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Comment by 9283409232 | Hacker News Reader

> The Republican Senator from Missouri Josh Hawley has introduced a new bill that would make it illegal to import or export artificial intelligence products to and from China, meaning someone who knowingly downloads a Chinese developed AI model like the now immensely popular DeepSeek could face up to 20 years in jail, a million dollar fine, or both, should such a law pass.

You get less jail time for committing 34 felonies.

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You get less jail time for an insurrection aimed at overthrowing a free and fair election and beating the shit out of cops while doing so.

Truly, what do you even do as the CCP or some other party that would like to spread anti-American propaganda? Literally just point to the actual, factual state of this country and tell me it isn't a rolling joke.

CCP is no stranger to chaos and self sabotage either. China is probably the least affected and most likely still standing in one piece

Thats how most propaganda works. Russia, for example, has been publicizing cases of extreme racism in the US for years to demoralize black people. [1] Hell this has been going on since WWII, when other countries saw how the US treated their black troops, and used it to damage loyalty. [2]

Nothing works like the truth, if the US could just stop being so racist it'd be that much harder to divide us. It seems like that's fundementally against our nature though.

1. https://www.npr.org/2017/10/30/560042987/russians-targeted-u...

2. https://perspectives.ushmm.org/item/german-leaflet-for-black...

US is a racist country though, at least at the government level. See how BLM and January 6th demonstrations got treated.

It took bipartisan pardons/commutations across 2 disparately ideological faction leaders to even the outcomes for both groups of people who purportedly aimed to overthrow the government that let them all be free.

So the outcomes are even now?

Black Lives Matter only sought to "overthrow" the system in place if you presume first that racism is a core component of it.

The thing that makes it a wedge issue that's useful for propaganda isn't that the US is racist, it's that the US is racist while (ostensibly) aspiring to be more in its creed.

The funny thing is Russia an China can claim to be less racist as they are homogenous societies.

Russia is homogenous? Interesting.

China is homogeneous?

... What?

That is completely nonsense. Absolutely ludicrous.

Neither Russia nor China are homogenous. Both have large Muslim minorities (and both are be pretty racist against them). Eastern Russians are not European descended and are looked down on by Western Russians. Tibetans are not Han Chinese.

Even the Asian nations that actually are pretty "homogenous" like Japan and Korea are also famously pretty racist.

There are also a ton of other ethnic groups in China and the government just call them all Han Chinese. Tons of ethnic groups in Russia too. These are countries with very long histories that span a large area, with many areas that were multiple kingdoms, tribes, etc. Makes perfect sense that they would have a lot of different ethnic groups.

If you were not aware, Russia is famously diverse and a large number of their oblasts(province level equivalent jurisdictions) are drawn up along ethnic lines

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethnic_groups_in_Russia

... Homogenous in _what way_?!

They're both the remnants of large land empires, each incorporating many ethnicities, languages, religions... They are not at all homogenous.

Like, that whole thing with the Uyghurs, what did you think that was about? Or Chechnya?

There's a museum in Shanghai with posters going back to Mao that take the same strategy. Lots of highlighting American racism.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaganda_Poster_Art_Centre

https://www.tripadvisor.com/Attraction_Review-g308272-d18871...

The Republican party could pull a 180 and stop instituting policies that prove CCP anti-American propoganda correct, and pass universal health care, free education, civil rights, and all those other socialist freedom crushing commie pinko ideologies.

It's open source, hosted on an American Github server. If you don't trust it, prove it.

If you really don't trust it, copy the algorithms without forking it. That's the big allure of OSS. You should be scutinous, but you should be able to base that scrutiny on cold hard facts.

It's kind of like the export controls over strong encryption that we dealt with in the 90s. There used to be separate binaries for Netscape or Mozilla back in the day.

And you can invade getting any jail time for 34 felonies if you become a president and strike deals with billionaires!

You mean one time-barred, victimless misdemeanor that got transmogrified into 34 felonies by an overzealous political hack of a prosecutor?

Lawfare was tried, and it failed. I hope it dies the death it deserves instead of becoming the new normal.

If you're an actual attorney, you should be disbarred. Not sorry.

Disbarred for being realistic and honest about what a mistake that prosecution was? I voted for Harris BTW.

No, you did not.

I did though.

It’s possible to support Harris and still be reasonable about the utter failure that the lawfare campaign against Trump has been.

Ga's are still elected. "Hard on Crime" still works as a campaign slogan to this day.

We have a deeper societal perception to fix first before we can even think about a justice system focused on rehabilitation. It'd also be nice to remove that certain clause in the 13th amendment while we're at it.

up to 20 years. Realistically some kid downloading a model would get probation, and you'd only get 20 years if you were making an entire enterprise out of it.

relevant: https://web.archive.org/web/20130208124604/https://www.popeh...

You and I know this isn't how this works.

The moment the government wants to punish someone over this they will grab some random kid that's barely done anything and threaten them with the full 20 years to serve as an example to others.

Where's the kid rotting in federal prison for downloading a mp3? Does the music/movie industry not have good enough lobbyists to make an example of a torrenter?

I don't know, you tell me what happend to that Aaron guy that ran Reddit?

Thanks for proving my point. Schwartz was offered 6 months in a minimum security prison, but he declined it because he specifically wanted a trial. Moreover that was for effectively DoSing JSTOR, a much more serious crime than some guy using a vpn to download an AI model. I don't think 6 months was justified, nor the string of crimes he was charged with, but OP's assertion that "You get less jail time for committing 34 felonies" is still false.

