Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

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To: KLP who wrote (1466)	7/5/2000 1:40:27 PM
From: Green Receipt	Respond to of 3372

Yeah i'm for the most part against class action lawsuits. they typically do not benefit the victim. Instead the lawyers line their pockets with gold. GNET should clean their hands of SI by getting rid of it. In the span of less than a year, GNET has taken the #1 board and done too many unspeakable things to it. Now the daily msg posting is dismal at best as everyone is shifting to elsewhere.

To: KLP who wrote (1466)	7/5/2000 2:34:16 PM
From: IEarnedIt	Respond to of 3372

You mistook my post to infer that I would be involved in a class action suit. Chances are extremely good that I would not be involved. I am opposed to them personally simply because as you already state it is only the attornies who win. I was merely responding to David and the security issue and other comments I had already seen posted by others. I am not blind nor dumb and know that we live in a very sue happy society. Do I agree with that? No I don't but at the same time I would not ignore that fact if I were in SI's shoes currently. I have already seen one post where the poster has freely admitted grabbing every name he could get his hands on while having the chance to do so. BTW I think David's idea of spinning off SI is a good one. It it pretty obvious that the current owners don't have the same affection for SI or it's members that the former owners had. JD

To: KLP who wrote (1466)	7/5/2000 5:01:24 PM
From: Original Mad Dog	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 3372

Hi KLP, I am one of those who has posted the lawsuit alternative a few times since this started, mainly on the Piffer OT thread, where they are sick of it and me by now. My reason for suggesting the lawsuit was not because the suit would offer redress but rather because in today's corporate culture it seems to be one of the only things which instills the necessary fear to cause managers to divert resources to solve the problems. My point of view is that lawyers are generally bad (I am one, BTW) but that managers who operate with disregard of customers and personal privacy are equally bad, and if lawyers are the only thing that will get their attention, that's sad but it may also be a necessary evil in modern society. I am certainly open to any suggestions you or anyone else has regarding how to effect change within the SI/GNET corporate culture. My understanding is that on five separate occasions people's real identities have been divulged through programming snafus. In some cases this has caused personal and business harm. It has harmed the community by causing people to leave. It even happened again last night after SI was quoted publicly last week as saying that the problems had been fixed. You know, it is easy to just say, well, lawyers are bad and they will be unjustly enriched by all of this. But lawyers are what brought AOL to heel a couple of years back. And there are other examples where, in the aftermath of lawsuits, a corporation managed to "solve" the problem which brought about the lawsuit. I won't bore you with the details of other situations unless you want to hear them, but there are many such stories. Why is that? I think it is because most of these problems are really the result of corporations choosing not to allocate the resources necessary to deal with situations. GNET in its SEC filings lists somewhere around 3 or 4 dozen programmers in the whole company (including numerous sites besides SI). Maybe they need 200 to really do the job correctly. Instead, they have chosen to run on a shoestring, and the result is that people's privacy and the SI site's integrity have been severely compromised. My point is that lawyers are not threatening to burn down this community; GNET management is setting the fires themselves. You say lawyers are not the solution. OK, then I ask you: What is the right solution for someone who likes the SI community and does not want to leave?????........