“Printcrime” by Cory Doctorow • Hacker News Board

Re: “Printcrime” by Cory Doctorow

#71

Post by klipt » Sat, May 25, 2013, 8:37 AM UTC

anonymous wrote: post #52

yk wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the risk of sounding like a libertarian, there is no scenario in which it is good idea to use violence against a government. They will win, it is their own game. The way to change a government is political action, not use of force.

I can conceive of some edge cases where shooting at a policeman or a soldier using home-printed weapons does have positive expected value. But in general I agree with you - it's like wrestling a herd of rhinos.

As long as policeman and soldiers are humans, especially from the same country as you, there's the hope of appealing to their humanity to stop them from committing atrocities. Unmanned drones or robot soldiers are much scarier.

Re: “Printcrime” by Cory Doctorow

#72

Post by ansgri » Sat, May 25, 2013, 12:16 PM UTC

MindTwister wrote: post #51

freehunter wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

See that's not the same though, unless the garage directly led to making the crime possible. Change a few words and see if it still makes sense: what if the person used their life for criminal purposes? If they get out of prison do you still allow them to have life? A garage is a place, not a tool.

What about changing it then... If I build a detonator using a soldering iron and spare parts from a radio, should I be banned from ever owning a soldering iron... or a radio

The main difference is in the scale: you can't solder a thousand detonators before the police notices you. With a fast printing technology, you can.

Re: “Printcrime” by Cory Doctorow

#73

Post by AnthonyMouse » Sat, May 25, 2013, 1:35 PM UTC

hcarvalhoalves wrote: post #63

freehunter wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

See that's not the same though, unless the garage directly led to making the crime possible. Change a few words and see if it still makes sense: what if the person used their life for criminal purposes? If they get out of prison do you still allow them to have life? A garage is a place, not a tool.

It's exactly the same thing. What defines a crime is intention . For instance, firing a gun is not a crime per se. Or in the case of the United States, even building one isn't illegal, since no one made a law to make it so. [1] On the other hand, attempt to shoot, shooting or killing someone, are all possibly crimes, depending if there's intention and the circumstances (e.g., self-defense). So in your example, if som…

>It's the same case as hackers sentenced for years away from computers.

Which always was, and remains, complete nonsense.

If someone steals a car, you don't prohibit them from driving their own car to work after they return to society.

The analogy the proponents of this nonsense will present is that it's more like lawyers being disbarred or bankers being prohibited from working in the financial industry. But that analogy fails, because prohibiting you from using a computer is not the analog of prohibiting you from being a lawyer or a banker, it's the analog of denying access to the court system or the ability to use money.

Re: “Printcrime” by Cory Doctorow

#74

Post by AnthonyMouse » Sat, May 25, 2013, 1:41 PM UTC

ansgri wrote: post #72

MindTwister wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What about changing it then... If I build a detonator using a soldering iron and spare parts from a radio, should I be banned from ever owning a soldering iron... or a radio

The main difference is in the scale: you can't solder a thousand detonators before the police notices you. With a fast printing technology, you can.

Your argument goes the other way. If someone with a printer can do the malicious thing quickly then prohibiting ownership of the printer is useless, because someone prohibited from owning it could just borrow one from someone not so prohibited for a very short period of time, do the crime, and return it without being detected. You might as well just prohibit the act of making detonators, because you'll never catch one without the other. Prohibiting ownership of the printers will just prevent those trying to reform themselves from using their skill in using printers to make legitimate things that benefit society.

Re: “Printcrime” by Cory Doctorow

#75

Post by AnthonyMouse » Sat, May 25, 2013, 1:54 PM UTC

klipt wrote: post #71

anonymous wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can conceive of some edge cases where shooting at a policeman or a soldier using home-printed weapons does have positive expected value. But in general I agree with you - it's like wrestling a herd of rhinos.

As long as policeman and soldiers are humans, especially from the same country as you, there's the hope of appealing to their humanity to stop them from committing atrocities. Unmanned drones or robot soldiers are much scarier.

The thing with war is that the odds can change quickly. If you don't have any weapons and the enemy soldiers have machine guns, but you can sneak up behind one of them before anyone notices, now you have a machine gun.

The thing is, drones and robots work pretty much the same way. They work much more that way, actually, because if you find a vulnerability in one, it's likely present in all of them since they all came off the same assembly line. You don't have to kill all the drones, you just have to kill the ones guarding the drone control facility, or convert the drone operators to your side.

