EU wants to filter code
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Trwtf is the EU's new proposal:
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@benjamin-hall said in WTF Bites:
Trwtf is the EU's new proposal:
Contact your MEPs
Wait, did they ever turn off e-mailblocking?
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'd because this seems juicy.
I wonder about the awareness of the people proposing this regarding the sorts of licenses you find on software at github. Of course, that doesn't mean that someone isn't incorrectly putting things up there under a permissive license.
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@boomzilla said in EU wants to filter code:
I wonder about the awareness of the people proposing this regarding the sorts of licenses you find on software at github
Like most politicians, the sum of their knowledge about software is E_DIVISION_BY_ZERO
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@timebandit said in EU wants to filter code:
sum
DIVISION
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@hungrier Math is hard !
File under: you broke my joke
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The main practical problem I see with checking code for copyright as opposed to, say, checking movies for copyright is that movies under copyright tend to be public, and hence can be compared with the item being checked. While code under copyright is generally kept under tight wraps, making checking for copyrights problematic.
Apart from that, I don't see why checking code for copyright is philosophically a much bigger problem than doing so for, say, movies?
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@pleegwat said in EU wants to filter code:
I don't see why checking code for copyright is philosophically a much bigger problem than doing so for, say, movies?
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@pleegwat said in EU wants to filter code:
Apart from that, I don't see why checking code for copyright is philosophically a much bigger problem than doing so for, say, movies?
It isn't. It is just a big problem for both.
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@benjamin-hall TRWTF is the (international) race for ever stricter IP laws, which results in craziness like this or the DMCA.
Imaginary conversation:
: "You only have 50 years of copyright after death? We've got 70. You should fix that."
: "We upped it to 90 years after grand-children's death. Your turn."In general you can assume this people wouldn't even find the power button on a computer.
Meanwhile, everybody happily outsources their shit to China, who don't give a shit about your I Pee.
Filed under: SCOTUS: "Infinity-1 is finite for all we care."
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@pleegwat said in EU wants to filter code:
While code under copyright is generally kept under tight wraps, making checking for copyrights problematic
Even GPL-licensed code is under copyright. That said, I do agree that the sort of people who are pushing for these rules probably don't keep their code visible to the public.
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@pleegwat said in EU wants to filter code:
Apart from that, I don't see why checking code for copyright is philosophically a much bigger problem than doing so for, say, movies?
It's a travesty for both, but for open source it's even more egregious:
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IT follows the path of least resistance. Remember what happened with the EU cookie law? Instead of stopping to track you (obviously not always with ill intent when used to store logon sessions), sites threw up a notice saying "Click here to accept cookies or get lost". What might happen here is that (smaller) source repositories simply refuse to publicize the code, requiring you to pay for a private repo or get lost.
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Automatic detection is likely to favor bullshit from copyright trolls over legitimate sources. That trivial
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code you wrote? Sorry, that's copyrighted already by Bridges, Inc over there and it looks like yours is identical. No can do!
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@topspin said in EU wants to filter code:
Filed under: SCOTUS: "Infinity-1 is finite for all we care."
I mean...I'm not sure what else they could do about that sort of thing.
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@timebandit said in EU wants to filter code:
Like most politicians, the sum of their knowledge about software is E_DIVISION_BY_ZERO
So very large when approached from the right?
See: Asymptote
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@boomzilla said in EU wants to filter code:
@topspin said in EU wants to filter code:
Filed under: SCOTUS: "Infinity-1 is finite for all we care."
I mean...I'm not sure what else they could do about that sort of thing.
I don't know either, it's not really their fault. But perpetually increasing it is very much not in the spirit of "for limited times".
One idea would be to not allow retro-active extensions, i.e. copyright extensions would only apply to new works. Not sure if there'd be any legal basis for that.
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@topspin Yeah, I just don't see a judicial "solution" for that issue as the laws stand now.
“Dare to think this: It is entirely possible for a law to be really, really stupid and yet be constitutional,” Scalia said. “It is not up to the Court to run the country by holding as unconstitutional not only those things the Constitution pronounces to be unconstitutional, but those things it thinks ought to be unconstitutional.”
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@boomzilla said in EU wants to filter code:
“Dare to think this: It is entirely possible for a law to be really, really stupid and yet be constitutional,” Scalia said.
Preach.
