this post was submitted on 29 Aug 2025
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Parents have the ultimate say-so of what their kids have access to.
I don't believe there needs to be a law that says that, no.
If a parent decides their kid is responsible enough to have their own money, then it's the parents who are to blame if that kid buys "bad" things with that money.
Same thing online. If a parent decides their kid is responsible enough to have unrestricted internet access, then it's their fault if the kid then goes to a "bad" website.
It's not the store's fault. Nor is it the website's fault.
We have given away far too much of our parental responsibility over to 3rd parties, and now we don't know how to parent anymore.
A responsible parent can do as you say, but there are also not so much responsible parents out there, so maybe we need a backup option in these cases.
The problem with that is that you quickly become responsible for EVERYONE, and then you wind up right back where we are with government bureaucrats telling parents how to raise their children.
If a law or rule can be used to harass otherwise good people, then it will be.
If you give some self-important bastard an inch, they'll take a mile. Just look at the police.
Ok, so do you think it is better to not be responsible for nodoby ? Good, as long as you are prepared to pay the consequences of this, both at personal level and a social level.
Sadly true, but this do not means that we should not have laws.
So you would also support a child buying alcohol online on account of being given money and access to the internet?
Support? Absolutely not.
Allow? Not my child.
Make illegal? Nope. Not my business to tell other parents how to raise their children.
And that's exactly the problem here. People like YOU, who think that if I don't want something illegal, than that of course means I like that thing, or that I personally want to do that thing.
Nope. It has to do with personal autonomy. I'm not your boss, I shouldn't get to tell YOU what you can do to yourself. Period.
Wait, this way every **laws **is useless then, I am not your boss, I shouldn't get to tell YOU that you cannot drive while drunk.
Except you forget about the whole "as long as it doesn't directly affect others" thing.
Or, more likely, you intentionally ignored it in order to score some "gotcha" for Internet points.
I followed on your steatment. If I forgot it, you also forgot it.
But my point stand, by the traffic code you cannot drive drunk also if you don't affect anyone else on the road.
Generally it is not that you can do something that is illegal thinking that it is ok as long as it doesn't affect others.
Let me turn that around on you.
You think people should be charged with a crime they haven't done yet? Because that is exactly what happens in some DUI arrests.
Sleeping it off in your car but have the engine on because it's cold/hot outside? DUI.
Then there are the idiotic open container laws where even an open alcoholic drink is legally a DUI, even if the driver isn't drinking.
And if you can't afford a good lawyer? It's a conviction. Which goes on your permanent record.
A guy I worked with had a motorcycle try to pass his company vehicle as he was turning left. The motorcycle driver was killed.
It fucked the guy up so bad, mentally. He began drinking. Never at work, but he drove a company vehicle. See where this is going yet? If not let me finish.
A block from his house, he cracked open a beer. Now even if he had chugged it, there's no way he'd be even slightly drunk before he got home. But he didn't realize the worker who sold him the beer had already called the police and he was being followed.
The arrested him for DUI in his own driveway, due to idiotic open container laws, despite blowing a 0.
He took a plea for reckless endangerment, but it didn't matter. He was 4 years from retirement. He was fired.
Of course not, but then maybe the problem is not the DUI law, it is the fact that you cannot fight it if you cannot get a good lawyer, which cost money. Basically your justice system is fucked up.
Slippery slope. How can police know that you just turned on the engine but not moved instead of driving and then stopping because you fall asleep ?
That is a stupid law, I agree, but it is the law.
Well, he should not have done it. He know the laws. I can feel pity for him in the specific case, but he breaks the stupid law.
That was the problem here. The laws is written so you fail either way. Here if I have an open wine bottle in the car but I blow a 0, nobody could do anything to me.
But assuming I agree with you, what would be your suggestion to avoid people driving around while drunk ? Or to avoid minors to access porn material ? Aside the charade "parents need to educate they children" that obviously you cannot take for granted.
If they hurt someone, then they get charged with a crime. If they do not there's no injury to anyone else so it's not a crime.
I don't like the idea and where it could take us.
In the case of DUI, I think the idea behind the law is to avoid that a drunken driver hurts someone, with potentially lethal consequences, not only punish them if he do it.
Once a drunken driver killed someone is too late, even with the harsher punishment.
