What we did when a patent troll asked for our help

http://www.lessannoyingcrm.com/articles/262/What_we_did_when_a_patent_troll_asked_for_our_help

by mojowo11 • 14 years ago

83 98 14 years ago

Domenic_S• 14 years ago

> At least for now, we use the law as our guide [...] since it is the point at which these issues cease to be a matter of opinion. Of course, if you’re an asshole, you'll still get the boot—that policy remains firmly in place.

So you're objective until someone makes you mad. Got it.

mojowo114• 14 years ago

We're pretty patient with anything up until the point of what is obviously verbal abuse. Frustration is obviously a reality of customer service, and we understand that. I think we've maybe only politely urged one person to try out other options in the eight months I've been with the company, and generally if someone reaches the point of being genuinely mean, they're not going to use the software anyway.

I see your point, however, and I won't pretend that there's not a little bit of cognitive dissonance there.

jarrett5• 14 years ago

I think his point is that he'll kick someone who makes trouble for his business. Someone who is a jerk in their life outside that particular business relationship get a pass, provided they don't break the law. That seems like a very rational policy.

huhtenberg• 14 years ago

Am I missing something? I want my two minutes back.

  > What we did when a patent troll asked for our help?

  I gave the patent troll a demo of our system, complete 
  with genuine recommendations about how he could best 
  track his entire process from start to end. ... While 
  we did set up customization for him, ...

stephengillie2• 14 years ago

This is just a publicity stunt for this company. It's an ad.

"Oh hey look, we have patent trolls using our product"

motters• 14 years ago

If you're running a software business then it's probably not a great idea to actively assist people who are trying to damage the software business with trolling behavior. It would be self-defeating.

It's a slightly different situation when dealing with other people whose views or activities you might not entirely concur with. In most cases their activities won't be directly harming your industry.

mojowo114• 14 years ago

This is pretty much what we struggled with -- at one point, we thought about how dumb we would feel if we did everything we could to streamline the guy's workflow and then received one of his letters demanding payment.

That's another interesting place to draw the line, though -- self-preservation, or at least protection of your own industry. It's pretty compelling, although it still feels a bit odd to be protective of only one's own industry, while being okay with things that might be destructive to others. Hm.

CamperBob22• 14 years ago

That's another interesting place to draw the line, though -- self-preservation, or at least protection of your own industry.

Arguably this could be justified the same way you would justify refusing to support drug dealers, even though you disagree with the War on Some Drugs. Your only justification for turning down such business (as I understand it) is that you can't accept the risk of having the whole company shut down by law enforcement. Not many people would take you to task for that reasoning, I suspect, and it would be easy to dismiss those who do.

It's easy to argue that software patents carry the same existential threat as law enforcement would. At first blush it seems reasonable to write this into your TOS: I agree that I will not assert any patent claims as a non-practicing entity. I agree that my account with lessannoyingcrm.com will be terminated without recourse if I assert any such claims in a court of law, or threaten to do so.

The problem is, you've only narrowed your ethical dilemma -- you haven't eliminated it. What if the patent troll in question was instead offering to buy your company for 100x revenue? What if the patent troll in question was (e.g.) Google or Apple? Would you have the fortitude to tell them to pound sand then? Google may be a good example, in fact, because they've probably already found it necessary (or soon will) to threaten other companies like Microsoft and Oracle with patents that they don't practice, but have purchased for defensive purposes.

If you had turned down the patent troll's business, you would indeed have found yourself in an even murkier ethical swamp, so in that sense you did the right thing. Out of all of the entrepreneurs I've known in a long career spent in and around small companies, I only know one founder with the personal fortitude to tell a patent troll to get bent. I don't expect to meet any others, because I'm not sure you can build a large, successful company around strong personal convictions in the general case.

anonymoushn• 14 years ago

It's a shame that your ToS is worded in such a way that his line of reasoning causes you to turn away legitimate businesses that create actual value (like drug dealers) to instead help racketeers.

Edit: Turning away illegal businesses and helping unethical businesses is probably rational, even if it is not good. I don't think we can expect a higher standard from people who set out to make a business.

andrewcooke2• 14 years ago

but why can't you be arbitrary (within the confines of the law)? particularly a small company. you don't have to justify your actions - just don't work with people you don't want to. why does it have to be consistent or logical? just say "fuck em" and move on...

what, in short, is so bad about being faithful to what you feel?

mojowo114• 14 years ago

You might be right. As much as telling this guy to fuck off would have felt great, though, it also felt wrong to us to inject our opinions into it. But, well, I could probably be convinced by your perspective, too -- which is why I wrote this post.

I suppose one consideration would be a legal one. We're not legal experts, and for some entities, turning them away for being distasteful or what they believe -- based on what we feel -- could be considered discrimination.

