S03.E08: Flesh and Blood - Upload

On 11/11/2023 at 7:06 AM, Paloma said:

I also liked Ingrid better this season, but I don't understand what Nora said to her to make her willing to testify. And I'm still unclear on why her testimony was so crucial. Actually, I'm unclear on what the overall trial was intended to accomplish. I know that the lawyer (Nathan's ex) said they won because they got a lot of money for the families, but was the main issue in question at the trial?

So here's my attempt to explain what was at stake in the trial. Apologies if I get anything wrong:

Holden and her firm filed a class-action suit against Horizen for the disaster in which people coming for free uploads at Freeyond were lost in a supposed Luddite attack. Freeyond was set up as a more democratic and economically affordable alternative to Big Upload, and was setting up stores in major cities across the country. In reality, Big Upload (Horizen and a couple other competing yet collaborating firms in the same space) organized Freeyond, and deliberately sabotaged the uploads of people to shift voting patterns in the hopes that a bill allowing Uploads to work would pass, which would make them all mega-super-rich instead of just merely rich, because when you have basically an army of VR slaves who owe their continued existence to you, what can't you get them to do? And how much could you sell their labor for?

So Holden was attempting to show that Horizen/Big Upload was truly behind the disastrous Freeyond that led to what were presumably hundreds if not thousands of deaths.

Anyway, though our heroes know this conspiracy to be true, they can't use any of the direct proof they have toward it. Both Nathan 1.0  and Backup Nathan are the intellectual property of Horizen and apparently can't be used against it. (Which is some hand-wavy BS IMO because the discovery process would allow to seek records from the company, even those that are covered by intellectual property protection. They could just ask for access to Nathan 1.0's file and get him to testify that way.). But the same thing goes for David Choak, 

I can't think of a very good reason why a competent investigative team knowing what Our Heroes know and with access to scan the entirety of David Choak's memory could not determine many, many legit ways to show the conspiracy that existed. Yes, the one doctor that they found as a witness got blown up real good, for instance. But there is presumably a whole chain of evidence that having talked to him would have opened up. 

But for show purposes, the only connection that they can make is having Ingrid testify that she knows that her father was in cahoots with Smoak, thus linking the software that Nathan developed to Big Upload.

Ingrid is of course a very shaky foundation on which to build a case. As much as we have seen the show humanize her, she is a) not the smartest person in the room b) a chronic liar, including having been pretending she was dead for a substantial period of time to fool her boyfriend c) at odds with her family after having been cut off financially, giving her a potential motive to strike back at them by lying d) a VR addict.

What Nora tells Ingrid is basically: this case could lead to the Uploads getting recognized as having rights. Right now your boyfriend is a bunch of code that Horizen can do what it wants with, and he won't be free, and you won't really be free to be with him until we stick it to Horizen.

Instead of cross-examining Ingrid on any of the above weaknesses, the Big Upload lawyer seizes on Ingrid inadvertently letting it slip that there are two Nathans. I'm not really sure why this would be an effective trial technique but whatever.

So it comes down to Al, who hacks her girlfriend Katrina and is able to come up with a terabyte of sketchiness that they are able to send to the plaintiffs' lawyers under the theory that Karina sent it as a whistleblower. Obviously she did not, and presumably if this were a real trial, Holden would have to explain where she got these records from, Karina would be able to say that these records were stolen, fake or whatever. But the Horizen decides to settle for what, it seems to me, is pretty much chump change. A class action lawsuit in which (I think) 140ish families clear $1 million each is pretty small ball. 

The thing I don't like in addition to Holden acting like this is a great settlement for her clients when (presumably) they have some level of evidence of Horizen deliberately killing people to sway the results of an election is that Our Heroes are like "Man, sorry this lawsuit didn't expose what corruption there is with Horizen." They still have the terabyte of sketchiness that Horizen was up to. And even if Holden agreed to a confidentiality order, it couldn't possibly stop Al or others from not shipping that terrabyte of information to journalists, the Internet, government regulators, etc. 

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