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GeekNights Monday - Right to Repair
Tonight on GeekNights, we discuss the right to repair in a practical sense, and how there is no appetite to fix the problem. In the news, Rym got some christmas cheese, Zipcar is dead, Linux Kernel 4.7 is out I guess, Verizon bought most of what's left of Yahoo, and the EU is auditing Apache and Keepass security.
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But I also don't want to allow companies like Verizon to exist.
Human language, English or otherwise, is shitty. The real world has infinite possibilities. Mathematically precise language can separate all states of a finite board or video game into legal and illegal states. That is not possible for even basic laws governing society.
You want to spend a ton of time on perfecting semantics to avoid loopholes, but it is actually the slavish devotion to semantics that allows for loopholes in the first place. Allowing judiciaries to use common sense, and to give proper respect to the spirit of a law, closes all loopholes.
"Yes, John Deere, the law says you can do this. However, it is obvious to anyone that the DMCA was intended to prevent people from sharing music and movies online without paying. It was not intended to give you a monopoly on tractor repair. The people who wrote the DMCA are still alive, and we actually asked them. Go fuck yourself and pay the farmer's legal fees. Dismissed."
Now, some people might be worried about increasing judiciary power in the face of corruption. But corrupt courts are already a problem in this country. Your precious words aren't stopping them now. If anything, semantics of anti-corruption law are enabling them. "It's not technically corruption that I took all that money, because it wasn't quid pro quo! Can't pin this on me, suckers! By the way, I rule in favor of all these patent trolls." Allowing for a bit more common sense, would actually help defend against its own weakness.
TL;DR: Why do you allow your pedantry to excuse injustice?
http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2012/06/what-america-can-learn-from-germanys-justice-system/258208/
I guarantee that if the DMCA were a German law, with the language being as similar as possible, it would not prevent a farmer from fixing their own tractor.
I don't care about the Linux 4.7 kernel.
Scott, read GEB. You can't tune a piano.
Failure to acknowledge that allows common sense to be used as a weapon. See discrimination of all kinds in that regards.
Why is it that the most discriminatory and awful justices are almost uniformly textualists?
If giving more latitude to judges will result in greater discrimination, why would racists and homophobes be so strongly against it? They went to law school and know way more about this than I do, but they don't agree with me?
The reason is that the current system already allows them to be as discriminatory as they want. But also, it ties the hands of good judges and forces them to be discriminatory when they would rather not be.
Imagine a case where a black kid kid brings Tylenol to school. Strict interpretation of the law would require all judges to send them to juvie. Allowing for judges to recognize the intent of the law was to stop dangerous drug dealers, and not to ruin people's lives because they had a headache, would allow the non-racists to be non-racist.
Also, such strict interpretation gives courts a convenient excuse for any horrible results they may produce. It's not their fault. They are just doing what the law says to do. Just following instructions from the evil legislature. Their hands are tied.
Giving more power to the judicial branch also puts more responsibility on the judicial branch. When one judge does differently than another, their discriminatory ways will be laid bare for all to see. And not only would they be found out, but they could be held accountable for their evil ways since their excuse is gone. And the anti-discrimination and anti-corruption laws could be enforced, in spirit, against judges as much by judges.
Well done.
Consider philanthropy tourism, where unskilled but well meaning and privileged people go to a poor region to "help". Building schools or whatever. But the money they spend (plus the shoddy work they do) would have been better spent training/hiring the local population.
Consider also that state sanctioned racism is VERY apparent at the moment, but there's a large enough disparity in perception that progress, if any, is minimal. I suppose you could argue that loose interpretation would relieve that, but I would be skeptical until I saw it (in America, which has a VERY different social, legal, and moral dynamic than Germany, see jaywalking).
The more discretion a judge is given in a law, the more well defined the parameters of that discretion have to be. Most law is far more complex than Scott is willing to admit, and there is good reason for that. He conflates the "obvious" problems he sees with the idea of well-written law, as opposed to the real problem which lies solely in the slow pace of congressional action on modifying law as it is used (or misused).
Also, I already talked about how most right-wing judges are textualists. On the flip side, most so-called "activist judges" in the US are big lefties. And not the elected kind, the appointed kind who can't be unseated easily. If the leash holding them back were loosened a bit they could fix a lot of shit regardless of perception, public opinion, corrupt legislators, etc.
Aren't you the one who supports very specific rules in games?
It's a load of semantics and horseshit.
Pilitus, I agree 100%
Plus, American behavior as a whole is very "textualist". "You didn't SAY I couldn't ______. Neener!" Things here have to be explicitly stated, or people use it as an excuse for bad behavior. It's one of my biggest frustrations with Americans. Can't have nice things. I doubt you could even enforce loose interpretation without being mired down in endless appeals.
As for the good/bad guys getting a greater advantage. I don't think that it will give good guys a greater advantage. Anyone with power will use that power to serve their own interests. I just think that bad guys already have maximum advantage, and that slightly more power won't allow them to do any worse than they do today. They are already letting the cop who murdered someone completely off the hook. Given slightly more power they will, let the cop who murdered someone off the hook. No change.
Meanwhile, there are good guys who are forced to do worse than they would like because they strictly follow the exact letter of the law against the intent of the law, and against their better judgement. Look at all the stupid stories of injustice you see on Fark. You think the courts actually wanted to rule that way on all of those cases? In many cases, they were forced to by stupidly written laws.
Even if our legislatures were functioning and could rewrite and revise laws quickly, and well, they will always have flaws that result in those kinds of injustices. Given the complexity of the world and the limitations of language, these problems will always exist. The purpose of even having a judicial system with human brains is to cover for those errors. If you just want to follow the letter of the law precisely, we can do away with layers, judges, and juries, and let computers do their work.
A lot of things you would assume are bad are not, they're just complex. Who gets to be the expert to decide what complex tax thing is perfectly sound and what complex tax thing is "bad?"
And before you switch to arguing that anything complex is bad or that the tax stuff needs to be simpler, do you acknowledge that there are things in this complex world for which a complex regulatory framework, beyond the ken of the laity, is necessary?
Who's a good guy? Who's a bad guy? Isn't that the goal in the end? Precise rules for the exertion of specific coercion to prevent adverse behavior and/or promote positive outcomes? Judges are the backup, failsafe, and conscience only.
More importantly, you forget something very important. Judge is a partisan, usually elected, position. You would put all the vast power of our society in the hands of the same partisan system, where now it stands apart ONLY due to its relative lack of direct power. The courts are largely independent primarily because their sole power is to interpret and sometimes augment the law as written by congress.
Increase the power of judges, and then whether you vote for a Republican or Democrat judge matters a whole lot more. Judicial elections become entangled with the rest of our elections, and we effectively become a two-branch government.