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I hate slippery slope arguments, but.... How long until media players and display devices are hashing all of our media to check for copyright violations. Right

I hate slippery slope arguments, but.... How long until media players and display devices are hashing all of our media to check for copyright violations. Right now it is effectively impossible for a consumer to buy a TV that doesn't include a computer capable of this. CSAM is one thing, and from reports it sounds like checking hashes isn't really that effective. However, this paves the way for hash checks for a variety of scary things. What happens when governments start distributing lists of hashes belonging to "subversive" material (this isn't pipe dream, numerous large countries already block subversive material on the internet).

majormajor 5y ago
Display devices do this, but for advertising targeting, not copyright violation right now. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automatic_content_recognition https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automatic_content_recognition Detecting copyright violation would need some sort of license info side channel so your TV knew what subscriptions, what digital copies, what BluRays, etc, you owned. Fortunately that's basically an impossible thing to wrangle currently, but if things like Blu-Rays go away it starts to be more feasible ("Oh, you're watching this show in 8K? Please connect your Netflix account to verify your access.") Once the technical capability is there, how can we best stop it? That's where I don't have good answers. Possibly the only thing unique about what Apple is doing is that they announced it.
- jrumbut 5y ago
  > Detecting copyright violation would need some sort of license info side channel so your TV knew what subscriptions, what digital copies, what BluRays, etc, you owned. An anti-piracy scheme that respected legitimate use would need this. History suggests that breaking existing media so that you have to buy (or rent) new copies of the same content over and over may be seen as a feature rather than a bug.
- Scaevolus 5y ago
  There is a DRM scheme that uses fingerprinting to detect unauthorized play (Cinavia), but it requires the player to implement the detection. In practice this just means you can't play ripped movies using blu-ray players or Sony devices like Playstations.
- heavyset_go 5y ago
  You don't need a licensing side channel if you just detect watermarks from pirated/leaked recordings.
- amelius 5y ago
  > Detecting copyright violation would need some sort of license info side channel so your TV knew what subscriptions, what digital copies, what BluRays, etc, you owned. Did you know that there is ethernet running over HDMI already?
noja 5y ago
Your Smart TV is already doing this to sell targeted adverts aimed at you based on what you watch.
- meowster 5y ago
  A friendly reminder/suggestion to people looking for a TV: Sceptre makes consumer 4K "dumb" TVs upto 75". Walmart sells them.
  - sunshineforever 5y ago
    Thank you so much! I remember reddit being stumped by this question years ago.
  - memco 5y ago
    I heard in some other HN thread that the quality isn't that great on these. Was that an issue for you? I looked into NEC monitors, but they're a bit pricey. Does anyone know of other options?
    - meowster 5y ago
      I don't own one, sorry :-/
    - bitwize 5y ago
      I bought a Sceptre TV. Quality seems fine, but I'm no videophile. It could be that when displaying certain shades of blue, the display is four or five nits dimmer than spec, but I wouldn't know if it was.
    - namibj 5y ago
      Iiyama? Assuming monitor cuts it. Their TV-sized screens are filed under "large format display".
      - jacquesm 5y ago
        We have five of these in the office. They're pretty good, and work well from a reliability perspective. These have seen some pretty heavy use in the last two years, one had a power supply issue in the first 90 days that was fixed under warranty, and otherwise they all worked flawlessly. They're 4K, pretty large and the price was surprisingly low for a screen this large and of this quality.
jerf 5y ago
"I hate slippery slope arguments, but...." Slippery slope is vastly oversold as a logical fallacy. It is only a fallacy in the absence of evidence that there is a slope. If there's a multi-decade trend of which this is only a single step, and there's no visible mechanism for making it stop here and go no farther, then the logical fallacy is in believing with no reason that the trend line will stop here. It is not a fallacy to speak as if this is only the beginning of a huge push into intrusive monitoring. It is a fallacy to pretend otherwise. Slippery slope is also a fallacy if you take one instance of a trend and then logically project it to an absurd extreme, but this is not what we're doing here. We're simply looking at the next obvious, logical, well-evidenced step, with plenty of people who obviously want this even if they are a bit too discreet to come right out and say it in public. But it's not a hard leap to see that our rulers today would like to be in full control of everything bit of data we receive and every bit of data we produce and the only things stopping them are technical possibilities and whether or not we'd put up with it. I see nothing else stopping them; not scruples, not morality, no existential awareness of the sheer staggering amount of responsibility they would be pushing on to themselves, no concerns about how it may hurt anyone, nothing.
- ShrigmaMale 5y ago
  Ahh yes, the slippery slope fallacy fallacy: assuming that all slippery slope arguments are fallacious. https://twitter.com/vitalikbuterin/status/987274961659232256?lang=en https://twitter.com/vitalikbuterin/status/987274961659232256...
  - godelski 5y ago
    > assuming that all slippery slope arguments are fallacious. They literally stated when it is and isn't a fallacy with differentiating conditions...
    - voltaireodactyl 5y ago
      > Slippery slope fallacy fallacy I believe the poster you’re responding to is making a joke.
miketery 5y ago
Why do you hate slippery slope arguments? They tend to be right. It’s why we have the saying - the road to hell is paved with good intentions. Edit: rather than “tend to be right”, I should have said can be right given the right argument and evidence.
