My Notes On: Purple Mattress LAWSUIT over not-so-Honest Review

TL;DR: Purple is suing HMR (Honest Mattress Reviews). HMR is asking questions about the "white powder" on Purple Mattresses. Purple asserts it's safe and a trade secret. Purple also asserts that HMR is paid by a competitor, GhostBed.


The thing I find most interesting is the 5th Cause of Action: Temporary Restraining Order and Inunction

This would compel HMR to take down the videos that Purple doesn't like. This is where censorship resistance comes in. Hypothetically, if we had technology to host videos in a decentralized manner, hosted by an abstracted aggregation, linked and verified by blockchain, it would remove this power from the courts.

Currently, steemit.com has a mechanism for dealing with DMCA take-down requests. Court ordered take-downs are not any more difficult to implement.

And the courts don't do the actual dirty work of take-downs anyway. This would fall to law enforcement. But it's an interesting situation that we are about to observe some day soon.

This also brings up the concern about "astro-turf" content. Astro-turf is when a corporation creates articles appearing to represent unaffiliated opinions. It's like false "grass-roots" movements (hence the name astro-turf), paid by a corporation, to make it appear that there's interest in a particular product, when in reality it's just paid advertising.

In this case, it is asserted that HRM is astro-turfing bad press for Purple. Introduce this practice to blockchain technology and things become even more complicated.

Sure, if a court wanted to, they could try to compel sites to take down a video and articles even though it would still be available to the tech-savvy user. But this becomes an arms race and the courts are unprepared for this.

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