[HN Gopher] Montana becomes first state to enshrine 'right to co...
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Montana becomes first state to enshrine 'right to compute' into law
Author : bilsbie
Score : 293 points
Date : 2025-11-09 13:03 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (montananewsroom.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (montananewsroom.com)
| montroser wrote:
| I guess this is like the second amendment, except for computers
| and GPUs? I'm with it -- but is this actually addressing a real
| threat?
|
| Maybe I'm naive, and I am definitely uncertain about how all this
| AI craziness is going to break -- whether empowering everyone or
| advancing ultra corporate dystopia. But do we think our
| government is gearing up to take our laptops away?
| lmeyerov wrote:
| There is a big push to limit what kind of models can be OSS'd,
| which in turn means yes, a limit to what AI you are allowed to
| run.
|
| The California laws the article references make OSS AI model
| makers liable for whatever developers & users do. That chills
| the enthusiasm for someone like Facebook or a university to
| release a better llama. So I'm curious if this law removes that
| liability..
| ranger_danger wrote:
| Maybe they are trying to lure in more money.
| theoldgreybeard wrote:
| The federalist wing of the drafters of the US Constitution
| didn't think a Bill of Rights was necessary because they
| believed that a government of only enumerated powers was
| enough.
|
| So they didn't even think things like the First and Second
| Amendment were even necessary.
|
| Fastfoward 250 years and now maybe the idea of a "right of the
| people to own and self host their own software, shall not be
| infringed" doesn't sound like such a bad idea.
| montroser wrote:
| True -- I like this take on it. I wonder where we will be 250
| years from now.
| dehugger wrote:
| Our current form of government doesn't seem likely to last
| 25 years, let alone 250.
| burnt-resistor wrote:
| There's an oft-repeated factoid that recognizable
| organized civilizations last about 10 generations or 250
| years on average. And then there's Strauss-Howe
| generational theory. There's no magic formula or
| universal fate except it's risky to have lots of corrupt,
| stupid leaders, injustice, inequality, and/or bad
| circumstances that do everything to avoid rare, effective
| leadership with integrity and labor wealth growing faster
| than capital wealth. Late stage capitalism is omnicidal
| and suicidal because the greedy fools involved tend not
| to care about or plan for the future, including a
| cognitive dissonance to deny anticipation of domination
| by externalities like changes in youth public sentiment,
| demographic shifts, geopolitical balances, and climate
| change. The current richest people in the world are drug
| addicts, warlords, pedophiles, and those who erroneously
| believe public beaches belong to them personally.
| queuebert wrote:
| "The law is antiquated and should be repealed. The framers
| could never have envisioned Our Supreme Lord AI and how
| irrelevant individual compute is today when writing that
| law."
| salawat wrote:
| Ha. You reach for the 2nd but fail to realize that of all the
| Amendments, there is more legal precedent torture to sidestep
| that prohibition than any other amendment save maybe the 4th,
| 5th, and 10th.
| FpUser wrote:
| >"right of the people to own and self host their own
| software, shall not be infringed"
|
| Count me in.
| pessimizer wrote:
| > they believed that a government of only enumerated powers
| was enough.
|
| That's a perspective, but it seems to me that the Federalists
| didn't believe that government should be limited at all. The
| Constitution is a genie granting three wishes, and explaining
| beforehand that one of your wishes can be to wish for three
| more wishes.
|
| Personally, it's always seemed obvious that the Federalists
| and their children have been the worst intellectual current
| in US government. They never had popular support at any time,
| and relied on the manipulation of power and position to
| accomplish personal goals (which is really their only
| ideology.) It began with a betrayal of the French Revolution,
| setting the US on a dirty path (and leaving the Revolution to
| be taken over by the insane.) The Bill of Rights is the only
| worthwhile part of the US Constitution; the rest of it is a
| bunch of slop meant to placate and protect local warlords and
| slaveholders. The Bill of Rights is the only part that
| acknowledges that individual people exist other than the
| preamble.
|
| The Anti-Federalists were always right.
|
| I agree with you that what we should be working on is
| specifying, codifying _and expanding_ the Bill of Rights,
| rather than the courts continually trying to come up with new
| ways to subvert it. New ways that are never codified firmly,
| that always exist as vibes and penumbras. Rights shouldn 't
| have anything to do with what a judge knows when he sees. If
| we want to abridge or expand the Bill of Rights, a new
| amendment should be written and passed; the Supreme Court is
| overloaded because 1) Congress has ceased to function and 2)
| the Senate is still an assembly of local warlords.
| giantg2 wrote:
| "Fastfoward 250 years and ..."
|
| ... the 10th amendment is largely ignored.
| lostmsu wrote:
| It's not like second amendment due to "limited to those
| demonstrably necessary"
| bongodongobob wrote:
| Maybe you've forgotten that the US at one time tried to ban
| encryption. They will try again too, I'm sure.
