Bitcoin Forum

I have to take this case to the jury which is the bitcointalk community. One of my friends, Jeremias, who is the developer of LocalBitcoins, Easywallet and AcceptBit, just got kickbanned from #bitcoin-dev for ridiculous reasons.

Basically he promoted the new epic Bitcoin/Iran article (http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2012-11-29/dollar-less-iranians-discover-virtual-currency) in the channel, which is very interesting and #1 in Bitcoin-Reddit. What happened was that jgarzik banned Jeremias because of "encouraging illegal activity", WTF? Bitcoin is not illegal in Iran or anywhere else either, as far as I know.

Enough talk, I have the IRC log here and you can make your own conclusions. I'd understand the reaction if #bitcoin-dev is limited to development talk but it doesn't seem like that was the main reason for the ban. Personally jgarzik lost all some respect from me.

http://pastebin.com/taMsQLBN

My updated view on the topic: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=128532.msg1372057#msg1372057

Where I live there are 3 subjects you better not discuss if you want to avoid having someone mad at you: religion, politics and football.
You know what I mean ;)

The last straw for jgarzik was when jeremias mentioned translating Bitcoin-Qt to Farsi. Nice. That is actually related to development and not off topic in any way. I can't believe this.

jgarzik is quite right. The SHA-256 algorithm is property of the US and export regulations for SHA-256 expressively forbid exporting the algorithm or products based on the algorithm to Iran.

I understand the point: breaking the Iranian trade sanctions is illegal in a statutory sense.

But it's not illegal ethically. If anything, the law as it exists is the ethical illegality. So I'm with the OP on this one, but Bitcoin's a broad church. Remember, non-political money means you have to be tolerant of everyone's politics, even, to some extent, the intolerant

Bitcoin can't belong to someone. IRC log shows that jgarzik thinks that Bitcoin is his own toy. If I were jgarzik I would apologize and cancel the ban. It's obvious that Jeremias was banned NOT for offtopic.

This is funny

FATF member countries have started applying stronger economic sanctions against the Iranian government and Iranian financial institutions.  The US, the UK and the EU have all recently issued new directives regarding financial activity with Iran.  I suspect that Jeff is concerned about Bitcoin being promoted as a way to bypass those sanctions, which could lead to it being directly targeted by AML/CTF laws in those jurisdictions.

http://www.knowyourcountry.com/iran1111.html

ALL GLORY TO THE HYPNOGARZIK!

We all must obbey USA laws and THE foundation

http://images1.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20120516174034/en.futurama/images/0/0b/Hypnotoad.gif

jgarzik is not quite right, if i understand the issue right.   :D Seems to me that it's also expressively forbidden for US citizens to create and distribute currencies, which doesn't stop jgarzik from using or developing Bitcoin...

Makes me wonder whether the Teodesian guy is really right (http://teodesian.net/index.php?nav=7&post=projects/blog/14-Bitcoin:%20Hologram%20of%20Cryptocurrency.post)...

In fact, doesn't the US Constitution only allow the use of Au/Ag as money, and that only the US gov can issue that also? Maybe even the US governement is in violation of its own laws?  :D

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.

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

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...

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.





 

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 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iranian_diaspora) 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 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Excession#Outside_Context_Problem) for Bitcoin.
 

http://notetakingnerd.profitmarketingp.netdna-cdn.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/3-11-10-post.jpg

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:

http://raincoaster.files.wordpress.com/2012/08/keep-calm-and-no.jpg%3Fw%3D474%26h%3D613
(But considering a translation into farsi dangerous or illegal, is also questionable)

More like idiotic.

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.

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://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=13706.0

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!

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.

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?

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.

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

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.  :D

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.

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.

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.

+1 for wisdom

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

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

It's one thing to silence people because you are afraid of the United States.

It's another to actually defend their excuses to take away freedom from those that actually need it.

Why not also advocate banning access to TOR from within Iran? They are using cryptography after all...

Jesus...

-1 for cowardice

Well, if it's just how you use it, where are jgarzik calls to shut down or ban even just verbally a number of B laundering sites there are in this world, or SR, or a number of Bitcoin "services" that have since defrauded their customers, or whatever in the B world that is expressly forbidden by US law?

If you believe that the SHA-256 "technology" has not already been exported to every corner of the world, you probably also believe that the US citizens all drive the speed limit on their roadways too...  :D (A long-standing public display of hypocrisy and stupidity on a massive, national scale, among many other examples...)

We all know how corrupt, self-serving and hypocritical the laws are in every country, and this one is no exception, except to jgarzik and the like for their own self-serving and hypocritical reasons...

Actually -1 for wisdom as well. So what's the plan? Limit our use of Bitcoin to conform with the U.S. regulations until it's widespread enough, and then boom, we can use it for penetrating through sanctions as well and they can't do anything about it, since it's got big enough!

You are not fooling anyone. Everyone knows what Bitcoin is and what it can be used for.

It will never get widespread enough to suddenly intimidate regulators. They will either allow it to get bigger in peace or not. It really doesn't matter whether you "give them reasons".

There are always reasons. It's a matter of how much they are intimidated by the concept and whether there is something they can do about it.

Running a bitcoin laundry or SR or a ponzi scheme does not usually get you shipped off to Guantanamo.  ;)

this.

Let me use an analogy.

If you start doing mma, will you gradually go the ranks, and then when you're ready, challenge the best fighter, or will you as a newbie challenge the world champ immediately ?

It depends on if your name is Bob Sapp.  ;D

I am going to have to agree with jgarzik here.

We as a community are asking for swift trouble from US govt bullies if we are actively marketing Bitcoin to Iran.  It has nothing to do with whether it's legal, moral, ethical or not. We are lucky they have left this project alone thus far.  Doing anything that looks like marketing to Iran will change that quickly.

Also, bitcoin-dev is a publicly logged channel.  If I am a Bitcoin developer on a publicly logged chat channel where my actions could be scrutinized by the media and the world and someone wants to discuss Iran, kicking and banning in a publicly visible manner would be prudent.  That is truly not a good place to talk about that subject.

I sure as hell would not want to discuss bringing Bitcoin to Iran in any place where my discussion was being logged and published.

Usage of Bitcoin occurs regardless of state sanctions. There are some vulnerable points to the Bitcoin system, notable the exchanges and developers.

Allowing potentially 'illegal' activities is different from actively promoting them. The latter paints a bright red bullseye on Bitcoin's soft targets.

If you start 3D printing assault rifles, flaunting the fact will get you noticed by the kind of people you're defending yourself against in the first place. This is similar in that there's only an arbitrary decree of illegality, but the power behind that stance is overwhelming and fickle.

It's unwise to deliberately antagonize; we are not big enough to walk with impunity yet.

+1

wow i really dislike that boot.  isnt the POINT of bitcoin to put money into PEOPLE'S hands?  unethical laws should not be obeyed, and a primary function of a system like this is to take that control to the people, where it belongs.  if he thinks it'll hurt bitcoin and that it's a bad idea, then discourage it being used that way and have that discussion, but booting him or crying that farsi translation or using sha256 is illegal is completely against the entire PURPOSE of bitcoin.  and in the link he gave, satoshi was clearly speaking purely from a pragmatic perspective.

wtf guys!?  understanding the power structure of the world and being practical is one thing, but this is outright cowardice which has detrimental effects on the community

From my point of view Bitcoin is strong enough to attempt to f*ck the state.

Who's marketing to Iran? Who received any money for selling anything to Iran?
Creating a translation to Farsi has nothing to do with marketing to Iran. There must be plenty of people around the world who speak Farsi outside Iran.

I for one do not abide by the fascism that the USA mafia-state reeks of these days.

How would you stop the Bitcoin issuer?

Your statement is true if and only if the same kinds of currency controls and devaluations that have occurred in other countries that can't get their fiscal house in order never come to the Western countries.

IMHO the analogy of "fighting the state" is not adequate. They're stronger, fighting is futile. But we can escape them. We should just learn how to run faster.
"... the lions are getting old. They don't run as fast these days. Zebras are multiplying.": http://www.lewrockwell.com/north/north900.html

I agree. My statement was a provocation anyway. I know plenty of people in Western countries that find Bitcoin useful, myself included, but it's true that the regular joe doesn't have many uses for it here. In restricted countries Bitcoin could help exactly the regular joe's but only if we give it a shot.

Now that I've seen more defences from notable members such as Casascius and miscreanity, I'm coming to the conclusion that we do indeed have a conflict on this issue.

I understand that it's much easier for someone from Finland to promote Bitcoin to Iran than it is for someone who is from the US. It's a delicate situation. Personally I'm taking a strong stance on this one and I'm forced to call cowardice on certain people, no choice.

I think it's inevitable that Bitcoin starts to get more attention and if this is it, then so be it. Bitcoin either can take the heat or it can't. We'll see. It will happen eventually anyway and there is really no way to stop Bitcoin from being used in Iran by us, unless we want to become exactly what we're opposing.

Again, it's easier for me to talk like this when I'm from Finland. I understand the difficulty of this from the point of view of people in the US. However, this is one of those things that forces the anarchist inside me to come out.

This simply is one of those times when I'll say, bring it on. I agree that in 2010 that would've been stupid but at this point we should be able to take some heat. Massive heat is unrealistic at this point, LocalBitcoins has had 34 transactions in Iran or something like that. Not a lot.

This is precisely why tools like Tor and Freenet are so valuable. These kinds of discussions can happen in ways that greatly reduce the participants' susceptibility to retaliation.

yes, this is all ridiculous hysteria. let the people of iran market bitcoin, but there's no sensible reason to deny them the whole platform.

Why are people ignoring this fact. It is illegal. And I think other restrictions on Iran would also apply. As a U.S. citizen I'm almost certain that it would be a crime for me to send BTC to Iran. To give an example of how far Iran has to go to avoid any U.S. dollars, look at how they sell oil.
First they ship the oil for sale to Turkey. They cannot be paid in dollars so they take Turkish Lira. Then they go shopping for gold bars in Istanbul. The gold is then brought in small amounts to Dubai by couriers. From there the gold can be used to buy things Iran needs.  

i think a worthy couple of questions to ask of the bitcoin foundation members is:

_exactly_ what kind of world view do they have? what do they truly see as bitcoin's place in the world, and what kind of entanglements are they willing to get themselves into in order to bring that about?

i too find lawful censorship arguments about bitcoin unworthy of much serious discussion, but maybe there is something to it. perhaps jgarzik knows about flaws in bitcoin that make it extremely vulnerable right now. it would be helpful to know his views above, and about this.

I'm disappointed. I shall not purchase US government physical bitcoins anymore!

do you find that to be a sensible law, or practice? and if not, do you find it sensible to submit to submit to nonsensical laws?

I agree with this. He is in the core dev team and knows a lot about the protocol, if he thinks we're vulnerable right now I'm going to listen. This is not the first time we've had this type of debate so I believe he will explain himself at some point. I'm interested in that explanation.

We're not in fight club, this is a long drawn out chess match.

I'm with jgarzik. You don't win at chess by taunting your opponent. Is our main concern not the long term survival of bitcoin? I think we all have that in common.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wB5r6HeOA-8

I don't understand u, guys. Bitcoin lets us to do a lot of things to make the world better. Why the hell should we ask the state? Why do we need to care about their opinion? Forget about their rules and use our own ones.

Sorry, but I can't resist the temptation to repeat it:

FUCK. THE. STATE.

Read this article. I think it's relevant in this context.

http://www.dgcmagazine.com/the-old-radical-how-bitcoin-is-being-destroyed/

There is no such thing as sending BTC to Iran. People in Iran may not even "have" any BTC in Iran. The only place they exist is as data in a blockchain database on computers everywhere. So, in fact, if a single node in Iran is running then all our BTC are already in Iran just as much as any user from Iran. And who are these users when there is no link between an address and a user.

Given it's illegal to send crypto software to Iran I think susceptible people shouldn't do that. If they want to use it in Iran they'll have to figure out their own way to get it. Or use an eWallet service. Whatever.

Yes.

Lololol. So US will invade europe if we europeans give bitcoin to iran?  :D

I have a awesome idea: stop hosting services in US.

Seriously, iran people are humans, it's not like they are aliens or zombies

You don't. The examples illustrated that those former currencies were not illegal, but the behaviour of the issuer was illegal, thus killing the currency. With bitcoin illegal behaviour of certain issuers is irrelevant.

I was going to name some other, but held my pen till I read your post: http://www.bullshido.net/forums/showthread.php?t=116634

The last time I was banned here was due to posting off-topic, of which I probably was guilty, for my postings were getting somewhat out of hand. My last post, though its first part was off-topic (like in this post), the rest of the post was on-topic, but vague in nature, akin to if I only added a single sentence following the first sentence of this post.

That said, I hope this episode gets resolved in a satisfied matter. For the record, I'm leaning on the side of Jeremias, and not for the reasons of I-can-relate or feel sorry for him. Also, currently I have no ills toward jgarzik.

~Bruno K~

Which part do you find disappointing?  Suppose we were dumb instead of smart and took the opposite stance and made a point of parading Bitcoin to Iran.  You would be so happy you might be willing to purchase physical bitcoins, except they'd probably be as hard to find and as expensive as Liberty Dollars as I'd be less likely to be around to continue to produce them.  Bitcoin and the blockchain might be bulletproof but community members, developers, and those facilitating exchange are not.  If I were jgarzik I would view someone wanting to discuss Iran with me in #bitcoin-dev as a threat to my personal safety.

If you (everybody) want to work toward bring Bitcoin to Iran while throwing middle fingers to governments, clearly you understand no one can stop you, do what you must I guess.  But, use your heads and do not publicly involve those individuals who are publicly involved with bitcoin under their real life identity.  I am disappointed that this isn't so obvious that it even has to be asked!

+1

Didn't Iran invent language? They should not have exported that.

I understand your reasoning, but there is a danger of taking it too far, incrementally it can bring community to a point where it will agree with some drastic change of Bitcoin protocol. For example, it is possible to hard fork Bitcoin to accept source address as valid only if it was produced from a seed that belongs to a government, so government will be in control of issuing new address and will map real identity to every bitcoin transaction. Which is why I was infuriated with Peter Vessenes, Executive Director of Bitcoin Foundation, who made a careless comment about Bitcoin privacy which made me believe that he will be ok with a change like that.

