Anyone can file a lawsuit naming anyone they like. You are using the existence of a lawsuit you filed as evidence in your argument. I would call that "circular logic".
True, the lawsuit exists, and anyone can be named. But this particular lawsuit is backed up with a few hundred pages of evidence. Feel free to read it--that's why I linked to the docket, so that anyone can. No circular logic involved.
Again, my point is that lawsuits are signaling mechanisms for ethical problems.
I also disagree. And I have no dog in this fight -- no affiliation with YC nor Aaron/thinkcomp.
It is false and tendentious to claim that "lawsuits are signaling mechanisms for ethical problems" -- the law nowadays is sadly well-divorced from ethics. Just look at some of Hollywood's inane copyright lawsuits with Silicon Valley companies as defendants. Or the rise in software "patent" suits. Or Harvey Silverglate's book Three Felonies a Day. Etc.
It would probably be true to say that lawsuits are signaling mechanisms for business success. I once interviewed Cypress Semiconductor CEO TJ Rodgers who pointed to the list of complaint cover pages on his office wall. There were dozens. He said something to the effect of: Whenever we get sued, that means that our competitors are unable to win in the marketplace. Bring it on!
If I'm not mistaken Aaron/thinkcomp is suing just about everyone who could possibly be a defendant including Andreessen Horowitz, Coinbase, DST Global, Dwolla, Kleiner Perkins, Slide co-founder Max Levchin, Reddit CEO Yishan Wong, Sequoia Capital, Square, and Y Combinator. (If YC principals don't reply in this thread, it's probably because of litigation.)
A uninvolved attorney, commenting on this case, wrote: "Unfortunately for Aaron Greenspan, he has sued enough people to seem litigious at best—his own word choice—and a little crazy at worst (that last word choice is mine)." http://blog.upcounsel.com/aaron-greenspan-versus-silicon-val... While I'm expressing no opinion about the merits of this suit, I do wish Aaron/thinkcomp would do less lawyering and more, actual, you know, engineering.
(Since 2011, I've built PlainSite from scratch, building on Aaron Swartz's PACER data. But I'd rather be working on payments.)
Also, I'd expect a reporter as experienced as yourself to read the complaint and evaluate the evidence on its own merits. There was a long list of defendants in the recent litigation involving Google and Apple and Intuit and eBay, because--guess what--they all broke the law.
I stand by my point that lawsuits are signaling mechanisms for potential ethical problems. Not all of them are legit. Sometimes they're just crazy. But by and large, they point to problems that need resolution.
Also, if you want to selectively quote things from articles, here's what Felix Salmon at Reuters has to say about T.J. Rodgers: "Chrystia Freeland has found a classic example of Silicon Valley hubris in TJ Rodgers."
Regarding my legal battle with California, the Upcounsel article also said, "He may be right, and it seems obvious that California’s MTA is much tougher than comparable laws in other states," as well as "his complaint raises some valid points."
Civil suits should definitely not be considered signals of ethical problems. This case is a perfect example where the law is vague, primarily exists to protect some large incumbents and has been used to generate a lawsuit by a legally active gadfly with tenuous standing.
If there were standing issues in the case against California it would been tossed out years ago.
In the unfair competition case, after trying and failing to get rid of the case via bogus sanctions, Y Combinator and the other defendants manufactured standing issues to get it thrown out by arguing that one cannot be the victim of "unfair competition" if one is not legally permitted to compete (even when the other parties are "competing" by breaking a law). This leads to the perverse conclusion that § 17200 encourages illegal activity.
Most legal gadflies are not cited by opposing counsel in formal filings before state agencies, invited to submit testimony to Congress, consulted by the GAO on what to tell Congress, cited by academics, or offered fellowships at Stanford Law School. But, you know, whatever.
I disagree. Lawsuits could also be rightfully characterized as signalling mechanisms for predatory (but still ethical) commercial opportunities, social ills and/or exploitation of same, poorly constructed laws or regulations, reasonable disagreements, and probably half a dozen other situations. Not to mention that the ethical problems that could be signaled by a lawsuit might be those of the plaintiff, the defendant, or either of their legal teams. Or all of them together.
Hmmm, I suppose that could have been plainer. I disagree with your assertion that - as a general rule - the existence of a lawsuit necessarily signals ethical concerns relating to the defendant.
As for "it", if "it" was not in the text of one of the comments leading up to my post, I probably did not read "it". In any event, I doubt that further knowledge of "it" would have substantially modified the nature of that assertion you made.
The actual subject matter of the lawsuit you've been referencing is only of marginal interest to me (and is irrelevant to my comment), and I didn't feel like looking through the claimed hundreds of pages of materials, or addressing the merits of a case that is already in the hands of professionals.
It might be more on track to say that criminal lawsuits indicate criminal activity, since DAs are only supposed to commence with prosecution when they believe that the law has been broken and when they can prove it. It's a safe bet that the majority of people criminally accused actually did what happened. But it violates the spirit of innocent until proven guilty, where even after an investigation the state must still convince a jury of the defendant's peers beyond a reasonable doubt.
So that's just to contrast with civil lawsuits. There is essentially no bar at all for those.
