Topic: jgarzik goes berzerk in #bitcoin-dev, wtf? - page 18. (Read 29037 times)

I disagree. Even in less totalitarian places, Bitcoin can help people acquire some financial privacy and protection against inflation.

But of course, the more totalitarian the place, the more useful it gets.


+1

The answer is simple. They kidnap you, put yourself in a plane to Cuba and then dronebomb you in Guantanamo. All legal, but expensive.

+1 for wisdom

It seems like it was a good idea to start a discussion on this. We have a stronger internal conflict on this issue than I realized at first. He actually has defenders which I find preposterous.

It's silly to bring ammunitions to all the opponents of bitcoin by drawing attention to Iran,a state known for performing significantly more terrorist activities than your average government.
It's a good way to raise awareness of bitcoin in a very bad light.
The timing is just wrong because bitcoin is not widespread enough today to afford this kind of freedom.
Jeff Garzick was right in banning idiotic propositions.
Timing is everything.

The Satoshi quote was from 2010. It should have no relevance anymore. Bitcoin is a currency with properties that will cause it to have more popularity in countries that have financial restrictions. Iran is one of them. I believe that is exactly what Bitcoin is meant for.

Bitcoin is currently essentially useless for the regular joe in Western countries. You read it correctly, totally useless. In countries such as Iran or Argentina, it's far from useless. It's potentially a saviour.

The post I wrote and the conclusion of "losing respect" was an understatement. Bitcoin is the currency of the resistance and I find it problematic that the core dev team has people that will use their authority to silence people who simply want to make Bitcoin available to everyone in the world, which is its purpose basically.

By the way, nothing jeremias said in that chat log is encouraging illegal activity. Nothing at all. The discussion even turned to on topic issues such as translating Bitcoin-Qt to Farsi, and that was the final straw for jgarzik. For fucks sake.

As I said in my edit, I totally concur. It's a flaw in the protocol.

Wanna shut down Bitcoin without just declaring Bitcoin itself illegal (which you really can't easily due to jurisdictional issues)? Just redefine usage rights for SHA-256. Can be done from today to tomorrow. Their algorithm, their right to decide what happens with it. "Yeah, about SHA-256. We don't really want that to be used for crypto-currencies. Toodles". Bam, instantly every mining instance or mining-rig or whatever you have is breaking the usage license and thus illegal. Which would shut down Bitcoin at least until a new cryptocore is implemented. Also it would totally suck for ASIC users.


Watch out for any black helicopters. 

What if you are not a USA citizen? Will the US government still drone bomb you, if you provide SHA256 to Iranian citizens?

As far as I'm concerned if it's not spam, virus' or malware they're promoting no one should be banned for anything they say, to ban someone for anything else just makes you look like a cunt no matter how you try to word it. I do think that some of you Bitcoin guys are being a bit too aggressive in promoting the idea of Bitcoin though, don't go posting links etc. in places unless people ask for it.

You're right, it's pretty much theirs. I was merely complaining about the bossy attitude and gave the example of overreaching regulations. I'm sorry if I gave the impression that I was talking about the cryptographic algorithms Bitcoin is using.

My argument was that, advocating Bitcoin use in Iran does not equate to advocating the usage of SHA in Iran. Iranians can and do use it indirectly, and there is nothing illegal about it.

As I said though, if this is how things shall develop, we should get rid of SHA before it's too late. What if the USA made it illegal to relay cryptographic traffic that is initiated from sanctioned countries?

I read the pastebin. You should not lose the respect for a man over something like this.

I don't think jgarzik went beserk. He kicked a couple of users off the channel, no big deal.

Jgarzik and Satoshi have good points. If you want to catch an elephant, you don't start by poking forks into it's eye.

It's not the first time this state-sucker Garzik does something pathetic like this. Who remember his bashing of Silk Road in a TV interview? I found it so disappointing, listening to those words coming from a core dev, that I even created a topic at the time: https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/mr-garzik-and-silk-road-the-cbs-interview-13706

And here we go again. The ban was silly. Garzik coward behavior is ridiculous.

If there's any good in Bitcoin, it's its potential to allow people to circumvent governments. If you don't think people should be allowed to circumvent governments at all, then you have nothing to do with Bitcoin. The built-in monetary policy is by itself a means to circumvent government centrally imposed monetary policy. And that's just one of the good things Bitcoin enables. Allowing Iranians to bypass foreign sanctions is a perfect, "text-book" use case for Bitcoin. Even WordPress understands it, but one of the core developers apparently doesn't.

