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Courts do not do that. The people suing would offer up a big old list of damages into the millions and then negotiate down from there to something like 6 figure

Courts do not do that. The people suing would offer up a big old list of damages into the millions and then negotiate down from there to something like 6 figures AND the loser covering the court costs. The American legal system is completely broken, and amounts to two people piling up money, then the one with the bigger stack wins both stacks of money. This is completely untenable for a non-profit to even think about, let alone to incur the risk.

burningChrome 2y ago
>> The people suing would offer up a big old list of damages into the millions and then negotiate down from there You're assuming an awful lot with this. - No defendant is going to negotiate a settlement out of court. They would force you to hire an attorney and force this to a trial because of how absurd it is. Then you would be left with other major issues: - One that any IP law firm would take a case like this on to begin with. - The little upside for any firm litigating a case where the software is 30+ years old, effectively abandoned and has little if any resell value. - Then even if some firm did want to take a swing at it, getting this in front of a judge who would even consider the case would be a huge hurdle as well. We're not even considering having to deal with a jury trial either which would also be even harder to win. - Even if the defendant refused to negotiate pre-trial, and you somehow managed to finagle yourself into a civil bench or jury trial, trying to convince anybody that the plaintiff has somehow sustained financial damages on 30+ year old software that is no longer being used and has no resale value is almost impossible. The US courts are not perfect, but these kinds of cases rarely see the inside of a court room and for good reason.
- VonGuard 2y ago
  OK, so my non-profit with a budget of about $200,000 a year is now expected to lawyer up and take on this risk, where some random company can just sidle up to us, sue us for X, and automatically win because we cannot possibly afford a lawyer to even respond to their litigation? I love how utterly diconnected from reality HN comments are. Y'all seem to think that just because you can rationalize something on paper that we should all just go out and do the thing because the laws are "Stupid." If the world ran like HN thought it did, we'd have no copyright laws, no patents, and infinite free legal advice and services. Yeah, yer right, maybe we could get a sympathetic judge or get the case tossed. After we spend $100,000 on lawyers to get there. Oh, the prosecution would have to pay our legal fees you say? Great, now I'm out $100,000 waiting on the appeal, and it could take years for them to pay up. That's like giving them a $100,000 loan with 0 interest and no defined closing date. And what's even the upside? I ruined my non-profit so I could spuriously open source some random crap I don't even want to preserve. I have the binaries already, I don't need to recompile. But hey, no one is using this stuff right? Fuck the law! The world does not work this way. If a lawyer shows up and wants to kill a small non-profit, they can do it in a day, very easily. They don't even need the courts, they just have to sue you and then bomb you with 50,000 pages of evidence. This is a REAL tactic. How do you counter that without paying a lawyer to look at all 50,000 pages? The key is to not give them a reason to do so. You know, by not breaking the fucking law.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
- martinsnow 2y ago
  If you're willing to take on such an economical risk, why don't you pony up the money and start serving the content?
xboxnolifes 2y ago
At least in the US, loser doesn't pay count costs for the opposing party.
- VonGuard 2y ago
  This is entirely within the realm of the judge to do. They do it fairly frequently as punishment to people who bring bad law suits and lose.

burningChrome 2y ago

>> The people suing would offer up a big old list of damages into the millions and then negotiate down from there You're assuming an awful lot with this. - No defendant is going to negotiate a settlement out of court. They would force you to hire an attorney and force this to a trial because of how absurd it is. Then you would be left with other major issues: - One that any IP law firm would take a case like this on to begin with. - The little upside for any firm litigating a case where the software is 30+ years old, effectively abandoned and has little if any resell value. - Then even if some firm did want to take a swing at it, getting this in front of a judge who would even consider the case would be a huge hurdle as well. We're not even considering having to deal with a jury trial either which would also be even harder to win. - Even if the defendant refused to negotiate pre-trial, and you somehow managed to finagle yourself into a civil bench or jury trial, trying to convince anybody that the plaintiff has somehow sustained financial damages on 30+ year old software that is no longer being used and has no resale value is almost impossible. The US courts are not perfect, but these kinds of cases rarely see the inside of a court room and for good reason.

VonGuard 2y ago
OK, so my non-profit with a budget of about $200,000 a year is now expected to lawyer up and take on this risk, where some random company can just sidle up to us, sue us for X, and automatically win because we cannot possibly afford a lawyer to even respond to their litigation? I love how utterly diconnected from reality HN comments are. Y'all seem to think that just because you can rationalize something on paper that we should all just go out and do the thing because the laws are "Stupid." If the world ran like HN thought it did, we'd have no copyright laws, no patents, and infinite free legal advice and services. Yeah, yer right, maybe we could get a sympathetic judge or get the case tossed. After we spend $100,000 on lawyers to get there. Oh, the prosecution would have to pay our legal fees you say? Great, now I'm out $100,000 waiting on the appeal, and it could take years for them to pay up. That's like giving them a $100,000 loan with 0 interest and no defined closing date. And what's even the upside? I ruined my non-profit so I could spuriously open source some random crap I don't even want to preserve. I have the binaries already, I don't need to recompile. But hey, no one is using this stuff right? Fuck the law! The world does not work this way. If a lawyer shows up and wants to kill a small non-profit, they can do it in a day, very easily. They don't even need the courts, they just have to sue you and then bomb you with 50,000 pages of evidence. This is a REAL tactic. How do you counter that without paying a lawyer to look at all 50,000 pages? The key is to not give them a reason to do so. You know, by not breaking the fucking law.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
martinsnow 2y ago
If you're willing to take on such an economical risk, why don't you pony up the money and start serving the content?

xboxnolifes 2y ago

At least in the US, loser doesn't pay count costs for the opposing party.

VonGuard 2y ago
This is entirely within the realm of the judge to do. They do it fairly frequently as punishment to people who bring bad law suits and lose.