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Legal letters breed resentment. I was once threatened by a big business and promised myself never to use their services in the future. If only they had sent an

by sudomal 13y ago

Legal letters breed resentment. I was once threatened by a big business and promised myself never to use their services in the future. If only they had sent an informal email pointing out the error and suggesting a fix, but nope, it was a threatening legal letter through some third party with a short time limit for response. Just makes me angry thinking about it and this is now several years down the line.

jfarmer 13y ago
You could be right. If you are, Tumblr will be the worse for it and you can feel vindicated. On the other hand, maybe that's a risk Tumblr is willing to take. Who's to say the cost in attorney dollars and company focus of having dozens or hundreds of one-off conversations or more every month isn't greater than the cost of all this supposed resentment? Who's to say that the opportunity cost of addressing that resentment is too high to justify spending time on it? If you were Tumblr's CEO and believed either of these were true, would you still spend time fiddling with your trademark C&D process? To be honest, I suspect Tumblr builds up more user "resentment" every time they change the placement of a button on their site than they have from all the C&Ds they've ever sent out. I've received aggressive, company-and-livelihood threatening C&Ds from companies like Groupon, Facebook, and others of similar heft. Sometimes I complied, sometimes I didn't, and sometimes we reached an agreement. There's no reason to take it personally. Lord knows the other side isn't!
- nknighthb 13y ago
  > There's no reason to take it personally. Lord knows the other side isn't! That people abdicate their humanity whenever the word "business" is attached to what they're doing is pretty well the root of the problem.
  - jfarmer 13y ago
    Nobody is abdicating their humanity and the only "dehumanizing" thing I see is the implication that some people are. Let's say you live above a popular bar. On Friday and Saturday nights it gets loud as folks line up to get in and then again as last call approaches. The first dozen times you go down and ask folks to quiet down because it's late and you're trying to slew. Some comply, some don't, and others are happy to comply if you buy them a drink. Eventually, this becomes tiring and you see it's a poor use of your time even if most people are happy to comply.. You enlist the bar to help and they implement a "no tolerance" policy. If the bouncer can hear you talk you're out of the line and won't be getting in that night. You are on a first date with someone and go to this bar. You talk too loudly and are told to leave. You're embarrassed and upset that this bar would embarrass you in front of your date. You try to appeal by explaining the situation. "Hey man, cut me a break. This is our first date, I didn't know the rules, and in any case we were barely whispering." "Look, man, I don't know you. I get lines like that all te time and you're making my job harder than it needs to be right now. Come back tomorrow of you want, but neither you not your date are getting in. I need to be checking IDs right now, not debating you." I'm sure you can and will nitpick the analogy, but here's my claim: even if you feel outraged at your treatment, even if it ruined your night and your date, nobody in the above scenario "abdicated their humanity," as you put it.
    - nknighthb 13y ago
      The bar owner is absolutely in the wrong for having set up shop below where people have to sleep without adequate soundproofing for their business. This is an abdication of their humanity. In order to remain in business without the cost of fixing that problem, they have abdicated their humanity a second time by treating their customers like shit.
      - true_religion 13y ago
        In the example, people are outside the bar loitering or waiting to get in. How can you soundproof a sidewalk?
    - wpietri 13y ago
      > Nobody is abdicating their humanity and the only "dehumanizing" thing I see is the implication that some people are. Your taking a human relationships issue and deciding it based on narrow cost-benefit analysis is definitely dehumanizing. And that's exactly what you're doing by comparing attorney salaries against the cost of resentment. Hint: if you have to say, "hey, it's nothing personal, it's just business" after somebody is badly treated, then dehumanization is exactly what's happening. It's obviously personal to the person you're saying that to. What that phrase says is that you've decided to treat them impersonally.
      - jfarmer 13y ago
        It's not my responsibility that they take it personally any more than it's my responsibility as the apartment owner, bar, or bouncer that the person being ejected from the line is taking it personally. As Tumblr, I have no relationship with the person in question. Why isn't it their responsibility to ask if they might use my name first? Why isn't it the loud-talker's responsibility to know the rules of the road (or sidewalk, as it were) before they hop in line? A C&D does not have the force of law. If I build a service that piggy backs off another service without their permission, I shouldn't be surprised that their opening remark is a strongly-worded, "We don't know you. We don't have a relationship with you. We don't like that you're doing this. We don't feel the need to explain ourselves to you. Stop it, now." If we want to talk about empathy and human-to-human interaction, the "human" thing for me to do (IMO) would be to apologize for stepping on that other person's toes and ask what I could do to make it work. The obnoxious thing for me to do would be to stop what I'm doing, set up a milk crate, and start shouting about how this other person is trying to censor me. I don't think it's inhuman to do that, but OTOH I shouldn't be surprised when the other person is suddenly less inclined to make nice. In this case, I would not be saying the same thing if Tumblr's first move were something that carried legal force, in the same way that I think it'd be inappropriate if the first thing the bar did was call the police and file a noise violation rather than tell the person to leave.