| bhauer wrote:
| > _but is this actually addressing a real threat?_
|
| US Executive Orders 14110 and 14141 did create fairly onerous
| regulatory regimes that could have constrained the dynamism of
| the marketplace. However, my understanding is that both have
| been rescinded, so they do not currently post a real threat.
| amanaplanacanal wrote:
| A state law wouldn't have any effect on those anyway.
| TheRealPomax wrote:
| You're thinking about your own situation - that's normal, but
| not enough: there are still _loads_ of folks who don 't have a
| computer but are expected to interface with their governments
| (municipal, county, state) using a computer, and have had to
| pay disproportionately more being in the least affluent and/or
| most vulnerable demographic.
|
| It's not about losing access to laptops, it's about
| guaranteeing the right to even have access to the same tools
| that folks like us think everyone already has access to.
| montroser wrote:
| That seems like something different though. My understanding
| is that this is not about the government handing out free
| laptops, the same way the second amendment is not about the
| government handing out free guns. Rather, this is saying
| people have the right to own general purpose computers.
|
| As far as government expecting you to interface with them
| using a computer, I loathe this trend. And of course it's
| infinitely worse if they require a specific proprietary
| platform like iOS or Android. But I don't think this is about
| that.
| terminalshort wrote:
| I'm totally with you as far as requiring a proprietary
| platform, but at some point we do just have to cut off
| obsolete methods of communication. We can't just keep
| supporting them forever.
| gspr wrote:
| > I'm with it -- but is this actually addressing a real threat?
|
| Yes, the threat of mandated computational devices performing
| mandated computations to do things in regular life. Currently,
| these come almost exclusively from private companies (at least
| in the free world), but I think it's a good precedent for a
| government to recognize the dangers here. To be really helpful,
| it needs to ban those private companies from doing what they're
| doing. But this is a good start.
| wyager wrote:
| The EU and UK keep trying to undermine encryption, so I'd say
| there's a pretty clear risk to the freedom of general purpose
| computation.
| nrhrjrjrjtntbt wrote:
| No one made the joke yet?
|
| Right to bear ARMs.
| seneca wrote:
| Here's the actual text of the law:
| https://legiscan.com/MT/text/SB212/id/3078731
| superkuh wrote:
| It's hilarious that the text of this law is blocked behind an
| impassible cloudflare computational paywall.
| terminalshort wrote:
| So impassible that I didn't even see it
| fHr wrote:
| I don't get it, accessing this from EU no issue
| dynm wrote:
| I _think_ this is the main content of the law. (Everything below
| is quoted.)
|
| ---
|
| Section 3. Right to compute
|
| Government actions that restrict the ability to privately own or
| make use of computational resources for lawful purposes, which
| infringes on citizens' fundamental rights to property and free
| expression, must be limited to those demonstrably necessary and
| narrowly tailored to fulfill a compelling government interest in
| public health or safety.
|
| ---
|
| Section 4. Infrastructure controlled by artificial intelligence
| system -- shutdown.
|
| (1) When critical infrastructure facilities are controlled in
| whole or in part by an artificial intelligence system, the
| deployer shall ensure the capability to disable the artificial
| intelligence system's control over the infrastructure and revert
| to human control within a reasonable amount of time.
|
| (2) When enacting a full shutdown, the deployer shall consider,
| as appropriate, disruptions to critical infrastructure that may
| result from a shutdown.
|
| (3) Deployers shall implement, annually review, and test a risk
| management policy that includes a fallback mechanism and a
| redundancy and mitigation plan to ensure the deployer can
| continue operations and maintain control of the critical
| infrastructure facility without the use of the artificial
| intelligence system.
| BirAdam wrote:
| I feel like this was a mistake: "must be limited to those
| demonstrably necessary and narrowly tailored to fulfill a
| compelling government interest in public health or safety"
|
| So, public health or safety, in the hands of a tyrant how broad
| can that get? I imagine that by enshrining this in law, Montana
| has accidentally given a future leader the ability to
| confiscate all computing technology.
| ralusek wrote:
| It appears to be a law that is simply adding restrictions to
| what the state can do (like the first amendment, the best
| sorts of laws IMO). It's not _granting_ people limited
| rights. Any existing rights people had under the fourth or
| first example, for example, are still in place, this just
| sounds like _further_ restrictions on the state.
| terminalshort wrote:
| What are rights besides restrictions on the state?
| mpalmer wrote:
| This is how laws are written. A court would determine whether
| the state is abusing or violating this public safety carve-
| out.
| zbrozek wrote:
| And this exact method is how we got minimum lot sizes,
| setbacks, FAR, and a burgeoning affordability and
| homelessness crisis. It's a blank check.
| mpalmer wrote:
| Yes, the ability to litigate is key. Only a few can
| afford it.
| shortrounddev2 wrote:
| Seems like a lazy way to write a law. Basically just gives
| any governor whose party controls the supreme court a blank
| check. The law should qualify what public safety means
| kingkawn wrote:
| You want discretion for judges so that they can respond
| to the problems of their era wisely rather than rigidly
| applying the ideas of another time without nuance
| jfengel wrote:
| Unless those judges themselves have a fondness for an
| imaginary "great" time, and will apply their reasoning in
| a way that just happens to fit their ideology.