And finally, we think having some consistency is pretty important. Sure, we could just do this case-by-case and that, frankly, would be pretty nice. But it's also not really fair to our users, I think, who should know that we work with some kind of framework in making decisions so that they don't have to worry about us getting pissed off and shutting down their account for (what they see as) insufficient reason.

andrewcooke2• 14 years ago

you misread my "fuck em" - i don't for a moment think you should be rude to them: simply don't co-operate.

i'm not a legal expert either, but i am pretty sure that legislation related to discrimination is based on specific attributes (race, color, religion, sex or national origin for the us civil rights act). and being a spammer is very unlikely to be a reason for protection under such laws.

consistency is important if you're doing this enough for it to be noticed. if it's one person in the history of your firm, you could have quietly stalled and no-one would have been any the wiser. instead, you decide to support a spammer and profit from hits on your blog. from that viewpoint you don't come across as a great company, to me...

brelsnok• 14 years ago

Exactly. The writer is looking for a 'rule' that defines wrong and right. Maybe to look for a strict pattern is the nature of a software developer but it doesn't always apply. Especially not in ethics I think.

kriro• 14 years ago

I think every business should be opinionated to some degree. Call it ethics if you must.

I would snapcancel that account but not snoop around in data and actively try to find people that offend me to boot them.

If they tell you they do something that you have ethical objections against shut down their account. Just imagine how you'd feel if he'd use your system to troll 5k people.

I think the law shouldn't be your ultimate guideline it should be your moral and ethical standards in combination with the law.

CWuestefeld• 14 years ago

Agreed. The 1st Amendment is not a guarantee that any jerk can say anything he wants. It is only a restriction on government interfering.

The framers of the Constitution didn't want people putting up pornographic billboards on every carriage path. They just didn't trust the government to be the ones making the call.

Instead, they entrusted the ethics of society to ... society at large. If somebody says something that we feel is offensive, it's not censorship to speak out, or even to refuse that person the use of your resources to facilitate his speech.

So I think that this was an incorrect decision. The OP has abdicated his right and responsibility to act as a moral member of our society, instead electing to follow a libertine philosophy of "if I can do it, there's no reason I shouldn't".

dfxm12• 14 years ago

You know, jury nullification is a thing. One aspect of this is when there is evidence to convict someone of a crime, the jury may choose to not convict if they feel the law is not just. This is a power granted to citizens (of the USA) to help us govern ourselves in in case our legal system becomes unjust or corrupt.

You are in the position of (some) power. By knowingly choosing to to help someone do something unethical, you contribute to furthering unethical behavior. Also, what is the difference between "a jerk ... speaking up" and "an asshole"? Is an asshole still an asshole if their business is legal?

I think you should reconsider your sign. It shouldn't say We reserve the right to refuse service to anyone, it should say Greed is good. Remember, all that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. Don't get me wrong, there's nothing wrong with making money, but don't try and rationalize your ethics away.

mcherm5• 14 years ago

> This is a power granted to citizens

Technically, no. Jury nullification is an unavoidable consequence of the fact that juries are not required to explain their reasoning. But it can only happen when a jury ignores a judge's instructions (which will say to base the decision on the existing law).

> it should say Greed is good. [...] Don't get me wrong, there's nothing wrong with making money, but don't try and rationalize your ethics away.

Maybe you read a different article than I did? In the article you read, the employees at LessAnnoying got together by the water cooler and talked about how they'd LOVE to eject EvilTroll, but couldn't make payroll at the end of the month without his business. In the one I read, they didn't give a hoot about EvilTroll's money, but wanted to avoid engaging in content-based censorship.

jeremyarussell8• 14 years ago

You should replace technically with expressly. As it is technically given to American citizens, just not expressly told to them that they have this inherent right.

gravitronic• 14 years ago

This is a great post because you go in expecting "we kicked that patent troll to the curb! Yeah!" and it turns out instead to be a reasoned set of implications of running a service-based business.

pnathan• 14 years ago

Reading the OP carefully, it is clear there are a lot of implications that can be derived from choosing to limit service outside of what the law requires.

As a thought experiment: Suppose Oracle and Google show up and want the service. Oracle is known to be an aggressive company with respect to business and so the company denies Oracle... but accepts Google since Google is friendlier. Does Oracle have grounds for suing ? I don't know. IANAL. But if I was in their position, I would be concerned until I consulted a lawyer.

What about other entities: political parties you disagree with? activist groups you disagree with? businesses who have unsavoury practices?

Put anther way, what can you legally say 'no' to, and what will get you sued for denying them?

If you can provide a straightfoward notice "no patent trolls" (enforceable in court), does that insulate you?

Again, I don't know. But it would give me pause to ponder if (when?) I am in the position of providing services.

--- more thoughts---

If you take the onus of determining who is moral onto your shoulders, you take responsibility for the inevitable screwup. And with that, you ensure that you will be arbitrary when you notice that one entity is an exception to your existing rules. You have to modify the rules, and that angers people (notice Blizzard's forums anytime changes come

Where the line? Where the exceptions? How to handle it? out!) This is a scaling problem.