The most dangerous thing about robot armies isn't that it will make governments too powerful, it's that a terrorist could take control of them. And the only way to prevent that is to not build them.

Re: “Printcrime” by Cory Doctorow

#76

Post by veidr » Sat, May 25, 2013, 2:23 PM UTC

e12e wrote: post #56

jbooth wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can spin up US cloud providers from inside China and tunnel to them in about 15 minutes. It's just that most people don't bother -- there'll always be the people on the edge, though.

You could. But someone unable to afford an account with a US cloud provider might not.

Not to mention the fact that most people in China don't have Internet access of any kind.

Re: “Printcrime” by Cory Doctorow

#77

Post by veidr » Sat, May 25, 2013, 2:42 PM UTC

yk wrote: post #48

angersock wrote: post #20

So, one wonders--how does anyone who detests the idea of getting arrested for printing things and having printer tech confiscated simultaneously detest the idea of printing weapons with which to defend yourself and your means of production?

On the risk of sounding like a libertarian, there is no scenario in which it is good idea to use violence against a government. They will win, it is their own game. The way to change a government is political action, not use of force.

It bears pointing out that the vast majority of changes to government have, historically, been brought about by violence. Only a vanishingly small minority of them have been effected through nonviolent political action.

(Once a society has achieved democracy, the equation may be different (and closer to what you are saying). However, only a small minority of human societies have achieved democracy.)

TL;DR: fuck it, print weapons

Re: “Printcrime” by Cory Doctorow

#78

Post by jabbernotty » Sat, May 25, 2013, 3:25 PM UTC

bowerbird wrote: post #44

jabbernotty wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They just asked a question. There is no need to be snarky, and your suggestion wouldn't even have answered their question.

actually, "they" didn't ask any question. and peterkelley wasn't being "snarky" either. he was making a joke, based on the description of the subject-matter of the book. oh, and i'm not being "snarky" either. but it's so very difficult to resist the temptation!, i don't know if i'm gonna be able to do it!, i can feel myself slipping even as i continue typing!... -bowerbird

I didn't reply to peterkelly.

Re: “Printcrime” by Cory Doctorow

#79

Post by joelhooks » Sat, May 25, 2013, 4:37 PM UTC

GuiA wrote: post #65

joelhooks wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've come to a similar conclusion. We homeschool, and my oldest is 15. "How to teach my kid to program" is the wrong question. My oldest is barely interested. He's getting to the point where it might be good as job skill, and he knows that, but he's not hacking his nights away. Could care less. My middle son however is 11 and is constantly hacking at stuff. Setting up his friends' minecraft servers. Asking me questio…

Do you have links to relevant articles/essays/etc. about homeschooling? All the homeschooling families I've seen were the religious-nut kind, but I frequently see commenters on HN mention that they homeschool their kids, which is causing me to do a double take on the whole thing. I'm quite a few years from having kids, but am curious about the subject. Thanks in advance!

John Taylor Gatto[1] was a huge early influence for me. You are right about the religious saturation in the homeschool world. They paved the way (legally), so I respect that, but there is a lot more opportunity in home education outside of religious exclusion.

The time we get together is amazing, and I wouldn't trade it for anything. I love the fact that they can spend a Thursday building Lego and making stop motion animations, and it is an acceptable educational activity.

They get a lot of social time too. People generally worry about that, but it hasn't been an issue.

[1] http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/

Re: “Printcrime” by Cory Doctorow

#80

Post by nitrogen » Sat, May 25, 2013, 10:59 PM UTC

maeon3 wrote: post #13

This is reminiscent of Gnu's "Right to read". http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html What is the solution if a person uses a printer to print devices that are used for what most people consider criminal behavior? For example, someone printing high performing secret remote detonating bomb materials for political enemy rallies. After they serve the prison sentence. Do you let them own an open source printer a…

After they serve the prison sentence. Do you let them own an open source printer again and let them use it without restriction?

According to one of the extra features on a well-known activist documentary about health care, in Norway a man convicted of murdering his family with a chainsaw was rehabilitated in part by employing him as a (well-supervised) logger, presumably to ensure his mind is well-trained in correct and incorrect uses of chainsaws.

So "serve the prison sentence" is the wrong way to look at it. Instead we should be saying, "After they've been rehabilitated and reintegrated into society," with the focus on rehabilitation to prevent recidivism, rather than retribution to satisfy our primitive lust for revenge.