- umvi 5y ago
  The problem is that one man's hell is another man's paradise. Gun-free America, strong covid public health policies, "hate speech", device surveillance, etc ... you name the slippery slope and you'll find at the bottom of the slope that it's hell for some people and paradise for others. Some people prefer highly authoritarian governments that manage (and minimize) life risk and others prefer hands off governments with self-managed risk.
  - coding123 5y ago
    The GOOD news is that there is no One World Government, so people are able to buy their transfer to another country to better fit their definition of paradise.
    - Sebb767 5y ago
      The BAD news is that there are so many government options that it will be hard to find a country that will fit you perfectly and some countries tend to overreach their borders very far so that you cannot escape their tyranny even if you move. The WORSE news is that even if they're able to find a country that fits them better, they still need to invest a lot of money and time to move (if they get in at all) and leave their family, friends and home behind. Seriously, moving to a different country is hardly an option. In nearly all cases, fighting to keep your country good is your best bet.
      - collaborative 5y ago
        Some people are born in societies that overwhelmingly hold opposite views to their own. In these cases, escaping outweighs staying since they have no chance of seeing them change during their lifetimes
howaboutnope 5y ago
> If we forget, no other forgetting will ever happen. Everything will be remembered. Everything you read, all through life, everything you listened to, everything you watched, everything you searched for. -- Eben Moglen, https://benjamin.sonntag.fr/en/2012/moglen-at-republica-freedom-of-thought-requires-free-media.html https://benjamin.sonntag.fr/en/2012/moglen-at-republica-free...
Lammy 5y ago
Sadly the “display devices” ship sailed a long time ago. Smart TVs were phoning this stuff home way back in 2013: https://doctorbeet.blogspot.com/2013/11/lg-smart-tvs-logging-usb-filenames-and.html https://doctorbeet.blogspot.com/2013/11/lg-smart-tvs-logging... Of course that was just file names and TV tuner/input metadata like channel numbers, not even MusicBrainz/Shazam-style fingerprinting like they would probably be capable of these days with beefier SoCs and more widespread always-on connectivity. Files-on-USB are no longer “en vogue” anyway with everyone and everything moving to streaming services where the surveillance is built right in by definition. Every time I watch something on Netflix/Hulu/Disney they’re watching me right back even if it’s ostensibly for my benefit e.g. for more accurate recommendations.
- coding123 5y ago
  Well, the good news is that the vast majority of those monitors and TVs need a WIFI connection, which is optional to set up. However, unfortunately, we're on the cusp of devices having their own permanent mobile phone network connection. Rozzie can confirm.
  - alpaca128 5y ago
    All they need is flip a few bytes in the software and all newly sold screens only work if they're registered with an active, unbanned and non-anonymous account and were online in the last 12 hours. And then you won't just get randomly banned from Facebook or Google with no human support staff to talk to, you'll also lose access to half your media devices. This is already true for Oculus/Facebook (and probably some others).
    - dane-pgp 5y ago
      > all newly sold screens only work if they're registered The other side of this pincer movement is to mandate that all devices which access the internet must send a remote attestation of their boot process, to check that you haven't "tampered" with them by installing your own OS or jailbreaking them.
- 5y ago
umvi 5y ago
> What happens when governments start distributing lists of hashes belonging to "subversive" material Soon for any device containing a computer: "We are just including this hash check feature so we can do business with China, don't worry it'll be disabled by default for western countries"
armSixtyFour 5y ago
It's right to be critical of the slippery slope argument, except that you can take a look at history and see how even in western governments in "free" societies have spied on those who challenge the status quo. I think we're right to be skeptical of surveillance as there is a proven track record of this kind of behavior from governments and corporations. Take a look at a law that's being proposed in Canada right now. It includes allowing the government to request take downs for a broad number of reasons including otherwise legal speech that they consider to be offensive, data retention, what essentially amounts to a national firewall etc. Cory Doctorow, who is from Canada originally, has a good write up on it: https://pluralistic.net/2021/08/11/the-canada-variant/#no-canada https://pluralistic.net/2021/08/11/the-canada-variant/#no-ca...
wheybags 5y ago
That's not even a slippery slope, the ps3 already did that (refused to play video files of Sony pictures movies)
- 2III7 5y ago
  Got any more info on that? I don't recall the PS3 refusing to play movies.
  - wheybags 5y ago
    It seems the system is called cinavia: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cinavia https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cinavia I specifically remember it refusing to play an mp4 of a spiderman movie.
paulcarroty 5y ago
> How long until media players and display devices are hashing all of our media to check for copyright violations. Heard Sony TVs doing it right NOW.
fidesomnes 5y ago
How long ago were you born to not realize this is already the case for almost everything you already use?
javagram 5y ago
This has already been happening since 2012, just for blu ray players so far rather than within the TV itself: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cinavia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cinavia
dec0dedab0de 5y ago
I think the only reason we haven't seen the MPAA/RIAA suing people already, is the backlash from the crazy p2p lawsuits a while ago. Just search HN for TV, and you'll see plenty of companies uploading screen shots and file lists and who knows what else. https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=%20tv&sort=byPopularity&type=story https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
deleted 5y ago
