Topic: A Warning Against Using Taint (Read 16246 times)

Precisely, it is a systemic vulnerability ... call it the "taint attack".

+1
A tainting system could be used to deanonymize all bitcoin owner. Anybody could claim that bitcoins from an address were stolen from him and now all tainted bitcoin owner would need to authorize themselves and reveal all their transactions to the police otherwise their bitcoins would be blocked. That would lead to subsequent malicious accusations and the authorities would feel legitimized to seize the half of the bitcoin supply worldwide. Finally bitcoin would crash.

strongly disagree with OP

8 pages of this and most of it is lost in the small details instead of the big picture, which is why this thread might have been created.

Why are we focusing on the effect, instead of the cause? What is the intention of this thread? To prevent stolen coins from being effectively used, right?

Why aren't we focusing on how to prevent thefts, period? Isn't that really the goal?

Instead of talking about a system that isn't workable based on fungibility, shouldn't we be talking about a way to implement a system that uses escrow and trust? Or some sort of way to prevent theft?

Let's stop focusing on the effect, and more so on the causes.

well, i say use the taint if you want! it is not for us to impose our sexual preferences on others.

besides you naysayers shouldnt be so narrowminded. have u ever tried letting a girl lick the taint? it feels really good!

Admittedly I entered this thread thinking it was about something different.

Carry on.

Considering the mix of this forum it would be better to call it the gooch. I'm not really concerned about using coins with taint. After all who could possibly be against coins with a chin rest? 

Okay.  I have an opinion that killing me is a bad idea and is against the law.  I'm willing to use force to "coerce" anyone who doesn't believe that.  Wow, I'm a monster!

Opinions are just opinions. They all have exactly the same validity.

The difference you are talking about is not inherent to the opinions; it is a difference in the people who state them. Some people are willing to use force to coerce everyone else into obeying their opinions, and other people are not. That is the difference.

Some people would consider that a rather large difference.

There's nothing special about laws; they are just opinions. The only difference between your opinions and The Law, is the people uttering those opinions will (have other people) shoot you for disagreeing with them.

Not even one joke about the taint. How this forum has changed. It is indeed the difference between immoral and illegal, depending on where you live.   XD

Heh, I had just hoped to point out the contradiction so that he could examine it for himself.  My confusion was rhetorical, rather than actual.

Once you see it for yourself, it becomes obvious that following law is only moral when the law is moral.  From there, you can divide out the middle step and see that on one side you have (moral = moral) and on the other side you have (law = law), with no fundamental connection between the two.  Having laws that are moral is an ideal that we must strive for.

Ghandi and MLK both wrote fairly well on the struggle to make law moral.  Letter from a Birmingham Jail is an excellent read on the topic.

kjj, Steve doesn't need people being exasperated.  He just needs some explanation...

Steve, Consider the possibility that "breaking the law [is] immoral by definition" is similar to the feeling of stupidity that a (very intelligent) child gets when those taking care of him constantly tell him he's stupid.  It's a lie that becomes true because we aren't psychologically advanced enough yet to resist the "availability heuristic".  You can google that.

Jim Crow laws are an excellent example.  Laws against marijuana are also excellent examples.  Cocaine is dangerous - but it's a little less dangerous than sky diving, as far as I know.  If you feel obligated to do something about whatever dangerous behaviors others choose to undertake, then by all means, do so, but please don't vilify others for leaving them alone or otherwise respecting their decisions to behave dangerously.  Danger is fun!  Caveat!  It's also dangerous.  But that doesn't make it immoral.  It does make it illegal, at least when there is a nanny state involved (as there usually is).

If challenging that idea ("breaking the law [is] immoral by definition") interests you, visit voluntaryist.com or (if you want resources that are out of my control - I'm the webmaster for voluntaryist.com), just google immoral illegal different.

And I just read your post about the mentality - you're absolutely right, and that is a big problem.  Once people see that illegal is often NOT immoral, they kind of lose their conscience until they "eat of the tree of knowledge" (which means to re-grow their own conscience).  That is the result of having a nanny state.   As Nietzsche says, religion (statism is also a religion) tends to replace the self (that's you - your own conscience) with a Godhead (or a legal system).  It's our job to undo that damage.

It seems contradictory but I'm talking about the *mentality* of law-breaking in general.  Stealing, killing, speeding, like that.

I always thought breaking the law was immoral by definition.  I can think of situations where using cocaine is immoral, certainly selling harmful substances is immoral.

Sure, breaking the old Jim Crow laws was illegal, not immoral.  But we're talking harmful drugs here.

Using cocaine is not immoral.  Making deals for mind altering substances is not immoral.  The difference between immoral and illegal is very very important.  It is, fundamentally, a large part of the reason that bitcoin is such a great invention.

If you buy a shovel at a used equipment shop and you find blood stains on the bowl, do/should you care?  What if it's a garage sale?

BTC are different from greenbacks for many reasons, the most important of which, in this thread, is that their entire transaction history is permanently recorded in full view of the public.

The victims of bitcoin heists have NEVER appealed to the community (that I know of) to help them recover their stolen property (until the thieves send the bitcoin back).  As I mentioned (way) earlier in the thread, without such an appeal, I don't think there's any point to paying attention to taint.  However, when a victim offers me something for helping to thwart the plans of the thief who stole their bitcoin, I will be happy to check my own holdings for taint.

BTC are no different than greenbacks.  Who knows what path a bill has followed into your wallet?  Does anyone really care?

Bills are all contaminated ("tainted") with trace amounts of cocaine supposedly.  Maybe they were involved in a drug deal.  Does/should anyone care?

Dan Kaminsky of Business Insider mentions the failures of bitcoin and then explains what I explained at the beginning of this thread.  I was not unprincipled enough to mention the fact that "possession of stolen property is a crime" since the foundation of that concept is mostly perverted from psersonal self-discipline (which would call it immoral rather than a crime) is the centralized coercive system of "justice" provided by coercive governments.  Kaminsky, on the other hand, has no problem with that centralization, perhaps because he views anything called a crime as equivalent to immoral.

I pointed our earlier in the thread that (essentially) having and following your own code of conduct is a good thing, but imposing it on others (through coercion) is a bad thing.  When you internalize this lesson, you'll understand why I love this thread so much, and why I have brought it back from the past.

If you have stolen coins, consider making some small attempt (however small it might be) to undo the damage you helped cause.  I urge others toward what I believe is the right thing to do, but I will never attempt to coerce them into doing it.