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Comment by zhoutong | Hacker News Reader

I don't understand why #BoycottSomething should be used for protests. Boycotting an influential company is extremely hard.

I'm sure that there are more rational ways to protest, instead of trying to boycott a company that actually delivers some of the best products. No company is perfect and Apple's case is just a tip of an iceberg in the whole industry.

http://www.dontmakemesteal.com/ is a good example. We know the movie industry sometimes uses intellectual property rights against their customers but there are good ways to fight back without disregarding the merit of the entire thing.

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I believe Apple's success still depends on public image more than most. Their products are high quality but some of those from other vendors are very very good as well.

If this label of "evil ugly sociopathic corporation" were to stick they could end up in big trouble.

Check out this tweet: https://twitter.com/joeycmiller/status/219271776394412032

The guy's profile says he's a Marketing professor so he knows the angle he's spinning. But this is the kind of thing I would be really worried about if I were Apple.

What are the other ways to protest? I don't mean that as a rhetorical question. I'm genuinely curious.

Sit-ins have been extremely effective, where there's a free press and where companies want to avoid negative publicity. You can't eject people forcibly without looking thuggish, and reporters flock to them.

Only problem: you actually have to care enough about an issue to risk getting arrested. I'd be surprised if anyone cared that much about Apple's patent trolling.

On a small scale, petitions will work better than a hash tag on a Google-owned website. The person that made the decision is the judge. So a rational way to protest is to protest the decision itself.

On a large scale, make something disruptively innovative to fight back.

#BoycottApple may work by alarming and reminding Apple of their unethical act (to the crowd). But the effect is small because it has nothing to do with Apple's product quality and customer service. If no one buys Apple products any more, we won't necessarily be better off.

That said, I think Apple seriously doesn't have to go this far. If they have the energy to continue innovating there shouldn't be any fear.

The problem here is that we're trying to apply social pressure to a legal problem. Being intensely social creatures, our instincts tell us it should work, or that it's at least worth a shot.

What we're trying to fix is that companies can even get injunctions for stupid reasons, and that patents are used as warfare rather than for encouraging innovation. Boycotting every single company that abuses patents is simply not going to fix the problem, especially since some of those companies don't even sell products.

Look at Righthaven -- a boycott would have been meaningless, but the right case came along and Righthaven lost its teeth. And this only involved two branches of the government! Imagine what you could accomplish if you could actually pass laws to fix the patent system...

Has petitioning or protesting a judicial decision ever affected change? I think I would lose faith in the judicial system in such a thing worked.

Remember Amazon and one-click? There was sufficient backlash that they never tried anything like that again. Could work with Apple.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1-Click#Patent says the revised patent was confirmed and they've been paid for licenses to use it (by Apple and possibly B&N). I don't see any effect the backlash had.

You're not going to change a judge's mind by protesting. But you are going to change Apple's nonsense lawsuits if the negative PR keeps building up against them. And that's what these boycotts could achieve if they become large enough.

If company behaves indecently (like Apple does) it deserves to be boycotted. The fact that it's influential is even a bigger reason to boycott it. Influential crooks are more dangerous.

Not to say you're not right but just about every company behaves indecently. Samsung, Google, Microsoft and others all have their offenses in the people's eye for what is right but this is business and we people should just let it play itself out in court.

As consumers , collectively we can influence corporate behavior. If Companies feels that customers can punish them for such acts they may refrain from it in the future. The point is , the scale of the protest should be big enough for them to sit up and notice

If the patent system is so broken that it's abused by all kind of trolls (including Apple), do you think courts can fix it? Only patent reform can change something. And meanwhile, boycotting works too.

It seems your from USA; I'll assume you mean the US patent system, and I gather that in the USA you elect judges but do you think that the courts should be "fixing" the law. Do you elect the judiciary to alter the law?

Unbiased application of the law seems much more becoming of a judicial system than rewriting of it.

If you have your judiciary do the statute [re]writing then do you want your government doing that too?

Courts don't create laws, they interpret and apply them. Laws are created by the legislative power (i.e. congress). Courts is the judicial power. I.e. to fix this mess, legislative power needs to reform the patent law.

Here is a proposal: https://defendinnovation.org

You said that the patent system was broken and asked "do you think courts can fix it" (my emphasis). I know that in general legislative power is not within the remit of the court (you might say it was ex judica, fnar-fnar) - you appeared to be saying that the courts should be fixing it though, hence my post.

