5 ms·

Utopia of Rules - our culture thinks that if we just had the right set of rules and everyone fallowed them then everything would work well. This is a flawed bel

Utopia of Rules - our culture thinks that if we just had the right set of rules and everyone fallowed them then everything would work well. This is a flawed belief, like other utopias.

Goronmon 5y ago
Utopia of Rules - our culture thinks that if we just had the right set of rules and everyone fallowed them then everything would work well. This is a flawed belief, like other utopias. I don't see what about ContentID is related to the "Utopia of Rules" issue. ContentID seems more like a problem related to issues of capitalism, where a corporation will make decisions to maximum profits at the expense of any human or social impacts. Alongside the inability to effectively reign in corporations who make such decisions.
- sidewndr46 5y ago
  ContentID is less of a "Utopia of Rules" and more of a "Kingdom of dictates". Google dictates you are subject to ContentID if you want to participate in YouTube. If you don't want to be subject to that, leave the kingdom.
- AnthonyMouse 5y ago
  > ContentID seems more like a problem related to issues of capitalism, where a corporation will make decisions to maximum profits at the expense of any human or social impacts. Capitalism is the thing where there is supposed to be vigorous free market competition and ContentID would have no power. Because even if 70% of the services were getting it wrong, anyone could switch to any of the other 30% with minimal friction, and then the original 70% would fix their shit or lose market share. Capitalism isn't a synonym for anarchy. It needs, for example, government enforcement of property rights. But it also needs antitrust. Constraints on vertical integration. The lack of effective antitrust enforcement has allowed markets to concentrate. Which removes competitive pressure, which allows incumbents to make rules that benefit them and their business partners at the expense of customers who now have high switching costs. Enabling the "Utopia of Rules."
  - notreallyserio 5y ago
    ContentID wasn't built because Google thought it would be a great service for end users. It was made in response to a lawsuit by, IIRC, Viacom. There's no practical way for a competitor to operate without their own version of ContentID as it is a function of copyright law and not market forces. Even so, I would bet the vast majority Google's customers that are aware of ContentID like ContentID and want it to spread everywhere, to all companies in all nations. I mean, how likely is it that Ford (a big customer) would move to UpstartVideo.biz because they don't automatically analyze uploaded videos?
    - AnthonyMouse 5y ago
      > There's no practical way for a competitor to operate without their own version of ContentID as it is a function of copyright law and not market forces. Which part of copyright law is the ContentID part? It's not in DMCA 512 anywhere I can see. YouTube in particular had problems because in their early days they were, shall we say, not well-counseled on the copyright front, and were still getting sued over that. They were also trying to make nice with Hollywood to try to get them to license premium content. Many competing video services don't have anything like ContentID. But they also don't have priority search results on google.com, so content creators don't want to use them. And the "you're not the customer, you're the product" trope doesn't really apply -- in a competitive market, suppliers have a choice in who to sell through too. And Ford follows the eyeballs.
      - notreallyserio 5y ago
        > Which part of copyright law is the ContentID part? It's not in DMCA 512 anywhere I can see. It's a measure to avoid legal ramifications under the DMCA and other acts. > Many competing video services don't have anything like ContentID. But they also don't have priority search results on google.com, so content creators don't want to use them. It's only a matter of time that they'll fold due to lack of interest, fold due to lawsuits, or implement ContentID or similar. Or they'll restrict and moderate uploads manually which has exactly the same effect, or perhaps even worse (still erring on the side of legal caution).
SapporoChris 5y ago
"Utopia of Rules - our culture thinks that if we just had the right set of rules and everyone fallowed them then everything would work well." I hate to be pedantic, but your typo fallowed is literally the opposite of your intended followed. https://www.wordnik.com/words/fallow https://www.wordnik.com/words/fallow adjective Characterized by inactivity. However, you have got my interest. What is the flaw in the reasoning?
- justinclift 5y ago
  > What is the flaw in the reasoning? Because the world is a very wide and varied place, with far more range of human situations than a set of rules is able to adequately deal with. Probably ever.
  - ufmace 5y ago
    More so, any system of rules that was anywhere near complete enough to deal with every situation ever would be so huge and complex that no human could ever read and understand it all, and even searching it properly would be impossible. Which will certainly lead to parts of the rule system contradicting each other and actual cases following one or the other or something else entirely depending on what the person applying it to the case was able to find. And if some individual's ability to find things or not decides what happens, then we're right back where we started, at a rather arbitrary system vulnerable to corruption. In which case, why did we even bother making this huge incomprehensible set of rules? See for example the US Tax Code.
ratww 5y ago
This is one of my major Hacker News pet peeves. People talk about any law whatsoever and people immediately jump to "yeah but what about this crazy edge case" as if the legal system itself doesn't take those into account. They're probably throwing lots of babies away since bathwater won't ever be microbe-free.
- AnthonyMouse 5y ago
  People immediately jump to "yeah but what about this crazy edge case" because they know the law will be applied to hundreds of millions of people and that crazy edge case will actually happen many times. And if you can't say ahead of time what a judge should do with that law against that edge case, you have a legal vulnerability. Something that will cause "hard cases make bad law." Something that will be abused by the rich and powerful and against the poor and vulnerable. You have a bad law. What you're advocating for is not thinking about the consequences of legislation before passing it.
  - Aerroon 5y ago
    >People immediately jump to "yeah but what about this crazy edge case" because they know the law will be applied to hundreds of millions of people and that crazy edge case will actually happen many times. And it shouldn't be too surprising that this happens on HN. Programming has taught me to specifically pay attention to edge cases and evaluate how likely they are and what kind of consequences may follow. This same pattern of thinking then gets applied to other things in life. Laws are one of the closest analogues to programming.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
  - ratww 5y ago
    Where am I advocating for anything? Please don't put words in my mouth. What I am complaining about is people immediately jumping to completely dismiss the discussed laws and even the need for them just because the posters assume they don't cover edge cases. This is done without understanding or even reading the laws themselves, nor the legal process that will be used to enforce them, nor how the individual legal systems of each countries work in regards to those edge cases. The ironic part is that in the last two or three cases where I saw it happen, the laws themselves already had the edge cases covered! And honestly, uninformed people talking about a law without doing an iota of research won't make a single difference in the world. Hacker News armchair amateur lawyers are not fighting for anyone, not even for themselves.
dubya 5y ago
Not exactly a new idea. They constantly try to escape From the darkness outside and within By dreaming of systems so perfect that no one will need to be good. T S Eliot, The Rock

