DeepSeek is probably going to be the straw that breaks the camels back in terms of full mask off fascism vs keeping status quo of polite business fascism that America loves. Let me explain, keep in mind, a pro-move would have been if TikTok did this.

So for those who don’t know DeepSeek is covered by the GPL. The current bill to ban DeepSeek and “imports of Chinese tech” basically has a problem.

• Source code is free speech
• GPL’d source code exists before the ban
• The way copyright works if that if I make a change in DeepSeek no matter how minor it becomes a derivative work that I can then release.
• Therefore PiggySeek is my freeze-peach not China’s

Essentially the US has to destroy the last 100 years of jurisprudence in multiple arenas (free speech, copyright, etc) to effectively create this ban. The reason the TIkTok ban was ruled legal is because by the US law, your speech is your speech, the platform is the platform, so there is a technicality there that can be used without talking about chilling effects. GPL and OSS enables “their” speech to be “your” speech in terms of software.

With the tech industry dollars and demand time table behind this… well let’s just say it’s the time of the cool zone folks.

This process was already killed and ignored once with encryption where the government made the issue go away by loosening requirements and not prosecuting, despite a ruling against them:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernstein_v._United_States