I’m not really big on “let’s make a movement”, but this independent dev has been hit with a cease-and-desist from making a FOSS Home Assistant addon for their Haier air conditioners.
Haier claims that they are losing out on millions of dollars due to this plugin which… lets you control their air conditions from home assistant. They haven’t bothered to explain how that’s possibly worth millions of dollars - they’re just claiming it.
So of course they hit the Streisand button and are demanding that he takes it down. He of course is complying… in a couple of days. Maybe you see where this is going.
It would be an absolute shame if any of you just happened to create a fork, or clone the code, or mirror it in your own instance. An absolute shame.
Just so everyone here knows which repositories NOT to clone or fork, here are the two links:
and please, don’t repost this anywhere, or share it in other communities, or anything like that. It’s a shame that so many people already know and are making clones. I’m just letting you know so you don’t do anything like telling others who may make their own copies.
(sidenote: Haier owns GE Appliance, so for our American folks it may affect you folks too)
I hate how cease and desist are essentially blackmail. Even if you did nothing wrong, you can still get fucked over by costs of a potential legal battle.
It’s a bigger problem in the States than elsewhere. In the US, awarding legal costs is the exception, not the norm, so someone with a lot of money and access to lawyers can basically intimidate a defendent into avoiding court. In the rest of the world, courts are much more likely to award costs to a defendent who has done nothing wrong - if you file a frivilous lawsuit and lose, you’ll probably have to pay the costs of the person you tried to sue.
This guy’s in Germany, so I think he’d be alright if he clearly won. The issue, however, is that courts aren’t really equipped for handling highly technical cases and often get things wrong.
But the defendant still has to put the funds up in the first place? It’s a huge gamble and most people don’t even have the ante available.
Is there anywhere in the world that has a robust and comprehensive public funding for legal entanglements of all types?
Good point. Actually it isn’t a huge gamble in Germany, other than in Usa (which is again the extremely worst example).
Costs of legal defense are moderate. There is a public tariff for lawyer costs and for court fees. So the only areas where you even have a chance to spend huge amounts are finding or creating evidence (private investigators etc), or hiring too many lawyers.
The problem is that it can still work in Germany to just pile the defendant under too many files to process with his ressources. This is not the case in stuff that courts understand, like say a traffic accident. But for anything technical/IT/IP related German courts are terribly incompetent and unable to create a fair case.
Especially regarding IP related things like streaming or torrenting movies, there is a myriad of ridiculous court decisions. The default unfortunately seems to be to just assume the corporation to be in the right, because it is a corporation and surely they must own the IP and lose a lot of money from the evil hackers.
It is not “the” problem.
It is thinkable in theory, but it is not a normal thing to happen. Also, you would not just “drown” the defendant, but the court as well, and then they may smell the misuse.
There is criminal, not civil courts, that were sucessfully drowned in the cum-ex robberies. They gave up on prosecuting people who stole billions from the federal budget, because they were unable to process the amount of files brought by the defense, before the statue of limitations expires.
So if even prosecuting theft of billions of Euros is subject to this tactic smaller civil cases can be too. And the court, because of their lack of technical understanding struggle to assess which files are relevant and which aren’t.
It seems that hourly rates of german lawyers are €100 to €500 which is about what I would expect. Even a few hours of time is a lot. To explain the case, have the lawyer or their designate review it, prepare for a case and show up to court is many hours at a minimum. Even if it is a simple matter.
That linked text is very, very wrong.
Better delete your comment about it, from lemmy and from your brain.
Yes they do have to fund their defense to begin with, however there has to be some balance struck. Until the court proceedings are concluded it isn’t known which side is in the right.
I think most countries’ public funding for legal representation is limited to criminal matters, and even then you have to qualify (eg have a very low income or be unemployed). With civil matters, it’s up to you to find a lawyer you can afford, or one who will take it on pro bono.
If the defendent is obviously in the right, then it should be more likely that they can find a lawyer who will work pro bono.
vs
Before the trial happens, it could really go either way, even if the defendant is obviously in the right - there could be some procedural slip up that causes them to lose anyway.
However, a lawyer isn’t going to assume that they will make some slip up, so if it is obviously in the defendant’s favour they will work pro bono. There is still some risk for them, because if they lose they don’t get paid, but they’re confident they’ll win.
Edit: wrote the reply thinking this was a conversation about awarding costs to the defendant, that was a different thread. The first paragraph remains unchanged though.
I wish Lemmy showed you more of the context than just the last reply.
You can keep pressing on “Show context” to load more replies, up until the top level one.
That’s the problem of the legal system. You can get acused of a crime falsely but still end up bankrupt and alone.
Honestly its just a symptom of a bigger problem with the justice system entirely.
It has always completely favored those with the most money and lawyers.