By that logic, I can refuse to follow this law without consequence? Sounds to me like my options are to comply, pay fines until I can’t and then comply, or go to jail (which would be done at gunpoint).

What am I missing? What’s the magic way to avoid complying with this new government edict without escalating to violence?

> What’s the magic way to avoid complying with this new government edict without escalating to violence?

Move to the mountains and farm turnips.

If you mean "how do I avoid complying with laws while still participating in polite society," you're right, that one you can't do.

Right, but the law doesn’t prohibit me from farming turnips*. It prohibits me from running a website without doing certain things. That’s what will be enforced, in escalating fashion up to and including violence.

If someone “asks” me to do something, they usually don’t mean “otherwise I will take your money and/or jail you”. But all laws have that threat, otherwise they wouldn’t mean anything. Hence why I take issue with saying the govt is “asking” us to do something - even though that thing is good and honorable, it’s still not an “ask”.

*well, I mean, there’s probably mountain turnip preservation zones or something, where it would prohibit me from farming mountain turnips.

What do you propose instead? All governance has force at its roots.

Certainly, no disagreement there. What I propose is that we avoid being cavalier about the implications of creating law.

Using the force of government is, or should be, a serious affair, and I think we water it down by using language like “they’re just asking”, etc. The force of government never “just asks” - when Trump was deporting people, no one (reputable) said they were “asked to leave”.

That sense of seriousness about government force would help us see clearly what is, and is not, worth bringing government into.

I really do love the fact that mass deportation and the digital equivalent of building codes are being treated as equivalent. Peak HN.

I don't think anyone is really unclear on law. You are expected to follow it, lest you be punished.

Have you put an accurate description on every image you've every uploaded to the web? No? You're going to jail or pay a fine since you didn't accommodate blind people. You uploaded 40k images and it will take you an entire year 8yrs a day 5days a week to tag and annotate every single on of them and not working your kids will go hungry and your pets starve. Too bad for you.

Note: I have around 160k images on the net, all marked as CC-BY. Thought I was doing something good by sharing but now I'm told if I don't make them all blind accessible then I'm a criminal.

I also have ~200 open source projects, 10 or so are fairly popular. Volunteered lots of time to make them, don't believe I should be forced under threat of fines and jail to have to put more time into them.