[elefantastisch]

So, if someone is standing trial for murder and it turns out the evidence against them was collected illegally, they will end up getting away with it even if everyone knows they did it.

It's not that we value police procedure more than we value the life of the victim. We value rule of law and due process as a society more than any individual gap in applying justice in a given case.

Yes, if we ignore procedure and lock that murderer up anyway, we will have done better justice for the victim. But then we will no longer have a functioning criminal justice system, and that's much worse in the long run.

If Cloudflare allows DDoS to take down these horrible sites, the world will definitely be a better place in many ways. But then it will also be a world where we deal with problems via DDoS and whether you get to keep your site up or have it DDoSed is subject to the whims of Cloudflare. DDoSing sites won't be "wrong" anymore, it'll be a question of whether they deserved it or not.

This is not how we do justice as a society. If someone punches you in the face without instigation, we don't ask if you deserved it, we charge them with assault.

Cloudflare allowing DDoS of content they don't like would be a bit like allowing assault of people we don't like. Maybe there are some people we're happy to see punched in the face, but in the long run, our society suffers.

Protecting people from getting punched in the face, even when they deserve it, is fundamental to maintaining rule of law in society. Wrongdoers are punished after due process of law, not arbitrarily by any vigilante who decides to give them what they deserve.

That is essentially what Cloudflare is arguing.

[M2Ys4U]

> So, if someone is standing trial for murder and it turns out the evidence against them was collected illegally, they will end up getting away with it even if everyone knows they did it.

That very much depends on jurisdiction; don't assume that American laws and norms are universal, nor that they are the best way of doing things.

[endtime]

Rule of law and due process are the best way of doing things, and are not exclusively American concepts.

[freeone3000]

Absolutely, but, Canadian law would absolutely allow illegally-collected evidence. The trial against the officer invading the defendant's privacy is a separate matter; the goal of a trial is to determine the truth of matters, after all, and if the defendant did kill someone, all evidence to support (or refute) that is generally admissible.

[didibus]

This makes so much more sense lol. I think this is a good example of people accepting certain things at face value and never stop to think about it.

[msla]

So what makes the state follow the rules of evidence? Anything?

[google234123]

From what I can tell, Canada is somewhere in between complete exclusionary and inclusionary rules wrt illegally obtained evidence.

[endtime]

Nitpicking the details of the example isn't really a reputation of the more general point, though.

[freeone3000]

The details are the entire thing! The principles that we should have fair trials due process are followed, but, you end up with wildly different conclusions.

[geodel]

Well, best way would be to do things my way.

[groby_b]

> So, if someone is standing trial for murder

If Cloudflare would like to be nationalized, I'm happy to have a discussion of applying government rules to them. Until then, they're a private company, "due process" does really not apply.

If we think that protecting sites from DDoS is a public good (and I think that's a good question), that is a task that should fall to government entities.

[elefantastisch]

The point is that Cloudflare thinks due process, not DDoS, is the right way to bring down horrible websites. Thus they protect them until such due process happens.

[groby_b]

That's not the point you originally made. Moving the goalpost.

[elefantastisch]

It is, but I will accept this as a valid critique that I probably didn't make my original point as well as I could have.

[fragmede]

You're making it easy more complicated than it needs to be. Cloudflare sells face punching shields and thinks every last single person should have one. Even face punchers. (They make money off this service.)