I was asking, commenting on what jaebrown said earlier, quote:

this is business and we people should just let it play itself out in court.

So I asked: do you think courts (alone) can fix it? I.e. really courts won't help, until the law is fixed.

> but this is business and we people should just let it play itself out in court.

I'd be okay if the patents in question were not trivial and something really innovative(like RSA).

Also, consumers should make decisions based on their convictions too. For example, I shop at CostCo instead of Sam's Club because CostCo treats their employees much better than Walmart(which owns Sams) does.

"Be the change you wish to see in the world." - Gandhi

I totally understand your point but these are the rules in which the game they play in. Each company has the money to make a stand for the change they want to see and if it was truly broken, I think we would see a unified body of tech companies coming together to enforce those changes. Either Congress is not listening or there are some companies that are fine with the current system. The companies I'm referring to are not Patent Trolls because they do not have the money to go toe to toe with a big company like Apple, Samsung, Microsoft or Google when it comes to hiring lobbyist, court fees, legals fee and PR. They're the companies we're speaking of now, that secretly like the current structure. Congress seems to be interested as they have a patent reform bill on the Senate right now.

Consumers should take more of a note on issues of the companies and products they buy but I believe in this case it's irrelevant to them. I too choose CostCo over Sam's Club and Meijers over Wal-Mart because of the same thing you brought up. However, our choices are based on how they treat people and not patents on which a company clearly infringed upon. The basis on why they infringed or if it's wrong or not is not for us to decide but for the courts.

I don't like the current system either but it is the current system.

How is it irrelevant? Consumers should not support companies which engage in crooked anticompetitive behavior. Our choices should be based on something more than how they treat consumers.

It's like "blood diamonds". They might be all nice and sparkling, but really stained in blood. Do you think it's enough to look just at the external value? It's not enough. It's good to vote with your wallet, boycotting companies which engage in unethical business practices.

Using Blood Diamonds as an example is offensive. The two are no where close to related nor should be reference when speaking about each other. All companies engage in crooked anti-competitive behavior. Samsung is not excluded from the list and one of the reasons that this thread exist. Our choices should always be about how companies treat people, not just consumers of their products.

It's offensive enough to show disrespect towards unethical business practices in which Apple engages (such as abusing patent law for anticompetitive purposes).

> Our choices should always be about how companies treat people

That's correct. That's why companies which promote lock in, stifle innovation with software patents abuse, and etc. cause damage to society. I.e. they treat people badly, for the sake of their profit.

> Samsung is not excluded from the list and one of the reasons that this thread exist.

I'm not following every single example, but when did Samsung exactly act as patent aggressor? Most cases that come to mind were in defense to others aggressive patent threats (namely Apple's). Apple doesn't hesitate to act as patent aggressor on the other hand. There is a difference between defensive attack, and outright aggression.

Boycotting Apple is very easy. They have a very limited number of products sold in their own stores. Try boycotting Johnson & Johnson or Nestle.

I've boycotted Nestle in the past and still err away from them as a producer.

It's right that it's hard to avoid buying any single product that sends money back to Nestle or PG or J&J or whoever but it's not hard to cut back practically. Search online for a list of the company's products and try to avoid them.

Like you said boycotting Apple [Computers] is very easy.

I don't think the parent understands how a boycott works. You don't say "I can't boycott company X because their coffee tastes nicer that company Y's"; unless having slightly nicer tasting coffee completely outweighs the moral wrong that you're trying to punish.

The group of people that use Android and the group of people that are vehemently against Apple overlaps quite a bit, so this boycott costs them nothing. It's a bit of sound and fury slacktivism that makes them all happy but accomplishes nothing.

I extremely disagree with you, a boycott is the perfect weapon again a big brand like apple. People just tell others about it, and it's just really bad for their image.

The average person doesn't care. I'm in this industry and I barely care. Watching Google and Apple is like watching NBA players scuffling over the last bottle of champagne. The average person just wants to use their phone, update their Facebook and find out what Snooki is up too. A boycot organized on a site that the muggles have barely heard of over an issue that they don't give two shits about isn't going to affect Apple's share price one cent. In fact their price will likely rise as the Street sees Apple defending their IP successfully.

