3 ms·

> Any rule applied across 300 million people is going to have edge cases regularly The rule against murder is applied across 300 million people and very rarely

by pdonis 4y ago

> Any rule applied across 300 million people is going to have edge cases regularly The rule against murder is applied across 300 million people and very rarely has edge cases. The same goes for the rule against fraud, which is more to the point for this discussion (see below). The problem is that most of the "rules" that are applied across 300 million people are not straightforward rules like the ones against murder or fraud, but micromanaging rules like the ones in the law that is the subject of this article. The law itself is silly: fraud is already a crime, why should fraud using a computer be any different from any other kind of fraud? If we just had the simple rule against fraud, it would be obvious that "white hat" security testing of computer systems is not fraud and is not a crime, and we wouldn't have all the edge cases that make enforcement of this law such a mess. The only reason the edge cases are so common is that the laws are not written to embody simple straightforward rules against obvious crimes that everybody can recognize; they are written to embody complex, byzantine rules that have evolved over time because people have the mistaken belief that giving more power to the government can solve problems. But actually, as the old joke about regular expressions goes, when people try to use the government to solve a problem, now they have two problems.

lazide 4y ago
Huh? Murder and fraud have tons of weird edge cases! Most jurisdictions even have 3+ different definitions for murder alone (not to mention manslaughter) and a bunch of specialist lawyers to figure it out, and a bunch more lawyers to argue about technicalities!
- pdonis 4y ago
  > Most jurisdictions even have 3+ different definitions for murder alone In other words, most jurisdictions can't just leave it at a simple common law definition of murder; for example: "At common law, murder was defined as killing another human being with malice aforethought." [1] This is not a matter of edge cases. It's a matter of the legal system getting out of hand even for what should be basic common law crimes. [1] https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/murder https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/murder
  - lazide 4y ago
    Common law uses case law for precedent, which is insanely complicated and requires years of study and decades of active practice to not screw up badly. That example is not what you think it is.
dragonwriter 4y ago
> The rule against murder is applied across 300 million people and very rarely has edge cases. Murder has, like tons of edge cases, as reviewing almost any jurisdiction’s criminal homicide laws will reveal. (Here's California's, for reference) https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displayText.xhtml?lawCode=PEN&division=&title=8.&part=1.&chapter=1.&article https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displayText.x... > The same goes for the rule against fraud That's not true of either civil or criminal fraud (which generally have quite different sets of edge cases.)
- pdonis 4y ago
  > Murder has, like tons of edge cases, as reviewing almost any jurisdiction’s criminal homicide laws will reveal. In other words, you're saying that even what should be fairly simple laws have been overcomplicated by our byzantine legal system, so that prosecutorial discretion can be abused even for them. I don't disagree, but I don't see how it contradicts my basic point.
  - lazide 4y ago
    No, their point is that reality is nuanced and complicated and in an attempt to be just and non capricious the legal system builds up complexity. But it still requires human judgement.
  - dragonwriter 4y ago
    > In other words, you're saying that even what should be fairly simple laws have been overcomplicated by our byzantine legal system No, I’m saying that operationalizing fairly simple moral principles into forms suitable for enforcement as laws is inherently messy, and that the examples you cited of it's potential simplicity, in fact, are examples that demonstrate the very complexity you held them up as lacking.
    - pdonis 4y ago
      > operationalizing fairly simple moral principles into forms suitable for enforcement as laws is inherently messy Assuming that I agree with this (at least for the sake of argument), it still misses my point. My point is that most laws--and the CFAA is an example--are not "operationalizing fairly simple moral principles into forms suitable for enforcement as laws". As I have pointed out several times now at various points in this overall discussion thread, we already have laws against fraud. Why should fraud that is committed with a computer be any different from fraud commmitted by other means? Having a separate law that makes committing fraud with a computer different from committing fraud some other way is not operationalizing a fairly simple moral principle against fraud. It's making the legal system more byzantine and complex for no good reason. That is what I am arguing against.

by pdonis 4y ago

lazide 4y ago

Huh? Murder and fraud have tons of weird edge cases! Most jurisdictions even have 3+ different definitions for murder alone (not to mention manslaughter) and a bunch of specialist lawyers to figure it out, and a bunch more lawyers to argue about technicalities!

pdonis 4y ago
> Most jurisdictions even have 3+ different definitions for murder alone In other words, most jurisdictions can't just leave it at a simple common law definition of murder; for example: "At common law, murder was defined as killing another human being with malice aforethought." [1] This is not a matter of edge cases. It's a matter of the legal system getting out of hand even for what should be basic common law crimes. [1] https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/murder https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/murder
- lazide 4y ago
  Common law uses case law for precedent, which is insanely complicated and requires years of study and decades of active practice to not screw up badly. That example is not what you think it is.

dragonwriter 4y ago

> The rule against murder is applied across 300 million people and very rarely has edge cases. Murder has, like tons of edge cases, as reviewing almost any jurisdiction’s criminal homicide laws will reveal. (Here's California's, for reference) https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displayText.xhtml?lawCode=PEN&division=&title=8.&part=1.&chapter=1.&article https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displayText.x... > The same goes for the rule against fraud That's not true of either civil or criminal fraud (which generally have quite different sets of edge cases.)

pdonis 4y ago
> Murder has, like tons of edge cases, as reviewing almost any jurisdiction’s criminal homicide laws will reveal. In other words, you're saying that even what should be fairly simple laws have been overcomplicated by our byzantine legal system, so that prosecutorial discretion can be abused even for them. I don't disagree, but I don't see how it contradicts my basic point.
- lazide 4y ago
  No, their point is that reality is nuanced and complicated and in an attempt to be just and non capricious the legal system builds up complexity. But it still requires human judgement.
- dragonwriter 4y ago
  > In other words, you're saying that even what should be fairly simple laws have been overcomplicated by our byzantine legal system No, I’m saying that operationalizing fairly simple moral principles into forms suitable for enforcement as laws is inherently messy, and that the examples you cited of it's potential simplicity, in fact, are examples that demonstrate the very complexity you held them up as lacking.
  - pdonis 4y ago
    > operationalizing fairly simple moral principles into forms suitable for enforcement as laws is inherently messy Assuming that I agree with this (at least for the sake of argument), it still misses my point. My point is that most laws--and the CFAA is an example--are not "operationalizing fairly simple moral principles into forms suitable for enforcement as laws". As I have pointed out several times now at various points in this overall discussion thread, we already have laws against fraud. Why should fraud that is committed with a computer be any different from fraud commmitted by other means? Having a separate law that makes committing fraud with a computer different from committing fraud some other way is not operationalizing a fairly simple moral principle against fraud. It's making the legal system more byzantine and complex for no good reason. That is what I am arguing against.