Topic: [POLL] Should we ban something on the Bitcoin marketplace? - page 6. (Read 14831 times)

Bitcoin is a replacement for cash, do what you will with the forum, but the entire point of the thing is to be able to trade it like cash.  No control on what it can be spent on is possible, by design.

+1 and Amen!

The controversy is caused by bitcoiners with different goal in mind, not just what they think will be effective/ineffective.

Nonetheless, I think there's a goal of bitcoin we all could believe in:

Destroy and replace fiat money, and facilitate the economy toward human prosperity(material wealth, health, etc). That's it.

I believe this is what Satoshi would have wanted. He thought all those trusting we must do are unnecessary and harmful to our economies. He designed bitcoin to fix the flaw inherent in fiat money.

We should achieve his goal without compromising its very principles. When we get down to it, the government will never and should not have power to dictate the monetary policy of bitcoin by mere decree.

The forum and community here may ban drugs and illegal goods for the pragmatic reason of protecting and growing the bitcoin economy, but we cannot compromise the system that Satoshi laid out for us, nor can we compromise the integrity of the community dedicated to achieving this goal.

Remember, we must make bitcoin prevalent in the world, without compromising its power as a cryptocurrency, if we were to have any chance of changing the world at all.

While I would love to see the illegal content and scams blocked out completely from the system. However, would something even be possible to accomplish given the anonymous goals and nature of the system?

really I think the best we could do is a community wide blacklisting/boycott of these services. (i.e. remove the adult sites from the Wiki trades listing.) I pick on adult content mostly cause I work at a k/12 school and think theres too much of it in society as a whole.

So we cant ban for technical reasons. Boycotting 'offensive' material becomes a matter of culture which would fall on the side of more restrictive rather than less. I'm not an economic mind nor do i even pretend to know what would actually be required to make a new economic base work (a-la bitcoin) but If what I've gleaned from the boards and other reading is that more trade is good. Be it illegal goods or donating to a major/minor charity the more the currency changes hands the stronger it becomes.

Much as I hate to admin it the gambling/adult/illegal will probably be one of the first broad range adopters to the system as they have been for so may other advances in technology. First microtransactions - hand of poker, webcams - adult chat, etc. now if the community were to collectively take a political PR approach we can change how some of this is perceived.

Would I ban it if I could? yes, but I would also live in a utopian world if the potion were there. its not, I've looked. the really sad thing is that people will probably blame bitcoin for making this possible. Which it didn't, It's just made it a little easier.
if someone wanted to run a drug deal then all they needed was a backpack and a couple of train lockers. anonamity would still be possible just requires people to get up and do it rather than use an existing system.

I'm tired and ranting. I should stop before this turns into something involving the 7 dead-lies.

Yes, as even a basic standard of professionalism nothing that is not intentionally being made part of the "bitcoin brand" should be allowed on these forums or anything else officially connected with the project.  If people want to use bitcoin for these things they can do it in a back alley somewhere like they do with any other kind of cash.  I know that some of the users here are big libertarian/anonymity etc. fans but there are plenty like me who don't have that as a priority at all and just want to use bitcoin as a much more efficient version of paypal.  To be frank, if the world market for bitcoin is libertarian techies we've probably already saturated it.  Bitcoin adoption on any significant scale will be more to do with people like me--people who want to conduct normal, above-board transactions and build businesses based on the economic model that it enables.  It's perfectly fine for anarchists/libertarians/whatever to appreciate particular aspects of bitcoin, but I think it's quite smallminded to think that any particular community or philosophy, especially outside of the mainstream, is "what bitcoin is about."  Just think about it for a second:  What is cash about?  Who uses it?  Particular forms of cash have advantages and disadvantages from different economic and philosophical positions, but in real life cash is something that people from every aspect of life use for purely non-philosophical reasons.  If the current users of bitcoin can get that into our heads we will be much better positioned to actually make bitcoin successful, which depending on your particular slant might have those particular benefits you are looking for.

eMansipater

++20

This is exactly what i was walking about when i argued that allowing of trade of such materials is bad for Bitcoin's publicity. We - anarchist/minarchist/libertarian types don't have any problem with freedom of speech & freedom of trade.
But most of "normal people", when they see something like "heroin store", they just run away and don't look back.

So selling stuff like drugs/arms/other illegals on this forum will be viewed by general population as proof that "Bitcoin was created for evil" or some other bullshit. This makes it extremely easy for governments to delegalise it, and kill mainstream adoption for next few years/decades.

How is possible to fight government while simultaneously putting weapons into his hands ? As i said before, this is a childish strategy (which is no strategy at all actually).

Would it though? While its true that it wouldn't be tolerated by the world at large, how many here would really "tolerate" it. The "girls for btc" got a few sneers and accused of being fraudulent, and talked about as over the line as it was.

Recently, after reading about the whole HBGary debacle, I decided to go check out 4chan. Heard of it many times, but never actually checked out the site before. On there I ran across a thread where someone posted some sick, sick, evidence of the torture of dogs. The response that this ilicited was interesting, people were, trying to figure out who he was.... trying to... do something about it.

