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Comment by peter_d_sherman | Hacker News Reader

The problem here is that "hacking techniques" to a black hat are also, equal-and-oppositely, legitimate security research and prevention -- to a white hat / security researcher / ethical hacker...

In other words, they're aspects of the same thing...

The idea that you're going to ban something because one aspect of it has a negative social purpose is philosophically unsound... We don't ban videos on electricity or electrical engineering because people can be electrocuted... We don't ban videos on chainsaws because they could be used to cut a person in half... We don't ban videos on cars because they could be used to run people over... Everything in the universe can be used for a positive or negative purpose, when you start banning things because some people use these things for negative purposes, you misunderstand that those effects are caused by the actor, not the information and/or the tool that's being used...

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Ironically, I tracked the real world identity of someone using stolen credit cards in my ecom site BECAUSE he posted a tutorial/how-to on YouTube showing the vulnerability tool (script kiddie), under his real name. SMH.

This won't stop this information from being disseminated, but it may save some idiots from themselves.

It would be ironic if Youtube did this because they were tired of fulfilling warrants from governments over authors of these videos

> We don't ban videos on electricity or electrical engineering because people can be electrocuted... We don't ban videos on chainsaws because they could be used to cut a person in half... We don't ban videos on cars because they could be used to run people over...

Don’t give to YouTube too many ideas.

I think the real problem is the obsession with a centralized video silo, when internet video hasn't been "hard" for nigh on a decade. Chuck a video on a host (hell, Cloudfront is just an SFTP transfer away), and drop an HTML video tag onto a web page and you're done.

Everyone who wants to run some sort of "channel" can trivially use cheap hosting and open syndication tools.

Cloudfront may only be a transfer away but bandwidth pricing is so expensive you can not afford it for video streaming.

> The idea that you're going to ban something because one aspect of it has a negative social purpose is philosophically unsound

Uh, guns?

If you meant to stay on topic (reads like a tangent), I believe firearm videos are still kosher on Youtube. Look up FPSRussia.

If by kosher, you mean "allowed, without monetisation, and under some arcane, opaque and onerous restrictions that mean you never know if this video will get you a strike or not", then yeah, they are

We're not banning knives though, are we? Guns are different, and they're banned for the same reasons that, say, carrying around a bioweapon is banned.

- Their primary purpose is to inflict harm.

- The harm caused is potentially / easily lethal.

- Their existence escalates nearly all situations.

- They're dangerous items that can very easily cause accidental harm.

"we"? In the UK you are not allowed to carry a knife with you, unless you just bought one and are bringing to home or are a certified chief who needs one for work, or are going camping.

Hmm, how is it actually regulated? So, e.g. if I am going to my friends and carrying a bottle of wine altogether with pocket knife bundled with a corkscrew to be sure I will be able to open it, then I am in a grey zone or even illegal?

As long as it's a small, non-locking pocket knife, you're fine. If it's larger, you're fine as long as you have a good reason (eg. needed for work).

That's dangerous advice in many areas of the United States. In NYC if a police officer finds any kind of folding knife, regardless of how harmless, if he wants to arrest you he probably can under NYPD's absurd perversion of the law by considering it possession of a drop knife. If the officer can open the knife by holding it and flicking it open via inertia then he can arrest the victim for possession of a drop knife. They usually don't hold the handle to try and flick it open either, they'll hold it from the tip of the blade as that makes it very easy to just arrest anyone with a pocket knife.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15372404

The first man mentioned in that article was convicted and sentenced to 6 years in prison on the sole charge of possession of this knife.

https://www.amazon.com/Sheffield-12113-One-Hand-Opening-Lock...

Try with a slightly-stuck Opinell. You're more likely to throw the knive or cut/puncture your finger than you are to flick it open. You can push it open with the thumb while retaining the handle with the ring? finger, but that's not flicking.

If the blade is under 3" and isn't a locking blade you don't need a reason. If the blade is longer than 3" you need a reason. "I'm taking this bottle of wine to my friend's house and they don't have a corkscrew" would be fine.

Many states in the USA are similar once you get above a certain blade length to allow for common pocket knives. Then again the same rules will get you in trouble for having a baseball bat and don't seem to have a good reason.

Actually, in the UK you are not legally allowed to carry a hard fruit such as for example a squash or miniature pumpkin in a plastic carry bag if you end up using it for self defence when attacked.