|
| Law is either rigorous or it's not. When I'm told that
| the law is against me but gosh darn it the law is the
| law, I grow resentful of the "discretion" reserved for
| some but not others.
| kingkawn wrote:
| There's no eliminating humans from human civilization. No
| risk no fun.
| jfengel wrote:
| What drives me nuts is the way lawyers (of all stripes)
| keep praising "legal reasoning". None of it strikes me as
| even vaguely rigorous.
|
| I'm not a lawyer so I could well be completely off base
| here. But if my perception is correct, I would much
| rather they admit that it's fundamentally up to someone's
| gut feeling. That's more honest than telling me that a
| bit of reasoning is airtight when it's not.
| lanyard-textile wrote:
| The true honesty is that judges may rule however they
| please, regardless of the reasoning. In many cases they
| require their intuition to guide them. In that sense, it
| is already up to their gut feeling.
|
| At some point someone needs to weigh the facts, and they
| are given great discretion to do so. It is generally a
| good thing, because we have multiple layers of appeal to
| prevent obviously horrible outcomes.
|
| So this legislation, like all legislation, provides
| guidance for the good faith judge to help weigh the
| facts. There is no guidance that will prevent a bad faith
| judge from ruling badly: You do not need a clause about
| public safety to get the ruling you want, but there is an
| argument that your ruling may perhaps be less
| scrutinized.
|
| There's a reason an attorney's answer is always "it
| depends" :) No legislation is truly airtight from abuse.
| DrewADesign wrote:
| A judge can rule however they please, but if it goes
| against legislated law or precedent, it can (and should)
| be appealed. Sure, if the highest appellate determines
| the law says something different than it really does,
| that's that, but it's not like most judges have carte
| blanche to determine the outcome of any legal
| entanglement on a whole.
| mpalmer wrote:
| > gives any governor whose party controls the supreme
| court a blank check
|
| Here's the thing: this is not supposed to be a thing. Not
| supposed to be how things work at all, but it kind of
| does now.
|
| So the trust implicit in the broad language of our laws
| gives - has been giving - a massive advantage to bad
| faith actors who obtain power.
| noir_lord wrote:
| In the hands of a tyrant all laws can be arbitrary/ignored
| because that is a key part of what makes them a tyrant.
|
| Almost every part of government is in isolation a single
| point of failure to someone with a tyrannical streak, it's
| why most democracies end up with multiple houses/bodies and
| courts - supposed to act as checks and balances.
|
| So this law wouldn't alter the outcome in the slightest.
| raw_anon_1111 wrote:
| How has that been working in the US where both the
| legislation branch and judicial branch have willingly given
| their authority to the executive branch?
| noir_lord wrote:
| You would think the fact that I put "supposed to act as
| checks and balances." in my post would answer that but
| apparently not.
| SV_BubbleTime wrote:
| Yes. That has been a problem. Several states outright
| ignored the scotus Bruen decision.
| Retric wrote:
| Yea a Supreme Court ruling 110 years after a law passed
| only for them to reverse course 2 years later. Surely
| that's based on the constitution and nothing else.
| hamdingers wrote:
| How would you expect checks and balances to work when a
| single party controls all the branches? Is this a serious
| comment?
| raw_anon_1111 wrote:
| It seems strange (or maybe you are just young) that you
| think this. But both Democratic and Republican controlled
| Congresses have fought against excesses of their own
| President. The same is true for the Supreme Court in the
| past ruling against an administration of its own party.
|
| There was an entire coalition of "Blue Dog Democrats"
| that came from red states as recently as 30 years ago.
|
| Or did you really forget that even in Trumps first term
| that Republicans like McCain voted against Trump snd 10
| voted to impeach him?
| hamdingers wrote:
| The party is MAGA and that party is pro-dictatorship. The
| behavior of republicans decades ago is irrelevant, and
| it's obvious that MAGA has learned lessons from Tumps
| first term.
|
| Perhaps it's you who haven't been paying attention? I
| find older people have a lot of unfounded faith in these
| failing institutions, but if you try to keep up you'll
| see this isn't the same America you grew up in.
| gosub100 wrote:
| > The party is MAGA and that party is pro-dictatorship.
|
| remember the "sanctuary city" thing? That kind of blind
| obeisance to the tribe and defiance to the federal
| government smells awfully like what MAGA does today.But
| let me guess: it's okay when your tribe does it?
| bdangubic wrote:
| sanctuary cities are there partly due to government
| trying to be (just a little bit :) ) lawless... if ruling
| party was obeying the laws there wouldn't be any need for
| "sanctuary cities" so pick another example
|
| your "tribe" in particular is *all about State rights"
| unless of course States do what the Tzar doesn't like,
| right?!
