I’m happy to discuss specifics, so long as they don’t start with the premise “regulation is authoritarianism” and also are in good faith. Kids don’t have to have an engineering license to build a bridge out of popsicle sticks, I doubt you think that someone saying “building a bridge should require a civil engineering license” should apply to that. I’m not unreasonable. I just think there has been entirely too much demonstrated harm to start with the premise of “anyone can build any software they want at any time, with zero liability”.

These students may be liable for things after the fact, but that is hardly any consolation to the people that may have had their intimate personal data leaked. Even if they are successfully sued by everybody on the site, how much money could they possibly squeeze out of a bunch of college students? I don’t know how you can prevent this without some up front thing, such as a license, rather than making them liable after the fact.

You and many others (reading through the comments) are pretending that an information leak is on the same scale and severity as major safety concerns people may have about the safety of physical structure. It is obviously asinine comparison and why you will always get such push-back and people instinctively know they fundamentally different.

You also haven't thought about how many unintended consequences it will have. It will affect things like open source, hiring and how it will affect smaller niche cultures that rely on pseudo-anonymity or just want to do fun things.

Just off the top of my head:

Am I going to need a license to build a EDuke32 package for AUR?

Am I going to need a license to add a plugin to a piece of software?

Will I need a license to stick a gist on github?

Many people that currently make the laws in industry (just look at the UK online safety act) don't understand/won't care about any of the nuance.

>I just think there has been entirely too much demonstrated harm to start with the premise of “anyone can build any software they want at any time, with zero liability”.

Actually it is the opposite. I and many others could argue that it has improved the world immensely. I can talk to people that share my interests from all around the globe, I have the ability to work internationally and never leave my home. I've just recently I've taught myself how to fix many of my own vehicle problems at home using Youtube and do some basic maintenance around the house.

I can get any niche product delivered to my door in a matter of days. All of these are massively positives that have benefited the world immeasurably.

> These students may be liable for things after the fact, but that is hardly any consolation to the people that may have had their intimate personal data leaked. Even if they are successfully sued by everybody on the site, how much money could they possibly squeeze out of a bunch of college students? I don’t know how you can prevent this without some up front thing, such as a license, rather than making them liable after the fact.

A license will guarantee nothing. You should assume that anything you put online can be leaked. I can control the amount of information I put on most sites by either giving them false information or being pseudo-anonymous / anonymous.

However regulation in my country is going to force photo ID for platforms such as Discord (and many others) under the guise of age checks. This will mean that I have to give a third party my ID which has all my data or not use the service. This will tie my identity on Discord (which is pseudo-anonymous) to my Discord account.

So licensing/regulation actually guarantees more data leaks. Because I can't vet the company that deals with the ID check, not can I easily circumvent information gathering. Sure I will probably be able to defeat most of this with a VPN. But it is more of a PITA.

This was beautifully constructed, and I wish you got a reply.

I appreciate the effort.

Thanks. I think it is very easy for people to focus on a lot of the negatives about the tech over the last 25 years and demand regulation, without recognising the huge amount of innovation that took place because people were allowed to try things.