Yes, that's right, in UK carrying in public any object that can be or is used as a weapon (including defensively) is considered a crime. This is normally applied to knives, but if the letter of the law was to be adhered to someone who did defend themselves against an attack with a small pumpkin could be arrested for the possession of the said pumpkin... This is the madness of UK law.

I remember few years ago a situation where a dog attacked a small child and wouldn't let go, someone ran home, grabbed a kitchen knife, killed the dog and saved the child. When the police arrived they had to arrest the person who saved the child life because of the knife... Thankfully the person didn't end up being charged as no witness would testify that that person has indeed used a knife as a weapon.

No, this is untrue.

You're not allowed to carry a hard fruit in a bag with the intention of using it as a self defence weapon. But if you go shopping and happen to have it on you when you're attacked you're allowed to use it to defend yourself. (And you don't need to wait for the attacker to land the first blow, you're allowed the first strike if you're genuinely trying to defend yourself).

EDIT: also, you seem to misunderstand the purpose of English arrests. Of course if you stab an animal to death you're going to get arrested. The arrest allows the police to question you, and it _protects your rights_ -- you get a free lawyer for that interview; they have 24 hours to charge or release you etc.

You make it sound like arresting the person is doing them a favor.

That's not actually true, the law states, "Without a reasonable excuse", so any reasonable excuse is fine. The idea you'd need to be "certified" to carry a knife is fiction to drive an agenda.

Ok, by "certified" I just meant that if you say you are a chef, you better be employed as a chef and be able to prove it. I don't mean that you need to produce a diploma from a culinary school. If you get stopped with a knife on the London metro saying you're off to cook some food at someone's place(and you need your own knife for some reason) that's probably not going to be accepted without some brief investigation.

That's untrue.

If the blade is under 3 inches (and isn't lockable) you're allowed to carry it.

If the blade is longer than 3 inches you need a valid reason to carry it.

It's not automatically legal to carry a blade under 3 inches,

(2)Subject to subsection (3) below, this section applies to any article which has a blade or is sharply pointed except a folding pocketknife.

(3)This section applies to a folding pocketknife if the cutting edge of its blade exceeds 3 inches.

The three inches is clarification around folded pocketknives, it's not blanket authorisation to carry knives less than that length.

Banning guns is philosophically unsound, for the exact reasons this guy just listed. Look at Britian where they are now having unprecedented amounts of stabbings and are actually confiscating things like pliers and forks.

I'm uncertain about this idea that increase in knife crime means gun control is pointless. I'd much rather get stabbed than shot given the differential in mortality. Even if all gun crimes were replaced with knife crimes the per capita homicide will be lower.

Guns are loud even with a silencer. Knife crimes are easier to conceal in urban ambush situations.

If that were such a big factor, then allowing guns wouldn't make a difference, as criminal could still choose to carry a knife for this reason.

Look at Chicago for an example: It's one of the most restrictive states in the union on 'gun control' yet has some of the highest murder rates and death by guns across the board.

Seems to have worked GREAT there!

I read years ago in a book about gangs that knife wounds lead to death far more often than gunshot wounds

Yeah, guns are another example.

Popular hacking-related YouTube channel LiveOverflow has a nice discussion of the ban that addresses this very concern at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LIdZ2oPyB1Y

What’s the gist of it? I can’t watch videos without headphones, my speaker is busted :/

The video is captioned if you want. But the TL;DW is that there's an ethical spectrum of security content; on one end is sketchy content that has little educational value - like, say, a tutorial on how to make a phishing page - and on the other end is educational content that could be applied maliciously but isn't intended that way - like a general web programming tutorial (or a DefCon talk). YouTube seems justified in demonetizing or removing the former type of content, but the difference between these two types is not always obvious if you don't have a security background, and so it's expected that there will be some false positives / negatives in YouTube's filtering. In practice, educational content (from LiveOverflow, for example, and from the other security channels he knows) hasn't been banned, and the few false-positive bans appear to have been reverted quickly, so it seems like this is largely a non-issue. If YouTube actually starts blocking educational security content, and not being responsive to appeals, then this would worth being upset about, but right now it seems like a non-issue.

(Note that YouTube has plenty of other problems; I'm just summarizing LiveOverflow's take on this particular controversy)

Oh man thank you so much for that. Totally makes sense and glad live overflow won’t be (hopefully) affected.

Videos aren’t working at all because the speakers on my phone are busted. On an iPhone, they won’t load even if the volume is set to 0. It has to have an output :(

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