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I was correcting a bad metaphor and pointing out that the question of legality is important, not just the question of whether censorship is ever OK, I wasn't ar
by corin_ 15y ago
I was correcting a bad metaphor and pointing out that the question of legality is important, not just the question of whether censorship is ever OK, I wasn't arguing for or against the legality.
Regardless, what's wrong with discussions about legality. A huge feature of any discussion board is that people can share opinions, debate, and correct each other when wrong.
I'm not sure if I'm mis-remembering you or if you used to have a different attitude on here, because in my head when I see your username I think of someone who's helpful and a good contributor to HN, but lately the comments I've seen from you are snide, snarky and not useful. I hope that either I'm just seeing the bad ones and missing the great ones, or that you're just going through a patch and will be back to your old self. Or perhaps I'm just wrong and being unfair to criticise you, but just calling it like I see it - if it was someone unknown making these comments I just feel they'd be getting downvoted to hell and for the most part ignored.
- tptacek 15y agoCriticize me as much as you want! I don't take it personally. If you end up being right, I'll benefit from it --- no matter how you choose to phrase it. I'm sorry you feel I'm being snide. I don't intend to be. Regardless, each successive HN "legality" discussion drives me further towards some conclusions (here I'll use 'nerd' as a shorthand for "people such as myself who come from a tech background and like to argue on HN"): * Very few nerds have taken the time to learn even basic facts about how the legal system works * To a nerd, the legal system resembles a rule-based system, like a Sendmail configuration file * Nerds feel entitled to reason through rule-based systems on nerd terms; in particular, nerds feel entitled to demand that all rule-based systems manifest themselves and are evaluated in the same terms that a programming language is * Nerds generally feel pissed off when they inevitably discover that no legal system works on nerd terms * As a result, nerds rarely read actual laws or statutes, and can generally be counted on to read only the first paragraph of any Techdirt story involving the law, enough to confirm their suspicion that the law is a gigantic broken computer program that is being systematically exploited by giant corporations to screw them out of free DVD rips. Nerds are mostly wrong about this stuff. MEANWHILE, 'citricsquid isn't even wading into that particular debate. Rather, he's making an argument that nerds should find colloquial. "Don't bullshit us", he says, "because we all know what The Pirate Bay is. We're nerds, for Pete's sake. Most of us could easily build The Pirate Bay ourselves." NO NO NO, says the rest of the thread. Whuh? WE SAID NO, the thread continues, BECAUSE IT'S MORE IMPORTANT TO CAPTURE THE GREATER TRUTH THAT THE LAW IS AN EVIL SCHEME TO SCREW US OUT OF FREE DVDS.
- losvedir 15y agoThank you for putting into words exactly what frustrates me about the legal system! You've exactly captured how I find myself reasoning about the law, and now that it's so explicit, I see that that's clearly wrong. This is similar to an epiphany I had when reading a blog post explaining intellectual property through an analogy of the "color" of a portion of code. How intention and legal action shape the color, whereas software people tend to think only of the actual bits that represent it. Why independently coming up with an arrangement of bits could be fine while possessing that exact same arrangement from a different source is not. (It's the color of those bits.) I just tried searching around but unfortunately could not find that post. I'd like to reread it. Anyone know what I'm talking about and have a link to it?
- burgerbrain 15y agoRegarding your last point: You're not the only one to make this observation.