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squarefoot 5y ago
> Right now it is effectively impossible for a consumer to buy a TV that doesn't include a computer capable of this. Digital Signage Displays come to the rescue, although they cost more and some are starting to put Android inside, which however can be kept offline as the device would work merely as a display. The upside is that they're designed to work 18/7 to 24/7 and won't easily break like cheaper Smart TVs; setting up a wall of screens in a mall can be a real pain in the ass if every month some guy needs to climb up there and swap the one that died because of bad capacitors etc. That stuff must last or it becomes a huge waste of money. Then the necessary tuner can be either bought stand alone (and kept unconnected), or enclosed in a Linux/Kodi mini-PC in the form of a cheap USB dongle. https://linuxtv.org/wiki/index.php/DVB-T2_USB_Devices https://linuxtv.org/wiki/index.php/DVB-T2_USB_Devices The result can be bulky and probably Grandpa wouldn't welcome it, but for technical inclined users, the level of freedom and security that can be achieved is worth the effort.
- dtgriscom 5y ago
  And, even beyond the improved quality, they'll cost a lot more than a "smart" TV, because the "smart" TV is (likely?) subsidized by whomever gains access to your media stream.
  - squarefoot 5y ago
    This is possible, although economies of scale also play a role here; they probably sell like a thousand Smart TVs for each signage display. I like to think however that for that higher price I'm actually buying a better durable product that will pay in the long run: 4K will last for a while, and by keeping things separated, other potential weak points (incompatibility with new formats or standards) are left to the tuner/mini PC, which would cost a lot less than the screen to change, or possibly nothing in case of software update.
guerrilla 5y ago
> How long until media players and display devices are hashing all of our media to check for copyright violations. Right now it is effectively impossible for a consumer to buy a TV that doesn't include a computer capable of this. Not my area, but wasn't this part of the point of HDMI... So, the slope seems slippery and pretty vertical to me
tomxor 5y ago
> slippery slope arguments There is a stronger 2nd argument, but it's buried towards the end: > Now imagine an Internet of Snitches doing it badly. It’s easy if you try. Some vendors already do a bad job of keeping customer data private and will continue that track record, so you can expect public leaks of databases that have flagged suspected criminals. Other vendors will write bad machine learning algorithms (or biased ones) leading to false positives and ruined lives. No slippery slope is needed, CSAM alone is extremely sensitive, a false accusation is ruinous... if automated client side CSAM scanning becomes a wide spread practice with Apple leading the way, it will be an "AI" of the flies... Apple has also demonstrated that it's willing to use ML as an unquestionable source of truth before with it's in store security, using facial recognition which is blatantly wrong to prosecute the innocent.
zepto 5y ago
Governments already are. The question is what safeguards you have against your own government doing this. If we weren’t worried about government overreach, we wouldn’t be worried about CSAM scanning. In another thread someone suggested that the 4th Amendment might be a protection in the US. I am doubtful about this, but I am interested in what actual law might help. Breaking up large companies doesn’t seem likely to protect us from the government.
fabianhjr 5y ago
> Right now it is effectively impossible for a consumer to buy a TV that doesn't include a computer capable of this. I buy monitors or projectors, no TVs for me.
enlyth 5y ago
It is coming, and there is nothing we can do about it. There's a chilling feeling watching this all unfold, as our freedoms get taken away and we're powerless to do anything other than complain on a programming themed social media website. We'll be labelled as conspiracy theorists, wackos, nutjobs, unintegratable people. That meme you shared with your friend in a private chat? Sorry, was a bit too anti-establishment for our tastes.
- dontneedajacket 5y ago
  Alternatives are already being built and released, both hardware and software. There will simply be more divide between know-how people who can save their freedom (tech people, friends, family) and the rest who get left behind. Now, if we get to China and North Korea levels of authoritarianism and people start snitching on each other, then that's a whole other problem :-)
  - bitwize 5y ago
    Until Jeri Ellsworth MacGyvers together a way to make Ryzens with some sand and an Easy-Bake Oven, we are at the mercy of the chip manufacturers, all of whom would gladly add spyware to their chips' must-have-in-order-to-boot firmware with minimal arm twisting from the USG/CCP, if that. And President Biden has already started urging people to report extremists to the goverment.
    - jacquesm 5y ago
      That isn't going to happen. Jeri Ellsworth is fantastic at what she does but there are some hard to get around physical limits in terms of material purity and once you get to a certain degree of integration that pretty much guarantees a yield of 0 until you spend a very large amount of money.
      - bitwize 5y ago
        Then we will always be beholden to large chipmakers who will crumple to governments at the drop of a hat and implement whatever spyware they desire on-die.
1vuio0pswjnm7 5y ago
As this blocklist issue gains increased contemplation lets not forget that this is a "new feature". Lets consider the silent remote access subterfuge that has become known as "software updates". Therefore, as this is a "new feature", 1. it does not apply to older computers, particularly ones that are not remotely acessible by others to install their opaque "updates" and 2. on newer computers these lists can only be dynamic if the owner allows "software updates". The moral of the story is (a) not all "new features" are ones the computer owner may want, and (b) older computers have value, if only becoause they lack the bad stuff that greedy, manipulative, overreaching "tech companies" are building into new ones. There is nothing wrong with updates so long as they are granular1, transparent and optional2. It is the owner's computer and the owner has a license to the software installed on it at the time of purchase. Any party wishing to install new software on the owner's computers should need the owner's permission. Owners should have a reasonable option to deny such permission and to review and install updates themselves, or to reject individual proposed "new features". 1 Here "granular" means avoiding a situation where the user has to install a feature that she does not want in order to get a feature she does want. 2 Manual installation of updates should always be possible.
