Javascript suits most jobs better than any other language, and Amazon just added an option that increases its suitableness. AWS Lambda's two most popular languages are NodeJS Javascript and Python.

Python is in general slower. And this update in theory gives JS an even more massive edge, since Python too is a language that uses garbage collection.

However, the EXPORTER is the entity guilty of the violation.

This is my thought exactly.. Since the export is Information instead of materials; possibly stolen by the foreign company through acts of espionage the Spies and/or whoever conspired with them to get the information outside the US might have committed a crime at that point.

They might be all guilty parties of that export crime; even one or more Huawei employee(s) may even be guilty co-conspirators.

However, now that export has already happened - whatever people in China do with that information would be solely governed by Chinese law and outside of the United States' territorial jurisdiction and outside the US legal system's personal jurisdiction for every person involved. Especially if whatever they use the information for does not result in an infringement of Patents or Copyrights, or intellectual property recognized in Europe or other places due to established international treaties.

The import of chips into the US is not governed by export restrictions; the US government has to put an import ban on Huawei if they don't want them used in the US.

How do you define "automated"? What about stuff worth less than $1?

I don't. I'm saying the tax should be charged for all products and services delivered. The tax is for automation, but still has to be paid regardless of whether or not automation has actually been used. The assumption is all companies will automate to the degree possible. And the tax should still apply fully to companies who have not automated yet - It's not a punishment for automating nor an incentive to not automate.

Perhaps there can be some criteria for waiving the tax in extremely rare conditions - such as low-volume small home businesses only for a product and all its components other than raw-material commodities are refined/obtained or assembled solely by direct labor by humans without purchasing them from anyone else and without application of any electricity-powered device or fuel-burning machine or equipment.

Your suggestion does not solve the mentioned problem for two reasons. First, people can still say "Google is enough"

A solution does not have to and should not consider every possible objection. The people who say "Google is enough" would not need a registry. They can already do that today. Google publishes a listing of Googlebot's IP addresses, and any IP not on that list is not Googlebot - it's about 10 lines of code to ID Googlebot, then you can reject everything else.

a million insurance is still a large number. A startup does not have it.

A startup can get this easily. If they can't then fine; come back when you have appropriate backing. You're not building a successful startup without a little bit of investment.

And have you thought about distributed systems? Go have a look at YaCy. Should every participant go for their own registered user-agent

The operator of each node needs to enter an agreement.

Or just manually contact each website operator for each website you intend for your particular node to scrape and request a variance from their normal request limits. Persuade them that you are not just pretending to be a participant in a distributed project while in fact scraping their data for AI training purposes.

what about Cloudflare? They already control half of the net ... why not have them as gatekeeper who is allowed to crawl?

I'm pretty sure they already are, but Cloudflare is not all the web, and it's not yet enabled by default. Block all Scrapers and Crawlers by default is a tickbox away for Cloudflare users; However, more advanced policies like allowing unknown search engines to crawl would likely require a premium plan.

Trump's own commerce Secretary admitted there would be no new jobs because of automation.

Create an automation tax to be the greater of $1 per unit produced, or 30% the retail price for all goods, even if they are not manufactured locally, or even if they are, and use proceeds to fund a UBI program that guarantees $30k/Year plus food, housing, and Healthcare for every American regardless of their means, even if they can't or won't get a job.

Which actually means that if you're in a jurisdiction that has an extradition treaty with the US, they can legally attack you at home

They can apply to extradite, but they first have to convince a judge in that country that there is a legal basis.. They have to show how you did acts that were under their criminal jurisdiction and how you broke criminal laws within that jurisdiction. They gotta have evidence you did something that is a serious criminal offense and would be sufficient to charge you if committed in either country.

As far as I know violation of US export controls is not likely to be on the list of things the courts in most countries will find legally justifies allowing an extradition.

Suppose you are living in some country such as the UK, and you purchase a Huawei chip from a Chinese company; which is shipped from China to the UK. No part of that transaction is subject to US jurisdiction, and as a UK citizen; the US has no jurisdiction over you personally, Therefore it would be impossible to extradite you -- the US has no legal jurisdiction over the operation.

How does IMPORTING Huawei chips for use in a product in the US violate EXPORT control laws?

It seems like the Administration decided since the chips contain US technology each new chip manufactured outside the US by Huawei also counts as a new illegal exportation from the US, and any company they sell that chip to is complicit in the illegal export of that chip.

I have no idea if the law actually supports this idea the administration has. In my view it would seem like violation of the Export control occurred when the technology in the chip was exported; the parties involved in that crime would be whoever in the US was responsible for sending the tech overseas or provided information to Huawei.

But the manufacture of the new chips by an overseas entity are Not an export in the first place, and US would/should have zero legal jurisdiction any way whatsoever in anyone using chips that were made overseas and never brought into the US.

Using a legitimate crawler registry only stifles competition. "Why should I whitelist this search engine startup? Google is good enough for me

I would suggest that any organization whatsoever be allowed to enter the registry as a Legitimate crawler and automatically get whitelisted provided they can meet standard business requirements including carrying a minimum of $1M in liability insurance over their web crawling operation and stipulate to liability for any breach of the Legitimate Crawler program rules in a public manner. And any legitimate crawler caught breaching the rules on repeat occasions should be subject to a minimum $1 million fine.

It's not about requiring them to already be a major search engine, but obtaining agreements from crawlers in order to secure certain rules and make certain companies who register as Legitimate crawlers are identifiable and have agreed to abide by rules.

requiring them to Identify the crawler and provide for establishing Legal liability for any behavior of their crawlers. What company is running it, who are the beneficial owners of that company, etc.

So long as they meet basic policy requirements, Sign a contract stating that they will abide by Terms of Service, carry insurance, and sufficient capital (Or provide personal guarantees from owner/managers and proof of sufficient personal assets). Assume specific liability in the event of Breach of ToS, Provide a registered agent for service of legal process, and pick up a $100/year EV web client TLS certificate in order to show that their Organization Identity is vetted and authenticate their HTTPS connections.

Someone is transferring money to himself that belongs to the creditors. A fraudulent scheme.

Well not so fast.. To get them as a fraudulent scheme: you actually need proof beyond a reasonable doubt every single one of the elements required for fraud. If any of the following elements doesn't exist or If there is one of these you cannot prove, then there is no fraud.

1. A false statement is made, or a false representation is made regarding a material fact (Which may also be in the form of omitting or hiding information that would be important to the other party, such as knowledge an item you are selling contains a defect).
2. Knowledge of its falsity at the time the false statement was made.
3. A deliberate intention to deceive a victim and to profit from deception at the expense of that victim.
4. Justifiable reliance by the victim. In other words it has to be representations the victim has a right to rely upon regarding a transaction and does actually believe and rely upon.
5. Damages to the victim. You've got to prove the victim has substantive losses, otherwise it doesn't meet the bar for fraud. Generally there is some type of threshold set by the law, and if the amount is under $1000, then you need not bother.

This is a lot easier for a bank to do than for a consumer to do, since before a bank was willing to lend you a dime: you would have been required to sign a contract in writing which includes a number of representations and warranties by the borrower. Some of your representations are regarding a source of income to repay the loan; some of them will be about your intention to repay, and some of them will be about the asset itself.

In case your "Straw man company" decides to take out credit.. the bank is going to scrutinize them heavily, and some of the documents you sign will get them specific security interests on the company's assets specifically restricting such shenanigans.

However, with a company like this.. There will not be a stack of papers management had to sign warranting their future business plans and preventing them from dispensing with their assets however they like.

It's going to be basically impossible to prove that at the time some retailers did a Lifetime service promotion the company had any intention of failing to honor it. The fact that they undermine their business doesn't turn it into a fraud, unless the company's management had planned it that way all along.

As for the character of the asset transfers themselves - Since it has occurred more than two years ago; most likely any statute of limitations on fraudulent transfers has lapsed.

Their business continuing to operate for 2 years after the acquisition would very strongly suggest they didn't deliberately undercapitalize its operations. The likelihood of a court piercing the corporate veil in that case would be extremely low.

but yet gotten the money that came with it as an asset, but

The buyer of the asset would say the only thing they got was the customer information. And backend systems. They don't receive any money that came from the "Lifetime customer". The only benefit to them of acquiring this customer list is a possible opportunity to sell continuing services to these customers in exchange for money in the future.

If it was as simple as "oh hey we only bought the assets" then all contracts, including mortgages, financing, etc." could be easily unloaded

These debts cannot be unloaded, Because your mortgage has terms giving the bank a security interest to the property - The property you mortgaged is encumbered by a security interest. But you can liquidate any of your other property that is not so encumbered, and the buyer will never be responsible for your mortgage.

