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Magicjack Loses Legal Attack Against Boing Boing
An anonymous reader sends word that USB VOIP company Magicjack lost a lawsuit against Boing Boing when the judge declared the legal action a SLAPP (strategic lawsuit against public participation). Magicjack must pay more than $50,000 in legal costs. Boing Boing has posted a page linking and summarizing all the legal documents relating to the lawsuit.
convincing me to not buy their product. Too bad, I was considering getting hold of one to play around with it. But I try not to support companies run by litigious pricks with no sense of humor.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
MagicJack SLAPPed a Boing Boing? Sounds dirty to me.
The summary could have put in a word about how MagicJack sued for defamation after Boing Boing made a post highly critical of their EULA, before explaining how the judge shot their suit down as a SLAPP...
Qu'on me donne six lignes écrites de la main du plus honnête homme, j'y trouverai de quoi le faire pendre.
Even BoingBoing agrees that MagicJack's hardware is great stuff... Too bad their marketing/management/legal department seems to think it can get away with shady practices like their crappy EULA.
Option number two looked warm, they took it, and it wasn't as clean an approach as they thought?
I give...
From the article;
In the lawsuit... It also alleged that I am a professional blogger.
I knew that bloggers were disreputable sources for Wikipedia, but I had no idea that being a blogger could be used against you in a court of law.
I continue to be amused by the power switch on the MagicJack: MagicJack On. MagicJack Off.
SkypeIn
Facebook is not social interaction, no matter how many times you say it is.
I have also read that, despite being advertised on those 'as seen on TV' ads that everyone hates, the product actually does what it says. Even stodgy old Consumer Reports says it's a winner.
I judt got a nre Kinesis keybiartf so please excusr ant egregiou typos.
But their business model is unsustainable. There are real, FCC-mandated costs to terminating calls on the PSTN. Those costs are more than $20/year if you terminate even a few hours of calls in rural areas, and can easily exceed $20/year even if you only ever call metro numbers.
The only way MagicJack can make a go of it is by becoming a CLEC, preferably in areas with high termination fees, then collecting those termination fees on inbound calls and hoping that they get enough inbound traffic to pay termination fees on all their outbound calls. Presumably most of their outbound calls are to low-rate metro areas, which makes things easier, but it's still playing an arbitrage game. They also stack they deck by explicitly block some high-termination-rate areas -- mostly those used by other companies with the same business model -- meaning you simply can't connect with some people or services in high-tarrif regions.
The long and the short of it is real phone companies won't put up with this for long if they see it as a real threat. They'll either start doing it themselves and the mandatory termination fees will be restructured, or they'll find some way to make it illegal/convince their lawmakers and regulators that it already is illegal.
My Dad bought one over a year ago. He still uses it and has been happy with it.
I don't always use unix-like operating systems; but when I do, I prefer FreeBSD.
It just struck me that the main bone BoingBoing had to pick with MagicJack's EULA is that its users' calls are monitored, and are played targeted ads (obtained from said monitoring). How is this really much different from Google's adsense inside of gmail, where ads containing keywords found in your email's body are displayed next to your emails?
Not that I am supporting MagicJack or Google in anyway, but what really was the difference? Did it boil down to Google's better wording or selling of its adsense, or are we just more sensitive when it is done to audio/ voice as opposed to when it is done in text/ email?
So my boss bought these for our office, and as the tech guy I had to actually deal with them. The device itself is actually quite good, but their company is an abomination of a decent business. One of the jacks stopped working, and so I figured that it should be replaced with the option of transferring our old number to the new jack. Their customer service jerked me around for hours until one of them finally sent me a link to their terms and hung up on me. Basically, once they have your money they will jump through hoops to not help you at all. It is such a sleazy company and I hope nobody here gets fooled by them and actually buys it. Pay more for your service just to deal with a reputable company.
Yeah, but they're not doing that at all. All it is doing to opening (in the background) something similar to MSN Live Messenger (or Yahoo, or any other major chat client) voice chat. There's no compression to speak of and certainly no QoS stuff. LIke recording yourself in a WAV file and emailing it to someone...only really fast. And then there's a small rj-11 jack to plug in a handset. As far as I know web based voice chats are not regulated at all.
I judt got a nre Kinesis keybiartf so please excusr ant egregiou typos.
How did they find themselves in a situation where they were receiving legal advice, unless they were already committed to assholery? When you're just sitting there minding your own business, lawyers don't just call you up out of the blue and spout advice at you before you can hang up.