I would have said that the most targeted audience (of a petition) IS the average person. Who is flooded by choice and will take a bad image into account when deciding what to buy.

Us techies we tend to be more selfish and buy what we need more than what is trendy, what is not etc...

There really isn't much choice in the smartphone market, despite 20 flavors of Android. If your friends have iPhones, that's what you want. Android is popular among the muggles because it's cheaper. Very few people I've met buy Andeoid because it's better, they buy it because of price. The only Blackberry users I know use it only because of their companies. The average consumer doesn't care about 'morals' when they buy something -- if they did, no one would buy Chinese products, the only chicken sold in stores would be fre range and Wal Mart would have gone out of business a long time ago. People either want the cheapest or the best, not necessarily the 'rightest'.

> There really isn't much choice in the smartphone market, despite 20 flavors of Android.

windows phone?

> Very few people I've met buy Andeoid because it's better

Hi, nice to meet you :)

True, but developers are more likely to care, and they matter a lot more than the average user. A lot of developers preferred not to use Microsoft products when MS was the evil empire, and there would probably be an MS monopoly now if they hadn't.

I'm not sure if that was true. Either way, there was money to be made on the Microsoft platform and even though I didn't like Microsoft and their practices myself, I did develop .NET software for a year of 3. At home I just used my preferred OS (Mac OS X) but a man has to make a living.

Developers matter a lot.

Developers know which users and platforms pay out the best (iOS) and this is what guides their efforts. Not patent infringement, injunctions or boycotts.

If it was just about which platforms pay out the best, there wouldn't be much software for Linux, and there wouldn't have been much for Apple during their inter-Jobs nadir.

No, developers don't matter more than the average user, and that fact is the reason Apple sells so many of their products.

Exactly. Developers go where the money is.

But might it be seen by the average potential Apple employee? It's structured as "don't buy from apple", but it also covers "don't work for apple", which they actually need to fear.

That won't work either. A job with Apple is highly sought after. Even jobs in the retail stores get hundreds of applications. Engineers still flocked to Microsoft even during the "dark" days. I don't think a company that had an $89 stock price in 2008 and a $584 stock price now is going to have any trouble attracting top talent. A strong stock price and massive earnings == no problems recruiting.

When it comes down to it, the average employee wants to work on interesting things and be well paid. They want job security. They choose their jobs less from ideology and more on finances, work-life balance, quality of work environment, innovation opportunities. If ideology was a defining factor, then people would be lining up to work for non-profit organizations, which they're not. Some 2-bit boycott attempt by a bunch of hysterical Android nerds will not make a dent in anyone's universe, much less Apple's.

I doubt Apple is shaking in their boots over a silly hashtag on a social network only used actively by 89 people worldwide.

I'm not saying they won't get a flood of resumes for every opening.

But the best people, who know they can get a position at any major tech company, will be weighing Apple against the likes of Google, Facebook and Amazon. It's possible that Apple has an edge over those in money/environment/opportunity, but it isn't a clear or solid one. The thought of being looked down on by fellow nerds for working at a patent aggressor could turn the balance.

And building products with 98th percentile engineers instead of 99th percentile is a big deal. Look at Microsoft.

The Yahoo/Facebook litigation brought on immediate support from the community. Yammer came out and gave Yahoo employees an ultimatum: quit Yahoo or never work for us. Will we start seeing something similar due to Apple/Android?

Anyone who would write or respond to a boycott of Apple is already the sort who gets into flame wars against the company to begin with, so it is, as they say, "preaching to the choir." Not likely to have a big effect.

I've owned two MacBooks, a MacBook Pro, and two iPhones, but I won't now. No more. I had no particular reason to want to boycott them then before because they weren't behaving atrociously at that time. The kind of person who would boycott Apple now is the kind of person who would have boycotted Microsoft back in the day, which also happens to be the kind of person (or one kind of person) who would have bought Apple products.

You're right, it's going to tarnish their reputation. But I still find it hard to believe that you'd put aside product quality and preferences because of this. In a couple month's time you'll forget most of the case (and eventually the Galaxy Nexus will come to market anyway). In a year's time you'll be comparing products on technical merits alone. I can't say what your next purchase will be, but I'll bet it will be less affected by this emotional response than you expect.

In a year Apple will probably have done something new to piss off people who care about this kind of thing. If not, then you're right.

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