3 ms·

Everyone who goes to twitter copies the posts to their computers.

27183 12d ago
Spot on. This is where a lot of these "terms and conditions" break down logically. Viewing some content on the internet is literally copying it. So is the distinction that xcancel served the content? But when I run mtr xcancel.com I see a bunch of hops between me and them. Every one of those hops is literally copying and retransmitting all the content. Are they not also serving it?
- immibis2 12d ago
  No, this is where programmers rules-lawyer in ways that actual lawyers don't and then get law stuff hilariously wrong. No judge thinks that viewing an HTML page is downloading it, because downloading means saving a copy to your computer, not just looking at it. Even having an internet cache folder doesn't count as downloading. Even copying the file from the internet cache folder to somewhere might not count as downloading, although it'd still be a copy. Same as when LG said their TVs don't record you and then Hacker News said "how can they detect voice commands if they don't record your voice"... facepalm.
  - 27183 12d ago
    I don't pretend to understand law, mostly it just doesn't make sense at all.
    - rimunroe 12d ago
      Could you elaborate in what way you find the law mostly doesn't make sense? It has to be flexible in order to work with actual humans. Why should visiting a page on your computer count as copying? Usually when we talk about copying it's someone making a duplicate so it can be accessed later. Only a very technical user is going to be diving into their cache to view that content after the fact. The vast majority of people don't understand that the browser is storing anything on their computer, much less how to access it before it's purged.
      - 27183 12d ago
        > Why should visiting a page on your computer count as copying? Because there's no physical mechanism for the information to be transmitted over a computer network other than by copying the bytes. Note this is distinct from broadcast systems like analog television or radio. Packet switching networks only function by copying information and storing multiple copies around the internet, including in your computer's RAM (and disk, if cached). So a legal definition that says "this kind of copying is copying but that other kind of copying isn't copying" makes no sense at all. Like many other legal definitions--it's all about what has been successfully snuck past a jury at one point or another in the past, without any heed for how things actually work.
        rimunroe 12d ago
        > Because there's no physical mechanism for the information to be transmitted over a computer network other than by copying the bytes. Your response seems to ignore everything in my comment other than the second sentence. I was asking why that detail should matter as far as the law is concerned, and I gave some reasons I don't think that would be good or practical.
        card_zero 12d ago
        There's the matter of linking to copyrighted works: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_aspects_of_hyperlinking_and_framing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_aspects_of_hyperlink... If your link is set up to make the image display immediately (that is, you wrap it in image tags, or as in one case, embed Instagram posts) then you may be violating copyright. What's more, in Europe, just a hyperlink to a copyrighted work violates copyright. Conclusion: copyright is not about copying, it's about access.
        rimunroe 12d ago
        Sure, but that seems different from what I was addressing. The person I was responding to was saying that the law as a whole usually doesn’t make sense. They were saying that in the context of arguing that if the law didn’t consider viewing a page of copyrighted copying as involving copying due to the technical basis of it having to transfer bits to your computer then the law didn’t make sense. My point was that laws don’t have to encompass or fully specify all edge cases, and that the ways laws are written can be open to interpretation. I think I removed a sentence before posting about the purpose of finders of facts in the US system like juries or judges in bench trials.
    - immibis2 12d ago
      It makes more sense when you remember it's not a computer program and the things that are written in the law are not the things that will actually happen in the way that "if(foo) bar;" makes bar happen if foo is true. It's more like a book of excuses you could use for why you didn't do your homework. Then the other side also has to bring an excuse for why you were supposed to do it, and if the principal thinks their excuse is better than yours, you get detention. If you tell the principal "I don't have to do my homework because work means employment and it's illegal to employ a minor" you'll get detention for not doing your homework and extra detention for being a smartass.
      - rimunroe 12d ago
        And this example is not just due to people not taking the trouble to write fully specified rules. I don't think such rules could even be written. You can just do your best to cover the cases you can think of. The complexity of society is incomprehensibly vast and constantly changing, and the law has to have wiggle room to account for it.
        immibis2 12d ago
        You don't want fully-specified rules because a rule with strict boundaries has loopholes. You actually want a clearly allowed area, a clearly disallowed area, and a gradually increasing gradient of punishment in between, so that a small change in behaviour produces only a small change in punishment, and avoiding punishment requires a large change in behaviour.
        rimunroe 12d ago
        Exactly!
  - conception 11d ago
    I think its more than the law doesn’t understand the technology.
    - mitxela 11d ago
      It's definitely that programmers don't understand law.

