As I stated earlier in this thread… it is their ball. On the other hand, it speaks far louder than any words the management at Onefinity may use. From this distance, it very much appears to be a mistaken policy choice by the leaders at Onefinity. Horses for courses eh?
Hey QCDVacuum,
I never had the misconception that a manufacturer forum was a place dedicated first and foremost to free speech. When people saw that their posts were deleted because they portrayed the product in a bad or unflattering way, I always said, “Hey, this is a manufacturer’s forum”. And Onefinity has always deleted posts. If you want to express free speech, post in a free forum, was my opinion.
But what is not acceptable is that Onefinity removes existing statements from forum visitors and even Onefinity customers in existing postings and replaces their content with an advertising statement for a product. Like shown here and here.
By the way, a product that didn’t even exist at the date of posting.
This is not only a mistaken policy choice, this is stupidness which easily leads to legal consequences. Even if the user posted with a pseudonym, It is a form of identity theft.
Do you see Onefinity users and customers taking to the streets and protesting? I don’t. The question is who is even aware of this scandal.
2 Likes
Hello @Aiph5u. Thanks for detailing your position. I have used many products where the various manufacturers keep a close eye on their support fora. It is one possible approach and if it turns out to be little more than a cheerleader’s club for that manufacturer, then the users will probably see through it.
News at ten… technology manufacturer engages in nefarious practices to prevent their image from being tarnished by users who are less than thrilled with their products. The users all know that the product under scrutiny does not live up to the hype. In the face of this practical knowledge, it is highly damaging for the manufacturer to pretend otherwise.
I have never seen PwnCNC staff use these forums to belittle the choices of their users nor do they attempt to con people. We make our choices based on the best information we can gather and we pay our money. The company we know as PwnCNC, understands that it is the user base that determines the future success of a business. I am pleased that my choices are helpful to my aims and I could not be more delighted with my PwnCNC choices. What other companies choose to do is little more than merely a passing interest to me.
1 Like
Hey QCDvacuum, hey all,
whether the product is good or not, that is another question.
Just to be clear, the scandal is not that a manufacturer controls the presentation of his product on his website. The scandal is that it uses identity theft to do so. He does this, as shown, by exchanging the content of his visitors’ forum contributions or comments. Some of whom have paid a lot of money for the manufacturer’s product.
The other thing is that the general user community does not even realize this as long as it is not their own posts that have been replaced. But I think if they knew, they could question buying the manufacturer’s product more than people do today.
1 Like
Hello - I was also surprised. Unfortunately, the owner of the forum can change or delete the content. I’d be interested in how the laws differ in other countries…hmmmm.
Hey Diana,
It depends on whether the data are assigned to another person. This is usually the case if you post in a forum. The forum operator may delete your comment, but not write something with your identity.
2 Likes
Hello Diana. Thank you, I appreciate your welcome input. I am sure that the user-signed T&Cs will give broad powers to delete or edit content that the forum owner finds objectionable. Within that accepted remit, I would be unsure about the forum owner’s permission to pretend they are a particular user.
Effectively, this would be knowingly publicly masquerading as someone else in an attempt to deceive. In the UK, misrepresenting any event for pecuniary gain will come under the general heading of fraud. I have a tame legal eagle in the background. I will try to clarify the UK laws concerning the rights of any business to promote its wares by falsifying user commentary. (possibly think of false reviews on Amazon)
1 Like
Vote with your wallet. I’m very happy with my PWN spindle system and have had great response from PWN with my questions.
2 Likes
@Diana
Appreciate the legwork. I too am VERY surprised that the lawyer said it was NOT illegal. You are correct that they can delete posts that match whatever criteria they prohibit in their T&Cs. I do think it would be a different answer if the lawyer understood they were modifying a user’s post to make it appear the user was promoting their product…in essence…identity theft and fraudulent behavior. If you speak with your lawyer again, you may ask about that in particular to see if their answer remains the same.
Jay
1 Like
Clarification from UK Jurisdiction.
Forum owners can admit or reject any post from any user for whatever reasons they choose. They can also ban users or subjects if they are so-minded. To restate the matter with Onefinity is helpful.
They are selling a product that they would prefer to be used by as many customers of Onefinity machines as possible. It is within their gift to prevent machinery agnosticism if they choose. What is unacceptable is to edit a user’s contribution and substitute their preferred spindle in place of the PwnCNC item. The reason it is unacceptable in UK law is primarily that misrepresenting someone else’s viewpoint for pecuniary gain is simply fraudulent.
A simple cease and desist letter from PwnCNC’s lawyer may put a stop to the matter. What Onefinity should not be doing is claiming magic for their own supplied spindle while rubbishing the spindle set up from PwnCNC.
As a business practice, what Onefinity are doing may be permitted in their jurisdiction. It would be unusual to find that out and out dishonesty is permitted in law just so they can make a quick buck. For the avoidance of doubt, if this were the case in the UK, it would be stopped as a matter of course, either legally or via some adverse publicity.
