Code is speech. Forcing someone to implement something is legally-compelled speech, assuming no complicating factor like commerce.
We need to all loudly and publicly say "Fuck off, I will defend my rights if needed", so they understand how expensive the fight is going to be.
Fear is power. Do not give your enemies power.
You keep saying that, but that's not the realistic outcome. The realistic outcome isn't an injunction forcing you to add code. It'd be to force you to pull it out of circulation.
There are more effective ways protest this law than posting punk-rhetoric on a nerd forum for a project that will likely fly under the governments radar anyway.
Posting rhetoric on an anonymous message board is not making a stand. If and when they’re doxxed by US media outlets, and slapped with life-changing court orders, with their work and families directly affected by their decisions; then they’re making a stand. But until that point, their words are as meaningless as their view of this law.
Eg I can confidently say I’m not going to comply with this law either. But you have no reason to assume that will make any difference nor that I wouldn’t fold the moment I’m put under the slightest amount of pressure.
If people really wanted to make a stand then they’d be drumming up support in real life, not anonymously. They’d be speaking to government representatives. They’d be raising financial support for lobbying change.
I’m old enough to have lived through multiple iterations of unpleasant laws being passed and each time a movement against it has been online-only, that protest has achieved nothing. So I know the real reason this maintainer is speaking as boldly as they are is because they know the government hasn’t heard of them nor their distro. Ie it’s a “making a stand” by doing exactly nothing. But it will also achieve exactly nothing too.
This law is stupid and I gleefully and openly mock it and those that think it is enforceable under my well known public identity.
No one should take these unenforceable overreaches seriously. People will be jailed for not putting age verification code in software as soon as they will for piracy, or owning a 3D printer without gun-detecting spyware. It is a fear tactic with no ability to enforce.
My message here should be pretty clear: Open source international community owned operating systems can just completely refuse to comply and nothing will happen to them.
In China at least, the blank paper protests were successful in making the government loosen up its extreme “zero-COVID” policies (welding shut the gates of apartment buildings, sealing off cities, etc).
The "blank paper protests" might have been effective at persuading the Chinese government to undo some measures, but that government is no less authoritarian and repressive than it ever was.
Mockery was very successful in maintaining morale among oppressed groups in both Nazi and Soviet Europe, as well as in many Latin American dictatorships, in times when armed rebellion wasn’t a realistic option. It was also effective during the Yugoslav Wars (Otpor) and the Vietnam War (inside the US).
If mockery weren’t an effective weapon, political cartoons and political satire (and establishment attacks on them) wouldn’t exist.
Of course not. I'm simply refuting your assertion that "mockery is...the best weapon against authoritarianism."
> If mockery weren’t an effective weapon, political cartoons and political satire (and establishment attacks on them) wouldn’t exist.
Mockery can be effective in inspiring others to topple authoritarian regimes or amass public support for doing so. But it is rarely, in and of itself, the weapon that does it. It's better thought of as a catalyst.
I'll also remind you that we still live in a democracy, not an authoritarian regime, despite whatever characterizations people make about our leaders (and some certainly might lean toward authoritarian if the Constitution allowed them to). The most effective means of change in a democracy are persuading voters and politicians. Mockery can help here, to the extent it engenders the sympathies of the larger population. That doesn't seem likely, though, given the content I've seen in this thread.
We actually live in an authoritarian or “managed” democracy, where technocratic leadership increasingly ignores or even openly mocks the demands and needs of the people. Insider trading and blatant market manipulation is rampant, technocrats are constantly devising new methods to surveill and suppress public dissent, and regime supporters (regardless of which “color” party is in power) dismiss legitimate concerns and gaslight the public. In some countries they’re even trying to ban political parties who promise to address popular issues. There’s a reason that dangerous ideologies and popular anger are rising, and it’s not the Internet—there are material realities underlying these complaints, and they aren’t being taken seriously.
