3 ms·
Sometimes programmers' minds get infected with the idea that the whole world, especially courts and regulatory agencies, are just little virtual machines that w
by carussell 9y ago
Sometimes programmers' minds get infected with the idea that the whole world, especially courts and regulatory agencies, are just little virtual machines that will dutifully execute based on whatever steps you lay out at the beginning. They're not. Machines can't call bullshit on you, but people will.
- Bartweiss 9y agoI think that comment makes the mistake twice over, even. First, because T&C are (usually) not an immutable contract - companies can just change them without any legal shenanigans at all. Then second because, as you say, actions taken just to circumvent laws are usually themselves illegal. It is pretty baffling to see how often programmers talk about law like it's an algorithm. Even the DAO didn't work out that way, and that was explicitly intended to turn contracts and law into algorithms. If that didn't resist social pressure to redress harms, why would we expect actual humans to do so? (And frankly, thank god the law doesn't work like that. I don't want to live in a world where legal loopholes open up as often as software vulnerabilities.)