Seems that a judge does not understand the impact of asking company X to "retain all data" and is unwilling to rapidly reconsider. Part of what makes this newsworthy is the impact of the initial ruling.
Retention orders of this kind are not uncommon and the judge has not ordered it be turned over to anyone until they hear arguments on it.
I note with amazement that tons of hn users with zero legal experience, let alone judge experience, are sure its the judge who doesn't understand, not them. Based on what I don't know but they really are sure they get it more than the judge!
Underlying this issue is that the judicial system (or the patent system, or the political system) is not populated with enough individuals possessing software engineering "common sense."
It is highly likely that this is not confined to just software, I'm sure other engineering or complex disciplines feel the same way about their discipline.
How do we have experts inform these decisions without falling into the trap of lobbying where the rich control the political and legal sphere?
Anyway, I cede you the point that the US law does not match my "common sense" esp around this 3rd party rule mentioned in other comments. It kind of sucks that US "winning the internet" means that even non-US citizens are subject to US law in this regard.
The judicial system is supposed to apply the law, not "common sense". How could it be otherwise? If you don't like the law then take that up with the legislative branch.
Who is meant to pay for all this data retention? If OpenAI win the argument, can they claim the storage costs from plaintiffs?
It's OK to say "don't throw out a few pieces of paper for a bit", but that doesn't compare to "please spend $500k/month more on S3 bills until whenever we get around to hearing the rest of the case". (Perhaps that much money isn't that important to either side in this _particular_ case, but there is a cost to all this data retention stuff).
> Seems that a judge does not understand the impact of asking company X to "retain all data"
You can count on the fact that the judge does in fact understand that this is a very routine part of such a process.
It is more like the users of ChatGpt don't understand the implication of giving "the cloud" sensitive information and what can happen to it.
It might surprise many such users the extent that the data they casually place at the hands of giant third parties can be, and has routinely, been the target of successful subpoena.
As an illustration, if two huge companies sue each other, part of the legal process involves disclosure. This means inhaling vast quantities of data from their data stores, their onsite servers, executives laptops. Including those laptops that have Ashley Madison data on them. Of course, part of the legal process is motions to exclude this and that, but that may well be after the data is extracted.
