Hacker News Reader

Comment by negativity | Hacker News Reader

Does this mean that Linux, and other Unix variants (but not Mac OS of course, because Apple plays ball), will be classified as a "Hacker Tool" in the eyes of the law?

View on HN

In the "eyes of the law" wget is a "Hacker Tool".

Why hasn't anyone made the case that "Hacker Tools" are simply arms, covered under the 2nd Amendment?

Perhaps because "foreign" countries (i.e. most of the rest of us in the world outside the US and a few other select countries) and much of their populations (me included) see arms as something to be tightly regulated, and so it would fly in the face of what you are trying to achieve for "hacker tools". Internet issues tend towards being global, with notable exceptions.

Right, but Murkins are special. There's this very real culture of "you can take my guns from my cold dead hands" that the rest of the world doesn't quite grok. While the 2nd Amendment argument wouldn't hold much water in, say, Denmark, You could probably get a bunch of NRA members to champion the cause of your friendly neighborhood script kiddie if you sold it to them correctly. And americans only support what's been sold to them.

Now, would the world be a better or worse place if someone got SCOTUS to agree that DC v Heller applied to 0-day exploits? Personally, I don't know if I could answer that.

Anything without a well-regulated "app store" will be classified as a hacker tool in the eyes of the law.

So Ubuntu/Arch/Fedora are safe, because of their respective package management GUI's?

I'll take a liberal, CATO-Institute-on-2nd-amendment stance on the concept of what is considered "Well-Regulated" in the eyes of the Law [1].

[1] http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/07-290.ZS.html

as long as direct use of dpkg or make is considered a felony.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com