It also doesn't define what a "human rights law" is very clearly...

Yes, you don't have to look very far afield to find potential problems here. The UN Declaration of Human Rights article 27(2) states:

Everyone has the right to the protection of the moral and material interests resulting from any scientific, literary or artistic production of which he is the author.

This sounds very much like it's framing copyright as a human right, so going by this I guess it could be argued that software that falls afoul of DCMA provisions against aiding copyright infringement could be considered to "violate human rights laws".

OTOH, article 27(1) states:

Everyone has the right freely to participate in the cultural life of the community, to enjoy the arts and to share in scientific advancement and its benefits.

How this is supposed to be reconciled I have no idea.

And the original modern copyright act, the Statute of Anne was justified as "An Act for the Encouragement of Learning", while the constitutional basis for copyright in the USA, article 1, section 8, clause 8 is justified "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts", so they weren't presented as human rights laws.

I do not know the ins and outs of WASM so please enlighten. Can an anti-virus notify/block malicious WASM?

I'm not an expert, but my understanding is that WASM is sandboxed like JavaScript, so it can't do anything JavaScript can't do, but it can do the same things faster. I expect websites could have used JavaScript for cryptocurrency mining too, but being slower, there'd be less point. I don't see any reason that it wouldn't be possible to check WASM for known malicious code, although I think it's less of a worry than native binaries, since (AFAIK) the worst it can do is waste your CPU time. Perhaps another approach could be to throttle WASM CPU time by default, and require users to grant exceptions, or just notify users if a site is CPU intensive.

james_gnz: ... the BSD licence doesn't give you the freedom to copy derivitives ...

exomondo: It explicitly does give you the right to copy derivatives ...

james_gnz: It can't give people a right to copy all derivatives, and at the same time give people a right to create non-free derivatives.

exomondo: A non-free derivative is, by definition, not under the BSD license ...

No, but it is a derivitive, and the BSD license doesn't give you the freedom to copy it.

The BSD license doesn't extend itself to other peoples' work and it doesn't need to because nobody is taking away any rights that anybody had to the original work ...

No, but non-free derivatives may take market share away from the original work, which may well diminish the original work's value.

Stop conflating software with property. Your analogy isnt even close because of the very fact that me having some software does not preclude you or anyone else from having the same software. Contrast this with property, if I have some software my having it isnt predicated on others not having it.

To clarify, it wasn't my intention to conflate copyright with moral property rights. I was only attempting to illustrate that every freedom requires a corresponding restriction. BTW, copyright is legally a form of property, although I would agree with you that it isn't a moral property right.

... the BSD licence doesn't give you the freedom to copy derivitives ...

It explicitly does give you the right to copy derivatives ... and if you want to create derivative under ... a non-free license ... you are free to do that too.

It can't give people a right to copy all derivatives, and at the same time give people a right to create non-free derivatives.

No because the fundamental difference here is choice, comparing it to slavery is nonsense because slaves did not have the choice of whether to be slaves or not.

I'll put it another way, then. Every freedom requires a coresponding restriction. e.g. The freedom to own property requires the restriction not to use others' property. What you consider more free depends on what you think you have a right to do. e.g. If you accept that people have a right to own tangible property, then you would not consider it an imposition on freedom to not have the freedom to use other people's tangible property. So you can't have a meaningful discussion about freedom without having a discussion about rights.

I don't have to use your non-free BSD derivative, I am free to choose to do that if I want (as I should be) and I am free to choose the free software that your non-free derivative is based upon.

Underlying this assertion of freedom is an assumption about what you have a right to do. i.e. The BSD licence gives you particular freedoms, notably the freedom to restrict other people from copying derivitives, and these are the freedoms you think people should have, so these are the freedoms that you look for, and draw attention to, to argue that the BSD licence is free. OTOH, the BSD licence doesn't give you the freedom to copy derivitives, but this is not something that you think people have a right to do, so you don't see it as an imposition on freedom.

My point is that the argument about what you have a right to do is the crux of the matter, and this is something you have simply assumed, not made a case for.

Nope. The GPL is not free. You cannot be free when you place restriction.

