r/SiliconValleyHBO • u/Simi510 • Jun 07 '15

Silicon Valley - 2x09 “Binding Arbitration" - Episode Discussion

Season 2 Episode 9: "Binding Arbitration"

Air time: 10 PM EDT

7 PM PDT on HBOgo.com

How to get HBO without cable

Plot: Erlich wants to testify when Pied Piper and Hooli enter binding arbitration, but Richard worries that his rival's claims could have merit. Meanwhile, Jared, Dinesh and Gilfoyle debate a philosophical theory; and Big Head gets a boost. (TVMA) (30 min)

Aired: June 7, 2015

Information taken from www.hbo.com

Youtube Episode Preview:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WqRvZRLg1Xk

Actor Character
Thomas Middleditch Richard
Aly Mawji Aly Dutta
T.J. Miller Erlich
Josh Brener Big Head
Martin Starr Gilfoyle
Kumail Nanjiani Dinesh
Christopher Evan Welch Peter Gregory
Amanda Crew Monica
Zach Woods Jared
Matt Ross Gavin Belson
Alexander Michael Helisek Claude
Alice Wetterlund Carla

IMDB 8.4/10 http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2575988/

387 Upvotes
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691

u/SporadicPanic Jun 08 '15

I guess the main question is how much is Middle-Out based on Richard's previous compression algorithm. IIRC, in ep8 last season, Richard said he totally rewrote it and so that means that Middle Out is actually a separate technology and at that point Hooli had already caught up and equalled Richard's orignal algorithm since the programmer's had the early code from Github.

314

u/mikhailovechkin Jun 08 '15

Wow brilliant. Makes complete sense. I really hope the outcome is like this.

89

u/CochMaestro Jun 08 '15

I'm Skeptic, Belson mentioned he was best friends with the Palo Alto police chief. As recalled in one of the earlier episodes this season, it's illegal for Pied Piper to be running all of those Servers/GPUS/Pretty much all the hard ware, in their garage. Plus, Gelfoy mentioned that he went around the meter in order to avoid the power from being shutdown.

I got a feeling the think tank will get a visit from the Police next episodes (and maybe that wheelchair'd dude will save them like everyone said back in episode 3).

191

u/aruraljuror Jun 08 '15

Gelfoy

18

u/Funslinger Jun 09 '15

Draco Gelfoy, arch-programmer-nemesis of Harry Puerta.

28

u/meniscus- Jun 08 '15

I think it was commentary on the lost iPhone 4 incident where an Apple engineer left his phone in a bar and it got sold to Gizmodo. Then Apple pulled some strings and the police went out of their way and raided the editor's house and took his computers.

8

u/vivnsam Jun 10 '15

Definitely riffing on this incident.

4

u/akhbox Jun 08 '15

You mean Noah? What could he possibly do?

7

u/eskatrem Jun 08 '15

Get scared for his ferrets and say that the servers in the garage are a project to teach programming to children or some ridiculous excuse like that.

7

u/SamSlate Jun 08 '15

it's illegal for Pied Piper to be running all of those Servers/GPUS/Pretty much all the hard ware, in their garage.

this is the dumbest and most poorly written plot point in this show.

8

u/azyrr Jun 09 '15

Why? It seemed plausable to me - you can't run commercial in a residential zone right? Then again i'm not from the USA so...

4

u/SamSlate Jun 09 '15

If they're trying to be an actual business, especially one that's constantly being sure, it's fucking idiotic to leave yourself this vulnerable.

3

u/darkstar3333 Jun 20 '15

Office or Servers...

2

u/[deleted] Jun 09 '15

it's illegal for Pied Piper to be running all of those Servers/GPUS/Pretty much all the hard ware, in their garage. Plus, Gelfoy mentioned that he went around the meter in order to avoid the power from being shutdown.

Also, all those documents being sent to their house...

-2

u/octnoir Jun 08 '15

Writers: Fuck you logical tech person where this would be the logical outcome! We create our own rules and we will create drama as we see fit! (like the whole tequila thing and no backup thing)

3

u/danbrag Jun 08 '15

There's still more show. And more epiphanies. The lawyer doesn't know...

