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But we do pass laws about wheels. You can't drive them too fast, you must have them inspected to see if they are safe. The engines that power them mustn't emit

But we do pass laws about wheels. You can't drive them too fast, you must have them inspected to see if they are safe. The engines that power them mustn't emit harmful emissions. You can only drive them in certain places, and following a certain pattern. Why is the notion that you shouldn't be able to drive your computer to support radical terrorism, violate copyright, or purchase illegal materials any more strange than the rule that you can't drive your car over 70 miles per hour on the highway?

sounds 11y ago
Because violating copyright is not the same as stealing (at all), or stealing a car (which the copyright industry loves to say it is), or detonating explosives in a mosque (which this article conflates it with). Radical terrorism is an enormous red herring simply because only a very small percentage of the total population will engage in it, they are easy to identify (Israel has been doing it successfully for years), and regulating their _computer_ use will not make or break their aims. Therefore, we must logically conclude that the article is really about copyright, and not terrorism.
- oconnore 11y ago
  Huh? You seem to be stuck on something that is irrelevant to the current conversation (at least, the point that I was making). I have no interest in debating copyright with you. If you are stuck on that point, replace "copyright" in my original post with "operating a drone-mounted pistol". Better?
eridius 11y ago
No we don't have laws about wheels. We have laws about cars. Cars are not wheels. Wheels are merely a critical component of cars. And that distinction is absolutely vital to the wheel analogy.
- oconnore 11y ago
  You're losing me here, but I'll try: we can't pass laws about components, but we can pass laws about complete systems? Why is that? If you can pass a law about wheels only when you've bolted four of them together and attached an engine, can you similarly pass laws about microprocessors once you've attached memory, screen, a wifi link, and a global packet network known as the internet?
  - scotchmi_st 11y ago
    Cory Doctorow goes on to discuss that as well in the next paragraph after the one I initially posted, when talking about banning hands-free kits in cars: "We understand that cars remain cars even if we remove features from them. Cars are special-purpose, at least in comparison to wheels, and all that the addition of a hands-free phone does is add one more feature to an already-specialized technology. There's a heuristic for this: special-purpose technologies are complex, and you can remove features from them without doing fundamental, disfiguring violence to their underlying utility." Computers and software such as Google and MegaUpload are not special-purpose enough that you can make legislation about their design without "doing fundamental, disfiguring violence to their underlying utility".
    - oconnore 11y ago
      That's funny, I still find YouTube quite useful as a utility even though I can't upload all 172 episodes of Seinfeld.
      - wfo 11y ago
        You Tube is not a general purpose computing machine. Look up "turing complete" to get a sense for what the argument is about.
  - eridius 11y ago
    We already have laws saying that you cannot pirate music. It's called copyright law. The problem is that a lot of people want us to have laws saying that anyone who completely unknowingly facilitates copyright infringement should be punished. This means that any time someone can find pirated content by searching Google, Google would have broken the law, even though it's all automated and Google has no way of knowing that it's pirated. In fact, we already have a law called the DMCA that is supposed to deal with this, by establishing the "safe harbor" provision as well as a means by which IP owners can require service providers to remove infringing content, but that doesn't satisfy everyone. So in this analogy, our copyright law is like the laws on cars. We already have laws saying you can't drive cars past the speed limit, or do other various things with them. But we don't have any laws for wheel manufacturers that say that their manufactured wheels cannot be used by someone else in the commission of a crime. Penalizing Google for inadvertently allowing someone to find a page (hosted by a third party) that contains copyrighted content is like fining a wheel manufacturer any time one of their wheels is used as a component of a car that was used to rob a bank. Besides being patently ridiculous, there's no way for a wheel manufacturer to know which cars are going to be used to rob banks.
shkkmo 11y ago
We don't try to enforce the speed limit (yet) by limiting the ability of cars to drive fast. We don't limit the ability to own a vehicle with bad emissions or without safety equipment. (We will push you for operating that vehicle on publicly owned roads.) If you use your computer to commit a crime, you should be punished. If you use your car to commit a crime, you should be punished. (Assuming the crime should actually be a crime.) What we shouldn't (generally) do is preemptively prevent your from having the ability to commit that crime, especially when that prevents you from performing activities that are not crimes.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- oconnore 11y ago
  We seem to be in violent agreement. "If you use your computer to commit a crime, you should be punished."
  - shkkmo 11y ago
    I have a sneaking suspicion that we disagree on what should be a crime and what the penalties for certain crimes should be :) I think injuring or killing a pedestrian with a car should always be a crime and should be severely punished. I think sharing free software across international borders should never be a crime.
    - oconnore 11y ago
      I have a sneaking suspicion that we don't actually disagree on all that much, and that most people who are arguing with me here are doing so simply because I am using words that sound slightly different than the ones Corey Doctorow uses. So far the most convincing evidence of this is that the original article didn't actually mention anything about legislating against general purpose computers.
      - shkkmo 11y ago

