Edelson’s Class-Action Privacy Suits Could Make Him Tech’s Least Friended Man | Hacker News Reader

Edelson’s Class-Action Privacy Suits Could Make Him Tech’s Least Friended Man

nytimes.com

101 pointshendzen91 comments

If you don't want to get sued, stick to the straight and narrow. Sell a product in exchange for money that does what you say it will do. Don't collect extensive user data, and protect what you do collect so it doesn't leak into the world. But if you make your money dabbling in legally and morally gray areas, then litigation is how you find out where the lines are drawn. There is frivolous litigation in this space--firms hoping for a quick $100k payout to just go away. But I don't think that's Edelson's business model.

That is not how current VC funded mega viral startups operate. The outdated ideas of selling something usable for a price are so 1960s ... /s

But there is no incentive to stay straight and narrow. The laws are weak, penalties are small, all your competitors are doing it (so it becomes a competitive advantage), users are either ignorant or don't care, most of the lawmakers have no clue about privacy...and so on.

What he is doing is a good first step, but the whole culture needs to change.

If users don't care why does culture need to change?

Because ethics aren't something you vote on.

The universe must bend to my desires?

That's basically human civilization in a nutshell.

Better mine than someone else's.

Users care, but the information asymmetry between seller and producer has never been as big as today. Most consumer do not know what they eat, what they buy, what agreement they sign, or what the things they interact daily with do.

That is a lot of unknowns, each demanding that the consumer is 100% aware or they are responsible for the result. This then leads to apathy, where we care and not care at the same time. A culture that makes people feel that they do not possess the level of skill required to confront daily life is a bad culture, creates depression, and is general bad for society at large.

I'll add that I'm among the elite in my ability to understand and manage my technology (I'm not boasting; almost everyone reading this is the same) and confidentiality is important to me.

But I don't have time to understand and manage the confidentiality of my IT; I have no hope. Even when I try to learn about one product's or service's confidentiality, the information available is often vague, incomplete and subject to change at any time (per their license agreements). I have so many products that I have no hope of keeping up.

And a 20 page small-type contract with dozens of companies. If you say you're getting informed consent from consumers you're a liar; there's no practical way to read and understand all the contracts (that can be updated at will) I have to agree to in order to use gmail, my isp, my cellphone, github, slack, zenefits, docusign, hellosign, groupon, my gym, my bank, my credit cards, direct deposit, yelp, google maps, android, paypal, ebay, hipchat, instacart, amazon, aws, backcountry, kingdom rush, uber, every single app on my phone, and I'm sure more that I can't list off the top of my head.

This is relevant here - http://www.geek.com/games/gamestation-eula-collects-7500-sou...

> If users don't care why does culture need to change?

Users clearly care. The market for privacy-oriented products (e.g., Snapchat), demand for privacy from existing products (recognized and responded to by Facebook and others), and the impact on reputation for companies who violate it (e.g., Uber) all have grown significantly. Surveys of the American public support these observations.

Do this and someone with a different set of tastes for the "straight and narrow" will attack you for commodifying things, or beating up on the less privileged by charging for stuff that ought to be free, or for having lousy products because you don't know about your users.

If by 'attack' you mean 'say mean things' - then sure.

I mean, you're absolutely right about how business people seem to really really hate people who make commodities, even though it's in the buyer's interest to buy things that are sold as commodities (e.g. goods and/or services where switching vendors is easy)

It's a lot like how business people get all hostile when you talk about competing on price. "It's not about the money!" they shout, like overdressed, aging hippies. But it's a transparent lie, and I think largely harmless.

but... yeah, as far as I can tell, the hostility starts and ends at saying mean things (and, you know, not giving you money, but I don't really live in the universe where investors give you money, so likely that is observer bias.)

I think it's just the general kind of hostility you get from co-workers, in most industries when you make them look bad by working harder than they do.

Tell that to everyone who's been wrongfully sued. There's no connection between "the straight and narrow" and the law industry. When you have rooms of people brainstorming who to sue next for the most money, sanctimony isn't merited.

I'm not trying to be pedantic, but there is a connection between the straight and narrow (i.e., the law) and the law industry. Netflix, for example, committed a legal error, and they paid for it. This is essentially private enforcement of the law. Whether the law is sensible is another discussion.

That's only a way to avoid getting sued by privacy trolls. Other trolls will still find a way to sue you. Once you are majorly successful, you will get sued regularly. Period.

