undefined | Better HN

0 pointswindexh8er9mo ago0 comments

Can the Terms of Service of individual content creators leverage a "death of a thousand cuts" model to produce a legal honeypot which would require organizations like Perplexity to be bound up in 10s of thousands of conciliation court cases?

Big Tech has hidden behind ToS for years. Now, it seems as though it only works for them, but not against. It seems as though this would be easy to orchestrate and prove forcing these companies into a legal nightmare or risk insolvent business stature due to the high load of cases filed against.

Why couldn't something like this be used to flip the table? A conciliation brigading, of sorts.

0 comments

Eisenstein9mo ago

Because lawyers are expensive and big tech companies have lots of them. Because it takes a ton of time and effort to sue someone. Because you need to show standing, which means you need to be able to demonstrate you lost something of value by their actions. Because the power imbalance is heavily weighted towards a corporation. Because the way to deal with such things should be legislation and not court decisions. And lots more reasons...

windexh8erOP9mo ago

That's exactly why I said conciliation court. None of what you've outlined is required nor is it expensive. But, for each case, the defendant is still required to show up.

I've successfully used conciliation court against large corporations in the past which is why I question it here.

And while this should be able to be handled via legislation it won't be. Beyond that a workaround could force that to happen.

Eisenstein9mo ago

> conciliation court

Sorry, I had never heard that term before. You would still have to show standing though. How would you try to prove that their violating your TOS cost you money?

2 more replies

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse

0 comments

Eisenstein9mo ago

windexh8erOP9mo ago

That's exactly why I said conciliation court. None of what you've outlined is required nor is it expensive. But, for each case, the defendant is still required to show up.

I've successfully used conciliation court against large corporations in the past which is why I question it here.

And while this should be able to be handled via legislation it won't be. Beyond that a workaround could force that to happen.

Eisenstein9mo ago

> conciliation court

Sorry, I had never heard that term before. You would still have to show standing though. How would you try to prove that their violating your TOS cost you money?

2 more replies

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse