Amazon Liable for Defective Third-Party Products Rules CA Appellate Court - <AUTHOR> https://californiaglobe.com/section-2/amazon-liable-for-defective-third-party-products-rules-ca-appelate-court/ <comment><USER3> Common sense. Amazon want to 'own' the customer relationship and go to great lengths to that end then it follows they will have to 'own' any liability too.

Imagine you went into a retail store with a faulty product and they were to try fob you off saying you need to go to their supplier/wholesaler/manufacturer. It mostly doesn't work that way thanks to most consumer protection laws in place.

<comment><USER4> > Imagine you went into a retail store with a faulty product

I understand where you are coming from, but there are lots of consignment stores and flea markets, at least in the middle parts of the US. The person you pay at the front counter simply records the transaction for the merchant. Amazon is a sort of cross between traditional retail and a consignment store, so it's not obvious (or "common sense") where product liability should lie.

<comment><USER5> This is laid out in the judgement[1]. In California, if you are an integral part between the manufacturer and the consumer, especially if you are the one that "owns the relationship" you are on the hook for strict liability.

[1] Starting from Page 17 -- [https://cases.justia.com/california/court-of- appeal/2020-d07...](https://cases.justia.com/california/court-of- appeal/2020-d075738.pdf?ts=1597343456)

<comment><USER6> Then maybe this return policy will only apply to buyers in CA?

<comment><USER7> Now I'm wondering if I can establish personal nexus in CA sufficient to qualify for such protections, while continuing to reside in place without all the Californians...

<comment><USER8> There's something off about this comment, and simultaneously I'm aware that my response is reading _way too far into it_.

The last phrase you use continues to perpetuate the odd perception that Californians are weird extreme hippie aliens that Middle America should avoid at all costs.

And then, your comment simultaneously envies California's strong worker and consumer protections.

It's almost as if Californians aren't weirdo hippies and they're just normal people who have demanded and received robust environmental, safety, labor, and privacy protection.

I'd _love_ to live in California right next to those _weird_ Californians and be able to make CCPA requests. I'd also love for non-competes to be illegal.

It's almost as if other states' citizens have been failed by their governments in comparison, and/or their citizens are too unaware of these issues to have lobbied for data protection laws.

It has astonished me that a certain political party has just gotten away with labeling an entire state in our country as a bad place, especially one as big and diverse as California.

Maybe that certain political party would have a chance to win California if Joe from Texas didn't think California was a Mad Max liberal wasteland and considered taking a new job there.

<comment><USER7> Oh no, I love the weird extreme hippie aliens. And the strong worker and consumer protections. It's the Hollywood and the Disney and the Dot-com bros I'm avoiding at exactly those other costs.

That plus the completely unsustainable water situation that I refuse to be a part of worsening.

<comment><USER9> As I understand it, the water situation is all kinds of screwed up, but much of the _residential_ water is sustainable. SF, for example, uses mostly surface water and has access to a _lot_ of surface water. One might argue whether the dam that supplies the water is a good thing or a bad thing and whether the allocation of SF's water is reasonable, but it appears to be sustainable. In addition, residential water usage just isn't that much.

Agricultural water in the drier parts of California is an entirely different story.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Shopping on Amazon has become unbearable for like 95% of categories these days. The experience is like rummaging through some shady tourist market with a dozen stall owners trying to scam you. The pricing is all whack with lots of counterfeits that have gamed the ranking and review systems. It's just not worth trying to filter and find things that are actually competitively priced and sold directly by Amazon.

Have no idea how they are so dominant still when they seem to not care at all about these things.

<comment><USER11> I could hardly disagree more. It takes some effort to find the good stuff, but Amazon is the superior way to shop online for most things.

<comment><USER12> As someone with 2200 purchase on amazon over the last several years, you're definitely wrong. I have to use every trick up my sleeve to not get pure hot alibaba trash. It USED to be that amazon best seller items were good at least, and now those are an absolute trash garbage fest as well too. Go try to buy a strainer, charger, literally any appliance, anything, and tell me you get good results.

<comment><USER13> I recently bought Amazon's best seller hot oil frier. When we turned it on, the cheap thin metal of it bent from the heat so that the hot oil dripped on the floor. Turns out it was straight from a Chinese noname brand but marked as "sold by Amazon" on the website. When I tried to refund it, they told me that Amazon had just purchased the items for resale and that I should contact the original manufacturer for warranty. And they gave me a Guangdong address and a Gmail email.

By now every product listing on Amazon should be treated like SEO spam.

Plus there's now all these sellers trying to buy a 5 star review by promising a gift card. I recently saw a baby carriage with lots of 5 star reviews from teenagers who tried it out with plush toys because they didn't have kids yet.

<comment><USER14> Report this to your state's Attorney General, they usually have a consumer protection division.

<comment><USER13> They did give in and give me a refund eventually. It's just that I was surprised by their laissez-faire attitude that their topseller was some random no-name factory in China.

<comment><USER14> Attorney General would still be interested in the fact that you were sold a deep fryer with such a potentially dangerous flaw by Amazon, and the run around they initially gave you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Amazon has been trying to play a parallel game for a while - from one side, they are a brand name store, with their own brands (Amazon Basics), they own loyalty club (Prime), and so on - they even own physical stores and a grocery chain now. On the other hand, they pretend to be a neutral marketplace that has no responsibility for any goods that are sold there and just renting out the space to independent sellers. It is a smart game, as they can resell all the reputational benefits of the established store brand to the tiny sellers who would never enjoy the same reputation, without actually spending the time to vet the suppliers and take responsibility for the goods being sold, as the brand name store would have to. However, looks like the courts are not buying this game. Which makes sense because Amazon not only does not separate the marketplace from the brand name store - they actually make as much effort as possible to mix both up, making distinguishing between goods sold by Amazon and goods for which Amazon bears zero responsibility quite hard to distinguish.

<comment><USER16> I've not experienced the neural marketplace element myself. They still have the A-to-Z guarantee and still have the best return and customer support policies in the game. I spend 10s off thousands of dollars a year and return anything I don't like. Never had an issue with feeling like they had my back.

<comment><USER17> That'll enthusiasm will last right up until the few picoseconds before you realised you've been royally rolled.

What makes you think you're immune to the Arbitrary Hand of Amazon?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Honestly, I'm confused as to why Amazon -- or _any_ retailer -- is responsible for injury from defects in the products they sell in the first place.

Why is it the retailer's responsibility, rather than the manufacturer's responsibility?

No store has the expertise to independently conduct safety testing of every item they sell. That would be ludicrous, whether you're a mom & pop store with 1,000's of items or Amazon itself with 1,000,000's of items. Plus it would be incredibly redundant.

What is the justification for this law at all?

(And if you say it's for international products, then the onus should be on the importer who takes responsibility on behalf of the manufacturer.)

EDIT: virtually every comment that has replied so far is talking about defects, warranty, etc. But that's not with this article is about -- it's about liability for INJURY which is a very different thing. It makes total sense that if a product doesn't work, you return it to the store and not the manufacturer. But if a product is _dangerous_ I still fail to see how it makes any sense to make retailers liable rather than manufacturers. If you get a batch of improperly made baby formula that makes your baby sick... shouldn't the onus be 100% on the manufacturer? In what universe is a retailer expected to be liable for that? How would they ever know? If Nestle makes a bad batch... what good is it to go around suing Amazon, FreshDirect and 1,000 other local supermarkets? Shouldn't there just be a class-action suit against Nestle?

<comment><USER19> If a store put a random baby formula from a sketchy Chinese factory on its shelves and it made babies sick, they're going to get demolished by the FDA. "Hey I'm just a retailer" is not at all a defense.

As a customer I can't be expected to know about the intricacies of the supply chain for every product I use, so I establish a relationship with one entity - the retailer.

<comment><USER18> > _so I establish a relationship with one entity - the retailer._

My thinking is precisely opposite.

Because I can't be expected to know about the intracacies of the supply chain, I consider the quality to be determined by one entity - the manufacturer.

I trust Crest toothpaste over some no-name generic toothpaste that might be made by anyone precisely because it's Crest. I can buy it from the immigrant family which owns the corner bodega, and I don't have the slightest idea where _they_ buy it from... but it's still Crest.

In my mind, my primary relationship is with the brand. The retailer I couldn't care less about.

Also, I don't want my health to be determined by where the _store_ sources its stuff from. I want that to be determined at at a governmental level, by the FDA. Sketchy formula shouldn't be _allowed in the country_ in the first place. It's the importer who should be held criminally liable. Again, what does a corner bodega owner know about determining the safety of consumer products? It's the government's job to set safety standards, not store owners making their own uninformed decisions.

<comment><USER20> IMO the supply chain and knowing your supplier plays an extremely important role in making sure products are legitimate and conform to all regulations. A big problem with Amazon is that you can end up with counterfeit products or products that have fake safety certifications stamped on them and you'll never nail down the culprits that orchestrated it. It'll be a transient company in China that's gone by the time anyone knows what happened.

So yeah, you can trust the brand, but if a retailer has no incentive to keep counterfeit products off the shelf there's no guarantee your toothpaste is actually being supplied by Crest. You aren't going to have much luck suing a counterfeiter in a foreign country, especially since they'll be set up to disappear.

It's important for everyone in the supply chain to be liable and making the retailer liable to the consumer is the easiest way to do that. If a supplier sells a retailer a fake unsafe product and the retailer gets sued because of it, the retailer can sue the supplier. If the supplier is buying from a respectable manufacturer they can sue the manufacturer (or settle with them).

As soon as you make the consumer go directly to the supplier or manufacturer, there's a huge incentive to set up a supply chain like Amazon has where a ton of low quality garbage gets foisted onto consumers and there's no recourse because all of the liable parties are in foreign countries.

<comment><USER18> Thanks for explaining, but I still don't see the logic here.

First of all, how is a retailer supposed to vet their suppliers? They don't have the expertise or time to audit the supplier's own supply chains.

Second, if the (non-counterfeit) manufacturer puts out a shoddy batch, it doesn't matter which suppliers it goes through. Why should the store be responsible for the shoddy product when it could have come through _any_ supply chain?

And third, I don't think lawsuits work the way you think they do. If you get sued, you can't just sue your supplier to pass it on and be done with it. You still lose $$$$ hiring lawyers.

You're seizing on the idea of counterfeit products, but I'm not talking about counterfeits. I've never seen or heard of counterfeit toothpaste in my life. And I'm not talking about foreign producers either -- if you _import_ it, then you're liable.

I'm talking about a store purchasing merchandise from a domestic supplier that is genuine. If that merchandise produces injuries, why on earth would the store be liable, instead of the manufacturer? It makes _zero_ sense.

<comment><USER20> I guess the way I see it is that most manufacturers are foreign rather than domestic, so that leaves you with making the importer liable for bad products. I think it's a lot easier to implement that part of the supply chain with a bunch of zero asset, disposable companies, so it doesn't really leave anyone that's going to actually assume liability.

The retailer relies on the value of their brand and often have significant domestic assets. So by making the retailer liable you're pinning down someone who can't just fold their company and walk away.

And I don't agree the retailer isn't capable of vetting their supply chain. I'll agree it's not easy, but they're in the best position to do it because they have a lot of leverage over their direct suppliers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Long-term, it would be good business sense for Amazon to address the counterfeit issue to remove the bad actors from their platform to stay in good standing with consumers so people continue to use their platform and purchase items without worry about getting scammed.

Short-term, at least one idea to fix this is to implement more stringent checks/QA with their FBA policies. Do more stringent verification of imported items going into Amazon FBA warehouses. Or at least add a mark to branded items received from other third-party sources. Simply adding "Shipped by: X, Sold by: X" text on the product page doesn't really help.

There's probably other/better ideas out there. This has been a recurring problem that has kinda gotten swept under the rug so far, but at some point is going to need to be reckoned with.

If Amazon wants to be the best customer experience, then it has to position itself in such a way that it does not devolve into one big flea market + Aliexpress + dropshipping junk bin.

<comment><USER22> It's crazy to me that if I want to buy Ray Ban sunglasses off Amazon, I am routed by default to random third party sellers. I have purchased these once before and I'm almost positive that I received a fake product.

How can I know for sure though? How does Amazon know for sure? Since that experience I have looked at Amazon in a different light, and I've realized how difficult it is to source name brand products with confidence.

This is as good a time for blockchain as any. Register genuine products on a blockchain and have them scanned once they hit the Amazon warehouse to ensure they are authentic.

<comment><USER23> How does blockchain help here? The database would be extremely large - <USER2> large to hold for any ordinary computer system.

The basic problem is solveable without blockchain by simply registering products by their serial number on the brand's website, which a lot of brands actually already do for higher priced products.

<comment><USER24> Then the scammers would just copy the serial numbers, you would have to link every number with a customer name

<comment><USER25> You don't need to link it to any customer details. The way it usually works is the website records every serial number checked, and warns you if somebody has already checked that serial number. For additional assurance the serial number can also be concealed with tamper-evident packaging, e.g. scratch-off paint.

<comment><USER26> D'Addario has a "serial number" check webpage for their guitar strings. If you enter an invalid (or previously used) serial number, _supposedly_ (I've never had a counterfeit set) they'll send you a genuine set for free.

Sure, some people will input fake serial numbers to get a free product, but they probably weighed the cost of counterfeit strings affecting brand image (if I don't know mine are counterfeit, I'll assume it's D'Addario's fault if they're bad) with the cost of sending a free set of $5 strings.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> I've finally figured out how to buy non-counterfeit items on Amazon: try selling it yourself and see if Amazon says 3rd party listings are allowed. In the very few cases where you're not allowed to proceed to create a listing, it is safe to purchase.

<comment><USER28> I see this type of comment all the time, but I've never purchased anything but legitimate items off of Amazon. What are you buying that you consistently run into fakes / knockoffs?

<comment><USER29> Memory cards / thumbdrives are the canonical example here, I think. The fakes are _plentiful_ , and comingling ensures that you are playing roulette every single time you purchase one, and the fakes are good enough that they'll stand up to visual scrutiny unless you know exactly what you're looking for, and sometimes not even then.

<comment><USER30> I remember for a brief period where there were 256 GB micro SD card listings on Amazon...before there were any real ones released by anyone.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Wow, here is the actual decision : [https://cases.justia.com/california/court- of-appeal/2020-d07...](https://cases.justia.com/california/court-of- appeal/2020-d075738.pdf?ts=1597343456)

It definitely looks like Amazon is going to have to accept strict liability in California. That will make it interesting to see what they do. Do they leave California? (their biggest US market) or do they clean up their FBA act? I'm hoping for the latter, as the justices argue in the decision that is exactly the intent of California's strict liability.

<comment><USER31> Why would they leave CA? They would just remove 3rd-party sellers and implement higher standards if/when they allow them again. FBA sellers don't get to sell anything they want, you have to get ungated first per category.

<comment><USER32> Cool, who's making the comparison website that shows which products are the same price in California, vs all the others that Amazon knows are mixed in with counterfeits and low-grade and defective items.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> bought some wireless earphones from them a while back, the store sold me a knock off. open up a dispute and the owner told me their delivery guy was swaping fake ones for the real ones. took forever to send me new ones. after all that I went to post a review saying that this happened and guess what? my review never saw the light of day

<comment><USER34> > the owner told me their delivery guy was swaping fake ones for the real ones

That seems a scam scheme. They send fakes and for the people that complains they send the real deal.

> my review never saw the light of day

Amazon does not want to give a good service, Amazon wants to sell products. Your review could have negatively impacted Amazon sells.

I doubt that, currently, there is any law that forces Amazon or any other website to publish all reviews. They can pick and choose to float or sink any store.

<comment><USER35> Actually in my experience Amazon has always provided prompt and satisfactory customer service. I'm not talking about the sort of issue in this article of course, but just the normal things: Returns, billing problems, charging me for home pickup on two different returns I'm making at the same time instead of just once... I've never had one of these common place customer service issues that wasn't solved quickly & to my satisfaction. Sometimes they'll even go beyond what I was expecting and add a credit.

Of course none of that means they don't rig the review system, although the presence of products with near universally bad reviews would indicate that, if they do rig reviews, it's not a general practice.

No, in my experience, while Amazon is bad in plenty of other ways, good service isn't one of them.

<comment><USER4> Hmmm. I recently ordered an item (pack of quicklinks) and the package itself arrived with a hole in it and no product (looks like the bubble-envelope seam failed). After clicking around on Amazon's website, the closest way to solve this was "return because of missing items" and they seem to still want me to ship back the original item (which is obviously impossible). The replacement was shipped quickly, but I have no idea what will happen when they don't receive a return.

As far as I can tell, there's no way to communicate this to a human. I'm not impressed with their service.

<comment><USER36> AFAIK the correct way to solve empty-package-received is contacting customer service: Help => Need more help? => Contact Us => Contact Us.

<comment><USER4> Thanks... the menu structure is somewhat different on the website, but I finally found it. I spent 20 mins looking for a way to contact someone before giving up, assuming it didn't exist.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> The next logical step here is that Amazon is also liable for the counterfeit products they sell and seemingly do absolutely nothing to police.

Consumers currently get blamed for this (eg [1]), sometimes through absolutely no fault of their own. Imagine walking into into Best Buy or Macys, buying something, and then getting in trouble for buying counterfeit goods.

Just watch how quickly that problem gets solved once Amazon is liable.

These companies really want the best of both worlds. Amazon wants to own the customer relationship but have none of the responsibilities ("we're a third party marketplace"). Uber wants to control what drivers do (as in, not drive for Lyft at the same time) but not have them as employees. Airbnb wants to run (illegal) hotels by arguing they aren't running hotels and it's really the hosts who are responsible.

It's all kind of ridiculous.

[1]: [https://www.racked.com/2018/1/8/16849298/amazon- counterfeits...](https://www.racked.com/2018/1/8/16849298/amazon-counterfeits- global-entry-customs)

</comment><comment><USER38> The real issue is that Amazon has turned into Alibaba/Aliexpress and is filled with low quality products. Amazon will sell anything as long as its cheap.

I think this will only hurt Amazon where there is some injury beyond a defective product. Amazon already uses its contracts and terms of service to push the cost of returns and such to the third party supplier. Amazon will do its best to deflect most or all of the pain through better contracts.

</comment><comment><USER39> OK, a California decision on this. I thought the dog-collar case in Pennsylvania was going to be the one that turned this around. Amazon is re- appealing that one.[1]

[1] [https://www.insurancejournal.com/news/national/2019/07/08/53...](https://www.insurancejournal.com/news/national/2019/07/08/531347.htm)

</comment><comment><USER40> Wait, so....previously in the US Amazon wasn't responsible for the products it was selling?? Lol, what? So who was responsible then??

<comment><USER41> Obviously, it should be the manufacturer. You know, the people that made the product??

<comment><USER40> Uhm, no? Obviously, as a consumer, I couldn't care less about who is the manufacturer - I have no business relationship with them. The person who sold me the item is responsible for it because they are the ones I entered into a purchase contract with.

That's how it works in all of EU already - the seller is responsible for sold items, because....it just makes more sense?

<comment><USER41> Ok, and if you sell or even give away your used item to me and I deem it harms me in some way? When does the litigation pain chain stop?

<comment><USER40> The legislation treats used items differently. Unless the seller purposefully hid something from you then you accept used items as-is with no further responsibility accepted by the seller. So the chain ends on the first sale on a new item. There are exceptions to this for certain items(say cars). But if you buy a second hand phone and it explodes a month later then whoever sold you the item is not responsible.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> In what world does this not just become a contractually required insurance policy covering Amazon, paid for by the third party.

Granted, whoever pays in name, the cost will be passed on to consumers.

<comment><USER43> Well, maybe, maybe not.

At least, it incentivizes Amazon to chase the culprits. The question is whether that incentive is big enough for them to fix / improve things.

<comment><USER44> If Amazon can get sued every time someone burns themselves with a knockoff product, I would think their incentives would shift from:

"Pay as little as possible for quality assurance, down to a floor of $0"

to

"Pay as little as possible for quality assurance, down to a floor of $whatever number would convince a court that we made a good faith effort to prevent knockoffs."

<comment><USER45> Strict liability means that Amazon is liable for _any_ defective product no matter how "hard" they tried

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> Amazon wants to own the revenues of the market but not the liabilities :)

</comment><comment><USER47> How does this apply to eBay or Newegg? I've written about how we've lost a lot of smaller independent websites and everyone has to have a store on Amazon/eBay/Newegg/Reverb these days:

[https://battlepenguin.com/tech/the-death-of-the-mom-and- pop-...](https://battlepenguin.com/tech/the-death-of-the-mom-and-pop-e-store/)

I imagine this wouldn't affect eBay since it's clearly a site where you are buying from a seller. eBay is more of a newspaper listening. But what about Newegg or Reverb which try to create these tight models just like Amazon so you're not always sure who exactly you're buying from? Newegg even does the "sold and shipped" by newegg (it's not clear if these are actual products from newegg inventory or if they are leasing warehouse/inventory pipeline like Amazon).

<comment><USER48> The decision (linked above) makes the distinction based on Amazon placing itself in the supply chain between distributor and customer. eBay seems safe from this one, Newegg will have liability for those 3rd party products they actually ship.

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> I find it perplexing that Amazon is still so dominant in e-commerce despite being an all around strange and confusing experience with weird pricing and no name brands that's more like an eBay than a Walmart these days.

I just go to Costco and Walmart now for 99% of the things I used to buy on Amazon.

</comment><comment><USER50> If you ever happen to run into a seller that's motivated to fight your claim, you'll actually realize that Amazon is the new eBay. They now play the exact same game where they sit in the middle, giving each party time to respond, etc. and it just bounces back and forth forever. In my case I had ordered a print on white background and it arrived on a yellowish background and the seller kept fighting. It took 2 weeks and several escalations after which Amazon finally issued me a refund. Noteworthy as well that it was a "goodwill" refund, ie they didn't rule against the seller despite having ample proof in the form of screenshots of the listing and pictures.

</comment><comment><USER51> eBay is not same-same, it's much more marketplace-esque.

eBay does not use a consolidated product listing, much more like a bulletin board each sellers products being sold under it's own URL. Amazon consolidates the listing for all sellers into a single product and uses their own ranking algorithms to determine which seller is in the "buy box" (which accounts for 97% of the items sales velocity). Amazon treats the entire experience as their transaction, they anonymize the emails and don't allow sellers to send follow- messages to clients or market other products to them (package inserts). The cart-checkout process isn't broken down by seller either, it's a unified payment and "1 click" checkout. I don't feel bad for Amazon at all - they've had it coming!

FWIW .. I was the first person (as a 3rd party) to develop an integration with Amazon's marketplace. I also personally won eBays' star developer award. I recall the year the Internet Retailer show was in San Diego and Amazon didn't have an employee there. It was against Amazon corporate rules to allow employees to spend the night in CA in fear it would create sales tax nexus. Amazon employees would need to fly back to Seattle and then fly back to San Diego if they came down for a friday meeting and wanted to spend the weekend on personal time! Amazon has gamed the rules, they compete directly with their clients (sellers) using the sales data to decide what product to source. They ran their warehouses as 3rd party entities to avoid nexus and begrudging accepted 3rd party (non-Amazon owned) sellers when the courts ruled that wholly owned entities would create sales-tax nexus. I feel no pity for them.

<comment><USER52> > eBay does not use a consolidated product listing, much more like a bulletin > board each sellers products being sold under it's own URL.

Try searching for a product on ebay right now and it's the exact same experience as Amazon. Both Amazon and Ebay's algorithms determine which usb drives show up first when searching for "usb stick", which is where 99% of their commerce is coming from.

<comment><USER53> The eBay list will have a rating for the seller, full detailed customer feedback the seller received for the previous 90 days including the listing. It will also have verbatim customer feedback going back 12 months.

This is the top result of my search for "usb stick" \-- a seller with 28k transactions and 100% positive feedback. [https://www.ebay.com/itm/SanDisk- Cruzer-Blade-Flash-Drive-8G...](https://www.ebay.com/itm/SanDisk-Cruzer-Blade- Flash-Drive-8GB-16GB-32GB-64GB-USB-2-0-Pen-Memory-Stick/202906951835)

<comment><USER52> That doesn't contradict my point. Both have a generic search list that combines multiple sellers onto one page, making the OP's statement "eBay does not use a consolidated product listing" incorrect.

<comment><USER53> The search list on eBay provides provenance. The buyer can choose among suppliers as well as products. The eBay list is specific, not generic.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> Amazon 3rd party store is a flea market full of complete garbage. It's a high time to force Amazon to clean it up.

</comment><comment><USER55> So, I'm currently living in mainland Europe. Amazon UK (native English) will be out of EU in the near future. Given this article and also shady 'is this real thing or not - order and find out' \- what would be a not shady general kind of store in the EU with native english? I'm ordering mostly books, but sometimes electronics.

There's tons of e-shops. Telling apart which one is shady and which one is not is really difficult. Amazon used to be trustworthy in my eyes and that feeling has faded.

<comment><USER56> This doesn't really answer your question, but Amazon DE offers an English UI option.

<comment><USER57> amazon.de is fine and the personal does speak English. More also it's the EU, hence free returns and no questions asked (by law) for 2 weeks. plus 2y warranty.

I can't say bad words about the EU version of amazon when it comes to customer service. Yes the counterfeit stuff is there but the free returns mitigate that.

To the grandparent poster: you wont be able to order e-books off the uk version... and would have to use .com one.

<comment><USER58> Note that when ordering outside the country you still have to pay for the shipping fee of the return yourself _to_ the amazon store of origin you selected, making this a lot less flexible (and slower) than you'd think.

As a frequent traveler across the EU, this bit me both on amazon.de/fr.

I'm not sure if there are exceptions to these rules, but free returns are frequently only free if within the same country and it's not unique to amazon.

<comment><USER57> >Note that when ordering outside the country you still have to pay for the shipping fee of the return yourself _to_ the amazon store of origin you selecte

That is false - I do order outside and it costs around 10 + 10euro/kg for around 7-10days delivery (express within 2-3days is around double). When I returned anything (3x times) - amazon paid back the shipping costs, BOTH my own sending and the bill sending back to them. If the item was part of a bigger order, they paid back partially my own cost for sending it to me initially. And they always foot the bill for the sending back in full.

More also, there was a hard drive that failed 2nd day I installed, I complained, they called and did send one immediately prior I even returned the original one to them, which they reimbursed the bill for. The drive arrived the next day (shipped by courier/air). Like I've said - I cant say bad words about their service in the EU.

<comment><USER58> What do you mean by "BOTH my own sending and the bill sending back to them? When did this happen, and from where?

My last cross-country return was in 2017 for a lens (sold and shipped from amazon) and I had to pay for the shipping myself to amazon.fr from italy. Didn't get a refund for the shipping cost, although the replacement arrived for free. Note that the lens was originally shipped to france. I was substituting for an identical item, which usually gets shipped right away. However, in this case, I had to wait for the return to be processed.

I had the same scenario in 2016, but from germany (shipped to germany, returned to france).

Note that I cannot complain for the service itself. I only had great experiences in return from amazon in general, but your description comes unexpected from me.

<comment><USER36> Note that you have to specifically ask customer service for the return shipping refund afterwards, it is not automatic if you self-paid the shipping (or they might only provide a small allowance automatically which is usually not enough for international shipping).

I've gotten my international return shipping always refunded when returning to amazon.de, amazon.it and amazon.fr (when the item was faulty or the item was otherwise eligible for free returns).

Here's the relevant amazon.de help page: [https://www.amazon.de/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=G...](https://www.amazon.de/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=GXM7UWCH63ZJHAVP)

> If your item was eligible for free return but you paid a delivery fee, we'll > issue a refund for the delivery charges.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER59> I'm currently dealing with a situation as an Amazon seller where I think the buyer is trying to scam me (claiming I sent the product wrong/late, hoping they can manipulate the return process to both get a refund and keep the product because of Amazon's notoriously customer-biased policies). I wonder how this plays in.

</comment><comment><USER60> I'm not so sure this will hurt Amazon. I'd imagine if this decision holds (for more regions), Amazon will decide to stop acting as a platform for individual smaller businesses and focus on its own assortment. And since this decision is most probably not limited to Amazon itself, competitors would face the same problem.

</comment><comment><USER61> This is a good place to ask this question: Lately, we're trying to buy products on Amazon only if it says, "Sold by Amazon.com." Is that a good way to ensure that the product is not counterfeit? The assumption is that if Amazon is selling something directly, it would be getting it directly from the real manufacturer.

<comment><USER24> Your assumption is wrong - FBA means that 'Sold by Amazon' will often be supplied by a third party, so you have to dig through all the offers to see if any are FBA.

</comment></comment><comment><USER62> How did eBay avoid this?

<comment><USER63> > The Appellate Court didn't agree with Amazon's stance, noting that the > product had been listed on Amazon, was stored in an Amazon warehouse, had > facilitated payment, and shipped it out in Amazon packaging, proving it to > have a hand in getting it to Bolger and thus being liable under California > law.

eBay does not meet the second qualifier and rarely meets the last. Additionally, it is more obviously a marketplace - the seller of a given item is highlighted and their credibility made known in the form of their star ratings. Amazon de-emphasizes the seller name for non-Amazon sellers and completely hides their rating on the product page.

Of course, the only way to know for sure is if eBay's liability is litigated.

<comment><USER64> Product had been listed on eBay: Yes

Was stored in an eBay warehouse: No, eBay does not have warehouses.

Had facilitated payment: Maybe, but eBay typically just links one Paypal account to another Paypal account. eBay does not actually touch the funds. (Paypal has been it's own separate company for awhile now.)

Shipped it out in eBay packaging: Unless they're using a service, typically shipping is up to the eBay seller.

So I doubt this ruling affects eBay.

<comment><USER65> > Was stored in an eBay warehouse: No, eBay does not have warehouses.

eBay used to have a service where you could take any random junk to their mall kiosk or a FedEx store and eBay would sell it on your behalf. That would pretty much require them to have warehouses.

Is that service dead?

<comment><USER66> They have a Consignment Center [0] but that only really seems to hook you up with on the the various "I'll sell your crap on eBay" that exist instead of doing it themselves.

[0] [https://pages.ebay.com/rcp/consignmentcenter/#/](https://pages.ebay.com/rcp/consignmentcenter/#/)

<comment><USER65> Well, I wasn't just hallucinating: [https://www.cnet.com/news/ebay-drop-off- locations-coming-to-...](https://www.cnet.com/news/ebay-drop-off-locations- coming-to-1600-fedex-office-stores/)

But the program does seem to be dead.

I found some interesting forum discussion taking the opinion that eBay strangled consignment businesses by choosing to heavily discourage auction sales (as opposed to fixed-price listing). They did that because customers on average strongly prefer fixed-price sales, but I'd be open to the idea that this could be a case where giving the customers what they want turned out to be a mistake for the business.

eBay saw themselves as competing with Amazon in the "buy things over the internet" space.[1] But by emphasizing fixed-price sales so much, they arguably made themselves much less distinct from Amazon.

[1] I was surprised to learn this, as I had always thought of Amazon as being for buying things new and eBay for buying things used.

<comment><USER66> I think a lot of people didn't understand or know about how the eBay auctions worked [0]. I only learned about eBay being a second price auction, effectively, ages after eBay was a thing. Without knowing how the proxy system works doing an auction would be pretty frustrating because it'd look like you were usually instantly outbid.

[0] At least the later version I don't know if they used a different scheme earlier. They must have because the sniping services that existed in early eBay don't really make sense with proxy bids.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER67> I hear a lot of complaints about counterfeits in Amazon in the US.

But not as many back here in India. I've bought electronics, chairs, phones and appliances without too much hassle. Always with fulfilled by Amazon though.

I'm curious if the problem is more prevalent in different locations.

<comment><USER68> In Canada and haven't had too much an issue, thou im carful with what I order and look for red flags

</comment></comment><comment><USER69> This will have interesting impacts on all marketplaces.

Ebay, Walmart, NewEgg, all the app stores on every platform - if a game is malware (or trashes your machine with a bug), is that Steam's responsibility? It's delivered from their servers with their packaging.

<comment><USER70> Depends on how much effort is shown to have been made by these app stores to prevent malware. For example, if Steam shows significant cases where malware games have been removed, and can prove they actively work to remove these cases, then it won't be much of a problem for Steam. They are doin their best.

<comment><USER71> That's not how strict liability works.

Strict liability means even if they do all of those things they are still liable.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER72> Good. The amount of counterfeit crap on Amazon is getting out of control. Indeed they are no longer the first place I think of for electronics.

</comment><comment><USER73> Hmm.. this is like if section 230 was written in an opposite way such that sites that hosted content were liable for the things posted by 3rd parties aka you and me.

</comment><comment><USER74> I only buy books from Amazon, who knew they were still only good at one thing.

<comment><USER75> They sell counterfeit books too. There was a thread about it a couple of years ago.

</comment></comment><comment><USER76> Amazon is responsible for covering the globe in Chinese garbage.

</comment><comment><USER50> That's good, one less "we are just a market place" scam.

</comment><comment><USER77> We need more rulings like that.

Want to peddle chinese crap? Be responsible.

</comment><comment><USER78> This is the norm here in the UK and the EU

</comment><comment><USER79> Isn't it obvious ?

</comment><comment><USER31> I've had nothing but good experience with Amazon over the past 10 years. Very few problems but when there is, it's a few minutes to get a replacement or refund immediately, including complicated scenarios like promos, out of date returns, and warranty claims.

I must not be the only one with good experiences if they're doing so well. Then again I also check to make sure I'm buying direct from Amazon and reading the most recent verified purchaser reviews for any expensive items.

However this ruling needs clarity since Ebay would also qualify, especially since they also handle payments now instead of using Paypal, and potentially Shopify as well.

EDIT: what are people disagreeing with?

<comment><USER80> Agree with the experience: Amazon has never done me wrong.

Disagree with the context: You're making the mistake of saying that you do things the proper way and if others would follow your lead, they might have better experiences also. People who have been wronged don't like to hear that other people think it's kind of their fault. Not saying you think, or said, this: but there's a bit of victim-blaming going on. This should not be something Amazon customers need to worry about. And for the record, I am less careful than you. But it's possible that the products I purchase are less attractive to counterfeiters...

Disagree on the comment about eBay. They do not warehouse or ship. It is very clear that the seller is responsible for product description and delivery.

Did not downvote. :)

<comment><USER31> That's helpful, I should've been more clear.

Most products I don't really check and have been fine. What I was trying to convey was that expensive, specialized or esoteric items have more scam potential which should require more review before buying (not that Amazon isn't still at fault).

However people are claiming here that 95% of orders are bad and that's just hard to believe. The business would collapse tomorrow if that were the case for any serious number of people, and why would a person keep buying if that's all they were getting?</comment></comment></comment>


Lectures in Quantitative Economics with Julia [pdf] - <AUTHOR> https://julia.quantecon.org/_downloads/pdf/quantitative_economics_with_julia.pdf <comment><USER2> Good stuff, thnx for posting ;)

Have heard JuliaLang is gaining mainstream acceptance in mathematical finance across academia as well as the Fed, GS, Blackrock and other enterprises</comment>


My latest order of programming books - <AUTHOR> http://antoniocangiano.com/2009/08/14/my-latest-order-of-programming-books/ <comment><USER2> "Clean Code" looks good to me. I feel too lazy to chew off books like "Elements of Programming".

</comment><comment><USER3> I know several people who know "Uncle Bob" (And how does one get to be named uncle bob, anyway?) and this is the third recommendation I've read for his book.

So over to Amazon, click once and bam! It's on my Kindle.

Amazon bastards. (grin)</comment>


Tim Cook Q&A: The Full Interview on iPhone 6 and the Apple Watch - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2014-09-19/tim-cook-q-and-a-the-full-interview-on-iphone-6-and-the-apple-watch

<comment><USER2> Does anybody actually buy the line about "the other people that ventured into this [mobile payments] spent all of their time on the front end thinking about how to create a business model, how to collect data, own the data, sell the data, monetize the data. They were thinking about it in those kind of terms, not in terms of why you would want to use it."?

Seriously? what has Apple done differently here? Is it not just tap and go payments where Apple takes a cut of the total take? Is that really innovative and original?</comment>


My Livecoding.tv account deletion saga - <AUTHOR> http://liza.io/my-livecoding-dot-tv-account-deletion-saga/ <comment><USER2> This has gone beyond PR disaster theater and become an outlier. I've temporarily banned Michael's account until it is resolved.

Commenters here should be considering scenarios in which glee would not be a humane response to all this.

<comment><USER3> > This has gone beyond PR disaster theater

I'm not sure this is a PR disaster. Googling, I only see major coverage in this HN thread, and on /r/technology on Reddit. There was a big thread on /r/programming but the mods there deleted that. There are another several discussions on assorted minor subreddits.

None of the major tech news sites or blogs seem to be picking it up. /r/technology can be enough of a cesspool that many tech people don't bother with it. Unless the news sites and blogs are just waiting for more information before running their stories, it looks like this might blow over with little damage to livecoding.tv.

<comment><USER4> "Might" is quite a stretch here. A search for "livecoding" now ranks this thread in the #2 spot, just after the site in question. The damage has already been done, I think.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> nv-vn I'm not very fond of the admins on there (but not really in the same sense). I signed up maybe the first week that the website was up and found a bug. I reported it to the admins, who then criticized me of trying to hack their website and insisted that I was the same person as another user who had spammed their site. They told me that our IPs were the same (and when I asked them to tell my what my IP supposedly was they simply refused). They banned my account after that and I was forced to make a new one (because at the time it was impossible to watch without an account). The next account I made worked for about a week, but then they banned it as well, I guess because it was from the same IP. I don't think I even used that account once after signing up. Finally, I signed up on a VPN because I wanted to watch a friend who was going to stream on there, and that's the account that I've been using since. I think that they tried to ban that one as well after I logged in from my actual IP because it would log out all the time and I couldn't use any of the available account integrations to log in (having to do so directly by the username/password).

<comment><USER5> Please send me a personal message and I'll track your case and see what happened.

<comment><USER6> Dude, honestly, you just need to stop.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> So it really looks like the new profile _was_ deleted by Livecoding and then registered by someone else, who initially put a modified version of the libel back onto it and has now linked to their own video. I would like to stress that this really does _not seem_ to be Michael's doing this time, but a third party who saw this and grabbed my previous username.

On a slightly different note - I have seen some people express some sort of satisfaction in Michael's poor handling of this, specifically on this thread. To me it does not feel right to post these sorts of reactions to what seem to be unwell, possibly almost delusional comments on the part of this person. In fact it seems to be potentially dangerous and irresponsible. This person seems genuinely confused and is going through some possibly serious mental or emotional issues. Something just seems very off about these responses. I am the last person to defend his unprofessional business tactics or communication skills and of course this whole thing seems to have been grossly mishandled, but at this point I don't think a person in their right rational mind would react in the way he has and I would think very hard before making personal comments that might push him further into turmoil right now.

Of course nobody has to listen to me, but I feel it needed to be said. I didn't write this post or post these screenshots to make a joke out of a person or be cruel to someone who seems to be unwell. I just wanted my account deleted.

<comment><USER7> > I just wanted my account deleted.

Totally fair.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> It looks like Livecoding have now updated my profile for me, to claim I am "spamming them":

[https://www.livecoding.tv/lazer/](https://www.livecoding.tv/lazer/)

<comment><USER8> Hi drakonka, I have only just found out about this, and was until now not aware of what happened. I don't know why my cofounder Michael marked you as spam, and I will ask him to contact you. I can only apologise for the handling of your account deletion, it really is not acceptable that it took so long, so we will make it a priority to improve this.

<comment><USER9> What's wrong with you? _Take the page down._ There's a whole HN thread sitting here hitting fucking refresh on it over and over again waiting to see how much more drama your insane team can generate over this. Are you running a company, or a very elaborate piece of nerd performance art?

<comment><USER10> I may be jumping to conclusions, but this reddit comment by Jamie Green may shed some light over his situation...

[https://www.reddit.com/r/timferriss/comments/3g2mjg/tim_ferr...](https://www.reddit.com/r/timferriss/comments/3g2mjg/tim_ferriss_me_would_love_ama_ideas/ctuacjo)

<comment><USER11> Feel sorry for Jamie. See also the latest twitter comment here [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10488919](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10488919)

<comment><USER12> This? [https://twitter.com/StartupLJackson/status/63963265474104115...](https://twitter.com/StartupLJackson/status/639632654741041152)

"Startup L. Jackson @StartupLJackson Sep 4

[Startup L. Jackson Retweeted Ced]

How to make your team completely ineffective.

Treat communication & collaboration w hostility.

Done."

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Just a quick update - I can no longer reset my password, so either they have actually deleted my account now (great!) or just changed the email address. Either way there is no use speculating now as my profile page is a 404 and there is no way to tell with certainty one way or the other whether my account has actually been removed (I suppose one could try to register the username "Lazer", but I am way too sick of this to go near their registration form again).

I filed an ICO report early this morning when the libel on their website stayed there overnight with no sign of changing hours after the cofounder's and Y Combinator president's replies; I simply didn't know what else to try and someone suggested looking into the ICO. So I guess it will just be in their hands now and I'll see what comes out of it, if anything. For now I think this is the end of the road in terms of getting the best possible outcome with a company like this. They are clearly not going to admit their mistake and they seem to still be in (seemingly really bad) damage control mode. I think any further interaction with them would just be a waste of time at this point.

<comment><USER13> Thanks for this. It was really fun to watch a CEO completely torpedo his startup in less than 24 hours by publicly flipping the bird to a message board filled with its would-be users for some reason I cannot begin to fathom.

We should do this again sometime.

EDIT: After reading through a bunch of the CEO's comments, I'm now seriously concerned there may be a mental illness at play. I probably shouldn't have made light of the situation; calling out several users such as minimaxir as Alex from LiveCoding honestly seems delusional.

<comment><USER14> The CEO is not even _trying_ to do the damage control.

<comment><USER13> They're tweeting that most of the comments on here are coming from competitors. I think the problem is they're so overly defensive they're completely in denial.

<comment><USER15> Claiming that everyone criticizing them is a competitor or a banned user seems to cross the line from overly defensive to paranoid.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I'm amazed. Michael, if you're reading this - get someone else to handle this situation. Anyone, even it's just the guy who does SEO.

Your company has appeared on HN before, and as a YC-backed company you should probably have some idea of the type of people who are part of this community. It amazes me that you believe you can respond to this story by attempting to doxx trusted long-term users (or rather, just plain lying about their identities) and claim that the people here are attacking your company.

Even more so that you believe you can claim that a "majority of the comments [in this HN thread] come from competitors and banned users" (@livecodingtv). Most of the people in this thread have never used your products (myself included) - and in response to this story, many who may have never will.

You are the one attacking your company. Stop lying on Twitter. Stop trying to avoid criticism by claiming that your (outraged) potential customers are competitors or spammers. Stop trying to remove pseudonymity from HN commenters (especially the ones trying to be at least slightly sympathetic to your company).

Consider the fact that you may be facing legal action for some of your behavior. The way you respond to these accusations will undoubtedly be reflected in any proceedings, and at at the moment I don't think you're helping your case. (IANAL)

I'm not going to make jabs at your psychological state like a few of the comments here have, but it would be in your interest to visit a mental healthcare professional (if only to check you're capable of handling the pressure caused by this story).

</comment><comment><USER17> I've been unimpressed with LiveCoding.tv's spammy tactics as well.

The decided to enable email notification of video streams for users who have already signed up by using an opt-out system rather than opt-in system.

I created an account out of casual interest and then weeks later got slammed with dozens of spammy "stream is starting" emails every day.

I did actually try to delete my account as well but gave up when it appeared that they didn't allow for that option. Instead I've just been training Google that all the email from them is Spam.

<comment><USER18> They are super spammy, I've unsubscribed several times and still get emails. Sticking with Twitch.

<comment><USER19> I was about to sign up, with about the same reason and interest level as the post author. How's Twitch for this?

<comment><USER20> Twitch officially doesnt allow non-gaming related (game-dev is ok) streams. As long as you dont stream anything explicit you should be ok though

<comment><USER21> As of last week they expanded the definition of what they allow, explicitly mentioning coding

[http://help.twitch.tv/customer/portal/articles/2176641-creat...](http://help.twitch.tv/customer/portal/articles/2176641-creative- faq) Q. What if my creative broadcast is gaming-related art, game development, programming, or involves creation of music? A. You are free to choose whatever you think is the most appropriate category for your creative broadcast, so long as you adhere to the Rules of Conduct for the category when doing so.

Q. Does all Creative category content have to be gaming related? A. No, you're free to broadcast your creative process for any genre!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> So, 12 hours on and the account still hasn't been deleted...

I mean, at this point you have to assume none of the co-founders has the ability to delete it (because common sense would suggest they would have by now, if they could have, to mitigate the on-going public-relations disaster) probably because they outsourced all of their development and really have no clue about how their website actually works.

Under normal circumstances, this could be understandable, but I think there's an obvious irony when the site in question streams people, well, coding!

Now, I suppose it's fair to argue you don't need to know rocket science to make a space game either, but in this case, I'd think there'd be an expectation the people running the site actually at least kinda-sorta know how to code themselves.

Or at least be able to delete some records from a database.

<comment><USER22> YC is an investor in the company. We've been trying all day to reach the CEO and we've been unsuccessful so far.

Obviously, this is very bad and we hope the company will fix it quickly.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, I hope you guys can get somewhere. I'm preparing a complaint to file with the ICO and looking into other options since nothing else seems to have worked and I have no idea what else to do, but really I just want to have my account deleted and move on. I can't believe a simple support ticket spun out into this debacle.

<comment><USER23> Please sue them for libel.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Just noticed that the text on my profile has now been changed to "Marked for removal from database". Perhaps they fixed their "cron job".

mumphster mentioned on Twitter that that he just got banned also and actually managed to have an exchange with the CEO:

[https://twitter.com/elgruntox/status/661063421283012608](https://twitter.com/elgruntox/status/661063421283012608)

[https://twitter.com/elgruntox/status/661063608302866432](https://twitter.com/elgruntox/status/661063608302866432)

I'm not sure where the first line is coming from about any kind of information that they were "doing migrations" (I have had no such communication). My videos were already deleted because I deleted them one by one before they changed my password, put in a redirect back to home on my account, and updated my profile for me.

Anyway, at least they're not referencing dice.com, which I have nothing to do with, anymore. I guess we're just back at square one now.

<comment><USER5> Hi Liza – This is Michael from Livecoding.tv. I hope the tension has calmed down a bit. Am traveling in Europe and thus not always reading emails. Apology for how our support handled your account deletion request and the emails back and forth. It was not really nice and needed given that your account had no content on it, we even deleted all your videos, and disabled your account. They thought you were a troll and just playing funny pranks on them with your friends.

Sorry that it took 11 days to get it resolved. We are a small team and as such if one team member is traveling or on holidays some work/emails get delayed. We are also in the middle of a big migration to v2.0 and thus we have some backlog pending. Again I apologize!

Let me know if you want to talk on the phone and I'll apologize again. We will send you an Amazon gift card to soothe things a bit.

Thanks!

<comment><USER24> There are so many questions that are unanswered. "We are a small team" is not an excuse for what has happened.

Considering that your support person original said "I would be happy to delete your account", considering that someone at Livecoding.tv vandalized the profile page, and considering that the only thing the user has ever requested is for the account to be deleted - can you really say with a straight face at this point that deleting the account is "not needed"?

<comment><USER13> "We are a small team so we changed the text on your account multiple times throughout the day, falsely claiming you were a spammer and worked for Dice.com instead of deleting your account."

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Slightly unrelated note, but I received a spam email from firstname.lastname@example.com on Saturday. I will NEVER EVER use a site that spams like this:

> Hey Luke,

> I've been searching code repos and found that you also love coding. Would be > cool to see your awesome code and projects on Livecoding.tv

> Livecoding.tv is a livestreaming platform for coders to share their code and > hang out. We have users from 194 countries and 3,000 products are being > built live using over 35 different programming languages and frameworks. > Come and complete your first 10 stream hours on Livecoding.tv and get a > chance to win a cool Livecoding.tv T-shirt :)

> If you love your friends, also forward this email to them.

> Michael > Founder, Livecoding.tv > Livechannel: > [https://www.livecoding.tv/drmjg](https://www.livecoding.tv/drmjg)

<comment><USER26> This reminded me of Eli the Computer Guy's rant: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h66PNIUtaaE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h66PNIUtaaE)

<comment><USER27> That was posted in July. They clearly haven't changed their approach or tactics. It's unbelievably short-sighted and damaging.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> It's worth noting that when Livecoding.tv first launched, you were _forced_ to register and log-in to watch any videos. It took an entire thread on Hacker News to force the founders to backpeddle once they were caught: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9800321](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9800321)

This isn't the first YC startup I've seen with such blatant "growth hacking" tactics, and it's disappointing.

<comment><USER29> What does "caught" mean in this context?

If you can't use the site without registering, it probably isn't a secret that you can't use the site without registering.

I can see using a phrase like 'called out' or 'called on their bullshit' or whatever, but I don't see how they were 'caught'.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> So the cron job turned out to be an invented lie told to a user they essentially assumed would be too stupid to think about it. Which is it then, that they e.g. have a tired support team using a canned response that includes a lie? Or is it the founders themselves thinking their audience are fools?

Sure, separate business policy from code, but it seems unwise to assume your users are technically ignorant when your site is about inviting programmers to stream their work.

<comment><USER31> could be a monthly cron job. Principle of charity right?

Of course, assuming that it is a monthly cron job and the account actually is scheduled for deletion then, the question would be: Why in gods name would you not just say that?! "Your account is scheduled for deletion at so and so time", and if at that point you're complaining that it's not fast enough, no one would really have much sympathy for that.

It's still possible this isn't an example of a vindictive and petty individual lying through their teeth. It may still be an example of someone who with poor PR skills, and is not coping with the situation those poor PR skills created.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> I hope Liza comes up with a follow-up post: "the saga continues"

They continue to deny any wrongdoing, and continue in their favorite game of copy-and-paste-replys on Twitter. [https://twitter.com/livecodingtv/with_replies](https://twitter.com/livecodingtv/with_replies)

Here's one directed at me (and 2 other people, since I guess in this instance they were too lazy to copy and past the reply 2 extra times: [https://twitter.com/livecodingtv/status/661153102750425088](https://twitter.com/livecodingtv/status/661153102750425088)

This deep in a hole and they're still convinced they are the victims... Unbelievable.

<comment><USER6> Hm. All my critics are competitors or bad actors we had to ban. Convenient. Or paranoia.

In all seriousness though, I worry about the co-founder(s) mental health. It's all fun to poke at people and say they've lost it, but running a startup is a highly stressful endeavour and it shouldn't be ignored when people break, which I suspect has happened in this case.

It's a tough situation. They'll want to defend what they have, tooth and nail, because it means everything to them. We'll want to counter against what they say, because we feel it's wrong to let that sort of thing go unchallenged. But who wins?

<comment><USER33> Aye. There's a lesson here to be had for all of us, which is that sometimes you've got to step back and let someone who isn't as emotionally invested in the company as you take the reins, as you can end up doing extraordinary damage to yourself by acting rashly.

I speak from experience - I've been at this lark for a decade now, and have on more than a few occasions found myself sincerely regretting how I've responded to a situation, as I've ended up emotional and escalating the matter, rather than responding rationally and calmly. I recall literally pounding my head on the office wall - in front of an investor - painfully to this day. Childish.

We all mistakes, but we also have to learn when to admit our fault, and when to step away from a situation because we aren't the right person to handle it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> I have noticed a recurring theme with YC companies. Many of them....let's just say that they weren't selected for the strength of their technical implementation or people skills. A good example of this is Magic. This is a site that few people probably remember, but they raised $12M at a $40M valuation after 2 weeks in existence back in March. More than 7 months after raising this money, the company, whose entire business model is dependent upon people sending them SMS messages detailing the things that they need or want, has yet to place a tappable SMS link on its home page.

The simple fact of the matter is that money from VCs and/or an endorsement by YC speaks only to the potential of the idea and the pedigree of at least one founder. Nothing else seems to even be considered, even when writing eight figure checks. Given this situation, no one should be surprised that YC companies sometimes go off the rails like this.

<comment><USER5> You might dislike Ycombinator because of whatever reason from the past, but Ycombinator is overall by any objective measure very successful in building companies. Am not saying this just because I was in Ycombinator - if you are honest to yourself you will agree.

<comment><USER35> Would you mind elaborating on "because I _was_ in Ycombinator"? Typo or did something change during today?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Here is my interaction with livecoding.tv's support about removing videos, they don't seem to like removing stuff from their website!

[https://www.livecoding.tv/video/designing-a-touch-screen- int...](https://www.livecoding.tv/video/designing-a-touch-screen-interface-4/) @ 20:37

<comment><USER37> can you submit DMCA claim to them?

<comment> nv-vn Doubt it. Their T&C probably protects them from that kind of thing, but I can't even find it on their site right now.

<comment><USER38> 2.Except for Broadcaster Content already downloaded by users, the foregoing license granted by you terminates regarding a specific piece of Broadcaster Content once you remove or delete that Broadcaster Content from the Livecoding.tv Service.

\-- From Livecoding T&C [https://www.livecoding.tv/terms/](https://www.livecoding.tv/terms/)

seems from the T&C you should be able to remove or delete videos

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Just got another email from Michael trying to convince me that they did the right thing and deleted my videos from my account for me. I just cannot understand why they keep acting like this - did they think I'd forget that I deleted my own videos earlier in this process?

[http://i.imgur.com/Ea55D6G.png](http://i.imgur.com/Ea55D6G.png)

<comment><USER39> "I hope the tension has calmed down a bit". That doesn't come across very well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> In the span of a just a few days we have YC-backed companies being publically outed for engaging in behavior which most of us consider pretty egregious and would certainly warrant any rights as YC founders to be revoked. The tone of commenters (here and w.r.t the Homejoy) can be described as mild shock. This particular example is perhaps even worse than the Homejoy issue, as it seems the founders have taken to personally attacking an individual user for, as far as we can see, are pretty legitimate claims.

But I think probably the least shocked people are the YC partners. If you are Paul G./YC, what do you do about this? By far the biggest question that YC must confront as it expands into research, bigger and bigger classes, new types of involvement through fellows, etc., is how to retain their ability to suss out, deal with, or prevent things like these. I think they are fully aware that they can't.

If anyone hasn't figured it out already, YC is becoming the first 21st century university. In order to get there, they have to become significantly bigger, and just like the startups they fund, that's the metric that's on their radar.

I don't think these events are a sign of YC's negligence. Instead, I think YC is slowly transitioning to a new era in the company. Paul G and the gang are incredibly brilliant. They knew the odds when they decided to continue this incredibly rapid growth of batches and outreach. They aren't surprised by these events; they are just moving to a stage where things like this are unfortunately the cost of doing business. If Paul G is cooking dinner for you and your few buddies over the summer every night, you aren't getting away with this. If you are now one of thousands of people fighting for (or trying to avoid) their attention, you certainly can.

Go around to any top school, and you see the same. Out of your couple thousand bright-eyed, brilliant freshmen, there inevitably are a couple bad apples. But none of them would think that a solution to this is to shrink class sizes.

<comment><USER41> _If you are Paul G. /YC, what do you do about this?_

Nothing unless it gets bad press. Why do you think they care about "egregious" behavior?

Quote From: What We Look For In Founders - Paul Graham - October 2010

        [...]
        Naughtiness
        Though the most successful founders are usually good people, they
        tend to have a piratical gleam in their eye. They're not Goody
        Two-Shoes type good. Morally, they care about getting the big questions
        right, but not about observing proprieties. That's why I'd use the word
        naughty rather than evil. They delight in breaking rules, but not rules
        that matter. This quality may be redundant though; it may be implied by
        imagination. [...]

<comment><USER42> I don't think that's fair. I strongly doubt PG considers spamming, or (falsely) naming & shaming customers, as "naughtiness". That's something very different.

<comment><USER11> "The culture of any organisation is shaped by the worst behaviour the leader is prepared to tolerate".

By stating that rules breaking is desirable, but not stating clearly where the lines are, companies are not given clear enough guidance to avoid scumbag behaviour.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> Shameful.

Since both her and a part of Livecoding are in the EU, EU data protection laws probaby make the situation fairly clear (and give her tools do deal with it, but it shouldn't be necessary)

</comment><comment><USER44> I don't really get the appeal of Livecoding.tv. I've streamed a few times on the service and it's not as good as any other live streaming service. Their email marketing is borderline spammy, their tactics are questionable, and they don't offer a particularly solid feature set, or anything specifically helpful for live streaming coding that you couldn't get with YouTube or Twitch (categories, I suppose?). The argument might be made they have audience specifically looking to watch people write code, but I've never seen more than ~40 people at a time on one stream. You'll probably see more traffic on Twitch in the Programming category.

</comment><comment><USER45> This is a terrible practice for consumers, but a huge strategy win for startups(AOL zombie account trick .. hope they forget about wanting to delete or cancel).

I ran into this awful practice with Uber after a hack they know about lets your account be hacked by London drivers who rip you off for rides in London (im in the states). I went to my forgotten Uber account to cancel and found out I have to email support and further I cant remove all payment options from my account either. WTF ... as a consumer any company who follows such a practice needs their ass handed to them.

On the other hand as startup person I can see the slimey merit in following said practices.

<comment><USER5> Hmm, i don't know how you bring Uber in this conversation, but we are really not in the same space or sharing any information with them.

<comment><USER45> You along with other startups make it incredibly hard to cancel ones account. It's a trick to keep your user base numbers high vs. offering an easy way for the user to delete their own account themselves, as most startups use to allow.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> It's also funny given the cofunders last tweet: [https://twitter.com/jcbgreen](https://twitter.com/jcbgreen)

</comment><comment><USER47> Wow. I did one stream there a month or so ago, and an admin showed up in my chat. They didnt do anything too out of tge ordinary, but I found their attitude to be a little too controlling. It seems like they're trying to build an educational platform and expect all their users to be on board with that. The admin interaction lift a bit of a sour taste in my mouth so I didn't log in again.

Their business model and their management competency are just too poor. They will not be able to compete with twitch.

</comment><comment><USER48> I'm shocked this is a YC-backed startup. It seems standards have fallen substantially.

</comment><comment><USER49> I made an account to see how their system worked after thinking about doing a stream myself a few months ago. After I signed up and poked around their platform, I was none too pleased with the features or way their application worked. They emailed me too many times (almost every day) in the first week and I just marked them as spam and went along with my life.

Glad to hear about what's going on here, I will be sure to never stream or give a website with this type of management my business :)

</comment><comment><USER50> At the beginning of her post, with her explaining why she got into streaming, she almost convinced me to start an account myself; needless to say, by the end of the post and judging from the comments here, there is no way in hell I'd sign up.

<comment><USER51> Good news! Many other livestreaming sites allow this!

</comment></comment><comment><USER52> If livecoding keeps acting like this they are gonna lose whatever foothold they currently have of coding live streaming. With twitch.tv's recent announcment to open up streaming to creatives it is only a matter of time until they capture this audience too.

</comment><comment><USER53> I can't speak for everyone, but unless some extraordinary new information comes to light I personally would never use livecoding.tv after observing this incident. It seems from the comments on this thread that a lot of HN readers agree with me.

And since livecoding.tv is targeted at programmers and a lot of programmers read HN, this is the end of livecoding.tv. It's surreal to watch it happen in real time.

</comment><comment><USER54> Huh, I saw this livecoding site advertised here by the founders, seemed like a great idea and I hoped it would kick off. Sad to see the administration is unprofessional. I wonder how people can fail so hard at public relations. If they didn't want to delete her account all it would have taken is a "Sorry, accounts can't be deleted from livecoding.tv". Instead they had to turn this into something that destroys the reputation of their new site.

<comment><USER5> To be frank, there were only a few videos on the account and the account was not even visited by any other user last 30 days. It was just pending on our tasklist.

<comment><USER53> I think if it were only a matter of taking a long time to delete the account, we wouldn't be so unhappy. To me, the reason your team's behavior seems extremely unprofessional are

1\. Not telling Liza when her account would be deleted

2\. Telling her her account was deleted but not actually deleting it

3\. Sending the "Do you and your friends want to disturb us with this" email

4\. Editing Liza's account to claim that she was banned for spamming

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER55> I don't understand how a company this small doesn't get the public opinion matters. I am will to bet they are not going to be around much longer.

</comment><comment><USER56> Can you change the gender on your account? Switch it over to male and set up a couple dozen pseudonyms to throw off their count.

If Livecoding has aligned their interests with the gender ratio of their users to the extent that they're treating you like this, makes sense to speak back to them on their own terms. IMHO.

<comment><AUTHOR> Unfortunately at this point that redirect back to home on login that I discovered after changing my password is still there, so I doubt I can change any part of my account details now; it's just going to sit there until they decide to actually delete it (if ever). But I did manage to change the profile description and stream title to make it clear that I am waiting for the account to be deleted before the redirect was put in place.

I didn't actually connect their shadiness about deleting my account with gender and am honestly not convinced that this is it. Sure, they were kind of pushy about promoting the site to women, but there is actually no gender identification on my profile other than my profile picture. I can't remember if gender was specified somewhere in my account settings but then not publicly displayed at this point.

<comment><USER51> Suggestion:

Write a Cease and Desist letter to

        Livecoding.tv (Livecoding Ltd)
        20-22 Wenlock Road
        London, N1 7GU
        England

That should get them to stop.

A letter such as this costs less than a Euro, and means they have no excuse not to act on it.

Otherwise you can try sending them a fax, that usually also has better chances at success with businesses.

        </comment></comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>----

I kinda want to move my twitch streams over to livecoding just to be able to get into this deletion mess and send lawyers after them now...

<comment><USER57> That's odd, their domain name suggests they are based in the small island nation of Tuvalu.

<comment><USER51> There are more oddities like that:

The government of the state of Schleswig-Holstein in Germany uses for most official websites the domain .sh, which actually belongs to Saint Helena.

At this point almost all domains on .sh actually belong to companies or governmental entities in Schleswig-Holstein, the remaining domains mostly belong to geeks using it due to the similarity to the file ending .sh for shell files.

Examples:

\- [http://www.nah.sh/](http://www.nah.sh/) (Official transit agency)

\- [http://www.studentenwerk.sh/](http://www.studentenwerk.sh/) (Official Student Service Agency, operates dormitories, etc)

\- [https://www.wir-bewegen.sh/](https://www.wir-bewegen.sh/) (Kickstarter for public projects, operated by the government; one example is "a 3D model of the city for blind people as map, publicly accessible next to the train station")

Many more such cases exist all around the world, it is... weird.

<comment><USER58> Also: .nu is owned by Niue, but is mostly used by Swedish companies (nu is swedish for now). It was even taken over by IIS/.SE in 2013.

<comment><USER59> .nu is common in the Netherlands as well, it means the same thing in Dutch.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER60> People really need to read all of DrMJG_HN's comments in this thread. I can't believe what I'm seeing. Completely delusional.

<comment><USER61> And for a laugh, they need to check out how much karma he hasn't got...

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Well, it looks like my profile is back again...again with accusations of spam...

[https://www.livecoding.tv/lazer/](https://www.livecoding.tv/lazer/)

<comment><USER16> Wow. This could be another user re-creating the account to create drama, though. Is the rest of the profile info (favorite line of code, etc.) the same?

I wouldn't call it impossible, but this seems like such a deliberately bad move that I can't even believe it was done by livecoding.tv

<comment><AUTHOR> No, the rest of the profile info is totally different. I agree, this is probably some troll recreating the account.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER62> I had initially considered streaming on livecoding.tv for the same reasons as yours. Definitely won't do it now.

</comment><comment><USER63> I'd guess this sort of thing results from the obsession over growth. They are desperate to make their user aquisition/retention numbers look good so they do scammy things to keep accounts. It's sad to see the aggressive behaviour though.

<comment><USER64> It's probably more likely that acquisition or retention isn't good, and this is done out of desperation.

<comment><USER65> It's probably this. I've livestreamed on Twitch + LiveCoding and have no clue why you would ever use LiveCoding. Twitch and Youtube seem like they're better in every capacity.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER66> They don't deserve you! You had the full right to ask them to delete your account!

Even if you where "an unreasonable user" they should never treat their users like that (just for their own sake)!

Livecoding.tv should immediately admit this huge mistake and apologize to prevent any further damage to their public image!

Calling your user a spammer?? Shame on you!!!

</comment><comment><USER67> Just asked for my account to be deleted, their whole response to this situation is insane.

</comment><comment><USER68> I think actual deletion of accounts is not a functionality that is high on any startups list - disabling is probably the usual course of action? However, to lie about it is another matter entirely.

<comment><USER38> It is a legal requirement in the EU under Data Protection Laws.

<comment><USER69> Outright deletion of data, especially anything used in financial calculations, might run afoul of Sarbanes-Oxley in the United States.

I say "might" because it's not exactly spelled out that way in the regulation. Basically, any sort of reports that are used to make financial decisions must be replicable. You have to be able to show an auditor how you came to your numbers. You have to show how the report would have looked at the time it was made, and what data it would have contained.

I could potentially see raw count of users, or counts of users combined with popularity of videos (and growth of popularity across those videos) be a part of plans on how to monetize such a site. If Livecoding.TV had made revenue projections based on some future monetization plan and had started circulating this plan amongst potential investors, it becomes a serious landmine to hard- delete data.

Most places assume this just means "keep backups", but I don't know anyone who is operationally prepared to restore year-old backups of databases _and_ running application code to be able to appease such an auditor. Full compliance is really hard, so I almost always advise people to go for soft- delete instead. There are any number of technical and business reasons why soft-delete is better, too. If this report that a 3rd party registered a new account with the same name just to be able to troll everyone involved turns out to be true, that would be one of those reasons.

That said, that's a completely different issue than privacy compliance. Any sane authorization system should make it easy to de-authorize specific sets of data for _everyone_. No data request meant to go out into the world should ever lack an authorization check. Given the difficulties of keeping tabs on internal- versus external data, I just generally believe all data requests should come along with an authorization check, regardless of whether or not it's required, because you can't ever really predict what code a jr. programmer is going to reuse some day.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER70> Shame. I was really enjoying streaming while I coded. Not so much the livecoding platform (very buggy from my experience), but the activity itself.

I don't think I'll stream on their site again after this. Can't stand to support founders who treat their users like this.

Twitch.tv it is.

<comment><USER5> It was just a backlog we had. Her account and the multiple accounts her friends created days ago never had any big content on them. There is really no incentive for her request not to be fulfilled. You can contact awakekat on Livecoding.tv to hear her feedback on how we treat women: [https://www.livecoding.tv/awakekat/](https://www.livecoding.tv/awakekat/)

Her friends just created multiple accounts within a short time frame and thus our support thought they were just trolling together.

<comment><AUTHOR> I don't know of any friends creating multiple accounts at all. If anything my friends learned to _never_ create an account with your site. I would also appreciate it if you did not "play dumb" in your communications with me. To be honest I can't believe this is actually still happening: [http://i.imgur.com/NT6xH5X.png](http://i.imgur.com/NT6xH5X.png)

<comment><USER71> Near the bottom on the imgur link:

``` I think it is just a complete misunderstanding you have ```

I might be wrong. But this is almost border line delusional!

<comment><USER72> It seems to be a go-to phrase for him. From a video linked elsewhere on this page: [https://youtu.be/h66PNIUtaaE?t=17m38s](https://youtu.be/h66PNIUtaaE?t=17m38s)

That video was posted in July...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER57> I hope your cat gets better soon!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you very much! He is better now (knock wood), but needs medication 3 times a day and may have a permanently damaged bladder. But as long as he's happy and peeing I'm happy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER73> when twitter bots go bad: [https://twitter.com/livecodingtv/status/661046865488580610](https://twitter.com/livecodingtv/status/661046865488580610)

</comment><comment><USER74> Thank you for this post. I've been looking into using Livecoding in the exact same way the author has, and now know that it is not the platform for me.

Maybe there is space for a competitor?

<comment><USER51> Yeah, a competitor where users can easily fork the code and send a pull request (maybe even with support for a webIDE?) sounds like it could easily make profit in this situation...

I'm going to look into it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER75> They've also been spamming reddit pretty hard. As a mod of a programming sub, I've had to add their domain to the automod spam list for post spam, and then report a user or two to /r/spam for comment spam (and are now shadowbanned) . Kind of surprised to learn that they were YC.

</comment><comment><USER76> I put in a deletion request for my account as well ([https://www.livecoding.tv/wmoxam/](https://www.livecoding.tv/wmoxam/)).

The handling of this situation has completely nuked any trust I ever had in this service.

</comment><comment><USER77> A word of advice to founders from the US: ignoring user requests to delete accounts or personally identifying information is a crime in some countries. (I'm only familiar with French and Canadian law.)

</comment><comment><USER73> Thanks for the heads up. Gonna try to get my account deleted.

[http://livecoding.tv/ell](http://livecoding.tv/ell) hopefully they get the message.

</comment><comment><USER78> This happened to me too!!!!! It took so long, and was so annoying, and i'm still not even sure why they stopped coming.

</comment><comment><USER79> Sounds like livecoding.tv is run by a bunch of jerks.

</comment><comment><USER6> hm. livecoding.tv seems to be built on top of some version of mesh-app.io (which doesn't seem to be publicly available yet.) I wonder if this has something to do with their inability to delete accounts...

</comment><comment><USER80> So they not only use Flash but every ugly trick in the book.

<comment><USER5> Some users prefer flash other HTML5. We are just testing HTML5 on staging server and will release HTML5 streams soon.

<comment><USER81> Nobody prefers flash for video streaming. Not one person on the planet.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER82> The issue here is not that Livecoding.tv isn't removing this individual's account, but that individuals sign up for things with the expectation they have rights to their data. Here's a gem from Livecoding.tv's TOS which clearly indicates their intent with other people's data:

> All Materials contained on the Livecoding.tv Service are the proprietary > property of Livecoding.tv or its subsidiaries or affiliated companies and/or > third-party licensors. All trademarks, service marks, and trade names are > proprietary to Livecoding.tv or its affiliates and/or third-party licensors. > Livecoding.tv reserves all rights not expressly granted in these Terms of > Service. Unless otherwise expressly stated in writing by Livecoding.tv, you > are granted a limited, non-sublicensable license (i.e. a personal and > limited right) to access and use the Livecoding.tv Service for your personal > or internal business use only.

In short, if you sign up for an account on their site, they own EVERYTHING. They don't have to delete your account because all of their users agreed to these terms by using the site. Looking through the TOS, there is nothing mentioned about canceling accounts.

I'm empathetic to the author of the article, but I will point out that expecting ownership of your content after giving up ownership of your content is logically unsound.

Shaming aside, not signing up for a centralized service with limited rights like this in the first place would have resulted in less suffering for everyone involved.

<comment><USER83> I think you are quoting the part the protects their( livecoding.tv's ) intellectual property and , and not the streamer.

The license for the streamers stars at _11.Broadcasters._

It seems you are allowed to cancel the license:

 _11\. Broadcasters

a.License from Livecoding.tv.

If you sign up for an account as a Streamer, subject to your compliance with these Terms of Service, Livecoding.tv hereby grants to you a personal, limited, non-exclusive, non-transferable, freely revocable license to use the Livecoding.tv Service for the uploading and distributing of authorized digital content, including videos (" Broadcaster Content ")._

and:

 _2.Except for Broadcaster Content already downloaded by users, the foregoing license granted by you terminates regarding a specific piece of Broadcaster Content once you remove or delete that Broadcaster Content from the Livecoding.tv Service._

<comment><USER82> I read through that, but that last part basically says "if someone hasn't watched your content, you can revoke the license from the content by deleting it". If anyone has seen any of the other content, the company owns a perpetual license for it. Regarding their site content, it would appear they think they own everything on the site, including user content:

> Unless otherwise indicated, all Content and other materials on the > Livecoding.tv Services, including, without limitation...

That goes on to list all types of content, that the content is trademarked, copyrighted, etc. and then states they own all of the licenses to it, as I mention in my comments above.

In comparison, here's Github's statement on the rights to content:

> We claim no intellectual property rights over the material you provide to > the Service. Your profile and materials uploaded remain yours.

<comment><USER83> >Regarding their site content, it would appear they think they own everything on the site, including user content:

> Unless otherwise indicated, all Content and other materials on the > Livecoding.tv Services, including, without limitation...

... are protected by United States copyright, trade dress, patent, and trademark laws, international conventions, and all other relevant intellectual property and proprietary rights, and applicable laws (including in your country of residence).

Where does it say that they own everything?? You are interpreting this whole contract incorrectly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER84> Is there an equivalent to livecoding.tv that I can use?

</comment><comment><USER4> Did anyone else see "Eli the Computer Guy" slamming YC on his channel about an email exchange he had with the founder of Livecoding: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h66PNIUtaaE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h66PNIUtaaE)

I found it to be fairly entertaining...

</comment><comment><USER85> > "You are scheduled to be deleted on our next cron job. Nothing complex."

Is this serious? What's a cron job have to do with knocking out information from a rdbms?

I imagine a cron job could be useful if there was a script to clear out any static files - but you can also invoke the script manually. "Nothing complex" :)

<comment><USER51> I'll quote another comment from minimaxir:

> You're joking, but a quick Google search of [site:livecoding.tv banned] > shows that's exactly what is happening.

> [https://www.livecoding.tv/2pointoh/](https://www.livecoding.tv/2pointoh/)

> [https://www.livecoding.tv/hekton/](https://www.livecoding.tv/hekton/)

Which shows their usual procedure for deleting or banning is... _vandalism_.

</comment></comment><comment><USER86> E Nervous system singa.e</comment>


Website Flippers make millions - <AUTHOR> http://biznews.wordpress.com/2007/02/21/website-flippers-make-millions/ <comment><AUTHOR> While selling out to a larger corporation is a great exit-strategy, I suggest that all startups formulate a plan to monetize their site. The fact is, for every startup bought by the big five's (Google, MS, Yahoo, AOL, eBay) there are at least another 100 that go down the drain.</comment>


Ask HN: What're your startup negotiation tips? - <AUTHOR> Say you've found a startup you really like. Looks like lots of fun and you're excited to join.<p>What're your tips to get a reasonable compensation package so you can enjoy the work without feeling underpaid? <comment><USER2> Start high. Don't give current compensation. Don't accept if you feel underpaid. It's not really much different than negotiation with a big corp, other than the equity, which is a huge topic in itself for startups.

</comment><comment><USER3> This is a great resource: [https://www.kalzumeus.com/2012/01/23/salary- negotiation/](https://www.kalzumeus.com/2012/01/23/salary-negotiation/)

I am also currently reading Ury's "How to get past no" which has been really helpful so far.

Also search for "Ramit Sethi negotiation" and you will find great tips.

</comment><comment><USER4> Just remember you deserve to be paid something equivalent to the value you will add to the business.

</comment><comment><USER5> First one to mention a number (money), loses.

<comment><USER6> In a similar vein, have other options available. That gives you ultimate negotiating power.</comment></comment>


Why Warren Buffett really likes newspapers - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2012-05-17/why-warren-buffett-really-likes-newspapers When companies like Instagram and Pinterest are valued more then NYT , Warren Buffet is doing what he has always done - make prudent investments solely on market fundamentals. <comment><AUTHOR> When companies like Instagram and Pinterest are valued more then NYT , Warren Buffet is doing what he has always done - make prudent investments solely on market fundamentals.

<comment><USER2> Exactly. Plus, classic example of actually "buying low" and maybe down the road selling high.</comment></comment>


Sharing data between tabs using a shared web worker - <AUTHOR> http://webdevandshit.com/2015/09/03/share-data-with-between-tabs-using-a-shared-web-worker.html <comment><USER2> I haven't ever read an article with more contempt for the reader.</comment>


Don't you forget about me: Ready Player One for a nerdgasmic trip to the 80s - <AUTHOR> http://factordaily.com/dont-forget-ready-player-one-nerdgasmic-trip-eighties-via-future/ <comment><USER2> Ah, _Ready Player One_... basically Willy Wonka as told by a Gen-Xer who sneers at modern video games (because the old ones were, of course, the best).

I can't believe they haven't made a movie of it yet.</comment>