Comment by mercurial | Hacker News Reader

Comment by mercurial | Hacker News Reader

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> Despite a federal court order directing Microsoft to turn overseas-held email data to federal authorities, the software giant said Friday it will continue to withhold that information as it waits for the case to wind through the appeals process. The judge has now ordered both Microsoft and federal prosecutors to advise her how to proceed by next Friday, September 5.

> Let there be no doubt that Microsoft's actions in this controversial case are customer-centric. The firm isn't just standing up to the US government on moral principles. It's now defying a federal court order.

Whoever wrote this clearly didn't bother wondering if, just maybe, handing out customer data "overseas" ("overseas" apparently means Ireland) would be illegal under EU and Irish law. But let's not minor details like this get in the way of good PR.

Assigning noble motives to Microsoft's actions is ignoring the actual motives of a business. How do those same people explain why Microsoft has given the US government user information on other occasions? It's just a calculation of what's the best thing to do for the well-being of the business. Just as banks happily take a "record fine" for breaking the law because it's a small expense to making a lot of money.

We get in so much trouble trying to understand companies as if they're individual humans. Evolutionary biology for corporations needs to be taught.

I absolutely agree. On the other hand, the fact that ethics rarely seem to play any role in decision-making at large-scale organization is pretty telling about the sort of people who rise up to the top :(

It is illegal, but it also means you'd have no foreign customers. They would lose tons of contracts immediately. It would completely end the enterprise cloud revolution that is occurring.

Absolutely. They don't realize they will hurt the other companies this way. There are companies and institutes follow this thing very closely and when you try to close the sell with them, they would drop this Bomb, where are your servers and how they are not feeling comfortable with all this things going on.

Mercurial has the most clear-headed read on the situation. His comment should be upvoted to the top.

As for Microsoft, they have demonstrated time and time again they are not aligned with the user but with Big Brother. They are lawful evil, to use D&D parlance.

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