- paulryanrogers 5y ago
  This assumes the base software and its updates are both secure. Considering the velocity of development and complexity of modern software I don't think that's ever true of general purpose devices.
anthk 5y ago
>How long until media players and display devices are hashing all of our media to check for copyright violations. It has been rumored back in the day that WMP 10-12 would be like that.
grishka 5y ago
You can just not connect your TV to the internet. If you must, you can firewall it to prevent it from connecting to unwanted hosts. Regarding media players, VLC is open source. Is anyone even using proprietary media players any more?
- foxfluff 5y ago
  It's pretty easy to build a device that connects to the internet without you knowing about it, with all the mobile networks around us..
  - grishka 5y ago
    It's also pretty easy to take it apart and remove the SIM card and/or disconnect the antenna. Also mobile data is expensive. Even more expensive if you want something that works in more than one country.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
_carbyau_ 5y ago
I can easily imagine American Media rubbing their hands with glee as they hash every pirate torrent and get it on the "to scan for" list for Microsoft.
gnopgnip 5y ago
Playing a file without a license is not a copyright violation though
BiteCode_dev 5y ago
Slippery slope argument are a very good thing when talking about abuse of power, because history proved again and again that potential very often becomes reality: humans are opportunistic greedy creatures. We absolutely need to address slipery slopes for all things that are related to freedom and democracy.
iamnotwhoiam 5y ago
WRT to copyright violations, I expect the same thing that has always happened will continue happening. Pirates will stay 3 steps ahead and only legal consumers will be harmed.
cm2187 5y ago
It’s not a fallacy when we can see the slope being actively oiled up right now. Hate speech laws and policies being used to target dissenting political opinions, tech companies using their power to put their thumb on the scale in elections, health emergencies to curb basic civil liberties, etc. And generally any law and policy should be looked at with the optic of how is it going to be used in the worst possible bad faith because ultimately it will. I remember the UK using its anti-terrorist act powers against Iceland during the 2008 financial crisis.
beebmam 5y ago
Maybe you should stop buying devices that undermine your freedom.
heeen2 5y ago
Smart TVs are already doing that for viewership metrics
raxxorrax 5y ago
It is only a slippery slope fallacy if your argument relies on sure escalation alone. But if you have other factors, like obvious corporate ambitions to fight piracy or to protect their industry and states ambitions to fight memes that exposes or embarrasses their policies, it isn't a fallacy at all and just another indication.
kenneth 5y ago
I had a pretty shocking moment recently. I bought a cheap simple Chinese 55" TV when I moved into my new place in Hong Kong recently. Worked fine for 6 months. I don't connect it to the internet or cable, it's just a screen in front of a few HDMI devices (Roku + Switch). It recently started randomly playing 30s video ads every time I turn it on. I can't figure out how it's getting them, because I've never connected it to the wifi (nor would I even know how to given the menus are all in Chinese). Does it have its own LTE connection? Anyways, this has got me pretty annoyed and I'm thinking of tossing it on principle.
- tpxl 5y ago
  Some devices will scan for open wifi networks in the area and connect to those if you don't give them your own network. It's also entirely possible they have deals with ISPs to use the router you rent from them on a separate network (some routers in the US broadcast a 'public' paid wifi network that's separate from yours that anyone can connect to and doesn't count toward your data).
- jacquesm 5y ago
  It probably has a built in WiFi unity, before tossing it you could open it up and try to find the antennae, they are usually just short bits of wire. Snip those off and see if there is a factory reset option, that should 'cure' it.
- fsflover 5y ago
  > it's just a screen in front of a few HDMI devices Internet over HDMI.
deleted 5y ago
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yomly 5y ago
I'm reminded of that story of how airline ticketing systems assumed names ending with the suffix "*MR" had an honorific appended and so cleverly stripped it. Cue the Arabic name "Amr" The thing is with this types of systems that are deeply ingrained in our lives, we create the possibility to make people's live profoundly miserable because of an "edge case" And for that individual who is many times removed from the reason why their life is being wrecked by software it can be next to impossible to even feed back that their life is a misery, let alone get recourse.
tikiman163 5y ago
I wouldn't worry about purely display devices like TVs sending hashes. They don't retrieve the entire file, and hashing streamed data has challenges that tend to break the active stream. They would need to have a large enough sample of the streamed media, and most importantly it isn't illegal to watch pirated materials, only to distribute or publicly show them. The television manufacturers simply don't have an economic interest in trying to do so when they can easily collect data regarding subscription based app use. The cops asking them to do so wouldn't change the fact it would cost the company money to implement and maintain, and no real pay off. There certainly is a slope to worry about here, but the slope is in the direction of corporate profits. Anything that doesn't result in profits is a slope up hill and nobody wants to be the one pushing that particular rock up hill.

