6 ms·

If you support unrestricted speech, then you support legalisation of lies, fraud, vilification, threats, child abuse pornography, yelling "Fire!" in crowded the

If you support unrestricted speech, then you support legalisation of lies, fraud, vilification, threats, child abuse pornography, yelling "Fire!" in crowded theatres, abandonment of copyright, spreading of state secrets, insider trading, you name it. It's not surprising that few dare to advocate it.

matheusmoreira 7y ago
> abandonment of copyright > spreading of state secrets Nothing controversial about this.
- incompatible 7y ago
  I can't think of anything less controversial in international main-stream politics than copyright. Pretty much every country in the world has signed up to at least the Berne Convention, even certain so-called rogue states. When was the last time any country reduced the length of its copyright terms? Are there any large political parties, anywhere, that even advocate it? Countries step out of other treaties occasionally, even major things like the EU, climate change and weapons limitation, but copyright is sacred. I suspect that some form of state secret law is also found in practically every country, and any political controversy is only in the details of how its used and misused, not in the concept.
  - matheusmoreira 7y ago
    Copyright was pretty much imposed on the entire world via trade agreements. Adopting US-style intellectual property laws is pretty much a requirement for trading with the US. They even put countries with lax enforcement on a watch list. It's sacred because the multibillion dollar copyright industry spends a lot of its money lobbying governments. This doesn't change the fact that copyright infringement is so trivial copyright might as well be incompatible with the 21st century. Actually enforcing copyright requires sacrificing free computing and the free internet as we know it today. Humanity should sacrifice the entire copyright industry instead so that computers can remain free. Abolish copyright and let them die if they can't adapt. My problem is not with state secrets but with how governments prosecute their revelation. Whistleblowers are treated like traitors when they reveal the abuses perpetrated by governments under the cover of national security. Of course, the governed doesn't have the privilege of keeping secrets by using encryption: authorities and judges feel disrespected when they can't get access to information and punish people without proof almost out of spite.
    - incompatible 7y ago
      The EU is pretty enthusiastic about copyright too, I don't blame solely the US. > Humanity should sacrifice the entire copyright industry instead so that computers can remain free. I agree, but I don't think it's likely to happen. Free computing would sooner be sacrificed to save copyright, and the other restrictions on information. At best, the current uneasy coexistence will continue.
      - matheusmoreira 7y ago
        > Free computing would sooner be sacrificed to save copyright, and the other restrictions on information. True. It's not just copyright though. Free computing is a direct threat to the power of governments. Encryption is powerful enough to defeat entire militaries. They don't want mere citizens to have this power. They want a future where computers only run software signed by the government. This is likely to happen because electronics manufacturing is extremely expensive and centralized. We can write our own software but we can't make our own processors. Due to Intel ME, we already know how dangerous trusting these manufacturers can be. Perhaps FPGAs will change this one day. What if people could design and implement their own CPUs? Someone just posted this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21898061 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21898061 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21891056 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21891056 > At best, the current uneasy coexistence will continue. It's not an uneasy coexistence. It's a politico-technological arms race. Governments make laws, people make technology that circumvents those laws. The government must always increase its reach just to maintain the same level of control over the governed. We'll end up with either a tyrant government that considers programmers a threat to national security or an ungovernable population that has access to ubiquitous subversive technology.
        incompatible 7y ago
        Governments wouldn't have much trouble shutting down Tor nodes in their own territory, as far as I know, since they can trace the IP addresses back to physical computers. Generally, they don't, which is the "uneasy coexistence" aspect. Perhaps they have legal reasons for not shutting it down, such as the US constitution, or perhaps they find it useful for their own purposes to keep it running, or perhaps they just don't care because it's not used widely enough. I can imagine an outcome in which the illegal information is driven further underground and no longer accessible at publicly known locations. Like the hidden ftp sites that supposedly exist in the "Warez scene". The trend that most people no longer keep their own data on their own devices, but use streaming sites and cloud servers, will presumably help keep information under control.
averros 7y ago
Ah, nothing beats slippery slope fallacy... "Legalization of lies". They are legal by any legal code in existence. Nothing to support here. Criminalizing lies implies totalitarianism, it's as simple as that - because either enforcement is selective, leading to its usage to suppress dissent, or it's total, implying total surveillance and massive police state. "Fraud" - fraud is not a free speech issue because it's a form of failure to adhere to contract: when I form a contract with somebody I expect honest description of what I get in exchange for fulfilling of my contractual obligations. "Vilification" - it's legal. Just turn on TV and watch news for five minutes. "Threats" - ditto. In US it's called "diplomacy". In private life _credible_ threat is considered a pre-cursor of violent action, to which pre-emptive defensive response is considered appropriate. "Child abuse pornography" - again, the issue here is not images but the violence against children which was inherent in production of child porn. The current state of the art in generating photo-realistic imagery has decoupled viewing of such images from the actual harm to the children. "Yelling "Fire!" in crowded theatres" - here is confusion is between speech and action. Yelling "fire" in a theater has a predictable and immediate consequence of having people to panic, and is a deliberate action. Yelling "fire!" on a movie set when playing a role isn't - it will not trigger panic as everyone on the set understands that it's a part of the play. Yelling "fire" on the same set when not playing a role is the same as in a theater. The difference is intent and immediate causation of harm to others. "abandonment of copyright" - it is de-facto abandoned by millions of people and mega-corps like Google. In fact, the very existence of Silicon Valley media and search tech depends on willful violation of copyright law AS WRITTEN. In any case, copyright is a very bad idea to start with and amounts to little more than socializing exclusion costs while collecting private gains in the content creation line of business. "spreading of state secrets" - like complicity in mass murder of innocent people? This is one very slippery rationale for suppressing right to free speech. "insider trading" - ditto. The crime of insider trading is basically the crime of having better information sources than others. If legal, insider trading will change trading behavior to compensate - i.e. people will be looking at what insiders are doing. As they should, but naive "investors" rely instead on the illusion of government protection. "you name it" - you named it, and none of that holds water on closer examination. "It's not surprising that few dare to advocate it" - yeah, because people get mobbed immediately by the fascist gang pretending to be progressive just because they express their views.
incompatible 7y ago
As the article discussed, people generally want free speech for the things they approve of, and restrictions on speech about things they think are bad. There are some things that seem to have overwhelming public support, like bans on child porn, terrorist videos, and copyright violation. I'm thinking of specific events like the Christchurch shootings, where there was a lot of public outcry along the lines of "such things shouldn't be allowed on the Internet", and 8chan was eventually kicked off Cloudfare. I guess when people want something banned, they want it gone for good, including from the likes of Tor hidden services. But that won't stop them from going to the same kinds of services to access some information that they think has been unfairly banned. I also find it ironic to be censored when commenting on topics related to censorship, or at least greyed out to -4, which is about as much as can be achieved without moderator assistance, I think.
- matheusmoreira 7y ago
  > child porn, terrorist videos, and copyright violation One of these is not like the others. > "such things shouldn't be allowed on the Internet" This is why people created things like Tor in the first place. The internet is not a country. Nobody should get to decide what is and isn't allowed on the internet.
  - mcadenhe 7y ago
    > "The internet is not a country." While technically true, the reality is every first world country's internet backbone is controlled by the state. But I think your comment touches on a deeper philosophical question that is, should information be allowed to flow freely?
    - incompatible 7y ago
      There's obviously tension between the typical belief that not all information should be allowed to flow freely, and the limited tolerance of "safe spaces" like Tor, encrypted chat channels and sites like Sci-Hub where information does indeed flow freely.
    - 7y ago