You can't have a meaningful discussion about freedom and restrictions without referring to moral or natural rights, as opposed to legal rights. e.g. In the USA civil war, the Confederates were fighting, in part, to secure their "freedom", as they saw it, to keep slaves, which they had had a legal right to do. Few people today, however, would argue that the society they were fighting for was more free in this regard. To ensure people's freedom, you must restrict people from imposing on others' freedom. (This is sometimes referred to as "the paradox of freedom".)

To argue that the GPL is not free, you have to argue not just that it imposes restrictions, but that it imposes restrictions that infringe on your moral rights. The USA claims the moniker "the land of the free", yet it has many laws, i.e. restrictions. This is not a contradiction, unless the laws infringe on people's moral rights.

Good thing dinosaurs rule the earth until the next asteroid comes along. I prefer my languages without a political position.

I'm guessing this is to do with codes of conduct? (Or at least something to do with Mozilla as an organisation rather than Rust as a language?) If so, I'd say let free/open technology stand on its merits, regardless of who made it. I don't much like Microsoft, but I quite like .NET and VisualStudio Code, FWIW. (My 2c.)

Well, I am sure that you did not explain it well.

I'll cede that.

My new vague theory is that you tried to reference a controversial video to show that some people agree with it.

More or less. It was to show that (although only by a small margin) the majority of voters downvoted it, unfairly, I think, because I think it's a very good video. (It's a video debunking an aspect of World Trade Center conspiracy theory, not promoting it.) My point was just that I think online discussion ratings are often very unfair.

If you are actually attempting to challenge some part of my earlier comment on grounds of my personal bias, then you need to make it clear what part your were challenging and what bias you think I have. I certainly would NOT claim to be any sort of neutral observer, though I try to make appropriate allowances for my own biases. In that context, I would claim my primary biases are in favor of the evidence and objective scientific analysis.

I wasn't accusing you of personal bias. I was saying bias is a part of the human condition, and is a serious problem for online discussion ratings.

I don't know. I thought his [james_gnz's] comment was probably supposed to be some kind of joke, and I just didn't get it.

I am being serious, although I'm not sure I explained it very well.

I've tried to clarify my position in other posts, but basically I think people who choose to follow a discussion (whether they post in it themselves or not) probably have an interest in the discussion, and aren't impartial, and I think impartiality is a crucial factor in fair assessment of arguments.

Standard conspiracy nut tactic. Pile in with pages of irrelevant copy/paste crap, throwing so many arguments at them that they can't possible hope to respond meaningfully.

Yes, although I think these kinds of tactics are actually often used by people on both sides of heated arguments. As a social experiment, try finding an online argument that you have a position on, and respectfully querying an unsupported claim made by someone who holds the same position as you, without disclosing that you hold that position. Regardless of what position you hold, I think there's a fair chance someone's going to throw an ad hominem at you, and get upvoted for it.

The version I've been advocating is slightly different. It would be based on enhanced karma (AKA MEPR) that would be used to let people more easily ignore people who haven't earned positive reputations.

Dunno. I'm not sure how well karma really works. I kind of suspect that it's often assigned on impulse by people who hold strong views one way or another, so can't or don't assess the post on it's merits.

e.g. Here's a video that I think is very good, but which has (at the time of writing) slightly more dislikes than likes:
Debunking 9/11 Conspiracy Theories | Mick West

I think the video does a thorough job of debunking the argument that the presence of iron microspheres in the debris from the collapse of the World Trade Center is evidence for controlled demolition. It also, I think, remains reasonably respectful to those with the opposing view.

The comments section seems to be filled with comments that ignore the content of the video (microspheres), and instead complain that id doesn't cover other things.

Yup, and conscious control of breathing is apparently something else that's common in aquatic animals, but rare in non-aquatic ones. And apparently apes often stand quite upright when wading through water, but seldom do so otherwise, so bipedalism is something that could quite reasonably be expected to develop in aquatic apes. There's a lot in there that makes sense to me.

I might not recommend The Descent of Woman. As I recall, I thought there were some attempts to link to feminism that I found a bit questionable. (I haven't read the other books.) I did recently come across a TED talk she did though, which is more suitable for my diminishing attention span anyway.

Elaine Morgan says we evolved from aquatic apes