3 ms·

As I said, "The right to general purpose computing should be part of the constitution in any country that claims to value free speech."

acdha 3y ago
Yes, but that’s not related in any way to using a private service without paying for it. You have that now and if YouTube shut down tomorrow you’d still have it.
- _Algernon_ 3y ago
  I believe my comment is perfectly clear in the context of the comment I was responding to.
  - acdha 3y ago
    That’s probably why you aren’t getting much support: if you can’t specify what you’re saying in enough detail for anyone else to even know what you mean it’s going to be hard for us to talk about it.
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
- freedomben 3y ago
  At this point GP has made clear higher up in the thread. GP said they are arguing a negative right, which means that it's not something somebody has to provide to you, it's something they are prohibited from doing to you. For example, Freedom of Speech in the US Constitution is a negative right, meaning that the government cannot prevent you from your freedom of speech. It doesn't compel anyone to do anything to "give" you that right, it means that it can't be taken away from you. What you are arguing against would be a positive right, in which case I would agree with you. And to be clear, there are others arguing for the positive version vs. the negative version[1], so it's very easy to get cross threaded on this topic, but is ultimately a very different philosophical thread [1] For example, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37899830 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37899830
  - acdha 3y ago
    I’m fully aware, but they’re unclear about what specifically they believe should apply here. There’s no right to access someone else’s videos and the example they gave of drinking water doesn’t remotely fit this situation since that’s both a necessity and in most cases provided by a regulated utility rather than a normal business. We typically think of these kind of rights in the context of governments or natural monopolies because you don’t have a choice about using those but that’s clearly not a valid position here. The closest I can come would perhaps be a government privacy regulation limiting the types of tracking which a company is allowed to perform or perhaps some requirement that things like DRM not be restricted to a single option, but they have specified anything in enough detail to know if that’s what they had in mind.

acdha 3y ago

Yes, but that’s not related in any way to using a private service without paying for it. You have that now and if YouTube shut down tomorrow you’d still have it.

_Algernon_ 3y ago
I believe my comment is perfectly clear in the context of the comment I was responding to.
- acdha 3y ago
  That’s probably why you aren’t getting much support: if you can’t specify what you’re saying in enough detail for anyone else to even know what you mean it’s going to be hard for us to talk about it.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
freedomben 3y ago
At this point GP has made clear higher up in the thread. GP said they are arguing a negative right, which means that it's not something somebody has to provide to you, it's something they are prohibited from doing to you. For example, Freedom of Speech in the US Constitution is a negative right, meaning that the government cannot prevent you from your freedom of speech. It doesn't compel anyone to do anything to "give" you that right, it means that it can't be taken away from you. What you are arguing against would be a positive right, in which case I would agree with you. And to be clear, there are others arguing for the positive version vs. the negative version[1], so it's very easy to get cross threaded on this topic, but is ultimately a very different philosophical thread [1] For example, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37899830 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37899830
- acdha 3y ago
  I’m fully aware, but they’re unclear about what specifically they believe should apply here. There’s no right to access someone else’s videos and the example they gave of drinking water doesn’t remotely fit this situation since that’s both a necessity and in most cases provided by a regulated utility rather than a normal business. We typically think of these kind of rights in the context of governments or natural monopolies because you don’t have a choice about using those but that’s clearly not a valid position here. The closest I can come would perhaps be a government privacy regulation limiting the types of tracking which a company is allowed to perform or perhaps some requirement that things like DRM not be restricted to a single option, but they have specified anything in enough detail to know if that’s what they had in mind.