matheusmoreira 7y ago

> abandonment of copyright > spreading of state secrets Nothing controversial about this.

incompatible 7y ago
I can't think of anything less controversial in international main-stream politics than copyright. Pretty much every country in the world has signed up to at least the Berne Convention, even certain so-called rogue states. When was the last time any country reduced the length of its copyright terms? Are there any large political parties, anywhere, that even advocate it? Countries step out of other treaties occasionally, even major things like the EU, climate change and weapons limitation, but copyright is sacred. I suspect that some form of state secret law is also found in practically every country, and any political controversy is only in the details of how its used and misused, not in the concept.
- matheusmoreira 7y ago
  Copyright was pretty much imposed on the entire world via trade agreements. Adopting US-style intellectual property laws is pretty much a requirement for trading with the US. They even put countries with lax enforcement on a watch list. It's sacred because the multibillion dollar copyright industry spends a lot of its money lobbying governments. This doesn't change the fact that copyright infringement is so trivial copyright might as well be incompatible with the 21st century. Actually enforcing copyright requires sacrificing free computing and the free internet as we know it today. Humanity should sacrifice the entire copyright industry instead so that computers can remain free. Abolish copyright and let them die if they can't adapt. My problem is not with state secrets but with how governments prosecute their revelation. Whistleblowers are treated like traitors when they reveal the abuses perpetrated by governments under the cover of national security. Of course, the governed doesn't have the privilege of keeping secrets by using encryption: authorities and judges feel disrespected when they can't get access to information and punish people without proof almost out of spite.
  - incompatible 7y ago
    The EU is pretty enthusiastic about copyright too, I don't blame solely the US. > Humanity should sacrifice the entire copyright industry instead so that computers can remain free. I agree, but I don't think it's likely to happen. Free computing would sooner be sacrificed to save copyright, and the other restrictions on information. At best, the current uneasy coexistence will continue.
    - matheusmoreira 7y ago
      > Free computing would sooner be sacrificed to save copyright, and the other restrictions on information. True. It's not just copyright though. Free computing is a direct threat to the power of governments. Encryption is powerful enough to defeat entire militaries. They don't want mere citizens to have this power. They want a future where computers only run software signed by the government. This is likely to happen because electronics manufacturing is extremely expensive and centralized. We can write our own software but we can't make our own processors. Due to Intel ME, we already know how dangerous trusting these manufacturers can be. Perhaps FPGAs will change this one day. What if people could design and implement their own CPUs? Someone just posted this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21898061 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21898061 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21891056 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21891056 > At best, the current uneasy coexistence will continue. It's not an uneasy coexistence. It's a politico-technological arms race. Governments make laws, people make technology that circumvents those laws. The government must always increase its reach just to maintain the same level of control over the governed. We'll end up with either a tyrant government that considers programmers a threat to national security or an ungovernable population that has access to ubiquitous subversive technology.
      - incompatible 7y ago
        Governments wouldn't have much trouble shutting down Tor nodes in their own territory, as far as I know, since they can trace the IP addresses back to physical computers. Generally, they don't, which is the "uneasy coexistence" aspect. Perhaps they have legal reasons for not shutting it down, such as the US constitution, or perhaps they find it useful for their own purposes to keep it running, or perhaps they just don't care because it's not used widely enough. I can imagine an outcome in which the illegal information is driven further underground and no longer accessible at publicly known locations. Like the hidden ftp sites that supposedly exist in the "Warez scene". The trend that most people no longer keep their own data on their own devices, but use streaming sites and cloud servers, will presumably help keep information under control.