Can you get away with not overthinking it and simply kicking the odiousness to the curb and hope that the scaling problem won't manifest?

DanBC• 14 years ago

What do you do if you're in a country where the law allows evil acts?

the_bear8• 14 years ago

(I work at the Less Annoying CRM)

Since a few people have brought up similar points, I'd like to address them here. My gut instinct was to tell the patent troll to fuck off. I still wish we had done that. But that would set a terrible precedent and turn us into something that I hate: the App Store

Pretty much everyone here hates how arbitrary and opaque the approval system is in the App Store. It seems like there's a post on HN almost every day ranting about this. If we don't have a clear set of guidelines for what we will and won't allow, how can any of our customers trust our service?

Another example: many of us are worried that Google might randomly shut down our accounts. This would be devastating. I'm sure that Google normally only shuts down accounts with good cause, but they still are developing a reputation for being a company you can't trust. We can't afford to give our customers a reason to worry about that happening with our service.

So the question is, is there a way to tell the patent troll to go screw himself without jeopardizing our trustworthiness with our real customers?

mojowo114• 14 years ago

(Yeah, this is actually our CEO, Tyler.)

stephengillie2• 14 years ago

You definitely showed all of us that your moral compass is tightly bound to the law. Instead of telling this despicable customer to leave, you gave him the grand tour.

Your blog post could have been an explanation of your reasoning and moral outrage, making you look better while providing transparency for your customers to trust.

alain94040• 14 years ago

That would have been the easy way out. feel good. But read the post again carefully, and you'll understand why vetting each customer is not a viable solution. Comparisons to the App Store are warranted.

the_bear8• 14 years ago

Do you think that Reddit is immoral for allowing many despicable people to hold conversations about despicable topics? This community is normally all about a free and open internet, where companies like Google, Facebook, etc. aren't trying to control what their users can do with their technology.

Trust me, I don't feel good about helping a patent troll. I just don't see any sort of justifiable policy that would allow for us to act any differently.

We will definitely re-evaluate the decision though. This is a tough one, and we're not in love with our current solution.

harshreality• 14 years ago

I don't think you have to worry about being compared to the App Store or Google when you cancel accounts of patent trolls.

When you run a business, you have to regard yourself as a building block for other people to rely on to build their productivity, their own business, or their own ideas. If customers have to be fearful of pissing off the owner of a service they're using, that has a chilling effect on progress.

However, when a customer's actions or business model directly threatens those ideals you're trying to uphold -- helping people to improve their own productivity or offer better products or services themselves -- then I think you have ethical grounds to ban them as long as you have a human process to handle mistakes.

The main complaint about Google and Apple is that interacting with them is Kafkaesque. An occasional false positive is acceptable if the company has a process to resolve them fairly... a process that doesn't require the customer to get blogtweetHN traction before the company opens a dialogue.

eridius4• 14 years ago

> a process that doesn't require the customer to get blogtweetHN traction before the company opens a dialogue.

To be fair, I don't think I've ever seen a story where someone complained about an App Store rejection, and that story led to an approval. Typically the story is accompanied by other action, such as actually talking to the App Store review board, and it's the other action that leads to the approval.

donohoe• 14 years ago

  Can you turn away an account based on their “religious” beliefs, 
  however ridiculous, hateful, or exploitative you may find them? 
  Shut down? Answer: No.

For brevity, lets focus on this one example. I would not refuse service based on religious beliefs. But thats missing the point.

I would refuse service based on the actions of the organization.

From that standpoint I think you ultimately made the wrong decision based on providing service to the patent troll. You should reconsider.

  So the question is, is there a way to tell the
  patent troll to go screw himself without
  jeopardizing our trustworthiness with our real customers?

First, thats not the question you're answering. You don't tell anyone to go screw himself.

The question should be: "Is there a polite way to decline service?"

Yes. Its easy and you can explaining it nicely in a few short paragraphs that don't tell anyone to go screw them-self. (Much shorter than a blog post I suspect).

Your blog post, by the way, basically told me your company has no moral compass.

moldbug• 14 years ago

The App Store isn't evil because it filters. It's evil because it's a monopoly filter.

If there were lots of competing App Stores with their own beliefs, filters, prejudices, ideologies, etc - no problem. Of course this is exactly the case in the CRM industry.

So your conscience should be patting itself on the back, not beating itself up, when it tells a patent troll to go fsck a porcupine. This is exactly the purpose of a conscience: telling you to do what's right, regardless of the official structure of law in your era and country. Patent trolls aren't illegal, but they're evil, and it's wrong to collaborate voluntarily with evil. If the powers that be force you to collaborate, of course, that's something else...

technomancy• 14 years ago

> Patent trolls aren't illegal, but they're evil

If you use Douglas Crockford's JSON library, then arguably its license could make you turn them down on legal grounds: http://dev.hasenj.org/post/3272592502/ibm-and-its-minions =)

minhajuddin2• 14 years ago

You just need to be transparent about your reasons. Just add a clause which prevents Patent Trolls from using your app. People are angry at the App store because they are blocking genuine apps. You can't compare your situation to the App Store or Google, they both have a huge user base, the advantage of being a small company is that nobody is going to notice that you asked a Patent Troll to stop using your app, and if they did it would only improve your image.

larrys• 14 years ago

"So the question is, is there a way to tell the patent troll to go screw himself without jeopardizing our trustworthiness with our real customers?"

