alt Hacker NewsOne thing I've found, occasionally the hard way, is that helpful bystanders are always offering advice based on "ethical", "intuitive", "logical" and "common sense", usually without any aspect of "legal".
I got divorced a decade ago, and every well-wishing person in my life was strongly urging me to do things which were shockingly counter-productive / dangerous / wrong, based on their confident understanding (assumption, really) of the law which was completely and dangerously inaccurate.
Hacker News audience is global. People start accounts for various purposes. Yet people still freely share the notion that logging in to some unknown website run by an unknown company from a hard to spell country and then touching things is universally safe.
I miss the old "IANAL" tag which at least provided basic warning and self-awareness :-).
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IANYL, though! Offering legal advice with the disclaimer “I am not a lawyer” could be prosecuted as practicing law if a reasonably party could still infer a potential lawyer-client relationship from your message and/or intent. Instead, “I am not your lawyer” explicitly denies the lawyer-client relationship, which closes the door on both being accused of practicing law illegally and on being found as party to a lawyer-client relationship whether or not you have the appropriate certifications.
While true, I think that's implicit in all online conversations. I'm certain my thinking is 100% wrong in some jurisdictions elsewhere. Anything I say is wrong somewhere.
"It's OK: you can curse on the Internet." "Not when you're typing from Iran!" "Well, OK, if you're in Iran, don't take this American's advice for dealing with a government."
Part of our obligation as a reader is to consider what others are saying in the context of our own circumstances and experiences before trying to apply it. If you don't, and things end badly, that's on you.
But I stand on my words: I think it's ethically OK. You may not. That's alright. We're not required to have the same ethics or morals. And I don't think that's prosecutable. That's my opinion, based on my circumstances, not a statement of fact that applies in all jurisdictions around the world.
Above all else, I got tired of giving disclaimers about every single thing I say lest someone jump in with a "gotcha! scenario" I hadn't considered because it's not relevant to the context of the discussion.