> ITAR security is part of the cost of doing business.
To amplify this: so is compliance with non-discrimination law, and, to the extent the two interact, the cost created by the interaction.
Yes, exactly; thanks.
Readit NewsFor SpaceX to internally segment ITAR from non-ITAR is a huge bureaucratic overhead for them which leads to a possibility of mistakes. Doubly so since one of their explicit concerns is having foreign agents steal their trade secrets. And therefore they have to be guarding against intentional attempts to access what your job role says you don't have access to.
Given that, it makes a lot of sense for them to simply require ITAR compliance in all roles.
> For SpaceX to internally segment ITAR from non-ITAR is a huge bureaucratic overhead for them which leads to a possibility of mistakes.
They decided to become an aerospace engineering firm in the US. ITAR security is part of the cost of doing business.
If the typical e.g. janitor or cafeteria worker at SpaceX has access to ITAR, as SpaceX seem to have alleged before they got caught, then their ITAR security is pure theater.
IANAL but aren’t asylees and refugees still a citizen of the nation they left?
It’s complicated, but not always.
Regardless, the ITAR issue is secondary; they hire for roles that do not touch ITAR.
> In job postings and public statements over several years, SpaceX wrongly claimed that under federal regulations known as “export control laws,” SpaceX could hire only U.S. citizens and lawful permanent residents, sometimes referred to as “green card holders.” Export control laws impose no such hiring restrictions.
This is perhaps pedantically, but not practically correct. ITAR restrictions, for example, prohibit foreigners from using or testing night vision equipment (even on US soil). If a team is hiring a rocket engineer, and it's a violation of ITAR for them to see technical data on SpaceX's rocket program then it's effectively impossible for a non-US person to perform in this role. Perhaps SpaceX could have phrased things differently, like "this job requires access to ITAR-controlled technical material..."
Now, as to whether or not asylees are able to access ITAR restricted material seems a bit more complicated. Searching around the internet it seems that only some asylees are able to access ITAR material: https://exportcompliancesolutions.com/blog/2018/09/20/u-s-pe...
> SpaceX recruits and hires for a variety of positions, including welders, cooks, crane operators, baristas and dishwashers, as well as information technology specialists, software engineers, business analysts, rocket engineers and marketing professionals. The jobs at issue in the lawsuit are not limited to those that require advanced degrees.
The fact that SpaceX deals in ITAR does not prevent them from hiring refugees for roles that do not handle ITAR.
thebooktocome commented on Don't fire your illustrator sambleckley.com/writing/d... · Posted by u/todsacerdoti
Your definition of the needs does not have any requirements on the fitness of the output, nor on time spent on customer side. That does not seem realistic.
They’re not mine; I pulled them directly from the parent comment.
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thebooktocome commented on Don't fire your illustrator sambleckley.com/writing/d... · Posted by u/todsacerdoti
A professional artist that is proficient in the latest generative image models can increase their ability to attend to client needs.
The client "needs" in question here are low cost overall, low marginal cost for each revision, and a totally-interactive "do what I mean" interface.
Shoving a human artist in the middle is a liability on each front.
thebooktocome commented on Don't fire your illustrator sambleckley.com/writing/d... · Posted by u/todsacerdoti
I absolutely agree that an arbitrary line can be drawn; I don't see that that line can be clear and bright enough that forms the kind of precedence that can be relied upon by folks who don't have the money to fight an uncertain battle in court.
But would be overjoyed to be proven wrong.
Can you give an example of a “clear and bright” line in copyright law that does protect “folks who don’t have the money to fight an uncertain battle in court”?
For context, I’m in the process of translating a work that I know for a fact is in the public domain (sole author died 90+ years ago) and I’ve still got legal questions that I’m going to have to hire a lawyer to solve.
thebooktocome commented on Don't fire your illustrator sambleckley.com/writing/d... · Posted by u/todsacerdoti
> There’s nothing legally inconsistent about passing a law saying, e.g., “ML training is not fair use”.
Is it still fair use to take inspiration from another artist's work? How can the courts necessarily tell if the art was made using AI or if it's just someone stealing another artist's style? Theft of style isn't currently recognized under the law, but it could be.
1. Yes. Always has been, within the ambiguous limits of fair use.
2. Discovery. https://www.americanbar.org/groups/public_education/resource...
Some variants of “theft of style” are recognized by some courts already, please see the legal literature on music copyright and the recent 7-2 SCOTUS decision on Warhol’s Prince series.
>The fact that SpaceX deals in ITAR does not prevent them from hiring refugees for roles that do not handle ITAR.
This is way too casual a statement. At a company like that there won't necessarily be anything that doesn't potentially involve ITAR short of serious company reorganization, which is serious-business regulation and actively enforced. To take a simplistic example, even janitors might potentially have access to ITAR controlled materials if engineers threw them out into a bin bound for a shredder/incinerator and janitorial staff are trained and trusted parts of the disposal chain (which they should be!). Anyone might be able to overhear water cooler conversations. Etc.
At this point SpaceX might have some roles that can be segmented safely, completely firewalled from the rest of the organization. Tier 1 Starlink customer support perhaps. But it's not trivial when dealing with serious restricted tech to just say "oh these roles do not handle ITAR", because it's not about handling. Read "§ 120.56 Release" [1]:
It's quite broad.So yes, if SpaceX incorrectly excluded a group of people not covered by ITAR, they screwed up and will likely face some sort of fines/consent decree. But that doesn't mean it's trivial to then go and hire people who are covered by ITAR.
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0: https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/22/120.62
1: https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-22/chapter-I/subchapter-M...
As I mention elsewhere in this thread, if this is really how SpaceX operates then they’re already in (ethical, if not legal) violation of their duty to protect ITAR from dissemination. ITAR documents should never just be sitting in an unsealed bin waiting for disposal. Employees shouldn’t casually be discussing ITAR around the water cooler.
Assuming everyone around you is permitted to handle ITAR is a recipe for disaster.