4 ms·

Falsehoods programmers believe about laws and courts usually boil down to incorrectly thinking that it's impossible to prove intent.

bombcar 3y ago
Programmers also thing the law is code and the judge a compiler, and if you find a bug you win.
- klipt 3y ago
  [flagged]
  - hurryer 3y ago
    Or you could go to prison for 10 years for rape and lose child custody, so you don't get any money either.
    - klipt 3y ago
      Didn't happen in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hermesmann_v._Seyer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hermesmann_v._Seyer
      - hurryer 3y ago
        Statutory rape is not the same thing as rape. That's why it has a different name. And the "rapist" was a minor too. So far from how you presented the case.
        klipt 3y ago
        Adult rape is even harder to prove than statutory rape, so the rapist is even more likely to get away with it unpunished. And the child support law is the same in all cases. No exceptions for statutory rape, no exceptions for regular rape either.
- Verdex 3y ago
  The legal system exists to prevent people from using violence to solve their own problems. A very powerful third party arbitrating helps keep things relatively civil. If you did find a bug, then society needs to patch it. And that's to desirable outcome. The undesirable outcome is that someone sends a ninja into your house at 3am to manually patch the bug.
  - rzl1235 3y ago
    [dead]
  - SpicyLemonZest 3y ago
    What's much more common than either of those is that the bug isn't fixed and it's no big deal. For example, there's a widely known bug in the definition of "legal tender". It doesn't vary based on the size of payment to be tendered, so in a sense, you're entitled to pay a $10,000 bill in the form of 250,000 quarters unless you've specifically agreed otherwise. Every once in a while someone tries to exploit this (recently: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/30/us/coins-lawsuit-payment-colorado.html https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/30/us/coins-lawsuit-payment-...), but judges can and do simply declare the exploit to be in bad faith and make them knock it off. (As any third party arbitrator would do.)
    - waste_monk 3y ago
      Surprised you don't have something like this[1], at the federal level: " ...coins are legal tender for payment of amounts which are limited as follows: not exceeding 20c if 1c and/or 2c coins are offered (these coins have been withdrawn from circulation, but are still legal tender); not exceeding $5 if any combination of 5c, 10c, 20c and 50c coins are offered; and not exceeding 10 times the face value of the coin if $1 or $2 coins are offered. " It's clean, simple, and effective. And an entity can choose to accept the coins anyway if they wanted to, it just doesn't oblige them to accept them. [1] https://banknotes.rba.gov.au/legal/legal-tender/ https://banknotes.rba.gov.au/legal/legal-tender/
- rzl1235 3y ago
  [dead]
OJFord 3y ago
Alright, I'll bite, how do you prove intent? (.. Short of finding a note that 'I OJFord declare that I intend to [do something I'm later accused of] signed [etc.]' I mean .)
- williamcotton 3y ago
  You can attempt to show intent to a judge and jury with physical evidence and witness testimony. It just needs to be a better story with better props than the other side can put together! During the discovery phase of a legal case the court will order inspections, evidence to be produced, depositions, expert reports, etc. Somewhere in there is an arrangement of facts that signifies some kind of intent behind an action.
  - OJFord 3y ago
    Ok well yes you can 'prove intent' beyond reasonable doubt - I perhaps wrongly (given the context) took other commenter literally. You can't ever actually prove what a person intended, if they haven't claimed or claim otherwise themselves. But yes you can of course satisfy a judge or jury of peers that something was overwhelmingly likely their intent, and they are just lying about (or not admitting to) it.
- dragonwriter 3y ago
  > Alright, I'll bite, how do you prove intent? The same way you prove anything else in a legal case, by sufficient evidence to convince the trier of fact that it is sufficiently likely to be true ("sufficiently likely" depending on the applicable standard of proof, which varies based on the context which creates the need for proof.) Legal proof (even to criminal conviction standard of proof beyond a reasonable doubt, and even moreso to the standards used for civil liability and other purposes) isn't logical proof.
duped 3y ago
I can't count the number of times I've been asked to relicense a piece of GPL software I maintain because users think it's "fair use" of the original source I built it from. Sorry, even if I agree with you, the lawyers for the owners that have proven to be litigious in the past aren't going to stop and consider that line of thought when it's up to a judge and/or jury to decide that and I can't afford the legal bill.

