Class action against GitHub Copilot

Posted Nov 10, 2022 16:50 UTC (Thu) by bfields (subscriber, #19510)
Parent article: Class action against GitHub Copilot

"In recent decades, though, the class-action lawsuit seems to have become mostly a vehicle for extorting money from a business for the enrichment of lawyers."

I don't love this framing.

It seems to me there are two potential goals here: compensating victims and making sure crime doesn't pay. In cases where the damage was a small amount multiplied by a large number of people, the latter may be more important.

I mean, if someone scams me out of $5, it's rarely going to be worth my while to pursue them for the $5, but if someone else wants to, I'd happily throw that $5 into a pot of money for them to use. And when I've gotten one of those mailings, that's been my attitude--"hey, doesn't sound like it's worth even figuring out whether this applies to me, but it's probably good someone went after them."

In a case where something costs a lot of people a little money each, what should we do? No doubt the system could be more efficient, but I don't see how you're going to completely avoid the expense of sorting out exactly what happened and who's at fault, all to reasonable degree of certainty--something that could inherently need a lot of legwork by a lot of people, some with pretty specialized skills. And sometimes, in the end, you'll fail to make the case, so you'll have to build that into your costs too.

We could let that kind of thing slide. I think that could have long-term consequences we wouldn't like.

We could make it a government function and pay for it with our taxes. Obviously, that's already what we do in some cases.

Or we can have a system like this that allows law firms to take on the risk and expense in exchange for taking a cut when they win.

I honestly don't know what's best, but I don't think the latter is obviously "abusive" just because the compensation to individual victims is sometimes trivial.

Anyway, sorry, that's all a bit of a derail, as I'm not really convinced of the merits of this particular case. (Maybe I haven't thought it through.)

Class action against GitHub Copilot

Posted Nov 10, 2022 17:55 UTC (Thu) by hkario (subscriber, #94864) [Link] (5 responses)

1. because the total amount is hardly large for a typical corporation that's a target of a class action (a $5 fine for doing something is not a fine, it's just the cost of doing something).
2. getting $5 in "compensation" is a passive-aggressive corporate version of a non-apology: "sorry if you feel offended"

Class action against GitHub Copilot

Posted Nov 10, 2022 20:04 UTC (Thu) by bfields (subscriber, #19510) [Link] (4 responses)

1. because the total amount is hardly large for a typical corporation that's a target of a class action (a $5 fine for doing something is not a fine, it's just the cost of doing something).

That's OK, it doesn't necessarily have to be a threat to the corporation's existence to be useful, it just has to raise the expected cost of the undesirable behavior sufficiently.

Class action against GitHub Copilot

Posted Nov 11, 2022 11:20 UTC (Fri) by hkario (subscriber, #94864) [Link] (3 responses)

Yes, the point of a fine isn't to destroy a company. But when the fine for the activity is lower than the income from it (often by an order of magnitude), how exactly is that a discouragement for the activity?

Class action against GitHub Copilot

Posted Nov 11, 2022 12:16 UTC (Fri) by Wol (subscriber, #4433) [Link] (2 responses)

Which is why we have the Company Secretary, who in law is the personal embodiment of the company. No Secretary, no company.

Unfortunately, we are completely useless at punishing the secretary for the misdeeds of the company. If the Secretary knows they can (and WILL) be fined or imprisoned personally for company misdeeds, any company that starts "playing dirty" will soon find itself unable to recruit a secretary, and subject to intense scrutiny or being broken up.

Cheers,
Wol

Company secretaries are personally liable?

Posted Nov 11, 2022 15:12 UTC (Fri) by KJ7RRV (subscriber, #153595) [Link] (1 responses)

> If the Secretary knows they can (and WILL) be fined or imprisoned personally for company misdeeds,

Aren't most types of companies limited liability entities?

Company secretaries are personally liable?

Posted Nov 11, 2022 15:27 UTC (Fri) by Wol (subscriber, #4433) [Link]

What does this have to do with the price of tea in China?

I think I know what you're getting at - the Board of Directors are (allegedly) protected against being responsible for things going wrong on their watch. But if nobody can be held legally responsible for the company breaking the law (say for example ignoring health and safety, and people getting killed), then things can turn nasty, and they regularly do. Usually on a smaller scale than that, admittedly.

But the post of Company Secretary (a *mandatory* post - which is why you'll find that most organisations technically are not allowed to function without a Secretary) is mandated by law to be the official record keeper and legal advisor. As such they can be held personally liable for any wrongdoing on their watch they should have known about, or were told about. And (for companies over a certain size, the last figure I knew was £3M) they have to be legally qualified in some way.

If we started to make company secretaries realise this was actually a serious role, with serious liabilities, the standard of corporate governance would probably rise pretty quickly!

Cheers,
Wol

Class action against GitHub Copilot

Posted Nov 10, 2022 18:57 UTC (Thu) by unBrice (subscriber, #72229) [Link]

> I honestly don't know what's best,

Neither do I, but I thought you may be interested in hearing about a third alternative to state-owned agencies and predatory law firms. In France class actions are restricted to non profit organizations that have to go through a vetting process (eg there are 15 of such vetted non-profits defending customers). Additionally they are only allowed to sue for specific offenses (including discrimination and infringements to consumer protection laws). I suspect the way damage compensation works is also very different but I am not knowledgeable on that.

Class action against GitHub Copilot

Posted Nov 18, 2022 15:53 UTC (Fri) by nim-nim (subscriber, #34454) [Link]

The point of class action is not to compensate victims but to incentivize private law firms into making sure the law is applied. Because it turns out states are very bad at prosecuting interests that make lavish campaign donations.

It would be more honest to scrap the compensation altogether but lawmakers are reluctant to admit they don’t trust themselves to prosecute big money fairly.