Parler Lawsuit Against Amazon

Husky_Khan

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Looks like PragerU joined Rumble now as well, joining a plethora of other Conservative and News Organizations (as well as animal lover content creators).



Be honest; nobody actually believed the courts wouldn't side with the large multi-national corporation, did they? Our system is so broken on every level, it's downright pathetic.


The Lawsuit is still ongoing but yeah it's not a good first sign.
 

Abhorsen

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Be honest; nobody actually believed the courts wouldn't side with the large multi-national corporation, did they? Our system is so broken on every level, it's downright pathetic.
To be honest, Amazon will win the suit if the law is neutrally applied. Amazon is a company, with the right not to do business with people it doesn't like.
 

Abhishekm

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To be honest, Amazon will win the suit if the law is neutrally applied. Amazon is a company, with the right not to do business with people it doesn't like.
Pretty sure the basis of the suit isn't that they refuse to do business but that they unilaterally breached their own contract for how it would be ended. And did so in an explicitly biased way atleast allegedly in favor of larger and more hegemonic partners.

So basically a antitrust lawsuit joined with a breach of contract one.
 

Abhorsen

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Pretty sure the basis of the suit isn't that they refuse to do business but that they unilaterally breached their own contract for how it would be ended. And did so in an explicitly biased way atleast allegedly in favor of larger and more hegemonic partners.

So basically a antitrust lawsuit joined with a breach of contract one.
The antitrust has no chance of working. The breach of contract one might.
 

Abhishekm

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The antitrust has no chance of working. The breach of contract one might.
True, filing in their home state didn't help. I mean Amazon would have probably just field to have it transferred anyway but they probabaly chose to skip that fight in the hopes their case is clear enough they could get Parler back up faster. Thats coming back to bite them now. Unbiased Judges aren't unfortunately.
 
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Abhorsen

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You really had no idea what the lawsuit was actually about, did you?
No, I had read a fair amount about it, and looking at it, there's no chance that it would work. I know (roughly, IANAL) what antitrust lawsuits entail, and for Amazon to be sued over antitrust for banning Parler, it would have to at least, have some financial stake in something Twitter-like, or have colluded with a Twitter-like service, to establish that Amazon was trying to get rid of a competitor. There's no way the plaintiffs are going to be able to show this, so it will fail.

This goes into it more, and (as a professor says in the article) if Parler proves that Amazon did it because of politics, they've won the argument for Amazon, as antitrust law doesn't deal with shutting out view points, but shutting out competitors. And Parler and Amazon aren't competitors.
 

Terthna

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No, I had read a fair amount about it, and looking at it, there's no chance that it would work. I know (roughly, IANAL) what antitrust lawsuits entail, and for Amazon to be sued over antitrust for banning Parler, it would have to at least, have some financial stake in something Twitter-like, or have colluded with a Twitter-like service, to establish that Amazon was trying to get rid of a competitor. There's no way the plaintiffs are going to be able to show this, so it will fail.

This goes into it more, and (as a professor says in the article) if Parler proves that Amazon did it because of politics, they've won the argument for Amazon, as antitrust law doesn't deal with shutting out view points, but shutting out competitors. And Parler and Amazon aren't competitors.
No offense, but I think an actual lawyer knows a bit more than you do as to whether or not Parler's case has any merits:
 

Abhorsen

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No offense, but I think an actual lawyer knows a bit more than you do as to whether or not Parler's case has any merits:
Given that he's not a American lawyer, and on top of that, he's not a anti-trust lawyer, and the citation I gave quotes many experts on the topic, including lawyers, no, I don't think he does. Antitrust law requires harming competitors. There is no competition between Parler and Amazon.
 

Terthna

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Given that he's not a American lawyer, and on top of that, he's not a anti-trust lawyer, and the citation I gave quotes many experts on the topic, including lawyers, no, I don't think he does. Antitrust law requires harming competitors. There is no competition between Parler and Amazon.
And you keep focusing on the smaller Antitrust aspect of the lawsuit, when the breach of contract remains the core of it. You simply have no idea what you're talking about.
 

Bear Ribs

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And you keep focusing on the smaller Antitrust aspect of the lawsuit, when the breach of contract remains the core of it. You simply have no idea what you're talking about.
No, actually he didn't. He said this:

The antitrust has no chance of working. The breach of contract one might.
He's pretty clearly said that breach of contract has a better chance than antitrust. Claiming otherwise is being dishonest, and it looks pretty much like Abhorsen only concentrated on the antitrust part because that's what other people started arguing to the post above.
 

Terthna

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No, actually he didn't. He said this:


He's pretty clearly said that breach of contract has a better chance than antitrust. Claiming otherwise is being dishonest, and it looks pretty much like Abhorsen only concentrated on the antitrust part because that's what other people started arguing to the post above.
And then he said this, in response to my post calling out his apparent ignorance as to the particulars of the lawsuit:
No, I had read a fair amount about it, and looking at it, there's no chance that it would work. I know (roughly, IANAL) what antitrust lawsuits entail, and for Amazon to be sued over antitrust for banning Parler, it would have to at least, have some financial stake in something Twitter-like, or have colluded with a Twitter-like service, to establish that Amazon was trying to get rid of a competitor. There's no way the plaintiffs are going to be able to show this, so it will fail.

