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Comment by matheusmoreira | Hacker News Reader

> may be held liable for downstream uses over which they have no control

Equivalent to a ban. Nobody is going to host or invest in this stuff if they suddenly become liable for everything it does. This is equivalent to repealing the safe harbor provisions in the DMCA.

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>Committee amendments simplify and clarify the definition of “full shutdown” such that the shutdown capability can be implemented into hardware used to train or run a model, rather than the model itself. The amendments also serve to exclude covered model derivatives that are outside of the developer’s control.

I get the impression you are conflating whether a developer can be sued to oblivion for not implementing a "full shutdown" process that applies to finetunes versus whether they can be sued to oblivion for releasing a model that may cause "critical harm" when finetuned.

I'm confused why you think the only legal requirement is a "full shutdown" process. The text is there and I see a heck of a lot of requirements that are not about full shutdowns.

I get the impression that the full shutdown requirement is the main concern for open-weight from:

>SB 1047’s “full shutdown” requirement has been a source of constant consternation for the open-source community.

And I get the impression it's been addressed from the quote you're responding to. Neither mentions fine-tuning, which is defined elsewhere in the document. I'm not a lawyer, though, just relying on the analysis.

You claim you "get the impression" then do not quote either the law or a third party analysis of the law. Apparently we are supposed to believe this does not ban open source because the committee didn't write "This bans open source" in the beginning of the committee notes then circle it 3 times in red pen.

No, we're supposed to believe the official California Assembly committee bill analysis of SB 1047 over hacker news comments. Notably, SB 1047 passed the Legislature but was vetoed by Governor Newsom in September 2024. So whether or not it would have restricted open-weight models is an open question that won't get an answer.

No, you are not supposed to treat a politician or their staff’s statement about how their proposed bill works as dispositive and ignore the statutory text or third party analysis.

I’m glad we clarified the epistemological issue, so thank you for replying.

It is strange that half your reply is appeal to the authority of a not on point source and half is epistemological learned helplessness about what the impact of a vetoed bill would have been, pick a side.

It's called epistemological humility, and you could benefit.

When you make specific claims about a statute you were apparently too lazy to read, then respond with basically “I read the committee notes and surely if the statute was bad, it would say so and/or nobody can ever know what the statute does” when someone discusses the statute, whatever you are doing isn't “epistemological humility.”

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