dorkian-gray

If you’re recommending setting up a forward/IMAP collection from a Gmail account, don’t forget to mention deleting the messages from the server as well! Emails left on a server for more than 30 days are considered “abandoned property” for the purposes of warrantless search.

How does one send a spam email that passes SPF and DKIM if one doesn’t have access to the DKIM private key, or the DNS server to edit the SPF or DKIM records?

Please cite the case(s) where someone lost a case like this because the courts distinguished between “intern” and “volunteer”. The law does not care about labels, it cares about substance. According to the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA), a volunteer is defined as an individual who performs hours of service for a public agency for civic, charitable, or humanitarian reasons, without promise, expectation or receipt of compensation for services rendered.

However, the FLSA makes a clear distinction between work performed for public service, religious or humanitarian objectives and work performed for a private entity or for-profit organization. It states that “employees may not volunteer services to for-profit private sector employers.” If a volunteer is performing work that is integral to a for-profit company’s business activities, it can be argued that they are functioning as an employee and should be compensated accordingly. If a volunteer is performing work that is similar to work performed by paid employees, is working for a significant amount of time, or is under the direct control of the company, these factors could potentially support a claim that the volunteer is actually an employee.

If former Reddit moderators can convince the court that they were:

• Acting as employees of the company,
• performing labour valuable to the company, and
• that the company was the primary beneficiary of their labour

then the court might well find that they were effectively employees and are owed back wages. Since Reddit themselves have admitted how important active, experienced moderators are to the platform’s overall usability, it’s going to be very difficult for the company to argue that moderation services aren’t worth paying for, and they’ll have to find an entire other crop of people willing to moderate the site for no pay if they lose the current mods. It could take years for the case to even be heard, and if Reddit starts paying for moderation for any reason in that time, it’s going to look very bad for their case because that is a practical admission that moderation is a job that the company needs to have performed and thus should be paid.

The fact that Reddit is a for-profit corporation is a big fucking deal in this case. There are effectively no circumstances under which volunteer labour is allowed for private, for-profit companies in the US, so this is not nearly as clear-cut as so many people seem to think.

I’m not sure you understand how the law works. Read “Glatt v. Fox Searchlight Pictures Inc.” (https://caselaw.findlaw.com/court/us-2nd-circuit/1706417.html), where unpaid interns who worked on the film “Black Swan” sued the production company. The interns argued that they were actually employees and thus entitled to minimum wage and overtime under the Fair Labour Standards Act (FLSA) and New York labour law. The court agreed with the interns, finding that they were essentially regular employees.

To contrast with an unsuccessful case, I present “Wang v. The Hearst Corporation” (https://caselaw.findlaw.com/court/us-2nd-circuit/1882161.html), where unpaid interns at various magazines published by Hearst sued for wages. The court used a “primary beneficiary test” to determine whether the interns or the company were the primary beneficiaries of the arrangement. The court found that the interns were the primary beneficiaries, so they were not entitled to wages.

I think it would be hard for Reddit to argue that subreddit moderators are the primary beneficiaries of their labour, meaning if the mods unionise and bring a case, they might actually be successful.

Great, I’m an Orcish warrior and I’ve been trying to find someone to enchant my Daedric axe!