Hacker News Reader

Comment by regularfry | Hacker News Reader

The fourth part is where Apple are acting in place of the judiciary. Taking the article at its word, Apple have taken and enforced a "guilty until proven innocent" stance with respect to their own suppliers and customers. Ignoring for a moment how bizarrely arrogant that is, there's a very good reason we rely on independent judges and juries to get these questions right.

View on HN

Yes, the same approach is taken for example by Facebook. If there's a complaint, Facebook will first freeze an account and only unfreeze it after the dispute is resolved (by the parties themselves or legally through court). Shoot-first-ask-later approach.

I don't know why this is prevalent approach, since 90% of the time it's the big companies initiating disputes. So small companies are taking the hit.

My guess is that it's laywers being paranoid. If Apple didn't stop the app from being distributed when they were notified of a problem and a court later upheld the complaint, they might be sued for contributory infringement, or whatever the relevant patent term is.

We have a solution for this: preliminary injection.

IANAL, so perhaps this is still opening up for lots of liability, but I'd much prefer Apple say "You want it taken down? Ask the judge for a preliminary injunction. Until then, go away."

Preliminary injunctions are the due process mechanism for causing the action to cease while it's litigated rather than continue. They, not Apple's whim/decision/liability-aversion, should be how this kind of thing happens IMO.

Precisely.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com