majormajor 5y ago

Display devices do this, but for advertising targeting, not copyright violation right now. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automatic_content_recognition https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automatic_content_recognition Detecting copyright violation would need some sort of license info side channel so your TV knew what subscriptions, what digital copies, what BluRays, etc, you owned. Fortunately that's basically an impossible thing to wrangle currently, but if things like Blu-Rays go away it starts to be more feasible ("Oh, you're watching this show in 8K? Please connect your Netflix account to verify your access.") Once the technical capability is there, how can we best stop it? That's where I don't have good answers. Possibly the only thing unique about what Apple is doing is that they announced it.

jrumbut 5y ago
> Detecting copyright violation would need some sort of license info side channel so your TV knew what subscriptions, what digital copies, what BluRays, etc, you owned. An anti-piracy scheme that respected legitimate use would need this. History suggests that breaking existing media so that you have to buy (or rent) new copies of the same content over and over may be seen as a feature rather than a bug.
Scaevolus 5y ago
There is a DRM scheme that uses fingerprinting to detect unauthorized play (Cinavia), but it requires the player to implement the detection. In practice this just means you can't play ripped movies using blu-ray players or Sony devices like Playstations.
heavyset_go 5y ago
You don't need a licensing side channel if you just detect watermarks from pirated/leaked recordings.
amelius 5y ago
> Detecting copyright violation would need some sort of license info side channel so your TV knew what subscriptions, what digital copies, what BluRays, etc, you owned. Did you know that there is ethernet running over HDMI already?

noja 5y ago

Your Smart TV is already doing this to sell targeted adverts aimed at you based on what you watch.

meowster 5y ago
A friendly reminder/suggestion to people looking for a TV: Sceptre makes consumer 4K "dumb" TVs upto 75". Walmart sells them.
- sunshineforever 5y ago
  Thank you so much! I remember reddit being stumped by this question years ago.
- memco 5y ago
  I heard in some other HN thread that the quality isn't that great on these. Was that an issue for you? I looked into NEC monitors, but they're a bit pricey. Does anyone know of other options?
  - meowster 5y ago
    I don't own one, sorry :-/
  - bitwize 5y ago
    I bought a Sceptre TV. Quality seems fine, but I'm no videophile. It could be that when displaying certain shades of blue, the display is four or five nits dimmer than spec, but I wouldn't know if it was.
  - namibj 5y ago
    Iiyama? Assuming monitor cuts it. Their TV-sized screens are filed under "large format display".
    - jacquesm 5y ago
      We have five of these in the office. They're pretty good, and work well from a reliability perspective. These have seen some pretty heavy use in the last two years, one had a power supply issue in the first 90 days that was fixed under warranty, and otherwise they all worked flawlessly. They're 4K, pretty large and the price was surprisingly low for a screen this large and of this quality.

jerf 5y ago

"I hate slippery slope arguments, but...." Slippery slope is vastly oversold as a logical fallacy. It is only a fallacy in the absence of evidence that there is a slope. If there's a multi-decade trend of which this is only a single step, and there's no visible mechanism for making it stop here and go no farther, then the logical fallacy is in believing with no reason that the trend line will stop here. It is not a fallacy to speak as if this is only the beginning of a huge push into intrusive monitoring. It is a fallacy to pretend otherwise. Slippery slope is also a fallacy if you take one instance of a trend and then logically project it to an absurd extreme, but this is not what we're doing here. We're simply looking at the next obvious, logical, well-evidenced step, with plenty of people who obviously want this even if they are a bit too discreet to come right out and say it in public. But it's not a hard leap to see that our rulers today would like to be in full control of everything bit of data we receive and every bit of data we produce and the only things stopping them are technical possibilities and whether or not we'd put up with it. I see nothing else stopping them; not scruples, not morality, no existential awareness of the sheer staggering amount of responsibility they would be pushing on to themselves, no concerns about how it may hurt anyone, nothing.

ShrigmaMale 5y ago
Ahh yes, the slippery slope fallacy fallacy: assuming that all slippery slope arguments are fallacious. https://twitter.com/vitalikbuterin/status/987274961659232256?lang=en https://twitter.com/vitalikbuterin/status/987274961659232256...
- godelski 5y ago
  > assuming that all slippery slope arguments are fallacious. They literally stated when it is and isn't a fallacy with differentiating conditions...
  - voltaireodactyl 5y ago
    > Slippery slope fallacy fallacy I believe the poster you’re responding to is making a joke.

miketery 5y ago

Why do you hate slippery slope arguments? They tend to be right. It’s why we have the saying - the road to hell is paved with good intentions. Edit: rather than “tend to be right”, I should have said can be right given the right argument and evidence.

