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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" a

by 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.
  - nitrogen 5y ago
    [edit: the parent comment was edited so this comment applies to a previous version] Constructive feedback: the first sentence isn't necessary. People will only see the anger and not the actual point. The second sentence stands on its own.
    - ratww 5y ago
      You're right. Sorry about that, but it angers me when people put words in my mouth.
  - AnthonyMouse 5y ago
    > What I am complaining about is people immediately jumping to 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 legal system works in regards to those edge cases. This reads like "these dumdums can't possibly understand the law because only lawyers can understand the law and everyone else needs to shut up." How is that compatible with a democracy? Don't voters have to be able to understand what their legislators are doing on their behalf? Are we all just permanently screwed? It's not as if these criticisms don't come to fruition. People said DMCA 1201 would be a bad law from the beginning, and it still is. Sex workers objected to SESTA even though they were the ones it was supposed to protect, politicians passed it over their objection, and the bad things predicted to happen then happened. It is the calls to "reform" CDA 230 that seem to lack any understanding of the law, the reasons for it, or even what it does. The most common flaw in new legislation is the failure to account for unintended consequences from bad edge cases and perverse incentives. It is actually really hard to create a law without these things. The discussion of how to avoid them, or even if they can be avoided sufficiently to cause the proposed law to be a net positive in the world, is really important. Here's another example. This year, the Supreme Court did some good in reining in the CFAA: https://www.lawfareblog.com/supreme-court-reins-cfaa-van-buren https://www.lawfareblog.com/supreme-court-reins-cfaa-van-bur... This is your system working, right? But the CFAA was passed in 1986. We lived under that uncertainty, and it caused much turmoil, for thirty five years. That's bad. We should want for that not to happen.

by ratww 5y ago

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.
- nitrogen 5y ago
  [edit: the parent comment was edited so this comment applies to a previous version] Constructive feedback: the first sentence isn't necessary. People will only see the anger and not the actual point. The second sentence stands on its own.
  - ratww 5y ago
    You're right. Sorry about that, but it angers me when people put words in my mouth.
- AnthonyMouse 5y ago
  > What I am complaining about is people immediately jumping to 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 legal system works in regards to those edge cases. This reads like "these dumdums can't possibly understand the law because only lawyers can understand the law and everyone else needs to shut up." How is that compatible with a democracy? Don't voters have to be able to understand what their legislators are doing on their behalf? Are we all just permanently screwed? It's not as if these criticisms don't come to fruition. People said DMCA 1201 would be a bad law from the beginning, and it still is. Sex workers objected to SESTA even though they were the ones it was supposed to protect, politicians passed it over their objection, and the bad things predicted to happen then happened. It is the calls to "reform" CDA 230 that seem to lack any understanding of the law, the reasons for it, or even what it does. The most common flaw in new legislation is the failure to account for unintended consequences from bad edge cases and perverse incentives. It is actually really hard to create a law without these things. The discussion of how to avoid them, or even if they can be avoided sufficiently to cause the proposed law to be a net positive in the world, is really important. Here's another example. This year, the Supreme Court did some good in reining in the CFAA: https://www.lawfareblog.com/supreme-court-reins-cfaa-van-buren https://www.lawfareblog.com/supreme-court-reins-cfaa-van-bur... This is your system working, right? But the CFAA was passed in 1986. We lived under that uncertainty, and it caused much turmoil, for thirty five years. That's bad. We should want for that not to happen.