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Ask HN: On what grounds would a device that treats you as its slave be illegal?

6 points by logicallee 6y ago

on what grounds would a device that literally treats you (its owner) as its slave, to punish and control, be illegal? I wrote this comment up here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24626193 but thought it was worth a dedicated discussion. how would you legislate against this?

PaulHoule 6y ago
Like this one? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kyOEwiQhzMI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kyOEwiQhzMI
- sloaken 6y ago
  Winner! Perfect answer. Love that movie. The book was worth reading as were the 2 follow on books.
  - logicallee 6y ago
    I just watched it! It was great :)
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- logicallee 6y ago
  Wow! Looks like a really cool movie. I'm kind of surprised I never heard of it. Thanks for the link!
  - muzani 6y ago
    It was probably too far in the realm of fiction to be plausible back then, but sounds like it's worth a watch today.
    - logicallee 6y ago
      I watched it (after PaulHoule's and sloaken's recommendation above.) It was awesome! Great orchestral soundtrack too.
- kleer001 6y ago
  Reminds me of the absurdity of the paper clip optimizer optimizer problem : https://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Paperclip_maximizer https://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Paperclip_maximizer Which too, is entirely unhinged and impossible.
  - yesenadam 6y ago
    Have you played Universal Paperclips? https://www.decisionproblem.com/paperclips/ https://www.decisionproblem.com/paperclips/
    - kleer001 6y ago
      Cute. But I can't play mouse-clicky games. They bore me to tears and my RSI flares up.
Skaven 6y ago
It will be illegal the moment you loose ownership of it. Otherwise you are essentially a slave to the new owner. It can not endanger you and others and you always have to retain the ability to stop it and control it. Therefore it will be fine as long as all punishment is self inflicted and you always have the ability to just ignore it or turn it off.
- logicallee 6y ago
  >It will be illegal the moment you loose ownership of it. Illegal on what grounds though? What law would it violate? Edit: of course it should be illegal! But how can we make it illegal? Or is there any law already?
  - mytailorisrich 6y ago
    An object has no legal and criminal responsibility. If I keep you handcuffed then I am criminally responsible, not the handcuffs. If you use a machine/tool/system to keep someone in servitude, or imprisoned, or whatnot, you are the one committing a criminal offence, not the machine. For that to change we would probably need (a) fully autonomous AIs, and (b) that these AIs and society have reached a state such that these AIs are legally no longer considered as machines but effectively as human beings/individuals.
  - Skaven 6y ago
    That is really tough. I don't have an answer, but you might enjoy these loose thoughts. In the annals of technocracy, people can't stand politics anymore and so they send their toasters and refrigerators to do all that. These appliances can not be bought and become capable politicians. Machines pay taxes and the hirachy of ownership, human owns machine, is still clear but the dominance hirachy becomes more and more unclear. Here the toaster can become the president, but he is still send away from his human who could be on the lower end of society. Of course every human is on welfare paid by the machines and everyone is happy in the technocratic society, until the human machine integration takes of and existenz becomes an inconceivable horror. So the owner of the machine has to be responsible of the machine or the technocracy goes rogue and enslaves humanity. Then owning or instructing the enslaver device can be made illegal. Even if your toaster decides to enslave humanity, you will have to answer for it, even if you don't care or never bothered with it. You willingly gave it your political powers and it operates in your absence on your behalf. Not even death can eliviate you from this responsibility and with machine integration death isn't even an option anymore. But we missed our chance of Technocracy and powered unhinged through all industrial revolutions. Machines don't have to pay taxes for their labor, but they have become employers already. We lost the ability to pin this on the owner. All liability is transfered to the user and nobody owns the company or the machine anymore. The user agrees to the conditions and takes over all liability. So by agreeing to use the enslaver you will enslave yourself. If this is forbidden by law, you are breaking that particular law. I don't see a way around it.
AnimalMuppet 6y ago
The device wouldn't live long enough for the question of legality to come up. You don't deal with it by law. You deal with it by refusing to be treated like that - by physically destroying the device, if needed.
- logicallee 6y ago
  You're saying nobody would put up with it. But is that really true? If your TV got an update that made you wait 30 seconds as a way of punishing you, you would literally destroy it? (Rather than just put up with the punishment?) I think I would probably just put up with the 30 second punishment. But how would you legislate against it? What law would it violate? Youtube shows me the same ads hundreds of times (such as etoro ad). I didn't hate the ad to begin with but now I can only consider it a form of punishment to try to get me to sign up for youtube red. If it were normal genuine advertising there would be a rotation of advertisers. Nobody benefits from me having to see the same ad hundreds or even thousands of times. What if a TV applied this to other product categories, things you bring into your home? Where is the line? By the way do you boycott youtube? Or just put up with the ads? I don't think you smashed youtube when they started forcing ads on you. So where is the line?
non-entity 6y ago
Bsjejgidjaje
kleer001 6y ago
Can you supply more practical information about this device and why someone would put up with it? A machine is an extension of its owner. Whips, billy clubs, guns, and knives don't get into trouble when they're used to damage or kill people. The people that use them are. The same logic would apply here. Why wouldn't it? In the end all laws that would apply in this situation (unless OP provides more information) already exist and have existed since the first written laws.
- logicallee 6y ago
  >Can you supply more practical information about this device and why someone would put up with it? cheap ultra-hd TV. you can unplug it, doesn't have a battery. but if you don't unplug it it sounds an alarm if its camera is covered. if it sees a product competing with its sponsors, it punishes you by making you wait through a sponsorship punishment before watching whatever they're trying to watch. So if someone is out shopping and thinking about buying coke or pepsi then they will remember they have to sit through sponsorship punishments if they don't buy coke. As for why people would put up with it: well, because the TV is cheap. Maybe they don't care that much about coke/pepsi (aren't that loyal.). Maybe the actual punishment is done locally, doesn't invade their privacy. you can always just unplug the tv if you are not willing to put up with the punishment delay. I'm putting it in terms of punishment because I don't want to give marketers any ideas. (Obviously they would not call it a sponsorship punishment.) People already put up with unskipable advertisements on youtube, for example. You mention that a machine is an extension of its owner, but in this case the owner is the user but the software is run by another company. (the manuifacturer). you mention whips and billy clubs: if a television had a robot arm and whipped or billy clubbed you, you could sue the company for personal injury. but how about punishment advertisements? Can you sue them for emotional distress? Anything else? What makes this different? On what grounds would it be illegal specifically? (You mention "all laws already exist" but you don't mention any.)
  - kleer001 6y ago
    None of those are the behaviour of a master to their slave. They're merely inconveniences. Your definition of punishment is odd to me. The barrier to entry seems spectacularly low. Watching advertisements, though universally loathed, is not actually punishment, by any broadly accepted definition. The generally accepted notion of a punishment, the important one here to our discussion, is an imposition that cannot be stopped. If I get an unskippable advert on youtube I can always close youtube. Nobody is forcing them to keep the TV, or even buy it in the first place. People would be up in arms quickly about awful TVs like that and nobody would buy them. Those laws are assault and/or battery laws. Here's a clip from Hamurabi: http://45338297.weebly.com/laws-on-assault-and-battery.html http://45338297.weebly.com/laws-on-assault-and-battery.html Without doing any research I can guarantee you every Country has laws against assault. It's called the "Monopoly on Violence" and one of the most important cornerstones of civilization. Only the state can injure or murder people without repercussion. There's no such thing as a punishment (in the literal sense) advertisement. It's fiction. See Black Mirror Season 1 episode 2, "Fifteen Million Merits".