Comment on Valve Sued By The Performing Rights Society Over Music Rights in Games Valve Doesn’t Make or Own

• Grail@multiverse.soulism.net ⁨16⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  That myth was largely created by McDonald’s after they were sued for giving a lady third degree vagina burns and a fused labia. “Haha, Americans are so frivolous with lawsuits, they’d sue a company for serving coffee hot enough to make you need skin grafts”.

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  • Buffalox@lemmy.world ⁨15⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    Complete and utterly false, USA has that reputation because it’s true.

    USA has that reputation because it happens all the time, because it’s easy to make a lawsuit, even often finding a lawyer that will take the case it without payment, but take the fee as a percentage of the potential winnings. And because USA has insane rules of extremely high compensations.

    USA is not known for this because of a single anecdote, but because it’s very common, and because of the insane compensations, which is part of why it is so common to also try with what would be a frivolous suit in any other country.

    Point in case would also be the Apple lawsuit against Samsung, where part of the case was as simple as a tablet being a fucking tablet! When even Star Trek of the 60’s realized that it was a convenient form factor.
    Apple won on just about all points of the case, but in following years they were completely dismantled, with decisions that the case didn’t have a basis, and the patents were interpreted way to widely.
    This was a HUGE case that cost enormous amounts of money for both sides, and the only true winners are the lawyers. The US judicial system in this regard is completely rotten and that is being abused for frivolous cases that would be thrown out in other countries.

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    • DomeGuy@lemmy.world ⁨14⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      You’re right about the effect (lawsuits and the threat of the same are more common in America than Canada or the UK) but not at all about the cause.

      The USA has had a decades-long choice to have our industry regulated primarily not through government bureaucracy but instead judicial liability. en.wikipedia.org/…/Regulation_through_litigation

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    • Zamboni_Driver@lemmy.ca ⁨14⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      The reply that you are replying to is so off base I wonder if it’s Google Gemini trying to pretend to be a real user. So confident, so wrong, includes some real facts, but completely misapplies them.

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      • Flames5123@sh.itjust.works ⁨12⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

        There’s a reason they have a -6 total score from me… I don’t just downvote all willy nilly either…

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      • Grail@multiverse.soulism.net ⁨13⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

        I edited the word “myth” to “perception” because the well informed reply to My comment changed My mind about the truth of the facts, but I still think the fact’s prominence in culture is because of McDonald’s. Though, come to think of it, we were talking about frivolous lawsuits, not total lawsuits, so I’m not entirely convinced. It could be that the USA has a completely appropriate number of lawsuits and other countries have too few. After all, the judge in the McDonald’s case awarded the lady an entire day’s worth of profits, which is an absurdly high amount of money, but absurdity was in fact an appropriate response to an ongoing problem of absurd magnitude.

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  • supamanc@lemmy.world ⁨16⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    • making a business decision that selling skin graft hot coffee will save more money than you will have to pay in damages to anyone injured. A decision that ultimately proved correct.

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    • entropicdrift@lemmy.sdf.org ⁨11⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      They actually changed their policy on the heat of the coffee in the wake of the lawsuit. Also the lady only sued to have her medical bills covered but thr judge awarded her a bunch of punitive damages.

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  • Zamboni_Driver@lemmy.ca ⁨14⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    Omg there is always someone bringing up this McDonald’s case every time like they’re slam dunking some new information and not just repeating comments over and over that they read in the last thread.

    McDonald’s McDonalds McDonald’s McDonalds McDonald’s McDonalds.

    There are hundreds of examples of real frivolous lawsuits being filed in the US. This case did not create a myth about frivolous lawsuits. This was at one time an example of a lawsuit that seemed like it could be frivolous, but later there was media coverage that told the real story. There do exist many examples of real frivolous lawsuits.

    McDonald’s McDonalds McDonald’s McDonalds McDonald’s McDonalds.

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    • Sharkticon@lemmy.zip ⁨11⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      Of course there are examples, but the point is it’s not unique to the United States. You’re literally in a thread about it for those lawsuit in a different country. They aren’t unique to anywhere.

      On the other hand there is a very real trend of American media manipulation existing to frame anti-corporate lawsuits as frivolous. Also extensive lobbying of elected officials to stop “frivolous lawsuits”. I’ll let you guess as to why.

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