5 ms·

Perhaps we should make a site who's terms of service explicitly bars use by members of congress. Once some member of congress goes to the site, we try to get th

by matt2000 14y ago

Perhaps we should make a site who's terms of service explicitly bars use by members of congress. Once some member of congress goes to the site, we try to get them put in jail, at which point they'll change the law.

derekp7 14y ago
Good idea, but I don't think it is possible for a private citizen to bring a prosecution. You could report it as a crime to the local police / FBI, but then they would probably file charges against you for wasting their time.
- jpd750 14y ago
  Sad, but true. This is just outrageous.
- Retric 14y ago
  It's all in how you approach it. If your goal is change then the press is your best option. So, send a vary nicely worded letter to the FBI and the press along with a video and logs and the FBI will simply add you to a few watch lists...
- dclowd9901 14y ago
  The law is broad enough that any unauthorized access (even apparently toward private companies) constitutes breakage. I don't see how it would be any different in this case.
usefulcat 14y ago
Rather than starting a new site, it might be better to find an existing sympathetic and preferably well-established site and persuade them to add such language to their TOS.
lukifer 14y ago
Interesting idea. Another approach could be an "I'm Spartacus" strategy: a site with a one-click tool to automatically "hack" some willing participant, and then daring prosecutors to try to charge thousands of end users at once. In reality, though, either strategy misses the grander problem, which is not about the letter of the law, but about selective prosecution that dehumanizes arbitrary victims for the purposes of career advancement, personal grudges, and maintaining bureaucratic budgets.
- DanBC 14y ago
  There's a famous libel scandal in the UK. An unnamed politician was wrongly linked to a paedophile sex scandal. Twitter users named that man, and called him a paedophile. (He isn't!) Many thousands of people repeated this slander. Lord McAlpine was potentially going to sue 10,000 people. (http://blogs.wsj.com/tech-europe/2012/11/22/mcalpine-forces-twitter-to-come-of-age/ http://blogs.wsj.com/tech-europe/2012/11/22/mcalpine-forces-...)
AnthonyMouse 14y ago
>Once some member of congress goes to the site, we try to get them put in jail, at which point they'll change the law. The reason this sort of scheme never works is called prosecutorial discretion. If your purpose is to show how the law is an absurdity then prosecutors who see through you can choose not to prosecute in that case because they don't want to enable you to change a law they want to stay the way it is. Overtly breaking the law doesn't get the law changed, it just makes the law unenforceable in most cases. Look at what happened with all the people printing DeCSS on t-shirts -- I'm not aware of any of them actually being convicted of violating the DMCA. The fact that the code was so widely distributed meant that it could never be suppressed and anyone (i.e. any pirate) who lives outside the law has ready access to it, but the law is still sitting there on the books screwing over the people who won't risk prosecution, who then can't make innovative products that would otherwise have to interact with DRM. Having the law stay on the books but never be enforced (or never enforced against "good" actions) is a totally unreasonable outcome. Because plenty of people will be deterred from doing "good" things as a result of the possibility of being prosecuted, even if it doesn't happen in practice. The law actually has to be changed, either in Congress or in the courts.

derekp7 14y ago

Good idea, but I don't think it is possible for a private citizen to bring a prosecution. You could report it as a crime to the local police / FBI, but then they would probably file charges against you for wasting their time.

jpd750 14y ago
Sad, but true. This is just outrageous.
Retric 14y ago
It's all in how you approach it. If your goal is change then the press is your best option. So, send a vary nicely worded letter to the FBI and the press along with a video and logs and the FBI will simply add you to a few watch lists...
dclowd9901 14y ago
The law is broad enough that any unauthorized access (even apparently toward private companies) constitutes breakage. I don't see how it would be any different in this case.

usefulcat 14y ago

Rather than starting a new site, it might be better to find an existing sympathetic and preferably well-established site and persuade them to add such language to their TOS.

lukifer 14y ago

Interesting idea. Another approach could be an "I'm Spartacus" strategy: a site with a one-click tool to automatically "hack" some willing participant, and then daring prosecutors to try to charge thousands of end users at once. In reality, though, either strategy misses the grander problem, which is not about the letter of the law, but about selective prosecution that dehumanizes arbitrary victims for the purposes of career advancement, personal grudges, and maintaining bureaucratic budgets.

DanBC 14y ago
There's a famous libel scandal in the UK. An unnamed politician was wrongly linked to a paedophile sex scandal. Twitter users named that man, and called him a paedophile. (He isn't!) Many thousands of people repeated this slander. Lord McAlpine was potentially going to sue 10,000 people. (http://blogs.wsj.com/tech-europe/2012/11/22/mcalpine-forces-twitter-to-come-of-age/ http://blogs.wsj.com/tech-europe/2012/11/22/mcalpine-forces-...)

AnthonyMouse 14y ago

>Once some member of congress goes to the site, we try to get them put in jail, at which point they'll change the law. The reason this sort of scheme never works is called prosecutorial discretion. If your purpose is to show how the law is an absurdity then prosecutors who see through you can choose not to prosecute in that case because they don't want to enable you to change a law they want to stay the way it is. Overtly breaking the law doesn't get the law changed, it just makes the law unenforceable in most cases. Look at what happened with all the people printing DeCSS on t-shirts -- I'm not aware of any of them actually being convicted of violating the DMCA. The fact that the code was so widely distributed meant that it could never be suppressed and anyone (i.e. any pirate) who lives outside the law has ready access to it, but the law is still sitting there on the books screwing over the people who won't risk prosecution, who then can't make innovative products that would otherwise have to interact with DRM. Having the law stay on the books but never be enforced (or never enforced against "good" actions) is a totally unreasonable outcome. Because plenty of people will be deterred from doing "good" things as a result of the possibility of being prosecuted, even if it doesn't happen in practice. The law actually has to be changed, either in Congress or in the courts.