by sudomal 13y ago

jfarmer 13y ago

You could be right. If you are, Tumblr will be the worse for it and you can feel vindicated. On the other hand, maybe that's a risk Tumblr is willing to take. Who's to say the cost in attorney dollars and company focus of having dozens or hundreds of one-off conversations or more every month isn't greater than the cost of all this supposed resentment? Who's to say that the opportunity cost of addressing that resentment is too high to justify spending time on it? If you were Tumblr's CEO and believed either of these were true, would you still spend time fiddling with your trademark C&D process? To be honest, I suspect Tumblr builds up more user "resentment" every time they change the placement of a button on their site than they have from all the C&Ds they've ever sent out. I've received aggressive, company-and-livelihood threatening C&Ds from companies like Groupon, Facebook, and others of similar heft. Sometimes I complied, sometimes I didn't, and sometimes we reached an agreement. There's no reason to take it personally. Lord knows the other side isn't!

nknighthb 13y ago
> There's no reason to take it personally. Lord knows the other side isn't! That people abdicate their humanity whenever the word "business" is attached to what they're doing is pretty well the root of the problem.
- jfarmer 13y ago
  Nobody is abdicating their humanity and the only "dehumanizing" thing I see is the implication that some people are. Let's say you live above a popular bar. On Friday and Saturday nights it gets loud as folks line up to get in and then again as last call approaches. The first dozen times you go down and ask folks to quiet down because it's late and you're trying to slew. Some comply, some don't, and others are happy to comply if you buy them a drink. Eventually, this becomes tiring and you see it's a poor use of your time even if most people are happy to comply.. You enlist the bar to help and they implement a "no tolerance" policy. If the bouncer can hear you talk you're out of the line and won't be getting in that night. You are on a first date with someone and go to this bar. You talk too loudly and are told to leave. You're embarrassed and upset that this bar would embarrass you in front of your date. You try to appeal by explaining the situation. "Hey man, cut me a break. This is our first date, I didn't know the rules, and in any case we were barely whispering." "Look, man, I don't know you. I get lines like that all te time and you're making my job harder than it needs to be right now. Come back tomorrow of you want, but neither you not your date are getting in. I need to be checking IDs right now, not debating you." I'm sure you can and will nitpick the analogy, but here's my claim: even if you feel outraged at your treatment, even if it ruined your night and your date, nobody in the above scenario "abdicated their humanity," as you put it.
  - nknighthb 13y ago
    The bar owner is absolutely in the wrong for having set up shop below where people have to sleep without adequate soundproofing for their business. This is an abdication of their humanity. In order to remain in business without the cost of fixing that problem, they have abdicated their humanity a second time by treating their customers like shit.
    - true_religion 13y ago
      In the example, people are outside the bar loitering or waiting to get in. How can you soundproof a sidewalk?
  - wpietri 13y ago
    > Nobody is abdicating their humanity and the only "dehumanizing" thing I see is the implication that some people are. Your taking a human relationships issue and deciding it based on narrow cost-benefit analysis is definitely dehumanizing. And that's exactly what you're doing by comparing attorney salaries against the cost of resentment. Hint: if you have to say, "hey, it's nothing personal, it's just business" after somebody is badly treated, then dehumanization is exactly what's happening. It's obviously personal to the person you're saying that to. What that phrase says is that you've decided to treat them impersonally.
    - jfarmer 13y ago
      It's not my responsibility that they take it personally any more than it's my responsibility as the apartment owner, bar, or bouncer that the person being ejected from the line is taking it personally. As Tumblr, I have no relationship with the person in question. Why isn't it their responsibility to ask if they might use my name first? Why isn't it the loud-talker's responsibility to know the rules of the road (or sidewalk, as it were) before they hop in line? A C&D does not have the force of law. If I build a service that piggy backs off another service without their permission, I shouldn't be surprised that their opening remark is a strongly-worded, "We don't know you. We don't have a relationship with you. We don't like that you're doing this. We don't feel the need to explain ourselves to you. Stop it, now." If we want to talk about empathy and human-to-human interaction, the "human" thing for me to do (IMO) would be to apologize for stepping on that other person's toes and ask what I could do to make it work. The obnoxious thing for me to do would be to stop what I'm doing, set up a milk crate, and start shouting about how this other person is trying to censor me. I don't think it's inhuman to do that, but OTOH I shouldn't be surprised when the other person is suddenly less inclined to make nice. In this case, I would not be saying the same thing if Tumblr's first move were something that carried legal force, in the same way that I think it'd be inappropriate if the first thing the bar did was call the police and file a noise violation rather than tell the person to leave.