(further down in this thread you also said):

"Trust me, I don't feel good about helping a patent troll. I just don't see any sort of justifiable policy that would allow for us to act any differently."

Doesn't need to be "justifiable". "Justifiable" to?

You are, as was said by the sheriff played by Roy Schieder In Jaws "the Chief of Police". And you're not a large corporation (yet) where you have to issue a memo which says "don't sell to patent trolls " either.

You can do whatever you want to deflect or keep any business and nobody needs to know about it. You can simply be passive aggressive with any customer. You don't return phone calls. You don't setup demo dates. You don't get back to them without pricing or details or answers to questions they have. Almost everyone will leave and just think you are a typical non-responsive business and they will go elsewhere. Or you can quote them a high price to scare them away. There are dozens of "not in the book" ways you can get people to not give you business. Bad service is only one. It's not that hard. And you don't have to announce it to the world or justify it to anyone. It's done quietly.

This happens everyday in business for many reasons (that don't even have to do with anything objectionable). A salesman will spend his time with someone who is going to give him more business and be lackadaisical with someone that appears to be a trifler. Lawyers will build their business with any client then they will thin those clients by being less responsive and/or jacking up billing rates. The clients leave. They don't announce "you are not important anymore". It just happens.

Added: "jeopardizing our trustworthiness with our real customers"

The point is to do it where the other customers don't know you are doing this. I'm assuming there are many things in your business everyday that you don't reveal to current customers.

tzs• 14 years ago

How did he know they were a patent troll? From the description, they sound like the original owner of the patent, the patent appears to be newly granted, and we don't know if they are practicing the patent themselves or not.

There is some variation in the meaning of "patent troll", but an original owner practicing the patent promptly going after people who infringe is not a patent troll under most accepted definitions.

the_bear8• 14 years ago

We received an email from the user outlining their entire business. They weren't the most extreme example of a patent troll (where you can't even tell what company it is) but they didn't seem to have any real products, and their use of the CRM would be entirely for managing the victims of their lawsuits.

This is kind of the point of the post though. We hated the idea of letting this person use our software, but is it really our place to make those decisions? Things are rarely black and white.

Having said that, I'm really glad this guy didn't stick around.

zacharyvoase• 14 years ago

I semi-agree with what you did in this case, and here's why.

If you had spontaneously canceled his account, without having stipulated what kind of behaviour you find unacceptable in the Terms of Service beforehand, he could rightfully accuse you of being capricious and arbitrary. As a customer, that kind of action on your part would definitely make me think twice before signing up. Even though I'm not a patent troll, what if you some day decided that what I was using it for was also unacceptable? Speaking of the letter of the law, the ToS that you both agreed to didn't mention anything about patent trolling being out of bounds.

What I would do in future is maintain a list of un-OK uses as a schedule to the ToS, but grandfather existing clients into the old ToS (perhaps with a 30 day grace period, allowing customers to export all of their data). In the case of customers using the software to do things you don't like, rather than terminate their account, just politely ask them to take their custom elsewhere (with no obligation to do so). I think you'll find that most people would rather be where they're wanted.

Caveat: IANAL. You might not be able to do that sort of thing (although I'm nearly sure you can).

rada• 14 years ago

TL;DR

1. We reject customers who speak harshly about our software. They hurt our feelings, and we simply won't stand for that.

2. We welcome customers who rob and kill as a matter of business. If it satisfies minimum legal requirements, we are happy to make a buck.

3. We are so proud of our reasoning ability that we are going on record to say that we welcome patent trolls and the Ku Klux Klan.

aculver• 14 years ago

The content of the post was not at all what I expected.

The funny thing about principles is they're easy to have when they're not being tested. For example:

"'I really don’t want this guy’s money,' Tyler said at one point. We’re glad not to have it."

That's a lot easier to say when the offer of money is no longer on the table. I'm not sure at what point that was actually said, but in the article it comes after giving this guy a demo of the system, making genuine recommendations about his entire process, and doing actual customization work for the guy.

Patent trolling aside, using the law of the land to justify going against your personal conscience is a horrible idea.

mcherm5• 14 years ago

> using the law of the land to justify going against your personal conscience

I don't see it that way at all. Their personal consciences recoiled at providing support for a patent troll and they recoiled at imposing censorship based on the content of a client's messages. They had to reconcile these two opposing attacks of conscience.

kkowalczyk2• 14 years ago

Refusing a service to someone you don't like, for whatever reason, is not censorship, so there is no conflict of ethics.