I would not have banned Jeremias. (And he's welcome on this forum.) We aren't likely to gain much ground by strictly following stupid laws and trying to change the political/legal environment. IMO, widespread agorism is the best way to reduce the government's control over us. Iran might be a good place to try this sort of thing on a large scale.

But in case I'm wrong, it's probably not so bad to have parts of the Bitcoin community that are more concerned about laws. Just so long as our most important principles don't get lost while trying to follow laws.

I am sure it's illegal to use language because iran invented it. We are all criminals.

Precisely. The issue is who bears the cost in the fight for freedom?

If a particular person in Iran wants freedom then they should pay the cost for it. Trying to shift the cost onto jgarzik or any other Bitcoin devs results in moral hazard because individuals want to freeride off others contributions. The Bitcoin devs are already paying tremendous costs in terms of specialization of labor in the fight for freedom.

Those who think the Bitcoin dev team should pay increased costs for the fight for freedom to extend the benefits to individual persons in Iran who may or may not want that freedom is not only destructive to the Bitcoin product but economically inefficient.

The Bitcoin Project does not need to go looking for dragons to slay; instead, Bitcoin should be a passive weapon that dragon-slayers can pick up when they go looking for dragons.

How many people are aware that you can do anonymous IRC over Freenet (http://freesocial.draketo.de/)?

There's already an existing #bitcoin channel in FLIP that could stand to have some more traffic.

I can't speak for jgarzik, but maybe if you were discussing Iran with him in somewhere more private than a chat channel whose logs are published to the world.  Who knows, maybe he would say "jesus christ, this is big news for bitcoin, but can we please not fucking discuss it where others are watching?"

I see nothing wrong with enjoying alcohol, but if I had to live for a year in Saudi Arabia and one day had a local news crew pointing a camera at me and someone asked me to talk about my previous employment at a US brewery (despite it being totally legal), I'd be like hell no!  That's just common sense, not cowardice.

They certainly should have patented it at WPO.  ;D

Casascius and everyone else, I think there is some confusion here. No one is proposing we launch a massive marketing campaign to get Bitcoin to Iran. Even I think that is not a smart move. However, I strongly think we shouldn't be actively reducing the possibility of regular people in Iran to use Bitcoin.

In fact I think that translating Bitcoin-Qt to Farsi, LocalBitcoins to Farsi etc, is a noble goal. Just like translating them to all other languages is. I think it's smart to provide the tools for people to use Bitcoin if they wish but actively and publicly encouraging people in Iran to use it is not necessarily a good idea and I understand the risk it might pose.

Making it harder for them to use Bitcoin in purpose is in my mind ethically worse than anything. From a practical sense active promotion would be stupid as well though, so why won't we find a middleground. The reaction Jeff had in IRC was not a middleground, the ban was out of line. Jeremias didn't encourage illegal activities, all he wants is to make Bitcoin available everywhere.

Point is, do you guys realize that the bitcoin client can be easily downloaded from the website? And it does not state "if you are from iran do not download" lol

banning someone because he wrote an article?  :-\ That sucks, a lot.

This discussion isn't about politics, but about fear. I am seeing a disturbing trend in Bitcoin development towards centralization with e-wallets (bitcoincard), tainting, coloring, proof-of-stake, etc. It is what it is. The threat from the state is real.

I agree with this. Bitcoin community is a diverse bunch and that is good. I would never have reacted this way without the ban, that was out of line. I already knew Jeff thinks this way so I'm not massively surprised about how he reacted but I thought it was out of line. I'm an IRC veteran (almost 15 years now) so I have experience in moderating it. The only reasoning I could see for the ban was fear and that is concerning.

I don't think kicking someone off an internet chat channel is actively reducing the possibility of Iran use of Bitcoin.


I didn't see any disagreement with translating it to Farsi, I just saw a well-founded unwillingness to allow it to be discussed in a publicly logged bitcoin developers' chat channel.

Based on his comments before the ban he is very much against talking about it at all. There are many other public venues of talking about it and I think this thread and the coverage it currently has in Reddit is actually much more public than a darn IRC channel. What he did gave it 100 times more publicity than it would've got if there was just a discussion in an IRC channel.

I also wanted to comment on the Silk Road comment that you removed and I'll just say that I think the policies regarding talk about Silk Road are ridiculous as well. Silk Road is an anonymous marketplace by definition. Talking about it, using it, does NOT imply illegal activities. Silk Road itself is NOT illegal. I have actually consulted this with a lawyer because we've run into users in our service that talk to us about Silk Road. As long as the user doesn't mention drugs or other illegal substances, we have no problem providing service to people who mention Silk Road.

I can't believe my eyes when reading all this bs reasoning.  >:(

So, we should discourage Iranians using bitcoin because the US government says so? Are you crazy?

I can't believe it either. My faith on Bitcoin being a true currency of the resistance has been reduced today, I must admit that.

Nobody is shifting any costs onto anyone. The only thing being asked is for the cowards not to become a cost to those who fight for freedom.

Not surprising: I would expect he is against talking about it.  The media would salivate over even a 10-second sound bite of a "core Bitcoin developer in the US" talking about subverting the policies of the US government.  He seems like a smart guy.  I don't blame him.


You are not in the same position as him.  His name is on the front page of Bitcoin.org as a developer and yours is not.  His personal freedom is put at risk by being willing to discuss these topics on the record, yours is not.

+1000

I've seen some discussions about colored coins, curiously enough promoted by the state sucker this topic is about.

AFAICT, all use cases for coin coloring that I saw being promoted could very well be implemented by Open Transactions (stocks, financial instruments etc), which has a level of anonymity even higher than Bitcoin in some cases. Why the urge to introduce a perfect tool for surveillance in Bitcoin if what they claim to want to solve can be better solved by another protocol, built precisely for it?

Casascius, I don't think your arguments are sound this time. Why is it not enough for him to simply say in IRC that he does not think it's a good idea to promote Bitcoin in Iran because of the trade sanctions etc etc?

That is his position, and no one can say that he is doing otherwise. In fact I don't even think this is a problem of public record and personal risk, he seems afraid for Bitcoin. That is the only explanation that makes sense. He has no responsibility as a Bitcoin core developer to silence people who talk about topics that are not "correct". He can simply disagree and say that I, as a Bitcoin core dev, do not support this.

If that was the case there would be no problem either way. It would be the risk of jeremias to talk about promoting Bitcoin in Iran. He would have the responsibility. Why does it require a kick ban from the channel to be "compliant" with the US law? I think this is absolutely ridiculous. Some people are too caucious. There is nothing directly illegal in what was discussed either.

I sort of agree with you, but he didn't have to ban Jeremias in order to not discuss the topic himself.

+1000

With what he did, he basically enforced a policy on behalf of everyone who uses Bitcoin. I don't buy for one second that this has anything to do with personal risk because he will of course say it's a bad idea to support Iran and there will be no quote to use against him. The ban was unnecessary. Banning will only make it worse, as you all have now seen.

This issue was already hashed during the Wikileaks issue and Satoshi recommended keeping Bitcoin away from it so Bitcoin could grow and mature into a more powerful tool.


Since Len Sassaman, who may well have been Satoshi (http://www.slideshare.net/dakami/black-ops-of-tcpip-2011-black-hat-usa-2011), was likely covertly murdered (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Len_Sassaman) therefore it would be in people's best interest to be a little more discrete and pragmatic.



Why is it so difficult for people to follow the first rule of Fight Club (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iDqWAmvCf0o)?

Censoring people leads to 5 page long threads discussing the very topic you wanted people to be silent about.

He did at 13:17:02 in the chat log.


I think he did say exactly that, if you read between the lines.


I don't think he was trying to "comply" with a law, but rather, to eliminate the inherent risk he perceived (and clearly pointed out before banning) in allowing the topic to be discussed in a publicly logged bitcoin developers channel.  "Some people are too cautious" discounts the fact that his risk is FAR greater than yours - this is like me in the US saying Scandinavians are too cautious about food allergies.

I'm beginning to think that having central representation for Bitcoin that is supposed to be "responsible" for it, such as the "Dev Team", or the "Bitcoin Foundation", might pose a problem for the entire system. It might become the number one weakest link in the entire ecosystem. Even exchanges can be decentralized thanks to LocalBitcoins and future p2p online exchanges. What options do we have when governments attack the dev team? The fact that someone in the team is afraid is a genuine problem.

hehehe, kudos to the Internetz...

It's called the Streisand effect.


I agree with it too. There was no need to ban anyone, his personal and public disapproval should have been enough.

But not long discussions on #bitcoin-dev which I think is the point? This Iran thing is hardly the most controversial topic to ever come up surrounding bitcoins, so I'm not so sure why people are trying to draw big-ol' lines in the sand over this. The people of Iran deserve bitcoin and by flying under the radar, as BTC has mostly done thus far, they will find it and use it.

people get kicked off and banned from irc channels all the time often for no serious reason at all. Get over it.

The world is a place with shades of grey, don't be so black and white.

If I had to guess, I don't think anyone wants the discussion to not happen, I just don't think it was wanted in #bitcoin-dev.  jgarzik is conspicuously absent from this thread and I will bet it's not because he doesn't know about it.

He probably doesn't want the topic discussed in his living room either, especially with a tape recorder or camera rolling.

I'm aware of this, my question was why was that not enough?


I'm aware of this, my question was why was that not enough?


I actually don't like the fact that I'm not in that position. It makes me look weak in this discussion. Because I can guarantee that my reaction would not have been similar regardless of my position. I think it's over-caucious and if it's possible to get in trouble even if you disagree and stay out of the discussion, by simply allowing discussion to continue on the topic, I say fuck everything. Seriously. There is supposed to be such a thing as freedom of speech and there should be a limit on what kind of crap we take from the governments.

This is unbelievable.

Kick/ban = panic.

Normal reaction for brainwashed western citizens when they hear something about Iran.

They tend to forget that 80 million Iranians hate their crazy government too...

jgarzik  is intelligent, he looks long term, and wants bitcoin to succeed. Some people don't see the big picture.

It's sad that we are arguing about this. I'm wondering the censorship when someone talks about translating a piece of software in farsi. Casascius says "we must not put more heat in the USA devs/mods/users/whatever".

And I ask myself: how many mods/devs here, in the main bitcoin forum, are from the fearing USA? What is considered "heat" for them? Are we starting the worst kind of censorship (the selfcenshorship)?

They wouldn't need to "attack" them. I'm more and more convinced that just a polite request would be enough for Garzik to implement the perfect surveillance tool for the state to link addresses to people and monitor every flow of coins. Hell, he's trying to implement it right now, in anticipation.

Sad.

This is what Julian Assange thinks too.  The price he is paying in actual freedom is the disparity between what should be, and what actually is.

+1

I think I'm taking it too seriously but my history as an IRC veteran sort of heats it up. I tend to get emotional if there is unjust moderation and now that two of the things that I love are involved in the same dispute (IRC & Bitcoin), it heats things up for me. I do get the opposite point of view very well but I think there is a difference between being caucious and smart, and being afraid and in panic. I really don't see a reason to panic.

Even I hate it more than I did just this morning.

By the way, this NSA/SHA-2 burden doesn't exist for Litecoin. I've always seen LTC as redundant, but this is something to think about. What other algorithms do we use that is regulated by states?

Isn't this why bitcoin is open source? So, you could check on this sorta thing?

I don't think this is as unreasonable as you guys are making it sound.  If you believe in the legalization of certain drugs you might partake/sell those drugs, but I doubt any of you would go around and openly brag and announce that you are doing so in a way that can be tied directly back to you by law enforcement.  No one here is complaining that people on Silk Road aren't using their real names and posting their addresses openly.  

Caution and realism =! cowardice.

Guys, there's a real chance here for real discussion/debate but too many of you are just going full-on hyperbolic drama queen.

It's quite clear that you're clouded by emotions. I think Gavin is a good example about how to handle situations like that very well. When his blood starts to boil. He backs off and takes a couple of days offline.

For all we know, Jgarzik just had a shitty day, and didn't feel like being diplomatic. Interpreting too much from this is not necessary.

I don't understand. What is wrong with Iran?

This thread clearly show who's has no idea about how far a state threat can go. They can't destroy Bitcoin but they can destroy my savings and my joy. So thank you jgarzikfor making a point.

And:

Why all this drama? (Ja ok I know why) Just make a special "Iran and Bitcoin Discussion" on this forum and watch what's happening.


This.

I hope that is the case. The problem is that I don't see Iran in the same way as many of US citizens see it. For me Iran is actually in an equal position to US in terms of how I view it as a country. That makes my reaction very different. People in this thread accept this behaviour because they silently support the oppression of Iran. I don't support it for one nanosecond.

Thankfully Bitcoin is not just about the U, S and A. There are plenty of others and hopefully the group of others will get bigger. Especially in places that really need it. Yes, those places we don't want to discuss, ever.

I don't support the oppression of Iran either.  In fact, neither do most US citizens.

I also don't support the war on drugs, but that doesn't mean I'm about to use or sell drugs where I can be readily identified.  Nor am I about to create a commemorative "Silk Road" Casascius Coin, or a "Silk Road Gift Certificate" paper wallet generator, or print "buy drugs with this xxxblahxxblahblah.onion" in my banknote backside artwork, even though I could, and actually would totally love to.  I'll just let somebody else do that.

the only acceptable explanation is that jgarzik knows something about the technical limitations (weaknesses, vulnerabilities) of the currency as it stands. anything else is extremely suspicious.

Ah, come on dawg.  You know that most, if not all, people here don't silently support the oppression.  We are having a disagreement on how we could best oppose it without being arrested/BTC compromised.  Keep the hyperbole out and you'll get a much better discussion here.

I'm glad to hear that, but I would again like to mention the big difference between Silk Road and "selling drugs", or "using drugs". I don't personally support using or selling drugs, I really don't, but I do support Silk Road 100%. Silk Road is an anonymous marketplace that allows free individuals to trade. That is good. I'm also not against voluntary usage of drugs by adults.

It's important that the Bitcoin community starts to differentiate Silk Road and drugs. It's true that a significant amount of trade in Silk Road involves drugs, but not everything, and it doesn't need to be that way. We should not be afraid to use services such as Silk Road, for other things. Why not? It's not illegal to use Silk Road. Using it for drug trade is a totally different thing and I understand being super caucious when something like that is mentioned. But don't be afraid if Silk Road in general is mentioned.