| philipallstar wrote:
| Sanctuary cities are there to shelter people who enter
| the country illegally. That's not the government being
| lawless.
|
| They were not a reaction to recent ICE moves; you've no
| history, and have reversed cause and effect.
|
| In the 1980s they were a great moral move originally by
| the southwestern churches, they've just expanded into
| electorate jerrymandering and virtue signalling.
| jeltz wrote:
| Nonsense, how does sanctuary cities anything at all to du
| with gerrymandering?
| amalcon wrote:
| So-called "sanctuary cities" have made the judgement that
| their law enforcement apparatus will be more effective if
| people who fear immigration authorities are willing to
| interface with it. They can't and don't _stop_
| enforcement actions by federal authorities (see Chicago,
| right now) - but they view active cooperation with those
| efforts as detrimental to other law enforcement
| activities. You might disagree with that assessment, but
| it is a straightforward exercise of the municipal power
| to allocate its own resources.
|
| Claiming that they are "there to shelter people who enter
| the country illegally" is disingenuous at best. In
| reality, that is neither the goal nor the effect.
| bdangubic wrote:
| educated and sane comments like this don't do well when
| debating issues that people believe politicians about :)
| dragonwriter wrote:
| Sanctuary city laws were largely driven by local law
| enforcement and community services agencies and the way
| fear of being targeted (personally, or family, or
| community members) by immigration authorities in the
| event of law enforcement or other government contact
| complicated enforcement of local enforcement of non-
| immigration laws and delivery of local services in
| communities with significant immigrant populations;
| mitigating that fear related to contact with local
| government and leaving enforcement of federal law to
| federal authorities improved the ability of local
| governments to serve their own priorities.
| wredcoll wrote:
| So this is a fascinating example of left vs right
| thinking.
|
| To those on the left, _why_ you do things matter.
| Breaking a law that is widely regarded as unjust is
| considered to be a moral action as long as it helps
| people.
|
| The difference is being able to understand that "defying
| the federal government" is neither an absolute moral good
| nor is it an evil. Why you're doing it is the more
| important reason.
| raw_anon_1111 wrote:
| Yes next up - look at all of those evil lawless people
| during the civil rights movement who dared stand up
| against Jim Crow laws
|
| More recently, the difference between leaning on tech
| companies during an epidemic and a President leaning on
| companies to personally give him money.
| strictnein wrote:
| > "leaning on tech companies during an epidemic"
|
| The government partnering with businesses to restrict
| speech is actually a really bad thing. Thankfully we've
| pulled back from that now. Trump being corrupt and a
| garbage human doesn't negate that fact.
| philipallstar wrote:
| That is not left or right issue. Why you do things
| matters to everyone.
|
| What you're talking about, which the left can certainly
| be said to have been guilty of, is selective enforcement,
| where people who purport the right motivations (read:
| politics) are fine to do things that others are not.
| LinXitoW wrote:
| Well, no. It's the right, for example, that constantly
| saw the "spectre of pedophiles" everywhere, including a
| random pizzerias basement, but when it comes to Epstein
| Files and his friends, many of who are in office, they
| suddenly don't care. Leftists, are, at least as far as i
| can tell, very consistent in not liking child molesters.
|
| There's a huge amount of rightists against ALL abortion,
| until they suddenly need one. I don't know of any
| leftists that are ever like "I think abortions should be
| legal except for that one person who I don't like".
| strictnein wrote:
| To follow your format, apparently the entire left is okay
| with releasing convicted sexual predators back into
| society, when legally they should have been deported.
|
| Now, I don't think the left is actually in favor of that,
| but their policies cause this to happen.
|
| There's plenty of folks on the right who want to see the
| "Epstein Files" released. There's also plenty of folks on
| the right who are against abortions and still end up
| having the kid even though it will cause difficulties for
| them. If you're unaware of this, you may want to broaden
| how you're exposed to opposing views a little more.
| hamdingers wrote:
| This doesn't fully capture it, because the right is
| clearly fine with lawlessness.
|
| The distinction is the left cares about _why_ , as you
| said, while the right cares about _who_. If the Right
| People are breaking the law (Trump, ICE, the youth
| pastor), it 's okay.
|
| If every accusation is an admission, GP admits it
| plainly: "it's okay when your tribe does it?"
| BrenBarn wrote:
| I think another way to say this is that some people see
| laws as one layer in a stack of principles of varying
| degrees of generality, and believe that it makes sense to
| oppose a policy at more specific layer if it conflicts
| with a more basic principle at a deeper layer. Others see
| laws as just arbitrary dictates: you follow the law or
| you don't, and that's it, the law doesn't represent or
| instantiate any principles or ideals, it just is what it
| is.
|
| I'm not sure the distinction here maps cleanly onto a
| left/right political axis though. People on the right
| also think that stuff like refusing to serve gay people
| or (at least in the past) standing in a schoolhouse door
| to block racial integration constitutes a form of
| legitimate resistance or protest against unjust laws. And
| there are certainly those on the right who believe that
| certain acts are okay (or more okay) when done by certain
| people (e.g., the homeless, oppressed racial/ethnic
| groups).