The line is less clear when the company is in a position of great power (e.g. Google in search, Apple in smartphones) but it's clear that e.g. restaurant can have a dress code (which is frivolous) and refuse service if you don't comply with that dress code and an insignificant crm business can refuse you service for any reason whatsoever. It's not censorship because there's another restaurant just around the corner and another crm product a click away.

The article is framed as some epic battle of ethics but all I get from it is that $10/month is deciding factor in their decisions. They don't want the money from patent trolls but they'll take it if given.

the_bear8• 14 years ago

To be clear, we tell customers all the time that they shouldn't use our software. Each customer is worth $10/month, so it's not worth having people on the system that don't belong. This wasn't about the money at all, it was about the precedent it would set. How do we convince our other users that they can trust us if we're arbitrarily booting users because we disagree with them.

jeremyarussell8• 14 years ago

They would start trusting you on your principals, if they didn't agree and you lost a customer, then it's a customer that didn't line up with what you as a person line up with, and therefore you shouldn't be worried about them.

Edit: Didn't really wrap up my final thought.

seanica• 14 years ago

I was expecting a punchline such as, "The troll, on seeing the implementation of our feature set has notified our lawyers that we are infringing on his patent"

mcherm5• 14 years ago

Thank you for posting this. It was one of the most thought-provoking things I have seen on HN for weeks.

darklajid• 14 years ago

This had made HN and had the chance to win a lot of sympathy.

You backed down. That's fine, and - being no business owner or part of a startup myself, I'm clueless - maybe required. Maybe you just can't afford to alienate customers, especially as a small shop.

That said: You asked for an opinion. The idealist in me (see previous paragraph's disclaimer) would boot all of your imaginary customers. I DO believe, naively, that most people are good - or maximum chaotic neutral. In the grand scheme of things there aren't so many assholes to ignore and kick out.

But the list you presented, including the patent troll? Yeah, all of them should go. Politely, with recommendations maybe/help with the migration. No problem. But no, you cannot stay. We're sorry, but our company codex doesn't allow that.

Now THAT would've impressed me.

jeremyarussell8• 14 years ago

If it was me...

My ToS would have an ethics clause in it, that if it becomes known to us you are doing something I may find unscrupulous then me and my staff have a right to refuse to help you on a personal basis. I'd hate to make any of my people have to help someone they find unethical.

It is a hard question to answer though, but I think harder to answer after you are established, and therefore should be asked by every new startup that wasn't planning on having an ethics portion to their ToS.

the_bear8• 14 years ago

That's actually what we thought at first, but there's a problem. Doesn't that encourage our legitimate customers to not use our customer service? If someone is running a political campaign, they can't risk asking us a question because we might not agree with their beliefs. How can we have that policy without leaving all of our real customers in a constant state of fear that we might ban them because of our own beliefs?

jeremyarussell8• 14 years ago

You could list explicitly what all you find ethically objectionable. Transparency allows for honesty and a much more fluid system.

Allowing for each employee to be able to make that call can find you some middle ground.

Lets take your political campaign example, if a democratic pro-choice advocacy group wanted to use your CRM, but your support guy/girl doing that gets the call is pro-life, she/he should be allowed to say, hey I'm sorry but someone else needs to take this for me, I can't do this. Now really that should be every company, but let it be known in your ToS that you reserve the right to not force an employee to do something they don't find agreeable with their ethics.

If it happens that ALL of your employees hate patent trolls to the extent that none of them will help then simply tell the customer that they won't be able to get help.

I can appreciate how hard of a question it is, censorship versus ethics. But, maybe it'll help to think of it this way, as a company you don't want to censor your customers, but at what point do you realize that in violating your own ethics you are allowing someone else to censor you.

It's a tough call either way, I don't begrudge you the choice you made as it seems you put a lot of thought into it.

jarrett5• 14 years ago

A lot of this discussion seems to boil down to several key issues:

1. Should you ever refuse service to someone because you disapprove of their lawful activities? 2. If so, where do you draw the line? 3. If so, how do you deal with the fact that you can only enforce the policy when a customer's activities are specifically brought to your attention?

To answer #1, I'd make an analogy to the social responsibility rules some companies voluntarily impose on themselves. (Some companies say they will only buy from vendors who meet certain fair labor standards. Others say they will only buy from environmentally friendly vendors. Et cetera.)

Refusing service based on an ethical principle is very similar to these types of policies, except you're declining to sell something instead of buy. Companies that follow these rules are generally lauded for it. Likewise, companies that are perceived as not doing so are criticized. (Think of Apple's relationship with Foxconn.)

So I think it's pretty safe from a P.R. standpoint to refuse service based on ethical principles. You might have to ditch a handful of paying customers, but if your business model is about volume, it's probably not going to matter.

