GoodData threatens our student startup with lawsuit | Hacker News Reader

GoodData threatens our student startup with lawsuit

start2cloud.com

152 pointsvilda38 comments

It appears this would be litigated overseas, but I'd like to speculate based on sound legal principles that should hopefully apply anywhere.

I fail to see what sort of claim GoodData would bring against Start2Cloud. Suppose, for the sake of argument, that Start2Cloud did violate the GoodData terms of service by signing up for the purpose of writing a review. What remedies would be available?

According to the GoodData TOS (http://www.gooddata.com/terms-of-use), GoodData could terminate Start2Cloud's account. But I don't see anything about GoodData collecting damages for something like this. So suppose GoodData does sue for breach of contract. How can they calculate damages? How can they demonstrate quantifiable harm arising from Start2Cloud's use of the service?

Normally, I'd expect to see a libel suit threatened in a situation like this. But there was no mention of that in GoodData's message. Apparently, they're basing their threats entirely on the TOS, which don't seem to offer a viable cause of action.

To the extent that browsing a website is a restricted act under the law of copyright (see NLA v Meltwater for a ridiculous UK holding along those lines), I suppose you have copyright infringement if you engage in a restricted act without fully complying with the terms of the licence. If a judge were to rule similarly in the jurisdiction chosen for the dispute, and, like the US, there were statutory damages, I guess an award could come from there. That's farfetched and, IMO, based on bad law, but even an action for breach of contract that ended in a nominal award for damages (say, $1) could be punitive (on costs) in a loser-pays legal system.

Why would it be litigated overseas? The TOS explicitly state that they're governed by US law, which (oh my!) is clear that truth is an absolute defense to libel. So IANAL but yes, all they have is a civil claim with no stipulated damages.

Based on the OP, it seems that both parties are overseas. But you're right about the TOS. I think it could go either way.

You're right - perhaps, even though their threat letter mentions the TOS, their legal strategy is based on the laws of their country instead (e.g. maybe they have a libel law that's more plaintiff-friendly than the US).

Simply replace your GoodData reviews with a notice saying you had to take them down after GoodData threatened you with legal action.

You are off the hook because you have complied with their demands, and potential customers will read between the lines, and assume the reviews were not flattering.

Assuming your site is well regarded, this will seriously hurt GoodData, and should also stop any other vendors trying the same trick in the future.

I second what you say.

This fragment below struck me as a particularly bad piece of logic/causation thinking.

"In such a case we will have to comply with the request of GoodData, which would most likely mean the end of our business, because we will be unable to continue in our mission of providing you with an unbiased and unrestricted description of cloud computing services (...)."

Disregarding the strange EULA, why are they calling themselves a student startup, when the founders got their master's degrees 20 years ago and it's nearer to a corporate purchase guide than a startup (as in groundbreaking, repeatable, scalable)?

"formed by students of University of Economics in Prague and me as their teacher"

Not sure about other students.

Heh, this should be 'competitor threatens lawsuit, hands over PR bonanza.'

Never fun to be threatened of course but when you can use it to enhance your visibility, well that is kinda priceless.

I did this when my textbook startup was sent a cease-and-desist by a major textbook player for B.S. copyright infringement. I immediately forwarded the letter to the Harvard Crimson (Harvard was our biggest market), and they promptly ran a front-page story about us being sued.

The cease-and-desist said we had 10 days to take down our data. I never took it down and never replied, and never heard back from the company again.

Not only did the press scare them away, but as you mentioned, gave us a front-page story we couldn't have gotten any other way.

That said, I was very confident that their case had no merit and that they wouldn't take it to trial (or maybe it was that we were on our last leg and had little to lose).

Funny story: my next startup and all-of-a-sudden we're currently partnering with the company that threatened to sue me. I'm assuming they don't know it was me behind both companies!

I don't see how these two companies are competitors. Start2Cloud appears to be akin to a directory or online magazine centered around providing information on "Cloud" services from many companies.

