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Comment by tomatotomato37 | Hacker News Reader

I'd like to know the law company Twitch is contracting out of because holy shit is Twitch getting ripped off here. Sueing people you don't even know the identities of has to be the easiest way of racking up legal fees I have ever seen

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Could it be a pre-emptive political move to avoid scrutiny from governments where the content that was streamed (Christchurch shooting, some illegal pornography) is illegal? Also, I'm pretty sure they know some of the perpetrators but are probably still building a case. A few years ago they pinpointed the heads of a viewbotting operation and successfully took legal action. I could see them finding a few people to make an example out of, honestly.

I could see Twitch's thinking be to only catch a few people to make an example of, but in similar style cases with media companies and pirating the paperwork already has the targets name on it; the use of just placeholders imply to me that the lawyers are going to intentionally drag the case out while telling Twitch they are trying to find the "perfect target" to make an example of.

That makes a lot of sense, this is an interesting perspective.

It may be less of finding an example defendant as just providing an example that they are doing something if they're accused of not doing enough later. I expect the case will quickly settle.

Is streaming the Christchurch shooting illegal in the US, where Twitch is based?

Wouldn't just banning them and turning information over to the local police be the saner and cheaper move then?

The fact is even if traced it would end in 97% of cases with "(Home country)! You can't do shit!" While covering their asses by cooperating.

They’d want to keep things anonymous even if they know the identities of the streamers, which they can probably guess from emails and IP logs. If they name names the narrative changes to “website owned by worlds biggest company trying to put 15 year olds in jail for having fun”.

This may be necessary to determine the identities of the actual people they want to sue, like to enable a subpoena to the ISPs in question.

Agreed. There are a lot of actions that courts can take that companies cannot. (and court-imposed fines have a lot of teeth)

That'd be Amazon, their parent company, one of (along with the other FAANG companies) the savviest consumers of legal services in the world.

Why the N in FAANG? Why isn't it FAAMG? I can't get a reasonable answer to this.

Isn't the N Netflix? I think it's just Bay Area/Silicon Valley companies, while Microsoft is up north in Washington.

Yeah, N is netflix, but in this context what's being referred to is the Big 5 tech companies, which should be Google|Alphabet/Amazon/Microsoft/Facebook/Apple.

I think the original FAANG formulation had to do with fastest-growing stocks and now it's infected the discourse about the tech oligopoly. Other theories welcome.

Yeah, I think it has to do with stock price appreciation. Since 2009, Google has grown 7x, Apple 9x, FB was non-public but a rough private market valuation gives about 9x, Amazon 32X, and Netflix 70X. MSFT has grown 5x, but 2x of that is since 2017 and virtually all of it since 2015 (while FB started its rally in 2013 and the rest in 2009), so it's been left out of the discourse.

Personally, I'm a fan of the acronym MAGA for the top tech companies, because that's the initials of the largest 4 (Microsoft, Amazon, Google, Apple) and they are Making America Great Again, with multiple levels of irony that your personal political views and historical knowledge can help you unpack.

You've also pointed out that FAANG is outdated, so I'm switching to FAAAM

This is like a scrabble game where we're waiting for more companies that start with a consonant to hit a 1T valuation.

Yeah I have no clue. I'm partial to Patrick's "AmaGooBookSoft" but then you're leaving out Apple.

I think I switched to AppAmaGooBookSoft in ~2015.

FWIW, I think you started it as AmaGooFaceSoft, then AppAmaGooFaceSoft[1], then AppAmaGooBookSoft.

I personally prefer the AppAmaGooFaceSoft over the ...BookSoft version.

Based on the fact that I can say the above with a small amount of authority, I think it's safe to say that I have read too much of your stuff.......

[1]The Blue Googles confirms that you used AppAmaGooFaceSoft as well. I prefer it and use it not infrequently.

My assumption: because people really want it to sound like a real word, but dropping the "N" makes a very unfortunate cognate with an offensive English term, and "FAAMG" doesn't sound like a real word. Netflix is just there to avoid what "FAANG" would be without it.

One has to sue John Doe in situations like this to avoid the statute of limitations expiring.

Another commenter said the legal filings allege trademark violations. If this is the case, the suit may be an example of "policing" a trademark, which involves going after all trademark violators in order to maintain the legal right to enforce the trademark.

If you fail to adequately police a mark, you can lose the ability to enforce it.

Disclaimer: although I am a former lawyer, I did not specialize in trademark law.

I don’t know very much about the intricacies of this but wouldn’t it be possible to get a judge to decide this is worth a warrant which could then be used to deanonymize?

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