It's a general principle. If you're Apple and you generously replace every product that could have a design or manufacturing defect, you are unlikely to get sued on that basis. But when you're Apple and trying to figure out whether to replace expanding batteries or screens with messed up oleo phobic coating, you don't draw a line in the sand at a point where you won't get sued. You toe the line that balances replacement cost against brand impact and litigation risk.

Apple has a long history of settling class action lawsuits for defective products.

They'd rather defend a lawsuit and pay a settlement than preemptively replace all defective products as they come in. Companies make this sort of decision all the time--trading off users for the bottom line. There's nothing evil about it (no point in doing more than what the law requires of you), but if your policy is to do what you can get away with under the law, you should expect litigation over whether you've crossed the line in any given case.

That's fine but it's the opposite of what you said first.

Sorry, my first sentence was ambiguous. I meant if you were in charge of Apple and had a hypothetical policy of generous replacements.

There's nothing evil about it (no point in doing more than what the law requires of you)

I think reasonable people could debate both of those points. Making either ethical judgements or PR/branding decisions based only on the minimal standards required of you by law is always a dangerous path to tread.

This is only partly for the reason you give, that some people will sue you now. It's also partly because of the other consequences. Some people may sue you later and with more success, possibly after the rules of the game have been changed by subsequent legislation or precedents. Worse, some people may not bother suing you at all and may simply vote with their wallet and/or encourage others to do so, and that is an attack against which a business is given little opportunity to defend itself.

Works for Apple.

Works for the 10 largest software companies, most of which sell to businesses.

Good. All of this stealing of personal information as a business model is pretty ethically questionable.

It's time that these companies come up with a revenue model that doesn't involve facilitating the profiling and persecution of individuals by government agencies and private interests such as HR.

> Good. All of this stealing of personal information as a business model is pretty ethically questionable.

I agree that "stealing personal information as a business model" is something we should minimize. But is Edelson going after companies that are abusing personal information, or just any business that collects information, which might mean a payday for him or his clients?

Even collecting it, without explicitly stating what you are going to do with it, should be punished and prohibited. If it can identify you, you should be clear what is to be done with it before you can make an informed decision to give it to someone.

On what basis?

Basic human rights?

So if I listen to a person speak and deduce that they are Marathi without telling them I plan to do so, I should be punished?

Suppose lady has a conversation with me and deduces that I'm a man whore (happened to me a couple of weeks ago). Should she also be punished?

Or is it merely the act of making deductions with math that should be punished and prohibited? So if I use intuition and heuristics it's fine, but if I mentally apply Bayes rule I should be punished?

If you are she can do millions of those in your head and use it for profit without telling the people that you are going to do so, and how, then yes. You and her should be punished.

Accent detection is almost certainly thousands if not millions of calculations. So is white guy detection + overcharging for auto ride, let alone nice shoe detection plus upsell, emotion detection, or any of the thousands of things salespeople do every day.

I think you misunderstand what I said -- not millions of calculations, millions of individualized data that uniquely identify a person, then use it without telling the person how.

If people know you are using information to serve them a better ad, and agree to it, no problem -- if you have not made that clear, or use it for other purposes that they are not aware of, then it is a big problem and should be illegal.

What about humans who recognize faces?

It's unlikely that anyone has millions of data points on any individual. Thousands at most (possible exception: high resolution images, kind of like what human eyes process every day). Rather, ordinary data from across millions of people is combined to deliver better ads.

Again, not very different from what most sales people do.

Today's ethical company that collects more information than needed but uses it responsibly is tomorrow's acquisition of choice by the less ethical mega-corp.

These are not people, which you can have at least some hope will maintain some similar level of behavior across their life, these are companies, which are only constrained by the current leadership and the law. In this respect, leadership changes far too easily for my tastes.

That would be one of the downsides of outsourcing law enforcement to private, for profit, concerns. I'd support far more funding and enforcement actions for the ftc who can, should, and mostly do act in the public interest. But again, we decided to outsource law enforcement, so it's hardly fair to bitch that the private enforcers act in their own interests, to the extent that their and our interests differ.

Some of the text-message class actions were pretty justified as well imo. Besides straightforward spam (which like the old fax spam, costs recipients money), there was a whole ecosystem of fraudulent sign-ups to subscription services (sometimes called "cramming"). The telcos were forced to stop enabling that (at least allowing people to opt out) after settling some class-action suits.

> over the last few years many companies have adopted so-called arbitration clauses in which, simply by clicking the “accept terms” button, users waive their rights to join class actions. The move discourages plaintiffs’ lawyers because, unless they can sue on behalf of many clients at once, there is hardly any money in filing cases. “It may only be a matter of time before it is impossible for employees and consumers to file class actions,” Mr. Fitzpatrick said.

