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Comment by rickpmg | Hacker News Reader

But isn't the EFF supposed to pick the fights based on principals? By agreeing to this compromise they really just gave all the Zillow's of the world more confidence that strong-arm tactics work.

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Perhaps it's less "fine, I won't use it anymore if you don't sue" and more "I've decided to stop advertising your service for free on my website regardless of the outcome of this," and Zillow deciding to use the opportunity to gently remove their corporate dick from this particular beehive.

Very colorful

Except Zillow sort of won. So they are the beehive and McMansion is the dick being removed.

It's not the EFF's fight to pick, it's Kate Wagner's (the proprietor of the blog). It's pretty easy to imagine her not wanting to deal with a prolonged fight.

Plus, the EFF has limited resources and litigation would be time consuming. As long as they can fight back against the big companies by writing a letter, they can litigate for clients who face other companies who won't back down so quickly.

By providing the muscle necessary to protect the rights of Kate Wagner, they have won.

Which rights of Kate Wagner did they protect? She could have achieved the same thing by losing in court.

She isn't removing old posts that contain photos sourced from Zillow. If she had lost in court she might have had to do that.

She would have definitely had to do that, and probably she would have had enough monetary damages levied to bankrupt her. It's not reasonable to fault EFF for pursuing her best interests.

> It's not reasonable to fault EFF for pursuing her best interests.

That depends on whether you think the EFF's goal is more to protect the general well-being of Kate Wagner or to protect the idea that you can post pictures on the internet.

It's not reasonable to fault Kate Wagner for pursuing her own best interests, but what do those have to do with the EFF?

The EFF is representing her. They are doing so because they have a more general goal, but they're still legally and ethically bound to respect her interests.

I might suggest that representing her in conflict with their institutional mission is not a good use of the EFF's resources, and replaces a conflict of interest between the EFF and Kate Wagner with a conflict of interest between the EFF and its own supporters.

I suggest you try viewing this more as an activity of fundraising than pushing for their main goals. All non-profits funded by small donations have to do such things, and this had a pretty good side-effect as well.

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