umvi 5y ago
The problem is that one man's hell is another man's paradise. Gun-free America, strong covid public health policies, "hate speech", device surveillance, etc ... you name the slippery slope and you'll find at the bottom of the slope that it's hell for some people and paradise for others. Some people prefer highly authoritarian governments that manage (and minimize) life risk and others prefer hands off governments with self-managed risk.
- coding123 5y ago
  The GOOD news is that there is no One World Government, so people are able to buy their transfer to another country to better fit their definition of paradise.
  - Sebb767 5y ago
    The BAD news is that there are so many government options that it will be hard to find a country that will fit you perfectly and some countries tend to overreach their borders very far so that you cannot escape their tyranny even if you move. The WORSE news is that even if they're able to find a country that fits them better, they still need to invest a lot of money and time to move (if they get in at all) and leave their family, friends and home behind. Seriously, moving to a different country is hardly an option. In nearly all cases, fighting to keep your country good is your best bet.
    - collaborative 5y ago
      Some people are born in societies that overwhelmingly hold opposite views to their own. In these cases, escaping outweighs staying since they have no chance of seeing them change during their lifetimes

howaboutnope 5y ago

> If we forget, no other forgetting will ever happen. Everything will be remembered. Everything you read, all through life, everything you listened to, everything you watched, everything you searched for. -- Eben Moglen, https://benjamin.sonntag.fr/en/2012/moglen-at-republica-freedom-of-thought-requires-free-media.html https://benjamin.sonntag.fr/en/2012/moglen-at-republica-free...

Lammy 5y ago

Sadly the “display devices” ship sailed a long time ago. Smart TVs were phoning this stuff home way back in 2013: https://doctorbeet.blogspot.com/2013/11/lg-smart-tvs-logging-usb-filenames-and.html https://doctorbeet.blogspot.com/2013/11/lg-smart-tvs-logging... Of course that was just file names and TV tuner/input metadata like channel numbers, not even MusicBrainz/Shazam-style fingerprinting like they would probably be capable of these days with beefier SoCs and more widespread always-on connectivity. Files-on-USB are no longer “en vogue” anyway with everyone and everything moving to streaming services where the surveillance is built right in by definition. Every time I watch something on Netflix/Hulu/Disney they’re watching me right back even if it’s ostensibly for my benefit e.g. for more accurate recommendations.

coding123 5y ago
Well, the good news is that the vast majority of those monitors and TVs need a WIFI connection, which is optional to set up. However, unfortunately, we're on the cusp of devices having their own permanent mobile phone network connection. Rozzie can confirm.
- alpaca128 5y ago
  All they need is flip a few bytes in the software and all newly sold screens only work if they're registered with an active, unbanned and non-anonymous account and were online in the last 12 hours. And then you won't just get randomly banned from Facebook or Google with no human support staff to talk to, you'll also lose access to half your media devices. This is already true for Oculus/Facebook (and probably some others).
  - dane-pgp 5y ago
    > all newly sold screens only work if they're registered The other side of this pincer movement is to mandate that all devices which access the internet must send a remote attestation of their boot process, to check that you haven't "tampered" with them by installing your own OS or jailbreaking them.
5y ago

umvi 5y ago

> What happens when governments start distributing lists of hashes belonging to "subversive" material Soon for any device containing a computer: "We are just including this hash check feature so we can do business with China, don't worry it'll be disabled by default for western countries"

armSixtyFour 5y ago

It's right to be critical of the slippery slope argument, except that you can take a look at history and see how even in western governments in "free" societies have spied on those who challenge the status quo. I think we're right to be skeptical of surveillance as there is a proven track record of this kind of behavior from governments and corporations. Take a look at a law that's being proposed in Canada right now. It includes allowing the government to request take downs for a broad number of reasons including otherwise legal speech that they consider to be offensive, data retention, what essentially amounts to a national firewall etc. Cory Doctorow, who is from Canada originally, has a good write up on it: https://pluralistic.net/2021/08/11/the-canada-variant/#no-canada https://pluralistic.net/2021/08/11/the-canada-variant/#no-ca...

wheybags 5y ago

That's not even a slippery slope, the ps3 already did that (refused to play video files of Sony pictures movies)

2III7 5y ago
Got any more info on that? I don't recall the PS3 refusing to play movies.
- wheybags 5y ago
  It seems the system is called cinavia: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cinavia https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cinavia I specifically remember it refusing to play an mp4 of a spiderman movie.

paulcarroty 5y ago

> How long until media players and display devices are hashing all of our media to check for copyright violations. Heard Sony TVs doing it right NOW.

fidesomnes 5y ago

How long ago were you born to not realize this is already the case for almost everything you already use?

javagram 5y ago

This has already been happening since 2012, just for blu ray players so far rather than within the TV itself: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cinavia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cinavia

dec0dedab0de 5y ago

I think the only reason we haven't seen the MPAA/RIAA suing people already, is the backlash from the crazy p2p lawsuits a while ago. Just search HN for TV, and you'll see plenty of companies uploading screen shots and file lists and who knows what else. https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=%20tv&sort=byPopularity&type=story https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