As for the ethical imlications of refusing service, I say that nobody is entitled to use your service any more than you're entitled to customers. So I don't see a problem there.

Question #2 is harder. Where do you draw the line? I'd say that's up to each company to decide, but here are some reasonable examples of things you might forbid:

- Patent trolls

- Hate groups

- Technically lawful but sleezy stuff, e.g. certain infoproducts

The exact list a company chooses would of course depend on the subjective ethical beliefs of its leadership. Which is fine--it's their company. In any case, it's very important to clearly state these rules in the TOS. You really don't want to be seen as capricious, and it's not fair to your customers, even the evil ones.

Question #3 is probably the hardest. As the OP pointed out, you can't just dig through your customers' data, looking for possible violations. So you'd have to wait until something was brought to your attention. And then, as the OP said, you'd have de facto tolerance for offenders who don't speak up. Which seems kind of unfair.

But here, I'd make an analogy to the TOS rules concerning criminal activity. There must be tons of people using legitimate web services for crime. Occassionally, some of these are discovered, and their accounts are terminated. The rest get away with it.

I doubt anyone would say you should ignore reports of criminal activity just because some other crime goes unreported. So I think the same applies to these ethical restrictions.

the_bear8• 14 years ago

I think this is a great summary, but it misses one key point. There's a big difference between refusing to buy a product from someone you find unethical and refusing to sell a product to someone you find unethical. The difference how this impacts all of the other potential buyers/sellers out there who are ethical.

Google and Facebook ban people's accounts all the time for doing things they find disagreeable, and they certainly aren't lauded for it. Instead, we all live in a constant state of fear that Google might ban our accounts because we didn't use our real name, or we're showing a middle finger in our profile picture, etc.

drostie• 14 years ago

I agree somewhat and I disagree somewhat. At one point, I helped to moderate a religious discussion community, several hundred listed members. The Community Founders had set up a bunch of odd rules which sort of made sense given the history. For example, when you mix religion and Internet, civility becomes an issue. But after some situations where both of the insult-flingers were telling the mods "hey, cut it out, we're having fun here!" they had decided that we would only get involved when someone complained. That worked until people started trolling other members and then tried to complain when they were abused in return, as if they hadn't been trying to pick a fight in the first place. So they had also decreed that we might issue warnings for wasting our time, to get rid of these new trolls. But then people became afraid of complaining, because this process was difficult to make honest and transparent.

The "lower level" mods among us mostly tried to keep the peace without disciplinary actions, then: we would just say, "hey, this discussion is getting too heated: cool down, come back tomorrow, we're all humans here." This wasn't too bad, but some of our mods had these sorts of "itching-for-a-showdown" personalities, and I guess people always were a little worried about the powers we technically held. In the end it was gaining a reputation for being too abrasive, which meant good-hearted religious people didn't come by anymore. It reminded me of nothing so much as Sartre's statement, "we have the war we deserve."

I guess the lesson that I'm trying to articulate is that, especially in Internet communities, transparency is necessary to alleviate fear, but inaction can lead to your community passively falling astray from its goals, discouraging the members who you want.

When community is at stake, as it is in Facebook and Google, there is a higher-order priority. You have to decrease worldsuck and foster awesome[1]. That is a somewhat arbitrary priority, and creating rules and transparency around it can seem like an impossible task.

[1] Cheers, nerdfighters.

jarrett5• 14 years ago

If Google and Facebook have clear TOS terms forbidding the middle figure and pseudonyms, then I don't see anything wrong with them enforcing those guidelines. (Provided of course they don't ban people who they incorrectly deem to be in violation, which is a whole other can of worms.)

Likewise, if you have clear TOS terms regarding prohibited activities like patent trolling, then patent trolls should just refrain from signing up. I don't see what would cause the "state of fear" provided customers are clear on what the rules are.

bo1024• 14 years ago

1 is still hard because it implies vetting your customers based on intent. So basically you have a blank on your signup form asking why they want to use X, and then you reject them if they write the wrong thing? Seems fishy. Likewise, what if you suddenly find out a loyal customer of N years has been using your service nefariously?

I guess one approach is to have a Terms of Service, but in this case, what would it say? "You agree not to do anything we disapprove of." Seems like a tough road to go down.

jarrett5• 14 years ago

This is why I suggest having the TOS specially list prohibited categories of activities.

And no, I don't recommend any kind of checks at the front gate. Like I said, you'd just have to enforce your policy when something was brought to your attention.

nooneelse• 14 years ago

> "I doubt anyone would say you should ignore reports of criminal activity just because some other crime goes unreported. So I think the same applies to these ethical restrictions."

Yeah, thinking you have to be able to catch/notice everything before you should try to catch/notice anything in the domain of ethics... is a more stark and literal case of making perfection an enemy of the good possible?

Try the thinking outside of the ethical/legal domains altogether... don't bother trying to learn to play an instrument, there is no way you can get every note right.