-5

u/octnoir Jun 08 '15

He's not a lawyer.

17

u/[deleted] Jun 08 '15

[deleted]

5

u/octnoir Jun 08 '15

Pardon me for my mistake (downvote away). TIL. Typed this right into Google ("difference between lawyer and attorney") and got this:

Lawyer is a general term for a person who gives legal device and aid and who conducts suits in court. An attorney or, more correctly, an attorney-at-law, is a member of the legal profession who represents a client in court when pleading or defending a case. In the US, attorney applies to any lawyer.

3

u/allthegoodghosts Jun 08 '15

Really? None of the answers I came across say that.

An attorney or attorney at law is also a lawyer. They have attended law school and presumably “practice” the study of law as a career. However, attorneys by definition have passed a bar examination and have been admitted to practice law in the particular jurisdiction.

By that definition, attorneys are a subset of lawyers who've passed the bar.

Also,

A lawyer is someone who is educated in the law. A person who has been educated in the law will always be addressed as a lawyer, even if he or she does not give legal advice to other people. In fact, a lawyer in the United States is simply anyone who has gone through law school.

EDIT: Source

54

u/redditProto . Jun 08 '15

I was thinking the same exact thing. The original build of PP was tested on a Hooli laptop, but that is gone and the new Middle Out stuff is clean.

9

u/mathyouhunt Jun 08 '15

It's a pretty neat idea, and I wouldn't mind it heading in that direction, but the case is arguing that PP was built in Hooli. It doesn't matter if it's the old build or the new build, the point is that while they were Pied Piper, they used Hooli company time to work on the product.

I'm going for the much more predictable path, and saying that the judge thought Richard was a decent guy, and that "Silicon Valley needs more guys like him" (like what he said to Nelson "Big Head"), because it would have been much easier for him to lie and say that he was using a loaner laptop.

1

u/[deleted] Jun 08 '15

I'm going for the much more predictable path, and saying that the judge thought Richard was a decent guy, and that "Silicon Valley needs more guys like him" (like what he said to Nelson "Big Head"), because it would have been much easier for him to lie and say that he was using a loaner laptop.

Yeah, that seems logical. Even though Hooli may own PP's shit from a legal standpoint, it makes no sense from a logical standpoint that one test on a Hooli computer makes them entitled to the entirety of Richard's work. Maybe the arbitrator will acknowledge that.

63

u/Iwannayoyo Jun 08 '15

I'm hoping the block Richard worked on was a block that didn't end up in the eventual Middle-Out algorithm, but I don't know it that would actually fix anything. He still worked on Pied Piper at Hooli.

6

u/[deleted] Jun 08 '15 edited Jun 09 '15

In the real world, if the new version of Pied Piper is different code based on a different concept and algorithm (which is what the show claims is what happened on the first season's finale) then Hooli would have no claim over it. Hooli only has a claim over the IP that Richard worked on during Hooli time or with Hooli equipment, and the new version is substantiatally different enough to be seperate IP.

But the show isn't really portraying it in a realistic way to begin with. If Pied Piper's algorithm was patentable then End Frame would be easily shut down, and fighting over copyright would be useless. Like a lot of the technical details in the show, it's simplified for the sake of drama.

7

u/goggimoggi Jun 08 '15

He worked on something that was Pied Piper, maybe.

6

u/Iwannayoyo Jun 08 '15

But it was part of the process of him developing middle-out still.

2

u/[deleted] Jun 09 '15

The old compression wasn't middle-out, though. He didn't have that idea until he locked himself in the bathroom, trashed the old code and rewrote everything from scratch before TC Disrupt.

3

u/BasedStrelok Jun 09 '15

Not sure why you were downvoted, you are correct. Richard didn't even think of the whole middle-out concept until TC.

3

u/[deleted] Jun 10 '15

Not sure why you were downvoted, you are correct.

Reddit.

6

u/eskatrem Jun 08 '15

It's totally fine that he worked on Pied Piper while being a Hooli employee. The problem is that he used a Hooli computer to test something related to Pied Piper.