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squarefoot 5y ago

> Right now it is effectively impossible for a consumer to buy a TV that doesn't include a computer capable of this. Digital Signage Displays come to the rescue, although they cost more and some are starting to put Android inside, which however can be kept offline as the device would work merely as a display. The upside is that they're designed to work 18/7 to 24/7 and won't easily break like cheaper Smart TVs; setting up a wall of screens in a mall can be a real pain in the ass if every month some guy needs to climb up there and swap the one that died because of bad capacitors etc. That stuff must last or it becomes a huge waste of money. Then the necessary tuner can be either bought stand alone (and kept unconnected), or enclosed in a Linux/Kodi mini-PC in the form of a cheap USB dongle. https://linuxtv.org/wiki/index.php/DVB-T2_USB_Devices https://linuxtv.org/wiki/index.php/DVB-T2_USB_Devices The result can be bulky and probably Grandpa wouldn't welcome it, but for technical inclined users, the level of freedom and security that can be achieved is worth the effort.

dtgriscom 5y ago
And, even beyond the improved quality, they'll cost a lot more than a "smart" TV, because the "smart" TV is (likely?) subsidized by whomever gains access to your media stream.
- squarefoot 5y ago
  This is possible, although economies of scale also play a role here; they probably sell like a thousand Smart TVs for each signage display. I like to think however that for that higher price I'm actually buying a better durable product that will pay in the long run: 4K will last for a while, and by keeping things separated, other potential weak points (incompatibility with new formats or standards) are left to the tuner/mini PC, which would cost a lot less than the screen to change, or possibly nothing in case of software update.

guerrilla 5y ago

> How long until media players and display devices are hashing all of our media to check for copyright violations. Right now it is effectively impossible for a consumer to buy a TV that doesn't include a computer capable of this. Not my area, but wasn't this part of the point of HDMI... So, the slope seems slippery and pretty vertical to me

tomxor 5y ago

> slippery slope arguments There is a stronger 2nd argument, but it's buried towards the end: > Now imagine an Internet of Snitches doing it badly. It’s easy if you try. Some vendors already do a bad job of keeping customer data private and will continue that track record, so you can expect public leaks of databases that have flagged suspected criminals. Other vendors will write bad machine learning algorithms (or biased ones) leading to false positives and ruined lives. No slippery slope is needed, CSAM alone is extremely sensitive, a false accusation is ruinous... if automated client side CSAM scanning becomes a wide spread practice with Apple leading the way, it will be an "AI" of the flies... Apple has also demonstrated that it's willing to use ML as an unquestionable source of truth before with it's in store security, using facial recognition which is blatantly wrong to prosecute the innocent.

zepto 5y ago

Governments already are. The question is what safeguards you have against your own government doing this. If we weren’t worried about government overreach, we wouldn’t be worried about CSAM scanning. In another thread someone suggested that the 4th Amendment might be a protection in the US. I am doubtful about this, but I am interested in what actual law might help. Breaking up large companies doesn’t seem likely to protect us from the government.

fabianhjr 5y ago

> Right now it is effectively impossible for a consumer to buy a TV that doesn't include a computer capable of this. I buy monitors or projectors, no TVs for me.

enlyth 5y ago

It is coming, and there is nothing we can do about it. There's a chilling feeling watching this all unfold, as our freedoms get taken away and we're powerless to do anything other than complain on a programming themed social media website. We'll be labelled as conspiracy theorists, wackos, nutjobs, unintegratable people. That meme you shared with your friend in a private chat? Sorry, was a bit too anti-establishment for our tastes.

dontneedajacket 5y ago
Alternatives are already being built and released, both hardware and software. There will simply be more divide between know-how people who can save their freedom (tech people, friends, family) and the rest who get left behind. Now, if we get to China and North Korea levels of authoritarianism and people start snitching on each other, then that's a whole other problem :-)
- bitwize 5y ago
  Until Jeri Ellsworth MacGyvers together a way to make Ryzens with some sand and an Easy-Bake Oven, we are at the mercy of the chip manufacturers, all of whom would gladly add spyware to their chips' must-have-in-order-to-boot firmware with minimal arm twisting from the USG/CCP, if that. And President Biden has already started urging people to report extremists to the goverment.
  - jacquesm 5y ago
    That isn't going to happen. Jeri Ellsworth is fantastic at what she does but there are some hard to get around physical limits in terms of material purity and once you get to a certain degree of integration that pretty much guarantees a yield of 0 until you spend a very large amount of money.
    - bitwize 5y ago
      Then we will always be beholden to large chipmakers who will crumple to governments at the drop of a hat and implement whatever spyware they desire on-die.