Utopia of Rules - our culture thinks that if we just had the right set of rules and everyone fallowed them then everything would work well. This is a flawed belief, like other utopias.

Goronmon 5y ago

Utopia of Rules - our culture thinks that if we just had the right set of rules and everyone fallowed them then everything would work well. This is a flawed belief, like other utopias. I don't see what about ContentID is related to the "Utopia of Rules" issue. ContentID seems more like a problem related to issues of capitalism, where a corporation will make decisions to maximum profits at the expense of any human or social impacts. Alongside the inability to effectively reign in corporations who make such decisions.

sidewndr46 5y ago
ContentID is less of a "Utopia of Rules" and more of a "Kingdom of dictates". Google dictates you are subject to ContentID if you want to participate in YouTube. If you don't want to be subject to that, leave the kingdom.
AnthonyMouse 5y ago
> ContentID seems more like a problem related to issues of capitalism, where a corporation will make decisions to maximum profits at the expense of any human or social impacts. Capitalism is the thing where there is supposed to be vigorous free market competition and ContentID would have no power. Because even if 70% of the services were getting it wrong, anyone could switch to any of the other 30% with minimal friction, and then the original 70% would fix their shit or lose market share. Capitalism isn't a synonym for anarchy. It needs, for example, government enforcement of property rights. But it also needs antitrust. Constraints on vertical integration. The lack of effective antitrust enforcement has allowed markets to concentrate. Which removes competitive pressure, which allows incumbents to make rules that benefit them and their business partners at the expense of customers who now have high switching costs. Enabling the "Utopia of Rules."
- notreallyserio 5y ago
  ContentID wasn't built because Google thought it would be a great service for end users. It was made in response to a lawsuit by, IIRC, Viacom. There's no practical way for a competitor to operate without their own version of ContentID as it is a function of copyright law and not market forces. Even so, I would bet the vast majority Google's customers that are aware of ContentID like ContentID and want it to spread everywhere, to all companies in all nations. I mean, how likely is it that Ford (a big customer) would move to UpstartVideo.biz because they don't automatically analyze uploaded videos?
  - AnthonyMouse 5y ago
    > There's no practical way for a competitor to operate without their own version of ContentID as it is a function of copyright law and not market forces. Which part of copyright law is the ContentID part? It's not in DMCA 512 anywhere I can see. YouTube in particular had problems because in their early days they were, shall we say, not well-counseled on the copyright front, and were still getting sued over that. They were also trying to make nice with Hollywood to try to get them to license premium content. Many competing video services don't have anything like ContentID. But they also don't have priority search results on google.com, so content creators don't want to use them. And the "you're not the customer, you're the product" trope doesn't really apply -- in a competitive market, suppliers have a choice in who to sell through too. And Ford follows the eyeballs.
    - notreallyserio 5y ago
      > Which part of copyright law is the ContentID part? It's not in DMCA 512 anywhere I can see. It's a measure to avoid legal ramifications under the DMCA and other acts. > Many competing video services don't have anything like ContentID. But they also don't have priority search results on google.com, so content creators don't want to use them. It's only a matter of time that they'll fold due to lack of interest, fold due to lawsuits, or implement ContentID or similar. Or they'll restrict and moderate uploads manually which has exactly the same effect, or perhaps even worse (still erring on the side of legal caution).

