Re:Google, Apple cave to Pakistan pressure to take down apps...
by ethbr0 on Saturday February 06, 2021 @12:26PM
(#26048087)
That's drawing a lot of absolutes from a lot of very qualified facts.
Given the current state of technology, and the diversity of vendors at every level, there is no way any country could impinge on an individual's ability to access general purpose computing.
For example, that the US has the power to ban optical disk drives that don't scan for and prohibit certain contents? Ha!
Among the ridiculous points this is not reality, in no particular order. (A) General purpose computing would have to be banned. (B) This hasn't even broached the topic of content encryption. (C) The level of control over imports would have to be completely overhauled to something approaching North Korea. (D) Domestic manufacturers would have to be banned from producing programmable processors.
This is literally not the world we live in. Even in China.
It's not a game of qualified answers. If (1) I have a general purpose computer & (2) I have code that can accomplish the intended activity on that general purpose computer, then (3) no one can stop me from executing that code.
The closest example is metadata tracking artifacts in printer documents [0], and previous efforts to technically prohibit currency counterfeiting on then-new color printers.
But that's fundamentally different than what we're talking about here: there are a limited number of manufacturers, in a low margin business, that's highly specialized.
Given the current state of technology, and the diversity of vendors at every level, there is no way any country could impinge on an individual's ability to access general purpose computing.
For example, that the US has the power to ban optical disk drives that don't scan for and prohibit certain contents? Ha!
Among the ridiculous points this is not reality, in no particular order. (A) General purpose computing would have to be banned. (B) This hasn't even broached the topic of content encryption. (C) The level of control over imports would have to be completely overhauled to something approaching North Korea. (D) Domestic manufacturers would have to be banned from producing programmable processors.
This is literally not the world we live in. Even in China.
It's not a game of qualified answers. If (1) I have a general purpose computer & (2) I have code that can accomplish the intended activity on that general purpose computer, then (3) no one can stop me from executing that code.
The closest example is metadata tracking artifacts in printer documents [0], and previous efforts to technically prohibit currency counterfeiting on then-new color printers.
But that's fundamentally different than what we're talking about here: there are a limited number of manufacturers, in a low margin business, that's highly specialized.
[0] https://www.eff.org/issues/printers