This is scary, especially considering that many of the big technology companies are monopolies over the types of services they provide, and we are forced to use them if we want to succeed in modern life.

Which companies are we forced to use to succeed in modern life?

Oil and water companies.

Did you read the post I was replying to? Because I don't think your response makes much sense in the context.

LinkedIn has one of the strongest cases.

I deleted my LinkedIn profile a long time ago and never looked back. I can't think of a better example of the meaningless that is only meaningful because other people say it is. I don't even think about LinkedIn unless it's mentioned here, that's how irrelevant to my life it is.

> meaningless that is only meaningful because other people say it is

Couldn't this also describe dollars (currency), bitcoins, pretty much any social media site, fashion and rules of hygiene (beyond what is merely sanitary)?

Yes LinkedIn is only meaningful because other people say it is. But it's meaningful and there are industries where people simply can not get hired without a LinkedIn profile.

Not at all. Things that have meaning have that meaning because other people actually want them. Money is a means of exchange, legitimized by government. It has a relevance that bitcoin does not have.

Plenty of things have conditional relevance. Hygiene matters as much as your aspirations to social status. Social media matters only so much as you want to connect with others. Fashion is hard to describe, but I believe it's ultimately meaningful. If you completely ignore fashion it does affect you in certain ways. Note that I'm not just referring to clothes, technology is filled with fads as well.

LinkedIn is bullshit. Bullshit you can and should ignore. I refuse to believe that there are entire industries that, collectively, firms in that industry won't even talk to you without such a profile. You can believe that, or you can believe that its your skills and ability to sell yourself that maintains your hireability.

Cellphones and credit cards.

Cellphones isn't a company; is there a monopolist provider? Where I live, we have three plus a few MVNOs.

As for CCs, are you really forced to have one to succeed in the US? According to a Gallop poll, 29% of Americans don't have any CC, though I assume that correlates pretty well with the poor and dispossessed.

In the US, you have to have a history of credit card use for any bank to give you credit. That's right, a history of credit card use, not a history of paying expenses on time. Credit in this context includes mortgages. It's insane.

This is how corporatuions engineer impunity for themselves to hurt people 300 - 400 dollars at a time. "Sure, you can get your 400 dollars back from us - just pay this arbitrator who we picked that sides with us 95 percent of the time 1000 dollars to hear your case."

In most cases, the company agrees to pay the arbitrator, so it's even worse. You're in private court where the judge is paid by your opponent. The statistics on how often outcomes go against the company are about where you'd expect them to be.

You don't have to pay, but good luck getting anything out of the 'neutral' arbitrator.

Any claim that someone waived their constitutional rights by clicking a button will collapse under even the most mild scrutiny.

Is there any precedent for arbitration clauses being thrown out? I didn't think there was (in fact, quite the opposite), and that that's why they've become so common in everyone's EULA.

If it had already been shown to be useless, why would they keep trying to use it?

I'm not really considering having a single clause thrown out. The entire concept of someone providing assent through a checkbox is highly suspect.

A company will be able to provide no evidence, which will stand up to even mild scrutiny, that I understood and assented to any language that they claim I did.

For instance, Facebook is going to bring a database row where they have set `agreed_to_terms_xyz` to 1 into evidence? Maybe, but I will either destroy that argument real quick or I will have Facebook's entire codebase brought into evidence and then tear it apart line-by-line.

I agree that the idea of providing assent via a checkbox is highly suspect.

But unfortunately I think the law is on their side on this one because: almost ever piece of software that I've seen that presents that checkbox refuses to continue with the installation unless it is selected. Therefor, if you have their software installed and are using it, you agreed to their terms or violated their copyright.

I'm not saying I agree with that line of reasoning, I'm just saying that's what I would expect their argument to be. And in court, I think they might unfortunately win with it.

That may well be true, but two things to think about in that regard:

1) You don't have a Constitutional right to have private companies not collect your data. You don't have a Constitutional right to sue those private companies if they use your data in ways you don't like. These may be important things, but they're not in the Constitution.

2) In fact, arbitration clauses are almost always enforceable. Once you check that box and click OK on a contract containing an arbitration clause, it's almost a sure thing that the court is going to enforce it. That's because of the Supreme Court's ultra-rigid interpretation of a law called the Federal Arbitration Act, and it's not going to change anytime soon. You can have a look at http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/AT%26T_Mobility_LLC_v._Concep... for an example of how it works.

