Topic: jgarzik goes berzerk in #bitcoin-dev, wtf? - page 9. (Read 29037 times)

What do the Bitcoin Foundation members think about their representative banning someone for talking about Iran? Is it the foundation's official position that bitcoin is the currency for everyone!*

*Everyone meaning those not deemed undesirable by government authorities.

It seems such a position would be in line with the EFF's statement that they are scared of bitcoin. Is the foundation scared of bitcoin also? If so, how can it advocate for its use in a way that is indicative of its potential? Will the foundation encourage limiting discussion or efforts to spread bitcoin software to any other particular countries or groups? Has the foundation automatically bought in to the terrorism propaganda that they leverage to take any action they deem necessary, including midnight raids and drone strikes in foreign countries?

Garzik mentioned chess in his defense. Is the foundation ignorant enough to believe that any potential governmental foe is playing a fair game of any sort? That it adheres to any form of rule or law? Is the foundation naive enough to try and placate such organized efforts with this tiptoeing around its indiscriminate violence and shameful hypocrisy? This type of incident serves their interest more than it does bitcoin's, and if the foundation continues to play by this rigged game, it will lose. And it will lose because it misinterprets and grossly misunderstands the distorted values and ruthlessness of their opposition.

There are understaffed food kitchens in your community. How come you've got over a thousand posts here?

Hm. This picking the causes that other people should be fighting thing is fun.

There are smart ways to stand up against the most powerful government the world has ever seen and there are stupid ways to do it.

With all due respect, it is logical and normal to expect people to inform themselves and to stand up against atrocities commited by their government in their name. Trade sanctions harm and kill the innocent, directly, every hour of every day. The purpose of trade sanctions is not to "punish the government," but to criminalize and weaken the industry, economy, and the society in general, making it an easy target for military harassment.

Or a court of public opinion.  Some of the positions people adopt on these forms, and less often on IRC, are rather alarming to outright despicable.  While I hold the view that people have a right to have opinions which are widely (and rationally considered!) despicable my own freedom demands that I not be forced to associate with them.  If there is to be free speech a community also needs to have the freedom to exclude and choose their associations lest they all be made worthless by a competition of the loudest shock artists.   Sometimes I hesitate to mention Bitcoin to people because I'm, frankly, embarrassed that I might be associated with some of the people here.

The ultimate arbiter of the rightness of keeping someone in a channel or excluding them is the users of the channel and no one else has any business having an opinion. I'm especially disappointed to see the hysteria in this thread— mostly from people who do not use the channel, do not contribute to development, and may not even have a clue what IRC even is...   Why is it that so many seem to have so much time to rant and rave in this thread but yet cant find the time to spin up a prerelease copy of bitcoin and file some bug reports?

As for the bigger picture, it is important that readers review

• The logic behind Satoshi's Admonition, no don't "bring it on"
• My own Bitcoin Mini-Manifesto
• Sun Tzu's Art Of War
• And learn how to play chess.

In short, if you care about bitcoin, if you want bitcoin to survive long term, you need to play a long game.

In particular, big governments have committed billions of dollars and a small specops army to interdicting what they consider their major enemies.  Just about the worst thing you can do is look at the targets of the Big Guys -- Iran, North Korea, Taliban, jihadi terrorists -- and put bitcoin squarely in their crosshairs.

Right now bitcoin is weak; a few thousand listening nodes run by hobbyists are all that holds the network together.  The switch from GPU/FPGA to ASIC will bring an increase in network strength -- but it also consolidates hash production power in a tiny handful of startup companies.  If you think bitcoin can right now sustain a targeted cyber attack, you are dead wrong.

On the legal front, it is also quite clear that law enforcement is taking an active look at bitcoin.  There is an active SEC investigation into Pirate-related activities (good; clear out the swamp).  The DEA is most certainly looking at Silk Road.  The FBI produced an in-depth report on bitcoin, and talks actively about bitcoin at anti-money-laundering conferences.

It is therefore logical to conclude that IRC, forum and other activities are being continually monitored for evidence that can be used in a court of law.

That makes it all the more rich when anonymous forum trolls hurl charges of "cowardice!" and "treason!" when these trolls are neither (a) using their real name, nor (b) contributing in any meaningful way, nor (c) a High Value Target.  Teenaged crypto-anarchists may love to mock the "sheeple" who follow the laws of their jurisdiction, but at the end of the day, they just move back into their parents' house if they run into trouble.  Not that easy for me.

Just like a great many of people I would like to introduce to bitcoin, I am a law-abiding US citizen, using my real name, in public, volunteering my time to work on multiple bitcoin implementations.  Businesses like WordPress are law-abiding businesses.   It is logical and normal to expect people to follow the laws of their country.

That is the most revealing, the most saddening part about this thread.  In a short-sighted attempt to be a morally pure crypto-anarchist, you could ruin the true monetary freedom bitcoin brings, for the billions on this planet.

Thank you for the entertainment.  This thread is completely full of mindboggling silliness.

1) RE "why?" Gavin nailed it on IRC:

Offtopic crap, followed by a transparent attempt to keep the offtopic discussion going.  After warnings and repeated kicks are ignored, you get banned.  Typical IRC B.S.

