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Re:Oracle Wins Revival of Billion-Dollar Case Against Google by danShumway on Tuesday March 27, 2018 @12:28PM (#16690098)
> My point is, they did this to themselves

Whether or not they knew that someone would come along and sue them doesn't matter if the lawsuit is unjust.

Even if Oracle is correct, and even if APIs can be copyrighted, Google's intent still doesn't matter. The only thing that matters is whether or not they infringed.

I consider this to be a form of victim blaming. You should argue the case on its own merits, not posit that Google was "asking for it."

Re:Oracle Wins Revival of Billion-Dollar Case Against Google by ben509 on Tuesday March 27, 2018 @06:29PM (#16693377)
It wouldn't be victim blaming to criticize a company that is breached because they didn't take compsec seriously. They weren't a small company at the time and they knew this was a hazard.

Google had a responsibility to their shareholders and customers to do the right thing regardless of how stupid they thought the law was, and their attitude here was pretty arrogant. (To avoid beating up on Google, I should point out believing they could take on anything helped them do some work that changed the world for the better.)

Since the attitudes of parties involved in a case are often considered in judging the case, I think it's entirely fair to bring them up.

Re:Oracle Wins Revival of Billion-Dollar Case Against Google by danShumway on Tuesday March 27, 2018 @07:15PM (#16693692)
> It wouldn't be victim blaming to criticize a company that is breached because they didn't take compsec seriously.

If you then turned around and argued that the hacker somehow wasn't in the wrong because of the victim's attitude, yes it would be.

Victim blaming has nothing to do with someone's responsibility to others, and everything to do with taking a conversation about whether an attack is justified, and shifting that conversation to instead suggest "well, dumb people like that deserve to be taken advantage of."

Oracle contested that Google infringed their IP. "They should have known we were gonna sue them as soon as we smelled the money" is not compelling evidence for that claim.

Much in the same way, saying "Johny should have turned off his attitude and just given us the money" is not compelling justification for a mob hit.