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Comment by k_sh | Hacker News Reader

Yikes - this is bad. Criminalizing embeds (and hyperlinks, it sounds like?) is a swing at the jugular for the Internet.

Worse, it is teaching a generation (or more) that our justice system is stupid and broken. That in turn erodes ideas like rule of law that a essential to modern civilization.

> Worse, it is teaching a generation (or more) that our justice system is stupid and broken

Well, you wouldn't be wrong for coming to this conclusion (source: this ruling, and more!)

> That in turn erodes ideas like rule of law that a essential to modern civilization.

Not necessarily. Our implementation of this is essentially flawed, but that doesn't mean all possible implementations of rule of law are flawed as badly. I would hope that this would inspire change, but people are inherently against change so at the end of the day you are probably correct.

The only direction people really want to change in is socially. They focus all their attention on social issues and poverty and taxes. The actual laws don't want to be touched by anyone. We have very poor and contradictory laws and decisions with regards to new technology. The people in charge don't seem to understand the internet and internet-related rights.

Yep, which is why our implementation is flawed. It allows folks who have no knowledge of certain topics to make and enforce laws that pertain to those topics.

I know the solution: Just remove government officials who use the word "cyber".

>Worse, it is teaching a generation (or more) that our justice system is stupid and broken.

Quite the contrary. This is a lesson that we should all hope is well-learned by the vast majority of people so that it can be fixed, rather then blindly venerated.

>That in turn erodes ideas like rule of law that a essential to modern civilization.

That "the rule of law" is necessary for a modern society to function doesn't mean that every system of laws is beneficial or conducive merely by its existence. The unfortunate fact is that our system of laws, at it exists, is "stupid and broken", in a wide variety of ways, and badly needs fixing. We can't start fixing our broken system until we come to terms with the fact that it is broken, identify the problems, and develop the solutions.

Teaching? It's already been taught and learned. It does indeed erode such ideas. I guess that's what our society wants when it implements the multitude of stupid laws it does, copyright certainly among them. Hell, anyone who's ever smoked a joint already knows this to be the case as does anyone who is a minority. Maybe our ideas about the rule of law should be eroded, considering how poorly implemented the idea is here in the US.

There are unfortunately plenty of other ways to learn that lesson.

On the up side it may encourage people to participate in distributed systems that are more resilient against arbitrary censorship.

> rule of law [is] essential to modern civilization.

I feel like that is a false assumption. How often do you actually appeal to law in your day to day life?

I feel like we rely on the implied threat of the law 1000x more than we rely on explicitly calling the law.

I think the threat of an internet mob ala Cecil the Lion could be just as effective.

Tell that to African Americans in the South when lynchings were a thing.

If anything, the rule of law of the time all but directly promoted and encouraged it.

No. The definition of lynching is that it is without legal authority. What blacks were suffering from was the absence of the rule of law.

Now, true, the legal authorities were often complicit. But that's still the absence of the rule of law, not the presence of it.

I think we rely on social mores

justice system

It's not a justice system, it's a judicial system. It exists to follow precedent, set new precedent, maintain order, and preserve the authority of the government.

Unless you are talking about any decision that upholds the individual rights of citizens against the government, i.e., the Bill of Rights. Your cynical take doesn't map very well to reality.

Perhaps there's a difference in that embeds can display the content without directing the viewer to page. Consider:

* Embedding a copyrighted image.

* Linking to the original page that hosts said image.

In the latter case the copyright holder would still monetize of of, say, ads hosted on their website. Whereas in the former the copyrighted work would likely be displayed without the chance for the copyright holder to monitize.

I'm more surprised that Twitter doesn't have a clause where all users waive copyright to any posted on their website. Otherwise essentially all social media platforms would constantly be infringing. I upload my profile pic to Facebook, I can't turn around and sue them for the fact that it's displaying this image to all other Facebook users viewing my profile.

The social media terms of service typically include granting a global sublicensable royalty-free license to all copyrighted content you upload.

Which is why it's surprising to see the photographer going after the publications; it makes more sense to go after the 'someone else' who tweeted the picture. I suspect that it's a case of targeting those who are more likely to be able to pay out in case of a win in the courts.

In the latter case the copyright holder would still monetize of of, say, ads hosted on their website.

I'd have an easier time with this reasoning if I saw more legal argument directly addressing why "exclusive right to their respective writings" includes the right to require readers to also see something else at the same time as they view the writings.

ThePirateBay is an example that muddies the distinction.

My read of this is that embedding a tweet is not copyright infringement, rather the issue is that the tweet in question, was itself, infringing a work.

This is still a bad ruling, of course.

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