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>Asking builders to ONLY use maximally permissive licenses is equivalent to telling people never to release anything they're not ok with being used in every pos

>Asking builders to ONLY use maximally permissive licenses is equivalent to telling people never to release anything they're not ok with being used in every possible way. That's exactly right, and it shouldn't be their call how someone uses their thing. When I acquire a hammer, I don't have to sign an agreement that it will never be used to build a wall, and the world is better for this. Just because you have an idea, you shouldn't be granted the legal power to send the police after people who use your idea "the wrong way". To me, this goes just as much for copyright as it does for this new trend of "ethical" licences. >On a practical level this would massively chill research, as most builders and engineers I know give significant consideration to the impact of their work Good? People who develop things that can be used for harm and then act entitled to be the arbiter of what that "harm" is are just kidding themselves into trying to have their cake and eat it too. For the things that cause real harm, the actors that are going to cause the most harm (nation states) aren't going to listen to what you have to say no matter what (a recent film comes to mind).

hooverd 3y ago
Which film?
kelseyfrog 3y ago
People can make the things the way they want to make them. Makers have no obligation to make things maximally permissive. What this sounds like is entitlement. That really should be obvious. Besides, if users want permissivity and it doesn't exist, one of them can step up, make it, and be a hero.
- saurik 3y ago
  FWIW, I'd be more OK with this if liability for later use were then fairly distributed: if you sell me a hammer (or a phone or let me make phone calls), and I can do anything I want with it, and what I want to do is evil, the hammer seller is off the hook; but, if the hammer seller wants to believe they are in control of the use cases of their hammer, and attempts to use legal and/or technological controls to limit what I later do with our hammer (via licenses or digital rights management technology or even an army of moderators), they should be now--at least partially--at fault for what I do with the hammer, and they should suffer consequences along with me, whether it be in the form of costly joint and several liability on a tort claim or even indirect criminal liability from at least negligence if not racketeering charges. Regardless, as a lot of the weight of your argument seems to rely on the rhetorical use of "entitlement", note that that word applies to both sides: people who sell hammers and then expect to still be involved in the life of the hammer after they sell it are clearly the ones with entitlement issues, and if they didn't want to sell me the hammer then they shouldn't have sold it in the first place; if you want a lot of control over something, you should continue to own it, as it violates the entire notion of selling something and transferring physical possession for you to be continuing to employ legal and technological restrictions that have nothing to do with you anymore. Buyers have no obligation to care one iota about the wishes of a maker after the sale, and it is only due to the messed up incentives and (to many of us) unconstitutional extensions of copyright law in the last 30 years that have made this look even slightly reasonable.
- stale2002 3y ago
  > Besides, if users want permissivity and it doesn't exist, one of them can step up, make it, and be a hero. Or instead of that we can recognize that we live in a society and we can make rules that cause society to be better. We make laws all the time. And it is perfectly reasonable to make laws that increases peoples permissive ability to do whatever they want with things that they own. > Makers have no obligation to make things maximally permissive. Well, they would if we remove the "makers" ability to leverage the law to target users. If we take away their ability to use the government's monopoly on violence, we can effectively cause things to be much more permissive.
  - kelseyfrog 3y ago
    I'm curious. It seems like the world is very maligned against your desires. How did this happen?
