7 ms·

I think I've given up on sane legislation with regards to technology. Not only does technology advance much faster than law, but law makers are almost by defin

I think I've given up on sane legislation with regards to technology. Not only does technology advance much faster than law, but law makers are almost by definition two generations behind the generation that actually is native to the technological change in question. It's not possible to win in that situation. You're asking someone whose paradigm of video was formed by the advent of color TV, to understand the cultural and technological consequences of popcorn time. It's like the tech problems of WWI: generals who only knew cavalry rushes continued ordering i calvary rushes, even against machine gun fire and even against staggering numbers of dead. So I think I give up now. Technological issues may as well ignore the legal framework, because the legal framework ignores the technological issues. If we stop fighting, the rules will get so ridiculous as to he openly impossible to satisfy, offering industries the choice to either ignore them, or go out of business. In the end this stuff doesn't strangle the open sourcers or the hacker culture... It only strangles big industry, the people pay the legislators' paychecks. So fuck em. Legislators can figure it out when it hits their tax receipts.

tobltobs 11y ago
"It only strangles big industry" Actually it helps the big industry as the small business owner are struggling. For example the VAT MOSS rule. Amazon, Google or Apple will not have any problem to fulfill this law. A small company selling software to EU customer will not be able to handle the bureaucratic effort.
- oh_sigh 11y ago
  Will cheap services pop up which help small companies fulfill MOSS requirements while not being an onerous burden?
  - MichaelGG 11y ago
    Not in EU; don't know anything. What stops people from simply contracting or incorporating in another country like, say, Panama or something, and billing from there? Then VAT would be out of scope wouldn't it?
    - techdragon 11y ago
      That's not how the law is meant to work. The law is supposed to "force" overseas companies to collect VAT on behalf of customers inside the EU. So even in Panama your opinions are "sorry you're in the EU I can't sell to you" or you're supposed to collect the VAT. At present I don't believe they have tried to enforce it through any court yet. So I'm unsure how that would play out.
Jormundir 11y ago
You're right about the outcomes, but ignoring the laws would disproportionately hurt small businesses and the open sourcers and hackers you talk about. Laws are tools paid for and created by large entities to cement their positions. Ignoring laws means giving ridiculously powerful legal tools to big companies and governments to prosecute the smaller groups who can't defend themselves.
- fijal 11y ago
  No, mostly business. Those things are typically not criminal so as far as open source goes for the sake of open source, it's easy to ignore
specialist 11y ago
I choose to be an optimist. Codification takes time. Patience. IANAL, so my understanding is naive (at best): law is about striking a balance. So long as technological progress continues to rearrange society, it'll be a while before things settle down, thereby giving people sufficient time and experience figure out a new acceptable balance. I probably misremember (or just made up) this factoid: It took Roman's 400 years to codify their laws. So I think we're doing pretty good. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Codification_(law) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Codification_(law)
oneJob 11y ago
Finally! An opportunity to say something positive about representative democracies! The opportunities to do so are rather meager these days, it seems, what with all the talk about their failings and lackings, especially when compared to direct democracy, which is becoming more and more possible every day. This is a tailor made case for representative democracy. To all the comments speaking to the shortcomings of their legislators and how those shortcomings translate to suboptimal or even outright harmful laws, please consider two other options. Direct democracy and laissez-faire /libertarianism /anarchy. First, consider direct democracy. By opening the legislative process to every eligible citizen, there is little chance the voting base will become more knowledgeable as to the issues of technology it will be voting on. It will in all probability become less knowledgeable, on par. Direct democracy increases the cognitive load on the legislator by orders of