A valid argument.But few students have the wherewithal to "lawyer up". Not to mention that the "kid" wanted to make movies, not get himself in his own court room drama.
So defensive it may be, but that is just a symptom of an exceptionally litigious system, that overwhelmingly favors big players.
"The real question is, who sues a student for > $75,000 for breaching an employment agreement?"
I suspect that there is more going on here than meets the eye or has been disclosed exactly for that reason. [1] Notwithstanding the parent's comment about the games people play it's really hard to make a judgement (as with anything) w/o hearing the info from both sides.
Now had the OP not been using a throwaway account you could at least infer some legitimacy (however slim) because the poster would be known at least a bit. (Or maybe more than slim if the commenter was well known to the HN community). That is not the case here. This is not to say that the employer doesn't suck and that the case is frivolous but merely to point out a possible reality.
[1] I've been doing business for a long long time and have come in contact with many nutty people obviously but in general the limiting factor as has been pointed out is the amount of effort and money it takes to file and carry through with a law suit is not trivial. Would also add at this point is that it is typical to receive the "scary lawyer letter" prior to the filing of a lawsuit and the OP doesn't mention receiving that.
I heard a lot from one of the students when he was first publicizing his lawsuit on another Web forum. His dad was a lawyer, and it was painfully apparent that they were constructing outlandish hypothetical harms to students in an online statement they wrote about why what Turnitin.com does was so evil, in their opinion. He finally shirked away from the online discussion on that forum after getting lots of counterargument from fully grown and very experienced lawyers who poked holes in his claims. I see the court system on both the trial level and appellate level have done the same. My impression at that time, and my impression today, is that the case was made up in an attempt to make some easy money--just the sort of lawyer behavior that should be decried by hackers everywhere.
I agree the lawyer is doing the right thing for his role - perhaps I should have phrased as "ridiculous for this argument to be taken seriously" or some such.
I'll grant your point, absolutely. Like with most headline legal cases, the actors tend to be marred in all sorts of misery, misdeeds, and confusion. Analogously, free speech cases almost always come down to defending assholes, because they're the ones who cause trouble in the first place.
Probably I'm objecting to your 'procedural misconduct' phrasing, which appears to minimize an ethical disaster into an understandable mistake in the course of a busy day.
Oh dear. From the one lecture of his that I attended, I knew that Charlie Nesson had some unconventional ideas, but this is a bit excessive. (You know you should be worried when Lawrence Lessig dismisses your fair use argument.)
The student he is representing should be worried that all this showmanship is angering the judge, who would then give less credence to legitimate arguments.
That legal threat was not a good response. I think both sides messed up here.
It seems like the ex-intern made an honest mistake especially given his age. This isn't exactly the same but Helen Keller messed up and plagiarised when she was young before. People do dumb things, especially when they're young.
I think that was a mis-step. It plays well in the press, but it won't serve much use in court, and even if it does, I'd expect an appeals court to tear it to shreds.
Random aside, this all happened a mile or so from where I lived growing up, and the defense attorney is someone I went to high school with. I was reading about it this week and then saw his very distinctive name and was surprised...
I'm troubled by this post, actually, because of the implication and usage (overt or otherwise) of the HN audience. Especially with an earlier revision with that line about not tolerating such behavior in Silicon Valley, and the general tone of the post including going after the defendant's professionalism. This post smells pretty bad, and is pretty much just dirty laundry or posturing.
This is a really, really surprising post for Sam to write, and I think even he knows it's wrong with the lawyers bit. They would stop him for a multitude of reasons, some legal, some tactical, some ethical. All of them would be valuable legal advice.
I'm troubled by a mix of things here: the wide audience afforded an investor in the plaintiff simply by name recognition in this community, the aforementioned characterizations of the defendant (who most of us have never heard of, and therefore are relying on the post to describe), and the circumvention of process that this post demonstrates, whether intentional or otherwise, not to mention the implicit attempt to steer public sentiment on a person. I'm not ascribing any malice here, to be clear, I'm just still processing the frame of mind that would consider this post a good idea at all. I actually disagree that it should be pulled, because the gun has been fired now (and pulling it makes it worse).
There are only two explanations of overall motive here, and neither is kind. Nobody wins here, Sam, Cruise, Kyle, or Jeremy. Especially not Jeremy, and one need only scroll down to find the number of comments that bought in immediately to Sam's narrative and are talking about refusing to work with Jeremy in any capacity.
First of all, I think it's reasonable to start with the assumption that a case is fake until you validate that it is real.
Secondly, that's a ridiculous place to put the goal post. He didn't write the argument he submitted. He didn't even do basic vetting of it. It's fraudulent because he submitted work as his own that he didn't do, it's negligent because he didn't verify that the work was actually good before submitting it on behalf of his client.
Is it possible that the claims of the critic are not opinion but truly false? Why file a law suit that's just going to draw more attention and give oxygen to the critics unless you have at least some chance of winning?
This is a one-sided article written by the lawyers of the plaintiff. I don't care to know the rest of the story, so I don't have a worthy comment to make regarding the merits of the free speech argument in the article; however, professional licensing exists for very good reasons, and this article isn't a reason that it should all go away, as many folks here seem to have concluded.
Despite my distaste for Sony, I worry that the tone and claims of bad faith in Hotz's filing will distract from the overall strength of his argument.
From Kozinski's "How You Too Can Lose Your Appeal:"
Let's face it, a good argument is hard to hold down. So what you want to do is salt your brief with plenty of distractions that will divert attention from the main issue. One really good way of doing this is to pick a fight with opposing counsel. Go ahead, call him a slime. Accuse him of lying through his teeth. The key thing is to let the court know that what's going on here is not really a dispute between the clients. What is really going on here is a fight between the forces of truth, justice, purity and goodness--namely you--and Beelzebub, your opponent.
I find it interesting that you position this guy as a "hero" with supporting arguments being that he brought failed legal action against someone else for calling him a name on twitter, while implying the reason he lost was because the hero chose to hire a crazy lawyer. Then say he's clearly a hero since the lawyer he chose has opinions about things you don't personally agree with, as if that has any relevance whatsoever to the legal case here.
I have mixed feelings about this guy, but it's telling that a lot of the objections are to this guy acting like a lawyer. I mean, how dare he! What does it mean when they object more, as if morally, to the people who are filing pro se---and winning anyway? Hmm.
So defensive it may be, but that is just a symptom of an exceptionally litigious system, that overwhelmingly favors big players.
reply