    - stale2002 3y ago
      > It seems like the world is very maligned against your desires Oh it's not maligned against my desires! In my previous post I was referencing existing laws, and the existing ability of individuals in society to do basically whatever they want with things that they own. In the USA, consumers have large amounts of freedom, at least individually. The specific topic of model weights makes this even more clear. I have my own GPU, and nobody knows what I use model weights for, nor are they likely to stop me, (excluding some very rare but extreme edge cases obviously!). Isn't the USA great, and isn't it amazing that "makers" have basically no effective power to stop others from using their work in ways that the maker doesn't like? That's freedom for you.
      - kelseyfrog 3y ago
        How do you feel about terms of service or use contracts where individuals can freely enter into in order to use products?
        stale2002 3y ago
- FiniteField 3y ago
  This simple "no you" reframing of the user being entitled misses that the two situations are totally asymmetric. 1. A user is "entitled" to use a product how they see fit without being harassed 2. A maker is "entitled" to wield the power of the state to go after and (potentially) cause the fining and even imprisonment of a user who is using it "the wrong way". You might say that copyleft software licensing (which I agree with) is aligned with point 2, but I'd respond with the fact that copyleft primarily exists to subvert the system of copyright (point 2) from within, as it pertains to software. Even then, copyleft only restricts people who want to redistribute modified versions of the software, and explicitly not normal users.
  - kelseyfrog 3y ago
    I get the desire to have a parsimonious system, but if you take these two axioms in vacuo, then you've nullified cyber security law[1]. Or in other words, if you didn't want to get hacked, you shouldn't have had any exploits. Maybe this is what you're going for? If not, you'll need more or different axioms. 1. 18 U.S. Code § 1030 - "access[ing] a computer without authorization or exceeding authorized access" https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/1030 https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/1030
    - FiniteField 3y ago
      No, that's not "what I'm going for", because I'm talking about using a thing that I own, within the law. I'm not advocating for abolishing all laws that make "using a thing in a certain way" illegal, I'm saying that we shouldn't bestow corporations the right of legal prosecution against anyone they believe is using a product that they own "unacceptably". Just as I don't want a hammer to come with a terms-of-usage agreement, I don't want a hammer company to be held liable for crimes committed with one of their hammers. Obviously all simple axioms have a breaking point (if a hammer company sold someone a hammer for the express purpose of murdering somebody with it) but under any reasonable applications I think these hold up absolutely fine and are much better than the axioms we have now.
pixl97 3y ago
>When I acquire a hammer, I don't have to sign an agreement that it will never be used to build a wall, and the world is better for this. Eh, this is where it gets problematic... For example if you're a seller of an items and the person says "I am going to use this item to commit a crime" before you sell it, you could very well find yourself on the very expensive end of a civil lawsuit. This black and white world where you throw all liability on the end user does not exist. You will quickly find yourself buried up to your butthole in heathen lawyers looking for their pound of flesh.
evrydayhustling 3y ago
So the take here is: - I like how it feels to own a hammer, so everything should be like that. (I guess people shouldn't be able to rent hammers, or anything else?) - You can't prevent the government from using what you build, so you might as well set up no barriers to anybody using it. If you don't see any difference between limited control and no control, I don't think I'll convince you. But I think most of the ways we engage with the world involve degrees of control, and that there's value in picking where to exercise yours.