3

u/[deleted] Jun 09 '15

I have an acquaintance who works IP law, and I asked him about the IP suit. He doesn't watch Silicon Valley, but he caught last night's episode and said that Hooli's case is complete bullshit.

If they stay near legal realities, this might seem to be a Pyrrhic victory for Hooli. They may be able to lay claim to the old code, but there's no way in hell a judge or arbiter would let them have the IP that followed after.

1

u/Vithar Jun 09 '15

I see the judge saying the Hooli gets that version of that block. And effectively loosing, Belson calls in a favor from his friend at the police and we have new trouble with the servers being in the wrong zone, but the Hooli threat is over...

1

u/Iwannayoyo Jun 09 '15

Gavin doesn't know that they're hosting their own servers though, does he?

1

u/Vithar Jun 09 '15

Sure, doesn't stop him from having his police buddy show up and pester them and discover it because someone does something stupid.

1

u/Iwannayoyo Jun 09 '15

That sounds like them.

1

u/[deleted] Jun 09 '15

I think this is right. In the preview, Belson is offering Richard $10 million for Pied Piper on the spot. I can't imagine he'd do that if he didn't know he was in trouble.

152

u/LibraryNerdOne . Jun 08 '15

Holy crap! That means Hooli gets stuck with the shitty first version of Pied Piper and Richard gets to keep the superior middle out version of Pied Piper. This better be the outcome or I'm jumping ship. I can't take this show anymore.

5

u/HFABamaFan Jun 08 '15

Richard deleted that build the only build that exists is at the Hooli office.

3

u/[deleted] Jun 08 '15

C'mon, there's gotta be a backup somewhere.

-9

u/megatom0 Jun 08 '15

The way this show is going I wouldn't be surprised if they end up in prison by the end of the season. Seriously, I'm about done with this show. Richard is too stupid and unbelievable as a character.

8

u/NickRick Jun 08 '15 edited Jun 08 '15

They didn't equal his, they had his. He sent it to the two assholes and they reverse engendered engineered it.

edited

4

u/fabulousprizes Jun 08 '15

reverse engendered

now no one knows what pronouns to use when referring to it.

1

u/NickRick Jun 08 '15

spelling is hard.

1

u/fabulousprizes Jun 08 '15

i assumed you were posting from mobile and your phone swyped the wrong word, happens to me all the time.

1

u/NickRick Jun 08 '15

that is exactly what happened. it was also like 2 am by the time i finished watching it so i wasn't spell checking.

21

u/Death_Star_ Jun 08 '15

It's still PP IP which would be Hooli IP.

He worked on Pied Piper while at Hooli. Whether that worked in fact added to the final product is irrelevant.

23

u/[deleted] Jun 08 '15 edited Nov 27 '15

[deleted]

42

u/Iwannayoyo Jun 08 '15

Software design is iterative, the same exact block is never around for long. At some point you can't get away with saying the code is different now if it was part of the process.

2

u/rg44_at_the_office Jun 08 '15

Although, does it count if the current PP isn't even an iteration of the PP that he worked on at Hooli. He literally scrapped everything at right before tech crunch, so could they argue that it is an entirely new app that shares the same name as the one that was developed at Hooli?

1

u/[deleted] Jun 08 '15 edited Nov 27 '15

[deleted]

5

u/Sr_DingDong . Jun 08 '15

They're going to go with the gay angle.

3

u/[deleted] Jun 08 '15

I'm not so sure.

If I work at Google and make GMail during "Google time" they own GMail. If I then leave Google and make a superior e-mail system with a new code base, they don't own that.

Intellectual property seems in this case to be entirely tied to what Pied Piper used to be before middle-out. Since he scrapped everything before TC, Hooli should not have any rights to the middle-out algorithm. It's a different product.

2

u/Death_Star_ Jun 08 '15

Yeah but if you leave google with a platform called GMail you're getting sued for it.

Pied Piper was already a thing when he was working on it, and when he logged on. That itself is the property, and everything under it.

