Rick Hinderer sent Cease and Desist to Youtuber for saying the steel was soft in his knife?

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Paratrooper06 said:
Watch this video, see what Rick Hinderer is really about, and tell me he’s a “large maker” picking on the little guy. TK went about this whole thing all wrong. He did it because he thought he was going to blow the lid off some conspiracy to cut corners at RHK and he’s all over Instagram doubling down on it with all his groupies posting in support and bashing RHK. It won’t end well for him, and any lawyer worth paying is just going to tell him to take it down and apologize. He literally has nothing to go off of in court except “derrr I tested the hardness of 12 knives and one was out of stated range”. It ain’t enough.

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Compared to TK he is a large maker, compared to others he is not. It's relative which is important when you're looking at the possible power dynamics of the situation. I'm not going to go into mind reading TK or possible legal outcomes, that was never close to anything I was making a point about.
 
NebulaMask said:
Again, public opinion does matter in a courtroom in various ways even though it shouldn't. Just like funding shouldn't matter in a courtroom but it does and that's related to public opinion/how well one side might be able to raise funds. If it's a large enough public opinion that can mess with trying to select an unbiased jury (although I highly doubt that'll come into play with this one should it go to court). It's not so simple as to say well it's in court so public opinion doesn't matter. That's a very idealized/simplistic (I don't mean that in a derogatory way) version of how things work.
Different people put different weight on speech. Framing it as just not wanting to apoligize is one way to put it. Another would be that one side is trying to remove and compell speech. Just depends on how you view things and the values people have.
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Well yes, that's true. RHK is trying to stop this Instagram smalltimer from damaging their sales by getting his fanbase to disparage RHK's products over something that wasn't proven.

I don't know what the right answer here is, but it amazes me that RHK was automatically seen as the bad guy, when this dude who's not a professional tester used some results that got spit out of a machine to try and say RHK's processes are bad and put RHK on blast over it.
 
Quiet said:
Well yes, that's true. RHK is trying to stop this Instagram smalltimer from damaging their sales by getting his fanbase to disparage RHK's products over something that wasn't proven.

I don't know what the right answer here is, but it amazes me that RHK was automatically seen as the bad guy, when this dude who's not a professional tester used some results that got spit out of a machine to try and say RHK's processes are bad and put RHK on blast over it.
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That's a fine opinion to have, I'm not trying to tell people what to think, I only took issue with that because it's legal no one should have a problem with these actions or whatever. Personally I just hope it gets squashed or worked out in a way that's acceptable to both parties without it having to go to court.
 
Quiet said:
Well yes, that's true. RHK is trying to stop this Instagram smalltimer from damaging their sales by getting his fanbase to disparage RHK's products over something that wasn't proven.

I don't know what the right answer here is, but it amazes me that RHK was automatically seen as the bad guy, when this dude who's not a professional tester used some results that got spit out of a machine to try and say RHK's processes are bad and put RHK on blast over it.
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These Hinderer meltdowns always surprise me from the angle that he seems to be a stereo typical stubborn prickly knife maker and people figure it's gonna be a piece of cake to force him to do what they want.
 
NebulaMask said:
Compared to TK he is a large maker, compared to others he is not.
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NebulaMask said:
It's relative which is important when you're looking at the possible power dynamics of the situation. I'm not going to go into mind reading TK or possible legal outcomes, that was never close to anything I was making a point about.
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“Power dynamics” have nothing to do with “objective right and wrong”. You’re making Rick Hinderer out to be some Gordon Gekko type dude in the knife industry and he isn’t. He’s just a man that wants to defend his business from the smears coming from some attention-whore on Instagram.
 
NebulaMask said:
That's a fine opinion to have, I'm not trying to tell people what to think, I only took issue with that because it's legal no one should have a problem with these actions or whatever. Personally I just hope it gets squashed or worked out in a way that's acceptable to both parties without it having to go to court.
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Candidly speaking, I expect it will be.
 
