I’m not really big on “let’s make a movement”, but this independent dev has been hit with a cease-and-desist from making a FOSS Home Assistant addon for their Haier air conditioners.
Haier claims that they are losing out on millions of dollars due to this plugin which… lets you control their air conditions from home assistant. They haven’t bothered to explain how that’s possibly worth millions of dollars - they’re just claiming it.
So of course they hit the Streisand button and are demanding that he takes it down. He of course is complying… in a couple of days. Maybe you see where this is going.
It would be an absolute shame if any of you just happened to create a fork, or clone the code, or mirror it in your own instance. An absolute shame.
Just so everyone here knows which repositories NOT to clone or fork, here are the two links:
and please, don’t repost this anywhere, or share it in other communities, or anything like that. It’s a shame that so many people already know and are making clones. I’m just letting you know so you don’t do anything like telling others who may make their own copies.
(sidenote: Haier owns GE Appliance, so for our American folks it may affect you folks too)
I hate how cease and desist are essentially blackmail. Even if you did nothing wrong, you can still get fucked over by costs of a potential legal battle.
It’s a bigger problem in the States than elsewhere. In the US, awarding legal costs is the exception, not the norm, so someone with a lot of money and access to lawyers can basically intimidate a defendent into avoiding court. In the rest of the world, courts are much more likely to award costs to a defendent who has done nothing wrong - if you file a frivilous lawsuit and lose, you’ll probably have to pay the costs of the person you tried to sue.
This guy’s in Germany, so I think he’d be alright if he clearly won. The issue, however, is that courts aren’t really equipped for handling highly technical cases and often get things wrong.
But the defendant still has to put the funds up in the first place? It’s a huge gamble and most people don’t even have the ante available.
Is there anywhere in the world that has a robust and comprehensive public funding for legal entanglements of all types?
But the defendant still has to put the funds up in the first place? It’s a huge gamble
Good point. Actually it isn’t a huge gamble in Germany, other than in Usa (which is again the extremely worst example).
Costs of legal defense are moderate. There is a public tariff for lawyer costs and for court fees. So the only areas where you even have a chance to spend huge amounts are finding or creating evidence (private investigators etc), or hiring too many lawyers.
Yes they do have to fund their defense to begin with, however there has to be some balance struck. Until the court proceedings are concluded it isn’t known which side is in the right.
I think most countries’ public funding for legal representation is limited to criminal matters, and even then you have to qualify (eg have a very low income or be unemployed). With civil matters, it’s up to you to find a lawyer you can afford, or one who will take it on pro bono.
If the defendent is obviously in the right, then it should be more likely that they can find a lawyer who will work pro bono.
I’ll just leave this here…
lol I love it. You’d think by now people/companies would be aware of this…
The thing is, what most people aren’t aware of is the amount of times the Streisand effect doesn’t happen.
Yeah. This is going to be noticed in Tech blogs and news sites, but it wont make it to the mainstream news. Even if some mainstream newspaper might notice it and want to write a small article about it, they most likely will repeat the corporate response about some evil hacker messing with their product.
I see 803 forks currently, keep up the good work!
Even their Wikipedia page mentions it, I love it.
There we go. Haier is now on my personal “do not ever buy from” list. Congratulations, Haier.
