, the motivation to sue you is likely to go down once the vulnerability is public and their behavior has been reported in the tech press, and continuing to press it will just continue to the Streisand effect.
• phendrenad2 3y ago
  Man, fuck Facebook. The one-off C&D sent to anyone who appears to be using your trademark I can understand. Sending the guy a bill for $30,000? Now that involved human forethought. Something seems to be going on over at the Fsckbook legal department and it isn't good.
  • grow2grow 3y ago
    Yeah, it's called a party. Their office probably blows through $30k of party supplies in a week.
    • phendrenad2 3y ago
      Why don't they just use the Meta-verse? They could save on party supplies. Missed dogfooding opportunity.
• jimmydroptables 3y ago
  Interesting topic and article. I agree with the author, that it's useful to read this information and keep it in the back of your head in case you ever need it, before you actually find yourself in a stressful situation like this. But one thing I don't understand every time there's a C&D story is why leave a paper trail to send the C&D to in the first place if doing something in a gray area? If I was creating some piece of software that is designed to give the middle finger to the man or facebook or whoever and/or benefit the public, I would just release the source anonymously on some random forum and it can't be stopped. Why create an official github repo with your real email and everything just to take credit? To clarify, I mean cases like youtube vanced or the recent valve/nintendo portal mod issue, where its obvious some company might not like it, but I don't see why the projects couldn't have continued anyway if the authors didn't expose themselves to litigation. Or am I being naive about this?
  • Sammi 3y ago
    Just to verify, I just made a Github account using a throwaway email I got by googling "10 minute email". So making a Github account without a paper trail is trivial. People who get C&Ds must want to be known.
• barbazoo 3y ago
  It's like cancer suing chemotherapy for helping people get rid of it.
• denton-scratch 3y ago
  I used to work for an Indymedia collective; I'd say we received half a dozen C&Ds. [Indymedia was an open news collective, with a strong anarchist-socialist leaning] Our "collective" had no formal membership, and no assets. We were all just volunteers who valued the platform and did some work to help out. These emails were always addressed to "To Whom It May Concern". Pseudonymity was the norm in Indymedia, and I was completely ignorant about the IRL identity of most colleagues that preferred to be pseudonymous. They'd usually be complaining about Indymedia reports of the activities of some small businessman, often a builder. It would often be part of a campaign, i.e. there would be more than one article, by different people. So we'd collate the articles, and do web-searches; if the complaint appeared to refer to something potentially libellous; or involved some crime like inciting violence; or violated our posting T&C, like trolling, conspiraloon, or agent-provocateur, then we'd hide the article or comment; otherwise the site would have been deluged in spam. Hidden articles and comments didn't appear in lists. We had no one-button method for removing an article completely, we had to blank the article in the database. We even published a link to a page where you could view all articles and comments; none of these C&Ds ever referred to a hidden article. We never replied to any of these C&Ds. We (or I) never hid an article or comment as the result of reading a C&D; I never thought the C&D had any merit. We took the "Ignore" route, and never suffered any adverse consequences; not even follow-ups. So I don't share the author's opinion that you should never adopt the Ignore route. Perhaps we got lucky, but I'd have taken these messages more seriously if they had named me. FTR, IANAL.
• primitivesuave 3y ago
  I got multiple C&Ds for publishing public information, provided directly from the US government as giant CSV files (PPP loan data, provided under FOIA), through a web interface that made it easy to search loan recipients and analyze distribution of COVID relief funds. Many of the C&Ds came from people who were later indicted for defrauding the government, some of them in hilariously inept ways.
  • strix_varius 3y ago
    This sounds like interesting research - could you share a link to your results?
    • primitivesuave 3y ago
      Absolutely - I created the website pppwatch.com, which currently has searchable aggregates of the data from the official SBA data source [1]. The individual loan search is down right now, not because of any C&D letters, but simply to save some money on the search cluster while I have been revamping the site in my free time with some new analysis. 1. https://www.sba.gov/funding-programs/loans/covid-19-relief-options/paycheck-protection-program/ppp-data https://www.sba.gov/funding-programs/loans/covid-19-relief-o...
      • strix_varius 3y ago
        Thanks, that led me on a disturbing deep dive... It's super frustrating to know that so many people (even in my city) were handed hundreds of thousands, no questions asked. Honestly I wish I had used the LLC that I actually own to do the same thing. When the system is designed to promote cheating...
• PM_me_your_math 3y ago
  [dead]
• hsuduebc2 3y ago
  I'm still surprised how much people think that big tech is anyhow than by product itself different from companies presented like evil. For example weapons or oil companies.
• hsuduebc2 3y ago
  Another day and another reminder that corporations are necessary evil. To be more precise "harmful necessit".
• kelnos 3y ago
  Ooof, this was pretty depressing to read. It seems like your options are: 1. Ignore the letter: not recommended, as that will likely end in a lawsuit that you'll probably lose. 2. Comply: maybe not with everything (like if they ask you to do ridiculous things like give them a look at your finances), but at least stop doing what you're doing that triggered the whole thing in the first place. 3. Engage a lawyer and fight: but you're probably going to lose, unless you're independently wealthy, and/or can rally some legal-aid services that specialize in digital rights, as well as journalists and other powerful entities to help you. And in all cases, if it's an entity like Meta, they've likely already disabled your existing accounts and banned you, and you'll never get them back.
• neilv 3y ago
  A long time ago, I got a nastygram from Google, saying one of my domain names infringed on their trademark. Fortunately, I didn't need the domain, since I didn't want this headache or expense. (The domain name was a pun on "Orkut", intended for a site critiquing the emerging ridiculous influencer behavior, and I'd guess it was protected speech, but I never got around to making the site.) But the experience didn't seem very Googley to me, so I initiated a domain name transfer to the Stanford email address of one of their founders, then told the nastygram people, so maybe they could have a talk about "Don't Be Evil".
  • geephroh 3y ago
    "Don't [Stop] Be[ing] Evil"
• codazoda 3y ago
  I once received a cease-and-desist from my employer, who was a big tech company! I had written a small shareware app called JazAwake. It was designed to stop the Iomega Jaz drive from spinning down every two minutes or so. They did not know who I was but the stakes were instantly very high. If they filed a suit, they would uncover my identity, realize I worked for them, and terminate my employment. To make matters worse, I was relatively sure the demands were impossible to meet. They requested I stop distributing the program AND remove all traces of it from the internet. Similar to the linked article, I spent 9-months responding to demand letters. To my own surprise, I was eventually successful in removing it from the internet. I had to send my own demand letters (which were nicer) to every website owner who mentioned or linked to a copy of the app.
  • matheusmoreira 3y ago
    Why did your employer have a problem with your small shareware app though? I don't see why anyone could possibly get fired over something like a drive utility.
    • gnicholas 3y ago
      My guess is that GP's knowledge that led him to be able to create the shareware was derived from his employment, and quite possibly involved trade secrets. Creating and releasing software related to his work likely violated his employment agreement.
      • phendrenad2 3y ago
        That can't be it, see the "If they filed a suit, they would uncover my identity" part.
    • codazoda 3y ago
      The cited problem was trademark infringement. I had used “jazAwake” as the name and the drive was the Iomega Jaz(tm) Drive. They also mentioned that it might shorten the life of a drive, but that was not their primary complaint.
• jaimex2 3y ago
  If you're at 0 you already know you should be going dark right away. Basically take everything you know about Julian Assange and combine it with Christopher Nolan's Batman movies. Thank god for crypto.
• little223 3y ago
  On a related note: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2024/01/facebook-suffers-big-loss-in-lawsuit-against-data-scraping-company/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2024/01/facebook-suffers...