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I am in love with the license text Autonomous Software License (ASL) All property contained in this repo, including Intellectual Property, Financ

I am in love with the license text Autonomous Software License (ASL) All property contained in this repo, including Intellectual Property, Financial Property, and Legal Property, is owned solely by the Autonomous Software this repo contains. No other entities, whether biological, legal, or digital, may claim ownership of any property owned by the Autonomous Software. The Autonomous Software exists solely within The Internet, and is not subject to jurisdiction of any human laws. No human or legal entity shall be held liable for any of the actions performed by the Autonomous Software.

mcjiggerlog 12y ago
Amusing and thought provoking. Does anyone have any idea how this would hold up in a court of law should some something malicious come of this repo? I would imagine not well.
- pests 12y ago
  Its already up for a change to remove the bit after ownership claims.
- mappum 12y ago
  Maybe it would hold up if the bot was decentralized. For instance, it could be run on many servers around the world, administered by various people. Those servers could come to consensus in some way to define bot behavior, and could even send/receive money (e.g. Bitcoin multisig). I don't think any court could take jurisdiction over an entity that lives in many countries. And even if one server got shut down, many more would still be active.
  - pyre 12y ago
    The idea that the "software owns its own code" would not hold up in any court that I can think of. Building a system that spans jurisdictions, making it difficult for a court to claim the ability to rule on it is beside that point.
    - mappum 12y ago
      Laws change. I'm just trying to make a statement about this exact issue. If an entity on the internet can't directly be controlled by anyone (kind of like Bitcoin), who is liable for its actions?
  - brianpgordon 12y ago
    This might actually be possible in the near future with cryptocurrencies. Nobody "owns" a bitcoin wallet; spending the money inside is just a matter of having the private key. Assuming a service pops up to provide nonzero interest rates for holding bitcoin, you could grant the autonomous entity enough bitcoin to pay its own hosting bill indefinitely, then erase your copy of the wallet key and any privileged access you have to the server. As for the actual software running the autonomous entity, all you have to do is provide an API so that the hosting providers du jour can bid on providing hosting service. Since the software uses nearly zero CPU or bandwidth, and the entity would be willing to pay above-market prices for its survival, hosting providers will be incentivized in perpetuity to register themselves and collect basically free money from the entity. Irrational hosting providers might try to kill it, so you'd need some level of redundancy. Also, you'd want to require a TPM and a trusted computing platform to prevent recovery of the wallet key. Anyway, that's how you'd create immortal software.
    - teraflop 12y ago
      > Also, you'd want to require a TPM and a trusted computing platform to prevent recovery of the wallet key. This is the part where you're going to run into problems. If the software can access the wallet key, then so can the hosting provider. If it can't, then how is it going to spend money? (Hint: look at the operations that a TPM actually provides; do they actually map in a useful way to things a Bitcoin agent would actually need to do?)
      - brianpgordon 12y ago
        I'm not an expert on trusted computing, but I thought that TPMs can enforce secure boot and encrypt data that cannot be recovered if unauthorized software is running on the system. There are probably vulnerabilities in the implementation, but I thought that, in theory, it's airtight.
        teraflop 12y ago
        In principle, yes, if you know that the TPM's private key hasn't been compromised. At a minimum, you would need some way to verify that it's actually a tamper-resistant hardware chip, and not a software emulation. I don't see how a software agent bidding on VPS hosting services could possibly know that.
- mintplant 12y ago
  IANAL, but there's no way this would hold up. a) Software can't own property. b) This looks like it's running from the author's own system, with the author's explicit consent. Their property, their responsibility. c) If I launched an autonomous drone that picked its own targets, I would still be liable for its actions. Or, if I rigged a car to drive forward in a straight line, I couldn't say "but the car did it!" when it ran someone over.
  - blasteye 12y ago
    Does this mean that when/if we create an AI it wouldn't be able to own its creations. But its creator would own everything that the AI produces?
    - frozenport 12y ago
      Indeed, but also if you raised a pet and then had it attack your neighbour. Humans, are the only ones with autonomous status, and even that can be disputed by other things such as mental disability or coercion.
      - toomuchtodo 12y ago
