Comment by declan | Hacker News Reader

Comment by declan | Hacker News Reader

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Yep, sorry, you're naive. :) The law != common sense. If a law is on the books, it may be applied broadly, even to Timmy and Mark. That's why it's important to ensure the laws are sensible before they're enacted.

Here's one example. Let's say there's a 16-year old girl and a 17-year old boy who are in a consensual dating relationship and, you know, take some racy photos of one other. The photos were taken consensually, not shared with anyone else, and stored only on their own computers/accounts. And let's say they're living in Florida and under state law, they're legally old enough to have sex with each other.

It would be fear-mongering to expect that these two happy teenagers would ever be prosecuted and convicted on "child pornography" charges, right? Except they were. And, as I wrote in 2007, a Florida appeals court upheld their criminal conviction: http://news.cnet.com/2100-1030_3-6157857.html

Yes, sorry, Timmy and Mark, sometimes a judge and jury will let it go that far. Sometimes they will "literally lock up your children..."

Let's not overlook the fact that the law doesn't actually have to be applied, it can be a bargaining chip. The prosecution mentality is to 'throw the book' at defendants and then the defendant has to try to negotiate down from that starting point.

Firearms might be a good analogy here. You don't need to actually shoot a robber for your firearm to be effective. The mere presence of it is often enough to scare them off.

And how is this "everyone can be in prison if we want it" attitude any good? That's a huge enabler of selective enforcement and limitless corruption.

> That's a huge enabler of selective enforcement and limitless corruption

I don't think anyone will argue with you on that one.

Right. We go from a nation of laws, to a nation of people that can break the law .. if you're well-connected. Which has a strong resemblance to the situation commonly found in what was formerly called banana republics.

Ah, but that plays into the US's very strange views on sex. It feels like an exception, rather than the general rule.

US has strange views on a lot of things, including the one in question – privacy.

I don't think the US's views on sex and the US's views on privacy are quite comparable, given the 500 year history that comes with our weird prudishness.

Your point, as I understood it, was that jailing children for children pornography is an exception from normal routine because US has strange views on sex. My point is that US views on privacy ("nothing to hide") are also strange (relative to my viewpoint), so that will also be an "exception", and you shouldn't be surprised when these strange views will be applied in the courtroom.

I don't think sex and privacy come anywhere near each other, in terms of deviation from the global norm. The US doesn't have any particularly deviant view on privacy from the rest of the world, unlike sex.

Yes, but... the law is not rational. It will execute the code you give it.

Exactly. This is precisely the point. It will interpret and execute whatever code is thrown at it. The problem is that the code is NOT DETERMINISTIC (or non-deterministic, whatever). It can be interpreted in a variety of different ways.

This and the fact that 'compiled' code is sometimes altered by applying some money-based side effects gives us some pretty ridiculous results.

Correct me if I'm wrong but there's no easy way to fix this problem.

Don't think of it as corruption, think of it as aspect oriented programming!

BEFORE: go to jail

APPLY: expensive lawyer, public pressure

A large part of the US judicial system relies on people to take laws and find rational and reasonable interpretations.

It is JIT-compiled though, and courts will throw compiler errors from time to time.

But those jury nullification errors are non-deterministic, so you can't rely on them.

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