That is not what I'm seeing. If we go back to the original IRC chat, it was eventually about simply translating Bitcoin software and services to Farsi. That was the final discussion, until it was cut off by a ban. I think that simply translating our software is definitely opposing the oppression but in a fairly silent way. No one has been suggesting a promo campaign to get Bitcoin to Iran, as I've said before.

I would like to get this discussion to where it stopped thanks to Jeff, which is translating Bitcoin services to Farsi. What do you guys think about that? Bitcoin-Qt specifically. LocalBitcoins is already being translated, this episode put some nice motivation to do that.

I will bet nobody in the channel speaks Farsi, so what is there to productively discuss, and why would it involve the core dev team?

It would be a different story if what was brought up was: "I just submitted pull #1234 which adds some new language support."

I think translating into Farsi is fine and a wonderful idea and, of course, perfectly legal.  

I imagine that jgarzik was just agitated enough by the conversation that came at the start that he saw it as being tied directly to "translate to farsi in order to send BTC directly to Iran".  I don't blame him for seeing that way.  I imagine that if nothing had been mentioned about Iran and the idea of translating casually came up there wouldn't have been any trouble.

That's how I saw it too.

Well, that's how I saw it as well, so we're in agreement. It still doesn't make it all good. This issue is perhaps smaller than all the drama here suggests but I would certainly like to hear Jeff's take on it at some point. I mean, jeremias himself is surprisingly calm about this. He is a calm guy. I would be furious in his position.

Maybe it is better to be safe and sorry but I still don't like this. At all.

Would you like to hear Jeff's take on it when his words are on the record, or what Jeff's take on it would be if the two of you were sitting at a bar?  I don't know Jeff personally, but my reading of the situation suggests they'd be drastically different.

+1!

I think the explanations would be very different. I know representing Bitcoin is sometimes walking a thin line but there are individual differences on this. Some people want to put themselves on the line a little more (I'm one of those people), and some want to be very caucious and take no risks. I understand that as well, but I still see the ban as unneeded. He can remove himself from the equation even without a ban. If he did it to protect Bitcoin and has a good explanation, I might partially buy it.

Yes, definitely emotionally compromised. Compartmentalization is a wonderful tool. Tool X can be a tool to liberate people of jurisdiction Y while the dev team of Tool X is publicly on record as not helping people of jurisdiction Y.

I understood this as a ban to forcibly end the discussion since it was continuing despite his request for it to stop, not a permanent ban that means "never come back".  Have I misunderstood?

I'm guilty of excess emotion over this, but I must remind you that it was jgarzik who was originally "emotionally compromised", it was his fear and panic, or "agitation", that lead to an unnecessary ban. So I'm not the only one guilty of that.

But why stopping the discussion?  :-\

Of course it's not a permanent ban. It was a quick escape from a topic he didn't want to discuss. He was very agitated, at first he banned Finland entirely from the channel as a quick response.

What does other dev team members think about the fact that the topic of Iran is apparently entirely forbidden in the dev team IRC channel?

Let's make a complete list of everything that is forbidden. So everyone knows in advance to be quiet!

This is even more scary than what i tought  :-\

I think what makes this topic so closer to the fine line is the singling out of a group of people who had no choice on the matter. This is a far more sensitive subject than drugs.

Also, this might spark a greater controversy because Bitcoin is apparently being constrained to being a western project. In this case I'm more sympathetic to your views. This would only be resolved as Bitcoin gains more development effort from the rest of the world. Maybe we've gotten used to expecting freedom generating technologies from the west to the point of being unfair.

An Iranian joining the dev team, that would heat things up!

What happened is like banning someone because he is saying the racial laws are wrong during the hitler dictatorship, because otherwise the regime would go after you...

That's a half-way-there analogy.  Let's say you were doing work that undermined the dictatorship and were secretly helping people out of Nazi Germany...and then everyone got mad at you that you didn't go out on the street and announce what you were doing.

Are you mad that the people who were housing Jews in their attic didn't go up to some SS dudes and said, "hey bro, we're hiding some Jews"?

Nice Godwinning btw.

It's page 8, the probability was almost 1 anyway  ;) and what we are doing is not a secret, everything is open

Heh, fair enough.

I think that is kind of the grey-scale debate here.  Does a dev himself talking about (and implied approval of) the illegal uses of BTC on a recorded chat matter?  I think it does.

We all know what the goals of BTC are and I think we should all appreciate the delicate situation that those who are really putting themselves out there are in.

But it's "illegal" only for USA. And anyway are we sure it's "illegal"?

The embargo on Iran is actually pretty international in scope, and while I doubt there is any piece of documentation regarding the embargo that specifically names bitcoin there are many many restrictions of sending money/gold.

Wouldn't surreptitiously "infecting" Iran with Bitcoin be considered an act of terrorism by the Iranian government and could help liberate the country and the whole region?  However the US or others might get a little peeved and go after anyone connected with the project after they start translating it to the languages of sanctioned countries?

You're probably right.  I never really understood why anyone would think embargoes do anything but hurt the people and make the sanctioned government stronger. Sadly, for any major politician to suggest its a bad idea would quickly find themselves voted out for being "weak" on whatever. 

As for languages, I don't think the gov't would really care about just straight up translation.  There are plenty of people outside Iran who speak Farsi.

Not saying anything about the wisdom of the sanctions, but know that doing business with anyone in Iran may land U.S. citizens in jail. None of the arguments that I see here would hold up as a defense. Your best bet would be a guilty plea in the hope that the court would go easy on you. 

+ 1

what an awesome idea

I am late to this party, but in case anyone is still reading, here are my thoughts:

Regarding legality of what was said in IRC - discussions of this kind are perfectly legal in the US, Finland, and I am pretty sure in Iran, too. Regarding legality of providing Bitcoin software to individuals in Iran - I am not a lawyer, but even a lawyer would admit it's a complex issue depending on your jurisdiction and your specific actions.

Everything Adolf Hitler did in Germany was legal. Everyone should think about this for a moment.

Finally, and most importantly, there is the issue of hypocrisy: if my reactions to illegal actions are selective, I am a hypocrite. Specifically, if Jeff Garzik considers provisioning of open-source Bitcoin software to people in Iran to be illegal, and acts to prevent this from happening or even being discussed, he should be prepared to act in similar fashion when other illegal activities take place. For example, war crimes committed by the individuals in US forces or the government. What has he done about it? Dropping bombs and depleted uranium on the civilians?  Executives of Bayer who knowingly sold for profit HIV-infected materials, and FDA agents who were compliant?  Executives and workers of Trafigura, who knowingly and for profits dumped tons of toxic waste on people of Ivory Cost? Blackwater employees murdering civilians indiscriminately? Madeleine Albright, who claimed "the price was worth it" when asked about tens of thousands of children who died directly as a consequence of the US trade sanctions? The doctor behind MKULTRA experiments jn the US and Canada?  The Bush Five? Oliver North?

Why did he go to prison?

He died.

I'm talking about the coup d'etat, and the prison sentence Hitler got as a result.

All of these are off-topic for #bitcoin-dev and I would expect persistence in discussing them after being asked not to would probably be met with similar results.

So would an in-depth discussion of the latest episode of Honey Boo Boo, or whether Anderson Cooper is gay, or the requirements to get into medical school.

I'm talking about everything he did in the Nazi Germany. Don't get distracted.

This is a lie -- in fact, it was the lie that was used to cage von NotHaus.  Liberty Dollars looked nothing like U.S. dollars -- the prosecution made the whole thing up to have an excuse to put von NotHaus in a cage.

The guy was kicked out because he was supposedly promoting illegal activity, not because he was off-topic. I was wondering if Jeff Garzik did anything regarding illegal activities I listed above. I hope he comes here and help us understand what happened, and more importantly what will be happening in the future regarding his involvement with Bitcoin and people in Iran.

This is a crazy theory that has no basis in fact OR law.  You have no idea what you're saying.  The algorithm isn't even patented or copyrighted -- when the U.S. government produces any intellectual inventions, they are not property of anyone.  Read the law before talking nonsense.

He broke international law, does that count to you?

It's not a fact, and it isn't even legally correct, to say that SHA-256 is "property" of anyone.  People doing business as "U.S. government" may threaten you with a cage if you give an implementation of SHA-256 to people they dislike, but that doesn't mean "SHA-256 is their property" -- it only means that these people are sociopaths.

This gets Iranians +1 cleverness points in my book.  A peaceful solution to an agressive threat by sociopaths.

Unless the prosecution made up the photos of them circulating on the Internet, I'd have to disagree.  They aren't replicas, but they are similar enough in style to be plausible as US dollars.

Ok, so after the warning if you changed the topic to translating Bitcoin into a foreign language, should that be met with a ban?


Note the warning, then the switch to on topic discussion, and then the ban. In fact, it looks like Jeff was so zealous in the wielding of his banhammer that he initially banned everyone from Finnish ISPs.


This looks more like monopoly money than federal reserve notes to me.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/e/ef/Liberty_Dollar.jpeg

Agreed on the colored notes, but definitely not on the coins.

tl;dr

Governments love cowards who don't challenge their authority.

They also love fools who challenge it so overtly so that they can be taken down with a minimum of public outcry.

Mike, Farsi is spoken natively in (according to Wikipedia) Iran, Afghanistan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Bahrain, and Azerbaijan.

I don't understand why you're defending the ban so hard.

Right... when you compare the probabilities of [someone being nuts or having a bad day or disagreeing with your values] to [critical bitcoin vulnerability] it's all just so clear.

It's also spoken here in the US.  If you don't understand why I support Jeff's action by now (which I understand to be a timeout, not permanent), no amount of explanation will change that.

You would run that code?

If what you are accusing him of was even possible most of us wouldn't be here.

When I first happened across the liberty dollar (long before Bitcoin...early 2000s, maybe even late 90s), I recall thinking his tactics were a somewhat deceptive.  He would advocate things like trying to use liberty dollars in a restaurant to pay a bill without first informing the waiter what it actually was.  That and the imagery on the coins that made them look official (and the use of $ and "Trust in God") turned me off.  Not to mention that the silver coins were priced way above the spot price (almost double if I recall).

All of this could have been just due to a lack of good judgement on his part, but I can certainly see the case against him.  But the government's press release after the conviction was pretty chilling...it went way beyond the matter of counterfeiting and fraud.

The answer is easy. Fork a bitcoin clone into using a different algorythm. Or use litecoin or devcoin in iran :P

Also wtf ?

btw trying to go "legit" is what killed glbse.

Yep, this might be a problem.

If the core devs weren't already known, i would suggest them going the I2P-way. Some of I2P anonymous network devs are known only under psudonyms and are hiding behind the network they created. We could have the same kind of devs when it comes to Bitcoin.


Perhaps, If for some reason current devs would not want (or could not) to maintain Bitcoin anymore, then some new, anonymous devs could take over, I2P - style.

The coins look like U.S. government money as much as your coins do, Casascius.

Let's hope you don't become the next von NotHaus.  Are you ready to spend some time in the big house?

After reading this discussion, my conclusion is that it totally brings down to one thing: FEAR.

It is also clear that after this topic and "Iranians start to use Bitcoin" article on Buisnessweek (http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2012-11-29/dollar-less-iranians-discover-virtual-currency), there is no stopping Iranians from using Bitcoin, and hundereds of pages of posts will only make it worse by spreading the topic further into the Interwebz.

So those of you (including some devs) who are afraid of US government should leave the boat now, while the matter has not become "very hot" yet, and return later (or not) under anonymous identities using networks such as TOR, I2P and Freenet. And it is highly probable that this will become hot.

Someone stated smartly in THE Bitcoin Foundation thread that we need to separate the Bitcoin project from the USA.

Now we have USA devs, working in a Washington based foundation and forums with USA moderators fearing USA laws censoring worldwide users.

Fuck, I need a hamburguer now    >:( >:( >:(

Thats what I was thuinking. Physical bitcoins are more analogous to liberty dollars...

I have to say that I'm starting to agree with this. If the people in the US are too afraid of the US government, we have a problem. I'm not saying they shouldn't be afraid. Maybe they do need to be afraid. What I'm saying is that maybe we need to decentralize a little more. Having so many "major players" of Bitcoin in the US is not necessarily a very good thing.

+1000

And to say more, by calling it *THE* Bitcoin Foundation they only made it worse, because it's like saying "Hey, we are the CENTRAL Bitcoin Authority !". Not very smart if you don't want to be first target in case of "some" government decides that Bitcoin is illegal after all.

+1 from me too

An USA based foundation, the top of the idiocy

It's not just the US which is enforcing sanctions against Iran - the UK and the EU are as well and it's likely that other nations/economic co-operation organisations will follow.  The possibility of Iran becoming the new Cuba is not remote and "major players" are vulnerable, both as businesses and as individuals, if that happens and they fail to enforce the sanctions.

Hey,

No offense, but I'm the one on the front line here and when the US Gov't goes after Bitcoin I'll be one of the first people put in jail.

I agree that we need to decentralize more, and thats why I've created a contingency plan for myself and my team.


Oh dear, I must have said this 15 times. Its NOT called The Bitcoin Foundation. It's simply Bitcoin Foundation. The 'the' is only used when referencing this specific foundation.

In fact, you can create your own foundation. I know people who are in the process of doing so.

This foundation was simply created to fund Bitcoin projects and for Bitcoin companies to allocate their resources for a shared and common goal.

I know we all hate government and central authority, but I must have said this 15 times, this foundation has no teeth nor power to change Bitcoin.

Anyone who understands Bitcoin should understand that. I would assume you do.

Bitcoin is not something that can be made 'illegal'. It's a protocol and a standard, like VOIP or HTTP. You can't shut down BitTorrent for the same reasons, and believe me they have tried. (Offtopic: GREAT article about how the 1/3 of BitTorrent downloads are legal and how BT is working with the music industry http://techcrunch.com/2012/11/25/bittorrent-matt-mason-interview/)

What would the government do? Ban cryptography? If they ban Bitcoin, we can simply change the nane. They can't ban math.

However, they can choke us by shutting down companies like BitInstant, which is why I've created my own contingency plan to make sure this does not happen.