1vuio0pswjnm7 5y ago

As this blocklist issue gains increased contemplation lets not forget that this is a "new feature". Lets consider the silent remote access subterfuge that has become known as "software updates". Therefore, as this is a "new feature", 1. it does not apply to older computers, particularly ones that are not remotely acessible by others to install their opaque "updates" and 2. on newer computers these lists can only be dynamic if the owner allows "software updates". The moral of the story is (a) not all "new features" are ones the computer owner may want, and (b) older computers have value, if only becoause they lack the bad stuff that greedy, manipulative, overreaching "tech companies" are building into new ones. There is nothing wrong with updates so long as they are granular1, transparent and optional2. It is the owner's computer and the owner has a license to the software installed on it at the time of purchase. Any party wishing to install new software on the owner's computers should need the owner's permission. Owners should have a reasonable option to deny such permission and to review and install updates themselves, or to reject individual proposed "new features". 1 Here "granular" means avoiding a situation where the user has to install a feature that she does not want in order to get a feature she does want. 2 Manual installation of updates should always be possible.

paulryanrogers 5y ago
This assumes the base software and its updates are both secure. Considering the velocity of development and complexity of modern software I don't think that's ever true of general purpose devices.

anthk 5y ago

>How long until media players and display devices are hashing all of our media to check for copyright violations. It has been rumored back in the day that WMP 10-12 would be like that.

grishka 5y ago

You can just not connect your TV to the internet. If you must, you can firewall it to prevent it from connecting to unwanted hosts. Regarding media players, VLC is open source. Is anyone even using proprietary media players any more?

foxfluff 5y ago
It's pretty easy to build a device that connects to the internet without you knowing about it, with all the mobile networks around us..
- grishka 5y ago
  It's also pretty easy to take it apart and remove the SIM card and/or disconnect the antenna. Also mobile data is expensive. Even more expensive if you want something that works in more than one country.
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_carbyau_ 5y ago

I can easily imagine American Media rubbing their hands with glee as they hash every pirate torrent and get it on the "to scan for" list for Microsoft.

gnopgnip 5y ago

Playing a file without a license is not a copyright violation though

BiteCode_dev 5y ago

Slippery slope argument are a very good thing when talking about abuse of power, because history proved again and again that potential very often becomes reality: humans are opportunistic greedy creatures. We absolutely need to address slipery slopes for all things that are related to freedom and democracy.

iamnotwhoiam 5y ago

WRT to copyright violations, I expect the same thing that has always happened will continue happening. Pirates will stay 3 steps ahead and only legal consumers will be harmed.

cm2187 5y ago

It’s not a fallacy when we can see the slope being actively oiled up right now. Hate speech laws and policies being used to target dissenting political opinions, tech companies using their power to put their thumb on the scale in elections, health emergencies to curb basic civil liberties, etc. And generally any law and policy should be looked at with the optic of how is it going to be used in the worst possible bad faith because ultimately it will. I remember the UK using its anti-terrorist act powers against Iceland during the 2008 financial crisis.

beebmam 5y ago

Maybe you should stop buying devices that undermine your freedom.

heeen2 5y ago

Smart TVs are already doing that for viewership metrics

raxxorrax 5y ago

It is only a slippery slope fallacy if your argument relies on sure escalation alone. But if you have other factors, like obvious corporate ambitions to fight piracy or to protect their industry and states ambitions to fight memes that exposes or embarrasses their policies, it isn't a fallacy at all and just another indication.

kenneth 5y ago

I had a pretty shocking moment recently. I bought a cheap simple Chinese 55" TV when I moved into my new place in Hong Kong recently. Worked fine for 6 months. I don't connect it to the internet or cable, it's just a screen in front of a few HDMI devices (Roku + Switch). It recently started randomly playing 30s video ads every time I turn it on. I can't figure out how it's getting them, because I've never connected it to the wifi (nor would I even know how to given the menus are all in Chinese). Does it have its own LTE connection? Anyways, this has got me pretty annoyed and I'm thinking of tossing it on principle.

tpxl 5y ago
Some devices will scan for open wifi networks in the area and connect to those if you don't give them your own network. It's also entirely possible they have deals with ISPs to use the router you rent from them on a separate network (some routers in the US broadcast a 'public' paid wifi network that's separate from yours that anyone can connect to and doesn't count toward your data).
jacquesm 5y ago
It probably has a built in WiFi unity, before tossing it you could open it up and try to find the antennae, they are usually just short bits of wire. Snip those off and see if there is a factory reset option, that should 'cure' it.
fsflover 5y ago
> it's just a screen in front of a few HDMI devices Internet over HDMI.

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yomly 5y ago

I'm reminded of that story of how airline ticketing systems assumed names ending with the suffix "*MR" had an honorific appended and so cleverly stripped it. Cue the Arabic name "Amr" The thing is with this types of systems that are deeply ingrained in our lives, we create the possibility to make people's live profoundly miserable because of an "edge case" And for that individual who is many times removed from the reason why their life is being wrecked by software it can be next to impossible to even feed back that their life is a misery, let alone get recourse.

tikiman163 5y ago

I wouldn't worry about purely display devices like TVs sending hashes. They don't retrieve the entire file, and hashing streamed data has challenges that tend to break the active stream. They would need to have a large enough sample of the streamed media, and most importantly it isn't illegal to watch pirated materials, only to distribute or publicly show them. The television manufacturers simply don't have an economic interest in trying to do so when they can easily collect data regarding subscription based app use. The cops asking them to do so wouldn't change the fact it would cost the company money to implement and maintain, and no real pay off. There certainly is a slope to worry about here, but the slope is in the direction of corporate profits. Anything that doesn't result in profits is a slope up hill and nobody wants to be the one pushing that particular rock up hill.