8 ms·
Free as in Health Care
- stcredzero 10y agoI think the critical insight here is that Stallman’s vision of software freedom dates to a time when software was contained. You could walk away from that PDP-11 and the choices you made there didn’t follow you home in your pocket or give a world full of bored assholes an attack surface for your entire life. How practical could it be to have laws against trolling? There are online groups who have rules against doxxing, who seem to be able to enforce them. I don't think it would unduly contravene free speech, if public spaces on the internet assumed consent to communication between individuals, with the option of individuals revoking consent. This would be analogous to what people do in public spaces. Then the act of creating a throwaway account on Twitter to continue harassment would be analogous to continue to harass someone in real life. There would be exceptions, but generally, this would be definable and enforceable. (And I would also say, it would be more constructive than picking a figurehead like Milo Yiannopoulos and banning him as a scapegoat. Even if enforcement could only catch a few people.)
- vonmoltke 10y ago> This would be analogous to what people do in public spaces. How do I "revoke consent" to one-way communication in public spaces? All I can do is avoid known people (if possible) or ignore them.
- stcredzero 10y agoHow do I "revoke consent" to one-way communication in public spaces? "Okay, I'm done with this, and with you. I no longer consent to this interaction. If you continue, it's harassment." Then you walk away. In a virtual space, like Twitter, you block them. Then it's incumbent on them to not create a throwaway and continue the behavior. (And in the case of most middle schoolers and other internet willful idiots and trollers, they're probably not competent enough to hide their identity from a knowledgeable enemy.)
- vonmoltke 10y ago> "Okay, I'm done with this, and with you. I no longer consent to this interaction. If you continue, it's harassment." Then you walk away. One-way communications are not an interaction. You cannot silence someone just by saying "shut up or it's harassment". Harassment, from a legal perspective, rightfully has a high bar that your example does not meet.
- AnimalMuppet 10y agoI'm not a lawyer, but: >> Then you walk away. If the person continues the interaction, they have to follow you to do it. Is that (legally) harassment? If not, isn't it something? Or can I just legally follow you down the street, loudly verbally abusing you, and you have no legal recourse?
- dragonwriter 10y ago> If the person continues the interaction, they have to follow you to do it. Is that (legally) harassment? Without violence or threats of violence, or stalking (which requires more than just following), not in California, AFAICT. Other jurisdictions may differ. > If not, isn't it something? Like, some crime? Not for just continuing an unwanted verbal interaction generally. Legally, that's generally called, "Exercising one's First Amendment rights." > Or can I just legally follow you down the street, loudly verbally abusing you, and you have no legal recourse? If it is loud and unreasonable noise, it might be actionable as disturbing the peace.
- stcredzero 10y agoSo in the case of the infamous video about being a single female in New York, from the POV of California law, all of the male "transgressors" in that video were simply exercising their 1st amendment rights. (Had the events happened in downtown San Francisco.)
- dragonwriter 10y ago
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- wyager 10y agoThere are no public spaces on the Internet, except perhaps government websites. Everything else is a private space, maybe with public access. Regulating "trolling" (however some legislator chooses to define that) would be regulating what people say and allow to be said in their own private websites.
- paavokoya 10y agoThe government currently tells businesses how to build their buildings, how to run their safety code, their hygiene policies etc. I'm not endorsing this level of micro-management, but it certainly allows recourse for negligence and malpractice.
- wyager 10y agoAre you really saying that regulating hygiene is comparable to regulating speech? In what way is allowing open discourse negligent or "malpractice"?
- jasonkostempski 10y agoName 1 technology law that actually fixed a problem.
- fusiongyro 10y agoIf you read the post, he argues that we have boatloads of legislation about vehicle and road safety. Cars were once the cool new technology. And he implies that this legislation has actually resulted in safer cars.
- Frondo 10y agoSeatbelts?
- jasonkostempski 10y agoTouché, I should have been more specific, I meant digital technology.
- Frondo 10y agoOh, I thought of another. Section 508 rules on accessibility mean that government websites can be used by the visually impaired.
- jbmorgado 10y agoSeriously, this is the XXI century. You are free to put those awful colors in your website if you choose so, but those white letters on a black background just burned my retinas and stopped me from reading the full text.
- Sir_Substance 10y agoI've always found white letters on black background way easier to read. Isn't diversity wonderful?
