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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

#151
post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Capital Records vs Jamie Thomas where Capital Records was awarded around 2 million in damages and Sony vs Joel Tenenbaum. These cases are not uncommon. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capitol_Records%2C_Inc._v._Tho... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_BMG_v._Tenenbaum

Those cases are extremely uncommon. In nearly every case what happened was:

1. The RIAA sent a letter telling how many songs you were distributing and offering a settlement of around $2-5 per song. Most people at this point realized that they were in fact guilty and that the RIAA had enough evidence to prove it in court and agreed to settle.

2. A small fraction ignored this or refused to settle. The RIAA then files lawsuits in some of those cases, typically over a small number of the songs that the person was distributing rather than over all the songs being distributed.

At this point most defendants would get a lawyer and be told that they will almost certainly lose and advised to settle.

3. A handful of people ignored their lawyers (or had crappy lawyers) and plowed on. Their extraordinarily bad decision making often continued during their trial. Thomas for instance lied in court and tried to destroy evidence.

This is not wise since in these suits the plaintiff is asking for statutory damages, which is a minimum of $750 per song (not per download--if you were offering 2 songs for download and they were each download 1000 times the minimum is 2 x $750, not 2000 x $750) but can go up to $30000, and it is the jury that determines the amount in that range. You really want the jury to find you sympathetic, and lying and trying to destroy evidence doesn't help with that.

4. After the inevitable victory in most cases that got far the RIAA would again offer to settle for an amount much lower than the damages awarded by the court, although higher than their original settlement offer.

I don't know how many reached this stage, but if many did most of them came to their senses and realized that appealing would probably only make it worse.

The very small number that didn't are the ones that ended up like the two cases you cited.

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

#153
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.

Is it? Because as soon as the ban went into effect and phones started to ring Congress very quickly changed its tune. If it was genuinely a national security threat you absolutely would NOT bend after a few hundred angry constituency calls.

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

#154

Can you just... download it before it becomes illegal? The wording suggests it's the importing that's illegal, not the possession. And once I possess it, I can... give it to a few of my closest friends? Without crossing any borders of course.

By my understanding, yes. But this does mean you can’t use the internet to share it, because you can’t really guarantee internet communications aren’t crossing borders.

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

#155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While there may very well be security concerns, other countries have handled this by simply banning the app on government devices (eg: https://www.gov.uk/government/news/tiktok-banned-on-uk-gover... ). You needn't ban the app nationwide to address those concerns. What I believe is more likely is that, this isn't about national security or data privacy, which could be addressed far more effectively with subject-approp…

The concerns are about adversarial foreign governments being able to silently target messages to highly-influenced demographics en masse. I swear I have heard zero people opposed to the ban who seem to even be vaguely aware of that aspect which is the entire actual issue , and instead are completely confused and think it’s about spyware or hacking. Whether or not you agree with the ban, we need to actually be discuss…

The concerns are that US hegemony over the media narrative is crumbling. Young people, "highly-influenced" as you call them, sees that American bombs are dropped on refugees in Gaza and they don't think that is right. So just do what China itself does and remove everything that challenges the government-approved narrative. Banning TikTok is no different from banning publishers of books the government doesn't like.

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

#156
post #137
post #2

Guess what I, a person who mere minutes ago had little interest in downloading DeepSeek, am doing right now? Paging Ms. Streisand…

What is a shell one-liner that downloads DeepSeek ?

If you have ollama installed and 404GB free space: ollama pull deepseek-r1:671b

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

#157

The bill is political theater and this article is playing into it. A downloaded model that can be run on US servers is covered by the first amendment as free speech. This is not the same circumstance as the law that required TikTok divest of its platform, which was over spying concerns[0]. You can’t spy on Americans when data is kept on US servers. 0. Per the TikTok Supreme Court ruling: https://www.supremecourt.gov/…

> A downloaded model that can be run on US servers is covered by the first amendment as free speech.

This is absolutely not settled law.

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

#158
post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The concerns are about adversarial foreign governments being able to silently target messages to highly-influenced demographics en masse. I swear I have heard zero people opposed to the ban who seem to even be vaguely aware of that aspect which is the entire actual issue , and instead are completely confused and think it’s about spyware or hacking. Whether or not you agree with the ban, we need to actually be discuss…

And you weak-minded simpletons have to be protected from those dangerous ideas for your own safety. We have to fill your heads with only good thoughts, the ones we select for you. I know this is the stated issue, people won't shut up about it. It's a bunch of bollocks. How China handles their media isn't a blueprint for how we should do it. I wouldn't trust this power in the hands of my parents who love me unconditio…

> And you weak-minded simpletons have to be protected from those dangerous ideas for your own safety. We have to fill your heads with only good thoughts, the ones we select for you.

Yes that's the literally the idea of TikTok/Douyin https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/17544750.2020.17...

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

#159
post #22
post #7

On the one hand Hawley proposes a lot of things that don't ever get close to becoming law. On the other hand, we did ban TikTok (which is currently unavailable on the app stores because of the ban). I can think of few ways to more effectively destroy any US advantage in AI compared with the sheer efficiency of making it illegal to learn from what competing countries have achieved. From the article, it sounds like the…

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…

TikTok executives lied under oath about what they do with user data. That alone should have resulted in its ban. But the bigger issue is that we allow a foreign adversary market access who doesn’t allow it in reverse. And yes that has the capacity to skew our political process.
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