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Time and time again. You are protected in your speech from the government. Commercial law does and will still apply. Arbitrary company decisions happen all the

Time and time again. You are protected in your speech from the government. Commercial law does and will still apply. Arbitrary company decisions happen all the time, and GitHub makes it clear that they won’t refrain from deleting repos for whatever reason.

seattle_spring 3y ago
First amendment! Censorship! 2nd amendment for some reason! Yeah in all seriousness people trot out perceived constitutional infringements about 500x times more than it actually happens.
- smcleod 3y ago
  Also they assume the entire world lives in America.
  - vorpalhex 3y ago
    In this case both OpenAI and Microsoft are US companies, so US law applies.
- engineer_22 3y ago
  Your rights are your rights, don't give them up.
  - seattle_spring 3y ago
    Totally. It’s just that not every restriction in the world is an infringement on your rights.
vorpalhex 3y ago
Well that's not correct. You are actually very protected in documenting security flaws, and even republishing them. I am unsure of who you think enforces laws... as far as I know OpenAI doesn't have their own police force yet. They can sue you of course, but they generally can't demand compliance with takedowns in this case without first going to a judge and requesting a court order. There is no "commercial law" unless you mean UCC.. which doesn't apply here.
- spzb 3y ago
  I'm not a lawyer or even an American but that certainly isn't how the DMCA works. The takedown is issued against the hosting company and, if they comply, they have no further liability. If they don't comply, they are liable in court so, of course, they all comply.
  - vorpalhex 3y ago
    What does DMCA stand for? Hint, that C letter is important!
    - spzb 3y ago
      In your mind, maybe. In the real world, the actual words of the statute are important.
  - wtallis 3y ago
    There's a difference between being compelled by a court order to take down a repo and choosing to comply with a DMCA takedown notice of dubious validity because you don't want to waste any more time on the issue and are happy to screw your users.
    - spzb 3y ago
      There’s also a difference between how you’d like the world to be and the way the world actually is.
- sn_master 3y ago
  Still, there's nothing illegal about GitHub deleting your repo for any reason they choose as long as they're a private entity not owned by the government.
kennywinker 3y ago
Not sure if that distinction applies here. I understand that the 1st amendment doesn't protect you from a company refusing to publish what you've said - that makes sense. But this is a case of a company attempting to use commercial law (created by the government) to cause someone else to stop their speech. That seems like a simple violation of the "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech" But idk because i'm not a lawyer and we have copyright and ip laws so clearly congress can pass SOME laws that prohibit speech. Free speech absolutism is weird to me
- bee_rider 3y ago
  In this case, it is really GitHub’s company policy which is being applied, right? They aren’t required to host anything in general, and they have a policy of taking down repos based on their interpretation of the DMCA, or some similar law (which might be a misinterpretation).
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
bee_rider 3y ago
Any law is ultimately enforced by the government. There isn’t a different type of law to which the constitution doesn’t apply (I mean it doesn’t say a ton about limiting various types of laws—laws around contracts, state law, etc etc—but it still applies, it just doesn’t say much). However, this seems more like an issue of corporate policy than law. Github needs to have some policy that ends up with them taking down repos that actually host illegal content, they don’t have any legal obligation to host files, so they can respond to takedown notices by just taking down the files. This wouldn’t be the government forcing them to take down files, it would be them deciding not to try and parse the law very closely. But this is different from having an area of law where the constitution doesn’t apply, and it bears repeating, because the constitution is really important and the idea that there should be some sort of cutout where it doesn’t apply is bad for society. Something we should grapple with as a society is whether poorly written, ambiguous laws should be interpreted as the government taking action by essentially forcing companies into be over zealous in their corporate policy.
- selfmodruntime 3y ago
  > Any law is ultimately enforced by the government So? That’s not what the first amendment applies to. You do not have first amendment rights in civil cases. This is not “an idea”. It’s just how it is. See libel.
  - dragonwriter 3y ago
