Hacker News Reader

Comment by RockyMcNuts | Hacker News Reader

Seems a little like saying, you burn some gas and your car goes, and if it goes 80mph, that's just physics. You can't make it illegal to obey the laws of physics?

Plants are just biology and burning things is just chemistry. You can't make it illegal for a plant to grow and for a human burn it and inhale it, can you?

Well...if you pass a law that pi=3 it doesn't change the nature of the universe, but it does regulate human transactions, and human behavior can be and sure is regulated using some strange laws.

View on HN

> Seems a little like saying, you burn some gas and your car goes, and if it goes 80mph, that's just physics.

So, if you want to try to use this metaphor, the situation is actually a little bit different. Try this:

"Seat belts make it safe to go faster than 20 MPH, and tolerable to go faster than 80 MPH. Unfortunately, sometimes bank robbers use them while going faster than 80 MPH, so we have to ban seat belts entirely to prevent them from robbing banks."

Good one: brakes make it possible for bank robbers to travel faster than 80mph in a car, therefore the police must have a way to remotely disable brakes to catch escaping bank robbers. Oh you can trust the police the keep the brake-disabler safe from terrorists, don't worry.

It's more like saying if you draw a picture of a car going 80mph, that's just a drawing.

Doing physics or chemistry can directly harm people. Doing math or drawing pictures can't.

>Doing physics or chemistry can directly harm people. Doing math or drawing pictures can't.

Like the article said analogies are no fun. I agree with your premise but not with your conclusion.

You will perhaps agree that encryption has the potential to directly harm people just as physics or chemistry?

Doing physics or chemistry can directly harm people. Doing math or drawing pictures can't.

This argument might have worked, up until the point when they criminalized cartoon child pornography.

You will perhaps agree that encryption has the potential to directly harm people just as physics or chemistry?

No.

From what I remember, the child pon drawing law was about people taking child pon photography, and running it through a Photoshop filter to make it look like a drawing. That way people were trying to get around the law. Also, it was trivial to return the 'drawing' back into a photo by reversing the filter.

Hm, but then this is something different, if you just have to reverse a filter, then normal child porn laws apply, I would think.

> You will perhaps agree that encryption has the potential to directly harm people just as physics or chemistry?

I would not agree. Encryption can only indirectly harm people, in the same vein as speech.

All kinds of speech is regulated... talking about a murder is conspiracy, financial transactions are just bits moving around and they are highly regulated, talking about transactions incorrectly is fraud, yelling 'fire' in a crowded movie theater is a crime... as soon as there's a nexus between speech and action the speech is regulated.

And this is why we have the term mens rea.

Obviously there is much more to conspiracy than "talking about a murder," or Stephen King would be locked up in Supermax. It's as if Comey is asking for the right to review every murder mystery or horror novel before it hits the shelves. If he wants his job to be that easy, he should send his resume to North Korea.

Wrong math certainly do harm people directly. One example: Ariane 5

Reply on news.ycombinator.com