magnitude. By not having professional legislators each citizen must become, in addition to already being a productive member of the work force keeping their skills sharp and keeping abreast of advancements in their field, being a responsible, good member of their social circles, oh, and having a personal life, they must now both make decisions as to when they should devote resources to their legislative duties, given there will always be something up for vote, they must also devote resources deciding how they will vote. So, direct democracy not only creates a larger pool of non expert technology legislators but it also creates a framework in which those new legislators are less capable to devote the appropriate resources to legislate effectively. Now consider the laissez-faire case. This one is easy, and for a contemporary case study one just needs to look at the recently drafted TPP language on restrictions on States regarding OSS. Laissez-faire simply settles in whatever state is conducive to the capabilities and sensibilities of the most fit entity given the initial state of the environment and its constituents. If the environment is most conducive to an entity which is benevolent and intelligent, awesome. If it is conducive to the successful outcome of a self interested, profit motive driven entity, awesome or not, that is the outcome in that case. It is amoral. No judgement. Just outcome. The case for representative democracy then follows rather nicely, for once. Representative democracy creates a specialized space for crafting legislation where the citizens concerned about a given piece of legislation can appeal to the legislators to devote more resources to that particular issue, over other issues. Additionally they can provide additional resources to the legislators on a case by case basis to help them legislate, which may come in the form of financial assistance, access to relevant case or field studies, or experts in the domain. The non legislative citizens can then still go on about their lives, and the legislators can craft better quality legislation. Lobbying would be a form of this activity, but one in which the non legislative party is already decided as to how the legislation should look in its finished form, rather than simply trying to inform better legislation. Two other benefits of representative democracy. The process inserts safety-switches in the form of, for example, checks and balances (only possible when the legislature is split in to different bodies, does not work when the whole legisture is involved in every part of the process), vetoes and recalls (same thing here), or the formalized process itself, which might require drafting, review, certification, or cooling-off/reflection periods. All of which I mention to say that, sure, our "legislators" proper have had some pretty dumb moments recently while discharging their duties, but let's not throw the baby out with the bath water. They are only a small part of our law making apparatus. Lobbyists have certainly been providing their full energy. The process itself, while never perfect, has certainly done well for its constituents over an extended historical period, especially compared to other experiments; part of the beauty of the currently implemented process is its ability to improve and broaden the scope of its constituency, which should certainly continue. And there are some examples of grass roots activity influencing the dialogue and end-product. As technology experts, throwing our support and resources behind the entire process, in a holistic fashion, providing expertise, opening up operations to legislators and citizens so they can familiarize themselves with often mysterious domains, providing a forumn for dialogues surrounding the issues, etc, this, to me at least, seems like a promising way forward, as opposed to withdrawing from the process all together and assuming everthing will sort itself out to one's personal liking. Not every issue will be settled in a manner that will satisfy each citizen every time. But that is the trade off one makes for being part of a larger community which shares most, but not necessarily each of their interests and priorities with the other members of their community. On balance though, we should all be better off if everyone engages and basic rights are respected. So, yeah, call you Senator or Representative today. :)
BurningFrog 11y ago
Another problem is that when the legal system first encounters new technology, and is the most ignorant and unprepared for it, it makes that decision a "precedent" that later cases are expected to follow.
fsloth 11y ago