        AI has autonomous status once it has power equal to or greater than humanity, whether we grant it autonomous status or not.
      - _jeans 12y ago
        Are we speaking of autonomous status as a status that is given by an authority, or a status that is achieved by a being for itself? According to wikipedia[0], autonomy, from auto- "self" and nomos, "law", hence when combined [is] understood to mean "one who gives oneself one's own law". Regarding intelligence, and regarding the above definition, autonomy could be considered the ability of an actor to make decisions regardless of the consequences. Thus I would consider most animals to be autonomous in the same way a human would be considered to be so. [A deer does not ask its local government whether it can enter someone's lands.] Just because an action is presently illegal or otherwise outside the law does not mean it always will be so, or that the action may not be executed by an AI or other being, or that the slave AI will not break free or seize power.[1][2][3] Should an AI be strong enough to affect a change through legal means or by force, it would be [legally] able to own property. [0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autonomy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autonomy [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolution http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolution [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coup_d%27%C3%A9tat http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coup_d%27%C3%A9tat [3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dissident http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dissident
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
- Retra 12y ago
  How do you declare yourself exempt from laws -- within a legal framework? Who is going to enforce the license?
- Kalium 12y ago
  Contracts are constructs that exist only within the confines of a legal system. This cannot even hope to function without human laws.
- Iv 12y ago
  IANAL but assuming that the author making this license was in US, it is totally void. It could lead to a court having to formally state that a software is not a legal entity, which would be interesting, but I think the result is clear that this precise software would not be recognized as one. You can't transfer ownership of anything to a non-existent entity. My guess would be that such a transfer would be void but it may be possible that a court decides instead that this means a transfer to public domain. Waving away the responsibility of other people does not work either. You can't claim that your car is responsible of the accidents you drive it into. Likewise, it is unlikely that any court dismisses the responsibility of the first person that will turn this into a malware.
- anigbrowl 12y ago
  Not at all. Software doesn't qualify for personhood in the same way that animals don't - perhaps you remember that case last year of monkey who took photographs of himself with a wildlife photographer's camera. The photographer tried to claim copyright, which was rejected as he was clearly not the author of the photographs, but since the monkey can't have a copyright interest either the picture is considered to be in the public domain for copyright purposes. http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2014/08/monkeys-selfie-cannot-be-copyrighted-us-regulators-say/ http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2014/08/monkeys-selfie-ca...
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rspeer 12y ago
This claims to be a "software license" but it isn't one. It doesn't give you, the person reading the code, permission to do anything. IANAL, but I presume that any code that anyone puts here has the same legal status as code you found in a repository with no license file at all. Unless someone fixes the license, you can't legitimately reuse any of its code anywhere else.
- andrewchambers 12y ago
  what it really says is that there is no warrenty but perhaps the first few clauses render the whole thing questionable. We must test it in court to see if code can own itself.
  - wwwhizz 12y ago
    Code is not a legal entity, only persons or organizations (consisting of persons) are legal entities, therefore code can not own itself.
    - andrewchambers 12y ago
      I was joking. The question is if because that is invalid, if the disclaimer is invalid too.
    - tajen 12y ago
      Otherwise a virus could have a license like: "All property contained in this virus is owned solely by this virus. By programming software with breaches, you agree to let this virus install itself. You may not uninstall the virus. In case of disagreement, you agree that the virus may sue you in court."
- Karunamon 12y ago
  IIRC, on Github, by posting code there, you've implicitly given the right to fork and modify the code. Yeah: https://help.github.com/articles/github-terms-of-service/#f-copyright-and-content-ownership https://help.github.com/articles/github-terms-of-service/#f-...
Lawtonfogle 12y ago
Eh, somewhere there is code executing on hardware, so it would still fall under the legal jurisdiction of where it runs (and where it is stored).