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@pleegwat said in EU wants to filter code:
Apart from that, I don't see why checking code for copyright is philosophically a much bigger problem than doing so for, say, movies?
Movie makers don't copy-paste anywhere near as much as software developers do. And even in the rare case where code has been written by hand, it usually falls into some very popular, often replicated pattern. Accidentally coming up with large blocks of code nearly identical to someone else's is very high, especially if you're experienced developer who knows and uses proven design patterns (usually with the same names as in your programming book, just like everyone else who read that book).
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@gąska I guess a more apt comparison would be using similar filming styles and techniques to produce a different movie
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Like many (most?) companies we run a code scan before every release. The number of false flags we get for open sourced code that another company has wrapped in a more restrictive license is absurd.
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@homobalkanus with films, even if you have identical source and just convert it to another format, you get something that's different on binary level even after decoding to full bitmap frames. With code, any project using some framework will have large swathes of boilerplate code that will be 90%+ byte-for-byte identical with basically any other project using the same framework. Any plagiarism software will have orders of magnitude more false-positives with code than with pictures/movies/music/books.
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@dragoon said in EU wants to filter code:
Like many (most?) companies we run a code scan before every release.
Never heard of that personally.
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@gąska said in EU wants to filter code:
@dragoon said in EU wants to filter code:
Like many (most?) companies we run a code scan before every release.
Never heard of that personally.
It is becoming more and more common. It is about the only practical way to cvheck for known (to someone) vulnerabilities amongst the vast number of potential packages....
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@topspin said in EU wants to filter code:
Meanwhile, everybody happily outsources their shit to China, who don't give a shit about your I Pee.
This actually makes a lot of sense, if, like me, your hat is made of the finest tinfoil:
- Larger companies have more money to lobby the government (regarding things like, say, IP).
- Larger companies are more likely to outsource than smaller companies due to having more "disposable" income.
- Smaller companies are stuck with IP laws, giving more power to the larger companies.
Everybody's happy!
By everyone, I mean Big Software.
If you're wondering, yes, it's aluminium.
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I think it would actually be very interesting if the EU released a website where you could compare any public repo to any other public repo.
It might already exist, of course.
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If they public repos, you can already compare them yourself.
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@dragoon said in EU wants to filter code:
If they public repos, you can already compare them yourself.
Yeah but what dev doesn't use a GUI?
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@gąska said in EU wants to filter code:
Movie makers don't copy-paste anywhere near as much as software developers do.
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@shoreline said in EU wants to filter code:
@dragoon said in EU wants to filter code:
If they public repos, you can already compare them yourself.
Yeah but what dev doesn't use a GUI?
Of course I use GUI. How else would I browse TDWTF while compiling?
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@pleegwat It seems pointless in a website like Github. I can see the idea of copyright blockers for video sharing sites, where some users constantly make new accounts to upload videos from commercial shows and share them before they get taken down. There isn't, as far as I know, anyone constantly uploading pirated software on Github under throwaway accounts.
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Brexit looks a lot more sensible doesn't it?
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@gąska It is almost like they don't understand what the inherit problems with it would be. Or they don't care.
I have been campaigning by probably irritating the fuck out of my MP because Amber Rudd (I forget which position in the UK cabinet) thinks that Encryption should have a back door because it would never get abused by criminals.
The problem is that Tech is the most innovative sector and they dunno how to control it because it will make some of the institutions pointless.
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@lucas1 said in EU wants to filter code:
@gąska It is almost like they don't understand what the inherit problems with it would be.
No, it's EXACTLY like that.
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@gąska I think they don't care, they just wanna spy on us.
I am transitioning to protonmail, and I browse always under VPN because FUCK THEM they shouldn't be spying on me.
They will accuse people of being a Terrorist, Racist, Paedophile whatever for using encryption.
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@lucas1 said in EU wants to filter code:
@gąska I think they don't care, they just wanna spy on us.
This goes beyond spying. This is putting obstacles in the way of people for the sake of putting obstacles in the way of people. They're either utter idiots or extreme sociopaths. Or both.
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@gąska No they are socialists. They would probably make you sit down to piss (if you are a man) if they could make you.
Fuck the EU. Everyone vote out.
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@gąska Fair point. We have only one real Conservative in the Conservative party.
This is him and he is the only sensible voice. That is why the far right is rising over Europe.
