Comment by vkou | Hacker News Reader

Comment by vkou | Hacker News Reader

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> If you own a gun, you're responsible for knowing that pulling the lever implies shooting projectiles at them.

If you own a computer with the ability to send packets over TCP/IP, you're responsible for knowing what sending particular kinds of packets implies.

Hacking a server you don't own is handling someone's property without permission. When I host a web service, I grant the public permission for very particular kinds of access to it. I do not grant the public permission to try to break into it.

> All of these things are physical actions. The state should care about the physical actions of their citizens, but not about ideas, concepts, intent, or arbitrary abstractions. Those abstractions are the citizen's business, and legislating them is arbitrary and unfair.

Your understanding of the world is incompatible with centuries of civil, criminal code, as well as millenia of common sense.

Intent absolutely matters. Consider why mens rea is a thing. Consider why fraud is a thing. Consider the difference between accident, ignorance, and malice.

> If I have a mental breakdown every time someone says hello to me,

Are you seriously drawing an equivalence between breaking into a webserver with 'having a mental breakdown every time someone says hello'?

> Same principle applies to software. If your website has a breakdown every time I send specific IP packets, that's your problem, not mine or the state's.

Yes, you are. Good lord.

I take it you also don't take issue with people stealing the contents of vending machines, either? After all, there's no possible way to infer what the implied contract of a vending machine is! Sure, everyone with the intellectual maturity of a five year old understands that you're supposed to put money in, in exchange for its contents... But it's the owner's fault that if I happen to tilt it over a certain way, stuff comes out of it - without me putting any money in! I'm just manipulating it in a creative way!

You both have good arguments, but I would tend to agree with lone_haxx0r, even if his idea is maybe not practical.

He is comparing sending IP messages to freedom of speech. The debate is : are you for full freedom of speech or not?

In many countries with high level of freedom of speech, you can still be sued for just saying things : wrongly accusing someone, sending death threats, disclosing under NDA, etc

The logic of lone_haxx0r is noting that, physically killing someone is already illegal and punished, so why is sending death threats also illegal ?

We all know that it's for peace of mind of people, and also probably based on statistical evidences that some jokes may have turned bad.

Anyway, this pseudo freedom of speech is beneficial for rich people and big corporations as you can just throw more money to defend yourself with more words, and attack anyone who have a valuable piece of knowledge to your organization.

Snowden and Assange are good examples of why we should further liberate freedom of speech. Their intent was to inform people of a danger, but what they did (hacking) is so far considered illegal.

So, yes, we can charge people based on their intents, but in practice (for example if someone isn't able to express their intents, or in case of a government secret agency) it doesn't respect freedom of people.

lone_haxx0r is not making an argument about free speech. He is just demonstrating his utter lack of knowledge about law, philosophy, society, and politics.

Where does this distinction between physical and "digital" actions come from? Breaking into a server is an action, it's not speech. There's a big difference between sending a chat message (x no. of TCP packages) and sending C&C commands (also x no. of TCP packages). Just because you're technically only sending "information", doesn't demolish the action-speech distinction. Heck, there are theories in physics basically stating that our whole physical world is best understood as only a bunch of information. But that doesn't make the action-speech distinction mute.

There are already various theories of the (moral) foundations of law (see philosophy of law, jurisprudence). Talking about an "objective" foundation (whatever that means) that somehow needs to specify the speed of projectiles seems utterly impractical. We can just check whether harm has been done and what the intention of the perpetrator was (mens rea): Don't you think there should be a big legal difference between someone accidentally ramming a car and someone trying to murder the driver by ramming?

> If you own a computer with the ability to send packets over TCP/IP, you're responsible for knowing what sending particular kinds of packets implies.

Yes.

>Hacking a server you don't own is handling someone's property without permission.

I meant handling in the most literal sense: manipulating something with your hands/body. Sending a message to someone/something isn't handling them/it in that sense.

> When I host a web service, I grant the public permission for very particular kinds of access to it. I do not grant the public permission to try to break into it.

Morally speaking, I do not require your permission to do something that doesn't physically involve you or your property. The only relevant physical involvements here are between you and your ISP, and me and my ISP. Anything else is abstraction.

Under your permissions idea, I can go out and say "I grant the public permission to look at my face but not to say hello to me."

> Your understanding of the world is incompatible with centuries of civil, criminal code, as well as millenia of common sense.

Your understanding of the world is incompatible with freedom and justice.

> Intent absolutely matters. Consider why mens rea is a thing.

Something being a thing doesn't justify it morally. Slavery is a thing, you know? Murder is a thing, etc.

> I take it you also don't take issue with people stealing the contents of vending machines, either? After all, there's no possible way to infer what the implied contract of a vending machine is! Sure, everyone with the intellectual maturity of a five year old understands that you're supposed to put money in, in exchange for its contents... But it's the owner's fault that if I happen to tilt it over a certain way, stuff comes out of it - without me putting any money in! I'm just manipulating it in a creative way!

In a world with laws that make sense, it would be necessary to explicitly define the contract, because otherwise everyone would be handling someone else's property without permission. Simply state in the contract that people have to pay $x in order to take out their goods.

If the contract says "use this machine at will and take its contents". Then yes, you can tilt it all you want, who would have thought?

Manipulating something with your hands is a very arbitrary line to cross. What if you have gloves? What if you have prosthetic arms? What if you're remote controlling a robot to physically manipulate something on your behalf? Or is it the bare skin-to-material contact you'd make illegal? What if the person has a skin graft transplant on their hands?

Like the guy above said, intent matters. That is why stuff like attempted murder is illegal. You might not physically touch the victim but if you intend on killing someone, but happen to fail, you are clearly in the wrong imo.

Where does this arbitrary distinction between the physical and nonphysical realm come from? Who says that it would only be immoral to handle sth physically you don't have permission for? On what basis does this moral theory exclude the digital/nonphysical/nondirect way? Is someone remote operating a drone that kills a bunch of civilians not responsible?

> Something being a thing doesn't justify it morally. Slavery is a thing, you know? Murder is a thing, etc.

Instead of taking the contrarian route and coming up with wild theories, how about you first engage with any material from centuries of philosophy of law and jurisprudence? With any existing understandings? Your argument is extremely far out there and just demonstrates an utter lack of knowledge. It's not very respectful to then put the burden of "proof"/argument on all your discussion partners.

> The only relevant physical involvements here are between you and your ISP, and me and my ISP.

Forgive me, I may be wildly misunderstanding here, but are you saying that the hosted web service is fair game to you because you have no direct physical involvement with it? Because there's a middleman (your ISP talking to their ISP)?

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