Someone made a statement about MagicJack that MagicJack knew was true. MagicJack decided, "fuck the truth, I wonder if there's a way we can use force to shut them up." Ok, at that point a foolish lawyer might say, "Yes, I think I know a way that you can be a total motherfucking litigious asshole and successfully use force against this totally innocent party in order to suppress the truth," and a gullible MagicJack might believe that the lawyer was telling the truth.
But anyone who isn't evil, upon hearing that advice from their lawyer (let's ignore the fact that they had already proved themselves evil by even bothering to seek that advice), would say to their lawyer, "Well, that's interesting, Mr. Lawyer. I hope you enjoyed this intellectual exercise, but of course since I'm not a total mother-stabbing new-age-witchcraft-practicing father-raping puppy-shredding nun-strangling terrorist hippie racist moronic flat-earther sexist heretic robber-baron asshole Republican innocent-attacking bastard litigious prostitute kitten-poisoning jerk gay Scientologist thieving SCO homophobic Democrat shit-eating Nazi stupid criminal cocksucking evil Communist odious pig-fucking Christian pedophile nu-metal-wigger Romulan poo-head, I couldn't possibly actually proceed with such a case against a totally innocent party, even though I could successfully work my evil to advance the general cause of harming society and making the world a worse place. As much as I'd really like to, because I really do like injustice."
We know they're motherfuckers, and bad legal advice is totally beside the point. Accepting bad legal advice only means they're gullible motherfuckers.
...and it concluded: "The license agreement above has a high calculated interest ID. It's extremely long, and there were a high number of detected 'interesting' words or phrases." That means Eulalyzer thinks its a bad EULA. The interesting words or phrases are listed and can be viewed in context: (1) Advertising, (2) Emergency Calls or Services, (3) Third Party, (4) Web Site Address, and (5) Without Notice. I've never seen a EULA with that many "'interesting' words or phrases" called out by the program.
EULAlyzer is a free (download: http://www.javacoolsoftware.com/downloads.html). If, like me, you don't have the time to read through the EULA's for software you're thinking of purchasing, this is just the program for you. At the very least, it will give you a "heads up" and point you to the 'interesting' parts of the EULA where you can, then, read as much "legalese" as you can stomach..
One "Aw, Shit!" is worth 100 "Ata boys!"
That's all I care about, not their shitty SIP service, or their shitty customer service, but using them with Asterisk as an interface.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
This had nothing to do with MagicJack as a product, nor was anyone saying that it was inherently bad, a ripoff, or a scam.
This was simply BOING BOING pointing out, that like MANY corporations, their EULA is ridiculous. Like so many others, it is A) almost impossible to find, and B) absolutely ridiculous in its content. You have to promise your first born son for sacrifice to the telecommunication gods by buying their product, and you don't really find this out, until you have already bought their product. Move along, nothing to see here. The demands corporations TYPICALLY put in EULA's are above and beyond reasonable and are pretty much crazy. IANAL however I would bet MOST of these EULA's would not stand up in court as binding (though they may give weight for intent or something of that nature).
Having said all that, MagicJack could have easily amended their stupid EULA to something a bit nicer, or tried to appease their POTENTIAL CUSTOMERS another way. However in true corporate form they would rather hire a bunch of lawyers and duke it out in court to avoid giving consumers what they want. Re-read that statement. Crazy. Not only that, I bet if you pulled the stats as to how many times a EULA like this would even be USED, particularly for a 50$ product with a 3$ subscription fee, it would be minute to the point of non-existence. As we all know while some people may put up a big stink about this sort of thing (and they should) most if faced with the actual situation either are too lazy or don't care enough about it to make any kind of stand anyway.
In all a stupid move by MagicJack, but one that seems about par for the course for any corporate identity.
I applaud BOING BOING for its work however, as the basic principle is if you don't like it, or agree with it, simply don't buy it. However in this case and many like it, you would never have found out about it until after you bought the product (if then) so it is already too late, they already got your money.
This is why it is important what BOING BOING did (particulary when they didn't really have to, other than feeling slighted for being pushed around by lawyers), and why the SLAPP is a good idea, as it keeps the public informed. It isn't saying that MagicJack must change what it does, or fining them for bad behavior. It is just a decision that says, BOING BOING has a legitimate right to inform people about this information, and that MagicJack doesn't have the right to try and use the courts as its thugs to try and prevent it, thus they can pay for most of BOING BOING's legal fees. Thats all.
Anyway good for BOING BOING, and shame on MagicJack.