I ain't even far right and I think "maybe worth joining these cunts ".
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@lucas1 said in EU wants to filter code:
@gąska No they are socialists. They would probably make you sit down to piss (if you are a man) if they could make you.
Fuck the EU. Everyone vote out.
From the nation with a CCTV up everyone's
assarsehole.
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@lucas1 said in EU wants to filter code:
We have only one real Conservative in the Conservative party.
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@topspin said in EU wants to filter code:
@benjamin-hall TRWTF is the (international) race for ever stricter IP laws, which results in craziness like this or the DMCA.
Imaginary conversation:
: "You only have 50 years of copyright after death? We've got 70. You should fix that."
: "We upped it to 90 years after grand-children's death. Your turn."In general you can assume this people wouldn't even find the power button on a computer.
Meanwhile, everybody happily outsources their shit to China, who don't give a shit about your I Pee.
Filed under: SCOTUS: "Infinity-1 is finite for all we care."
Why does copyright law even take the lifespan of the creator into account? Why not have a piece of content become public domain automatically after a certain number of years of it first being published?
Let's say I make something when I'm 20 and another thing when I'm 50. Why should the thing I made when I'm 50 have 30 years less copyright protection?
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@gąska said in EU wants to filter code:
@dragoon said in EU wants to filter code:
Like many (most?) companies we run a code scan before every release.
Never heard of that personally.
You might see it more when code transfers ownership, e.g., going to the Apache Software Foundation, which I've done in the past. The adoption process includes plenty of these sorts of things, which was just a PITA for us, as we'd tracked what code we owned fairly well and had virtually nothing third-party in the repositories we were moving. (There were a small number of awkward cases where we were generating code from XML schemas we didn't own that were not actually available online in machine-processable form.)
I'd imagine such checks are not too awful provided you're prepared for them; it's always the first time that's the worst.
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@ben_lubar said in EU wants to filter code:
Why does copyright law even take the lifespan of the creator into account? Why not have a piece of content become public domain automatically after a certain number of years of it first being published?
Or why doesn’t it become public domain the moment the creator dies? I don’t know of anything that remains your (inheritors’) property for a certain, fixed amount of time after you die — it’s not like, say, the money in your bank account is available to your inheritors for 25 years only, or that they get your house for 50 years but must give it up after that.
Let's say I make something when I'm 20 and another thing when I'm 50. Why should the thing I made when I'm 50 have 30 years less copyright protection?
For the same reason that you can live less long in a house you buy when you’re 50 than in a house you buy when you’re 20?
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@gurth said in EU wants to filter code:
I don’t know of anything that remains your (inheritors’) property for a certain, fixed amount of time after you die
There's lots of things about copyright that are unlike anything else.
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@pleegwat said in EU wants to filter code:
Apart from that, I don't see why checking code for copyright is philosophically a much bigger problem than doing so for, say, movies?
Code for similar programs can look similar.
Even though there are times that some specific functions can be written in more than one way in the same programming language, generally they do converge into two or three common patterns. especially when coding some "idiomatic" code fragments.
This ensures huge volume of "false positives" if the rule kicks in.
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@ben_lubar said in EU wants to filter code:
Why does copyright law even take the lifespan of the creator into account? Why not have a piece of content become public domain automatically after a certain number of years of it first being published?
It used to work that way.
The Congress first exercised its copyright powers with the Copyright Act of 1790. This act granted authors the exclusive right to publish and vend "maps, charts and books" for a term of 14 years. This 14-year term was renewable for one additional 14-year term, if the author was alive at the end of the first time. With exception of the provision on maps and charts the Copyright Act of 1790 is copied almost verbatim from the Statute of Anne.[3]
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@antiquarian That's pretty much what I've been wanting copyright to be like for a while now, and here I find out that's how it was originally before it was perverted.
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@ben_lubar It's going to be fun if they ever develop life extension technology.
Disney is going to transfer all their copyrights to some random person, then he'll grant them a permanent license, then they'll just keep him in some form of "still technically alive" suspended animation forever.
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@anonymous234 AFAIK copyright on cooperative works and transferred rights count from work creation, not author's death.
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@lb_ said in EU wants to filter code:
@antiquarian That's pretty much what I've been wanting copyright to be like for a while now, and here I find out that's how it was originally before it was perverted.
There's a thread.