The EARN IT act is back, and it’s more dangerous than ever • Hacker News Board

Re: The EARN IT act is back, and it’s more dangerous than ever

#501

Post by CRConrad » Wed, Feb 09, 2022, 8:53 AM UTC

kragen wrote: post #388

Joeri wrote: post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Free society means limited government, and the only way for the government to be in favor of that is for the government to vote against its own interests. I would argue that a free society protects people’s rights, and this is impossible without a strong government. As for voting against its own interests, the government in a true democracy is quite literally the will of the people. We get what we vote for. So if peo…

That is the popular ideology that was used to justify most of history's worst atrocities. Piet Hein, who coordinated the Danish Resistance (which was, arguably, the will of the Danish people, though even today the Dansk Folkeparti has seats in parliament) satirized the situation in this grook, entitled Majority Rule , in 01969: His party was the Brotherhood of Brothers, and there were more of them than of the others.…

> in 01969:

> in 01689.

> in 01762

> in 01785:

> In 01793,

> In 01850,

> In 01918,

> In 01933,

> In 01951,

> In 01958

> In 01974

> In 01762

You do know that this affectation makes you look pretty darn ridiculous, don't you?

Well, if you didn't, at least now you do. HTH!

Re: The EARN IT act is back, and it’s more dangerous than ever

#502

Post by MatekCopatek » Wed, Feb 09, 2022, 11:46 AM UTC

bagacrap wrote: post #471

MatekCopatek wrote: post #382

To start, I absolutely don't think this bill is good, BUT I think there might be potential for some interesting silver lining. Let's say it's passed and big platforms such as FB need to start heavily policing their users because they become responsible for all published content. This level of moderation is nearly impossible to achieve, so they are forced to heavily limit participation (you can only post a limited amo…

whatever "self publish your blog" means, but if it's sufficiently easy for non technical users to figure out, no doubt it's a platform that can be subjected to this law. If it's not an easy-to-use platform it will deplatform and disengage the less sophisticated internet users. The old-school internet was mostly a few eccentrics no one paid attention to.

Disagree - you could take the exact registration flow of any existing platform (e.g. Blogger) and adjust it so that instead of creating an account in their database (and consequently on their platform), it provisions a hosting account in your name and installs some blogging software there.

Re: The EARN IT act is back, and it’s more dangerous than ever

#503

Post by CRConrad » Thu, Feb 10, 2022, 4:26 AM UTC

EarlKing wrote: post #93

treis wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We had a free society and democracy before the internet.

We had a society in which all media was controlled by a handful of corporations who dictated what people saw and thought. That is not by any means a free society. Then along came Bulletin Board Systems and then the Internet, and all that changed. Legislation like the EARN IT Act is meant to turn back the clock to silence the voice of the people so that, once again, only the voice of the bourgeoisie can be heard.

> We had a society in which all media was controlled by a handful of corporations who dictated what people saw and thought.

And we still do. Some of the corporations have changed, some are the same. What else is new?

> That is not by any means a free society.

And it still isn't. No "EARN IT Act" needed for that.

Re: The EARN IT act is back, and it’s more dangerous than ever

#504

Post by CRConrad » Thu, Feb 10, 2022, 4:36 AM UTC

kragen wrote: post #460

abecedarius wrote: post #449

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems like there was a time when these Long Now dates would prompt curiosity here on HN, without so much hostility as now. I don't care about the dates, but the aggressively conventional are something else.

It's useful for flushing the unthinking conformists out of the underbrush. That way we know who would have cheered on the court's sentence on Turing or Galileo before it matters.

> It's useful for flushing the unthinking conformists out of the underbrush.

you know how its annoying asfuck to reed shit without punctuatuin and capitals and possible misspeeled and those fuckers who never use the shift period or comma keys get read a lot less than they might just because its too much drudgery to shlep through their texts? your abit like that and i dont think thats what your going for

One would think you write to be read; to inform, argue, hopefully convince (and possibly even entertain?). This silly affectation is jarring; it breaks up the reading flow and often makes at least me give up. I may be more sensitive than most to sh...tuff like this, but surely I can't be all alone in it.

So what you're doing is just robbing yourself of an audience. Is that really what you want?

OK, maybe it is: We're "unthinking conformists". So... Why do you use correct spelling, punctuation, and capitalization? The nitwits my first paragraph imitates all say that's the real, you know, sign that you're, like, square. Are you perhaps more of an "unthinking conformist" than you'd care to admit -- above all, to yourself?

