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Comment by vorpalhex | Hacker News Reader

That is not quite correct. The question is undecided. It could be illegal and have been illegal this entire time.

Which makes it legal. When the courts interpret law it addresses a case and informs going forward. I don't believe, for instance, people can be retroactively tried for abortions during the period Roe V. Wade stood.

I'm not sure this is true; it addresses a case, which means the interpretation already is ex-post-facto. I don't know the answer, but it wouldn't surprise me if, in states with anti-abortion laws standing for which the statute of limitations has not expired, abortion providers could be held legally liable.

Ex post facto laws are forbidden by the US Constitution, both at federal and state levels. [1]

At least, at this time, with current interpretation- "the Supreme Court has explained that people must have notice of the possible criminal penalties for their actions at the time they act" [2] (See also Weaver v Graham[3])

This might be subject to change.

[1]https://constitution.congress.gov/browse/essay/artI-S9-C3-3-...

[2]https://constitution.congress.gov/browse/essay/artI-S9-C3-3-...

[3]http://cdn.loc.gov/service/ll/usrep/usrep450/usrep450024/usr...

The laws are not ex post facto. They have been on the books, on some cases for over 100 years. States were not enforcing them, because they believed they were constitutionally prohibited from doing so.

Roe v. Wade is a ruling that people have a right to abortions. Removing it removes the right. It doesn’t retroactively remove the right.

A new law that is passed doesn’t have retroactive power

A court ruling that the thing you’ve been doing for a year has been breaking an existing law can absolutely punish you for it. But it’s unlikely to punish random individuals doing things on a non noteworthy scale when a clear understanding of the law in a new context has not been established.

Pedandtly, this is not true. You might think something you’re doing is legal, but when someone takes you to court, it’s because they’re arguing that what you’re doing is already illegal. And if the court sided with them, then what you were doing was illegal the whole time. Courts don’t make laws, they interpret existing laws. Everyone can interpret laws in their own favor, but it doesn’t make things ‘legal’ in the definitive sense

The fact there’s multiple companies with lawyers on staff already doing it should suggest you shouldn’t claim it’s illegal based on no evidence.

(It’s legal the same way Google Image Search is.)

Why would you assume companies only do legal things? Companies break the law constantly it’s consequences law departments care about not legality.

This is why we do heath inspections etc, it’s all about shifting the risk vs reward calculation.

> Companies break the law constantly

That's obvious hyperbole and not a useful, or even factual, rebuttal.

It’s factual in much the same way the average person breaks multiple laws as written every day.

Much of this is simple ignorance and many thing aren’t particularly relevant. 14 states still had sodomy laws in 2003 when the Supreme Court reversed its stance and declared them unconstitutional. At this point there are hundreds of years of crap at the federal, state, and local level much of which changes based on where you happen to be.

What percentage of the US laws have you actually read?

I don't think it's hyperbole at all. Wage theft alone costs American workers billions of dollars every year.

I see two ways of interpreting "companies break the law constantly".

One, that there is always a company out there somewhere acting criminally. If that's the intended meaning, it is a factual statement, but doesn't not carry the original implication that companies do not try to avoid breaking the law. For instance, the fact that there is always a human out their somewhere committing crime doesn't not mean most humans do not actively avoid such.

Two, that any given company breaks the law often. This carries the implication that companies do not worry about breaking the law, but is also factually incorrect.

Legal departments are employed to tell you about legal risks, not to predict the future. Your corporate lawyer isn’t going to go “yeah that’s illegal but it’s totally awesome bro”. The execs might but not the lawyer.

In this case, the riskiest issue isn’t copyright, it’s that it can generate NSFW/CSAM, which governments and payment processors both get really upset about.

It’s not about predicting the future. The point of communicating legal risks is to make assessments about which risks might be worth taking because complying with every single law is impractical.

It’s part of the basic structures where the legal team has an advisory role.

I mean thats exactly what Uber did though, and it’s very very common attitude in tech. This is also how Facebook functions in a lot of areas.

I wouldn’t be so quick to say it’s legal because google image search is legal. Image search is legal because “thumbnails” and “image search” were decided by the court to be sufficiently transformative and in a different marketplace from “images.”

I could very easily see it being argued that “computer generated images” are in the exact same marketplace as “images” so already that case wouldn’t apply and new legal reasoning would be needed.

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