27183 12d ago

Spot on. This is where a lot of these "terms and conditions" break down logically. Viewing some content on the internet is literally copying it. So is the distinction that xcancel served the content? But when I run mtr xcancel.com I see a bunch of hops between me and them. Every one of those hops is literally copying and retransmitting all the content. Are they not also serving it?

immibis2 12d ago
No, this is where programmers rules-lawyer in ways that actual lawyers don't and then get law stuff hilariously wrong. No judge thinks that viewing an HTML page is downloading it, because downloading means saving a copy to your computer, not just looking at it. Even having an internet cache folder doesn't count as downloading. Even copying the file from the internet cache folder to somewhere might not count as downloading, although it'd still be a copy. Same as when LG said their TVs don't record you and then Hacker News said "how can they detect voice commands if they don't record your voice"... facepalm.
- 27183 12d ago
  I don't pretend to understand law, mostly it just doesn't make sense at all.
  - rimunroe 12d ago
    Could you elaborate in what way you find the law mostly doesn't make sense? It has to be flexible in order to work with actual humans. Why should visiting a page on your computer count as copying? Usually when we talk about copying it's someone making a duplicate so it can be accessed later. Only a very technical user is going to be diving into their cache to view that content after the fact. The vast majority of people don't understand that the browser is storing anything on their computer, much less how to access it before it's purged.
    - 27183 12d ago
      > Why should visiting a page on your computer count as copying? Because there's no physical mechanism for the information to be transmitted over a computer network other than by copying the bytes. Note this is distinct from broadcast systems like analog television or radio. Packet switching networks only function by copying information and storing multiple copies around the internet, including in your computer's RAM (and disk, if cached). So a legal definition that says "this kind of copying is copying but that other kind of copying isn't copying" makes no sense at all. Like many other legal definitions--it's all about what has been successfully snuck past a jury at one point or another in the past, without any heed for how things actually work.
      - rimunroe 12d ago
        > Because there's no physical mechanism for the information to be transmitted over a computer network other than by copying the bytes. Your response seems to ignore everything in my comment other than the second sentence. I was asking why that detail should matter as far as the law is concerned, and I gave some reasons I don't think that would be good or practical.
        card_zero 12d ago
        There's the matter of linking to copyrighted works: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_aspects_of_hyperlinking_and_framing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_aspects_of_hyperlink... If your link is set up to make the image display immediately (that is, you wrap it in image tags, or as in one case, embed Instagram posts) then you may be violating copyright. What's more, in Europe, just a hyperlink to a copyrighted work violates copyright. Conclusion: copyright is not about copying, it's about access.
        rimunroe 12d ago
        Sure, but that seems different from what I was addressing. The person I was responding to was saying that the law as a whole usually doesn’t make sense. They were saying that in the context of arguing that if the law didn’t consider viewing a page of copyrighted copying as involving copying due to the technical basis of it having to transfer bits to your computer then the law didn’t make sense. My point was that laws don’t have to encompass or fully specify all edge cases, and that the ways laws are written can be open to interpretation. I think I removed a sentence before posting about the purpose of finders of facts in the US system like juries or judges in bench trials.
  - immibis2 12d ago
    It makes more sense when you remember it's not a computer program and the things that are written in the law are not the things that will actually happen in the way that "if(foo) bar;" makes bar happen if foo is true. It's more like a book of excuses you could use for why you didn't do your homework. Then the other side also has to bring an excuse for why you were supposed to do it, and if the principal thinks their excuse is better than yours, you get detention. If you tell the principal "I don't have to do my homework because work means employment and it's illegal to employ a minor" you'll get detention for not doing your homework and extra detention for being a smartass.
    - rimunroe 12d ago
      And this example is not just due to people not taking the trouble to write fully specified rules. I don't think such rules could even be written. You can just do your best to cover the cases you can think of. The complexity of society is incomprehensibly vast and constantly changing, and the law has to have wiggle room to account for it.
      - immibis2 12d ago
        You don't want fully-specified rules because a rule with strict boundaries has loopholes. You actually want a clearly allowed area, a clearly disallowed area, and a gradually increasing gradient of punishment in between, so that a small change in behaviour produces only a small change in punishment, and avoiding punishment requires a large change in behaviour.
        rimunroe 12d ago
        Exactly!
- conception 11d ago
  I think its more than the law doesn’t understand the technology.
  - mitxela 11d ago
    It's definitely that programmers don't understand law.