Laws are lobbied by industries. In the end it will be the combined interest of several industries, not technologists, who settle this. "It only strangles big industry..." No, big industry will say how they would prefer this to roll. Currently the publishing houses seem to hold the upper hand. Industry players percieve this as a way to funnel Google and Facebook profits to dying industries in europe. Instead of innovating the publishing houses fight death through supportive legislation.
jonesb6 11y ago
While I agree with your point, the history buff in me has to point out that the WWI metaphor was inaccurate. World War One was a war of scale that was exponentially larger then previous conflicts. Tactics advanced rapidly and beyond 1914/1915 generals had adapted themselves in a myriad of ways. The largest example of this however was away from the battlefield. As Napoleon Bonaparte said "An army runs on its stomach", and the explosion of modern military logistics that took place in WWI was nothing short of miraculous. Millions of men, food, supplies, armaments, had to be shuffled back and forth from France, to Russia, and back to France again, in ways that had never been conceived before. One reason I believe this rapid advancement was possible was because leaders were CONSTANTLY replaced if their performance suffered. This forced new, and occasionally younger (but mostly old), officers to adapt or quickly lose their rank. I think this yields some hope in modern times, we don't necessarily need better representatives, just new ones, constantly, until they get it right.
- commandar 11y ago
  >Millions of men, food, supplies, armaments, had to be shuffled back and forth from France, to Russia, and back to France again, in ways that had never been conceived before. And not only that, but the bulk of it was still being done with horse and carriages.
vanilla-almond 11y ago
"law makers are almost by definition two generations behind the generation that actually is native to the technological change in question" This 1 min video clip from a UK comedy show is over 30 years old. But it captures this sentiment perfectly https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9VgwxKW0J6I https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9VgwxKW0J6I
quanticle 11y ago
>In the end this stuff doesn't strangle the open sourcers or the hacker culture... It only strangles big industry, the people pay the legislators' paychecks. Actually, you have it exactly backwards. Big corporation have teams of lawyers that will allow them to navigate this legal thicket. But your average open-source project, or blog? The first scary legal letter they get, asking for a six-to-seven figure amount for copyright infringement, will cause them to shut down. As far as I can tell, this law is a huge threat to any free-speech that threatens corporate interests, because the moment you link to the thing you're criticizing, you can be sued for thousands to millions, depending on how many people (allegedly) clicked. Under this legal regime, making it to the front page of Hacker News would be a literal kiss of death to almost organization that offends corporate interests. Maybe the EFF could handle the legal wrangling to prove that its links were "fair use", or whatever. Precious few others would be able to.
- Silhouette 11y ago
  Under this legal regime, making it to the front page of Hacker News would be a literal kiss of death to almost organization that offends corporate interests. Perhaps I've misunderstood, but it seems to me that under this legal regime, an organization that offends corporate interests making it to the front page of HN would be the kiss of death to HN. The danger is that the mere act of linking to something controversial becomes guilt by association, and since in general someone who links to another site doesn't control the content on that other site, anyone can become guilty of whatever crimes result literally without having done anything wrong (beyond not constantly legally reviewing the content of every site they link to and removing links in real time in the event of any potential problem).
  - quanticle 11y ago
    I don't know the specifics of the proposal, but I imagine that HN would be safe, unless the blog post author got annoyed at making it to the front page. Your point, however, is a good one. This legal framework would kill off Reddit, Hacker News, and all the other link aggregators out there. If linking to copyrighted material without permission counts as copyright infringement, then linking to anything, anywhere becomes a very dangerous act. It'd probably also hurt Twitter and Facebook badly (no more linking to viral videos or funny images).