|
| It does seem to just come down to different views of what
| principles are in that stack and what the priority
| ranking is. An obvious case is that many on the right
| would give certain tenets a central, foundational status
| on religious grounds, whereas it's increasingly the case
| on the left that religion isn't considered a legitimate
| basis for public policy. And in fact, the divide is even
| deeper, since many on the left consider that secular
| perspective itself central and foundational --- one side
| thinks certain things should be illegal because religion
| says so, while the other side considers it wrong for the
| law to even take account of what religion says.
|
| In light of this what I find frustrating is that so many
| of those on the left (especially those holding political
| office) are unwilling to turn against those institutions
| themselves on the same grounds, namely that the
| institutions are subverting and impeding more basic
| ideals of freedom and justice. Democratic politicians
| shouldn't be arguing about this or that Supreme Court
| decision or what this or that Senator did or didn't do;
| they should be arguing that the Supreme Court and the US
| Senate are undemocratic institutions and should be swept
| away entirely, along with a good bit of other
| governmental cruft, in the furtherance of the root goals
| of democracy and equality.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| Municipal government does not have any power, obligation
| nor responsibility to enforce federal law.
|
| Lowering themselves to be federal snitches, they reduce
| compliance with state and local laws which actually
| impact the public, and create a variety of other problems
| that hurt the community. Where does it end? Should states
| investigate purchases that may enable the violation of
| federal law? You realize that there's almost no limit to
| what can be technically constructed to be a federal
| felony. Why is immigration so special?
|
| To conservative thinkers, sitting behind their keyboards
| in the cushy suburbs, the concept of states' rights ends
| with the oppression of minority voting and pillaging of
| the environment. Anyone, regardless of politics, who is
| comparing that legal concept to support of the
| lawlessness the regime is carrying out should really look
| within.
| amanaplanacanal wrote:
| From what I can tell, all Sanctuary City means is that
| locals will not cooperate with federal law enforcement
| unless it is legally required. Which seems right to me?
| States are independent entities with their own laws.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| Exactly, sanctuary city/state laws are an application of
| 10th Amendment reserved powers of the states, and
| particularly the principle known as the "anti-
| commandeering doctrine", hinted at in in dicta concerning
| hypotheticals regarding the Fugitive Slave Laws in cases
| shortly before the Civil War and first applied as a basis
| for judgement by the Supreme Court in _New York v. United
| States_ , 505 U.S. 144 (1992).
|
| Even where the Constitution grants the federal government
| authority to make laws and to provide for their
| enforcement, it generally does not have the power to
| direct states to use their resources to enforce those
| laws. Sanctuary laws simply restrict the conditions in
| which state or local resources will be used to enforce
| certain federal laws.
| raw_anon_1111 wrote:
| Yes way back in 2016-2020 when dinosaurs ruled the earth.
| ryandrake wrote:
| 2016 might well have been 1916. The state of US politics
| is night and day different now.
| hamdingers wrote:
| > it's obvious that MAGA has learned lessons from Tumps
| first term
|
| Read all the words in a comment before replying to it.
| usefulcat wrote:
| I get (and partly agree with) the point you're trying to
| make, but do consider that the fact that Trump was ever
| elected at all, let alone twice, is really not helping
| your argument.
| jeltz wrote:
| And 2021 was when the republicans decided to protect
| Trump after his half-assed failed coup attempt. He should
| have been locked up but the republicans decided to
| protect him.
| hansvm wrote:
| > So this law wouldn't alter the outcome in the
| slightest.
|
| If an unchecked tyrant exists, do they really need the
| paper-thin facade provided by manhandling the English
| language to pretend that some law supports their actions?
| vlovich123 wrote:
| Yes because tyrants still value the symbolism of pretext.
| XorNot wrote:
| This is just making a slippery slope fallacy by
| circuitous means.
|
| The point of all laws and thus the courts is that each
| new action provides an opportunity to debate and decide
| on whether an action is lawful, and thus determine
| whether it should proceed.
|
| You are arguing that all such decisions would always be
| decided in favor of the tyrant because they're a tyrant
| ala a slippery slope: the law exists, all things will be
| declared lawful, ergo all things are allowed with no
| further challenge.
|
| This can certainly be true, but it doesn't naturally
| follow.
| vlovich123 wrote:
| Show me a tyrant that doesn't have rules and laws.
| Turkey, Saudia Arabia, Iran, China, North Korea, Sadam
| Hussein's Iraq, and Russia still have law creating and
| law enforcing bodies. A good chunk of those countries
| even hold elections.
|
| Hell, even in medieval England the king didn't have
| absolute authority and had to worry about political
| alliances abcs political support of the other nobles.
