While I have a lot of respect for Charlie, and I think this type of reaction is probably good as a way to create some attention and pressure, in practice my bet is this will end up mostly being a non-event for most people.

It's still a bad law, though, and a great recipe for selective enforcement, so the more people who do take it seriously, the better.

The risk/reward ratio is very tilted towards risk in events like this. Sure, it's unlikely that someone does something that he gets in trouble for, but if it does happen, it's a disproportionate amount of consequence.

I'd not risk it in his shoes either.

Note sure who that is, but it is an unfortunate circumstance of the web that comments are connected to the authors of content (YouTube, New York Times, Instagram) at all. Comments should be independent of content (like HN).

Charlie Stross is a fairly successful science fiction author