Note That this is a recent case, decided 5-4 by the George W Bush Supreme Court, so it could be overturned by a future pro-consumer court.

Elections have consequences.

1) You have a constitutional right to bring suit against a private company if the amount in dispute exceeds $20.

2) The clauses are meaningless as the problem is with the lack of provable assent.

1) Negative. You do not. What you have is a right to a jury trial in a civil case, where a federal court has jurisdiction , that would have been brought before the courts of law (rather than equity) in England in 1789. In the case of class actions, if you don't have a federal law that authorizes your claim, you actually need $5 million in controversy before you can get into federal court.

2. This is only partially true. Yes, there might be a problem with assent, but it doesn't render the clauses meaningless. As far as I'm aware, so-called "clickwrap" contracts, where you agree to a contract by clicking, suffice to manifest assent in every state. Companies haven't been as successful arguing that they can prove assent based on a tiny "terms of service" link on the bottom of their page that you don't have to click to agree to (sometimes called "browsewrap"), but click-through contracts are pretty much valid. Yes, they're contracts of adhesion with a seemingly unfair power imbalance, but between pro-business judges and the pro-business UCC, this argument doesn't get far.

1) Not sure where you're coming from. If a company has damaged me for more than $20, I have a constitutional right to jury trial against them.

2. It is meaningless in the context of "you violated our language as pursuant to § 12 paragraph 10 sentence 4 clause 2 subsection c item 15" because their language never even makes into the case due to lack of provable assent. Claiming "clickwrap", "browsewrap", "click-through" or any other jargon doesn't help. You will need to provide the full source of the code that was actually ran and show that the user actually read, understood, and assented to whatever language you claim. This is basically impossible on many fronts: a) most companies don't track events in enough detail b) you'll never be able to prove those events actually happened c) even if you can prove that someone actually checked a box and pushed a button, you still can't prove someone actually read language and agreed to it.

1) I'm assuming you're getting that $20 figure from the Seventh Amendment, and while your interpretation seems reasonable and natural, it's not how the Seventh Amendment has been interpreted. First, the Seventh Amendment has never been applied to the states, so it doesn't give you any rights in your state's court. If Massachusetts wanted to amend its state constitution to abolish juries in civil cases in Massachusetts state courts, it could do so tomorrow.

As far as federal court goes, it only applies if the court has jurisdiction to hear your case. The Seventh Amendment tells us that you have the right to a jury if you get to trial (in certain circumstances), but it says nothing about whether the court is allowed to hear your case. Jurisdiction in federal courts is granted by Congressional statute (subject to the limits of Article III), and you only have a right to get into federal court if your case falls under one of these statutes. Otherwise, no federal court, and no Seventh Amendment.

2) I wish this were true, but unfortunately it's not. A contract can be valid even if you never read it and you didn't understand it. What's really important is that they can prove that you made an outward and objective manifestation of your assent to that contract. If the website is set up to require you to agree to terms of service before you create an account, then they prove that. Since you've probably already alleged that you created an account when you filed the lawsuit, you're probably stuck. If you read Judge Easterbrook's opinion in ProCD v. Zeidenberg (https://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=118110098054586...), you can get an idea of how that happens. Again, I think it's shitty, but that's how it works today.

1) Do you know of an instance of someone asserting >$20 damages and 7th amendment right to a jury trial being denied?

2) It may or may not be how it works today, but that is only because I have not made the argument (likewise, no one has asserted that I violated their language).

> If the website is set up to require

If a company wants to take the argument this far, they will have to produce all their code, including the code that was running the day they claim I assented. They will have to prove that it is not possible to use the software without assent of the user to their language.

1) Most companies will not produce their code (and likely won't be able to produce the code that you used) and will fail on their claim.

2) Most companies will not be able to prove that their code requires a user to assent before usage.

3) I can't imagine anything short of video evidence of a user staring at a screen, scrolling through all of their language, then considering their options and making a decision as proof of assent. The claimant just doesn't know what happened. Because, well, they weren't there and took no verifiable record of it.

As far as asserting more than $20 in damages and getting thrown out of court on jurisdiction: tons and tons and tons. Happens all the time. Here's an example: https://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=768942503267893.... This was back when the jurisdictional requirement for diversity cases was $50,000 (it's now $75,000). Plaintiff didn't allege enough damages, and he got thrown out of court.

