[illegalmemory]

" If you plug a laptop into a closet at MIT to download some scientific papers you forfeit your life."

This is exactly what I immediately thought while reading the article. It almost feels like the legal system only punishes general public, while most of these guys are above it.

[rchaud]

Airbnb and Uber have showed us that laws matter only to the extent that the political will to enforce them exists. Throw enough lawyers and lobbying money at the problem and the laws can simply be re-written to be friendlier to your business model.

[DebtDeflation]

The reason there was no political will to punish Airbnb and Uber for violating the law was that initially they were subsidized with VC money and so were able to undercut traditional hotels and taxis on price. In the world of tradable goods, pricing below cost with the intent of putting competition out of business so you can raise prices later is known as "dumping" and is itself illegal.

[pdntspa]

This has always been the case. Laws are only as good as their enforcement. This is why the business class is so aggressive about tearing down regulation until they can wield it as a weapon. Do as I say, not as I do, etc etc

If you as an individual can prevent the enforcement of a law, or be sure that it will not be enforced against you, then it does not apply to you.

[deegles]

I've also heard the term "regulatory arbitrage" to describe this.

[cpursley]

The hotel and taxi industry were legit terrible before those two disrupted them.

Laws are ment to be broken. Especially in cronist systems where incumbents write the laws.

[CamperBob2]

Airbnb and Uber have showed us that laws matter only to the extent that the political will to enforce them exists.

Laws matter to the extent that they don't interfere with actual progress. Laws that would have prevented the LLMs we have today from being developed should be ignored, as should laws requiring us to pay tribute to taxi and hotel cartels.

Respect for the law is going to be an increasingly-hard sell going forward, and that's mostly the lawmakers' own fault. When the law does not respect the people, the people will not respect the law.

[classified]

That's what makes a banana republic, and for all intents and purposes the U.S. are exhibit A.

[veggieroll]

Wilhoit’s law:

> There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect.

[TeMPOraL]

Is that a prescriptive or descriptive law?

[rahton]

The legal system is built to favor large corps and capital owners. See Katharina Pistor books for instance.

[cheschire]

I think it’s the other way around. Those large entities break all the same laws and rules as others and then get to the point where they can influence the creation of a regulatory moat around themselves to prevent competitors from taking the same path as them.

[jamesbfb]

RIP Aaron

[arp242]

If you do something wrong then you, as a person, are held responsible and accountable.

If you do something wrong as "part of your job" then you're typically not held responsible and accountable but the company is (the exceptions being spectacular fraud: Enron, VW diesel).

It's not hard to see how this can go off the rails.

[toomuchtodo]

“The revolution will be incorporated.”

[nico]

> the legal system only punishes general public, while most of these guys are above it

It’s because the legal system is not about justice, it’s about money

Most people can’t afford lawyers or expensive legal battles

On the other hand, individuals and organizations with a lot of money get to weaponize and exploit the legal system to their advantage

“To my friends, anything; to my enemies, the law”

[btown]

At the risk of wading into politics - consider a legal environment, in any country, where laws become increasingly strict, but where prosecutorial discretion, pardon powers, and a justice system designed to allow well-resourced law firms to delay cases indefinitely, are all transparently used for political purposes. Such an environment could easily exhibit a feedback loop that allows justice to be arbitrary and opposition voices to be silenced.

I'll refrain from value judgments on the above - but for heaven's sake, we're on a site called "Hacker News." We should understand that a machine like this could turn on any one of us in an instant for any reason.

[artyom]

> the legal system only punishes general public.

In more general terms, the legal system punishes what can be made a profit or an example when punishing.

Also, I don't think the legal system itself wants to get too much into "big institutions against the work of others", save for the fictional TV representations of smart lawyers and clever arguments, 99.9% of the legal system output is copy/paste.

[jimmySixDOF]

> MIT

I think Aaron Swartz went to Harvard, not MIT

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Swartz

[xemoka]

Yes, he went to Harvard; the laptop was plugged in at MIT using his Harvard Fellow credentials to access JSTOR.

[meeech]

At this point, I think it's safe to say it doesn't 'feel' that way. It is that way. Sorry if you were being facetious and I didn't pick up on it.