This goes into it more, and (as a professor says in the article) if Parler proves that Amazon did it because of politics, they've won the argument for Amazon, as antitrust law doesn't deal with shutting out view points, but shutting out competitors. And Parler and Amazon aren't competitors.
Completely ignoring the breach of contract aspect, and insisting that the lawsuit had no chance of working; implying that the Antitrust aspect was all there was.
 

Abhorsen

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And you keep focusing on the smaller Antitrust aspect of the lawsuit, when the breach of contract remains the core of it. You simply have no idea what you're talking about.
The antitrust is by no means the smaller part of the lawsuit. Even if they win the breach of contract, all that means is that they get 30 days of AWS before leaving, not 2. It's just there to get immediate injunctive relief to push off this problem. Read the filing, which consists almost entirely of a probable hopeless attempt at an antitrust lawsuit. Or realize that without the antitrust part, all that happens is that AWS dumps them 28 days later. Parler needs the antitrust to stay on AWS long term, which means that the antitrust is the crucial part of this lawsuit, but unfortunately for Parler, it's also the part that has no chance of surviving.
 

Terthna

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The antitrust is by no means the smaller part of the lawsuit. Even if they win the breach of contract, all that means is that they get 30 days of AWS before leaving, not 2. It's just there to get immediate injunctive relief to push off this problem. Read the filing, which consists almost entirely of a probable hopeless attempt at an antitrust lawsuit. Or realize that without the antitrust part, all that happens is that AWS dumps them 28 days later. Parler needs the antitrust to stay on AWS long term, which means that the antitrust is the crucial part of this lawsuit, but unfortunately for Parler, it's also the part that has no chance of surviving.
Perhaps I misjudged your position a bit; but I still think you're misjudging their case. Regardless, I would hope that you can at least agree that the fact the judge did not rule in Parler's favor, specifically on the issue of breach of contract, has nothing to do with the legal standing of their case.
 

Megadeath

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Perhaps I misjudged your position a bit; but I still think you're misjudging their case. Regardless, I would hope that you can at least agree that the fact the judge did not rule in Parler's favor, specifically on the issue of breach of contract, has nothing to do with the legal standing of their case.
You really had no idea what @Abhorsen was actually talking about, did you?
 

Abhorsen

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Perhaps I misjudged your position a bit; but I still think you're misjudging their case. Regardless, I would hope that you can at least agree that the fact the judge did not rule in Parler's favor, specifically on the issue of breach of contract, has nothing to do with the legal standing of their case.
So I just listened to the Judge's ruling, and no, it has a lot to do with whether Parler will win their legal case (though not their standing, which Parler definitely has).

In short, after listening, I am even more certain Parler is going to lose, and more, that Parler will lose on the breach of contract as well. This video (it starts at the breach of contract part) reads the judges decision, and the judge says why Parler has no chance here.



Basically, if Amazon wanted to suspend/terminate the agreement with Parler normally, they'd have to give the 30 days notice. But if Parler is in violation of any of a bunch of things (including end user content violating Amazon's Acceptable Use Policy (AUP)), Amazon can end the agreement immediately upon notice to Parler.

And did Parler violate the AUP? Amazon says they did and provides evidence, Parler doesn't dispute it, so legally Parler did.

These two things combine to say that Parler has no chance in hell on its Breach of Contract argument. IMO, not even discovery can save them on this.

So basically, Parler has just a Hail Mary attempt at hoping that there is something in discovery about Amazon colluding with Twitter. I doubt it, as that would be stupid, and Amazon isn't stupid.
 

Vaermina

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No, I had read a fair amount about it, and looking at it, there's no chance that it would work. I know (roughly, IANAL) what antitrust lawsuits entail, and for Amazon to be sued over antitrust for banning Parler, it would have to at least, have some financial stake in something Twitter-like, or have colluded with a Twitter-like service, to establish that Amazon was trying to get rid of a competitor. There's no way the plaintiffs are going to be able to show this, so it will fail.

This goes into it more, and (as a professor says in the article) if Parler proves that Amazon did it because of politics, they've won the argument for Amazon, as antitrust law doesn't deal with shutting out view points, but shutting out competitors. And Parler and Amazon aren't competitors.
Actually Amazon signed a pretty big deal with Twitter recently.

Unfortunately for them, that deal creates enough of a financial stake that trying to claim there wasn't one would be silly.
 

Abhorsen

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Actually Amazon signed a pretty big deal with Twitter recently.

Unfortunately for them, that deal creates enough of a financial stake that trying to claim there wasn't one would be silly.
That's not a financial stake. That's a customer/business relationship. A financial stake would be owning a good part of Twitter, for example (think stakeholder). The financial stake part is basically asking is Amazon a competitor/owns a competitor of Parler. It clearly doesn't.

Moreover, Parler didn't say that Amazon had a financial stake in it's filing (because Amazon obviously doesn't), but instead tried to claim collusion. This means that the claim of antitrust rides or dies by the collusion factor, and ownership is irrelevant.
 

Vaermina

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That's not a financial stake. That's a customer/business relationship. A financial stake would be owning a good part of Twitter, for example (think stakeholder). The financial stake part is basically asking is Amazon a competitor/owns a competitor of Parler. It clearly doesn't.

Moreover, Parler didn't say that Amazon had a financial stake in it's filing (because Amazon obviously doesn't), but instead tried to claim collusion. This means that the claim of antitrust rides or dies by the collusion factor, and ownership is irrelevant.
A financial stakeholder is defined as "groups that stand to benefit if the venture or company succeeds" this very specifically includes "suppliers" which Amazon falls under because it supplies the hosting space for Twitter's servers.
 

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