> A single archive of public exploit PoCs and vulnerability research writeups. At the time I post these, none have been reported. Feel free to report them yourself and take credit for the CVE if handed out lulz. Please do not abuse these. I do this so to allure people into the field, and I've always found this is the most efficient way.
Which is roughly the definition of zero day. Whether the contents of the repo reflect the above claim is something else entirely.
Reminds me of Jamie Wolf's joke about bestiality laws. Who are those for? What stops most people from bestiality is… not wanting to have sex with animals! For people who do want to, what, they won't because of… the law??
Well, it's a joke because the problem becomes apparent after you think a bit about it. The exact same reasonig can be applied to anything illegal, criminals are criminals because they don't respect the law, so you could try to say that laws are useless. Reality is, if something is illegal not only someone can be punished after the fact, but in some cases also preventive measures can be taken.
Regarding the comment, it isn't going to stop anyone. Most people will not do cybercrime because they're honest. Of the remaining, the risk of being sentenced to jail time will instead stop some people, even if not all of them.
As you're basically saying, the world isn't black or white. There's also a category of people that needs an incentive to behave. Also, without any laws, it would be problematic to punish "the bad guys". At that point, what you can or cannot do would be only a matter of relative power: who is stronger can do whatever they want to weaker people.
Nope, it reduces the issue even if it isn't solving it entirely. Without laws and law enforcement, anyone with bigger muscles than you could break your nose just because they feel you looked at them the wrong way.
So? Anyone with a badge can wreck your life with zero consequences, even if they're a pipsqueak. Many of these individuals absolutely hate being looked at the wrong way.
Physical violence is just about the last area we "need" laws because people really hate violence and will go well out of their way to avoid even the chance being subject to it. No matter how big you are you can't go around breaking noses without a good reason we all agree on because if you do that for very long a bunch of other people will gang up and break yours or worse.
To a first order, laws basically just codify how the government (the overwhelmingly dominant applicator of violence in any given society these days) will apply violence so that the peasants can reason about it in advance and avoid it.
You don't need any of that for the basic "if I do violence upon others without a damn good reason violence will be done upon me" workflow though.
I think you are forgetting that laws are responsible for a good chunk of what people perceive/are educated to see as good/wrong honest/dishonest.
Sure the worst atrocities are known to be bad from Religion (10 commandments, which is a law in itself) but many aren't. Speeding, drunk driving, harassment aren't concept that are obviously wrong (as in obvious to people with no guardrails).
So laws aren't useless. The fact that most people respect them actually means they have a purpose.
Those seem like two different scenarios though, right?
The point of beastiality laws are to give society some recourse to punish people who abuse animals.
There was a very famous case back in Washington state back in the early 2000s where a group of men were sexually abusing horses. It was uncovered because one of them died, and the other could only be charged with trespassing because it wasn't illegal at the time to sexually abuse animals.
You cited a specific case. It's not odd at all in the context of that case. The professionals in charge of enforcing the law decided the animals weren't harmed.
> There was a very famous case back in Washington state back in the early 2000s where a group of men were sexually abusing horses. It was uncovered because one of them died, and the other could only be charged with trespassing because it wasn't illegal at the time to sexually abuse animals.
What I said, verbatim, about that case.
What part of that is incorrect or warrants clarification, exactly?
Using the legal definition of "abuse", yes it was illegal to sexually abuse animals. Their actions didn't qualify. That's what warrants clarification here.
I appreciate your definition of abuse here but it's confusing in a discussion about legality.
No, it wasn't. The laws are quite explicit about what "abuse" means, and if you take a gander at most laws (including Washington state's circa 2000 or so) in the context of animals it usually explicitly refers to physical harm (for example, mutilation) or improper living conditions. Charging them under Washington's existing abuse laws would've required the animal to be physically injured, which it wasn't. It's quite literally why they had to pass a new law.
I don't know why I have to explain this, but:
1) Sexual abuse can occur without physical harm or injury.
#2 can be split into two sides, and not everyone believes one of those is sexual abuse.
Edit: Removed video link because the second half was gross and unrelated. May try finding another clip, but the first half was of Cenk Uygur from The Young Turks about a decade ago saying he'd legalize cases where the person pleasured the animal.
And my point is that sexual abuse is a subcategory of abuse.
You didn't imply until now that I was wrong about animal abuse already being illegal. In that case, a bestiality law doesn't fix the actual problem, right? It's a band-aid partial fix.
I'm not sure what your point is, to be blunt. It seems like you wanted to make some weird argument about the semantics of the word "abuse", and are now implying one of:
1) Beastiality isn't sexual abuse
2) Beastiality laws are pointless because it was already illegal under existing abuse laws (it wasn't, as we've repeatedly discussed)
3) Sexual abuse requires physical harm
all of which are pretty gross (1,3) and/or pointless (2). I don't really feel the need to argue any of this any further, so I'll leave you to it.