You may want to reconsider your assertion that it works this way because you haven't made this argument in court. Lots and lots of people have tried to argue that clicking can't form a binding contract, and they lose. Have a look at https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q=clickwrap&btnG=&a... for gobs of cases where clickwrap contracts have been held valid and enforceable.

Here's what will happen after you file your lawsuit against the company with an arbitration clause. First, the company you're suing will file a motion to compel arbitration. You'll say "wait a minute, I didn't agree to shit." If you're lucky, the judge lets you do some limited discovery on the issue of whether you agreed. You'll get to take some discovery, but so will they. And what they'll do is take your deposition. That means that you have to show up for them to ask you questions under oath. This isn't in court in front of a jury, but you can't lie, and everything you say is recorded by the stenographer. Here's how that will go:

Q: Mr. Jsprogrammer, have you ever created an account on ZZ website? A: Yes. Q: And what is the username of that account? A: jsprogrammer. Q: When you created that account, did you use ZZ website? A: Yes. Q: I'm handing you now what's been marked for identification as exhibit 1. Do you recognize this? A: Yes. Q: What is it? A: It's the registration screen for ZZ website. Q: And is this how the screen appeared when you created your account? A: I don't know. Probably. Q: Would it be fair to say that it is at least very similar to the page that you saw? A: Yes, that would be fair to say. Q: On the document I handed you, do you see the checkbox next to the words "I agree to the terms of service."? A: Yes. Q: When you created your account, did you select that checkbox on the screen?

Now what do you do? You can say you don't remember. Or you can say yes, because you know you checked it. Or you can say no and commit perjury (not a good idea).

Deposition in hand, they'll amend their motion to compel arbitration. They'll include a sworn declaration from their developer lead, saying that there is literally no way to create an account without agreeing to the terms. They'll attach the terms, with a sworn declaration from the guy who's in charge of updating the terms saying that these were the terms, as they appeared, on the day you created your account. Finally, they'll attach your deposition, where you (if you didn't commit perjury) don't deny that you agreed to the terms.

So now what's the judge going to do? When the company refuses to turn over their source code and you ask the judge to make them turn it over, she is going to ask you why you didn't deny checking the box. You're not really going to have a good answer for that. Then, she's going to come to the natural conclusion: it's because you did check the box. Then the judge will dismiss the case, and you'll go to the arbitrator.

You're changing the target. As for your example, it doesn't appear that the plaintiff asserted 7th amendment rights to a jury trial. AFAIK a court will throw you out on the first technical violation.

As for the deposition, my answers would be that I have no idea if that screen was similar to any screen I saw on the vendor's site or what buttons I may have pushed (I may see dozens of these screens from multitudes of vendors in a single day) and would ask them if it was the exact same screen I was displayed when I visited their site, how they know, and what evidence they have that it is. I'd then ask them to turn over any evidence that they claim.

I don't believe I'm changing the target. I'm trying to explain that the way that you see the 7th Amendment -- as giving you an ultimate right to a jury trial in all civil cases over $20 -- is simply not what the 7th Amendment does. You can make this argument, that you've asserted $20 in damages and you want your jury, but you will lose. If you would like to see your argument addressed specifically by a court, in the context of arbitration, have a look at https://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=842506548303475....

As far as your deposition goes, you don't get to ask any questions. It will last all day, all you get to do is answer questions. You get to ask questions when you take depositions, and you can ask all of the questions that you mentioned, but it won't get you far. After all the discovery is done, they're going to have pretty good circumstantial evidence that you checked the checkbox by virtue of signing up for the account, and you're going to have literally no evidence showing that you didn't. This is not going to make the judge believe you.

Look, at the end of the day, here's what you're up against: 1) a strong policy in favor of arbitration agreements (courts use those exact words in their decisions), 2) a judge who wants cases of her docket, 3) big business with limitless lawyering resources who want to make absolutely sure that the arbitration clause will be enforced.

I'm not saying that you can't beat it. It's possible, and sometimes companies do lose on their motions to compel arbitration. But what I am saying is that you will usually lose. This is a really, really bad thing for consumer rights, and it allows businesses to engage in flagrant unlawful and fraudulent activity with no fear that they will ever have to answer for it out of their wallets. The solution to this problem is not to cover your eyes and ears, ignore the doctrine, and insist that you can beat these clauses in court. You can't. The answer is to get Congress to crack down on predatory arbitration clauses so that businesses have to answer for their wrongdoing in courts like the rest of us do. Maybe that's just as lofty a goal, but at least it recognizes that there is a problem, and it needs to be fixed.

