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Malus – Clean Room as a Service

malus.sh

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Re: Malus – Clean Room as a Service

#551

Post by zezeh »

jerf wrote: post #75

An interesting aspect of this, especially their blog post ( https://malus.sh/blog.html ), is that it acknowledges a strain in our legal system I've been observing for decades, but don't think the legal system or people in general have dealt with, which is that generally costs matter . A favorite example of mine is speed limits. There is a difference between "putting up a sign that says 55 mph and walking away", "putt…

I see many comments focusing on whether speed limits (or the law) should or should not be enforced, while the main idea in this post is to say that today any agreement can be measured to the dot.

I agree with the author that we are not prepared for the consequences of such a change and that it can lead to abuse on many instances.

Re: Malus – Clean Room as a Service

#552

Post by fph »

frenchie4111 wrote: post #99
hmokiguess wrote: post #26

The fact that it took me the comments sections to understand this is satire speaks a lot about the current status of where things are going. EDIT: Reading it again its quite obvious, I was just skimming at first, but still damn. Hilarious

lol - it's literally called malus but I guess that's only an obvious giveaway in retrospect

Malus is also Latin for "apple tree", coincidentally.

Re: Malus – Clean Room as a Service

#553

Post by bambax »

grumbelbart2 wrote: post #515
bambax wrote: post #492

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My mom, who's a lawyer, always told us that laws don't matter, what matter is how hard they're enforced, and we can simply ignore laws that exist but we know for a fact they're not enforced (or not enforceable). I once had small talk with Lawrence Lessig after a conference of his, and when I told him that he was visibly shocked, as if I had told him I was raised to be a criminal. Now I'm not sure what to think anymor…

Your mother's advice sounds terribly selfish, honestly. Our society is pretty much build on the fact that most people are in some way "good" and will not break laws and rules even if they could get away with it. There are tons of stuff every day I could steal, knowing that any law I might break would not be enforceable simply because no one knew it was me. Littering in the forest. Dumping toxic materials into rivers.…

Sure; I was generalizing; my mother never taught us that stealing or killing or even polluting was fine if we would not get caught!

However I don't think I agree with your way of thinking. The reason we have laws is because people will not naturally do the right thing; otherwise laws and police would be entirely unnecessary, no?

Re: Malus – Clean Room as a Service

#555

Post by Twey »

jll29 wrote: post #477
Twey wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem with precise law enforcement is that the legal system is incredibly complex. There's a tagline that ‘everybody's a criminal’; I don't know if that's necessarily true but I do definitely believe that a large number of ‘innocent’ people are criminals (by the letter of the law) without their knowledge. Because we usually only bother to prosecute crimes if some obvious harm has been done this doesn't cause a…

> I do definitely believe that a large number of ‘innocent’ people are criminals (by the letter of the law) without their knowledge. Because of that (or rather, to sort out the mess), I always felt that citizens should have a right to be informed of every law that they are expected to obey so that at least in principle, they'd be able to comply (to be effective, plain language explanations would need to be included).…

They certainly have the right. All laws are (effectively?) public in every country I can think of, even when the law is ‘don't upset the not-so-benevolent dictator’. The problem is that to try to cover all the corner cases the sheer amount of law in effect in rule-of-law countries is too much for any one human to realistically consume, and that's before getting into the various _interpretations_ of the laws given by case law, precedent, etc. Any ‘plain-language’ explanation would be a) still gigantic and b) wrong in new and exciting ways — this is why the entire profession of ‘lawyer’ exists.

To make this more practicable you might be able to drastically narrow the context of the information, e.g. to the current task. So you could have an app that watches everything you do and tells you if you're (possibly) about to break a law. The extreme version of this looks like wearing a body camera at all times and having a little ‘voice of the state’ in your ear that tells you what your legal options are on every circumstance. Maybe a little dystopian, especially if it starts reporting you if you don't follow its guidance.

Re: Malus – Clean Room as a Service

#556

Post by beagle3 »

singpolyma3 wrote: post #512
beagle3 wrote: post #339

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The existing laws are rarely well specified enough for precise enforcement, often on purpose. You cannot have precise enforcement with imprecise laws. It’s as simple as that. The HN favorite in this respect is “fair use” under copyright. It isn’t well specified enough for “precise enforcement”. How do you suggest we approach that one?

We can fix it by fixing the law. In this case the obvious solution is to abolish copyright (and other IP laws).

Good Luck!

Re: Malus – Clean Room as a Service

#558

Post by aftbit »

derefr wrote: post #544
aftbit wrote: post #537

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, in the same way that vehicles without backup cameras or even airbags still exist. They will become less common over time. Vehicles don't have to be fully autonomous to provide this "service". They just need to have a reliable grasp of which road segment they are on and what the speed limit is. It will take some time but it won't be long before there are no cars left on the road that lack the (at least theoretic…

I would note that motorcycles, ATVs, tractors, etc. still don't have seatbelts or airbags. And sure, that's partly because, for some combinations of safety feature x vehicle class, they fundamentally can't . But we could have just outlawed public road use by those vehicle classes because of that. We didn't, because the lack of much more basic safety features (e.g. a roll cage) was already "priced in" to our decision…

A guy on a literbike can drive at such stupidly fast speeds that he can't actually be pulled over already. By and large, society continues to function despite the occasional scofflaw doing 180 in a 55. They don't even tend to kill bystanders all that often.

I would imagine that if, say, 95% of vehicles on the road were incapable of speeding, there would be very little reason for the police to attempt to stop the other 5%. You'd probably still have token speed enforcement, but without the revenue raising potential of frequent speed tickets, it would likely make sense to direct enforcement resources elsewhere.

Re: Malus – Clean Room as a Service

#559

Post by JambalayaJimbo »

godelski wrote: post #540
gbalduzzi wrote: post #327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If a law being enforced 100% of the time causes problems then rethink the law (i.e. raise the speed limit, or design the road slower). Isn't this the point of the whole conversation we are having here? Laws on copyright were not created for current AI usage on open source project replication. They need to change, because if they are perfectly enforced by the letter, they result in actions that are clearly against t…

What would really help is for people to understand that that's the "spirit of the law" and the "letter of the law". People don't want the letter of the law enforced, they want the spirit. Using the example from above, speed limits were made for safety. They were set at a time and surprise, cars got safer. So people feel safer driving faster. They're breaking the letter of the law but not the spirit. I actually like t…

>cars have gotten safer

For their inhabitants, maybe not pedestrians though. Speeding laws are in part for protecting pedestrians

Re: Malus – Clean Room as a Service

#560

Post by JambalayaJimbo »

fiddlerwoaroof wrote: post #457
hamdingers wrote: post #373

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Cayenne would be safer going 35 instead of 40 regardless of all other variables. It's a trivial physics question, kinetic energy is a function of mass and velocity.

The Cayenne would not be safer going 35 instead of 40 "regardless of all other variables": it's statistically safer to go closer to the flow of traffic because you're then "at rest" with respect to other drivers (assuming a controlled access road without pedestrian traffic). If the speed limit is 55 and the flow of traffic is 70–80 (as is the case with the Beltway around DC, despite automated enforcement), then going…

The problem with your DC beltway example wouldn’t be automated enforcement then, but with the speed limit itself.

A road without pedestrians and intersections in it should have a speed limit that reflects the reality of its use (70-80)

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