|
| You should go read the dictator's handbook. Think about
| it from the perspective is the tyrant - there's one of
| you. How do you establish control over groups of other
| people? Just ordering people around doesn't work. You
| need to create a power base. You can go broad and give
| riches back to the people or narrow and give riches to
| people who have power and influence already. Dictator's
| generally go the latter route because you're not at the
| whim of changes in political mood and individual problems
| can be managed easily. But you still need to tap into
| symbolism and other institutions to lend yourself
| legitimacy to avoid uprisings.
| rolph wrote:
| give a man a shovel, and a treasure map, but dont tell
| him he is digging his own grave.
| exe34 wrote:
| in that case they can just vote in whatever law they want
| or they can hold starving kids hostage and forbid anybody
| from helping - I don't think this law in particular will
| make any of it worse.
| xorcist wrote:
| It sounds like you completely agree with the comment you
| replied to?
| MangoToupe wrote:
| > In the hands of a tyrant all laws can be
| arbitrary/ignored because that is a key part of what makes
| them a tyrant.
|
| Sure, but legislators should generally avoid explicitly
| building the on-ramp to such behavior.
| miki123211 wrote:
| > In the hands of a tyrant all laws can be
| arbitrary/ignored because that is a key part of what makes
| them a tyrant.
|
| But that is not how tyrants actually operate, at least most
| of the time.
|
| The most tyrannical country possible would be a "free
| democratic union of independent people's republics".
| Democracy has been so successful that most tyrannies
| operate under its veneer. This is in stark contrast to how
| monarchies have operated historically.
|
| The trick isn't to ignore laws, but to make them so broad,
| meaningless and impossible to follow that you have to
| commit crimes to survive. You can then be selective in
| which of these crimes you choose to prosecute.
|
| You don't charge the human rights activist for the human
| rights activism. You charge them with engaging in illegal
| speculation for the food they bought on the black market,
| even though that was the only way to avoid starvation, and
| everybody else did it too. In the worst case scenario, you
| charge them with "endangering national peace", "spreading
| misinformation" or "delivering correspondence without
| possessing a government license to do so" (for giving out
| pamflets).
|
| "must be limited to those demonstrably necessary and
| narrowly tailored to fulfill a compelling government
| interest" is exactly the shenanigans tyrants love. You can
| get away with absolutely anything with a law like that.
| SilverElfin wrote:
| Agree - it feels a lot like emergency measures, which are
| broadly abused at every level of the government and by both
| major parties.
| captainkrtek wrote:
| Do tyrants care about law? They find ways to work around law,
| write new law, and rule by decree.
|
| Democracy is largely following norms and tradition of
| respecting the people and laws, but it can also be ignored
| when those in power shift.
| dvntsemicolon wrote:
| I see your point, but a tyrant doesn't need to follow laws in
| order to do tyranical things
| ethin wrote:
| This phrasing is not by itself unusual; this almost mirrors
| the requirements for strict scrutiny.
| singron wrote:
| This is essentially the "strict scrutiny" standard, which
| governments have to achieve in order to violate your
| strongest constitutional rights (e.g. 1A). If you don't spell
| it out, then it might be delegated to a lower standard like
| "rational basis".
| simplulo wrote:
| Correct.
| simplulo wrote:
| I know what you mean, but this is actually as strong as a
| protection in Montana (and probably elsewhere) gets. The
| burden is high. Montana's RTC bill had strong and competent
| libertarian input.
| BriggyDwiggs42 wrote:
| So this is probably just to attract datacenters with the
| promise there will be no recourse for the local environmental
| consequences and the horrible noise for neighbors.
| andai wrote:
| Does The Hum fall under the 1st Amendment? ;)
| Spooky23 wrote:
| That's no hum, it's the sound of shareholder value.
| xorcist wrote:
| That's .. unexpectedly broad? A strict interpretation of that
| would mean no gaming consoles and certainly no iPhones.
|
| Their fundamental promise is a gatekeeper that restricts a lot
| of things that are not only legal but many customers want to
| do, including trivial things like writing their own software.
| qnleigh wrote:
| > Government actions that restrict the ability to privately
| own or make use of computational resources
|
| If the government tried to block you from installing certain
| apps on your phone, that would fall under this law. Apple as
| a private company can still block whatever they want.
| XorNot wrote:
| It does get a little interesting to imagine the interface
| here though: if I circumvent those restrictions, a strict
| reading would be that I'm allowed to because the mechanism
| by which Apple would stop me would be through the State.
|
| Which in turn would put it in conflict with the DMCA.
| benatkin wrote:
| That seems like a correct interpretation and I don't like
| seeing it spelled out like this in a law. It seems more
| like a CAN-SPAM act than a step in the right direction.
| yason wrote:
| If that's the gist of it, then:
|
| > Government actions that restrict the ability to privately...
|
| This seems weirdly backwards. The main problem is not generally
| what government can and wishes to restrict, it's all the
| proprietary/private restrictions such as not being able to run
| whatever code you want on hardware you own. The bill does
| nothing to address the actual _rights_ of citizens, it just
| limits some ways government can 't further restrict the
| citizens' right. The government should be protecting the
| citizens' digital rights from anyone trying to clamp them down.