    > > Any law is ultimately enforced by the government > So? That’s not what the first amendment applies to. Yes it is. > You do not have first amendment rights in civil cases. Yes, you do; that’s why US defamation law is more limited than the common law it derives from, and where Fair Use as a judicial application of the First Amendment came from before it was codified in statute. > See libel. Libel is a perfect example of how you do have First Amendment rights in civil cases. Here's a long list of cases applying the First Amendment in the libel/defamation context: https://www.mtsu.edu/first-amendment/encyclopedia/case/63/libel-and-slander https://www.mtsu.edu/first-amendment/encyclopedia/case/63/li...
dragonwriter 3y ago
> You are protected in your speech from the government. Commercial law ...is the government.
user3939382 3y ago
> You are protected in your speech from the government In theory. In practice we see in the Twitter files, the new rule is that government agencies are free to send takedown requests to social media platforms for speech that disagrees with our (abhorrent) foreign policy.
- krapp 3y ago
  >In practice we see in the Twitter files, the new rule is that government agencies are free to send takedown requests to social media platforms for speech that disagrees with our (abhorrent) foreign policy. Where in the Twitter files did it show that social media platforms would be punished with jail time or violence or anything if they refused to obey the government's orders? Because unless you can demonstrate the government was putting a gun to Twitter's head and would not take no for an answer, that isn't a "new rule" it's literally just the government making a request. Which they and anyone else is and has always been allowed to do. And which social media platforms have sometimes refused without reprisal. I mean, I see speech that disagrees with American foreign policy all the time on social media. No one's being sent to the camps for it. It doesn't even get censored.
  - user3939382 3y ago
    Twitter didn’t need any additional pressure beyond what’s monumentally implicit, they had an FBI spook running the other side inside Twitter. Not to mention that the requests constituted a gross 1st amendment violation.
    - otterley 3y ago
      > Not to mention that the requests constituted a gross 1st amendment violation. IAAL and am unaware of any case law that holds that the mere act of requesting material be removed from publication is a First Amendment violation. Do you have any case law to cite?
llamataboot 3y ago
I think an interesting legal case could be made about publishing the code as a web page somewhere that could play around with the speech/action distinction - but I certainly don't think Microsoft is going to host ways for people to backdoor OpenAI under any circumstances - honestly I'm surprised it took an actual DMCA notice
jrochkind1 3y ago
In general it's certainly true that private internet companies are not bound by the USA first ammendment in that way, and routinely "censor" speech, I agree. Including for things that they think will be bad PR for them, or will be legally risky for them. But. > GitHub makes it clear that they won’t refrain from deleting repos for whatever reason. What actions or speech do you think Github has taken that makes that clear? In general, I have seen Github stick to only taking things down according to the actual DMCA law, more than most companies that take things down pretty much whenever anyone asks them to. Github has a DMCA Takedown Policy [1], that is better than most companies. Most companies policies -- if they even transparently publish them at all, which they often don't -- go well beyond what the DMCA requires in what they will take down. Compare to eg YouTube [2], which isn't really using a DMCA process at all, doesn't really have a transparent policy at all, and does not allow you to counter-notice. Github's policy is way better than most; but maybe there are occasions where they have been known not to follow their own policy, is that what you're saying? From what I've seen, github has actually made it much more clear than most companies that they won't just randomly take things down for arbitrary reasons, but have a clear and transparent policy based on the DMCA. But maybe there are things I don't know. In this particular case, though, someone else pointed out to me in another part of this thread -- it's not totally clear Github is even involved. From the text on the repo, it seems possible that OpenAI contacted the repo owner directly, and the repo owner decided to change the text of the repo README to say that, and that may all that has happened? If Github had actually done a "takedown" according to their usual procedures, I think the repo wouldn't be there anymore? But it's not really clear what's going on, or even what the repo owner _claims_ is going on, unless we have more info than appears in the linked repo README. It's not currently clear that Github is involved at all. [1] https://docs.github.com/en/site-policy/content-removal-policies/dmca-takedown-policy https://docs.github.com/en/site-policy/content-removal-polic... [2] https://www.eff.org/issues/intellectual-property/guide-to-youtube-removals https://www.eff.org/issues/intellectual-property/guide-to-yo...
- selfmodruntime 3y ago
  > What actions or speech do you think Github has taken that makes that clear? Github has deleted Iranian / Russian / etc. Repos before purely for political reasons. GitHub belongs to Microsoft, and Microsoft has a stake in OpenAI. Seems like a reason to me.

