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Re:I've Just Liberated My Modules by patio11 on Wednesday March 23, 2016 @12:23AM (#11342147)
"So what you're saying is, your computers cannot possibly not continue damaging the plaintiff's interests." "That's correct." "You're being honest with me." "Yes, your Honor." "Will the computers continue harming the plaintiff's interests if shut off?" "... That would be dreadfully inconvenient, your Honor." "Do you have a more convenient solution?" "No, your Honor." "You are hereby ordered to turn off your computers in 48 hours." "... You can't do that." "I can do a lot of things, including jailing you if you disobey my lawful authority. 48 hours."

Engineers often think that they are the first people in history to have thought "Hey, wouldn't it be easy to pull one over on the legal system?" This is, in fact, quite routine. The legal system interprets attempts to route around it as damage and responds to damage with overwhelming force.

Re:I've Just Liberated My Modules by dctoedt on Wednesday March 23, 2016 @09:05AM (#11344011)
What Patrick says is technically true. But before granting the "extraordinary remedy" of an injunction, U.S. courts would apply the traditional four-factor test, which includes assessing:

+ the balance of hardships between allowing the conduct in question to continue vs. issuing the injunction;

+ whether the damage being caused by the conduct in question could be satisfactorily remedied by a payment of money as opposed to a mandate or a prohibition; and

+ (importantly) the public interest.

See, e.g., the Supreme Court's discussion of the four-factor test in eBay v. MercExchange, 547 U.S. 388 (2006), https://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=481934433895457...

Re:I've Just Liberated My Modules by indiv0 on Wednesday March 23, 2016 @12:43AM (#11342208)
How about a blockchain-based NPM? Can't take all the computers down.

Legal, shmegal.

Re:I've Just Liberated My Modules by ubernostrum on Wednesday March 23, 2016 @01:47AM (#11342388)
You can still be jailed for contempt of the order, though.

"I've found a clever workaround for court orders" doesn't work around that bit.

Re:I've Just Liberated My Modules by iopq on Wednesday March 23, 2016 @02:51AM (#11342589)
OK, now tell me how you can remove this file from BitTorrent (it's Fedora 18 KDE)

magnet:?xt=urn:btih:14f146cdfaef83951ca9d3ac647e18e1977d1367

I'll wait

Re:I've Just Liberated My Modules by ubernostrum on Wednesday March 23, 2016 @02:55AM (#11342602)
It's not about whether the removal is logistically possible, it's about whether a court can punish someone for failing to carry out the removal.

Even when the former is actually impossible, a court could still punish for the latter. "Ha ha ha I use technology to cleverly show how futile your orders are" is not the kind of thing you want to say to a court with broad contempt powers.

Re:I've Just Liberated My Modules by iopq on Wednesday March 23, 2016 @04:19AM (#11342843)
The court can't punish you for not being able to do the impossible. That's ludicrous. "We have shut down all of our servers, yes. We can't stop people from downloading this, no"
Re:I've Just Liberated My Modules by Retra on Wednesday March 23, 2016 @11:50PM (#11350459)
That's because all laws make sense and all people who enforce and judge them are understand this.
Re:I've Just Liberated My Modules by tangus on Wednesday March 23, 2016 @06:20AM (#11343217)
Pay damages, then.
Re:I've Just Liberated My Modules by naasking on Wednesday March 23, 2016 @08:32AM (#11343815)
Pay damages because someone else uploaded something by accident and you can't fix it? It doesn't work like that.
Re:I've Just Liberated My Modules by fixermark on Wednesday March 23, 2016 @03:17PM (#11347388)
It only doesn't work like that in the context of safe harbor laws.

If the safe harbor law protection doesn't apply, and the defendant is responsible for the illegal behavior, the defendant can absolutely be held legally liable and pay the legally-appropriate punishment.

Re:I've Just Liberated My Modules by iopq on Thursday March 24, 2016 @04:01AM (#11351255)
Why should you pay the damages for something that's not on your server?
Re:I've Just Liberated My Modules by toyg on Wednesday March 23, 2016 @04:00AM (#11342784)
If the "forbidden" action was previous to proceedings and carried out in good faith by unknown parties, it would be very hard to sanction anyone.
Re:I've Just Liberated My Modules by Fiahil on Wednesday March 23, 2016 @05:30AM (#11343063)
Just live outside of the United States, and you'll be fine.
Re:I've Just Liberated My Modules by rmc on Wednesday March 23, 2016 @06:37AM (#11343282)
Yeah, there's literally no other courts outside the USA.
Re:I've Just Liberated My Modules by coldtea on Wednesday March 23, 2016 @06:56AM (#11343341)
Yeah, because the US doesn't have treaties with most of the world...
Re:I've Just Liberated My Modules by kilotaras on Wednesday March 23, 2016 @05:03AM (#11342982)
Would that work if you did it before the court order?
Re:I've Just Liberated My Modules by esquivalience on Wednesday March 23, 2016 @11:23AM (#11345281)
No.
Re:I've Just Liberated My Modules by bryanrasmussen on Wednesday March 23, 2016 @03:34AM (#11342712)
that's why we'll kurtzweill ourselves into the computers that can't be shut down!
Re:I've Just Liberated My Modules by mdpopescu on Wednesday March 23, 2016 @01:56AM (#11342416)
Or something like http://ipfs.io/
Re:I've Just Liberated My Modules by repomies691 on Wednesday March 23, 2016 @03:54AM (#11342766)
IFPS is cool, however pretty far away from being usable as a package management system... Some package management system could use it as a backend, though.
Re:I've Just Liberated My Modules by NoGravitas on Wednesday March 23, 2016 @11:05AM (#11345112)
In fact, gx[0] is such a package management system.

[0]: https://github.com/whyrusleeping/gx

Re:I've Just Liberated My Modules by lugg on Wednesday March 23, 2016 @10:08PM (#11350076)
Re:I've Just Liberated My Modules by repomies69 on Wednesday March 23, 2016 @01:12AM (#11342292)
Yep, but someone should implement that first. Package repositories have pretty much centralized control still, and will have for foreseeable future.
Re:I've Just Liberated My Modules by BillinghamJ on Wednesday March 23, 2016 @04:31AM (#11342875)
npm already replicates to hundreds of other servers. Right now, it is practically infeasible to actually remove packages permanently.
Re:I've Just Liberated My Modules by kefka on Wednesday March 23, 2016 @10:56AM (#11345028)
That's why I'm looking into IPFS(https://ipfs.io) as part of my infrastructure. How that would look then, with IPFS...

> "So what you're saying is, your computers cannot possibly not continue damaging the plaintiff's interests." "That's correct."

> "You're being honest with me." "Yes, your Honor."

> "Will the computers continue harming the plaintiff's interests if shut off?" "No it wouldn't, your Honor.".....

And suddenly things like NPM can transfer the data to other machines, and those machines themselves can also provide to others. Deletions are impossible if people still want the content.

And IPFS guarantees that if a single node has the data, then any node can download it and also be part of the cloud that provides the data. Once it's out, it's impossible to retract.

Re:I've Just Liberated My Modules by oblio on Wednesday March 23, 2016 @06:57AM (#11343345)
> The legal system interprets attempts to route around it as damage and responds to damage with overwhelming force.

In other words, Hulk Hogan vs Gawker.