Do we really need to ban anything? I would like to think that if such activities come here, the community will act accordingly. The police and media will not need to stumble upon such things themselves, because everyone has lines they don't want to see crossed, and even if not everyone, there will be enough who will point the thugs in the right direction, and look the other way.

Truth be told, just as everyone has lines, not everyones lines are that extreme, I wouldn't be shocked to find that an (admittedly smaller) segment of the community will do it for drugs and adult voluntary prostitution too.

Banning it just means that it goes elsewhere, drives it under ground, I don't see how that is preferable.

+1

I know I was surprised when I saw the heroin thread, and reconsidered my involvement with the project. However, I know that cash is used for heroin as well, and I don't stop using cash because of the use of the currency. I do know that it would bother a few of the people I've introduced to bitcoin if they ever wanted to read the forums, as they are strongly against supporting something that allows discussion on illegal topics. The amount of anti-establishment talk on here surprised me as well, but I assume that the early adopters of a crypto-currency would be those who want to be outside the establishment.

Just a thought, the last website I saw which allowed discussion about anything and everything was Anontalk, and that website doesn't seem to be doing very well, and is continuously attacked.

I know a few people that were interested by the bitcoin stuff and, after visiting this forum, told me that "hey, this is just a project for junkie and anarchist retards that hope to defeat the governement".

So, yes, the current forum has already turned away 2 people I know.

And when I first read the "Heroin thread", I nearly gave up completely for the whole bitcoin thing.

I find this forum definitely not friendly in that regard and I believe that Bitcoin reputation is already suffering because of this.

Throw caution to the wind or proceed slowly?

That's the crux of the debate, isn't it?

But it's not the case, so let's not worry about it in advance. You don't know what will happen.
For example, maybe it will actually start global discussion about drugs and help stop the so called "war on drugs"?

It seems there is a problem with the definition of "illegal": some people here disagree that certain types of light drugs should be illegal.

A possible solution is to ban items which negatively affect more people than just the user: things such as spam, CP, ddos'ing services all majorly impact someone outside of the buyer-seller relationship.

You're the first one to bring up any argument of these being "immoral". No one said that and I doubt many feel that. As others and I have said, it's about keeping the integrity of the forum and focusing on what is important.
Let's say months down the line, a third of the market of filled with drug dealing. Do you really think a website/community like slashdot would even want to write about it? How would we gain publicity if websites don't want to cover something involving drug sales? Do you think if a big market like, say, amazon, was to look into bitcoin and saw drug dealing was openly happening on the home site of bitcoin, they would even bother?

Silly. I understand everyone's want for integrity and open freedoms, but this forum is integrated into bitcoin.org, where everyone will come to check out bitcoins and learn. Where the majority of people will disapprove of drugs, especially of the anonymous sales of them online. Again, I'm not implying this is me, I don't care what you do with your bitcoins. But putting drug sales right next door to the bitcoin homepage and FAQ, gives the wrong idea, especially to the majority of internet users who do not fully understand bitcoins, the technology behind it, nor care about it, and are just looking into a "paypal alternative".

Stop taking it so personal. I don't care what two consenting adults do(who's to say your transaction is with an adult anyway?). I wish we had a marketplace forum separate of bitcoin.org where rules weren't an issue, because having it tied to bitcoin.org is my ONLY problem. Bitcoin.org is the face of the community, and there's no sense having things like this plastered on the walls. If the no holds barred ruling stays, I hope it doesn't bite us in the ass concerning publicity.

There shouldn't be any need to ban something between two consenting adults.  What is "illegal" for two consenting adults in one place is "legal" somewhere else.  Is this not a worldwide community?

I don't think bitcoin should be taking sides or aligning with certain political forces over others for sake of popularity.  Hands-off would be better.


I like the idea of banning force and fraud.  If someone is taking money and not doing what they promised, then don't let them post here.  Remove their fraudulent website from the list.  If someone is advertising force services (eg. send me btc and I will beat someone up for you or send me btc and I will kill someone for you), that should also be banned.  Anything to do with children, and we can leave that up to forum admin on what age/maturity/etc is considered a child, can be banned.


Don't try to moderate the open market and what two consenting adults want to do.  I think bitcoin is about a free open market and free choice.  Limited choice is what spawned bitcoin's creation in the first place.  If you don't approve or wish to participate in some product or service, then don't.  How can you judge and say something between consenting adults is immoral?  On what grounds can you say something shouldn't be allowed here?


+1 for force/fraud/minors

-100000... for banning anything else.

+1

What do you ban when bitcoin itself becomes illegal?

That might not be a terrible thing, look a /b/ on 4chan

Could have our own /b/ board

I'd like it to be at least moved to another section called Questionable Behavior or something. BTC4LSD type of things would blend in somewhat with a section devoted to random/funny posts, and really the prior seemed like an obvious scam anyhow. I think that the rigorously obtained libertarian legal position is to not outlaw things like drug use, calling for the assassination of a "Pol Pot" type of leader, or even some forms of softcore child porn being shot (or anyone viewing images). This doesn't mean that our political position has to actually advocate any of those things or begrudgingly give them a forum and feel a sense of obligation. Doing so is both a theoretical and practical error IMO.

+1