-Charlie


While I agree the USA sucks in terms of regulatory pressure (I know firsthand as my office is based in NYC) we need to be on the frontlines and take themhead on

Actually they don't.  Casascius coins have no resemblance to the style of US coins other then the fact that they are around and made of metal.  

The Liberty Dollar coins use both the statue of liberty and the word "LIBERTY" at the top of the coin in a near identical fashion to genuine US coins.  

I am not saying they should be illegal, but the case is quite clear under current US law.  

Also Casascius coins are NOT pegged to the dollar.  

Good post Charlie. I appreciate everything you do. I also know you're not one of those guys who is pissing his pants over this. Everyone on the board of Bitcoin Foundation is actually very brave and I appreciate all of them.

that's right, but it never hurts to have more transparency, which is why i wish jgarzik would come here and diffuse this thread with some explanation.

I think he will. Give him time. It's a delicate situation and probably requires thinking it through. It's also better when the heated drama cools down a bit.

Ya, I didn't comment on that because honestly I think this thread is stupid. #bitcoin-dev is a developer related channel, not a channel for requesting upvotes on an extremely controversal and political topic article. Jeff gave a warning and followed with a ban. I dont think he 'went berzerk'



It's really not a delicate situation. His time is better spent working on Bitcoin dev, which is his job, not wasting his time on threads like this.

I agree that it wasn't the place for asking for upvotes, and that the title of this thread is exaggerated. However, after the warning, the topic changed to new translations of the Bitcoin software. I think it is completely unreasonable for Jeremias to have been banned for that.

jgarzik launched recently a new client - picocoin.
Should I fear about some backdoor in it?

(Technomage: Hyvä, Suomi! Viro on puolellasi! Olen puhunut puhelimitse Jeremiaksen kanssa. Voin olla varma, et Cryptedmemo on turvallinen kanava. Terveiset hänellekin!)

Thats absolutely not true. The reason for Open Source is for people to read, check, and criticize the code by bringing good arguments for and against it.

If the community feels need be, code will be reverted and miners and clients can chose wether to accept or reject a new update.

In fact, you can read the changelog and see this happend more then once https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Changelog


The ban took place 63 seconds after that topic was first brought up.

I think Jeff needs to do what others have suggested and come back under i2p if hes that concerned about things he has no control over.

Rather than censor people on sensitive topics.

We had the same argument with nefario and look what happened to glbse.

Maybe his time is better spent working on Bitcoin dev, but now we talk about the time he spent censoring someone who was asking for a Bitcoin language translation. And probably your time is too better spent managing your bitinstant bussiness or developing Bitcoin than coming here, trying to excuse Garzik's behaviour, because matches the "full legit Bitcoin cosmovision" your Bitcoin foundation professes.

Agreed. It's 6am and Ira and I have stayed up all night coding some new features. Now we are eating chicken nuggets and I'm reading the forums before I crash in my bed ;D I hope thats ok with you.


Oh dear, do you read my responses before commenting?

I'll make it easy.



lol what does that even mean? Don't answer, I should not have even started this debate. Your right, I'm wasting my time here.

It's not MY bitcoin foundation, it belongs to Bitcoin and its members. Hence the reason the board is elected every 2 years.

Shouldn't it be possible to compile the source on a similar system, then just check for byte differences between "official compiled versions" and your fresh compile in a hex editor?

Jgarzik is quite right in his assessment. The US government doesn't give a fuck about freedom of speech. They sacrificed that privilege long ago for homeland security. If something threatens the US dominance even in an indirect way - it will get silenced or at least corrupted.

If someone wants to promote something like the Iranian adoption of bitcoin, they need to use the unofficial channels.

That's just because it's late. I get more mellow the darker it gets.

Let me repeat myself, because it seems that most of people here don't get it:


**The longer you discuss on this topic, the more Iranians will eventually start using Bitcoin**

(jgarzik should not have censored the guy in the first place, but it's too late for it now)

Streissand Effect (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streisand_effect) is a bitch.

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.

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

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.

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.  ;)

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.

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!

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.

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.   

http://media.tumblr.com/tumblr_mdi5ewMNg91qb69zg.gif

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

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 (http://surprisinglyfree.com/2012/01/31/reuben-grinberg/)

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.

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?

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.

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.

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

• The logic behind Satoshi's Admonition (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1735.msg26999#msg26999), no don't "bring it on"
• My own Bitcoin Mini-Manifesto (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=113400.msg1229098#msg1229098)
• Sun Tzu's Art Of War (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Art_of_War)
• And learn how to play chess (http://www.chess.com/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 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special_operations) 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.

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? :(

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.

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.

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.

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.

I'm only on page two of this thread, but so far I totally agree with this.

Using the dev chan to promote advertising BTC to Iran is ridiculous. The west is more serious about the Iranian sanctions now than they've ever been. Talking about using Bitcoin to skirt those sanctions is suicide for this community.

somewhere along the line this thread just turned into a trollfest

Why don't you lead by example and tell us about all the ways in which you are standing up against atrocities committed by your government (because no matter where you live, your government is either committing atrocities or supporting nations which do).  Or are you just another armchair anarchist who would have watched safely from the sidelines while encouraging others to stand before the tanks in Tiananmen Square?

No, I am not an armchair anarchist. I don't even consider myself an anarchist. I did spend (literally spend) years of my life actively opposing immoral and illegal actions of the government of my own country during the Yugoslav civil war. I refused to serve in armed forces. My father did refuse too, and lost his job over it. In the midst of severe trade sanctions, with no legal ways to import or buy medications, fuel, spare parts, and occasionally food. No way of competing in the Olympics. No way of getting to read latest science journals at the university. How do you think city buses and hospitals operate under trade sanctions?

I never whined about it all, as I knew very well that actions of my own government were causing much greater suffering of people in the neighboring region. I spent days and nights in direct action groups, in clouds of tear gas, with rubber and occasionally real bullets flying around, being chased, beaten, and harassed by the riot police and undercover agents. We arrested our own president, and he died in prison some years later, for crimes much smaller than what each and every of Jeff Garzik's presidents typically commits in only a year.

There are some rather reasonable arguments in this thread as to why we should not openly promote Bitcoin as sanction-busting tool. I don't even think it would be a good tool for that purpose. But Jeff's words in IRC to me demonstrated a worrisome level of comfort with his own sociopathic government, and total disregard and disrespect of their innocent victims, who suffer much more than he would ever suffer even if the "evil government" nailed him. I hereby apologize if I misinterpreted his words as selfish and ignorant.

Thank you for reading this.

Firstly, thanks Jeff for your explanation.  Without it one could reasonably hypothesize that a fair fraction of the rational behind the action was simply a personal agreement that Iran as a nation and the Iranian people themselves are in 'our' way and should be squashed.  Lots of people seem to feel this way and I personally feel that it is ugly, inhuman, and a crime against humanity (but that is neither here nor there.)


I rather small minority of people seemed to have some concerns in the discussion about the formation of the Bitcoin Foundation, and this event seems to be among a class of issues that I had some qualms about.  Whether Jeff's actions had much if anything to do with the Bitcoin Foundation I don't know.  I do hope that as Bitcoin Foundation evolves some of the potential liabilities that it brings into existence will be considered and some thought put towards how to minimize them.

This seems like a bug.

Hopefully it more like a bug than like a feature.  I wouldn't have an interest in Bitcoin if I thought so (using the term 'interest' in several ways.)

To me it sounds like a simple statement of fact by someone who knows his shit.  In all of my speculation in BTC itself considerations of the Bitcoin solution and of other possible similar solutions, I have deliberately made the basic assumption that Jeff's statement is true (while hoping it is not.)  This is why Bitcoin to be yet pretty experimental and a pretty risky place to park net worth.

Hmm. Of course, I agree that bitcoin is extremely vulnerable. But what type of attack are we talking about here? The message is vague.

You are exploiting vague, unverifiable fears in order to encourage obedience. It is a dirty trick.

Can you make the concerns explicit and verifiable instead? This would keep everyone honest and rational. If not, it is probably best to avoid discussion of the issue entirely.

Help fix it :)

Average people can help simply by running a full node that accepts incoming connections from the Internet.  Just download the client and run it, 24/7 -- ideally with an empty wallet for maximum security.  Or maybe make a bitcoin clone of torservers.net (https://www.torservers.net/contact.html), a vehicle where people may donate to strengthen the network.

The wider spread, on different IP networks, the better.  Our accessible P2P network is something like 0.2% the size of the Azureus Island (total accessible Azureus/Vuze), and an even smaller fraction of the total active-at-any-one-time bittorrent userbase.  In file sharing terms, we are barely to the level of a popular torrent.

If you can afford it, get an ASIC or FPGA unit, and mine.  Mine p2pool or at a smaller pool, rather than a big pool.  The more decentralized the mining power, the better.  But even just running a full node is a huge contribution.

Test the pre-release of the next Bitcoin client, 0.8.  Automated, might-crash-and-eat-your-data builds at http://jenkins.bluematt.me/job/Bitcoin/  

If you are a programmer, help implement and test SPV mode clients.  There is a long list of projects that will improve the decentralization, performance, diversity and resilience of the network, that simply are not coded yet.  There are many tests, but many more need writing. There are high standards, but we will answer all technical questions if you have the patience to ask them!  This is one of those engineering projects where any mistake can be, literally, costly.

And that is just the technical side.  On the cultural side, do something that makes bitcoins interesting, appealing and friendly to others.  Pick a project, an idea, a blog post that gets people excited about bitcoin in a positive, uplifting way.  Think about how bitcoin can improve a person's or business's way of life.

Have any devs ever talked about maybe making BitTorrent client plugins that act as a Bitcoin node (with empty wallet?) as a step to piggybacking on BitTorrent popularity. The added traffic would be trivial in comparison to file downloading. If getting the node count up is important then this seems like it has potential.

i say we let bitcoin grow a little bit before we pick a fight.

This same type of situation happened in #bitcoin with me.  I was simply trying to help newer bitcoin users secure their computer and wallet(s) and the different strategies that can be used, and ended up getting banned by gmaxwell.  Some of these people act like petulant children.

Absolutely.  Or even better, maybe the plugin would permit you to send somebody bitcoins in exchange for a file, or file storage.

It is even worse than I thought.

In short, if you care about bitcoin, if you want bitcoin to survive long term, you need to resign from core devs group. You just don't understand what bitcoin is and what would be the consequences for the state, politics, economy, and generally for the society if bitcoin succeeds! You don't understand that bitcoin success is incompatible with the laws of a police and militaristic state where personal freedom is just an empty word!

I suggest you write an open (or not so open) letter to the government asking for their mercy and then try to deserve it by coding a back door in the bitcoin client to allow some agencies better monitor all bitcoin transfers from and to Iran? Because, face it, this is exactly what every 'law-abiding US citizen' is supposed to do these days!

Hey Jgarzik, how about you unban the person you ragebanned and state that you don't want any more discussion of Iran? That is reasonable, but banning someone for it isn't. And since it took this long you should also apologize.

Fact 1: The US Government is trying to subvert the Iranian Government

Fact 2: Much of any government's power comes from its ability to print and control currency

Fact 3: Bitcoin, to the extent that it's used instead of a national currency, removes power from governments

Conclusion 1: Perhaps the US Gov should be covertly promoting and disseminating Bitcoin in Iran. What better way to bring down the regime than to collapse its currency and empower the citizens with a tool to resist the regime monetarily?

In other words, the State Dept. should help with the Farsi translations.

Is Bitcoin ready for a fight with MPAA? Because as soon as you offer "Imma gonna pay you for your illegal copy of that movie" functionality, you know MPAA will be lawyering up like crazy.

I agree with Garzik generally on these points. Specifically, on the Sun Tzu point.  I won't comment on whether it was right to ban anyone from anything, and I see absolutely nothing wrong with making a Farsi translation, but in terms of strategy of presentation, we should always be playing the long game.

A while ago, a member of the forum here suggested that an organ/tissue market should be set up for Bitcoin. Indeed, Bitcoin would be great for that, and absolutely people have the right to buy and sell organs (so long as they aren't stolen from someone else). However, I recommended strongly against such an operation, not because I'm opposed to organ markets, but because it would be foolish from a strategic perspective.

Strategy and tactics, gentlemen.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/11/30/chinese_kidney_for_ipad_sentencing/ (http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/11/30/chinese_kidney_for_ipad_sentencing/)

I'll just leave that here.

It is amazing to read so many people here pretending they are good chess players playing 'the long game'. You are not a good player if you think your opponent is an idiot! Bitcoin is a way to circumvent government and escape from monetary slavery. Any government! You're an idiot if you think people working in the respective government agencies are idiots!

Nefario claimed he was playing "the long game too" and tried to put GLBSE full legit until he came here crying about shutting it down because the Government made stalemate showing him the road to the can.

Nice. Now we have to be careful with our government and to be careful with our devs because they are willing to start a chess game they aren't going to win

I see this kind of chess game, USA Government Vs garzik and foundation members:

http://derricklferguson.files.wordpress.com/2012/02/seventh-seal130.jpg

This is actually GENIUS. Quite seriously. It turns whole matter around.

http://www.reactionface.info/sites/default/files/images/tumblr_lo2zqb6h5P1qzsyre.gif

@jgarzik

I generally agree with you on most points, however there is a logical concept you don't seem to grasp:


It may be too late for the long game, since Iranians apparently already know about Bitcoin, and by prolonging discussion in this thread you only increase the probability that even more Iranians will get to know Bitcoin because of viral Streissand Effect which you created with your censorship act.

So i would say the thing to do now is prepare for shit hitting the fan once Iranians start taking Bitcoin seriously and US government notices the issue.

The question is not if, but when this will happen. So if you are that much afraid of US govt, perhaps you should either move to Europe or disappear from the Internet and return under different, TORified and anonymous identity, just like I2P devs did. Satoshi knew exactly what he was doing - this is why he remains anonymous.

Yeah, sure. The USA is going to comit the same mistake twice? Do you remember when they allowed the Persian Sha to print their own 100$ bills? Are you sure the USA is interested in spread a system designed to destroy the rial, and after that, the dollar too?

Occam's razor: Jeremias was banned because Garzik was trying to hide a USA covert operation vs the rial or simply he shitted his pants? In my opinion the answer is clear.

