Bitcoin Forum

     I was just reading up on bitcoin in Iran and I saw that sourceforge censors downloads from IP addresses in Iran. Iran is experiencing severe inflation right now and bitcoin might really be able to help some people. I don't know who is responsible for the sourceforge bitcoin account, but I just want to make sure that the settings are set to allow downloads from "axis of evil" countries where good people might be the victims of bad governments.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/jonmatonis/2012/10/09/as-inflation-rages-in-iran-bitcoin-software-not-available/

  I didn't find this topic already addressed in a search, so I thought I'd mention it, since inflation in Iran doesn't appear to be diminishing.

Careful.  Jgarzik might attack you for even thinking about revealing sha256 to Iran!   :P

jgarzik goes berzerk in #bitcoin-dev, wtf?  https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=128532.0

Would it legally engage the administrator to make this change?

No worries, Iranians who need bitcoin will surely find a way to download it.

But it is really funny to see how some people get crazy defending stupid and unjust sanctions - they must be either a real patriots or a real pussies. Cannot say which one would be more embarrassing, though :)

I say: fuck US, fuck EU - and fuck their stupid politics.
The truth is that Bitcoin is not and never have been meant to follow regulations of any of these nazi governments, but rather to destroy them - and that is the main reason of its worldwide success.
Now ban me, if you need to, for encouraging illegal activity, you poor american slaves. :)

Thanks for the link, interesting discussion.



 
  Glad to elicit such responses. I personally think nationalism is a sickness and don't want anyone to suffer because people think they are American/Russian/Indonesian first and human second.

  This is one planet now and people trying to fight us living united for personal profit, well, I advise you to stop that.

I'm also happy to be reading such opinions more and more often, as I get older.
Maybe there is still some hope for the humanity after all. :)

More ++ to semaforo :)

SHA developed and owned by the US and exporting SHA based stuff to countries like Iran is illegal so the devs and the foundation are trying to keep away from trouble. However as far as I know scrypt is a different animal, so Litecoin could be a good alternative.

Scrypt uses SHA256

Oops! That's true.

I seem to remember this being discussed maybe a year ago? It is still just as valid a concern now as it was then. Bitcoin is meant to go beyond national boundaries and silly politics.

Honestly, I do not see why the US is so hard on Iran, they seem to just want a boogeyman to fight against and an excuse to continue expanding their military and squeezing every last drop out of taxpayers.

BTW, it was so funny, when Iran captured their drone by spoofing its GPS receiver.. As it turns out the most advanced military in the world doesn't even bother to use signatures on their military focused navigation system. What a bunch of lamers - no wonder that they see such a big thread to their national security in enemy having access to sha256 algo.. :)

Already voiced this same concern almost 2 years ago. Didn't lead to much...
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=37687.0

Ha, I hadn't heard that was how they got it, I was under the impression it was just stupidity on the part of the Americans. Seems like something you would want to do: if you have a flying death robot you should make it so the people you are spying on/shooting at cannot take control of it.

As far as i know this is false, especially since SHA is in public domain

They did not take a control over it, per se.
But they jammed its communication with the base, so it couldn't receive orders - in which case it should automatically return to the home base.
And then they were broadcasting a fake GPS signals that made the drone thinking that it was going towards the base in Afganistan, while it just landed politely on Iranian airfield.
Because obviously US Army's top end GPS system does not use any reliable method of authentication whether a message comes from the actual satellite, and not from the enemy's radio.

They want to steal their oil to back the USD value. Don't wonder why Iran is the "enemy".

Indeed, we are all sharing the same spinning rock...it's time to act like it.

Actually, it does. Military GPS signals are cryptographically authenticated. But Iran jammed the military GPS frequency, and the drones were programmed to automatically fall back to the civilian GPS system if the military GPS system fails. Civilian GPS signals are not authenticated, and the decision to not authenticate civilian GPS signals was a deliberate one, as back when GPS was invented, cryptography was a restricted technology (and still is to an extent, which is why SourceForge is not allowed to make cryptographic code available in Iran) and the military decided that civilians have no need for authenticated GPS signals. Whoops.