This is a rationalization for resignation, not sound practical reasoning.

minhajuddin2• 14 years ago

You guys should not have demoed your app. Just add another line in your TOS which states that you don't let "Patent Trolls" use your app. How hard is that? You have to man up and say NO.

What's the point of "believing", when you don't act on it . This whole story paints a picture of a company without any conviction.

rubyrescue• 14 years ago

you know what's more annoying than patent trolls? arrogant posts about how much better someone is than patent trolls.

Eliezer2• 14 years ago

Scientology certainly operates in violation of the letter of the law - framing people for murder is illegal, I'm pretty sure - they just avoid conviction by bribing local judges and so on.

I don't see why you can't just tell the patent troll to go away. Are they being punished for telling you what they do? Yes, but if patent trolls have to operate furtively, not telling anyone what they do, on pain of being denied service in many places, the world is a better place. Make the world a better place.

I don't see why you are obligated to lend a helping hand to evil that happens to be legal. I'm not saying to throw a punch at someone doing something legal that you don't like; I'm saying that you are not obligated ethically or morally to do business with them. Or if the law has something to do with ethics in your world, then consider that since it's legal to deny service to patent trolls, it must be all right, right?

And I don't see what's unethical about one adult selling another adult neuroactive pharmaceuticals, but let's leave that aside for now.

Drawing the line around what's "legal" says to me, "We'd rather not think about ethics, so we're going to draw the line somewhere defensible that we don't have to think about." In another world this might make sense, but not in a country that criminalizes marijuana and has, well, patent trolls. To respect that line, and not try to promote good or retard evil any further than that, is just an abdication of ethics.

With that said, I respect Less Annoying CRM for trying to think about the issue at all and post about it, which most companies don't. I mean, they got the wrong answer, but most companies don't even try or think at all, so this blog post actually does rate LACRM in the top 10% of all companies in my book.

the_bear8• 14 years ago

I think one of the questions you have to ask yourself is whether your primary responsibility to protect the interests of your real users (the non-patent trolls) or to take a stand against people you don't like.

This would be a much easier decision if we sold a discrete product. A grocery store or Amazon.com can deny someone service and then they can go shop somewhere else. No big deal. Our users store their most important business data with us for years. How can our legitimate users trust us if they think they might wake up one day and be banned?

Thanks for the comment, this is definitely an interesting discussion.

By the way, I can tell you that I personally wouldn't have a problem with someone using the software for something illegal but not necessarily unethical (like selling drugs). The problem is that as soon as they tell you they're doing that, you're effectively assisting them in the illegal activity which makes me a criminal. That's the main reason why we have to take action when someone tells us they're using the CRM to do something illegal (not that it's ever happened).

jmathes3• 14 years ago

> I think one of the questions you have to ask yourself is whether your primary responsibility to protect the interests of your real users (the non-patent trolls) or to take a stand against people you don't like.

Using the phrase "primary responsibility" doesn't change the fact that helping unethical people do unethical things puts evil into the world. It sounds like you (and Less Annoying) are subconsciously reasoning with the goal of never being held responsible for evil. That's different from minimizing evil.

A clearer way to make your case would be to say that taking a stand is too expensive (vs not-my-problem.) Maybe the company's resources are better spent assisting ethical customers. Maybe this assistance yields more revenue, further increasing the ability to assist ethical customers. Now you have an exponential growth rate of net good, so you have a big-O notation argument for not policing evil. (... actually, exponential growth rates of small business revenue are really sigmoidal, not exponential, so it will probably be better to switch back to thinking about ethics when you approach market saturation)

I don't feel like I owe sympathy to people who are concerned with culpability rather than with utility, and I doubt you do either.

gdacuna• 14 years ago

As a software company, I would be wary of doing anything, whether legal or otherwise, to support a software patent troll. Having access to your software is clearly in the interest of your real users, and this access is threatened by the practice of patent trolling.

I understand your reluctance, of course, but a company whose business model that abuses the legal system at the expense of companies that produce software seems like a reasonable thing for a software company to avoid dealings with. How can your users trust you if they think they might wake up one day and your product is gone because of spurious patent litigation?

jmathes3• 14 years ago

I think Less Annoying was most interested in making an easy rule for themselves to follow, in the expectation that they'd have to make similar decisions in the future. "Is it legal," they decided, is easier to answer than "is it unethical." If they decided in the other direction, they'd have to evaluate the ethics of each of their customers. This, in their opinion, would drain their resources. If they're right, they made a decision that increases their ability to assist their ethical customers in doing good. So the net effect of the decision to draw the line at legality might still be positive from a preference-utility point of view.

