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Malus – Clean Room as a Service

malus.sh

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Re: Malus – Clean Room as a Service

#521

Post by awwaiid »

gault8121 wrote: post #400
arrsingh wrote: post #295

It took me a minute to recognize this as satire (thank you HN comments). However it does actually make sense - maybe this could be a way for OSS devs to get paid. What if we did build a clean room as a service but the proceeds from that didn't go to the "Malus.sh" corporation, but to the owners / maintainers of the OSS being implemented. Maybe all OSS repos should switch to AGPL or some viral license with link to pay…

This site is not satire. You can actually pay on Stripe and it will create code for you. The site is written with satirical language but it is a real service.

.... did you give them money? Brave!

Re: Malus – Clean Room as a Service

#522

Post by terryf »

dinowars wrote: post #503
terryf wrote: post #351

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The speed limit example is a great one. Consider a road that has a 35mph limit. Now - which of the following scenarios is SAFER: a) I'm driving on the road in a brand new 4x4 porsche on a sunny day with great visibility and brand new tyres. Doing 40mph. b) I'm driving on the same road in a 70s car with legal but somewhat worn out tyres, in the dark, while it's raining heavily. Doing 35mph. Of course technically optio…

If there was an accident an officer might give you a fine in both cases where I live. In the Porsche case they can say you broke the law and were speeding that led to the accident. But also in the case of old car for failing to adjust your speed to your skills, the state of your vehicle and conditions of the road and weather regardless of the speed limit.

Yes! This is exactly the point - machinistic enforcement makes no sense in case of speed limits. All laws about driving explicitly say that at the end of the day it's the driver's responsibility to drive safely and if they cause an accident, then they are at fault in some cases even if they followed the speed limit.

The point is that whether you drove dangerously is not a strict, machinistic "if-then" assessment. Automatic enforcement of speeding is ridiculous when viewed in this context.

And the people saying "yes but there is more energy in a faster vehicle" have clearly not felt the difference between driving a car with drum brakes vs modern brakes.

Re: Malus – Clean Room as a Service

#524

Post by nwatson »

modeless wrote: post #100
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…

We should welcome more precise law enforcement. Imperfect enforcement is too easy for law enforcement officers to turn into selective enforcement. By choosing who to go after, law enforcement gets the unearned power to change the law however they want, enforcing unwritten rules of their choosing. Having law enforcement make the laws is bad. The big caveat, though, is that when enforcement becomes more accurate, the r…

Enforcement stops completely at around US$1-billion.

Re: Malus – Clean Room as a Service

#525

Post by bombcar »

andrewaylett wrote: post #517
no-name-here wrote: post #460

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think their point was that a lot (but not all) of the existing argument boils down to “Well it should be that way because someone decided it hundreds of years ago” so if we are consciously starting again from scratch, ideally that specific argument no longer holds water. (I’d say we should instead use data based approaches, look at what has been successful in other countries, etc, although that’s slightly expanding…

One big difference between the UK's historic constitutionalia and the US is that the UK generally recognises that we only do things a certain way because agreeing how to change them is too hard, while the US appears to think that they do things in their certain way because that's the right way to do them. Specific examples for the UK: inducting politicians into the Privy Council in order to qualify them for security…

Modern democracy starts to make a lot more sense when you realize the driving principles are "what works easy enough" and "how do we prevent getting to the point of violent revolution".

Re: Malus – Clean Room as a Service

#527

Post by ericzundel »

Of course, it's a serious issue, but I love the sense of humor here, buried deep down:

Full legal indemnification* Through our offshore subsidiary in a jurisdiction that doesn't recognize software copyright

...

The MalusCorp Guarantee™ If any of our liberated code is found to infringe on the original license, we'll provide a full refund and relocate our corporate headquarters to international waters.

*This has never happened because it legally cannot happen. Trust us.

Re: Malus – Clean Room as a Service

#529

Post by phlakaton »

Otterly99 wrote: post #500
necovek wrote: post #438

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any law, including a speed limit, has unforeseen consequences. In my part of the world, there is a 4km stretch of the road with good visibility, low pedestrian traffic, and which takes you either 10 minutes to go through if you follow the limits, or 3 minutes if you drive at +5km/h. Other than lost time (which compounds, but also increases traffic congestion, so those 10 mins might turn into 20-25), the fuel use and…

Not sure how that makes sense, it takes a third of the time, but you're only going 5 km/h faster?

I presume they're beating some ill-timed traffic lights and overstating the savings.

Re: Malus – Clean Room as a Service

#530

Post by phlakaton »

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…

Agree with all this, but am not sure how it applies to this case. This seems rather the opposite behavior: accelerated bad de facto behavior because de jure enforcement is infeasible.

We are seeing this in the world of digital media, where frivolous DMCA and YouTube takedown reports are used indiscriminately and with seemingly little consequence to the bad actor. Corporations are prematurely complying with bad actors as a risk reduction measure. The de jure avenues to push back on this are weak, slow, expensive, and/or infeasible.

So if you ask me what's the bigger threat right now, stricter or less strict enforcement, I'd argue that it's still generally the latter. Though in the specific case of copyright I'd like to see a bunch of the law junked, and temporal scope greatly reduced (sorry not sorry, Disney and various literary estates), because the de facto effects of it on the digital (and analog!) commons are so insidious.

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