You got 2 wrong. It's: 2) If the existing abuse law doesn't include sexual abuse, we need to fix that law, not add a new one.
And that's not a pointless argument. If we're still allowing the whole category of non-physical abuse to animals, except for bestiality, that's a terrible job of lawmaking.
And just on a tangent here now that I'm reading the law they added, does it really make sense to have a blanket exemption for "accepted animal husbandry practices"? Some of those procedures are just as exploitative and unnecessary. It makes me think this law isn't putting animal welfare first.
If you jerk off a horse just for the love of the game, you're a criminal and that's abuse. But if you're paid to do it (e.g. for insemination) that's fine. The act is the same, seems doubtful the horse is harmed. What society has a problem with is the fact that you enjoyed it.
For some reason with people it goes the other way around.
As well as those who don't wish to be blessed with Herpes-B from somebody who thought it was a good idea to engage in unsafe sexual activity with other non-human primates
That’s one school of thought. Law as a tool to punish those who have committed a prohibited act, mostly reactive.
Others consider law a way of encoding the group’s existing rules and norms.
In that view, making something illegal or mandatory is not a prerequisite for punishment: it’s the actual main point.
The threat of punishment is meant for those not deterred from an act by the simple fact it is illegal (and the threat only works if enforced).
Others put it the other way around, and see law as social engineering, a way to shape the group, either through the encoding itself of the desired behaviours in law, or through deterrence. Or both. If what one is after is either power or legitimacy, they need compliance more than punishment (can’t rule once you’ve chopped everyone’s heads off, or once the mob has put yours on a spike).
It’s also sometimes used as coordination (which side of the road we drive on).
And there’s also law as dispute resolution (if your neighbour’s hen lays an egg in your garden, who does it belong to? Yes, it’s ridiculous. Yes, some places have one or more laws for that). Which, incidentally, both requires and provides legitimacy. Funny, that.
And probably many other kinds / points of view, with many different purposes, intents, and mechanisms.
Anyway, all that to say law is vast, fascinating, and utterly tedious. And apologies for the tangent.
> Law as a tool to punish those who have committed a prohibited act
You're thinking of criminal law. And it's not just some group's rules and norms - there already exists familial or social group punishment for that. Criminal law is prosecuted by the State. It's the code of conduct of the society you exist in.
If you want a thought experiment for what life would be like without organised society, read Leviathan
Hence why we accept State governance and law (to a greater or lesser extent, obviously people protest specific laws and injustices and what's on the statute books changes on a regular basis), because the alternative to law is "nature", aka bigger-army diplomacy. Anarchy doesn't free people, it only gives freedom to those with existing power to disempower others. Those with superior power will simply rob, rape, kill or enslave everyone else.
States exist to secure their territory from those sort of external threats, and incubate an economy inside their borders, which aspires to bring wealth and happiness. The criminal law is put in place by those with the monopoly on legitimate violence, often encoding the views of the population, to keep their society running.
> You're thinking of criminal law. And it's not just some group's rules and norms - there already exists familial or social group punishment for that. Criminal law is prosecuted by the State. It's the code of conduct of the society you exist in.
What I meant is more about why and how laws come to be, which depends on what we think they’re for. Hobbes’ point of view is one. Locke and Rousseau had different opinions.
For example, one can view criminal law as a punishing tool, like gp, whose only purpose is to punish the act once discovered. You criminalise duels to punish duelists because murder is bad and no murder or attempted murder should go unpunished, and associate a great punishment because murder is a very bad thing.
But you can also criminalize duels to prevent or reduce the incidence of duels, and associate a great punishment to it to deter your stupid hot-heated young nobles from going around each other. Still criminal law, but this time both as social engineering and deterrence.
It’s been a long time since I read Hobbes. Should definitely go back to it.
Either the fear of the consequences of breaking the law, or that the most effective way to reduce crime is to remove criminals from the population so over time these people being in jail or worse decreases the crime rate. They don't have to care about breaking laws in the abstract for the law, properly enforced, to reduce crime.
We slaughter animals millions by the day in an industrialized fashion. I'm sure they'll feel much better that even singular instances of sexual harassment are officially not ok on paper.
As a very general statement, there's a cost to having laws exist. A law that stops one human-scale action ever is very unlikely to be worth the overhead.
> A single archive of public exploit PoCs and vulnerability research writeups. At the time I post these, none have been reported. Feel free to report them yourself and take credit for the CVE if handed out lulz. Please do not abuse these. I do this so to allure people into the field, and I've always found this is the most efficient way.
Which is roughly the definition of zero day. Whether the contents of the repo reflect the above claim is something else entirely.