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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.

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
        How I feel is that for physical products, and things that users individually own (ex model weights in this example), users right now can basically ignore terms of service and use contracts in the USA almost entirely and completely get away with it. And that's a good thing. That's the existing situation that we live in now, and it is a good thing that consumers can freely ignore the TOS on basically everything and do so constantly. The exceptions, are of course, if you are referencing online services with a TOS, but that bothers me less because it involves other people and other people's live services, whereas a TOS that involves something a single user has (like a physical object or even software on someone's own computer), individually, those TOS can be completely ignored right now. Isn't our existing freedom great? Also, do you acknowledge that I made strong arguments that directly addressed your question? Because you seem to just be ignoring the content of my post by just switching to a new question every time I fully answer one with strong arguments.
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.

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
      How I feel is that for physical products, and things that users individually own (ex model weights in this example), users right now can basically ignore terms of service and use contracts in the USA almost entirely and completely get away with it. And that's a good thing. That's the existing situation that we live in now, and it is a good thing that consumers can freely ignore the TOS on basically everything and do so constantly. The exceptions, are of course, if you are referencing online services with a TOS, but that bothers me less because it involves other people and other people's live services, whereas a TOS that involves something a single user has (like a physical object or even software on someone's own computer), individually, those TOS can be completely ignored right now. Isn't our existing freedom great? Also, do you acknowledge that I made strong arguments that directly addressed your question? Because you seem to just be ignoring the content of my post by just switching to a new question every time I fully answer one with strong arguments.

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.