Re: The EARN IT act is back, and it’s more dangerous than ever

#505

Post by CRConrad » Thu, Feb 10, 2022, 4:39 AM UTC

kragen wrote: post #401

jacquesm wrote: post #385

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And a wrong one, at that.

My opinions are always wrong but sometimes less wrong than others.

> My opinions are always wrong but sometimes less wrong than others.

"My opinions are always wrong but some times less wrong than others."

There, FTFY. Now it makes sense: Some times they're less wrong than other times.

Re: The EARN IT act is back, and it’s more dangerous than ever

#506

Post by CRConrad » Thu, Feb 10, 2022, 4:40 AM UTC

bruce511 wrote: post #276

r2_pilot wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He's representing the year numeral as YYYYY to avoid a Year 9999 problem and make it into a Year 99999 problem instead. (see The Long Now and other long-term thinking projects)

So, to be clear, he is worried that in 7000 years time it's the _date_ part of his comment that will be hard for a human, or computer, to parse? While English from 1000 years ago would be unintelligible to most of us now... And how long is HN gonna keep these threads? I was worried about the NSA but now I'm worried about dang.

> So, to be clear, he is worried that in 7000 years time it's the _date_ part of his comment that will be hard for a human, or computer, to parse?

In eight thousand years.

Re: The EARN IT act is back, and it’s more dangerous than ever

#507

Post by a-dub » Thu, Feb 10, 2022, 6:29 AM UTC

aspenmayer wrote: post #343

a-dub wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If they want to investigate stuff, they should have to get warrants and literally send out operatives to physically compromise the targeted equipment. This puts a limit on the scale of government operations. This is how it's supposed to be. i think that's mostly right. i also take the controversial view that consumer encryption should have a front door for law enforcement. there should be a mechanism where if they…

Skeleton keys are impossible to secure.

i don't believe that it would be impossible to develop a multiparty scheme for deriving decryption keys as needed.

maybe there'd be some key at the root, but it doesn't have to be known.

Re: The EARN IT act is back, and it’s more dangerous than ever

#508

Post by aspenmayer » Thu, Feb 10, 2022, 6:37 AM UTC

a-dub wrote: post #507

aspenmayer wrote: post #343

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Skeleton keys are impossible to secure.

i don't believe that it would be impossible to develop a multiparty scheme for deriving decryption keys as needed. maybe there'd be some key at the root, but it doesn't have to be known.

Creating it is the easy part. Securing it afterwards is the hard part.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AACS_encryption_key_controvers...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-bandwidth_Digital_Content...

Re: The EARN IT act is back, and it’s more dangerous than ever

#509

Post by RustyConsul » Thu, Feb 10, 2022, 4:49 PM UTC

vel0city wrote: post #427

RustyConsul wrote: post #420

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A democratic government is a government built and run for the 51%. Technically, pure anarchy is the only form of government that is for the people by the people because... theres only the people. Not some entity set above and beyond the reaches of 'The people', with authority over the people. Not that i believe in anarchy as the epitome of governance, but Bakunin has left me slightly jaded ever since i read him in hi…

> Smoking cigs are bad for your health and 80% of the people agree... So lets ban cigarettes! Smoking is kind of a bad example here. Smoking has obvious secondary effects, i.e. secondhand smoke. I have no problem with tobacco smoking being banned from shared office spaces and other common public spaces. Sure, maybe make it possible to get somewhat easy permits to allow for things like smoking lounges, certain kinds o…

I agree but why do you need to government to tell you to do that? Move, tell him to put it out, or don't go to that bar that allows smoking...

Re: The EARN IT act is back, and it’s more dangerous than ever

#510

Post by RustyConsul » Thu, Feb 10, 2022, 4:56 PM UTC

CRConrad wrote: post #500

RustyConsul wrote: post #420

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A democratic government is a government built and run for the 51%. Technically, pure anarchy is the only form of government that is for the people by the people because... theres only the people. Not some entity set above and beyond the reaches of 'The people', with authority over the people. Not that i believe in anarchy as the epitome of governance, but Bakunin has left me slightly jaded ever since i read him in hi…

> Case in point - Smoking cigs are bad for your health and 80% of the people agree... So lets ban cigarettes! Yes, please. > While we are on this topic, everyone agrees that endlessly scrolling instagram is also bad, so let's put a time limit on social media - Everyone gets an hour a day! Wrong conclusion. (What, you wanna cut my HN procrastination by three quarters?!?) Correct conclusion: Just ban all that endlessly…

yeah, but you are creating a populace that is dependent on their government for motivation, morals and concept of time spent. Not a good long term strat, and is historically what you see in the death throws of an empire.