seattle_spring 3y ago

First amendment! Censorship! 2nd amendment for some reason! Yeah in all seriousness people trot out perceived constitutional infringements about 500x times more than it actually happens.

smcleod 3y ago
Also they assume the entire world lives in America.
- vorpalhex 3y ago
  In this case both OpenAI and Microsoft are US companies, so US law applies.
engineer_22 3y ago
Your rights are your rights, don't give them up.
- seattle_spring 3y ago
  Totally. It’s just that not every restriction in the world is an infringement on your rights.

vorpalhex 3y ago

Well that's not correct. You are actually very protected in documenting security flaws, and even republishing them. I am unsure of who you think enforces laws... as far as I know OpenAI doesn't have their own police force yet. They can sue you of course, but they generally can't demand compliance with takedowns in this case without first going to a judge and requesting a court order. There is no "commercial law" unless you mean UCC.. which doesn't apply here.

spzb 3y ago
I'm not a lawyer or even an American but that certainly isn't how the DMCA works. The takedown is issued against the hosting company and, if they comply, they have no further liability. If they don't comply, they are liable in court so, of course, they all comply.
- vorpalhex 3y ago
  What does DMCA stand for? Hint, that C letter is important!
  - spzb 3y ago
    In your mind, maybe. In the real world, the actual words of the statute are important.
- wtallis 3y ago
  There's a difference between being compelled by a court order to take down a repo and choosing to comply with a DMCA takedown notice of dubious validity because you don't want to waste any more time on the issue and are happy to screw your users.
  - spzb 3y ago
    There’s also a difference between how you’d like the world to be and the way the world actually is.
sn_master 3y ago
Still, there's nothing illegal about GitHub deleting your repo for any reason they choose as long as they're a private entity not owned by the government.

kennywinker 3y ago

Not sure if that distinction applies here. I understand that the 1st amendment doesn't protect you from a company refusing to publish what you've said - that makes sense. But this is a case of a company attempting to use commercial law (created by the government) to cause someone else to stop their speech. That seems like a simple violation of the "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech" But idk because i'm not a lawyer and we have copyright and ip laws so clearly congress can pass SOME laws that prohibit speech. Free speech absolutism is weird to me

bee_rider 3y ago
In this case, it is really GitHub’s company policy which is being applied, right? They aren’t required to host anything in general, and they have a policy of taking down repos based on their interpretation of the DMCA, or some similar law (which might be a misinterpretation).

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

bee_rider 3y ago

Any law is ultimately enforced by the government. There isn’t a different type of law to which the constitution doesn’t apply (I mean it doesn’t say a ton about limiting various types of laws—laws around contracts, state law, etc etc—but it still applies, it just doesn’t say much). However, this seems more like an issue of corporate policy than law. Github needs to have some policy that ends up with them taking down repos that actually host illegal content, they don’t have any legal obligation to host files, so they can respond to takedown notices by just taking down the files. This wouldn’t be the government forcing them to take down files, it would be them deciding not to try and parse the law very closely. But this is different from having an area of law where the constitution doesn’t apply, and it bears repeating, because the constitution is really important and the idea that there should be some sort of cutout where it doesn’t apply is bad for society. Something we should grapple with as a society is whether poorly written, ambiguous laws should be interpreted as the government taking action by essentially forcing companies into be over zealous in their corporate policy.

selfmodruntime 3y ago
> Any law is ultimately enforced by the government So? That’s not what the first amendment applies to. You do not have first amendment rights in civil cases. This is not “an idea”. It’s just how it is. See libel.
- dragonwriter 3y ago
  > > Any law is ultimately enforced by the government > So? That’s not what the first amendment applies to. Yes it is. > You do not have first amendment rights in civil cases. Yes, you do; that’s why US defamation law is more limited than the common law it derives from, and where Fair Use as a judicial application of the First Amendment came from before it was codified in statute. > See libel. Libel is a perfect example of how you do have First Amendment rights in civil cases. Here's a long list of cases applying the First Amendment in the libel/defamation context: https://www.mtsu.edu/first-amendment/encyclopedia/case/63/libel-and-slander https://www.mtsu.edu/first-amendment/encyclopedia/case/63/li...