It's not clear that this is the thinking they were using, and it's a false dichotomy. There might be any number of easy rules to follow that do a better job of approximating ethical judgement than "is it legal." A possible reason not to try for one of these might be because it's impractical. Less Annoying employees are people, and people tend to have irrationally-strongly-held beliefs about ethics. They are in the habit of not questioning the law or other peoples' religions, but this would step outside those boundaries. You end up with a company full of people who think it's their duty to force the company's ethics to be consistent with their own.

briandear• 14 years ago

Regarding the ethics of allowing a coke dealer to use the service: it doesn't matter because anyone knowingly facilitating illegal activity can be prosecuted under federal RICO statutes and they'd have the entire business seized under the seizure laws. Operating with the law as a benchmark isn't about ethics, it's about good business. While we can debate the ethics of the law, the law itself must still be followed. That's just responsible business. Discriminating based on one's beliefs is definitely an ethical issue but that can lead down a potentially dangerous slippery slope. Should Amazon (or libraries) refuse access to books to certain people because of their associations? It seems like bad business to have litmus tests beyond illegality. Can a store refuse to sell twinkies to fat people? That would be viewed by some as ethical, although potentially illegal.

The best course would be to ban hate activity on the site, but it would be impossible to know hate activity without violating privacy. And what is hate activity anyway? Who decides? The KKK seems like an obvious group, but what about the Black Panthers, certain religious groups and even so-called Civil Rights groups like La Raza. It's very difficult to determine hate activity in an objective and business-defensible way.

The law is the clearest standard rather than nebulous ethics. Besides free speech should apply to everyone, even if we disagree with the content.

jimworm• 14 years ago

If anybody was thinking of dismissing their decision off-hand, consider these:

    Pharmacists refusing to sell the morning-after pill
    Refusing to sell computer equipment to HFT firms
    Banning a child not vaccinated against polio from a swimming pool
    Cutting off the water supply to your local homeopathy practitioner

The world is full of petty tyrants. Tyranny of the majority via the law may not be ideal, but it might be the best we can hope for.

pessimizer• 14 years ago

Pharmacists are state licensed, and granted special privileges based on that license; they don't get to be the final say about what they will or won't do.

I don't see a problem with the other three. In fact, the third I actively encourage.

CamperBob22• 14 years ago

Pharmacists are state licensed, and granted special privileges based on that license; they don't get to be the final say about what they will or won't do.

You would think so, but remember that in the US, religion is the third rail of politics. Play the Jeebus card, and you can dodge almost all of the other rules and regulations in polite society. (See http://www.seattlepi.com/local/article/Judge-Washington-stat... ).

debacle• 14 years ago

Lather and Nothing Else

http://www.plymouth.k12.wi.us/OldSite/Staff%20Home%20Pages/H...

pirateking• 14 years ago

Clicked link excited to read a tale of a cowboy startup, sticking it to the man and laying waste to patent troll scum. Instead was a story of cowboys settled on the ranch, freely doing business with all types of trolls. Not what I wanted to read personally, but it is a path that many large, successful companies have followed.

Finster• 14 years ago

I guess I was hoping for an outcome other than, "Well, we decided to go ahead and help him out, anyway. Luckily, he just kind of faded away on his own."

Oh. Okay. That's good, I guess.

chris_wot• 14 years ago

To be honest, the best way of dealing with this would have been to price the customizations out of the market. You're selling a service, so price it accordingly. :-)

squozzer• 14 years ago

Welcome to the real world -- it's kinda messy but the booze helps you get used to it.

Personally, I prefer a bad decision based on reason than a good one based on emotion. So you get an informal +1 in my book.

Also, it might help you (and apparently a lot of posters) to develop multiple means to achieve desired ends. Does everyone with whom one disagrees deserve the banhammer?

Certain groups have darkened and stained the pages of history with their rigid ways of dealing with undesirables. Divide the world into black and white at your own peril.

eevilspock• 14 years ago

The First Amendment only protects freedom of speech from government interference. On your private property you are free to limit speech as you see fit, unless state or local laws have broadened free speech rights to work against private actors.

So unless the latter exception applies, your thought experiment is broken early in the chain. You are free to apply your own free speech limitations as long as you are within the bound of other laws, e.g. you're not discriminating in some other way that is illegal.

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pruneyard_Shopping_Center_v._Ro...

phene• 14 years ago

> we’re not fans of the KKK’s messaging. But KKK rallies aren’t illegal, or at least not inherently so. On the contrary, they're protected free speech. Shut down the KKK account? Our answer: No

This is just absurd. They are not bound by the first amendment and are entirely free to make judgements about the hosted content.

staunch• 14 years ago

Is the rule "we don't do business with people who are assholes" or "we don't do business with people that are assholes to us"?

Because if it's the former it's obvious that it applies to all the examples.

yo-mf• 14 years ago

If a coke dealer is using a cloud-based CRM system to manage their "customers", you have two valid reasons for reject them; for running an illegal business and for being too stupid to use your product.

dello• 14 years ago

Thank you for taking a stand against patent trolls! I wish all IP attorneys would follow your lead. Ironically, IP attorneys supporting trolls are destroying the patent system that pays their bills in the first place.

What we did when a patent troll asked for our help

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