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.
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.