carnegie

Mike Wuerthele said:

ITGUYINSD said:

Good ol' Bill Barr.  Can't wait until JAN 2021.  Buh-bye!

I don't think that this viewpoint that the DOJ has presented is going to change, regardless of who's in charge.

That’s right. This isn’t about Republicans vs Democrats or conservatives vs liberals, it’s about libertarians vs authoritarians.

flydog said:

chasm said:

Epic just lost the case by not demanding a jury trial, and Apple knows this.

The judge has already told Epic — repeatedly — that they broke the contract as a stunt and brought these problems on themselves.

she is not going to change that view in July.

Juries are triers of fact, not law, and the facts are largely undisputed here. A jury trial would add nothing for either side, and even if they agree to one, this case will likely be disposed well before it would start. 

There are plenty of questions of fact in this case such as, e.g., how should the relevant markets be defined. There are questions of law which can affect that consideration, but it's ultimately a question of fact. If a jury was involved, the judge would answer the questions of law and provide the jury with guidance on how to consider the questions of fact. This is a case which a jury could be asked to hear, and the judge indicated that was her preferred course.

The issue here is that Epic is only making equitable claims, it isn't making legal claims. In other words, it's asking for injunctions to stop Apple from doing certain things. It isn't asking for damages. Generally speaking parties have a right to trial by jury in federal civil cases. But they don't necessarily have such a right when it comes to equitable rather than legal claims.

Apple made counterclaims in this case, and when it filed those counterclaims (along with an answer to Epic's claims) it demanded a jury trial. It has a right to have a jury trial on its claims (which include legal claims). But it doesn't necessarily have a right to have a jury trial on Epic's equitable claims. So, if Epic insists on not having a jury trial on its equitable claims, there either has to be separate trials - one with a jury on Apple's claims (to include legal claims) and one without a jury on Epic's equitable claims  - or Apple has to agree not to have a jury. (Or, I suppose, the judge could make a determination that under the circumstances Apple has a right to have a trial by jury on Epic's claims.)

There would be reasons to have a trial by jury in this case, even on Epic's claims. But Apple has agreed to have a bench trial. I suspect Apple feels pretty good about its chances with this judge after having heard what she's said so far.

The merits case was already set to be decided by a jury unless Apple changed its mind or the judge decided all the issues through summary judgment. I'm not sure how likely the former is, but I think the latter is quite unlikely. Apple demanded, as was its right, a jury trial on all triable issues when it filed its answer and counterclaims.

Also, Epic had proposed a schedule which would have had the trial starting in late March or early April while Apple proposed a schedule which would have had it start in early August. So it looks like the schedule will be closer to what Apple had proposed.

Judge Nichols has granted in part and denied in part TikTok’s motion for a preliminary injunction.

https://www.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.dcd.222257/gov.uscourts.dcd.222257.29.0_8_1.pdf


EDIT: A preliminary injunction was granted as to prohibitions which would have gone into effect today and denied as to prohibitions which wouldn’t go into effect until November.

gatorguy said:

Seems as tho what the current administration apparently wants would lead to MORE censorship and not less. Companies will err on the side of caution and simply remove anything that might have the appearance of being untrue as they'd now be responsible for what the public posts on their platforms? Geesh, that sounds totally unmanageable and the only bulletproof solution would be blocking all comments. 

These changes are problematic in a number of ways. And, yeah, one effect might be to cause more censorship. But the changes don't go as far as I'd originally thought and they don't make providers responsible for the speech of others, even if they censor some speech.

One thing these changes do is require a notification system which providers must use to take down material that, e.g., has been determined by a court to be defamatory. But the changes don't mean that providers need to take down material preemptively to be on the safe side, so to speak, so that they aren't liable for defamation posted by others. Providers still wouldn't be liable for the speech of others except in limited contexts, to include if such speech has been determined to be defamatory and the provider was given proper notice of that and they still didn't remove it.