Our last line of “legitimate” defense is the courts. Thank God for the courts! But they are gradually being compromised as well, and even the Supreme Court is willing to sidestep important decisions if they would be too controversial. Besides, legislation cannot be written from the bench. And so the noose gradually tightens around our necks.
Mockery seems very appropriate, as a way of undermining legitimacy and gathering support. Perhaps the regime can be coerced into serious reforms before it is too late. Or perhaps the old guard will be replaced with reformers as they finally shuffle off. Recent elections seem to indicate that the public won’t stand for the status quo.
Ultimately, though, it's your call--do what you want.
Mockery is a great medium for spreading a message. But words don’t make change by themselves. Ergo mockery is not an effective a weapon for change.
What mockery does do, and online petitions too, is placate lazy but opinionated citizens into thinking they’re part of a movement while they can sit in their comfy chair and do a grant total of nothing to actually further their ideologies.
Some of us with mockery, and hopefully some with legal and political talent behind the scenes.
I am just a mascot pointing and laughing at a stupid unenforceable law with scary intentions. The real fight is likely to be fought by legal professionals, not me, and that is fine.
My job will be to keep shipping changes that protect user privacy and security because that is what my skillset is for.
One comment was, and that was your most inflammatory. Those tend to attract the most attention. The trick now is to expand that brief popularity on HN (which is a very narrow audience) to the general populace.
Everyone on HN agrees this law is stupid, myself included. What we are refuting is that big words on an anonymous forum count as any form of protest. Because they don’t.
If it were that easy then I could cure cancer just be willing it via message boards. Or end the Iran war just by complaining about it online. Unfortunately actual change requires actual effort.
You can’t even change our opinion on this very small point and you have our attention and we are likely otherwise likeminded. So to argue that your words will have any effect to laws passed by completely different personally types who don’t even frequent HN is beyond absurd.
So too will these other silly laws go I expect.
Absolute worst case we’ll do sneakernet. More likely we’ll just distribute via overlay networks.
Some of us are crazy enough to be full on free speech martyrs, believe it or not.
Any of our original forefathers would recognize today's American federal government as an overreach from their indended form of government.
The only reason we aren't seeing a Boston Tea Party 2.0 over the recent string of coordinated assaults against our inalienable human rights is because surveillance capitalism is already coarsely achieving its goals of suppressing any civic participation which exists between the spectrum of ineffective political protest to the most desperate, radical action.
Some of those among us simply cannot drink this koolaid. A quote from MLK, Jr:
I submit that an individual who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust, and who willingly accepts the penalty of imprisonment in order to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the highest respect for law.
Have you been to prison? I've been incarcerated before already after having my rights violated. Let's not go there. Make less assumptions.
It would be a fine or a few days of jail until bail is posted, at worst. And then a media shit show where the public is certain to side with the developer who is having their rights violated to discourage this from ever happening again.
The public even got the back of weev for his bullshit arrest. Weev, one of the shittiest people to ever live. But rights are rights.
Anyway, the nature of a slippery slope like this one is that the punishments will get worse over time as the government further vilifies those who push against things like this and encryption backdoors.
That's not the point. The point is that people who don't face a real possibility of being convicted and imprisoned are the ones who make the most noise about how they're willing to accept imprisonment (or, worse, are cheering on others to be imprisoned as some sort of Cyberpunk Martyr).
As I said elsewhere - it's easy to be an Internet Tough Guy when you (think you) have little to lose.
Instead of positioning yourself adversarially and making unfounded and unwarranted claims about others, it would be more productive to engage in good faith and seek to lend a hand.
You've already made flat-out incorrect assumptions about me, indirect or not. Calibrate yourself.
You've gone off the rails. You're not the hero saving the world that you make yourself out to be. Get over yourself.
I'm done with this thread.
Jesus H. Christ.
Your current negativity is not welcome, if you are an attorney then please conduct yourself with more professionalism. If you want to seek to understand, great, but now you are being aggressive and negative and making a host of unfounded assumptions.
Edit: Poor taste to edit out your original comment with no acknowledgement. That was inappropriate and you know it, which is why you've now changed your comment.