dragonwriter 3y ago

> You are protected in your speech from the government. Commercial law ...is the government.

user3939382 3y ago

> You are protected in your speech from the government In theory. In practice we see in the Twitter files, the new rule is that government agencies are free to send takedown requests to social media platforms for speech that disagrees with our (abhorrent) foreign policy.

krapp 3y ago
>In practice we see in the Twitter files, the new rule is that government agencies are free to send takedown requests to social media platforms for speech that disagrees with our (abhorrent) foreign policy. Where in the Twitter files did it show that social media platforms would be punished with jail time or violence or anything if they refused to obey the government's orders? Because unless you can demonstrate the government was putting a gun to Twitter's head and would not take no for an answer, that isn't a "new rule" it's literally just the government making a request. Which they and anyone else is and has always been allowed to do. And which social media platforms have sometimes refused without reprisal. I mean, I see speech that disagrees with American foreign policy all the time on social media. No one's being sent to the camps for it. It doesn't even get censored.
- user3939382 3y ago
  Twitter didn’t need any additional pressure beyond what’s monumentally implicit, they had an FBI spook running the other side inside Twitter. Not to mention that the requests constituted a gross 1st amendment violation.
  - otterley 3y ago
    > Not to mention that the requests constituted a gross 1st amendment violation. IAAL and am unaware of any case law that holds that the mere act of requesting material be removed from publication is a First Amendment violation. Do you have any case law to cite?

llamataboot 3y ago

I think an interesting legal case could be made about publishing the code as a web page somewhere that could play around with the speech/action distinction - but I certainly don't think Microsoft is going to host ways for people to backdoor OpenAI under any circumstances - honestly I'm surprised it took an actual DMCA notice

jrochkind1 3y ago

In general it's certainly true that private internet companies are not bound by the USA first ammendment in that way, and routinely "censor" speech, I agree. Including for things that they think will be bad PR for them, or will be legally risky for them. But. > GitHub makes it clear that they won’t refrain from deleting repos for whatever reason. What actions or speech do you think Github has taken that makes that clear? In general, I have seen Github stick to only taking things down according to the actual DMCA law, more than most companies that take things down pretty much whenever anyone asks them to. Github has a DMCA Takedown Policy [1], that is better than most companies. Most companies policies -- if they even transparently publish them at all, which they often don't -- go well beyond what the DMCA requires in what they will take down. Compare to eg YouTube [2], which isn't really using a DMCA process at all, doesn't really have a transparent policy at all, and does not allow you to counter-notice. Github's policy is way better than most; but maybe there are occasions where they have been known not to follow their own policy, is that what you're saying? From what I've seen, github has actually made it much more clear than most companies that they won't just randomly take things down for arbitrary reasons, but have a clear and transparent policy based on the DMCA. But maybe there are things I don't know. In this particular case, though, someone else pointed out to me in another part of this thread -- it's not totally clear Github is even involved. From the text on the repo, it seems possible that OpenAI contacted the repo owner directly, and the repo owner decided to change the text of the repo README to say that, and that may all that has happened? If Github had actually done a "takedown" according to their usual procedures, I think the repo wouldn't be there anymore? But it's not really clear what's going on, or even what the repo owner _claims_ is going on, unless we have more info than appears in the linked repo README. It's not currently clear that Github is involved at all. [1] https://docs.github.com/en/site-policy/content-removal-policies/dmca-takedown-policy https://docs.github.com/en/site-policy/content-removal-polic... [2] https://www.eff.org/issues/intellectual-property/guide-to-youtube-removals https://www.eff.org/issues/intellectual-property/guide-to-yo...

selfmodruntime 3y ago
> What actions or speech do you think Github has taken that makes that clear? Github has deleted Iranian / Russian / etc. Repos before purely for political reasons. GitHub belongs to Microsoft, and Microsoft has a stake in OpenAI. Seems like a reason to me.