tobltobs 11y ago

"It only strangles big industry" Actually it helps the big industry as the small business owner are struggling. For example the VAT MOSS rule. Amazon, Google or Apple will not have any problem to fulfill this law. A small company selling software to EU customer will not be able to handle the bureaucratic effort.

oh_sigh 11y ago
Will cheap services pop up which help small companies fulfill MOSS requirements while not being an onerous burden?
- MichaelGG 11y ago
  Not in EU; don't know anything. What stops people from simply contracting or incorporating in another country like, say, Panama or something, and billing from there? Then VAT would be out of scope wouldn't it?
  - techdragon 11y ago
    That's not how the law is meant to work. The law is supposed to "force" overseas companies to collect VAT on behalf of customers inside the EU. So even in Panama your opinions are "sorry you're in the EU I can't sell to you" or you're supposed to collect the VAT. At present I don't believe they have tried to enforce it through any court yet. So I'm unsure how that would play out.

Jormundir 11y ago

You're right about the outcomes, but ignoring the laws would disproportionately hurt small businesses and the open sourcers and hackers you talk about. Laws are tools paid for and created by large entities to cement their positions. Ignoring laws means giving ridiculously powerful legal tools to big companies and governments to prosecute the smaller groups who can't defend themselves.

fijal 11y ago
No, mostly business. Those things are typically not criminal so as far as open source goes for the sake of open source, it's easy to ignore

specialist 11y ago

I choose to be an optimist. Codification takes time. Patience. IANAL, so my understanding is naive (at best): law is about striking a balance. So long as technological progress continues to rearrange society, it'll be a while before things settle down, thereby giving people sufficient time and experience figure out a new acceptable balance. I probably misremember (or just made up) this factoid: It took Roman's 400 years to codify their laws. So I think we're doing pretty good. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Codification_(law) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Codification_(law)

oneJob 11y ago

Finally! An opportunity to say something positive about representative democracies! The opportunities to do so are rather meager these days, it seems, what with all the talk about their failings and lackings, especially when compared to direct democracy, which is becoming more and more possible every day. This is a tailor made case for representative democracy. To all the comments speaking to the shortcomings of their legislators and how those shortcomings translate to suboptimal or even outright harmful laws, please consider two other options. Direct democracy and laissez-faire /libertarianism /anarchy. First, consider direct democracy. By opening the legislative process to every eligible citizen, there is little chance the voting base will become more knowledgeable as to the issues of technology it will be voting on. It will in all probability become less knowledgeable, on par. Direct democracy increases the cognitive load on the legislator by orders of magnitude. By not having professional legislators each citizen must become, in addition to already being a productive member of the work force keeping their skills sharp and keeping abreast of advancements in their field, being a responsible, good member of their social circles, oh, and having a personal life, they must now both make decisions as to when they should devote resources to their legislative duties, given there will always be something up for vote, they must also devote resources deciding how they will vote. So, direct democracy not only creates a larger pool of non expert technology legislators but it also creates a framework in which those new legislators are less capable to devote the appropriate resources to legislate effectively. Now consider the laissez-faire case. This one is easy, and for a contemporary case study one just needs to look at the recently drafted TPP language on restrictions on States regarding OSS. Laissez-faire simply settles in whatever state is conducive to the capabilities and sensibilities of the most fit entity given the initial state of the environment and its constituents. If the environment is most conducive to an entity which is benevolent and intelligent, awesome. If it is conducive to the successful outcome of a self interested, profit motive driven entity, awesome or not, that is the outcome in that case. It is amoral. No judgement. Just outcome. The case for representative democracy then follows rather nicely, for once. Representative democracy creates a specialized space for crafting legislation where the citizens concerned about a given piece of legislation can appeal to the legislators to devote more resources to that particular issue, over other issues. Additionally they can provide additional resources to the legislators on a case by case basis to help them legislate, which may come in the form of financial assistance, access to relevant case or field studies, or experts in the domain. The non legislative citizens can then still go on about their lives, and the legislators can craft better quality legislation. Lobbying would be a form of this activity, but one in which the non legislative party is already decided as to how the legislation should look in its finished form, rather than simply trying to inform better legislation. Two other benefits of representative democracy. The process inserts safety-switches in the form of, for example, checks and balances (only possible when the legislature is split in to different bodies, does not work when the whole legisture is involved in every part of the process), vetoes and recalls (same thing here), or the formalized process itself, which might require drafting, review, certification, or cooling-off/reflection periods. All of which I mention to say that, sure, our "legislators" proper have had some pretty dumb moments recently while discharging their duties, but let's not throw the baby out with the bath water. They are only a small part of our law making apparatus. Lobbyists have certainly been providing their full energy. The process itself, while never perfect, has certainly done well for its constituents over an extended historical period, especially compared to other experiments; part of the beauty of the currently implemented process is its ability to improve and broaden the scope of its constituency, which should certainly continue. And there are some examples of grass roots activity influencing the dialogue and end-product. As technology experts, throwing our support and resources behind the entire process, in a holistic fashion, providing expertise, opening up operations to legislators and citizens so they can familiarize themselves with often mysterious domains, providing a forumn for dialogues surrounding the issues, etc, this, to me at least, seems like a promising way forward, as opposed to withdrawing from the process all together and assuming everthing will sort itself out to one's personal liking. Not every issue will be settled in a manner that will satisfy each citizen every time. But that is the trade off one makes for being part of a larger community which shares most, but not necessarily each of their interests and priorities with the other members of their community. On balance though, we should all be better off if everyone engages and basic rights are respected. So, yeah, call you Senator or Representative today. :)

