

Google and Facebook violate privacy rights - ordered to donate to EFF - casca
http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2012/07/30/google-and-facebooks-new-tactic-in-the-tech-wars/

======
greenyoda
The headline on HN is misleading. The whole article is about how Google and
Facebook actually had a role in choosing who the beneficiary of these court
ordered donations would be, which allows them to give money to the EFF without
showing up as large corporate donors on the EFF's donor list.

The actual text of the article's headline is:

"Google and Facebook's new tactic in the tech wars"

With the subtitle:

"Google and Facebook are using a controversial legal doctrine to channel money
to the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the Center for Democracy and
Technology, and other groups that share their hostility to online copyright
enforcement."

This quote explains what's happening:

"These payments to the EFF are being made in suits the EFF played no role in
bringing, and the defendants themselves -- Google and Facebook, in these
instances -- helped select EFF to be their beneficiary."

~~~
corin_
While I completely agree that the headline used on HN is a bad one, I'd argue
that this is a case where the guideline of keeping the original headline is a
poor one.

"Google and Facebook's new tactic in the tech wars" is far too vague to be at
all useful - the problem is that, when you go against this HN guideline, how
do you pick a good replacement without making the same mistake we've seen
here?

~~~
greenyoda
A good replacement would be a concise summary of the main point of the
article. Maybe something like: "Google, Facebook chose EFF as recipient of
unreported court-ordered donations" (77 characters)

~~~
corin_
I wasn't so much saying that this one is impossible to pick one, more just how
do you confirm that it's a good headline. For example the original OP of this
submission probably didn't write their headline and think "well this
misrepresents the story, but fuck it".

------
thechut
Looks like whoever posted this didn't actually read the article. It's all
about how Google and Facebook are using the cy pres legal doctrine to get out
of paying members of class action law suits. It seems to be that these
institutions and the trial lawyers involved profit unfairly.

The most interesting fact in this article is that Judge Lucy, Koh, of Apple v.
Samsung fame, recused herself from the case after an appeal was filed to
investigate the chosen charities and to create a more open application
process. According to the article she had ties to some of the chosen
charities.

What exactly is Koh's deal, there has Ben lots of speculation about her
partialness in the Apple v. Samsung case as well. Somebody needs to
investigate her.