averros 7y ago

Ah, nothing beats slippery slope fallacy... "Legalization of lies". They are legal by any legal code in existence. Nothing to support here. Criminalizing lies implies totalitarianism, it's as simple as that - because either enforcement is selective, leading to its usage to suppress dissent, or it's total, implying total surveillance and massive police state. "Fraud" - fraud is not a free speech issue because it's a form of failure to adhere to contract: when I form a contract with somebody I expect honest description of what I get in exchange for fulfilling of my contractual obligations. "Vilification" - it's legal. Just turn on TV and watch news for five minutes. "Threats" - ditto. In US it's called "diplomacy". In private life _credible_ threat is considered a pre-cursor of violent action, to which pre-emptive defensive response is considered appropriate. "Child abuse pornography" - again, the issue here is not images but the violence against children which was inherent in production of child porn. The current state of the art in generating photo-realistic imagery has decoupled viewing of such images from the actual harm to the children. "Yelling "Fire!" in crowded theatres" - here is confusion is between speech and action. Yelling "fire" in a theater has a predictable and immediate consequence of having people to panic, and is a deliberate action. Yelling "fire!" on a movie set when playing a role isn't - it will not trigger panic as everyone on the set understands that it's a part of the play. Yelling "fire" on the same set when not playing a role is the same as in a theater. The difference is intent and immediate causation of harm to others. "abandonment of copyright" - it is de-facto abandoned by millions of people and mega-corps like Google. In fact, the very existence of Silicon Valley media and search tech depends on willful violation of copyright law AS WRITTEN. In any case, copyright is a very bad idea to start with and amounts to little more than socializing exclusion costs while collecting private gains in the content creation line of business. "spreading of state secrets" - like complicity in mass murder of innocent people? This is one very slippery rationale for suppressing right to free speech. "insider trading" - ditto. The crime of insider trading is basically the crime of having better information sources than others. If legal, insider trading will change trading behavior to compensate - i.e. people will be looking at what insiders are doing. As they should, but naive "investors" rely instead on the illusion of government protection. "you name it" - you named it, and none of that holds water on closer examination. "It's not surprising that few dare to advocate it" - yeah, because people get mobbed immediately by the fascist gang pretending to be progressive just because they express their views.

incompatible 7y ago

As the article discussed, people generally want free speech for the things they approve of, and restrictions on speech about things they think are bad. There are some things that seem to have overwhelming public support, like bans on child porn, terrorist videos, and copyright violation. I'm thinking of specific events like the Christchurch shootings, where there was a lot of public outcry along the lines of "such things shouldn't be allowed on the Internet", and 8chan was eventually kicked off Cloudfare. I guess when people want something banned, they want it gone for good, including from the likes of Tor hidden services. But that won't stop them from going to the same kinds of services to access some information that they think has been unfairly banned. I also find it ironic to be censored when commenting on topics related to censorship, or at least greyed out to -4, which is about as much as can be achieved without moderator assistance, I think.

matheusmoreira 7y ago
> child porn, terrorist videos, and copyright violation One of these is not like the others. > "such things shouldn't be allowed on the Internet" This is why people created things like Tor in the first place. The internet is not a country. Nobody should get to decide what is and isn't allowed on the internet.
- mcadenhe 7y ago
  > "The internet is not a country." While technically true, the reality is every first world country's internet backbone is controlled by the state. But I think your comment touches on a deeper philosophical question that is, should information be allowed to flow freely?
  - incompatible 7y ago
    There's obviously tension between the typical belief that not all information should be allowed to flow freely, and the limited tolerance of "safe spaces" like Tor, encrypted chat channels and sites like Sci-Hub where information does indeed flow freely.
  - 7y ago