hooverd 3y ago

Which film?

kelseyfrog 3y ago

People can make the things the way they want to make them. Makers have no obligation to make things maximally permissive. What this sounds like is entitlement. That really should be obvious. Besides, if users want permissivity and it doesn't exist, one of them can step up, make it, and be a hero.

saurik 3y ago
FWIW, I'd be more OK with this if liability for later use were then fairly distributed: if you sell me a hammer (or a phone or let me make phone calls), and I can do anything I want with it, and what I want to do is evil, the hammer seller is off the hook; but, if the hammer seller wants to believe they are in control of the use cases of their hammer, and attempts to use legal and/or technological controls to limit what I later do with our hammer (via licenses or digital rights management technology or even an army of moderators), they should be now--at least partially--at fault for what I do with the hammer, and they should suffer consequences along with me, whether it be in the form of costly joint and several liability on a tort claim or even indirect criminal liability from at least negligence if not racketeering charges. Regardless, as a lot of the weight of your argument seems to rely on the rhetorical use of "entitlement", note that that word applies to both sides: people who sell hammers and then expect to still be involved in the life of the hammer after they sell it are clearly the ones with entitlement issues, and if they didn't want to sell me the hammer then they shouldn't have sold it in the first place; if you want a lot of control over something, you should continue to own it, as it violates the entire notion of selling something and transferring physical possession for you to be continuing to employ legal and technological restrictions that have nothing to do with you anymore. Buyers have no obligation to care one iota about the wishes of a maker after the sale, and it is only due to the messed up incentives and (to many of us) unconstitutional extensions of copyright law in the last 30 years that have made this look even slightly reasonable.
stale2002 3y ago
> Besides, if users want permissivity and it doesn't exist, one of them can step up, make it, and be a hero. Or instead of that we can recognize that we live in a society and we can make rules that cause society to be better. We make laws all the time. And it is perfectly reasonable to make laws that increases peoples permissive ability to do whatever they want with things that they own. > Makers have no obligation to make things maximally permissive. Well, they would if we remove the "makers" ability to leverage the law to target users. If we take away their ability to use the government's monopoly on violence, we can effectively cause things to be much more permissive.
- kelseyfrog 3y ago
  I'm curious. It seems like the world is very maligned against your desires. How did this happen?
  - stale2002 3y ago
    > It seems like the world is very maligned against your desires Oh it's not maligned against my desires! In my previous post I was referencing existing laws, and the existing ability of individuals in society to do basically whatever they want with things that they own. In the USA, consumers have large amounts of freedom, at least individually. The specific topic of model weights makes this even more clear. I have my own GPU, and nobody knows what I use model weights for, nor are they likely to stop me, (excluding some very rare but extreme edge cases obviously!). Isn't the USA great, and isn't it amazing that "makers" have basically no effective power to stop others from using their work in ways that the maker doesn't like? That's freedom for you.
    - kelseyfrog 3y ago
      How do you feel about terms of service or use contracts where individuals can freely enter into in order to use products?
      - stale2002 3y ago
FiniteField 3y ago
This simple "no you" reframing of the user being entitled misses that the two situations are totally asymmetric. 1. A user is "entitled" to use a product how they see fit without being harassed 2. A maker is "entitled" to wield the power of the state to go after and (potentially) cause the fining and even imprisonment of a user who is using it "the wrong way". You might say that copyleft software licensing (which I agree with) is aligned with point 2, but I'd respond with the fact that copyleft primarily exists to subvert the system of copyright (point 2) from within, as it pertains to software. Even then, copyleft only restricts people who want to redistribute modified versions of the software, and explicitly not normal users.
- kelseyfrog 3y ago
  I get the desire to have a parsimonious system, but if you take these two axioms in vacuo, then you've nullified cyber security law[1]. Or in other words, if you didn't want to get hacked, you shouldn't have had any exploits. Maybe this is what you're going for? If not, you'll need more or different axioms. 1. 18 U.S. Code § 1030 - "access[ing] a computer without authorization or exceeding authorized access" https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/1030 https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/1030
  - FiniteField 3y ago
    No, that's not "what I'm going for", because I'm talking about using a thing that I own, within the law. I'm not advocating for abolishing all laws that make "using a thing in a certain way" illegal, I'm saying that we shouldn't bestow corporations the right of legal prosecution against anyone they believe is using a product that they own "unacceptably". Just as I don't want a hammer to come with a terms-of-usage agreement, I don't want a hammer company to be held liable for crimes committed with one of their hammers. Obviously all simple axioms have a breaking point (if a hammer company sold someone a hammer for the express purpose of murdering somebody with it) but under any reasonable applications I think these hold up absolutely fine and are much better than the axioms we have now.

pixl97 3y ago

>When I acquire a hammer, I don't have to sign an agreement that it will never be used to build a wall, and the world is better for this. Eh, this is where it gets problematic... For example if you're a seller of an items and the person says "I am going to use this item to commit a crime" before you sell it, you could very well find yourself on the very expensive end of a civil lawsuit. This black and white world where you throw all liability on the end user does not exist. You will quickly find yourself buried up to your butthole in heathen lawyers looking for their pound of flesh.

evrydayhustling 3y ago

So the take here is: - I like how it feels to own a hammer, so everything should be like that. (I guess people shouldn't be able to rent hammers, or anything else?) - You can't prevent the government from using what you build, so you might as well set up no barriers to anybody using it. If you don't see any difference between limited control and no control, I don't think I'll convince you. But I think most of the ways we engage with the world involve degrees of control, and that there's value in picking where to exercise yours.