I should add that what I'm trying to illustrate here is that arbitration clauses are a big problem. Arbitration is a stacked deck, and consumers always lose. They lose even when they win, since you can only arbitrate your individual claim.

The clauses are very difficult to fight in court, and they deprive consumers of rights they don't even know they're giving up. Arbitration effectively allows companies to bilk consumers out of money and then make it so expensive to recover that the consumer (or her lawyer) won't bother. It's legal, and it's constitutional, but damn is it shitty.

If this guy can in fact put Spokeo out of business I would like to volunteer to buy him his first round of drinks in celebration.

Making lemonade out of lemons: Is there a list anywhere that tells you about all of the privacy laws you need to be aware of (eg. the Illinois Biometric one) and/or a known-good base privacy policy that a bootstrapper can use?

I don't think there can be a one-size-fits-all solution, because what laws you need to be aware depends on where you plan to operate. Within the US only, or internationally? In which parts of the US - I understand there are different laws regarding these things in differen states? And internationally, where? You might even have to choose, because it is conceivable that something which is mandatory in one country is forbidden in another.

Seems like a specialized consulting firm that gave advice on how best to craft and present your privacy policy (which as the article explains some laws stipulate conditions or items that must be presented to end users) based on jurisdictions would do very well. A lot of up-front cost in legal research which could then be amortized across multiple clients.

What you are describing is called a law firm.

Yes, obviously. But that's like referring to a pit crew as "a bunch of mechanics". Technically correct but ultimately not very useful.

Not every firm wants to specialize in this though, and a specialized firm would provide a lot of value. I imagine some exist, but obviously they either aren't very popular, aren't very good, or are ignored.

I'm glad somebody is doing this.

I think, if they knew, most people wouldn't be happy with how their private data is being used by tech companies.

>“Money doesn’t mean a ton,” Mr. Edelson said during an interview in the lobby of the Four Seasons hotel in San Francisco, wearing a watch whose face was loaded with diamond flecks.

Well played.

It doesn't mean he's being dishonest. If I was making 7-8 figures a year I'd own some expensive things too. It doesn't mean that money would be my primary driver though.

Whatever it means, the reporter was implying he's full of shit.

Insinuating, not implying. Which is poir journalism.

>Asked to sum up the tech community’s feelings about Mr. Edelson, Sam Altman, president of Y Combinator, a technology incubator that invests in very young companies, said the lawyer was regarded as “a leech tarted up as a freedom fighter.”

I guess that means even leeches have their societal uses.

Mr Altman certainly has learned Mr Graham's knack for putting his foot in his mouth.

There are better ways to disagree with someone who made a career of fighting for the public interest, even if he might threaten your investments in crapware bundlers or Craigslist spammers.

Somewhat offtopic but yes, leeches are in fact societally useful: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leeches#Medicinal_use_of_leech...

Is there any evidence companies have modified their behavior in response to these lawsuits?

PSA. This article is about Jay Edelson.

You may also be interested to learn about Ben Edelman, who famously does similar sort of work.

> Sam Altman, president of Y Combinator, a technology incubator that invests in very young companies, said the lawyer was regarded as “a leech tarted up as a freedom fighter.”

"Tarted?" Feel the homophobic side of the Force, Sam. As long as "track people as much as you can, under a EULA that gives you all the rights you can imagine" is a business model, Jay Edelson is necessary.

A “tart” is a prostitute or sexually promiscuous woman. From this we get “tarted up," to adorn, dress, or decorate, especially in a flamboyant manner. “Tarted up” is nearly always used opprobriously.

I find no factual basis for your claim that Mr. Altman made a homophobic remark. You are welcome to refile suit on the basis that he perpetuated sexist stereotypes via slut-shaming language.

> A “tart” is a prostitute or sexually promiscuous woman.

Right. What do you think Sam meant when he called this man a "sexually promiscuous woman?"

When used in conjunction with leech and freedom fighter that doesn't even make sense. You have a particular interpretation of the term in your head, but that doesn't mean that's how it was intended to be taken.

The precise same thing as when the Bush administration was accused of "sexing up" its claims about Iraqi WMDs.

To respond with precision, “tarted up” doesn’t literally mean to be a tart, but to dress up like a tart. Thus it is that you can “tart up” even inanimate objects, e.g. “they’re really tarted this restaurant up."

Delicious pastries are saddened by this comment thread.

I think it was meant as sexual thing, as the preceding (leech) and the following (freedom fighter) terms are not sexual, nor necessarily even human, in nature.

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