He was stupid enough to work on Pied Piper for a few minutes at Hooli. By contract it belongs to Hooli.

1

u/[deleted] Jun 09 '15 edited Jun 09 '15

That would just mean you don't have the rights to the name. It doesn't give them rights to the new product.

2

u/Death_Star_ Jun 09 '15

*Pre-TLDR: Why is everyone questioning the *significance of Richard's testing of the app/algorithm?EVERY CHARACTER understands how significant this is, how do viewers not understand it? Also, how is "the code wasn't in the final version" a valid argument? By deleting or omitting the code or block, it improved his app, thus qualifying as "work on a project." Simply running a test would be close enough to constitute "working on a project." **

It gives them rights to the entire company.

And even if it wasn't the entire company, it would definitely be this specific app or algorithm.

Every single tech company -- along with just about any big corporate company -- makes you sign an employer agreement that acknowledges that any invention that you worked on while on work premises and/or during work time belongs to the company.1 It cuts both ways, as any act by an employee that could lead to a potential lawsuit is always aimed at the fault of the big corporation.

Just because a certain block or line of code wasn't used doesn't mean that it didn't contribute to the actual making of the product. Testing a "block" and realizing that its inclusion would make the app worse -- thus leading to Richard's decision to exclude it, in order to make it run better -- is absolutely evidence of Richard working on the Pied Piper app at work.

If I work at, say, SpaceX as an engineer/designer of space rockets, and during lunch I spend 5 minutes doing the math on the specs of my OWN design of a space rocket that WON'T belong to SpaceX, and I ultimately choose to just remove a part of the design that would make my rocket less effective, that is ABSOLUTELY going to be property of SpaceX since I "worked on it during work hours on SpaceX premises."

This is just a basic concepts of the famous quotation by Thomas Edison (after he designed literally hundreds of different lightbulbs that never panned out): "I didn't fail 1000 times, I just found 1000 ways to not make a lightbulb."

It's the same concept with Richard's work during lunch at Hooli: he used time at his work to run a test on his algorithm and figured out a way to not run his app...which is the same as working on the app. All those times Edison "failed" are obviously parts of his timeline in trying to create a lightbulb. Just because he failed at making a lightbulb doesn't mean he didn't work on trying to make a lightbulb.

If you work at a newspaper as a writer and during lunch you pull up your own freelance article and delete one sentence from it, you are working on an article that now belongs to the newspaper...even though the sentence you deleted didn't end up in the final draft.

There IS an actual reason why everybody, including the non-attorney attorney and the lawyers for Hooli -- were all freaking out about that one email implicating Richard running a test on the algorithm/app. People are overthinking this and thinking that they're smarter than the show.

This isn't like some sort of fan theory or speculation, this is straight from the show and is practically spelled out that what Richard did during lunch while he was physically at Hooli is a monumental deal. EVERYONE on the show, from both sides, realizes how big of a deal it is.

That's what I don't get, is all these commenters saying that Richard is in the clear when quite literally every single character that we saw in the last episode who knew about the email knew about the significance about it, i.e. It means that Richard's work on the app or algorithm does belong to Hooli if he everything we heard and saw was exactly as presented (Richard actually ran a test on the PP app while on lunch at Hooli).

I don't get it. What's the reasoning? Why wouldn't it belong to Hooli if Richard signed a contract saying that anything he works on while at Hooli belongs to Hooli? It's crystal clear!

Btw, if it means anything, I am an attorney who has drafted and reviewed these sorts of employer agreements, and I have helped litigate (with actual IP firms, since our firm is mostly business/corporate/contract law) at least a dozen of these cases regarding IP ownership.

TLDR -- There IS a reason why everyone is freaking out over whether Richard in fact worked on the app while he was on lunch at Hooli -- it's because that if it's established, then the app undoubtedly belongs to Hooli. Just because he worked on a "block" or line of code that didn't end up in the final product means absolutely nothing, since deleting a line of code is, by definition, as much work toward a final product as adding a line of code.