| BrenBarn wrote:
| That's the notion of "rights" we have in the US though. It's
| the same with the Bill of Rights. It's true some states do go
| further and bestow more affirmative rights. But it's deeply
| ingrained in US political thought that "right to do X" means
| "government won't stop you from doing X", not "government
| will stop anyone who tries to stop you from doing X".
| gameman144 wrote:
| This seems to have the positive effect that patching
| applications on your own device (a la Revanced patching
| Spotify) appears blessed, since government prosecution would
| need to demonstrate a public interest case, if I'm reading
| this correctly.
| samdoesnothing wrote:
| No, the problem is the extent to which private parties can
| use the power of law to legally restrict your usage of
| property you own. And that's the reason it's a right.
|
| If you don't like the restrictions a product has you can
| simply not purchase the product, no "right" has been
| infringed.
| makeitdouble wrote:
| > you can simply not purchase the product
|
| You should explain how you'd see the majority of the
| population not buying a smartphone from a major brand.
| samdoesnothing wrote:
| ...by not purchasing one?
| a_humean wrote:
| Yeah, the whole concept of rights in the US are, in the main,
| about restricting what the federal government and states can
| do individuals.
|
| Whereas in Europe our concept of rights include restrictions
| on the state, but also also might restrict non-state actors.
| We also have a broader concept of rights that create
| obligations on the state and private actors to do things for
| individuals to their benefit.
| mbac32768 wrote:
| It is oddly funny that people in my town are ferociously
| protesting the police force's adoption of Flock
| surveillance cameras when everyone already carries total
| surveillance devices (smartphones) on their person at all
| times.
| TehCorwiz wrote:
| I can leave my phone at home. I cannot leave flock at
| home. It's about consent.
| singron wrote:
| "lawful" seems like an enormous loophole that makes this seem
| vacuous. If the government makes what you are doing unlawful,
| then it can be restricted. How would the government restrict
| you from doing something lawful in the first place? A bill of
| attainder? That's already illegal.
| stephenlf wrote:
| It gives a legal foothold to those who would challenge later
| laws, akin to the bill of rights. Believe it or not, courts
| will honor that kind of thing, and many legislators act in
| good faith (at least at the state level).
| throwaway384638 wrote:
| Having dealt with lawyers for the past few months this is
| design
| colingauvin wrote:
| >Government actions that restrict the ability to privately own or
| make use of computational resources for lawful purposes, which
| infringes on citizens' fundamental rights to property and free
| expression, must be limited to those demonstrably necessary and
| narrowly tailored to fulfill a compelling government interest in
| public health or safety.
|
| ....what does this say about DRM enforcement?
| nayuki wrote:
| Exactly. I was hoping that this law would be the pushback to
| the overzealous prosecution of DeCSS, people who defeat DRM
| locks in order to lawfully back up the multimedia data that
| they already paid for, etc.
|
| Somewhat related: https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-
| read.en.html , https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Right_to_Read
|
| I also wonder what the impact of the law is on TPM chips on
| computers (restricting your ability to boot whatever OS you
| want), the locked-down iOS mobile app store, etc.
| derbOac wrote:
| I admit I'm not knowledgeable about this law but as it's
| written it seems fairly meaningless to me, as it could be
| interpreted in many different ways, and the exclusion is a hole
| you could drive a metaphorical truck through.
| sweetjuly wrote:
| Most of the laws which touch on DRM are federal, and so they
| override any state laws due to the supremacy clause.
| sandworm101 wrote:
| Question nobody wants to talk about: will this prevent courts
| from issuing "no computer" restrictions on persons convicted or
| being investigated for crimes involving computers?
|
| I have seen clients go for many years without cellphones because
| a judge cassually attached a "no computer" protective order. It
| is hard enough finding work as a convict or person under
| investigation, but 10x harder for those without cellphones and
| email.
| FpUser wrote:
| These restrictions must be scrapped completely. Along with this
| barbaric "criminal record" they delegate big chunk of the
| population to an underclass, well, unless they are rich.
| zootboy wrote:
| It does look to be a nudge in that direction, but it's not a
| slam-dunk. From my non-lawyer reading of the text, it seems
| like it would depend on how well you can argue that a total ban
| is not "narrowly tailored."
| threecheese wrote:
| Any idea how "citizen" is defined here? Does this apply, like
| speech (and campaign donations), to corporations?
| sandworm101 wrote:
| Yes. In written laws "citizen" generally means any person
| and/or organization subject to the laws of the state. It doesnt
| mean just living people who can vote.
|
| Many a young law student has pontificated that as non-citizens,
| visiting tourists have no rights. There is no more loaded a
| word in US politics, and none more malleable under the law, as
| "citizen". It means something different in every context.
| zkmon wrote:
| I mean, without this law, are the people not allowed to use
| computing? What exactly is the difference it brings? Does it
| force government to provide computing to all citizens?