bombcar 3y ago

Programmers also thing the law is code and the judge a compiler, and if you find a bug you win.

klipt 3y ago
[flagged]
- hurryer 3y ago
  Or you could go to prison for 10 years for rape and lose child custody, so you don't get any money either.
  - klipt 3y ago
    Didn't happen in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hermesmann_v._Seyer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hermesmann_v._Seyer
    - hurryer 3y ago
      Statutory rape is not the same thing as rape. That's why it has a different name. And the "rapist" was a minor too. So far from how you presented the case.
      - klipt 3y ago
        Adult rape is even harder to prove than statutory rape, so the rapist is even more likely to get away with it unpunished. And the child support law is the same in all cases. No exceptions for statutory rape, no exceptions for regular rape either.
Verdex 3y ago
The legal system exists to prevent people from using violence to solve their own problems. A very powerful third party arbitrating helps keep things relatively civil. If you did find a bug, then society needs to patch it. And that's to desirable outcome. The undesirable outcome is that someone sends a ninja into your house at 3am to manually patch the bug.
- rzl1235 3y ago
  [dead]
- SpicyLemonZest 3y ago
  What's much more common than either of those is that the bug isn't fixed and it's no big deal. For example, there's a widely known bug in the definition of "legal tender". It doesn't vary based on the size of payment to be tendered, so in a sense, you're entitled to pay a $10,000 bill in the form of 250,000 quarters unless you've specifically agreed otherwise. Every once in a while someone tries to exploit this (recently: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/30/us/coins-lawsuit-payment-colorado.html https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/30/us/coins-lawsuit-payment-...), but judges can and do simply declare the exploit to be in bad faith and make them knock it off. (As any third party arbitrator would do.)
  - waste_monk 3y ago
    Surprised you don't have something like this[1], at the federal level: " ...coins are legal tender for payment of amounts which are limited as follows: not exceeding 20c if 1c and/or 2c coins are offered (these coins have been withdrawn from circulation, but are still legal tender); not exceeding $5 if any combination of 5c, 10c, 20c and 50c coins are offered; and not exceeding 10 times the face value of the coin if $1 or $2 coins are offered. " It's clean, simple, and effective. And an entity can choose to accept the coins anyway if they wanted to, it just doesn't oblige them to accept them. [1] https://banknotes.rba.gov.au/legal/legal-tender/ https://banknotes.rba.gov.au/legal/legal-tender/
rzl1235 3y ago
[dead]

OJFord 3y ago

Alright, I'll bite, how do you prove intent? (.. Short of finding a note that 'I OJFord declare that I intend to [do something I'm later accused of] signed [etc.]' I mean .)

williamcotton 3y ago
You can attempt to show intent to a judge and jury with physical evidence and witness testimony. It just needs to be a better story with better props than the other side can put together! During the discovery phase of a legal case the court will order inspections, evidence to be produced, depositions, expert reports, etc. Somewhere in there is an arrangement of facts that signifies some kind of intent behind an action.
- OJFord 3y ago
  Ok well yes you can 'prove intent' beyond reasonable doubt - I perhaps wrongly (given the context) took other commenter literally. You can't ever actually prove what a person intended, if they haven't claimed or claim otherwise themselves. But yes you can of course satisfy a judge or jury of peers that something was overwhelmingly likely their intent, and they are just lying about (or not admitting to) it.
dragonwriter 3y ago
> Alright, I'll bite, how do you prove intent? The same way you prove anything else in a legal case, by sufficient evidence to convince the trier of fact that it is sufficiently likely to be true ("sufficiently likely" depending on the applicable standard of proof, which varies based on the context which creates the need for proof.) Legal proof (even to criminal conviction standard of proof beyond a reasonable doubt, and even moreso to the standards used for civil liability and other purposes) isn't logical proof.

duped 3y ago

I can't count the number of times I've been asked to relicense a piece of GPL software I maintain because users think it's "fair use" of the original source I built it from. Sorry, even if I agree with you, the lawyers for the owners that have proven to be litigious in the past aren't going to stop and consider that line of thought when it's up to a judge and/or jury to decide that and I can't afford the legal bill.