That's what they do best.

Even more genius is to use Bitcoin for that purpose until it's pretty much successful and then turn around and hit Bitcoin with full force as violating sanctions in order to make sure as Iran falls so does Bitcoin. Muahahaha.

Nothing like an otherwise irrelevant display of irreverent free speech to bring out the uncritical Legalists among us.


This is perfect.  Unfortunately, only perhaps 1% of those here will actually understand it.

Bitcoin is on the left, I presume.

Perhaps, or perhaps not.  Would converting a country's economy over to bitcoin stabilize it or destabilize it in the long run?  If in the US we abolished the FED and the IRS, and went to a free market based system of competing currencies, would that make things more stable or less?  The fact is that the Rial has already collapsed:

"On September 25, 2012, the Iranian rial fell to a new low, trading at 26,500 to the US dollar. The drop followed the government's launch of a foreign exchange centre a day before, that would provide importers of some basic goods with foreign exchanges, at a rate about 2% cheaper than the open market rate on a given day. The announced rate at the centre on September 24, 2012 was 23,620 rials to USD.[23] By early October 2012, Rial had further fell in value to about 38,500 Rials per USD."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iranian_rial

If the currency has already collapsed but the regime has not, what does that portend?  Turkey sure seems desperate to raise as much gold as they can lately.

http://www.blanchardonline.com/investing-news-blog/econ.php?article=5088
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/iran-gold-imports-turkey-surge-8-billion-ytd-gold-increasingly-used-currency
http://www.cnn.com/2012/11/29/world/meast/turkey-iran-gold-for-oil/index.html

<----- Grabs more popcorn....

Precisely. But there could be blowback (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cQrwKr_b4Lg) like with the CIA and Al Qaeda (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CIA_%E2%80%93_al-Qaeda_controversy).

But screwing with decentralized open-source software is very risky because due to the increased complexity of work resulting from cooperation without coordination (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CEN4XNth61o) (highly recommend watching!) the software can mutate and grow at exponential rates which results in it quickly becoming uncontrollable.

200 days is long enough to filter out any short-term news, like WordPress announcement, etc. and reveal the long-term secular trend. Here is a 200 day moving average of Bitcoin's market capitalization:

http://s7.postimage.org/ui1wxg6uj/bitcoin_market_cap.png

jgarzik could be satoshi for all you know..

as fucking crazy as you usually seem, unfortunately i think you might be right.

Let's see.  What if one knew ahead of time that

• the forum is full of idiot trolls
• the chat logs are watched closely by said trolls

Like I said.  Chess.


Re-read the very first link in my long post...  to a Satoshi post.  Satoshi also knew that you don't challenge the biggest governments on their biggest issues.  That's just stupid.

This is an interesting book in its own right, but is most relevant to this thread for its tagline: http://www.starvingthemonkeys.com/ (http://www.starvingthemonkeys.com/)

100% heat, 0% light.

What do you do with a group of people who have similar interests but violently fundamental ideology? How can that work?

Fallacy: begging the question.

It's a very subtle one but no one conceded this point as true upon which your argument is based so please first show how some random person talking about translating the Bitcoin source into farsi is challenging the biggest governments.

Also why couldn't you personally/individually have just ignored him to solve that "problem"?

(I don't know if you are talking to me or not, so I will answer just in case)


No, development can be done openly even if all devs are known only under their nicknames. IRC, Git, SSH, Email, Web forums - all of these can be accessed using TOR, I2P, Freenet, Gnunet and similiar technologies.

This would work--short term. Imagine if some US entity did approach say the TBF and asked for their help to implement this. And let's say the members of the TBF obliged. Down the road, said entity will request of further help with some other regime, crisis, whatever, but this time the TBF members reply with no-can-do for some reason. At this point, the US entity threatens them with if-you-don't-we're-telling-what-you-did-back-when. See the quagmire?

~Bruno K~

They have a name for that: hypocrisy.

You have no idea what you are talking about.
And also, you have no idea about how programming (and especially open source programming) works.

The proper thing for somebody in your position would be to shut up and never talk again on this topic, but i seriously doubt you are smart enough to do it.

This topic is turning into a serious trollfest.

I would respectfully suggest that all involved in this debate including the author of the article, http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2012-11-29/dollar-less-iranians-discover-virtual-currency (http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2012-11-29/dollar-less-iranians-discover-virtual-currency) that led to the banning start by actually reading the United States sanctions against Iran http://www.treasury.gov/resource-center/sanctions/Programs/Documents/iran.txt (http://www.treasury.gov/resource-center/sanctions/Programs/Documents/iran.txt) While the United States sanctions are very broad there are certain exceptions.

The following quote form the article
Here is a quote from the US Treasury document:
It is fair to say that the claim made in the article regarding the importation of a digital download of a song from Iran to the United States is at best highly misleading and at worst out right wrong. Now let me get this straight on the basis of this erroneous claim made in this article someone was banned from #bitcoin-dev? There is way too much paranoia in this community regarding the US Federal Government.

Now take a look at the sponsors of the Tor project and how many are related to the US Federal Government https://www.torproject.org/about/sponsors.html.en (https://www.torproject.org/about/sponsors.html.en)
 

yankee, what is your contingency plan?

TOR project (AND THE FREAKING INTERNET BTW) was actually started by US Government.
So there is nothing peculiar about that.

This is how it works:
1. Government creates and funds an idea in secrecy (usually for military or intelligence)
2. After the project is no longer secret, scientists of all sorts take over & develop the project
3. The project is deployed academically
4. The project is deployed comercially

This is completely normal way of doing things, there are multiple examples - including TOR, The Internet and GPS.

Actually everything was started by Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. However, the 'freaking' Internet BTW began in CERN Switzerland. There at CERN the browser, the web server and the html (the hypertext) were invented. I know that most of the brainwashed US citizens think that Al Gore invented Internet, but truth is quite different:


http://public.web.cern.ch/public/en/about/Web-en.html
http://public.web.cern.ch/public/en/about/WebStory-en.html

The Internet and the World Wide Web are two very different things. As someone who actually used the Internet before the World Wide Web existed I know, and yes the Internet was started by the US Federal Government.

Technically speaking the World Wide Web is currently 99% of the Internet so, your statement is quite misleading especially for the uneducated public! As already mentioned, everything was started not by the US Federal Government, but by Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden.

This is not completely false, but missing the topic.

The IP network protocols that HTTP/WWW traffic operates on were created by US Government as ARPANET project.


So you are incorrect. The Internet WAS started by the military.
Of course then they had no idea what the project they started would become after many years. If they knew, government would scrap it and it would never see the light.

This is a complete Bullshit. This is so bullshit that the stench can reach me over thousands of miles of optical fibres & UTP cables.

Bittorrent, Netflix, FTP, SFTP, SSH, P2P, Bitcoin, TOR, Freenet, Gnunet, Email and many many many many many many many other protocols have nothing to do with WWW. And they do use IP protocols, which is a child of ARPANET.

And i would wager if they don't contain at least 51% (if not 70%) of the total network traffic.

Keep it on topic please. Thank you in advance.

OMG, what the hell you are talking about ?
I'm starting to think you're delirious or trolling.

Actually, i have perfect proof that what you said above is total crap. This topic. This very topic is the perfect example that proves that it is extremely difficult it is to manufacture consensus in the Open Source world !

Look at the "Alternative currencies" board https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?board=37.0. Forks of the official client spring up even if there is a relative consensus. Ask yourself what would happen if there was no consensus at all ? New forks would be created every hour.

There are already multiple alternative clients. Even i created a fork, because i didn't like ONE decision that the devs made. Do you seriously think that it is possible to easily manipulate "consensus" in this situation ? User always has a choice of his client. So why the hell would he choose client that is disadvantageous for him ?

I see it this way: either your logic is nonexistant or you are trolling.


I will try.

Actually it is not my comment that is misleading, it is the other way around especially in this community since Bitcoin uses the Internet but not the World Wide Web to transfer funds.

OK, I'm going to risk getting crushed by some of the high horses here, not in order to add anything that hasn't already been said, but to present things from a slightly different perspective that might be of help to someone.

First I want to talk more generally about exchanges such as this one has been.  Whilst I jest about high horses I also acknowledge some here have personal experiences that appear to have led to passionate and principled positions.  I'm not saying it oughtn't be so.  Yet there's a danger when one feels so strongly about something that we drag in related but not necessarily directly relevant points and mush them together to present a highly principled and inflexible viewpoint surely nobody in their right minds could disagree with.  Again I'm not criticising but there is a problem in this in that it can lead to outrage when despite it being so 'obvious' others still aren't seeing things our way.  It is only a short step from there to insults and we end up with increasingly entrenched positions and missing the opportunity available here for us all to understand one another a little better, to be learning from one another and venturing to re-evaluate our own positions in the light of the rich diversity of opinions being expressed.

I'm not going to go anywhere near addressing all, or even the primary issues raised in this thread but I would like to attempt to untangle two of the ideas.

First this idea of whether or not there should be a Bitcoin representative body.
We have:

• Glad there is one, pleased with who is on it, grateful they appear to be doing a good job;
• Maybe there should be one but not these folks if they are not behaving in a way consistent with my value system (or the value system I see Bitcoin as representing);
• Having one (and having elections) is not consistent with my value system (or the value system I see Bitcoin as representing) but if there is one they shouldn't be behaving in such and such a manner.
  

As far as I can see (and this was brought home to me by having it pointed out that its name is not 'The' Bitcoin Foundation but Bitcoin Foundation) whilst its main product may be called the 'official' client and has heritage/lineage, being Open Source there is nothing about the code nor its use that gives these folks a privileged position.  Reasonable options, depending on where one stands with reference to the above list include:

• deciding it's a hopeless position and stopping being involved with Bitcoin;
  
• deciding to use/develop alternative client software in order to weaken any claim to the bitcoin.org software having the title 'official';
• deciding to instigate/support the forming of another representative organisation, even if one doesn't believe in the idea of one but would rather support one with different values than the present one;
• etc. etc.

There is one position I don't consider to be reasonable:  'I don't like the fact that Bitcoin Foundation exists and that it claims to represent me (where was that claim?) therefore I want them to adopt the Bitcoin principles I deem to be true and to act accordingly.'

The other thing that is not coded into the software AFAIK are ideological/political principles.  It is transparent to all that the built-in rules virtually amount to a fully fledged monetary policy (and the headline in the first block gives us further clue as to what was behind it) but once the rules were coded in all we have is a set of rules defining the behaviour of Bitcoin.  It is then 'out there' and independent of any ideology or political standpoint.  We each can use it in the way we deem appropriate for our own ends and/or to further our own values.  Sure we can extrapolate from the rules (and from historic threads etc.) what we believe the intended ideology behind Bitcoin was but not even Satoshi has the right to say unless a user believes in certain principles and behaves in a prescribed manner (outside of the coded rules) they shouldn't be involved.

It's the difference between being attracted to Bitcoin because the rules concur with our world view and saying Bitcoin is the saviour of our world view and anyone using/developing it not in accordance with our world view is committing sacrilege.

Sorry that got a bit long!

Can some please explain to me how using Bitcoin to purchase a song by an Iranian musician from a site in Finland violates the US sanctions against Iran with citations to the actual documentation from the US Federal Government?

By the way we must keep in mind that Microsoft propriety software was used by the Iranian Government to enrich Uranium so the Open Source software argument is very thin in my books.

What statements are false on the CERN website?

Mod, this is not off topic! Some people here are trying to convince me that the US Federal Government has the right to bully people that use 'their' property, the Internet (aka WWW).  

None. CERN website is true but still your statement is false and misleading since Internet was created by US Government & Military, not by CERN.

Also, it seems you have no idea how the internet actually works and this may be the reason of your invalid line of reasoning.

In what way my statements are false? If the Internet and the WWW are 'very, very, very, very, very, very' different, which one do you use to write on this forum? When was the last time you used gopher which is part of the Internet but is not part of the WWW?

I think this point is often overlooked.  Bitcoin is a protocol and once in the wild people can use it for whatever they want.  There is nothing at all stopping different groups using it for different purposes.  There is no "one true Bitcoin agenda".  Different groups want to use Bitcoin for different purposes and some of those purposes are at odds with others.  How Bitcoin is used by the majority will determine its main function, but that doesn't render its other uses unimportant.  Nor does it mean that the majority will use it for "its original purpose" - Satoshi's intention can be made irrelevant over time by how it is actually used.

One organisation or one group cannot be all things to all people.  Different organisations and groups need to emerge representing the different agendas people within the Bitcoin ecosystem have.  

I'll use this as an excuse for a post script because it illustrates the futility of trying to too closely tie a technology to the ideas that may have given rise to it.  If anybody had the resources to keep the internet/ARPANET on the 'straight and narrow' to serve its initial purpose (and not its antithesis) it was the US government.

It just makes no sense to me to be criticising developers for displaying behaviour some of us deem to be not 'in the spirit' of Bitcoin.  However highly we may value our concepts of freedom, the technology itself is even freer in not being limited to them.

Once again, Bitcoin may have been created to fulfill a purpose but once out there 'it' has no purpose.  Where it ends up, including possibly nowhere, will be as a consequence of the aggregate of the way each of us (and others not yet involved) chooses to use it.

Edit:  I wrote this before seeing repentance's reply.  I guess this confirms we're on the same wavelength on this one!

You don't understand what you are talking about.

The internet and WWW are indeed very very very very very different, the same way as roots of the tree are very very very differnet from leaves of the tree.
Technically speaking HTTP is only one of the top-level protocols of the Internet, and it is not even responsible for the most of the traffic !

Since you don't understand, let me show you. This is how The Internet is built:
http://cosa.fh-luebeck.de/tl_files/glab/stack.jpg

Hint: Everything below the Application layer comes from ARPANET. HTTP/WWW is completely in the Application layer.

When you post a topic on this forums, it goes through multiple layers of technology which all evolved from ARPANET before it can reach the server.

EDIT:
I found an even better schematic:
http://www.ni.com/cms/images/devzone/tut/Web_Services_Architecture_Layers.jpg

Also, here is the wikipedia article:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_protocol_suite#Layers_in_the_Internet_protocol_suite

I know, I know. You don't know that the Gopher protocol presented an alternative to the World Wide Web in its early stages, but I'm the one that doesn't understand how the Internet is working, huh?

