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Comment by bryanlarsen | Hacker News Reader

I think it's a horrible way to teach about civil disobedience.

The point of civil disobedience is to get the law changed. By quietly lying about your age, you're doing the opposite, you're making it harder to get the law changed. Civil disobedience is about adding friction to the system as an incentive to change the law. By doing something nobody can notice you're adding grease.

It's not civil disobedience if nobody notices what you're doing. It's not civil disobedience if you aren't inconveniencing people in power.

By lying about your age, you're breaking the law purely for selfish benefit, which is not the lesson a parent wants to teach a child.

Sacrificing himself by following the law, and spreading the story widely as the author and his son have done will do much more to get the law changed.

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Thank you for your comment. People seem to have no idea what civil disobedience is. In addition to the good points you made, I'd also like to point out a couple things: First, this is not civil disobedience, it's corporate disobedience. And second, people seem to have forgotten that civil disobedience entails putting your ass on the line, in the form of publicly and flagrantly breaking a law.

The point of civil disobedience is to appeal to people's consciences, to call out a wrong far greater than your law-breaking, and to willingly open yourself to prosecution in order to make that point. (That's why Anonymous isn't committing civil disobedience until they turn themselves in and allow themselves to be on trial in order to call attention to the unalloyed benefit to society they seem to think they're providing.)

I don't see how Google's disallowing ten year olds to have Gmail accounts is a wrong: it seems more like a simple business decision in the face of a law that's designed to keep companies from preying on ten year olds by inundating them with marketing.

We all know the poster's child is special, but for all of the kids who aren't the offspring of übermenshen, this is a fight that maybe's not worth fighting.

My youngest brother is eight. Far from being the offspring of ubermenshen, he suffers from a slew of learning disabilities inflicted on his brain by drug use during pregnancy.

My brother doesn't type fast, he doesn't know how to code python. He does immensely enjoy minecraft, and he does use google. Honestly, for him, the ability to find something using google, going through the immensely difficult task of correctly typing a search term and then parsing the search result is a massive achievement.

All that said, to suggest that he shouldn't be allowed his gmail account, given the immense amount of effort it took for him to learn to use it, is not something I'm willing to stomach.

Its part of the internet, and he is well and truly a member of the internet generation. Its something he should have every right to grow up immersed in.

That the internet is made of advertising is no reason to deny our children access.

Yes, my daughter is too young to use Google. I will probably break the TOS and allow her to use Google when it gets older. My point is that this isn't civil disobedience or corporate disobedience, this is just me breaking the TOS. I'm cool with that, but I'm not going to pretty it up and call it civil disobedience.

First, this is not civil disobedience, it's corporate disobedience.

Not really. The reason it seems fuzzy is that the modern US government likes to offload its regulations onto corporations and other entities. In the interest of "protecting" children, they subject online service providers to penalties for allowing children access. In turn, these services must restrict access by children in order to protect themselves from the government.

Thus, although the direct object of the action is Google -- a corporation -- it really is an act against the nanny state.

COPPA protects children from advertisers. Google makes all of its money through advertisements. It appears that the law is doing exactly what it should be doing.

Ten years old is a condition of birth, just like race or gender, and is therefore an unlawful basis for discrimination. Discrimination may only be done by behavioral test, such as the tests the FAA uses to determine if 10 year-olds should be allowed to pilot an airplane (yes, really).

"... the face of a law that's designed to keep companies from preying on ten year olds by inundating them with marketing."

Then why ban 13 year-olds but allow mentally retarded 14 year-olds? Because this law, like all based on condition of birth, is about domination and control for political ends.

"People seem to have no idea what civil disobedience is."

It is breaking a law because you were born free. You don't have to have an axe to grind.

Not every law is good, and just because something is written to law doesn't mean that you should blindly obey it. I think the grandparent post is right in that this is a nice way of illustrating that point.

However, I definitely see your point that quietly lying about his age is likely not the best way to get the law changed.

I agree with you that you not only have to break the law but publicly flaunt it. I think the blog post is a good first step in an overall plan, which may include the production of letters to members of congress, or other political persons (Judges?).

My point was that if you see something that is obviously wrong and it's caused by a well intended law you have a responsibility to do something. I admit I'm something of a freedom zealot so my view on what corporations and especially the government can restrict you from doing is broad in general, but clearly this is a good learning opportunity about what to do if you're faced with a "buggy program" (aka a law).

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