NebulaMask said:
Compared to TK he is a large maker, compared to others he is not. It's relative which is important when you're looking at the possible power dynamics of the situation. I'm not going to go into mind reading TK or possible legal outcomes, that was never close to anything I was making a point about.
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If you're stronger than someone and they punch you do you feel it's crappy to stop them from doing it? I absolutely think there are cases where large companies use litigation as bullying when they know they have very little case. Bluntly, I don't feel that's at all the case here. If you go too far in your criticisms of a company's processes and products they're going to respond and it's very hard for me to see them as the villain by default simply because they're larger or more profitable.

Sometimes if you decide to, ummm, 'mess' around, you find out.
 
Paratrooper06 said:
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“Power dynamics” have nothing to do with “objective right and wrong”. You’re making Rick Hinderer out to be some Gordon Gekko type dude in the knife industry and he isn’t. He’s just a man that wants to defend his business from the smears coming from some attention-whore on Instagram.
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Maybe this is where we disagree, I don't think this is an objectively right or wrong situation. I can see where both sides are coming from on this.
 
NebulaMask said:
Maybe this is where we disagree, I don't think this is an objectively right or wrong situation. I can see where both sides are coming from on this.
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Then why stress over “power dynamics”? Someone always has more money, a better lawyer, more land, etc. What’s the point? You think someone with less money never won a lawsuit against a man with more money?
 
Insipid Moniker said:
If you're stronger than someone and they punch you do you feel it's crappy to stop them from doing it? I absolutely think there are cases where large companies use litigation as bullying when they know they have very little case. Bluntly, I don't feel that's at all the case here. If you go too far in your criticisms of a company's processes and products they're going to respond and it's very hard for me to see them as the villain by default simply because they're larger or more profitable.

Sometimes if you decide to, ummm, 'mess' around, you find out.
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It depends. If a toddler hits some one and they roundhouse little guy to get them to stop, then yea that's pretty dang crappy. So far it's just a cease and desist, but I can see why people view it in a negative way regardless.
 
Paratrooper06 said:
Then why stress over “power dynamics”? Someone always has more money, a better lawyer, more land, etc. What’s the point? You think someone with less money never won a lawsuit against a man with more money?
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It's just another way of viewing what's going on that goes towards how acceptable people can find actions outside if those actions are legal or not. It doesn't always mean the big guy wins, but it does put them at a large advantage. Pro se litigants do win, but if they're up against Disney... good luck (this is not to imply that RH is Disney sized, just a hyperbolic example to illustrate the point).
 
NebulaMask said:
It's just another way of viewing what's going on that goes towards how acceptable people can find actions outside if those actions are legal or not. It doesn't always mean the big guy wins, but it does put them at a large advantage. Pro se litigants do win, but if they're up against Disney... good luck (this is not to imply that RH is Disney sized, just a hyperbolic example to illustrate the point).
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Not even a remotely comparable situation in this case. More like a small business asking a wannabe social media influencer to shut up.
 
Question to those who test hrc: how complicated is it to do the test? How much training is needed in order for a person to do it reliably?
 
NebulaMask said:
It depends. If a toddler hits some one and they roundhouse little guy to get them to stop, then yea that's pretty dang crappy. So far it's just a cease and desist, but I can see why people view it in a negative way regardless.
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I definitely see why some view it negatively, and that's the biggest reason I think Hinderer may have erred with the response, not because it was the wrong thing to do, but because despite being extremely litigious our society isn't very well versed in actual law and, as we've seen in this thread, don't seem to realize that a C&D is the very lowest level of legal response you can make. If, as the letter suggests, they'd already reached out to the guy through social channels, I think this response is entirely appropriate and that TK very much brought it on himself.
 
Gee whiz, people! I can't take it anymore! 🤯
A hardness tester is a measuring device. There is error in the instrument and the calibration block. If some blowhard was on the internet talking about how I don't know how to hit my own hardness target on my own equipment with a steel/heat treater I've been using forever, I'd have my lawyer on him too or at least make a really nice rebuttal video.

By the way, ALOT of run of the mill test blocks SUCK. Good (accurate) ones cost many hundreds of dollars. Also, to know exactly what your tester is doing it must be professionally calibrated and you must READ the results. It's not as simple as pass/fail when you're ready to argue over four tenths of a point.
 
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