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I'm not sure why you're being so facetious. In fact, I wonder why HN always has comments like these. Lawmakers are purposefully vague because judges can deciph

by sushid 7y ago

I'm not sure why you're being so facetious. In fact, I wonder why HN always has comments like these. Lawmakers are purposefully vague because judges can decipher what the spirit of the law is and fine corporations or condone specific use cases when they are brought up in court. You can't go into court to challenge a law with hypothetical cases for a good reason. Do you want lawmakers to arbitrarily impose constraints like only 10% of non article words can be suggested per message composition or only 2 posts per minute are allowed? It is a fact in life that technology changes and improves things beyond what we could have foreseen in just a few years. The degree of flexibility built into these laws is a huge plus. Not a flaw.

dorgo 7y ago
>I wonder why HN always has comments like these It's a work related disease. A coder must consider all corner cases in advance. There is no judge to decipher the spirit of a program.
- MrGilbert 7y ago
  slight-OT: Yes, it is. Which is frustrating in itself. In general, I've developed a strategy: Me: "So, what should the program do when XYZ occurs?" Marketing: "Uhm... Dunno, haven't thought about it. I'd decide by, you know, gut instinct. We haven't thought about that yet." Me: implements a virtual coin-flip using Random.Next() Once you've done that, it's easier.
  - ryandrake 7y ago
    Or, file a bug for each corner case, mark it release-blocking, and assign to whoever is responsible for the requirements.
    - CGamesPlay 7y ago
      If you're interested in actually shipping, a more helpful approach is to choose the simplest behavior to implement, notify the requirements person that you've done that, and offer to create a release-blocking bug for the issue if that is unacceptable. Chances are, if the requirements person doesn't have an opinion on what the copy for the dialog should be if the customer is 65+ and it's a Tuesday in a month with 31 days, then it's because that choice doesn't really matter all that much.
repolfx 7y ago
You're not answering the question, you're just asserting someone will figure the answer out later and this is totally fine, even though it may not be fine for the person who thought they were doing things right and then suddenly discover they weren't. Vagueness in law isn't a good thing. It leads to people randomly losing everything, even if they made a good faith attempt to follow the "spirit" of the law (whatever that actually is), for no better reason than lazy or incompetent law making. After all, lawmakers can easily update or change laws to reflect changing circumstances - they just prefer not to because regulating entirely new areas of life makes them feel better than the relatively boring work of updating existing laws.
- moorhosj 7y ago
  The vagueness is how the American legal system has worked since inception. I don’t see it changing now. Society changes faster than representatives can legislate.
  - orasis 7y ago
    The fix is to not pass the law in the first place. Regulation generally favors incumbents.
    - Can_Not 7y ago
      It also unfairly favors companies that aren't poisoning children with lead.
hrktb 7y ago
I think you are right. I also think it’s an issue, as this law is set up to start a cat and mouse game, where precedents are slowly established, while bad faith actors find other workarounds and run with it until new rulings are set, to then rince and repeat. When it comes to spam or ads, iterating workarounds is faster than bringing cases to court, so the traditional approach is problematic.
alkibiades 7y ago
“lawmakers are purposefully vague”. yeah that’s a bad thing not a good thing. it really means almost everything breaks the law and then they selectively and inconsistently enforce on actors they don’t like
scarface74 7y ago
Lawmakers are purposefully vague because judges can decipher what the spirit of the law is and fine corporations or condone specific use cases when they are brought up in court. That leads to the judicial branch actually making the law and not having a consistent set of rules depending on who the judge is.
- AlexandrB 7y ago
  Precedent is foundational to western law. The first judge to make a decision based on a law sets a precedent that informs how that law is interpreted in the future. This is a feature, not a bug because real world situations are messy, complicated, and dynamic. Trying to enumerate every legal interpretation and eventuality based on today's conditions and technology results in a law that won't be meaningful 5 years from now.
  - scarface74 7y ago
    You really have that much faith in the US justice system that you don’t believe that partisan judges make judgements all of the time based on their belief system? Do you want to build a business based on the whims of a judge when you thought that you were following the law?
    - perl4ever 7y ago
      "This doing of something about disputes, this doing of it reasonably, is the business of the law. And the people who have the doing of it in charge, whether they be judges or sheriffs or clerks or jailers or lawyers, are officials of the law. What these officials do about disputes is, to my mind, the law itself. ... And rules, in all of this, are important to you so far as they help you see or predict what judges will do or so far as they help you to get judges to do something. That is their importance. That is all their importance, except as pretty playthings." Also see: https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-03-07/the-fed-gives-up-a-black-box https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-03-07/the-fe... ...in which Matt Levine juxtaposes the concepts of going by rules versus what he calls "legal realism".
  - 7y ago
kbenson 7y ago
> In fact, I wonder why HN always has comments like these. Because many people here are programmers, and finding edge cases and how to deal with them is often a significant portion of the job. I assume it's also a large part of many lawyers jobs as well.

by sushid 7y ago

dorgo 7y ago

>I wonder why HN always has comments like these It's a work related disease. A coder must consider all corner cases in advance. There is no judge to decipher the spirit of a program.