>During plea negotiations with Swartz's attorneys, the prosecutors offered to recommend a sentence of six months in a low-security prison if Swartz pled guilty to 13 federal crimes. Swartz and his lead attorney rejected the deal, opting instead for a trial where prosecutors would be forced to justify their pursuit of him.

Facts need not apply. We’re righteously indignant for goodness sake! Stop with all the nonsense “facts” and “reality” unless they fit the narrative.

It's a shame Swartz was downloading JSTOR articles to share. He could have DoS'd half the internet and gotten away scot-free if he'd been training an ML system instead.

You just need articles of incorporation and all crimes become civil matters.

I think the issue under discussion is whether or not this kind of law is applied gently and with consideration to seriousness, or whether it tends to be used as a club to make an example of people. I think Swartz is seen as an example of it being used as a club to make an example of people.

>I think the issue under discussion is whether or not this kind of law is applied gently and with consideration to seriousness, or whether it tends to be used as a club to make an example of people.

I'm not sure how you got that impression from the original exchange of:

>>[...] You get less jail time for committing 34 felonies.

>up to 20 years. Realistically some kid downloading a model would get probation [...]

I didn't get that impression from the original exchange, I got it from the thread I am responding to involving Aaron Swartz being given as a counter-example to the last point, and inferring why somebody would use Aaron Swartz as a counter-example.

Seems I was right in that inference, given other responses to the thread since.

I think it's not about examples. Every attorney graduating with a quarter million in student debt that gets a low pay government job is trying to punch a lot of notches in their belt so that they can be picked up by a major law firm with a pretty paycheck. They'd be stupid or magnanimous to look the other way on easy wins.

Last I checked, 6 months is still more time than 0 time. Not sure your point with this comparison

Last time I checked, entering an (unlocked) IT closet, using it to DoS a site and continuing to do so despite being IP banned a few times is slightly more serious than "some kid downloading a model".

Yes, but all the way back to the top of this specific thread was 34 felonies got 0 months. You're now comparing 6 months against a hypothetical where nothing has actually happened.

I finally got around to watching "The Internet's Own Boy" the other day. He told his girlfriend as they were driving by the Whitehouse that didn't want to accept the plea deal and plead guilty "because felons can't work in that building" [the Whitehouse]. Oh, man, how times have changed.

Capital Records vs Jamie Thomas where Capital Records was awarded around 2 million in damages and Sony vs Joel Tenenbaum. These cases are not uncommon.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capitol_Records%2C_Inc._v._Tho...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_BMG_v._Tenenbaum

Civil vs criminal. Federal sentencing guidelines don't apply.

You want federal then take a step out and look at all the people who got 10-15 years for carrying an quarter ounce of weed. Sentencing is very selective based on who they want to make an example of and when.

>You want federal then take a step out and look at all the people who got 10-15 years for carrying an quarter ounce of weed.

Source? My impression is that in basically all of those cases, it's either because:

1. the guy is a repeat offender and/or on probation

2. the guy decided to wanted to fight to the bitter end and they threw the book at them

I'm not saying either are justified, but the implication that someone will get 20 years just because he downloaded deepseek through ollama or whatever is still false.

> the guy is a repeat offender and/or on probation

“It was for two or three quarter ounces of weed!” isn’t the defense you imagine.

https://nitter.net/ddmeyer/status/1220480907393372160#m

(The graphs in the first tweet are from page 55 of the linked PDF.)

>mandatory minimum [...]

Which isn't applicable to the law being proposed. Moreover if the idea is "threaten them with the full 20 years to serve as an example", then the mandatory minimum kinda works against that? If you catch some guy and then he serves 10 years, you haven't really proven much. You're just acting in line with expectations.

Those cases are extremely uncommon. In nearly every case what happened was:

1. The RIAA sent a letter telling how many songs you were distributing and offering a settlement of around $2-5 per song. Most people at this point realized that they were in fact guilty and that the RIAA had enough evidence to prove it in court and agreed to settle.

2. A small fraction ignored this or refused to settle. The RIAA then files lawsuits in some of those cases, typically over a small number of the songs that the person was distributing rather than over all the songs being distributed.

At this point most defendants would get a lawyer and be told that they will almost certainly lose and advised to settle.

3. A handful of people ignored their lawyers (or had crappy lawyers) and plowed on. Their extraordinarily bad decision making often continued during their trial. Thomas for instance lied in court and tried to destroy evidence.

This is not wise since in these suits the plaintiff is asking for statutory damages, which is a minimum of $750 per song (not per download--if you were offering 2 songs for download and they were each download 1000 times the minimum is 2 x $750, not 2000 x $750) but can go up to $30000, and it is the jury that determines the amount in that range. You really want the jury to find you sympathetic, and lying and trying to destroy evidence doesn't help with that.

4. After the inevitable victory in most cases that got far the RIAA would again offer to settle for an amount much lower than the damages awarded by the court, although higher than their original settlement offer.

I don't know how many reached this stage, but if many did most of them came to their senses and realized that appealing would probably only make it worse.

The very small number that didn't are the ones that ended up like the two cases you cited.

A very small number end up with a high profile but there are many John Doe or Jane Doe cases where names aren't publicized.

This is a good point. If one thing didn’t happen then a different unrelated thing cannot happen. You would think that the reason for nobody being in jail for downloading mp3s would be that there is no criminal law against downloading mp3s but actu

Pirating is not a criminal offense in America. It is in other parts of the world, like Japan, which, tangentially, is why Japanese piracy is so underground and tends to use different software stacks to the norm, cf. Perfect Dark (the filesharing program, not the game).

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