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The first amendment argument can be made notwithstanding that corporations are not people. Forcing developers to implement and sign code goes against their firs

The first amendment argument can be made notwithstanding that corporations are not people. Forcing developers to implement and sign code goes against their first amendment rights.

harryh 11y ago
No developers are being forced to do anything. Any Apple employee who feels like it is more than welcome to quit. Otherwise, they're required to do the job their employer asks them to do which, it turns out, might include modifying iOS on a court order.
- BlackFly 11y ago
  I'm not sure if you are being disingenuous with me or you just haven't thought out your argument. You are essentially claiming that a person's rights aren't violated because they still have a choice between expressing a concept in code or losing their livelihood. This is analagous to saying that a person's fifth amendment rights are not violated because they have a choice between answering questions and going to jail. This is the precise definition of coercion, which is exactly what the US government is forbidden to do except in very limited circumstances. Furthermore, their employer is not the government so the ultimatum does not exist without coercion. Their manager is a human being who is forced to give them orders or fire them, which is again a first amendment violation. They get their orders from their manager, who was coerced, etc.
  - harryh 11y ago
    > You are essentially claiming that a person's rights aren't violated because they still have a choice between expressing a concept in code > or losing their livelihood. I write code for a living(1). I'm pretty sure that if I walked in to work tomorrow and told my boss I wasn't going to write any more code then he would tell me pretty soon thereafter that was fine but he was going to stop paying me to come to work every day. That's not coercion. That's what a job is. It's interesting, by the way, that you bring up the 5th amendment. You have it exactly backwards. The government has wide latitude to compel testimony at a trial. If you witness a crime, for example, you aren't allowed to refuse to testify about what you saw because of your first amendment rights. The 5th amendment outlines one of the very few exceptions to the government's ability to compel speech in the context of criminal investigations. 1. Strictly speaking I'm more of a manager these days. But, for the purposes of clarity, let's pretend I'm talking about the "me" from 5 years ago.
    - nikdaheratik 11y ago
      That example of you and your boss is not the same as the government forcing you to do/say something. The end result is unemployment in your case, and it is your choice since the decision to take the job in the first place was voluntary. In the case of the government compelling you to work and/or write code, the result of non-compliance is fines, imprisonment for contempt, etc. And assuming the process that led to the writ being issued in court was fair and followed correctly, you wouldn't be able to just walk away from it. Which is why the first amendment and other laws matter for the government and not for your employer-employee example.
      - harryh 11y ago
        No, you're wrong about fines, imprisonment for contempt, etc. That might be true for senior officials at Apple (Tim Cook, etc) but definitely not for rank and file employees. Any of them that are asked to implement GovOS (to use Apple's shorthand for the proposed software) could surely quit instead of doing the work. To be honest, they wouldn't even have to quit. I'm sure there are plenty of people at Apple qualified to do the work. If some of them have moral issues I'm sure they can go work on other things. Apple will have no problem finding a few folks to comment out a few lines of code and recompile the OS. You're basically repeating FUD spread by Apple and others to make the situation seem worse than it is. Normally this kind of FUD spreading is reviled by the hacker community.

The first amendment argument can be made notwithstanding that corporations are not people. Forcing developers to implement and sign code goes against their first amendment rights.

harryh 11y ago

No developers are being forced to do anything. Any Apple employee who feels like it is more than welcome to quit. Otherwise, they're required to do the job their employer asks them to do which, it turns out, might include modifying iOS on a court order.

BlackFly 11y ago
I'm not sure if you are being disingenuous with me or you just haven't thought out your argument. You are essentially claiming that a person's rights aren't violated because they still have a choice between expressing a concept in code or losing their livelihood. This is analagous to saying that a person's fifth amendment rights are not violated because they have a choice between answering questions and going to jail. This is the precise definition of coercion, which is exactly what the US government is forbidden to do except in very limited circumstances. Furthermore, their employer is not the government so the ultimatum does not exist without coercion. Their manager is a human being who is forced to give them orders or fire them, which is again a first amendment violation. They get their orders from their manager, who was coerced, etc.
- harryh 11y ago
  > You are essentially claiming that a person's rights aren't violated because they still have a choice between expressing a concept in code > or losing their livelihood. I write code for a living(1). I'm pretty sure that if I walked in to work tomorrow and told my boss I wasn't going to write any more code then he would tell me pretty soon thereafter that was fine but he was going to stop paying me to come to work every day. That's not coercion. That's what a job is. It's interesting, by the way, that you bring up the 5th amendment. You have it exactly backwards. The government has wide latitude to compel testimony at a trial. If you witness a crime, for example, you aren't allowed to refuse to testify about what you saw because of your first amendment rights. The 5th amendment outlines one of the very few exceptions to the government's ability to compel speech in the context of criminal investigations. 1. Strictly speaking I'm more of a manager these days. But, for the purposes of clarity, let's pretend I'm talking about the "me" from 5 years ago.
  - nikdaheratik 11y ago
    That example of you and your boss is not the same as the government forcing you to do/say something. The end result is unemployment in your case, and it is your choice since the decision to take the job in the first place was voluntary. In the case of the government compelling you to work and/or write code, the result of non-compliance is fines, imprisonment for contempt, etc. And assuming the process that led to the writ being issued in court was fair and followed correctly, you wouldn't be able to just walk away from it. Which is why the first amendment and other laws matter for the government and not for your employer-employee example.
    - harryh 11y ago
      No, you're wrong about fines, imprisonment for contempt, etc. That might be true for senior officials at Apple (Tim Cook, etc) but definitely not for rank and file employees. Any of them that are asked to implement GovOS (to use Apple's shorthand for the proposed software) could surely quit instead of doing the work. To be honest, they wouldn't even have to quit. I'm sure there are plenty of people at Apple qualified to do the work. If some of them have moral issues I'm sure they can go work on other things. Apple will have no problem finding a few folks to comment out a few lines of code and recompile the OS. You're basically repeating FUD spread by Apple and others to make the situation seem worse than it is. Normally this kind of FUD spreading is reviled by the hacker community.