One interesting question I think this discussion raises is whether Bitcoin is mature enough yet to survive without the official client being updated.  If the core devs walked away from Bitcoin tomorrow, what would that mean for the future of Bitcoin?  Another question is whether Bitcoin has now become overly dependent on those who are "in it for the money" - let's face it, people aren't spending tens of thousands of dollars on ASICs to maintain the network - and what that means for the future of Bitcoin.

I have a question: what would happen if a iran guy in iran make a new bitcoin client and we download and use it? US drone will bomb us? We are terrorists?

I will never download software made by terrorists. ::)

Where did you guess that from ? Surely not from my post.

FIY, i used gopher and telnet intensively in high school. SSH barely even existed yet (as did internet banking or firewalls) and everybody used unencrypted protocols for freaking e.v.e.r.y.t.h.i.n.g. We also played Text-MMO's (called "MUDs") before even the "MMO" name was invented. So yeah, I know how the internet looked before the WWW era.

Even if it's open source and better than what we have?

The cynic in me is inclined to say that if the US government thought it had the potential to totally fuck the Iranian economy they'd probably fund it under the table.

Why not simply read the US sanctions document from the US Treasury and find out?

This entire thread is predicated on the assumption that the activity mentioned is the article is actually illegal in the United States. If this turns out to be false then most the arguments being passionately debated here become moot.

Now back the original issue raised by the OP. I believe there is way more than enough reasonable doubt with respect to the illegality in the United States of what Jeremias promoted on #bitcoin-dev for Jeremias to be re-instated.

Wow just reading that pastebin also made me lose much respect for Jeff.

Who is he to tell others what they can and can't do?

If they wanted to do something illegal then that is their choice.

Perhaps he had a right to ban that guy but trying to shove your morals down someone else's throat is wrong.

Bitcoin is free-market money. Who cares what the government(s) thinks.

Jeff is only mad because he is holding a ton of bitcoins and don't want bitcoin to get bad attention.

 :D

Incorrect again.

This is similiar situation to the topic of Bitcoin Foundation establishment. And guess what - somebody made a poll asking "do you support bitcoin foundation", and about 30-40% (if memory serves me right) responded that they do not trust the foundation (do some searching, the poll is still on the forum).

This is not a centralized project and nobody tells us what to think.

eh, your sarcasm detectors are broken. :)
Isn't the whole thread about someone not wanting talks about a certain country because a certain government decided they're all terrorists, even folks like you and me?

Now for real: In my view the US gov. is the biggest terrorist of them all, therefore every american citizen or inhabitant is a terrorist and I despise you all and wish you all die in the flames of hell.

OK, maybe it wasn't that much "for real"...

Oh, it is a very simple answer. There are multiple reasons, all of them perfectly understandable:
1. My fork (you should call it patch actually) is too simple to be considered for pull-request and to be included in official client
2. I'm not a C/C++ programmer, the code i would produce would be shitty.
3. I don't have time to learn C/C++ properly to make a PROPER fork, so i stick with this patch of mine.
4. None of the official devs, or even alternative client devs care about the feature I want. Actually, even many "normal" people don't care, so that isn't a surprise.


People will always have the freedom to choose if they want to use the official client, or one of the other clients. And there are already multiple clients plus several more clients on-the-way. So you will ALWAYS have choice.

And, If you don't like the set of choises you have, you can write/fork your own. If you know how to do it.


No surprise there, I know exactly where the world is going - it is going into totalitarian state mode.
The difference between me and you is that i think that Bitcoin, together with Internet, Linux, TOR, Freenet, I2P, OpenVPN and many other OS technologies can stop that from happening.

I know it sounds that simple but like any laws it's all in the interpretation until they're successfully challenged.  

http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/03/20/us-iran-usa-sanctions-idUSBRE82J18Z20120320

http://news.cnet.com/8301-31921_3-57402034-281/how-u.s-sanctions-hurt-iranian-internet-activists/

Ridiculous things end up being affected by economic sanctions even if those things are in and of themselves exempt.  Hell, in the 1990s there were export controls imposed by the US on SSL encryption in browsers.

The sanctions are broad enough that almost anything can be included under them, even if it's technically "exempt".

Who are you (and most of the other people in this thread) to tell other people how to run a chat channel which they use and contribute to and you do not?

Are you serious? *facepalm*

Well, what you are basically saying is that Americans using bitcoin are totally fucking the American economy? Errr I thought that using honest money like gold, silver and bicoin is useful for every economy, not harmful?! May be you should make a distinction between fucking an economy and fucking a government?

It is not the law itself or it's interpretation that is the issue here but rather the actions of players in the private sector certain banks and a certain Bitcoin developer come to mind here in response to the sanctions. The classic case (This actually happened with Somalia), where a bank would instead of blocking only those transactions affected by the sanctions blocks all transactions. This has the effect of making the sanctions far worse by impacting innocent persons who were not the target of the sanctions in the first place. What happened in this thread is just as bad.  

So, are you saying that if you(or someone else) wants or tries to change bitcoin in a way I don't like or agree with I should just STFU because I never contributed a line of code?

Just now waiting for two things to complete this topic:

1) a Farsi section on bitcointalk forum to spring up

2) a p2p anonymous bitcoin-for-oil exchange

To find out who is the target of the sanctions the first step is to actually read the official documentation regarding the sanctions rather than make assumptions about the sanctions and then act on those assumptions to hurt innocent people. Then when innocent people get hurt blame the government, when in fact it is not the government that is really at fault here but rather actors in the private sector.

This why I posted the link to the US Government site further back in this thread.

...yet there are people even now, massively selling drugs (and were selling arms, but armory is closed ATM) for Bitcoin over the internet. Silkroad is the proof that what you are saying is false.

We already have the technologies to protect us from governments. Bitcoin is one of such technologies. We only need to reach for it and use it.

Also, you should watch Jay Rockefeller saying that "Internet should never have existed":
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ct9xzXUQLuY

They are NOT in complete control anymore, otherwise he wouldn't be so desparate to say it. And this shows they ARE afraid of us and of the Internet. We CAN win this.

Actually, ArticMine, reading too much government documentation regarding sanctions on other nations is dangerous for your mental health. Take care!

This assumes that the greatest threat to freedom actually comes from government. I would argue greatest threat to freedom in many cases actually come from big business in the private sector. 

There is a government official with an iPhone. Which of the two is the greater threat to freedom of speech the government official or the iPhone? I would make the case for the iPhone.

You are correct, however...I am also simultaneously correct.

That is because in fascist countries, or countries that are heading towards fascism such as USA, big corporations and governments are working very closely together.

The distinction you are making is an illusion. Corporations are creations of government. They exist because the government invented the concept of limited liability to shield them from the negative consequences of their actions, thus allowing them to grow artificially large.

The hope is always that life will become uncomfortable enough for the population and businesses under economic sanctions that they'll revolt - with or without outside aid.  It doesn't always work out that way, of course.

I never called you a coward. I merely stated that governments love cowards that do not challenge their authority. That is pretty much an undisputed fact of life.

While my username may be Daily Anarchist, it wouldn't take a genius to find out that my name is Seth King and the publisher of DailyAnarchist.com, so I'm hardly anonymous. Also, on Daily Anarchist I routinely broadcast my civil disobedience for all the world to see. Making anarchists out to look like jobless teenagers is disrespectful to a large part of the bitcoin community.

Haven't there been quite some unrest in Iran, but if you express your unhappiness in the street, you might as well be imprisoned and vanish ? I've heard some really bad stories..

This thread has been getting more off topic recently but I'm going to chip in with some final words. I'm a busy Bitcoin entrepreneur and I've used way too much time on this already but here are some conclusions based on the discussion.

I'm glad Jeff came here to explain himself and the explanation was decent, he has some respect back from me. I agree that it's important to be strategic and the issue is not black & white. That much I can agree with.

The ban itself I can't agree with, and I disagree with some people who think it was "no brainer" moderating decision. Personally I don't believe that any other op would've reacted the same way. Jeff clearly had a personal dislike of the subject. That is okay though, and it's the dev channel so the devs can essentially make the rules there.

I propose that the discussion over there is more strongly limited to development discussion so it's clear for everyone. Although in this particular case the ban was very questionable even if the rules were clear on that, because the discussion was moving from Iran in general to translating Bitcoin-Qt to Farsi, which is clearly a development issue.

All in all I think we're all in the same boat here and we want Bitcoin to succeed. We have different ideologies, different levels of risk we're willing to take for the sake of Bitcoin and different opinions on a lot of things.

What I can say is that this has been blown out of proportion on many levels. First of all the original issue is in my opinion not that much more serious compared to what Bitcoin is involved with already. Bitcoin is used in drug trade for at least 2 million dollars worth of bitcoins each month, probably more nowadays. Bitcoin in Iran, even though it is growing, is still a super niche.

For me the original frustration was more about the ban than anything else, the other stuff were differences in ideology which I don't see as that relevant. The issue about the ban was an issue about moderation and policies within the community. I don't have any experience of that btw, I'm a long time IRC user but I use different networks such as IRCNet. I have no experience of the official Bitcoin channels. I probably should come there though.

Finally, I would like to say that we need to prepare for the eventual heat. We don't want to invite the heat prematurely by our own actions, I completely agree with that. But we need to prepare for the heat. So I would listen to Jeff's advice and start running those full nodes more.

We also need more progress on decentralised exchanging, Bitcoin-otc and LocalBitcoins are very good starting points though. Thinking about what happens to Bitcoin if there is ever a crackdown on the dev team, is also something we should think about.

If I have offended anyone, including Jeff, I apologize about that. I don't want to burn bridges with anyone. I'm also doing this with my own name and I'm a Bitcoin entrepreneur full time, so I don't afford that.

Context...

He's referring specifically to a single IRC room setup for developers to have technical discussions with other developers.  In that context, if you're not a developer, then yeah, STFU.  Yes I'm free to run my chatroom the way I want.  Plenty of other places, including plenty of other bitcoin-related IRC channels, to talk about such things.

The way people talk in this thread, if I'm having a dinner party and I kick someone out for telling extremely racist jokes, I'm abridging their freedom of speech.  If I'm at a movie theater, someone answers their phone and holds a loud conversation, and I tell them to STFU I'm destroying their freedom of speech.

Thank you. I do strongly believe however that this ban needs to be lifted.

To use the movie theatre analogy what has happened here is more like someone taking out their phone to silently check the time and you telling them to STFU.

And ignore several requests noting how distracting that bright white screen on said phone actually is.

Bitcoin is a little like the Manhattan Project if it were open sourced. The banksters think they have the ultimate financial weapons in derivatives, but they don't know the power of cryptonium. As long as we keep talking with big words and avoid the scary words used by pundits, we should stay off their radar.

Fixed it for you.



I'm not sure this will even sink in with you, but it's something I've seen with a lot of developers. They're so hung up in the small details, that they have problems seeing the whole picture. The world is a complex, irrational place, where people sometime behave very irrational, and often opposite of how the developer would want it to work.

I also see this happening a lot online, people getting hung up in miniscule and 'unimportant' things that's counter productive for everyone.

It's important to think about who is delivering a message. Was it sathosi, was it jgarzik, was it gavin or was it some random 17-year old from his mothers basement. Who should we listen to, and who should we trust?

There's always more to an action than the immediate action itself. Humans are complex, and they have a belief system, they have values, opinions, feelings, their likes and dislikes.

Now, for the future, if anyone upsets you, and it's important for you to clear up the issue. Just wait a day or two, till your blood has stopped boiling, go out for a walk, anything but hammering the keyboard. Then find their contact information, e-mail them or ask them if they want to have a conversation with you on skype. You will be surprised about how accommodating most people will be as long as you ask nicely.

Now, if we take you as an example, if someone has a discussion with you, and then they somehow come to the conclusion that you're a total ass hat, I'm pretty sure you'll disagree with that. And often, people will base their assumptions and conclusion about you on a very fragile set of facts. Someone may even say they lost all and absolute respect for you because something you said, although it would look quite differently in another light, and if it was put into some sort of context and a framework for understanding.

So, if you asked jgarzik privately about why he kicked and banned (?) you from the channel, and why he is against bitcoins being used In Iran, when it from your point of view is a great thing, then he might as well have taken his time to answer you to the best of his abilities.

While some people just look at the things immediately in front of their nose (this seems to be very popular with social media), some people actually have visions and long term plans, and they see things in a greater picture. Sometimes foregoing something in the present is not because of cowardice or lack of spine, but because the end goal makes it a wise move.

For instance, a big army moving into a foreign country may have spotted an outpost of the enemy, and if they wanted to, they could strike it and kill everyone, which would be along the goal of most of the soldiers of that group, ie. kill the enemy, bring it on! Instead, they silently go past that outpost in a stormy night, and hit the main capital of the country, and take control of it. If they'd chosen to take the outpost first, it's quite likely that the outpost would alert back to the capital, and the element of surprise totally vanished. This is a far fetched example, but you get the point.

As a last word, don't get to worked up about what someone says or does on the internet in a few sentences or in a short action (like kicking and banning someone on an irc channel). I'm sure most upstanding people are in for a reasonable discussion if you talk to them nicely. Don't jump to conclusions, and don't let your emotions cloud your judgement.

You may notice that the 'greater' participants of this forum seldom indulge themselves in pissing contests, but the stay polite, and stick to the facts. If one get dragged into endless pissing contensts online, it's just a waste of time, and the same is getting upset about every small thing that doesn't go your way. In normal life, there's a shitload of things that may be irritating, but it's how we deal with these things that determines our own well being.

Let me take myself as an example, if I had a shitty day, I may not even have answered you back if you said 'hello'. In 85% of the cases, I would probably have responded to you though, and in the remaining cases, your gut reaction might have been: "What a complete ass!" When in fact it's far from the fact if you knew me. Sometime I just have enough minding my own business. And I think a lot of people are like this. We have good days, and we have bad days.

More like ignoring several requests about how much noise was been made with the phone even though there was complete silence. By the way I do not use an iPhone so the bright white screen is not an issue here. As with the original assumption that all trade with Iran is illegal in the United States, not all phones generate a flood of white light when checking the time.

