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In a normal society courts should be protecting from signing away basic freedoms
by FpUser 6mo ago
In a normal society courts should be protecting from signing away basic freedoms
- 0x3f 6mo agoWhat are 'basic freedoms'?
- ceejayoz 6mo agoFree speech?
- 0x3f 6mo agoSo I can't sign an exclusive book deal? Or write for a newspaper?
- ceejayoz 6mo agoExclusive book deals tend to have defined timespans. I'm not clear on the newspaper example; do you think reporters aren't allowed to write stuff outside their job? Plenty of reporters publish books.
- 0x3f 6mo agoNo I just mean in the sense that I give over the rights to my own words. I can't repeat them outside of the context that I've agreed to. They were both examples of the same kind of agreement. They'll keep those rights well after I'm dead, by the way.
- TheOtherHobbes 6mo agoYou're not giving over the rights, you're selling the right to profit from them under contract. You can argue that contract law is essentially a battle of relative political and economic power, and IP and employment contracts will always be unfair unless limits are set by statute and enforced enthusiastically. And personally I would. But generally you're signing away the rights to specific text, not the insights or commentary in that text, and if you freelance there's nothing to stop you making your points through some other channel, and/or some other text. If you're a full-time employee then the usual agreement is that your words (code) are work product and owned by your employer, and you're in that situation because your political and economic power is relatively limited.
- mikkupikku 6mo ago> Exclusive book deals tend to have defined timespans Good. We have "enumerate[d] [at least one] inaliable basic [freedom] that peopke should be able to deal in". Of course, we can quibble over the permissible duration of such timespans, but I think the point has been made clear.
- ceejayoz 6mo agoJust to be clear: you're asserting that "there are some inalienable rights" can be debunked by the existance of one that is not inalienable? That's not how this works.
- mikkupikku 6mo agoWe're talking about whether people should be permitted to sign away their right to speech. I think you've conceded that such is permissible at least for a limited duration. Shall we quibble the permissible durations, or are you done?
- ceejayoz 6mo agoSure; we have to resolve conflicts between two sets of people with rights sometimes. The inalienable right to free speech doesn't extend to defamation and fraud; the inalienable right to freedom of movement doesn't apply to jailed murderers. Unconscionability is a bit like obscenity; hard to perfectly define, but sometimes quite clear.
- SauntSolaire 6mo ago> The inalienable right to free speech doesn't extend to defamation and fraud You have a strange definition of "inalienable".
- ceejayoz 6mo agoNot really; it's a conflict between two groups and sets of rights. I have the inalienable right to not be defamed and defrauded. Now we have to resolve the contradiction as a society. That it's sometimes messy doesn't mean we ditch the concept of rights.
- mcbutterbunz 6mo agoThose that are deemed inalienable.
- 0x3f 6mo agoPlease enumerate these inaliable basic freedoms that I should not be able to deal in.
- ceejayoz 6mo agoThe US will not permit you to sign yourself into slavery, as an example.
- 0x3f 6mo agoOnly for a very narrow definition of slavery. Arguably constructing society such that it costs so much to just exist (for example, by artificially restricting housing supply) and thus you have to work is not all that different to slavery. I would say the dollar is but company scrip with better PR.
- ceejayoz 6mo ago> Only for a very narrow definition of slavery. Good. We have "enumerate[d] [at least one] inaliable basic [freedom] that I should not be able to deal in".
- pessimizer 6mo agoIf you don't believe that people should be able to sell themselves into slavery, you should start by offering your list. If you do believe that people should be able to sell themselves into slavery, then unlimited freedom of contract is a basic freedom for you. What you shouldn't do is pretend not to understand.
- 0x3f 6mo agoI'm not the one making a positive claim. I haven't even claimed such rights exist so why on earth would be the expectation be that I list them? You've assumed that I believe in this shared fiction. We sell ourselves into a form of slavery every day. Some would argue that is a big driver of our current society and way of life.
- AndrewKemendo 6mo agoYou can’t get people to try to break out of a prison they don’t think they are in
- nativeit 6mo agoSpeech, for example.
- SauntSolaire 6mo agoThat would also preclude non-disclosure agreements. I'm curious if you also find those unreasonable?
- FpUser 6mo agoDepends on what type of non-disclosure. Disclosing technical guarded and not publicly known technical know-how - I am ok with those. Disclosing that boss treats people like trash should be allowed and I think lawmakers should have enough intelligence in their brains to make laws accordingly.
- SauntSolaire 6mo agoI get that you're not a free speech maximalist, but that's still signing away a basic freedom.
- wtallis 6mo ago> Disclosing technical guarded and not publicly known technical know-how - I am ok with those. I would love to see NDAs for trade secrets limited in a way that incentivizes companies to rely on patent protection instead, where the system is set up to ensure that knowledge eventually becomes public record and freely usable by anyone. It would be very interesting to see how eg. the tech industry would change if trade secret protection were limited to a meaningfully shorter duration than patents.
- dragonwriter 6mo agoBoth non-disparagement and non-disclosure agreements should—just as many jurisdictions have for non-compete agreements, which do not even implicate free speech the way the others do—be sharply limited as a matter of public policy (non-disparagement even moreso than non-disclosure.) Both are routinely used to inflict public harm for private gain, and government enforcement of either is in tension with freedom of speech; while there is a legitimate case to be made that non-disclosure agreements within certain bounds have a certain degree of necessity in enabling legitimate business, this is a much harder case to make for non-disparagement agreements, at least for ones that are not temporally bounded within an active business relationship.
- FireBeyond 6mo agoWashington state does this with some parts of tenant law. There are certain tenant rights about habitability (heating, etc.) that are protected by law, and cannot be nullified by a rental/lease contract, even with consideration. The law states that the tenant legally cannot waive those rights.