GoodData appears to be providing some sort of data collection and analysis services.

GoodData would just be another company/service reviewed by Start2Cloud, no?

Yes, the point seems to be exactly that --- how ridiculous the terms of use are which prevent a media review, acting as if they are competitors.

Why would a (seemingly) strong, funded business-startup be scared of competitors using their service? Is their business model that precarious?

Potential customers would be wary of overly restrictive EULA and lawsuit-happy companies.

I really doubt this would be enforceable in an American court. The question is, can a little guy with no lawyers actually win the case if a motion is admitted by a judge?

I feel like the EFF could step in here.

Fantastic, GoodData wants to put a nail in the coffin of clickwrap contracts. Petard, meet hoist.

Are they even legally enforceable? I know at least in the UK that a contract cannot supersede any statutory rights or existing legislation, any any offending clause is null and void.

Not that I could name what that particular EULA infringes, but I would hope it gets laughed out of court.

This is a really tricky legal area. There have been a very limited number of real cases involving EULA terms like this (and I'm not sure any have been decided at a trial), and there will be wide variability between jurisdictions.

You can, in principle, contract away your right to speak on a well-defined subject, at least in the USA (I believe all common law jurisdictions permit this to one degree or another). Consider NDAs, for example.

What terms like these get into, however, is a question of fairness and equity. Terms that are almost certain to come up in common law jurisdictions are "contract of adhesion", "unconscionability", "fair dealing", and most importantly, "consideration".

Just skim the Wikipedia entries for those terms and you'll quickly see how complex and subjective this gets.

Lori Drew was acquitted on appeal where she was initially convicted of violating the CFAA, largely through exceeding MySpace's TOU.

That's a criminal matter, there's no applicability to a civil action.

Plus, an amendment has been adopted that decriminalizes acts against the TOS (though I guess it has not yet passed the full Senate):

http://cdt.org/blogs/joshua-gruenspecht/169senate-tweaks-bil...

This is a good example of hilarious EULA terms. I imagine start2cloud would win, but I don't blame them for not wanting the enormous hassle.

Oracle does the same. You can't publish benchmark results without their permission.

This must be high in the runnig for "the stupidest EULA agreement" contest somewhere. If it doesn't exist yet, please someone start one...

it's not unique on the Web:

http://www.google.co.uk/search?gcx=c&ie=UTF-8&q=%22I...

I guess I shouldn't be that surprised to see the extent to which companies literally copy/paste their EULA's. Perhaps the silver lining is that one instance of this contract language being rendered illegal would presumably set a precedent that invalidates all duplicated instances of it.

Going through a few pages of results, I don't think I've heard of any of those companies.

Somehow, that fails to surprise me.

or how is this for the company slogan: "Good Data, bad people"...

Going on their site it seems more like GoodSEO (ad-hoc holistic SaaS-software intelligent analyses stats performance).

Has he never heard of the Streisand effect? "Please stand by for a demonstration of relevancy."

I would add their ridiculous claims and threats to your review and tell them that you just don't agree with their ToS, and as such will now stop using their services.

Wow, how horrendously awful must GoodData's services be to require language like that in their TOS and actions like this?

"Interesting reaction" by the GoodData CEO which is also Board Member/Advisor of the German Hackfwd incubator:

http://hackfwd.com/people#roman-stanek

So basically their EULA says: "You can use but you can't judge."

How's that even enforceable?

Could start2cloud just say something like, "GoodData refuses to let us review them or they threaten a law suit. We will let you draw your own conclusions from that."

You can't publish benchmarks on Amazon EC2 either. Doesn't seem to have made a lot of difference to people that they're unable to find out whether an EBS volume will provide better or worse I/O than, say, a consumer-grade laptop 4800rpm 2.5" drive.

Is this true? Has Amazon/AWS asked people to take down blogs/articles that benchmark their systems?

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