It's relevant because that's the whole point of my original comment. If you want to ignore that, fine, but it's sort of disgusting how people are so eager to defend the law because it's the law, not because of any inherent morality.
> Unless they started commanding to destroy samples, and sharing sequences of captured bats after the pandemic started.
Which is exactly what they started doing back in February (2020). The two labs in Wuhan were ordered to destroy all samples they had. So even if the theory were to turn out to be the most likely origin, we'd have no way to find out for sure.
But that would simply mean that the lawyer is culpable for the criminal charges since it's their responsibility to know the law and ensure that their recommendations comply with the law. I think it's odd that she's punished despite having sufficient basis to believe that what she was doing was legal. Especially in a system where the laws in some areas are so complex that there's no way to figure out what's legal or not without being an expert in the field/topic.
If you can't figure out if something is legal and if you go to an expert and they can't figure it out (or they're lying through their teeth), and you get punished for it, I feel like something is broken there.
That said, maybe she did know it wasn't legal, but we don't have enough information about the case to draw any conclusions from it.
> She also said that since it had been designed by the company’s outside legal counsel and approved by their auditors, it was fully compliant with the law.
Why would she serve jail time if legal counsel told her that it was legal?
Something which is inevitable. It's hard to turn back the clock on something like this and I don't see any obvious solution for it, which is why both companies need to be regulated heavily to ensure they treat app developers fairly. If they're going to monopolize their own platforms, then whoever wants to sell on that platform needs to have guarantees that they aren't arbitrarily banned and that they have sane avenues to dispute any conflicts with Google or Apple. This is what regulation is for, to ensure fair marketplaces.
I always felt the discussion being focused on the platform tax to be a distraction. Sure, now app developers make more. Great. Doesn't change how unresponsive or draconian Google (and Apple) is in when they decide you aren't allowed to be on their Play Store anymore. Or how arbitrarily they choose to enforce their rules.
That's quite the lengthy article. Interesting topic though. I recently stumbled over the Astray podcast (https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/astray/id1552069504) which is also a decent look at the psychological risks (and maybe easier to consume than a 6000 word essay).
But ... the video isn't for a general audience. He doesn't have any reason to apologize to a general audience. His customers are the only people that matter in this situation and this video is for them.
Is the status page relevant though? At the very least, OVH immediately made a status announcement on their support page and they've been active on Twitter. I don't see anything shady here. From their support page:
> The whole site has been isolated, which impacts all our services on SBG1, SBG2, SBG3 and SBG4. If your production is in Strasbourg, we recommend to activate your Disaster Recovery Plan
Agree here. Matrix servers log everything by default. If somebody cares about protecting metadata, I don't know why they'd choose Matrix over Signal.