2) Apparently the IRC command "/ban jeremias" automatically banned all of Finland, thanks to his hostname and IRC server/client parsing, another LOL moment.  Finland was un-banned immediately ;p

3) jeremias was unbanned after several hours (by me, with no one prompting or requesting this).

As to the bigger picture...  that's coming in the next post.

Based on past history, governments tend to get more aggressive with businesses/organisations which ignore sanctions. When you're imposing trade embargoes, it's to punish a whole government - which is a whole different level of power than enforcing money-laundering or terrorism financing laws against individuals or organisations.  It's largely possible to avoid money-laundering, terrorism financing and tax evasion issues - especially for the devs.  It's much, much harder to avoid sanction-busting issues because merely doing business at all with entities in the sanctioned nations opens you up to sanctions yourself.  Just making Bitcoin technology available in those nations - even free of charge - could be regarded as a violation of the embargo which can create a domino effect where other nations then effectively punish you for breaking the embargo.

It doesn't matter how ludicrous you might regard the sanctions as being (and I could write right pages about how ridiculous the sanctions against Cuba were in both scope and duration), violating them can create a situation where Bitcoin is still legal per se but key organisations are effectively unable to operate. The majority of Bitcoin businesses need to interact with the conventional financial system in some way and if they violate embargoes it can be made very difficult for them to interact with financial institutions.  Restraints can be put on the development of the official Bitcoin client.  If businesses and organisations relocate, the new nations - which will likely be small and not especially powerful - from which they operate then risk sanctions themselves if they allow those organisations/businesses to trade (not just economically, but also in terms of sharing technology and IP) with Iran.  There aren't a whole lot of countries that have no economic ties with the EU or the US, and those ties give them significant leverage when it comes to commanding co-operation in enforcing embargoes.

That is too bad. They can be shut down for many other reasons including dollar-busting, 'unique' form of terrorism, money laundering, tax evasion, drug trafficing, etc. How is sanction-busting different?

Trolling?

No, it means as long as we sit on our asses doing nothing but whining and demanding, we are reinforcing the current situation. Devs don't owe anything to us, nor the world in general.

Not right at all. We are essentially forbidden to create and distribute dollars (or things that look too much like dollars).

IIRC, it's explained quite nicely in this

That was a masterful troll. Kudos. Couldn't have done it better myself.

What do you think they should do, all move to an Ecuadorian embassy?  Stop expecting people to be martyrs and start putting together an alternative team of devs who are either already in the sanctioned countries or who are willing to face prosecution for sanction-busting - or are you too "lazy" to do that.   

It's also not going to succeed in the long term if development of the official client and big economic players are shut down for sanction-busting.

It seems to me that there's a section of the community which is looking for martyrs.  If you believe that Bitcoin needs martyrs, then be that martyr yourself instead of demanding others put their asses on the line. 

No-one is forced to use the official client.  No-one is prevented from developing other clients.  Nobody's stopping you from putting together a team of devs to build a sanction-busting client.  The problem is people behaving as though the devs and major Bitcoin businesses are genies whose purpose is to grant your wishes.  There are many different agendas within the Bitcoin eco-system and the only one responsible for ensuring your own is advanced is you.

Bitcoin is not going to succeed if core devs live in fear of being prosecuted for not adhering to US sanctions on any country. That IS the big picture!

I did not sense any fear in his words, on the contrary. I sensed complacency and even agreement with criminal acts of the US government.

Let's face it, USA is no longer the beacon for the world of freedom and justice for all comers that it once was ...

... now it is a global empire that rules by fear.

USA citizens, like Jeff, have to live in fear of their militaristic govt. and so such actions that appear irrational to outsider but may have an internal logic perverted by contextual influences we are not privy to ... I seem to think his day job might be with a military sub-contractor, so it is even more understandable in that context. For example, if Jeff, was from communist China we would expect similar but even more extreme behaviour most likely ... removing the context of his circumstances is like expecting someone in a prison to behave like a free man roaming naked in the wilds. 

Possibly, possibly not but the problem isn't so much Iranians knowing about Bitcoin as it is services/organisations actively assisting the bypassing of embargoes against Iran.  Discussing it here isn't quite the same thing as making a request on official channels to do something which facilitates Bitcoin being used to bypass sanctions, though.  

If someone were to ask Charlie how BitInstant could be used to bypass sanctions against Iran, it would be really silly for Charlie to even engage in the discussion.  Services and organisations can't really afford to say anything other than "we won't help people bypass the sanctions" without painting a huge target on their backs.  They can't be seen to be promoting or allowing the use of their service/organisation for bypassing the embargo.  

Everyone has the right to determine what risks they take themselves.  No-one has the right to tell others what risks they should find acceptable.

There is nothing stopping those who feel strongly enough about the issue from releasing a non-official versions of the client and taking the risks associated with facilitating Bitcoin's use in embargoed countries themselves.

If jeff didnt like what was being said he could have simply left the channel.

Not necessarily.

Every action you take (like posting, commenting) in the Internet may lead to more people knowing about the issue. The issue spreads faster, and more people learn about it in a shorter amount of time, thus increasing probability that more people (including Iranians) will come across it.

Simple logic.

EDIT:
I believe today it's also called "going viral". And this is what we are doing - strengthening the virus.