1 Like
Exactly right! I feel the same way!
1 Like
The lawyer gave this as an analogy…
You own a home with a publicly accessible sidewalk out front. You still own up to the street including the sidewalk. Neighborhood kids write with chalk on them. You as the owner of the property (even though it has a publicly accessible sidewalk) can go change the artwork in anyway.
The kids have no legal recourse against you since it is your property. Yes publicly accessible sidewalk, but still it’s your property to do with what you will.
Basically unethical yes… illegal, it seems not.
1 Like
Hey Daniel,
but this analogy is flawed. The children do not publish their detailed views of relevant issues on the sidewalk, and most importantly, it does not remain publicly available with their name on the World Wide Web.
It is good to see the post supporting PwnCNC and condemning 1Finities censorship. I do want caution you about what you post on their site though. I merely posted that I could not wait for them to ship the Redmill spindle that came with the package I purchased in November and purchase a spindle fromPwnCNC that was due to arrive in a few days. I was immediately booted from their group and was told I was banned for posting unacceptable information.
1 Like
Hello Daniel. My confusion stems from how US law is applied. I think your lawyer’s analogy is not on all fours with any misleading acts or omissions committed by Onefinity for a purpose of let’s say… “competitive advantage”.
Land sold as a part of your home is defined in your ownership deeds and title. In the UK legal situation, what you own is what you own, where special provisions are made if there is a public right of way through your property. These rights of way are very ancient footpaths that have existed since the ice age some 11,500 years ago and many of them are Roman roads created some 5,800 years ago.
The icing on this particular cake is the meaning of ownership, so I am responsible for the physical upkeep of my home which is registered as mine with the Land Registry. I am responsible for repairing dangerous features. e.g. I had to replace the whole roof because several tiles and valleys were damaged in a very severe storm and I would have been legally responsible if any tiles, cement, or coping had fallen on a passer-by.
My home is surrounded by its curtilage which is formed by its gardens and legal boundaries as described on the deeds. The only thing I have no legal responsibility for is the upkeep of the sidewalk because the local county council is the supervisory authority.
Kids may chalk on the sidewalk here because it does not technically belong to me. They may not chalk on my driveway because that is my property, even though it has to be publicly accessible if I want to receive services such as deliveries. The American use of the term, “curtilage” was settled within the leading case in the Supreme Court of United States v. Dunn (1987). See the subheading, “The Opinion of the Court”, for the clarifying text.
I looked at the US definition of fraud and discovered the following: Fraud is described as an act of intentional deception designed to exploit a victim.
- Fraud involves deceit with the intention to illegally or unethically gain at the expense of another. (the act involves both the guilty mind mens rea and the guilty act actus reus)
- In finance, fraud takes many forms, including false insurance claims, cooking the books, pump-and-dump schemes, and identity theft.
- Fraud costs the economy billions of dollars each year, and those who are caught are subject to fines and jail time.
My intuition is that the legal opinion or advice you have received is missing some aspect of any party in business, deliberately engineering a situation for pecuniary advantage.
1 Like
For what it is worth, I agree that the lawyer’s opinion doesn’t seem to capture correctly the issue being discussed.
I feel like this is more accurately described as intentionally changing someone’s original content for the purpose of pecuniary gain and still attributing the modified statement to that other person. This feels like it is clearly within the definition of fraud.
I would agree that they have the right to remove a person’s post; but, not the right to modify it and still attribute it to that person.
The lawyer’s perspective is probably on the grounds that you don’t “own” what you write on their forum, so the content owner (them) can change it as they see fit. You, as a kid in the analogy, can’t say “I wrote my name on the sidewalk, therefore its mine” and then get mad that the owner washed it away with a garden hose.
By that logic we, legally, can do the same thing. We’re morally not going to, but legally we can.
Perhaps…I’m not an actual lawyer. I did work in Law Enforcement (Federal level) for 7 years and spent a lot of time in that environment. In any event, I’m glad we don’t have to worry about that here on PWNCNC’s site.
1 Like
I got my law degree, with honors, from Google University.
But it’s the same thing with Facebook.
I remember when I was on the platform every few months or so there was a blurb that would come about claiming to take possession of the account contents, and if you paste this to your wall, Facebook can’t do XYZ… that same blurb mentioned the Rome Statute (basically establishes an international judicial branch to work with the UN) which doesn’t apply on several levels
1 Like
Nice to see that I wasn’t the only person deeply disturbed by the Onefinity team doing this. This was the last straw for me regarding their products. I deleted my account from their forum and am selling my Onefinity CNC. I’ll be moving to an Altmill due to the open source nature of their platform.
I was days away from dropping several thousand dollars on machine upgrades (and their ridiculous shipping costs) when they made this move. So I’m glad it happened before I hit ‘checkout’. I loved the machine and am sad to see it go, but the company just doesn’t strike me the right way anymore.
1 Like