SapporoChris 5y ago

"Utopia of Rules - our culture thinks that if we just had the right set of rules and everyone fallowed them then everything would work well." I hate to be pedantic, but your typo fallowed is literally the opposite of your intended followed. https://www.wordnik.com/words/fallow https://www.wordnik.com/words/fallow adjective Characterized by inactivity. However, you have got my interest. What is the flaw in the reasoning?

justinclift 5y ago
> What is the flaw in the reasoning? Because the world is a very wide and varied place, with far more range of human situations than a set of rules is able to adequately deal with. Probably ever.
- ufmace 5y ago
  More so, any system of rules that was anywhere near complete enough to deal with every situation ever would be so huge and complex that no human could ever read and understand it all, and even searching it properly would be impossible. Which will certainly lead to parts of the rule system contradicting each other and actual cases following one or the other or something else entirely depending on what the person applying it to the case was able to find. And if some individual's ability to find things or not decides what happens, then we're right back where we started, at a rather arbitrary system vulnerable to corruption. In which case, why did we even bother making this huge incomprehensible set of rules? See for example the US Tax Code.

ratww 5y ago

This is one of my major Hacker News pet peeves. People talk about any law whatsoever and people immediately jump to "yeah but what about this crazy edge case" as if the legal system itself doesn't take those into account. They're probably throwing lots of babies away since bathwater won't ever be microbe-free.

AnthonyMouse 5y ago
People immediately jump to "yeah but what about this crazy edge case" because they know the law will be applied to hundreds of millions of people and that crazy edge case will actually happen many times. And if you can't say ahead of time what a judge should do with that law against that edge case, you have a legal vulnerability. Something that will cause "hard cases make bad law." Something that will be abused by the rich and powerful and against the poor and vulnerable. You have a bad law. What you're advocating for is not thinking about the consequences of legislation before passing it.
- Aerroon 5y ago
  >People immediately jump to "yeah but what about this crazy edge case" because they know the law will be applied to hundreds of millions of people and that crazy edge case will actually happen many times. And it shouldn't be too surprising that this happens on HN. Programming has taught me to specifically pay attention to edge cases and evaluate how likely they are and what kind of consequences may follow. This same pattern of thinking then gets applied to other things in life. Laws are one of the closest analogues to programming.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
- ratww 5y ago
  Where am I advocating for anything? Please don't put words in my mouth. What I am complaining about is people immediately jumping to completely dismiss the discussed laws and even the need for them just because the posters assume they don't cover edge cases. This is done without understanding or even reading the laws themselves, nor the legal process that will be used to enforce them, nor how the individual legal systems of each countries work in regards to those edge cases. The ironic part is that in the last two or three cases where I saw it happen, the laws themselves already had the edge cases covered! And honestly, uninformed people talking about a law without doing an iota of research won't make a single difference in the world. Hacker News armchair amateur lawyers are not fighting for anyone, not even for themselves.

dubya 5y ago

Not exactly a new idea. They constantly try to escape From the darkness outside and within By dreaming of systems so perfect that no one will need to be good. T S Eliot, The Rock