Comment by tptacek | Hacker News Reader

Comment by tptacek | Hacker News Reader

This is performative and obviously stupid, but to add some technical color to it: in the alternate universe where this passed, rather than floating around as a signalling tool for Josh Hawley, ordinary violators would see nothing resembling a 20 year sentence.

This statute falls under the 2M5 section of the sentencing guideline (for export violations); it has a base offense level of 14 (15-21 months) and is probation-eligible at that level. There are lots of accelerators for 2M5 offenses, but it's hard to see any of them applying to casual, or even commercial, users of DeepSeek. There are level-reducers that would apply.

(2M5 crimes can optionally be sentenced under 2B1.1, which is what most crimes we talk about on HN, particularly CFAA, are sentenced with; there the penantly would scale with financial damages. Again: hard to see how that would meaningfully apply here).

None of this is to suggest any federal prosecution for using DeepSeek would ever be reasonable. I don't even think Josh Hawley believes that. I think he just feels lonely and left out.

Oh good, so it's just a tool to selectively and arbitrarily make examples of people. I'm sure the government would never abuse that power. Carry on, then, citizen.

In addition big AI are swinging their clubs with Trump so this is a good way to jail the competition.

You are both talking as if this could possibly pass, and it cannot.

We are replying to the "the alternate universe where this passed" comment.

We've lived through a number of "That could never happen, though" scenarios in the past decade. I'm feeling a bit skeptical towards skepticism at the moment.

Too many people have it now. What would be likely to happen if the bill passed is selective enforcement.

Many dictatorships have very broad laws that almost everyone inevitably breaks, but as long as you don't challenge the dictator or speak out against them in any way, you are safe.

But the moment you speak out against the government, suddenly the law gets enforced, since in the governments eyes, you have now committed the one true crime.

Among the many reasons this could never pass: it would require extensive cooperation with the Senate minority (the majority holds control by just a thread, and not by enough move anything but reconciliation bills through) which isn't going to cooperate on anything resembling this.

There's only one Senator I trust to be able to understand the nuances of these kinds of issues and that's Ron Wyden, he's a Democrat. I would hope he would filibuster this if it came to the floor. As an Oregonian, I would definitely call his office if this came up for a vote.

It's not going to require a Ron Wyden filibuster. The Senate minority is not going to jump onto a grandstanding bill by an especially right-wing member of the majority. The bill will never clear cloture. That's before you even address the question of whether it'd get near-unanimous support from the majority, which is what it would need.

This is why stories like this are "officially" off-topic for HN ("proposed bill" is the search query you want). The actual mechanics of US politics are such that stuff like this pops up all the time, with everybody playing the televised game, as opposed to the home game like us, understanding that none of this is actually going to happen. Us talking about it was the entire ballgame for Hawley.

It's kind of funny to compare the Napster lawsuits, Aaron Swartz, DRM campaigns etc with the Ross Ulbricht type cases. Turns out you can download as many cars as you want, just make sure to pad the right politicans running for president.

"challenge the dictator or speak out against them" No chance of that.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com