[censorfree]

>This is exactly what I immediately thought while reading the article. It almost feels like the legal system only punishes general public, while most of these guys are above it.

Welcome to the modern day aristocracy. Not only what you mentioned, this world is also divided into a group of insider who can get capital from 0 - 2%, while rest of us has a cost of 17%, 22% or 30%?

[isaacremuant]

It doesn't "seem". The entire system in most countries works, by design, that way because the people in power trade in influence at a different plane.

That's why democracy often feels "failed" in that no change can be achieved because "it's just more of the same". Few Lobbyists representing the interests of a few people have more power than millions voting differently.

[vladms]

What happens in US right now shows that change is achieved through voting. There are other examples as well in Europe where things did change because of how people voted. If the change is good or bad depends on your perspective.

For me the annoying part is that people vote for a guy because of a couple heavily advertised issues, ignoring all the other plans or the fact that he might not keep his word. Then they are unhappy that things "fail" for them.

[jmount]

They may have just been the friendly step A. We didn't end up seeing where that was going to go.

[G_o_D]

Money speaks ! Money buys !

[yoyohello13]

It's not "almost" like that. The legal system IS that.

[TZubiri]

How so? It is still illegal if meta does it, they will face trial.

[quaintdev]

I read the same thing earlier today on Reddit, weird!

[devwastaken]

if you get a group of people and call it an llc then criminal elements are largely eliminated.

[bayindirh]

As Venus Theory elaborates the issue on his video [0]:

"This problem will be solved in the favor of the (party) which has the most money to throw into the problem" (paraphrase mine).

So, yeah.

[0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LrkAORPiaEA

[kordlessagain]

When individuals are assigned heroic status despite clear evidence of mental illness and crimes, such as “breaking and entering”, it prevents society from having rational discussions about both law enforcement and mental health support. This dynamic repeats across multiple high-profile cases.

People often elevate deeply flawed figures to heroic status when those figures seem to challenge authority or "the system." This happens especially with individuals who present themselves as outsiders fighting the establishment, have a compelling personal struggle narrative, or voice grievances that resonate with public frustrations

Trump fits this pattern - his supporters overlook concerning behaviors and statements because they see him as fighting a system they distrust. Like Manning and Swartz, his mental state and fitness are often ignored in favor of the "hero against the system" narrative.

This dynamic creates a feedback loop where legitimate criticism becomes harder to discuss rationally.

[jeffwask]

Welcome to the two-tier legal system of the modern world. Why obey the law when the penalty is a rounding error?

[ossobuco]

It's an oligarchy, always has been. I don't know how colossal the pile of evidence supporting this has to get before people finally accept it.

[rixed]

Conscious life in general seems possible to me unless our brain tells us a better story than reality.

A story in which we are the hero, in which we are not mortal, in which we are important, in which people care about us, in which we are intelligent and our perceptions rarely fail us, in which our life has a meaning and also in which the social game we play is determined, or at least influenced, by some just principles. We would despair if we were aware of the full extent of our meaninglessness and powerlessness.

I believe that it is the core reason why we love to believe that God/Nature is good, that the king is legitimate and that the laws are fair.

[52-6F-62]

They are paid, handsomely, by it. Or otherwise brainwashed by it. And pummelled into ignorance by it, as they are told that to understand is stupid or delusional, knowledge ends at STEM, and the world only exists for efficient production of capital products.

The poets write laments about such false ages. Prophecies were written about such ages thousands of years ago.

The cycles are larger than us all.

One stable insight is that the chaos breeds possibility, and thus hope. In the meantime, however…

[gscott]

It is more a money thing. Meta can pay x billion like pocket change. Regular people are run through the ringer to teach the plebs to not get out of line.

[bmitc]

It's not a feeling. It's exactly what happens. It's completely blatant.

For some reason, whenever you're a billionaire or company, things suddenly get so difficult that you can claim that it's impossible to be held accountable for anything. Murder, insider trading, laundering, treason, etc.

OpenAI complained about this, as did Google and everyone else. If your company can't exist without stealing data, then it's not a viable company. Companies don't have a constitutional right to exist.