The situation is very similar with your financing instruments. Banks and financing companies are smart and well aware of asset sales, Therefore, there will be language included in your contracts which control the company's ability to liquidate certain assets and what can be done with proceeds.

Suffice to say ALL your business' competent providers of financing are aware of these possibilities and have rules in their contracts which help protect them. But your individual customers only have the contracts the original business offered them, and they are generally slated heavily in the business' favor and devoid of any significant protections for the consumer.

This one is headed for a judge smackdown.

Doubtful. The lifetime agreements would probably be found voidable - it's unlikely the Judge will find that the company has to indefinitely continue creating and running a type of service that they decided to discontinue. Most likely the Terms of Service include provisions for these type of things, and the remaining contract liability is probably about $0 assuming they've received two years of service Since the acquisition, and the new company's cost has it that 2 years of service costs more than what the customer had already paid.

I cold set up a straw man company that takes out a credit to buy a car, then sell the car (its asset) to me for a dime on the dollar and then go bankrupt and not having to pay back its liabilities?

In theory, yes; If you can persuade a bank to give you that credit under suitable terms.

In practice it is Illegal to deliberately plan out a scheme like that. As it would end up being a type of fraudulent scheme to transfer money to yourself.

Which presumably mean they also didn't purchase the yearly subscribers from the previous company.

It's possible they simply after obtaining the customer list and infrastructure Opted to provide all customers gratis service as a courtesy for a period of time as a loss-leader in attempt to acquire those customers. The contract with the new customers is then formed with the new company the first time the customer completes payment. Since the previous Lifetime customers have never paid within a year, then they never formed a contract with the new company, and had simply been receiving the customary services free of charge up unto the point in time at which they were deleted from the new company's system. Because there's no contract with the new company, then the new company was not obligated to keep their data nor to continue providing courtesy service indefinitely.

You cannot just get the assets and not the liabilities, unless the liabilities are still served.

Your statement is dead wrong. Obviously false. Both companies and individuals liquidate assets all the time regardless of liabilities, and the buyer is in general never liable outside 1 narrow exception.

There is nothing that prevents it. The exception would be You have a contract creating the liability that specifically states otherwise. In other words: the asset is collateral related to a secured debt.

For example: I go sell a $100,000 vehicle I own outright and then default on a $100,000 credit card loan the next month that I had taken out before the sale. There is absolutely zero way that the buyer gets any liability whatsoever. It is totally irrelevent that the car would have in theory covered the debt. In the absence of a contract specially creating a security interest in that property - the debt is Unsecured, and liabilities do not follow the asset.

It's essentially the same with these asset-only sales. People may have signed up for a "Lifetime" plan, But there is no clause in the contract granting customers a security interest in the company's assets; it's unsecured debt that go with the company's general business expenses, and it's probably also a voidable liability, because the "Lifetime" of the service is over now that the company discontinued the service or sold it off.

Oh wait, the purchaser "didn't know" about the perpetual licenses? Because the sellers didn't tell them?

Asset-only sale according to the Ars article.

Since all the contracts and liabilities remain with the OLD company whose assets were acquired.. You or the class action would likely be only able to sue a company that has finished selling off all its assets a long time ago by now, and probably already distributed all the cash out to investors. The point of suing a company that doesn't have any money left might be very minimal - they could even be filing for bankruptcy at this point.

A VPNSecure representative claimed on the reviews site Trustpilot that the current owners “did not gain access to the customer database until months” after the acquisition. According to VPNSecure’s owners, their acquisition netted them “the tech, the brand, and the infrastructure/technology—but none of the company, contracts, payments, or obligations from the previous owners.”

The acquisition was an asset-only deal: Where they got the systems and customer database but zero contracts, liabilities, or obligations.

If there was a fraud, then the new company is in the clear (They can't be sued since they have none of the liability), and it was committed by the company who decided to be acquired and sell off all their assets. Apparently they sold off everything they needed to provide you'll services without making provisions to ensure customers would get a refund or receive what they had paid for on their fully paid up future services.

their acquisition netted them “the tech, the brand, and the infrastructure/technology—but none of the company, contracts, payments, or obligations from the previous owners.”

It's worth noting they the new company is at least offering a discount.

VPNSecure is offering affected users discounted new subscriptions for either $1.87 for a month (instead of $9.95), $19 for a year (instead of $79.92), or $55 for three years (instead of $107.64). The deals are available until May 31, per the email.