4 ms·

I think on the face of it these types of things sound ridiculous. For example everyone knows that murder is murder. And everyone knows that an accident is an ac

I think on the face of it these types of things sound ridiculous. For example everyone knows that murder is murder. And everyone knows that an accident is an accident. But what might seem like an accident, but was actually perpetrated on purpose because of knowledge of a condition, that's murder. Going back to reality: Someone severely allergic to peanuts is killed with peanuts in their food by a mistake: accident. Someone severely allergic to peanuts is killed with peanuts in their food because someone added them on purpose with knowledge of the condition? Murder. Luckily, seizures don't always result in death. Now to confound the issue here? The internet is already filled with blinking gifs, so this case is much more complicated.

tptacek 10y ago
Not really. Message board nerds may not care much about intent, but intent is most of what the law cares about. If it's really the GIF this person is being charged for, then the prosecution will simply present evidence to prove to a jury that the accused deliberately attempted to trigger a Eichenwald's seizure. The mechanics of how they tried to do that will be of secondary importance, except to the extent that the law will likely care that whatever mechanism was used did in fact stand a good chance of causing a seizure.
- dragonwriter 10y ago
  > Message board nerds may not care much about intent, but intent is most of what the law cares about. More accurately, mental state (of which intent is but one aspect) is a substantial part of the definition of most crimes.
- mindslight 10y ago
  You've mischaracterized it as a strawman of "message board nerds", but it's actually a respectable philosophical distinction between purely executable semantics and ambient authority. Executable semantics are more scalable, being a core innovation that allowed the Internet to flourish - eg a router doesn't care about the intent of a packet, but only its destination address. (ISPs are doing their best to undermine the e2e principle, attempting to infer intent to extract more value than can be gotten from commodity service, but I digress). If we want to follow the implications of executable semantics, then an epileptic should have software which prevents harmful signals from being shown on their screen. This seems onerous, except for the ultimate alternative being a single world jurisdiction to enable post-facto prosecution of cross-border "intent", and destruction of Internet anonymity to effect this. A signal filter also seems to be a more practical device than say a content filter to block scams for a cognitively-impaired older person, which is the accepted state of affairs even for intranational snail mail (eg Publishers' Clearinghouse). (note: I've said nothing condoning the actual act of attempting to give a person a seizure, but only how we should analyze the systems that have given rise to this capability. The simplistic reaction of focusing blame on the (essentially stochastic) perpetrator is helping to push us down the path of unsustainable centralization)
  - tptacek 10y ago
    If it will spare us a long and unproductive debate can we just stipulate that I'm speaking positively and not normatively? Whatever your philosophical leanings might be, intent is basically the fulcrum for most of US criminal law as it exists in the real world. As a result, we don't have to reach far to see how inducing a seizure over the Internet could result in criminal liability. It isn't a stretch. The laws we had 40 years ago adequately capture the event.
    - mindslight 10y ago
      In a sense that's following my point - describing the executable semantics of the legal system, sure. On the other hand, there is no such thing as a purely positive statement, as simply explaining how something works also promulgates it. This is a basic tenet of how the legal system bootstraps its own justification - notice, publication, etc. We can argue about it or not, but normatively I know that I would indeed like some sort of purely-executable-semantics environment, as the Internet was originally perceived as. Twitster's walled garden likely isn't a workable place to push for this for (being a mass-marketed proprietary service that merely delivers over the Internet). But as I don't see a boundary for where the legal system will ever stop attempting to apply its ambient authority, it is worthwhile to point out that there are alternative philosophies at every one of these occurrences.
  - tedunangst 10y ago
    You seem to have wandered off topic at some point. The FBI didn't arrest the ISP. They arrested the sender. What's more end to end than that?
    - mindslight 10y ago
      The FBI is interjecting itself by applying an interpretation to communication that occurred between two other endpoints. Furthermore, the legal system's judgment is being incorporated as third-party requirement that all future communication must adhere to.
kristofferR 10y ago
Just something blinking doesn't cause a seizure, the blinking has to be a certain frequency to induce it. Also important in this case is that the seizure gif in question was personalized with the message “You deserve a seizure for your postings.” That make the case similar to force feeding peanuts to a guy you know have a severe peanut allergy.

tptacek 10y ago

Not really. Message board nerds may not care much about intent, but intent is most of what the law cares about. If it's really the GIF this person is being charged for, then the prosecution will simply present evidence to prove to a jury that the accused deliberately attempted to trigger a Eichenwald's seizure. The mechanics of how they tried to do that will be of secondary importance, except to the extent that the law will likely care that whatever mechanism was used did in fact stand a good chance of causing a seizure.

dragonwriter 10y ago
> Message board nerds may not care much about intent, but intent is most of what the law cares about. More accurately, mental state (of which intent is but one aspect) is a substantial part of the definition of most crimes.
mindslight 10y ago
You've mischaracterized it as a strawman of "message board nerds", but it's actually a respectable philosophical distinction between purely executable semantics and ambient authority. Executable semantics are more scalable, being a core innovation that allowed the Internet to flourish - eg a router doesn't care about the intent of a packet, but only its destination address. (ISPs are doing their best to undermine the e2e principle, attempting to infer intent to extract more value than can be gotten from commodity service, but I digress). If we want to follow the implications of executable semantics, then an epileptic should have software which prevents harmful signals from being shown on their screen. This seems onerous, except for the ultimate alternative being a single world jurisdiction to enable post-facto prosecution of cross-border "intent", and destruction of Internet anonymity to effect this. A signal filter also seems to be a more practical device than say a content filter to block scams for a cognitively-impaired older person, which is the accepted state of affairs even for intranational snail mail (eg Publishers' Clearinghouse). (note: I've said nothing condoning the actual act of attempting to give a person a seizure, but only how we should analyze the systems that have given rise to this capability. The simplistic reaction of focusing blame on the (essentially stochastic) perpetrator is helping to push us down the path of unsustainable centralization)
- tptacek 10y ago
  If it will spare us a long and unproductive debate can we just stipulate that I'm speaking positively and not normatively? Whatever your philosophical leanings might be, intent is basically the fulcrum for most of US criminal law as it exists in the real world. As a result, we don't have to reach far to see how inducing a seizure over the Internet could result in criminal liability. It isn't a stretch. The laws we had 40 years ago adequately capture the event.
  - mindslight 10y ago
    In a sense that's following my point - describing the executable semantics of the legal system, sure. On the other hand, there is no such thing as a purely positive statement, as simply explaining how something works also promulgates it. This is a basic tenet of how the legal system bootstraps its own justification - notice, publication, etc. We can argue about it or not, but normatively I know that I would indeed like some sort of purely-executable-semantics environment, as the Internet was originally perceived as. Twitster's walled garden likely isn't a workable place to push for this for (being a mass-marketed proprietary service that merely delivers over the Internet). But as I don't see a boundary for where the legal system will ever stop attempting to apply its ambient authority, it is worthwhile to point out that there are alternative philosophies at every one of these occurrences.
- tedunangst 10y ago
  You seem to have wandered off topic at some point. The FBI didn't arrest the ISP. They arrested the sender. What's more end to end than that?
  - mindslight 10y ago
    The FBI is interjecting itself by applying an interpretation to communication that occurred between two other endpoints. Furthermore, the legal system's judgment is being incorporated as third-party requirement that all future communication must adhere to.

kristofferR 10y ago

Just something blinking doesn't cause a seizure, the blinking has to be a certain frequency to induce it. Also important in this case is that the seizure gif in question was personalized with the message “You deserve a seizure for your postings.” That make the case similar to force feeding peanuts to a guy you know have a severe peanut allergy.