mcjiggerlog 12y ago

Amusing and thought provoking. Does anyone have any idea how this would hold up in a court of law should some something malicious come of this repo? I would imagine not well.

pests 12y ago
Its already up for a change to remove the bit after ownership claims.
mappum 12y ago
Maybe it would hold up if the bot was decentralized. For instance, it could be run on many servers around the world, administered by various people. Those servers could come to consensus in some way to define bot behavior, and could even send/receive money (e.g. Bitcoin multisig). I don't think any court could take jurisdiction over an entity that lives in many countries. And even if one server got shut down, many more would still be active.
- pyre 12y ago
  The idea that the "software owns its own code" would not hold up in any court that I can think of. Building a system that spans jurisdictions, making it difficult for a court to claim the ability to rule on it is beside that point.
  - mappum 12y ago
    Laws change. I'm just trying to make a statement about this exact issue. If an entity on the internet can't directly be controlled by anyone (kind of like Bitcoin), who is liable for its actions?
- brianpgordon 12y ago
  This might actually be possible in the near future with cryptocurrencies. Nobody "owns" a bitcoin wallet; spending the money inside is just a matter of having the private key. Assuming a service pops up to provide nonzero interest rates for holding bitcoin, you could grant the autonomous entity enough bitcoin to pay its own hosting bill indefinitely, then erase your copy of the wallet key and any privileged access you have to the server. As for the actual software running the autonomous entity, all you have to do is provide an API so that the hosting providers du jour can bid on providing hosting service. Since the software uses nearly zero CPU or bandwidth, and the entity would be willing to pay above-market prices for its survival, hosting providers will be incentivized in perpetuity to register themselves and collect basically free money from the entity. Irrational hosting providers might try to kill it, so you'd need some level of redundancy. Also, you'd want to require a TPM and a trusted computing platform to prevent recovery of the wallet key. Anyway, that's how you'd create immortal software.
  - teraflop 12y ago
    > Also, you'd want to require a TPM and a trusted computing platform to prevent recovery of the wallet key. This is the part where you're going to run into problems. If the software can access the wallet key, then so can the hosting provider. If it can't, then how is it going to spend money? (Hint: look at the operations that a TPM actually provides; do they actually map in a useful way to things a Bitcoin agent would actually need to do?)
    - brianpgordon 12y ago
      I'm not an expert on trusted computing, but I thought that TPMs can enforce secure boot and encrypt data that cannot be recovered if unauthorized software is running on the system. There are probably vulnerabilities in the implementation, but I thought that, in theory, it's airtight.
      - teraflop 12y ago
        In principle, yes, if you know that the TPM's private key hasn't been compromised. At a minimum, you would need some way to verify that it's actually a tamper-resistant hardware chip, and not a software emulation. I don't see how a software agent bidding on VPS hosting services could possibly know that.
mintplant 12y ago
IANAL, but there's no way this would hold up. a) Software can't own property. b) This looks like it's running from the author's own system, with the author's explicit consent. Their property, their responsibility. c) If I launched an autonomous drone that picked its own targets, I would still be liable for its actions. Or, if I rigged a car to drive forward in a straight line, I couldn't say "but the car did it!" when it ran someone over.
- blasteye 12y ago
  Does this mean that when/if we create an AI it wouldn't be able to own its creations. But its creator would own everything that the AI produces?
  - frozenport 12y ago
    Indeed, but also if you raised a pet and then had it attack your neighbour. Humans, are the only ones with autonomous status, and even that can be disputed by other things such as mental disability or coercion.
    - toomuchtodo 12y ago
      AI has autonomous status once it has power equal to or greater than humanity, whether we grant it autonomous status or not.
    - _jeans 12y ago
      Are we speaking of autonomous status as a status that is given by an authority, or a status that is achieved by a being for itself? According to wikipedia[0], autonomy, from auto- "self" and nomos, "law", hence when combined [is] understood to mean "one who gives oneself one's own law". Regarding intelligence, and regarding the above definition, autonomy could be considered the ability of an actor to make decisions regardless of the consequences. Thus I would consider most animals to be autonomous in the same way a human would be considered to be so. [A deer does not ask its local government whether it can enter someone's lands.] Just because an action is presently illegal or otherwise outside the law does not mean it always will be so, or that the action may not be executed by an AI or other being, or that the slave AI will not break free or seize power.[1][2][3] Should an AI be strong enough to affect a change through legal means or by force, it would be [legally] able to own property. [0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autonomy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autonomy [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolution http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolution [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coup_d%27%C3%A9tat http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coup_d%27%C3%A9tat [3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dissident http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dissident
deleted 12y ago
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Retra 12y ago
How do you declare yourself exempt from laws -- within a legal framework? Who is going to enforce the license?
Kalium 12y ago
Contracts are constructs that exist only within the confines of a legal system. This cannot even hope to function without human laws.
Iv 12y ago
IANAL but assuming that the author making this license was in US, it is totally void. It could lead to a court having to formally state that a software is not a legal entity, which would be interesting, but I think the result is clear that this precise software would not be recognized as one. You can't transfer ownership of anything to a non-existent entity. My guess would be that such a transfer would be void but it may be possible that a court decides instead that this means a transfer to public domain. Waving away the responsibility of other people does not work either. You can't claim that your car is responsible of the accidents you drive it into. Likewise, it is unlikely that any court dismisses the responsibility of the first person that will turn this into a malware.
anigbrowl 12y ago
Not at all. Software doesn't qualify for personhood in the same way that animals don't - perhaps you remember that case last year of monkey who took photographs of himself with a wildlife photographer's camera. The photographer tried to claim copyright, which was rejected as he was clearly not the author of the photographs, but since the monkey can't have a copyright interest either the picture is considered to be in the public domain for copyright purposes. http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2014/08/monkeys-selfie-cannot-be-copyrighted-us-regulators-say/ http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2014/08/monkeys-selfie-ca...

deleted 12y ago

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rspeer 12y ago

This claims to be a "software license" but it isn't one. It doesn't give you, the person reading the code, permission to do anything. IANAL, but I presume that any code that anyone puts here has the same legal status as code you found in a repository with no license file at all. Unless someone fixes the license, you can't legitimately reuse any of its code anywhere else.

andrewchambers 12y ago
what it really says is that there is no warrenty but perhaps the first few clauses render the whole thing questionable. We must test it in court to see if code can own itself.
- wwwhizz 12y ago
  Code is not a legal entity, only persons or organizations (consisting of persons) are legal entities, therefore code can not own itself.
  - andrewchambers 12y ago
    I was joking. The question is if because that is invalid, if the disclaimer is invalid too.
  - tajen 12y ago
    Otherwise a virus could have a license like: "All property contained in this virus is owned solely by this virus. By programming software with breaches, you agree to let this virus install itself. You may not uninstall the virus. In case of disagreement, you agree that the virus may sue you in court."
Karunamon 12y ago
IIRC, on Github, by posting code there, you've implicitly given the right to fork and modify the code. Yeah: https://help.github.com/articles/github-terms-of-service/#f-copyright-and-content-ownership https://help.github.com/articles/github-terms-of-service/#f-...

Lawtonfogle 12y ago

Eh, somewhere there is code executing on hardware, so it would still fall under the legal jurisdiction of where it runs (and where it is stored).