Once more, Garzik is frightened. At the CBS interview, he made some ridiculous defamation. Here, he censors a reputable bitcoiner from an IRC channel. Nothing super serious so far, but up to what will his fear take him?

I obviously must acknowledge Garzik great contributions to bitcoin code. He's done for Bitcoin incomparably more than I, that's undeniable. But morally speaking, his a frightened government sucker. I hope this doesn't represent a problem one day for bitcoin development.

@Garzik; if you are afraid of your government, I sincerely accept and respect you in that. But please don't put yourself in the way of those who wish to use Bitcoin for its true purpose: circumventing governments!

It's their algorithm. US government institutions (NIST and NSA) invented it and own it. It is not common property though it is prevalent enough in the western world that one might think so. I'm pretty sure the US can regulate what people can do with it's own property.

Take a look at the TOS of pretty much any piece of software employing any US proprietary cryptographic algorithms and you will find an item excluding usage rights of the software for citizens of certain countries like Cuba and Iran. I know no one reads these things, but it's in there.

I DO concur that using a state owned cryptographic algorithm is pretty much counter to everything some consider Bitcoin to stand for and could thus be seen as a flaw in the concept.

More like idiotic.

He could be unbanned very fast, or is it the end of the world? He only got kicked from the chan for being an ignorant idiot. To me #bitcoin-dev is somewhat of an official chan and Iran is a serious subject. The rest is kindergarden drama.

But you know what's happening:


(But considering a translation into farsi dangerous or illegal, is also questionable)

Is suggesting the translation of bitcoin-qt to farsi "encouraging illegal activity"?

The smuggling of bitcoin software into Iran would be different, but that's not what was suggested here.

There are hundreds of thousands of Iranian diaspora in the US and Europe.

I think jgarzik should calmly explain his position on this. I'd certainly be interested in hearing his line of reasoning.


Use by Wikileaks hasn't killed Bitcoin yet, that doesn't mean the risk wasn't/isn't there.

What if Bitcoin had been released 11 years ago, and the taliban
(or some other organization which need not be named here)
had instructed their people to use Bitcoin at all times?

That would be an Outside Context Problem for Bitcoin.
 

Actually no. You can create currency all you like. Now how you use that currency, that is the tricky part where you can be shut down.

egold for example died, because the company directors actively facilitated money laundering. Killing the company as the sole issuer thus killed the currency.

Liberty Dollars was killed because the issuer behaved in a way that was clearly intended to defraud customers (designing the Liberty Dollar to look like US Dollars and encouraging businesses to give change to USD customers in Liberty Dollars without informing the customer). Stopping the issuer stopped the currency.





 

I'm not sure anyone is trying to export SHA-256. Coins themselves sure as hell do not contain, nor represent any algorithm. Maybe it's illegal to allow Iranians to download the Bitcoin client (which I'm sure sourceforge is complying), but I'm not so sure using Bitcoin would itself be forbidden for Iranians.

ETA: If this is in fact the case though, we should fork Bitcoin and switch to a free algorithm before it's too late.

Besides, why the hell are we to accept getting bossed around by the USA all the time? USA is imposing all kinds of regulations internationally. Do you know that banks who haven't signed an agreement with the USA can't do business with the banks who did (i.e. all of them)? If a bank does business with an American national, or "a resident", who may even be living in a different country, without taxing them on behalf of USA and turning over the money itself, it is subject to be fined the same amount. Do you really think Bitcoin can survive within the US legal system?

Okay. Now I am supposed to view life from the perspective of the United States. If they deem something illegal, then it is. Talk about oppression.

Maybe Jeff had to react that way to protect the foundation legally. If, so, this shows that a foundation wasn't a good idea to begin with. Maybe they should clarify in writing that #bitcoin-dev belongs to the foundation, which belongs to the USA.

ETA: I'm failing to shut up about this... Now, if I talk about Bitcoin to my friends in Iran, I'm encouraging illegal activity in the eyes of #bitcoin-dev? My brain is about to explode. What a joke...

Yeah?  You better take the bitcoin.org page down immediately then.  Also Wikipedia.
Anybody who promotes those sites should also be banned.  
    

jgarzik should come in here and make it absolutely clear that he did that because his well-being and wealth was/is threatened by a gang of violent thugs called the U.S. Government forcing him to do so otherwise I'm not sure how I feel about such exclusionary moves. Unless there's something that I'm missing Bitcoin is open source therefor open to anyone to do anything with the code, including translating it into farsi.