Again, your problem is not the law itself, it is the fact that your law and the justice system is designed in such a way that you are always set up to fail, in a way or another, be for the stupid DUI charge if you are sleeping in your car, the open container law or the way too expensive justice system. That is what you should fight.
I don't like the idea of actions that don't hurt others being a crime.
It's about consistency. If we make it illegal to do things that MIGHT wind up hurting someone there's no limit to what we can make illegal.
Me neither, but I like even less the idea that an action that is, demonstrably, dangerous to other should not be stopped until it provoke damages.
You are right. And it is about consistency the starting point from which we are discussing: minors should not be able to access porn. Now, in the real life there is such law and it in on the seller to check, exactly because you cannot count on the fact that a parent is 24/7 with his child, so I don't see why we should not try to enforce the same law on the Net, it is only on a different media.
Now, I agree that checking on the net is way harder than in real life, but minors are minors and porn is porn. If it is dangerous to see a naked woman on Playboy is also dangerous to see her on Playboy.com.
I see your point, but I simply think that if something is proven to hurt someone, like DUI, then maybe it is right to make it illegal.
Proven? To whom?
Excessive alcoholism is known to cause harm. Should we make being an alcoholic illegal? Wouldn't that make it harder for alcoholicsnto try to get help, for fear of being arrested instead of getting help, much like what happens to drug addicts?
People get hurt constantly while fishing, too. Should we make fishing illegal?
The problem is where do we draw the line. You want to draw it at some possibility of harm to others. I want to draw it at actual harm to others.
Which of these is more or less likely to wind up being stretched over time?
You aren't thinking about bureaucrats and politicians 20, 30, 50, or 100 years down the road. "We'll just fix the laws when it becomes a problem!"
Sure. Because we're really REALLY good at removing or rewriting broken laws..... Oh, wait. No we aren't.
Never heard about people killed in crash caused by drunken driver ? Or pedestrians hit by cars driven by drunked drivers ?
No, we should just have laws try to avoid consequences for others Are you an alcoholic ? Ok, we will help you to be ok but at the same time we try to avoid you drive while drunk. It not seems too unreasonable
Point is: how probable is that someone fishing hurts someone else ? How much damage you can do ?
Again, the point is not to make something illegal because you can hurt yourself, it is about trying to have law that try to prevent you hurt someone else while doing something.
If fishing can hurt others, maybe we should have a law that, while not forbidding to fish, protect the others from what you are doing. I would imagine that you would not like to swim in the sea while someone is fishing with bombs (illegal) 2 meters away from you, don't you ?
Fine as long as you accept the consequences. I just don't agree with you.
Both, because you just need to redefine what "harm" means. And some people is good to do it.
Probability is not certainty.
I do not want people in jail for doing something that is probably a crime.
Every so-called crime that has no jail time shouldn't be a crime. Fees are just another way of enforcing class warfare.
True, but there is an history of cases about it where the probabilty became certainty.
Me eighter but at the same time I would like to prevent some behaviors that could be dangerous to others.
I know it could be a slippery slope but honestly it would not console me to know that the drunken driver where punished *after *he hit me, I would prefer if he would be stopped *before *being able to hit me.
But fines works only if they are proportional to your wealth, else they are a punishment only for the poor.
We agree on the last part. But my feeling is that if a crime isn't "bad" enough to require actual jail time then it probably shouldn't be a crime at all.
Speeding, DUI, and other risky behaviors should be punished if, and ONLY if, an actual incident occurs. Because then there is actually a victim, and not just some nebulous might-have-been.
Hurt someone while drinking and driving? That's no accident, that's an intentional attack. Kill someone? Again, not an accident, but premeditated murder.
Now, if say, your insurance agency decides that you are a risk due to your alcoholism, and either drops you, or increases your premiums that's not a problem. There's no criminal punishment happening, and if it's in the contract you signed, that's expected.
But, you should only criminally punish someone after they've hurt another person. Not when they engage in risky behaviors.
Define "bad enough", because this is a very slippery slope. What about thefts ?
Following this reasoning, there are no crimes until you get caught and/or there is a victim. To me this is unacceptable in a decent society.
And why we should not to try to avoid to have a person in jail and one killed in the first place ?
Theft has a victim, what are you talking about???
Without an actual victim there is no crime.
And I understand this. What I don't like is the idea that to try to prevent that there will be victims is bad.
The way to prevent crime isn't to punish those who haven't hurt anyone, but to more strongly punish those who have.