Good post and I do get it. I don't like getting stuck in pissing contests or flamewars either, that's why I basically stopped posting after going back and forth with a couple of people in the beginning.

I didn't really think too much when I created this thread, I simply did it because I felt my friend had been wronged. Regardless of that, it has been a great learning process. The point was to take it to the jury and while the jury has been anything but unanimous and not exactly on topic, it has been fairly interesting anyway.

Personally I need to spend less time on the forums and it's not just about this forum. In general. I know other Bitcoin enthusiasts that have this problem as well. They have actual projects and businesses to run but they procrastinate by spending time writing about Bitcoin all over the Internet. It's marketing, true, but often it's not that effective.

This post itself is off topic by the way, and I'll stop right here.

I think you show great self insight. You don't get defensive. I think you have a bright future.

I believe jgarzik was trying to avoid with his temporary ban was once eloquently quoted after Pearl Harbor:

"I fear all we have done is to awaken a sleeping giant and fill him with a terrible resolve."

Isoroku Yamamoto, Gensui (Imperial Japanese Navy)

So JGarzik trolled a productive discussion in order to encourage more productive discussion? But then he denounces trolling as idiotic? So this thread that he dislikes was his intended purpose? I thought it was accidental. Which is it Garzik? We refuse to be your pawns!

This thread, along with Jeff's actions, goes to show that even the developers and core people of bitcoin are assholes. And people thought I was an asshole? Damn, Jeff pretty much showed how big an asshole he is by what he did.

What's next, Satoshi will return and tell us all we have been scammed by his creation called bitcoin and hits his "hidden" kill switch?  ;D ;D ;D

It's like how jgarzik thinks they are resourceful enough to monitor IRC and the forums, but not resourceful enough to see what it really is. Good luck with the chess thing, but I can't help but notice that your invisible opponent is not playing the game at all... I also tend to act overzealous when I have to deal with the State or banks, that's a psychological thing, and has been known to not work, ever.

Anyways, all in all, I think almost everyone now agrees that Jeff (and team America) are doing what they have to do, and we need to appreciate their resolve. However I don't think this thread has been a trollfest about a minor misunderstanding, but rather a revelation of several things most of us hadn't quite grasped before, thanks to that minor misunderstanding. We'll see if anything will come out of this.

We find out that a second Foundation has existed secretly all along and that Satoshi is really a robot called R. Daneel Olivaw.  ;D

I am surprised at the wide range of guesses as to the thought process that would go into this... you guys are reading into this way too far.  I am amazed that so many people point to the "Streisand effect" as though they think he is trying to silence all discussion of the topic and anywhere and everywhere and wants it to stay quiet... it's obvious to me this is in error, but maybe I am just smart like that or something. =)

Let me simplify it.  Imagine you're a developer.  Imagine you have the following GOAL: Avoid a situation where the developers are on the record participating in a discussion that could be interpreted to suggest they are in favor of something that is clearly politically unpopular, that is irrelevant to the development of the software itself, that could be used in the form of a "sound bite" to cast a bad light on the project as a whole.

Does having this goal mean you actually hold the politically unpopular position? NO
Does having this goal mean you hold the opposite of the politically unpopular position? NO
Does having this goal mean you don't stand for the values you say you stand for? NO
Does having this goal mean you don't have a backbone? NO
Does having this goal mean you are/aren't an asshole? NO
Does having this goal mean you love or hate or are a pawn of the government? NO
Does having this goal mean you are a sellout? NO
Does having this goal mean you love or hate the group(s) affected by the politically unpopular subject? NO
Does having this goal mean you truly want to make Bitcoin unavailable to the affected group(s)? NO
Does having this goal mean you are concerned if the affected group(s) manage to use Bitcoin without your support? NO
Does having this goal mean you want to silence all discussion about the topic anywhere and everywhere? NO
Does having this goal mean you care if others discuss the topic in your absence? NO
Does having this goal mean you are concerned if the topic goes viral and achieves the penetration you didn't want to discuss? NO
Does having this goal mean anything other than that you don't want the project to get bad press and/or targeted for attack in the form of a developer's own words? NO

Look guys, I have never met Jeff, I'm not sure I've ever corresponded with him more than briefly here and there in the forums, I am not picking favorites.  I don't think I have ever done business with Jeff either.  On the other hand, I believe I have done business with many of those who are against him or are criticizing him.  I have no personal motivation to favor his position over anybody else's.

I sustain his action because it was wise, and consistent with the common sense of someone who has the big picture in mind.  I wouldn't offer that support for any other reason.  Go ahead, let it streisand away... I don't think he or anyone else expressed any concern regarding this.

Not the translation to Farsi, but what jgarzik did (opposing such a translation) is casting a bad light on the project! Why can't you understand that?

We don't know what preceded the conversation recorded in the pastebin (http://pastebin.com/taMsQLBN) but fom what's there it looks like jeramias went there specifically in order to solicit support for his promotion of Bitcoin in Iran.  There followed a discussion about whether or not that was a good idea then when jgarzik decided he wasn't comfortable with this topic being discussed in that particular channel he put a stop to it.  It was only then the translating Bitcoin-Qt to Farsi topic was raised.  Whether it was jeramias's intention or not I can completely understand why, in the context of the previous conversation, it could look like this was just an attempt to keep the conversation going by using the translation thing to get around the 'off topic' and 'promoting illegal activity' accusations.  My guess is had the translation thing come up in a neutral way in the first place there would not have been a ban.

Technically those saying that the throwing out was in response to the comment regarding the translation are likely correct but jgarzik has agreed with Gavin Anderson's take that there may have been an element of 'having a bad day, can't be bothered with this right now' in the decision.  So whilst the banning (since removed) might not have been the 'best' move I don't see a single, slightly mistaken/intolerant moderating decision as justification for the consequent outrage and calls of treason.

jgazrik did not 'oppose the translation'.  He just wasn't prepared to talk about it - nor to have that conversation go on on that particular channel at that particular moment in the context of how it had been brought up.  Regardless of whether or not we believe the decision was justified or not the two are not the same.

Some people seem to spend their time next to their saddled up high horse with one foot in the stirrup already just waiting to hear the snap of a twig before jumping up on it to start shooting at anyone with an opinion that doesn't 100% concur with their own.  Good for me to learn from though so thanks all :)

Why is it a bad thing to do?

He doesn't oppose such a translation.  Anyone who thinks he does has failed to properly read the situation.

That would be EPIC

If what you're referring to is promoting Bitcoin in Iran or soliciting such promotion then that's just a matter of opinion.  My tendency is towards holding off on activities more likely to be construed as inviting an attack on Bitcoin until it is a lot more robust than it is - but that's just my opinion.

As for whether such a solicitation is appropriate in that particular forum is another question - and is one the moderator at the time decided wasn't.  Maybe 'inappropriate' is closer to the mark than 'bad'.

Again, we've got a number of issues that when mushed together keep the issue as a heated one going round in circles rather than allowing us to move forward.  If we tease it apart it gives us at least three questions:

Could the promotion of Bitcoin in Iran be justifiably considered as promoting illegal activity?

Is reasonable to expect that a moderator make an immediate, informed and 'correct' judgement on this matter when deciding whether to allow a discussion to develop/continue?

Is it reasonable to criticise the moderator of a developer channel in such harsh tones when in the moment he errs on the side of caution - especially given what's potentially at stake - and given that promoting a political issue had nothing to do with the technical development of Bitcoin in the first place?

Reading this situation is quite simple...

"Oh please, please leave me alone. I don't want any politics involved. I just want to play with my coding ideas. No politics, please. Please!"

I'm sorry, mate. Four years and you still don't get it! We are just about to start climbing the Big Bitcoin Political Mountain in front of us. This is unavoidable, just expect more of it if bitcoin succeeds. You have to step on a sound ideological foundation to fight all political winds. Don't ask me which one. I don't know. I'm still searching. What I do know, however, is that you have to have quite a mess in your head to support US economic sanctions against Iran or any other country. With such a mess in your head bitcoin is just not for you. Certainly you should not put your name behind bitcoin because other people get scared from your political immaturity.

If jgarzik tries asap to personally organaize translation to Farsi, I shall personally ask him to accept my apology.

Reading it the way you want to see it apparently is.  By now I am not seeing you come up with anything that has not already been well responded to in this thread.  That you choose not to take these replies on board is up to you but could you at least desist with the insulting accusations?

If the coding issues involved in maximising the chances of this project succeeding are a substantial challenge, which I am getting the impression they are, then what the dickens is wrong with someone giving their full attention to that?  Are you saying anybody who wants to get involved at the core of the technical development also needs to be a legal/political expert and a legal/political warrior (and one of the same political persuasion as you at that)?

It seems to me a nonsense to expect this.

Well you and some others are opting to begin the ascent now.  Not all of us are.  'The Project' doesn't appear to me to need to right now.  Some of us may request you hold back from running full speed to the commence with the ascent before the project is strong enough to make it to the top but nobody is physically going to stop you.

That we are heading towards that mountain I will agree is unavoidable and even possibly desirable - but utilising every opportunity to get stronger on the journey to the foot of the mountain is I think the wiser option.  By all means run on ahead but don't be surprised if some consider your actions to be a little naive all things considered.

No, you are not getting stronger by effectively supporting US sanctions on Iran! You are losing fans, thoughtfan! In record numbers! Fans not only from Iran and neighboring countries, but from the entire free world where people can still decide not to join illegal 'legal activities' like economic sanction on other nations. Apparently, in the US the FOX, CNN, and Hollywood style propaganda is very effective?

Yes. The tone of Jeff's words showed full, unquestionable support for criminal and immoral acts of his government. There was no "unfortunately, we cannot discuss this here" - clearly, he supports what his government is doing as the right thing. Jeff, please correct me if I am wrong here.

Context... if you piss off someone, and then suddenly act all cool and start talking about some project, do you think that will be well received ?

Jeff's words, which is what we objectively have to go by, didn't say such a thing.  Jeff's 'tone' might, as Gavin Anderson alluded, and to which Jeff referred, be due to any number of things to which neither you nor I are privy.  Are you seriously as certain as you seem to be that you are correct in your interpretation of what his 'tone' meant?

I don't have nor want fans but assuming by 'you' you mean the project then you are right in that by not actively promoting Bitcoin as a sanction-buster it is 'losing' potential users.  The project might, due to the outrage of current users at the way this was handled, even lose some of its current users.  The 'tone' of some of the objections going on here suggest some are about to walk away from the project but I doubt it will be many.

In the main, as far as I can see all that Bitcoin requires in order to strengthen is to continue to be as usable as it is because word-of-mouth brings more people on board.  Growth inevitably, it seems, follows.  If on the other hand the actions of some which are undermining an internationally supported embago paint a big fat target on the back of Bitcoin whilst it is as young and vulnerable as it is (in my opinion) and it gets virtually obliterated then it may be many years if ever before people world-over in future Iran-like situations have access to its use.  Introducing Bitcoin to Iranians, were it effective, would alleviate some of the suffering that's going on as a consequence of the embago.

But what's more exciting to me is if Bitcoin (or equivalent) in future was widely enough used worldwide one of the consequences would be that governments would have to accept embagos are no longer an option because they are impossible to enforce.  Right now all they had to do was to put pressure on the Society for Worldwide International Financial Transfers (SWIFT) (http://qz.com/32889/why-virtual-currency-bitcoin-cant-save-the-iranian-economy/) to effectively prevent trade with Iran.  A mature Bitcoin has no such soft underbelly.  But right now from what I understand the 'scales' that have the potential in future to protect Bitcoin are a way too soft to provide any protection of note against a concerted attack.

In the meatime, taking actions like this makes it more difficult for those in power needing to make the decision whether to act against Bitcoin to leave it/us alone.  As someone has said before elsewhere 'the government' does not act in isolation.  Even Hitler based decisions (other than towards the very end) on on what certain actions would do to his popularity.  The wider Bitcoin's use in non-controversial day-to-day activities - or even in somewhat controversial activities (such as for illicit substances) the more unpopular any drastic measures to shut it down (or drive it underground and out of reach of the average potential user) will be.

I'm not asking you to agree - just to accept that an opinion other than yours might just have some validity.

Despite so many words you've written above, I don't understand your point. Do you support the US embargo on Iran or you don't?

There is no 'governmentS' that apply embargoes. There is only one government. Other governments have to decide if they'll side with the bullying government or with the victim government. Don't forget the official US policy - 'If you are not with us, you are against us'. It is a risky business not to side with the bully as this government alone is spending 50% of the entire military budget of this Planet.


Nothing has changed in that respect so far.

It is true that there are groups with different agendas regarding bitcoin, but as someone has mentioned in this thread, timing is everything. So, the most important thing is who is the 'timing' manager? Who is trying to manage bitcoin target groups and extend of market penetration in the different regions? After this episode I'm more inclined to suggest that this effectively is the US government.

Once the bitcoin avalanche starts nothing can be managed. But before the start, one can decide where will be the starting point and when? The bitcoin community should not allow such a manipulation to take place. Laissez-faire and no country should be excluded by someone behind the scene!

I understand that sometime people get irritated and jumpy for variety of different reasons and pissed off by their girlfriend, wife, children, friends, colleagues, or just accidental meeting with a stranger. But after that they must be strong enough to overcome their ego and apologize to somebody they have unwillingly insulted.

Lets hope for the best but be prepared for the worst!

On this at least we are in agreement.  You don't understand my point!My point is that that despite a number of people here wanting it to be otherwise this was never about whether I nor jgarzik nor anybody else here agree or disagree with the embago.  It is not either about whether I nor jgarzik nor anybody else here agrees or disagrees with whether Bitcoin should be promoted right now as a means for the people of Iran to circumnavigate the embago.  It is not really even about whether the IRC channel on which the topic was brought up is the appropriate place to discuss it.

It is about, according to the Topic Subject, whether jgarzic's response was 'berzerk' or otherwise.  Of course all these other issues come up in the discussion but my primary point in all I have written in this thread is that mushing them all together is just not helpful.  Deducing jgarzik's position on the morality of the embago from the exchange that happened is as I have pointed out pushing into fantasy land.  Building on top of that to massive pronouncements about how wrong it is that such a terrible person 'represents' us as a member of the Bitcoin Foundation (I use 'the' because AFAIK there is no other to date), that he is anti-free speech and is in the pockets of 'the' government looks to me like it's bordering on truther-land and I have absolutely no interest in the pissing-into-the-wind kind of exchanges that are to be had with folks as deluded as they.