sounds 11y ago

Because violating copyright is not the same as stealing (at all), or stealing a car (which the copyright industry loves to say it is), or detonating explosives in a mosque (which this article conflates it with). Radical terrorism is an enormous red herring simply because only a very small percentage of the total population will engage in it, they are easy to identify (Israel has been doing it successfully for years), and regulating their _computer_ use will not make or break their aims. Therefore, we must logically conclude that the article is really about copyright, and not terrorism.

oconnore 11y ago
Huh? You seem to be stuck on something that is irrelevant to the current conversation (at least, the point that I was making). I have no interest in debating copyright with you. If you are stuck on that point, replace "copyright" in my original post with "operating a drone-mounted pistol". Better?

eridius 11y ago

No we don't have laws about wheels. We have laws about cars. Cars are not wheels. Wheels are merely a critical component of cars. And that distinction is absolutely vital to the wheel analogy.

oconnore 11y ago
You're losing me here, but I'll try: we can't pass laws about components, but we can pass laws about complete systems? Why is that? If you can pass a law about wheels only when you've bolted four of them together and attached an engine, can you similarly pass laws about microprocessors once you've attached memory, screen, a wifi link, and a global packet network known as the internet?
- scotchmi_st 11y ago
  Cory Doctorow goes on to discuss that as well in the next paragraph after the one I initially posted, when talking about banning hands-free kits in cars: "We understand that cars remain cars even if we remove features from them. Cars are special-purpose, at least in comparison to wheels, and all that the addition of a hands-free phone does is add one more feature to an already-specialized technology. There's a heuristic for this: special-purpose technologies are complex, and you can remove features from them without doing fundamental, disfiguring violence to their underlying utility." Computers and software such as Google and MegaUpload are not special-purpose enough that you can make legislation about their design without "doing fundamental, disfiguring violence to their underlying utility".
  - oconnore 11y ago
    That's funny, I still find YouTube quite useful as a utility even though I can't upload all 172 episodes of Seinfeld.
    - wfo 11y ago
      You Tube is not a general purpose computing machine. Look up "turing complete" to get a sense for what the argument is about.
- eridius 11y ago
  We already have laws saying that you cannot pirate music. It's called copyright law. The problem is that a lot of people want us to have laws saying that anyone who completely unknowingly facilitates copyright infringement should be punished. This means that any time someone can find pirated content by searching Google, Google would have broken the law, even though it's all automated and Google has no way of knowing that it's pirated. In fact, we already have a law called the DMCA that is supposed to deal with this, by establishing the "safe harbor" provision as well as a means by which IP owners can require service providers to remove infringing content, but that doesn't satisfy everyone. So in this analogy, our copyright law is like the laws on cars. We already have laws saying you can't drive cars past the speed limit, or do other various things with them. But we don't have any laws for wheel manufacturers that say that their manufactured wheels cannot be used by someone else in the commission of a crime. Penalizing Google for inadvertently allowing someone to find a page (hosted by a third party) that contains copyrighted content is like fining a wheel manufacturer any time one of their wheels is used as a component of a car that was used to rob a bank. Besides being patently ridiculous, there's no way for a wheel manufacturer to know which cars are going to be used to rob banks.

shkkmo 11y ago

We don't try to enforce the speed limit (yet) by limiting the ability of cars to drive fast. We don't limit the ability to own a vehicle with bad emissions or without safety equipment. (We will push you for operating that vehicle on publicly owned roads.) If you use your computer to commit a crime, you should be punished. If you use your car to commit a crime, you should be punished. (Assuming the crime should actually be a crime.) What we shouldn't (generally) do is preemptively prevent your from having the ability to commit that crime, especially when that prevents you from performing activities that are not crimes.

deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
oconnore 11y ago
We seem to be in violent agreement. "If you use your computer to commit a crime, you should be punished."
- shkkmo 11y ago
  I have a sneaking suspicion that we disagree on what should be a crime and what the penalties for certain crimes should be :) I think injuring or killing a pedestrian with a car should always be a crime and should be severely punished. I think sharing free software across international borders should never be a crime.
  - oconnore 11y ago
    I have a sneaking suspicion that we don't actually disagree on all that much, and that most people who are arguing with me here are doing so simply because I am using words that sound slightly different than the ones Corey Doctorow uses. So far the most convincing evidence of this is that the original article didn't actually mention anything about legislating against general purpose computers.
    - shkkmo 11y ago