BurningFrog 11y ago

Another problem is that when the legal system first encounters new technology, and is the most ignorant and unprepared for it, it makes that decision a "precedent" that later cases are expected to follow.

fsloth 11y ago

Laws are lobbied by industries. In the end it will be the combined interest of several industries, not technologists, who settle this. "It only strangles big industry..." No, big industry will say how they would prefer this to roll. Currently the publishing houses seem to hold the upper hand. Industry players percieve this as a way to funnel Google and Facebook profits to dying industries in europe. Instead of innovating the publishing houses fight death through supportive legislation.

jonesb6 11y ago

While I agree with your point, the history buff in me has to point out that the WWI metaphor was inaccurate. World War One was a war of scale that was exponentially larger then previous conflicts. Tactics advanced rapidly and beyond 1914/1915 generals had adapted themselves in a myriad of ways. The largest example of this however was away from the battlefield. As Napoleon Bonaparte said "An army runs on its stomach", and the explosion of modern military logistics that took place in WWI was nothing short of miraculous. Millions of men, food, supplies, armaments, had to be shuffled back and forth from France, to Russia, and back to France again, in ways that had never been conceived before. One reason I believe this rapid advancement was possible was because leaders were CONSTANTLY replaced if their performance suffered. This forced new, and occasionally younger (but mostly old), officers to adapt or quickly lose their rank. I think this yields some hope in modern times, we don't necessarily need better representatives, just new ones, constantly, until they get it right.

commandar 11y ago
>Millions of men, food, supplies, armaments, had to be shuffled back and forth from France, to Russia, and back to France again, in ways that had never been conceived before. And not only that, but the bulk of it was still being done with horse and carriages.

vanilla-almond 11y ago

"law makers are almost by definition two generations behind the generation that actually is native to the technological change in question" This 1 min video clip from a UK comedy show is over 30 years old. But it captures this sentiment perfectly https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9VgwxKW0J6I https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9VgwxKW0J6I

quanticle 11y ago

>In the end this stuff doesn't strangle the open sourcers or the hacker culture... It only strangles big industry, the people pay the legislators' paychecks. Actually, you have it exactly backwards. Big corporation have teams of lawyers that will allow them to navigate this legal thicket. But your average open-source project, or blog? The first scary legal letter they get, asking for a six-to-seven figure amount for copyright infringement, will cause them to shut down. As far as I can tell, this law is a huge threat to any free-speech that threatens corporate interests, because the moment you link to the thing you're criticizing, you can be sued for thousands to millions, depending on how many people (allegedly) clicked. Under this legal regime, making it to the front page of Hacker News would be a literal kiss of death to almost organization that offends corporate interests. Maybe the EFF could handle the legal wrangling to prove that its links were "fair use", or whatever. Precious few others would be able to.

Silhouette 11y ago
Under this legal regime, making it to the front page of Hacker News would be a literal kiss of death to almost organization that offends corporate interests. Perhaps I've misunderstood, but it seems to me that under this legal regime, an organization that offends corporate interests making it to the front page of HN would be the kiss of death to HN. The danger is that the mere act of linking to something controversial becomes guilt by association, and since in general someone who links to another site doesn't control the content on that other site, anyone can become guilty of whatever crimes result literally without having done anything wrong (beyond not constantly legally reviewing the content of every site they link to and removing links in real time in the event of any potential problem).
- quanticle 11y ago
  I don't know the specifics of the proposal, but I imagine that HN would be safe, unless the blog post author got annoyed at making it to the front page. Your point, however, is a good one. This legal framework would kill off Reddit, Hacker News, and all the other link aggregators out there. If linking to copyrighted material without permission counts as copyright infringement, then linking to anything, anywhere becomes a very dangerous act. It'd probably also hurt Twitter and Facebook badly (no more linking to viral videos or funny images).