MrGilbert 7y ago
slight-OT: Yes, it is. Which is frustrating in itself. In general, I've developed a strategy: Me: "So, what should the program do when XYZ occurs?" Marketing: "Uhm... Dunno, haven't thought about it. I'd decide by, you know, gut instinct. We haven't thought about that yet." Me: implements a virtual coin-flip using Random.Next() Once you've done that, it's easier.
- ryandrake 7y ago
  Or, file a bug for each corner case, mark it release-blocking, and assign to whoever is responsible for the requirements.
  - CGamesPlay 7y ago
    If you're interested in actually shipping, a more helpful approach is to choose the simplest behavior to implement, notify the requirements person that you've done that, and offer to create a release-blocking bug for the issue if that is unacceptable. Chances are, if the requirements person doesn't have an opinion on what the copy for the dialog should be if the customer is 65+ and it's a Tuesday in a month with 31 days, then it's because that choice doesn't really matter all that much.

repolfx 7y ago

You're not answering the question, you're just asserting someone will figure the answer out later and this is totally fine, even though it may not be fine for the person who thought they were doing things right and then suddenly discover they weren't. Vagueness in law isn't a good thing. It leads to people randomly losing everything, even if they made a good faith attempt to follow the "spirit" of the law (whatever that actually is), for no better reason than lazy or incompetent law making. After all, lawmakers can easily update or change laws to reflect changing circumstances - they just prefer not to because regulating entirely new areas of life makes them feel better than the relatively boring work of updating existing laws.

moorhosj 7y ago
The vagueness is how the American legal system has worked since inception. I don’t see it changing now. Society changes faster than representatives can legislate.
- orasis 7y ago
  The fix is to not pass the law in the first place. Regulation generally favors incumbents.
  - Can_Not 7y ago
    It also unfairly favors companies that aren't poisoning children with lead.

hrktb 7y ago

I think you are right. I also think it’s an issue, as this law is set up to start a cat and mouse game, where precedents are slowly established, while bad faith actors find other workarounds and run with it until new rulings are set, to then rince and repeat. When it comes to spam or ads, iterating workarounds is faster than bringing cases to court, so the traditional approach is problematic.

alkibiades 7y ago

“lawmakers are purposefully vague”. yeah that’s a bad thing not a good thing. it really means almost everything breaks the law and then they selectively and inconsistently enforce on actors they don’t like

scarface74 7y ago

Lawmakers are purposefully vague because judges can decipher what the spirit of the law is and fine corporations or condone specific use cases when they are brought up in court. That leads to the judicial branch actually making the law and not having a consistent set of rules depending on who the judge is.

AlexandrB 7y ago
Precedent is foundational to western law. The first judge to make a decision based on a law sets a precedent that informs how that law is interpreted in the future. This is a feature, not a bug because real world situations are messy, complicated, and dynamic. Trying to enumerate every legal interpretation and eventuality based on today's conditions and technology results in a law that won't be meaningful 5 years from now.
- scarface74 7y ago
  You really have that much faith in the US justice system that you don’t believe that partisan judges make judgements all of the time based on their belief system? Do you want to build a business based on the whims of a judge when you thought that you were following the law?
  - perl4ever 7y ago
    "This doing of something about disputes, this doing of it reasonably, is the business of the law. And the people who have the doing of it in charge, whether they be judges or sheriffs or clerks or jailers or lawyers, are officials of the law. What these officials do about disputes is, to my mind, the law itself. ... And rules, in all of this, are important to you so far as they help you see or predict what judges will do or so far as they help you to get judges to do something. That is their importance. That is all their importance, except as pretty playthings." Also see: https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-03-07/the-fed-gives-up-a-black-box https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-03-07/the-fe... ...in which Matt Levine juxtaposes the concepts of going by rules versus what he calls "legal realism".
- 7y ago

kbenson 7y ago

> In fact, I wonder why HN always has comments like these. Because many people here are programmers, and finding edge cases and how to deal with them is often a significant portion of the job. I assume it's also a large part of many lawyers jobs as well.