DongleGate: A Legal Perspective and some social commentary | Hacker News Reader

DongleGate: A Legal Perspective and some social commentary

codebetter.com

16 pointsgabrielrdz7 comments

Pretty interesting analysis and ties in well with this other one from quora (via forbes)

http://www.forbes.com/sites/quora/2013/03/22/was-it-appropri...

I take issue with this:

"One thing we can agree on, there is a massive lack of maturity in this business."

While true, the more general truth is that humans are human, fallible, full of mirth and wit and a need to socialize, laughing like chimps (and vice versa). Primates.

Zero tolerance is for robot species. Allowances must be made for errorful humans. This is why I dislike the firing of both of the people, though I agree that Richards' firing is much more justifiable. (The two CEOs had an opportunity to earn their pay and take a leadership stance that day.)

I do applaud Richards for one small thing in this. She tweeted those pictures using her name.

There are sites out there like the ihollaback sites that encourage the same exact behavior that Richards did, but allow their users to do this completely anonymously, and the people so shown and maligned no recourse.

Because of the cause ihollaback purports to advance, ihollaback drew a lot of acclaim when it launched, and still does. We should consider that.

To establish all the elements of a tortious interference case, wouldn't the fired engineer need to provide evidence that the Tweeter's intention was to get him fired? Tortious interference requires a deliberate attempt to actually interfere with a contract you knew existed. Here, it's hard to argue that the Tweeter even knew the fired engineer was employed; he could just as easily have been a freelancer. That's before you get to the awfully murky claim that anything negative you say about somebody on Twitter must be an attempt to get them fired.

If I was bringing such a suit, I'd focus on the content of the blog post where she mentioned his verbal acknowledgment that the firm was a conference sponsors, and argued that wearing a shirt with his employer's logo made him a representative of the firm, the implication being that he was unfit to carry out his duties as a corporate representative.

I couldn't tell you if there's precedent for that; I haven't looked. If so, it might just as easily support a counter-suit for IIED or NIED. I hope nobody files any lawuits; if they do I'm going to take a vacation from HN and stick my head in a bucket of water until it's over.

Oh, good point about the conference sponsor stuff.

Still: there's a big gulf of persuasive evidence between saying someone is not acting in the moment as an effective representative for their firm, and in directly procuring the severance of an employment contract between them and their employer.

I think this case, or any case in the other direction, is extremely far fetched.

Indeed. Likewise, a counter-suit would be reaching for the outer limits of what constitutes emotional distress. That's why I'm hoping it won't end up in court; both sides would have to make stretch arguments, and the underlying issues would get lost in all the kindergarten Constitution-thumping and posturing.

When I was a young internet evangelist I used to think that always-on internet availability would lead to a breakout of civil communication in some sort of 21st century Agora. Unfortunately, I overlooked the fact that people behave badly in crowds.

Surprising argument from a lawyer: the "right to be offended" is one of the most pointless, meaningless and hollow arguments there is, legally or otherwise.

Especially when it's followed by the complete and utter nonsense "others should respect that".

No, they damn well don't. Everybody has the "right" to think the sky is green and the grass is purple. That doesn't mean anybody else has to respect that.

Claiming the right to be offended and the obligation to respect that is the argument of religious and ideological fundamentalists.

This was a surprisingly interesting read, compared to what else has been written about the event so far. Someone should turn this into a little Grisham-style legal drama for the twitter age.

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