Comment by adrian_b | Hacker News Reader

Comment by adrian_b | Hacker News Reader

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If the vendors of programs do not want bugs to be found in their programs, they should search for them themselves and ensure that there are no such bugs.

The "legit security firms" have no right to be considered more "legit" than any other human for the purpose of finding bugs or vulnerabilities in programs.

If I buy and use a program, I certainly do not want it to have any bug or vulnerability, so it is my right to search for them. If the program is not commercial, but free, then it is also my right to search for bugs and vulnerabilities in it.

I might find acceptable to not search for bugs or vulnerabilities in a program only if the authors of that program would assume full liability in perpetuity for any kind of damage that would ever be caused by their program, in any circumstances, which is the opposite of what almost any software company currently does, by disclaiming all liabilities.

There exists absolutely no scenario where Anthropic has any right to decide who deserves to search for bugs and vulnerabilities and who does not.

If someone uses tools or services provided by Anthropic to perform some illegal action, then such an action is punishable by the existing laws and that does not concern Anthropic any more than a vendor of screwdrivers should be concerned if someone used one as a tool during some illegal activity.

I am really astonished by how much younger people are willing to put up with the behaviors of modern companies that would have been considered absolutely unacceptable by anyone, a few decades ago.

Not sure where the younger people thing came from, but I'm 45 and have been working in this industry since 1999. But even when I was in my 20s, I don't remember considering that I had a "right" to do something with a company's product before they've sold it to me.

In fact, I would say the idea of entitlement and use of words like "rights" when you're talking about a company's policies and terms of use (of which you are perfectly fine to not participate. rights have nothing to do with anything here. you're free to just not use these tools) feels more like a stereotypical "young" person's argument that sees everything through moralistic and "rights" based principles.

If you don't want to sign these documents, don't. This is true of pretty much every single private transaction, from employment, to anything else. It is your choice. If you don't want to give your ID to get a bank account, don't. Keep the cash in your mattress or bitcoin instead.

Regarding "legit" - there are absolutely "legit" actors and not so "legit" actors, we can apply common sense here. I'm sure we can both come up with edge cases (this is an internet argument after all), but common cases are a good place to start.

You cannot search for bugs or vulnerabilities in "a company's product before they've sold it to you", because you cannot access it.

Obviously, I was not talking about using pirated copies, which I had classified as illegal activities in my comment, so what you said has nothing to do with what I said.

"A company's policies and terms of use" have become more and more frequently abusive and this is possible only because nowadays too many people have become willing to accept such terms, even when they are themselves hurt by these terms, which ensures that no alternative can appear to the abusive companies.

I am among those who continue to not accept mean and stupid terms forced by various companies, which is why I do not have an Anthropic subscription.

> "if you don't want to give your ID to get a bank account, don't"

I do not see any relevance of your example for our discussion, because there are good reasons for a bank to know the identity of a customer.

On the other hand there are abusive banks, whose behavior must not be accepted. For instance, a couple of decades ago I have closed all my accounts in one of the banks that I was using, because they had changed their online banking system and after the "upgrade" it worked only with Internet Explorer.

I do not accept that a bank may impose conditions on their customers about what kinds of products of any nature they must buy or use, e.g. that they must buy MS Windows in order to access the services of the bank.

More recently, I closed my accounts in another bank, because they discontinued their Web-based online banking and they have replaced that with a smartphone application. That would have been perfectly OK, except that they refused to provide the app for downloading, so that I could install it, but they provided the app only in the online Google store, which I cannot access because I do not have a Google account.

A bank does not have any right to condition their services on entering in a contractual relationship with a third party, like Google. Moreover, this is especially revolting when that third party is from a country that is neither that of the bank nor that of the customer, like Google.

These are examples of bad bank behavior, not that with demanding an ID.

With the bank example, I thought your comment had some anti KYC language so I mixed it up with another response, sorry for the confusion.

I actually kind of agree with you in some principle, IF we had no choice. Like the only reason I can say “you can choose not to purchase this product” is because that is true today, thanks to competition from commercial and open source models.

But I’d be right there with you on “someone needs to force these companies to do ____” if they were quasi monopolies and citizens needed to use their technology in some form (we see this with certain patents around cell phone tech for example)

> If someone uses tools or services provided by Anthropic to perform some illegal action, then such an action is punishable by the existing laws and that does not concern Anthropic any more than a vendor of screwdrivers should be concerned if someone used one as a tool during some illegal activity.

In civilised parts of the world, if you want to buy a gun, or poison, or larger amount of chemicals which can be used for nefarious purposes, you need to provide your identity and the reason why you need it.

Heck, if you want to move a larger amount of money between your bank accounts, the bank will ask you why.

Why are those acceptable, yet the above isn't?

> I am really astonished by how much younger people are willing to put up with

Unsure where you got the "younger people" from.

Your examples have nothing to do with Anthropic and the like.

A gun does not have other purposes than being used as a weapon, so it is normal for the use of such weapons to be regulated.

On the other hand it is not acceptable to regulate like weapons the tools that are required for other activities, for instance kitchen knives or many chemicals, like acids and alkalis, which are useful for various purposes and which in the past could be bought freely for centuries, without that ever causing any serious problems.

LLMs are not weapons, they are tools. Any tools can be used in a bad or dangerous way, including as weapons, but that is not a reason good enough to justify restrictions in their use, because such restrictions have much more bad consequences than good consequences.

> Unsure where you got the "younger people" from.

Like I have said, none of the people that I know from my generation have ever found acceptable the kinds of terms and conditions that are imposed nowadays by most big companies for using their products or their attempts to transition their customers from owning products to renting products.

The people who are now in their forties are a generation after me, so most of them are already much more compliant with these corporate demands, which affects me and the other people who still refuse to comply, because the companies can afford to not offer alternatives when they have enough docile customers.

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