
What we did when a patent troll asked for our help - mojowo11
http://www.lessannoyingcrm.com/articles/262/What_we_did_when_a_patent_troll_asked_for_our_help
======
Eliezer
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_bear
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).

~~~
jmathes
> 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.

~~~
lmm
Utilitarianism 102: having firm written rules, even subobtimal ones, can often
have better consequences than evaluating each action on its merits. I've seen
it recommended on this very site to avoid any hosting provider with a
"morality clause" in their T&Cs. A service that will host "any legal content",
while it will aid a certain proportion of unethical actions, ultimately
contributes more benefit to society than one that hosts "any legal content,
except that we morally object to".

~~~
Eliezer
You know, you're right (about the dangers of morality clauses). Consider my
original content 70% retracted or at least flagged for requiring modification.

Maybe you could have a list up-front of who you don't deal with (Scientology,
patent trolls, KKK, etc.) and remark that anyone not on this list who signs up
will be grandfathered in forever, even if their category is added later - this
gives existing customers peace of mind, and tells your browsers exactly what
you consider morality?

But if lots of people did this, I'm not sure the world would be a better
place, now that I think about it. Pick a previous decade, and gays would've
been the ones most often targeted - of course, then I could meta-boycott,
but...

This is a deeper issue than my original comment acknowledged, so on further
consideration, please consider it entirely retracted until I can give this
more thought.

What sort of business policy _should_ one go around advocating on a planet
where most people think "morality" is about disapproving of sex acts, and so
anything that strengthens the force of what other people believe to be
"morality" within economic business, tends to make things that much worse? I
don't know.

------
aculver
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.

~~~
mcherm
> 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.

~~~
kkowalczyk
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.

~~~
FuzzyDunlop
I think the difference with the restaurant analogy is that the dress code is
applied before you enter and are seated. Thus you'll be turned away outright
for dressing improperly.

Compare it to this, where the issue only arose because the customer made clear
their intention well after signing up.

I'm seeing the main issue here being that enforcing their own ideals, so they
don't serve the customers they want, involves waiting for the to contact
support, lest they violate their own ethics re: privacy and data protection.

How many new customers will they get when they earn a reputation of applying a
personal and undisclosed set of ethics and ideals to customers any time after
they sign up?

------
the_bear
(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?

~~~
stephengillie
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.

~~~
the_bear
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.

------
dfxm12
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.

~~~
mcherm
> 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.

~~~
jeremyarussell
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.

~~~
monochromatic
It's really not a legal right that they have. They have the ability, or the
power. But in order to exercise that power, they have to disregard the oath
that they swear as jurors.

~~~
jeremyarussell
Right, hence the reason they do technically have that right, but don't
expressly have that right.

~~~
monochromatic
Not really... it's not a right that they have. They have the ability to do it,
but it's not a right that was ever granted to them, and they're breaking their
oath when they do it.

I have the ability to sneak into my neighbor's house and steal his things.
It's implicitly built into the system where I live next door to him, and he's
not always home. But I sure don't have the _right_ to do that.

~~~
jeremyarussell
I'm not sure if your argument is valid. The two seem very different from each
other. One is the chance to save someone from prosecution, the other is a
chance to take something from another.

I almost want to call this a Straw Man argument, you are using an argument
that is unrelated but you draw up similarities to make it seem that my
argument is wrong.

I might be wrong too though.

~~~
matthewowen
Well, it might be that the guy you save from prosecution is the same one that
just broke into their next door neighbour's house. And hey, the neighbour
might have thought it was his right, and you might agree. But that isn't the
point.

The actual point is that rights and laws are supposed to be generated by
consensus. Doing something just because you're able to isn't generating by
consensus - it's happening because a sufficient number of jurors in a case
decided they disagreed with something.

------
huhtenberg
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, ...

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

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

------
anonymoushn
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.

------
kriro
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
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".

------
rada
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.

------
zacharyvoase
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).

------
motters
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.

~~~
mojowo11
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.

~~~
CamperBob2
_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.

------
gravitronic
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
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?

------
darklajid
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.

------
Domenic_S
> 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.

~~~
mojowo11
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.

------
andrewcooke
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_?

~~~
mojowo11
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.

~~~
andrewcooke
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...

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

------
jimworm
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
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.

~~~
CamperBob2
_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...](http://www.seattlepi.com/local/article/Judge-Washington-state-cannot-
force-pharmacies-3352346.php) ).

------
tzs
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_bear
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.

------
minhajuddin
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.

------
eevilspock
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...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pruneyard_Shopping_Center_v._Robins)

------
squozzer
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.

------
jeremyarussell
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_bear
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?

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

OR

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.

------
pirateking
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.

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

------
jarrett
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_bear
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.

~~~
jarrett
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.

~~~
the_bear
This isn't a hypothetical situation. Google was actively banning accounts for
using fake names during the early days of Google+. It was in their terms of
service, but that didn't matter. People were outraged. The HackerNews
community in particular was outraged. Sure they have the right to do it, but
that's no way to treat your customers.

~~~
Dylan16807
What had me outraged was not the terms, but that google wasn't following them.
They said to use the name most people knew you by in real life, and proceeded
to ban people for doing so. They wouldn't accept extensive documentation of
names, only government IDs. (They also accepted blatant photoshops of
government IDs.)

------
dello
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.

------
debacle
Lather and Nothing Else

[http://www.plymouth.k12.wi.us/OldSite/Staff%20Home%20Pages/H...](http://www.plymouth.k12.wi.us/OldSite/Staff%20Home%20Pages/High%20School/HS%20English/Cleary1/oldengI/lather.pdf)

------
yo-mf
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.

------
staunch
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.

------
Finster
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
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. :-)

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

------
phene
> 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.