- arximboldi 10y agoTechnically, it's #ccc on black :-) And I actually find it nice to read. I would complain about the wide lines instead... I may rephrase the Spanish say: there are tastes to every color, or colors to every taste...
- seangrogg 10y agoIt's slightly better than white on black (down a few shades of white), but I do think actually using a jet black background was a really weird choice. I prefer light text on dark backgrounds, but #000 is a touch too dark in most cases...
- zaroth 10y agoFrom the OP, in reply to a similar comment on-site: You seriously got to the end of that and the most important thought in your head was “I wish the text was a different color?” But I guess as you say, you didn't get to the end! Also, 3 words for you: "Reader View Available".
- legulere 10y agoSo basically this article makes a Kant-ian argument that we need rules to actually get freedom. I think that there's nothing wrong with that argument, but the whole story to make open source about freedom is not the right way at all. I think if you release source code for other people to use is more akin to a present you make for the whole society of the world, which may be able to advance itself with it. Presents shouldn't be bound to conditions. We certainly need rules for our societies, but they need to be part of the law, not part of some conditions of presents. That's why I release the stuff I write under public domain/CC0.
- belorn 10y agoWhen individuals given donations to disasters funds and hospitals, is it not reasonable that it has the condition that the organizer don't pocket the money themselves? One obvious condition to me is that the money should end up as advertised, and if not, I would claim fraud and hope that the justice system handles it. Other forms of presents are public services "gifted" by the government to its citizens, like parks. A condition to that gift is that people don't vandalize the park, destroying it for everyone. Shouldn't presents like those should be bound to conditions, both informal and official. I find that most gifts are given under an implicit or explicit condition, and it seems the norm rather than the exception.
- utternerd 10y agoIt's not a "present" if you're forced to pay for it via coercion as we do when it comes to a public park. It is however a "present" when one spends their time and energy making, and then giving away something to others as was the example. Very different scenarios; one is a gift, one is coerced.
- ilaksh 10y agoSecurity standards should be better but software is not like roads or cars. And thank the stars for that. Filling up books full of laws just freezes systems or makes it so you need to be a large company to participate. If anything, roads and cars should be more like software. Which is not to say no laws. But the laws should not be so many volumes as to be unapproachable and prescriptive and there should be automated systems for testing and validation. This is certainly doable for software.
- micahbright 10y agoThe entire argument here seems to hinge on the idea that government regulation makes it easier to show liability, thus making an industry safer. I think this is totally off base. It assumes that safety innovation is only achieved via regulation, and cannot be achieved in any other way. It never ceases to amaze me that people still think roads wouldn't be built without the government, or that they would be sub-par. People think that without government, the world would be in complete anarchy, when the only examples we have close to that show the opposite(http://www.independent.org/publications/tir/article.asp?a=803 http://www.independent.org/publications/tir/article.asp?a=80...).
- dmoy 10y agoI have a hard time reconciling this opinion with the horror stories friends who grew up in Mogadishu (and subsequently fled to Minneapolis) tell me. I'm not sure that the wild west examples given in that article scale well to large cities.
- wonder_er 10y agoSomalia is bad. _Somaliland_ [0] has carved out a nice spot of land for itself. It's got plenty of problems, but it's not Mogadishu. Most of the world functions just fine without government oversight. Also, consider that in the absence of government, our lives (and cities) would be full of thousands of tiny corrections, back and forth, as people responded to the new information available to them. Governments let problems build, and eventually spend a few years trying to deal with the problem, only to arrive at a good solution a few years after everyone else has arrived there. The problem is they cause massive harm in the process. Reference: - War on drugs - Imperialism - History of who was allowed to marry who [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Somaliland https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Somaliland
- lhopki01 10y agoSomaliland has a government. It's the bits without government that have issues. Only someone who's lived their life in a place with semi effective government will think that without government things will function.
- natmaster 10y agoThe problem with the concept of additive rights, is that they require unequal application to a populace. You cannot have an additive right that everyone gets. For every addition there must be a subtraction. If you think you have 'right' to a private jet; someone has to make that jet - and you don't have to give them anything back. This is the logic of the thugs that use their threats to take the apple in your hand. Sorry, you are not better than any other human.
- camtarn 10y agoCan anyone enlighten me: why is the article called "Free as in Health Care", but the word 'health' is never again mentioned in the article? I feel like I'm missing something...