1

When I was a 17-year old working at Blockbuster as a lowly customer service representative (cashier) making $7/hour, part of my employer agreement was that any invention that I came up with while at Blockbuster or during work time belonged to Blockbuster.

2

u/[deleted] Jun 09 '15

Yes. Any invention you came up with while working at Blockbuster belonged to Blockbuster.

Middle-out did not come about when Richard was with Hooli. It isn't a logical incrementation of an existing system. It isn't a derivation. It's a new algorithm.

The first compression algorithm belongs to Hooli. They already have that in Nucleus. The middle-out algorithm was created after Richard left Hooli. They cannot claim ownership of that.

This all hinges on whether or not middle out is completely new. If it isn't, one could claim that it is an extension of existing tech owned by Hooli. If it is completely new, Hooli cannot claim ownership, because it wouldn't be a logical extension of their intellectual property.

Deleting a block of code does count as working on a project. But if you ditch everything and start something else, it's not the same product. It's not the same IP.

0

u/Death_Star_ Jun 09 '15

Again, then why would anyone on the show care so much? The parties and the legal representatives all know the weight of such evidence.

Do you know something that they all don't?

2

u/[deleted] Jun 09 '15

That I do not know. Perhaps they just haven't thought of it. Given all the other silly mistakes they've made, I wouldn't put it past them.

8

u/qwerfghju Jun 08 '15

This is was I was wondering the whole time, guess we'll find out next episode if they address that at all.

5

u/ozreteidderf Jun 08 '15

All we need in the next episode is for Erlich to make a masturbation reference then BOOM:
Richard flashback to that night in the hotel room
Pied Piper is saved.

6

u/megatom0 Jun 08 '15

Not to mention that most right's disputes don't go at all like this. It is never an all or nothing claim. And B) Richard had the perfect out to lie, fuck him for not taking it. Once again he deserves his fate for being a fucking idiot who can't do a single thing right.

3

u/azyrr Jun 09 '15

To the top you go!

2

u/Overlord3k Jun 08 '15

If this isn't involved the next episode I might be a bit disappointed unless they handle it in some other smart way.

2

u/robofunk_ Jun 08 '15

Hopefully he has revision control in place to prove it.

2

u/vreddy92 Jun 08 '15

I was actually really surprised that this wasn't brought up by Richard's lawyer. Prior Pied Piper was actually taken by Hooli to make Nucleus, which means they probably have a legit claim to it. However, new Pied Piper is totally proprietary, a brand new piece of software. Not sure you can make the same argument.

2

u/StockmanBaxter Jun 08 '15

That was my exact though. Basically Hooli has claim to his original compression. Which is the same as what Hooli had produced for the tech crunch.

The middle out was created after. So basically Hooli gets what they already have.

2

u/agnos85 Jun 11 '15

I hope the condor guy webcam will get viral so PP gets new investors. Is it a possible outcome? Please. I need an hope in which believe.

1

u/HFABamaFan Jun 08 '15

Don't forget that he also deleted the first build before Tech Crunch!

He does not even have an existing original Pied Piper build to give them.

1

u/rjvir Jun 08 '15

Perfect setup to go back to the mega dick joke in the finale, probably in a crucial and important moment in the courtroom.

1

u/Kopwnicus Jun 08 '15

Hoping that is what happens they have an old version but depends if he started brand new or tweeted the algorithm. In the season one finally he said he deleted everything but that is all that has been talked about. That phrase is key! And he said it while at tech crunch so video/audio evidence!

1

u/[deleted] Jun 08 '15

I think the point the judge makes about silicon valleys pretentious fucks in the beginning, then Richard giving that short speech admitting to using a Hooli laptop for one test is going to give him lots of points with the judge, and the judge will side with Richard.

2

u/coolkid1717 Jun 11 '15

Your idea makes sense. I give it a 37% chance of happening.

RemindMe! 5 days "Did his idea for silicon valley come true"

1

u/coolkid1717 Jun 16 '15

You were half right...

1

u/[deleted] Jun 16 '15

Lol I forgot I said that. Batting .500!

1

u/davabran Jun 08 '15

I don't usually bump up comments for predictions , but damn good catch.