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US bill proposes jail time for people who download DeepSeek

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Re: US bill proposes jail time for people who download DeepSeek

#81
post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You get less jail time for an insurrection aimed at overthrowing a free and fair election and beating the shit out of cops while doing so.

Truly, what do you even do as the CCP or some other party that would like to spread anti-American propaganda? Literally just point to the actual, factual state of this country and tell me it isn't a rolling joke.

Thats how most propaganda works. Russia, for example, has been publicizing cases of extreme racism in the US for years to demoralize black people. [1] Hell this has been going on since WWII, when other countries saw how the US treated their black troops, and used it to damage loyalty. [2]

Nothing works like the truth, if the US could just stop being so racist it'd be that much harder to divide us. It seems like that's fundementally against our nature though.

1. https://www.npr.org/2017/10/30/560042987/russians-targeted-u...

2. https://perspectives.ushmm.org/item/german-leaflet-for-black...

Re: US bill proposes jail time for people who download DeepSeek

#82
post #5

If the rationale is to avoid sending data back to Chinese servers, then shouldn't there be a carveout for downloading a model you run locally?

The rationale is to damage Chinese commercial interests. Otherwise, the billions of IOT devices that dial back to Chinese manufacturers would be way higher up the list than an AI tool that has shown five minutes of adoption.

Re: US bill proposes jail time for people who download DeepSeek

#83
post #33
post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You and I know this isn't how this works. The moment the government wants to punish someone over this they will grab some random kid that's barely done anything and threaten them with the full 20 years to serve as an example to others.

Where's the kid rotting in federal prison for downloading a mp3? Does the music/movie industry not have good enough lobbyists to make an example of a torrenter?

Pirating is not a criminal offense in America. It is in other parts of the world, like Japan, which, tangentially, is why Japanese piracy is so underground and tends to use different software stacks to the norm, cf. Perfect Dark (the filesharing program, not the game).

Re: US bill proposes jail time for people who download DeepSeek

#84
post #73

This is performative and obviously stupid, but to add some technical color to it: in the alternate universe where this passed, rather than floating around as a signalling tool for Josh Hawley, ordinary violators would see nothing resembling a 20 year sentence. This statute falls under the 2M5 section of the sentencing guideline (for export violations); it has a base offense level of 14 (15-21 months) and is probation…

Too many people have it now. What would be likely to happen if the bill passed is selective enforcement.

Many dictatorships have very broad laws that almost everyone inevitably breaks, but as long as you don't challenge the dictator or speak out against them in any way, you are safe.

But the moment you speak out against the government, suddenly the law gets enforced, since in the governments eyes, you have now committed the one true crime.

Re: US bill proposes jail time for people who download DeepSeek

#86
post #41
post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know, you tell me what happend to that Aaron guy that ran Reddit?

Thanks for proving my point. Schwartz was offered 6 months in a minimum security prison, but he declined it because he specifically wanted a trial. Moreover that was for effectively DoSing JSTOR, a much more serious crime than some guy using a vpn to download an AI model. I don't think 6 months was justified, nor the string of crimes he was charged with, but OP's assertion that "You get less jail time for committing…

I think the issue under discussion is whether or not this kind of law is applied gently and with consideration to seriousness, or whether it tends to be used as a club to make an example of people. I think Swartz is seen as an example of it being used as a club to make an example of people.

Re: US bill proposes jail time for people who download DeepSeek

#87
post #5

If the rationale is to avoid sending data back to Chinese servers, then shouldn't there be a carveout for downloading a model you run locally?

Model? Or Malware?

Why is the model malware?

That word has a meaning, and a model that isn’t politically aligned isn’t it.

That said, I’ve been using deep seek distilled to qwen, which should yield an incredibly censored model if they had been censoring the models, but instead yields a pretty balanced model that is more than willing to talk about Tiananmen and Xi Jinpings human rights failings.

Re: US bill proposes jail time for people who download DeepSeek

#88

A lot of people in this new federal government are terrified of China

I think it's the opposite, despite the people who are extra loud about it.

Trump admires Xi and Elon loves China. The people at the very top are more China-friendly than the last administration.

Re: US bill proposes jail time for people who download DeepSeek

#89
post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure it’s even worth speculating on a bill that’s merely been proposed. This one sounds DOA. But yeah TikTok ban was a very bad precedent, mostly because it was based on speculative risks, not hard proof of existing behaviour (TikTok not engaging didn't help at all either). Regardless of the merits I too hope it doesn’t have a ripple effect. National security is such a huge brush you could paint anything you want…

The risk from TikTok is possibly not speculative at all. I think it’s quite likely the national security apparatus knows something and informed congressmen because they went from being opposed to it to being in favor of it in a short time.

I have no way of verifying it, but I heard from someone I believe to be connected enough to know things that TikTok is taking marching orders from the Chinese military.

Re: US bill proposes jail time for people who download DeepSeek

#90

I have no idea about the intricacies of US law, but reading the actual proposed bill[1], it seems incredibly broad. Like, "this may make publishing linear algebra papers on faster matrix operations illegal"-broad, as it includes everything which may contribute to AI research. Also: Preventing the import of "foreign" knowledge / research seems completely insane to me, no offense, no matter how one stands on export. Th…

The reality is that this should fail under first amendment rulings.

Or it would if the courts abided by the principles they were supposed to.

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