| manbart wrote:
| Makes it harder for people to oppose construction of data
| centers in their back yard
| righthand wrote:
| Here is the official text:
| https://bills.legmt.gov/#/laws/bill/2/LC0292?open_tab=bill
| hereme888 wrote:
| Good job, Montana. There was a trend in proposed and passed
| policies that were eating at rights to own machines. Examples:
| DMCA anti-circumvention (right to repair and jailbreak), export
| controls for high-end chips and cybersecurity tools, proposals to
| weaken/negate e2e encryption or delay security updates, AI rules
| that you can't train past X amount (shortsighted for future of
| personal compute capacity), restricting individuals from crypto
| mining, etc. So basically a trend of restricting software use or
| modification on general-purpose hardware. Once the tiniest
| relevant policy lands, it tends to expand from there. Hence what
| Montana did.
| amanaplanacanal wrote:
| Aren't all of those federal efforts? This state law would have
| no effect on those.
| pottertheotter wrote:
| I think this is just to make it so that data centers and crypto
| mining facilities can be built and operated where owners want.
| Makes it so zoning and environmental regulations can't stop you
| as easily.
| dboreham wrote:
| Um. Montana resident here. The state also had quite strong anti-
| corruption (aka campaign finance) laws, since the copper baron
| days. But the US Supreme Court ruled that doesn't matter (because
| their corruption trumps any state anti-corruption law
| presumably). So don't expect this to amount to anything.
| lr4444lr wrote:
| It's a nice gesture, but I'm not sure it will matter. AI is
| likely already on the Federal radar for superseding regulation.
| eikenberry wrote:
| As long as laws are restricted to business services it
| shouldn't conflict. This is the right for citizens to use
| computation, business regulation is always a layer on top of
| that.
| londons_explore wrote:
| I'm not sure exactly what this law does, but I would like to do
| with a computer anything I could theoretically and legally do
| with my mind.
|
| Eg. If I'm a shopkeeper and see some customer coming in who stole
| stuff from the shop last time, I am within my rights to tell them
| to leave the shop.
|
| However if I use a computer to do the same, many countries would
| disallow facial recognition, keeping databases of customers
| without consent, etc.
| jstanley wrote:
| OK, but be careful what you wish for. We might get regulations
| on allowable thought if that's what's necessary to regulate
| computation.
| suncemoje wrote:
| What does this make with Montana?
| teucris wrote:
| I'm all for this movement provided it's actually focusing on the
| rights of individuals rather than empowering corporations to own
| and operate massive amounts of computing power unchecked. When I
| first read the article, I frankly assumed this was meant to limit
| regulation on AI. From what I've read in the law that doesn't
| seem to _explicitly_ be the case, but given the organizations
| involved, I fully expect to see more in that vein.
| frmersdog wrote:
| I feel super happy for the 5 people and 20 cows who will benefit.
| (This is intended less a jab at Montana specifically and more at
| state and national politicians who only seem to have political
| gumption when it concerns the needs of less-populated states with
| particular demographics.)
| perihelions wrote:
| The major context of this law is regulations like Executive Order
| 14110, of 2023 (since rescinded),
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_Order_14110
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38067314 ( _" Executive
| Order on Safe, Secure, and Trustworthy Artificial Intelligence
| (whitehouse.gov)"_--337 comments)
| malvim wrote:
| I mean, isn't there also law that says people have basic rights
| to food, housing, healthcare?
|
| What will this law change, effectively?
| SketchySeaBeast wrote:
| If there a law saying people have the right to food?
| samdoesnothing wrote:
| No...?
| jandrewrogers wrote:
| There is no basic right to food, housing, or healthcare. Your
| premise is wrong.
| Sleaker wrote:
| Interesting, has the EFF done a writeup/opinion on this
| legislation yet? I tend to trust them on breaking things down
| from the legalese and implications.
| RRWagner wrote:
| I used to do presentations at educational technology conferences
| and many (30+)years ago I speculated that "in the future"
| computers that could create would be licensed. This was based on
| the observation that every significant past technology under user
| control was eventually licensed for permission to operate -
| radio, television, cars, the list is long.
| PunchyHamster wrote:
| you need better examples than radio/tv/cars
|
| radio/tv share the bands which are very narrow resource so
| licensing pretty much have to exist else there would be
| interference abound (imagine competing TV station just driving
| around with a jammer on competition
|
| cars have that + the fact infrastructure is built by public
| money. Allowing anyone on anything with no training there
| literally costs lives
|
| Or, copyright wise, to earn money in before digital world you
| kinda had to not have too much of copyright infringement -
| while artist today might get popular enough to subside on
| patreon/other form of digital tips, before it wouldn't be
| possible
| cushychicken wrote:
| Oh wow, Greg Gianforte managed to do something in politics I
| _don't vehemently hate_.
|
| He's not a very nice person but he did at least used to own a
| tech company.
| nikitalita wrote:
| This is very transparently an attempt to prevent regulation of AI
| companies
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