I don't know of groups.  I'm only seeing individual opinions and despite my ridiculing one of the healthy things about this forum is that people here have such diverse opinions.

I don't see a 'timing manager'.  I just see those who in my short time here appear to be the wisest heads around here saying 'not yet'.  And despite being very limited in my understanding of what the whole Bitcoin and associated stuff is about I happen to agree with them.  But nobody is saying 'you can not do it yet'.  They may be, out of their wisdom/overcautiousness/obayence to their gov't overlords be pleading with you not to yet but nobody's stopping those who think now is the time to promote Bitcoin in Iran.  It's just a protocol, some software, some bits and some people.  Do with it all what you will.

This on the basis of a temporary banning that the banner has already suggested might have been as much to do with personal circumstances/mood at the time than anything else?  Really??

A manipulation by whom?  Again are you really claiming here on the basis of the exchange on the channel and what's written on this thread that jgarzik and the Bitcoin Foundation are pupets of the USA government?  Sorry but my conspiracy theorist alarm bells are beginning to go off here.

Now I'm afraid you've totally lost me here.  Who is irritated and jumpy and needs to apologise to whom for what?

[off topic]
BTW in answer to your question I really don't know whether the embago is a good idea or not - and if that makes me 'sheeple' in your eyes so be it.  At the most basic level I can understand the theory behind embagos but I don't understand enough about their chances of success or whether success would be affecting change such as reducing the odds of bombings and war.  If there is a chance of success and it prevents war can the suffering currently endured by the Iranian people be 'justified' against lack of the worse suffering as a consequence of war?  I really don't have a clue and I don't believe without spending a lot of time researching it and talking to people who really have experience of this stuff from more than one perspective that I would be qualified enough to come to a conclusion in which I could be confident.  Does that make me a coward in some people's eyes?  I don't know but I prefer that to making half-baked conclusions on a partially understood picture then 'taking action' the real consequences of which I have absolutely no idea about.  And I venture to suggest, but without implying you may be one, that some of those protesting most loudly and 'taking action' in all such circumstances don't really understand the whole picture either but by proceeding regardless, end up making things worse for those they most want to defend.
[/off topic]

I would like to share an illustrative video of what people doing business as "government" are about:

http://vimeo.com/5726046

As my main man Marc here says, they are not dumb.  People who manage to make millions of human beings believe that their green pieces of paper are "money" and real money (gold, silver, Bitcoin) is "funny money", people who manage to make millions of human beings cheer for mass murder and even invade other people's homes and murder them, these people are much, much smarter than you think.

Jeff Garzik is preventing everyone from questioning the actions of these guys.

No, it is just empty words. Baloney. What stuff do you smoke, thoughtfan?

So the better message is "Core bitcoin developer doesn't want Iranians using his software!"? Good luck with that one.

Everyone is viewing this through their own filter.  You're seeing it as "Jeff doesn't want Iranians using Bitcoin".  Others are seeing it as "the devs don't want to be seen to be modifying the official client in a manner which could be regarded as specifically intended to help people bypass the embargo".

They're not smarter, they just have a monopoly on the use of force and violence to maintain compliance. A smart person doesn't have to resort to these measures.

Which is antithetical to the purpose of bitcoin technology in the first place. The idea that no government can control what people do with their money.

But giving the US government an excuse to mess with developers of the bitcoin software is also anti-ethical to that same goal for everyone else that isn't Iranian.

Bitcoin doesn't seem very open source to me. In fact, it seems like a very closed little elitist system toy for the developers and heavy hitters of the Bitcoin business community.

Bitcoins for Oil exchanges now! .... anything else is for the little leaguers.

The source is open.  If you have teh skillset, you can contribute or fork the project.  Many have.  Almost all have failed to create an independent ecosystem like bitcoin, but that is a social question not relevant to Bitcoin's source access.  Whether or not you feel that Bitcoin's development team is nice enough is entirely beside the point.

Oh, right, I got it. Bitcoin is open as long as you don’t go to the main dev group and ask for any help or attempt to change it in public or anything like that. Thanks for clearing that up. O-o

Try asking Linus Torvolus to include (insert your pet project) into Linux mainline and see how far that line of thinking gets you.  Fork the project, that is the root freedom of open source, not the idea that you get to tell the developers your next great idea.

His complaint is that the devs aren't listening to what he considers to be important.  And it wouldn't matter if they listened to no one, the source is open, anyone with the skils can do anything with it.

As long as they are acceptable ideas I’m sure that’s true. That’s the same way freedom in the USA works. Everyone is free to contribute as long as it’s the type of contribution that’s acceptable.

EDIT: They stopped the conversation with a ban.

Sounds to me like getting someone to go in the main dev channel and getting one of the main devs to agree to break the iran blockade would be a fairly easy way to perform an economic hitman operation on bitcoin.

besides no one is stopping you from developing an "iran bitcoin" client.

Maybe they concluded you just weren't going to take no for an answer.  Are you sure that it was a conversation?

Alright, obviously many people feel strongly about this issue. Few pages pages back I explained why I do. (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=128532.msg1370828#msg1370828) After reading some of the responses, most prominently thoughtfan's, I have to admit that my reaction has got not much to do with Bitcoin development. I still feel that Jeff lost most of my respect because he sounded as if he was supportive of trade sanctions, that is all. I don't think this puts Bitcoin development in any imminent danger, though. To those who patiently engaged in honest discussion: thank you.
Over and out.

The role of the devs is to ensure that Bitcoin technology is still around by the time the majority of BTC have been mined.  The devs cannot control the purposes for which people use that technology, but the technology itself needs to survive long-term in order for the Bitcoin Project to be anything other than another failed libertarian experiment.  

The devs have already said in the past that they don't even want Bitcoin to go mainstream at this point - which makes sense if you're looking at this as a project which will take 40 years to mature, as they are.  While they can't stop people from trying to mainstream Bitcoin, changes to the client for that specific purpose are incredibly low on their list of priorities.

That the devs might believe that politicising Bitcoin by promoting its use to bypass sanctions would jeopardise the long-term future of Bitcoin itself doesn't mean everyone else has to believe the same.  Conversely, it's not reasonable to expect them to actively take action which they believe will put the project in jeopardy.  They can't stop others from doing it, but nobody - the devs included - has a moral obligation to do things which they believe will threaten the future of Bitcoin.

The devs aren't wish-granting genies.  Everyone is free to develop whatever features they want or to hire someone else to develop those features. By demanding that the devs be responsible for developing every single thing on people's wishlists, you're actually centralising Bitcoin.

How do those of you who believe that the devs should be leading the anarchistic charge feel about the fact that Satoshi himself has chosen not to do so?  Is he - too - "doing Bitcoin wrong" and being "treasonous" by dropping out of public view?

Bitcoin doesn't give a damn about your revolution, or your anarcho-capitalism, or your political idealogy or your <sacred principles>.

People do.

Well, there is greater respect for you now, after having said this.  Maybe that is why you lack a highlighted "ignore" word in your profile, unlike several trolls in this thread.  (protip:  use that 'ignore' button liberally on this forum; people are marked thusly for very good reasons)

In point of fact, in this thread or in the quoted IRC conversation, I never endorsed or condemned any US government policies.  Foreign policy always makes for a lively debate, though quite off-topic, and I am very well versed in the positive and negative impact from a great many foreign policy choices of governments around the world.

For the immediate reaction (temporary IRC ban), the explanation was simple:  it was off-topic, potentially inflammatory crap we specifically do not want in #bitcoin-dev.  People occasionally attempt to get on IRC and try to troll the devs into saying something publicly that fits their agenda.  After repeated warnings... boot.

The bigger picture is simple too:  You don't tug on Superman's cape (http://www.lyricsfreak.com/j/jim+croce/you+dont+mess+around+with+jim_10149470.html).  With today's young and very experimental bitcoin software, if you wanted to try really hard, and pick the worst thing to do to Bitcoin, it would be to try and get bitcoin involved in Iran money laundering, North Korea money laundering, Taliban or jihadi terrorist funding.

That is just a simple, pragmatic statement that saying nothing about one's personal feelings about a particular government policy.

Doing those things is not just stupid, it's fucking stupid.  Doing any of those things is working towards bitcoin's failure.

This is probably true but also probably irrelevant. If the US government says Bitcoin is involved in these things then it won't matter whether it actually is or not. They will act as if it is, and through repeated statements ensure people come to believe that it is. And if that doesn't take hold then they'll have a covert operation that makes it true.

The best defense would be to do whatever is possible to make it not matter. To me that means really push hard for localized, distributed exchange like localbitcoin.com and not centralized exchanges where most of the money is going now. Perhaps a Tor hidden service that does what that site does. Even still I can't see that working entirely. Bitcoins secret weapon is slow and continual conversion of mindshare.

I'd love to see an easy web interface to bitcoin-otc. That must be possible but I've not heard of anyone doing that. I don't mean another localbitcoins but an interface that handles the gpg mechanics, the signatures, authentication, and provides a nice trade history, and interface for trading that even total newbies could use without crypto-knowledge. It would be a web front end to the freenode channel for people who never use these things.

You quoted the wrong person.  It wasn't me who said that, it was LightRider.  I've consistently said that Bitcoin is simply a protocol which people can use as they see fit.  There's nothing stopping anarchists using it to further their ideology but they have no right to demand that others do the same or adapt it for that purpose any more than people who are in Bitcoin purely for the money have the right to demand that others use it for purely commercial purposes.  It's a tool and that's all it is.

No one was trying to get you to say anything. You inserted yourself into the conversation, from what the logs indicate. How was this person trolling when pursuing relevant discussion without asking you for any involvement or statement at all?

But you can't prevent it either, so your explanation doesn't make sense. It's an OSS and everyone can use it as they wish. Including US and UK government agencies currently laundering money for the terrorists in Syria as they did it before with the terrorists in Libya.

My point is, be responsible as a bitcoin coredev and don't demonstrate your political preferences in such a rude manner when other people in the dev channel are just doing their regular job i.e. asking for help to translate bitcoin client to different languages! If I could I'd have banned you from the coredev group.

If what you say is true, and it may very well be, there is no hope to begin with.

What I want to believe is, they either are allowing it to happen (maybe they think it will empower the "free world"), or they know they can't stop it (or they know it will fail anyway). I fail to see "they can't grasp what this technology makes possible" as a possibility, sorry. I know the system is very complex, but still.

I think "keeping the dev team and the foundation out of unnecessary headaches" is a good enough defense of how issues like this will be handled. It's also understandable to want trouble later than now. But it's harder to argue for the "long term strategic plan" thing. Very moot. And that rhetoric by itself can get you in trouble because it has a "hidden motive" vibe to it.

Anyway, the solution to all our problems is more users and more developers, more homogenously distributed around the world, and we should all work on that. Let #bitcoin-dev-iran kick out illegal U.S. supporters, if this is how it can only be balanced.

If Solzhenitsyn could read this he wouldn't know whether to laugh or to cry.

if shrödinger could read this he would be in a superposition of laughing and crying states
other than that I think this ban was/is retarded

It's not that serious guys. The key issue here is do the devs oppose making a Farsi version of Bitcoin-Qt, or are they okay with it. As far as I know, they are not opposing that. Everything else here is actually not that relevant. As long as they don't start actively doing radical shit like that, I think we're still OK.

I would like to add that I have nothing to contribute regarding the Farsi version but I'd be glad to see it. Just like I would be glad to see any other language version. Bitcoin is non-political, remember that.

I'm not impressed with their coding skills, I'm impressed by their commitment. This also covers service providers like BitInstant and even casascius, because even though they have a lot to gain, at this point they are risking a lot as well.

If you really think that manufactured consent is possible and damaging, you can easily polarize development. It's hard, but not impossible to become the maintainer of the de facto standard codebase. However you don't need to even come close to that, just be a decent competitor and that would considerably lessen the disadvantage you are talking about because of the diversified interests. If you think it's what ought to be done, it is your/our responsibility. For a project like Bitcoin, it really shouldn't matter whether devs are corrupt (not sure what that means). If you think they are, and they can indeed manufacture consent, I don't know what you think complaining about that here would accomplish.

I'm not dropping my guard. In fact I'm more vigilant than ever thanks to this incident. I'm backing off though, but just for the time being.

Oh come on.

This forum is almost 95% full of paranoid people (No offense - I do realize that I myself am quite paranoid). The devs cannot even lift a finger without somebody on the forum saying "one of the devs lifted a finger" ! OMG they betrayed us !!!!!!!11111oneoneone.

So if you want to find vigilant people, this is probably the best forum for that in the universe.

This.

Imagine being a developer and you have this great idea on... oh, how about pruning the blockchain. So you discuss it with your co-developers and everyone agrees that yeah, that would be a great thing. So you announce your plans on the forums....

..... and all hell breaks loose. "THOU ART VIOLATING THE TENETS OF OUR GOOD LORD SATOSHI, PRAISED BE HIS NAME! THOU SHALT BE PUT UPON THE WALL TO RECEIVE THE BLESSING OF COLD METAL ROUNDS! LET THIS BE A LESSON TO ALL HERETICS! DO NOT CHANGE THE WORD OF THE HOLY PAPER LEST YE BE CHANGED TO BREATHE NO MORE!"

Comparing Atlas ranting with questioning some retarded ban made on dubious pretenses => apples and oranges

It's less pleasant to step off of some straight and narrow paths than others.

You apparently will not be committed to doing shit, and people who are committed are already corrupt, by the fact that they are committed. So, what the hell are you even doing here?

God, I hate trolls. Whenever there is a difficult argument to make, they pop up and force you to side with the mainstream view.   :-\

Not judging, just thought I'd point to a post by jgarzik on reddit regarding the mentioning of kiddie porn in this (http://www.digitaltrends.com/cool-tech/the-future-of-money-its-not-in-your-hands/) article because it might be relevant here: http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/14lzyw/the_money2020_conference_and_the_future_of_finance

If you think this is true of either all or a majority of bitcoin-qt devs you're a loony.

Agreed, but it's true for the majority of people on the board of THE foundation.

Pretty much.  But just to put some facts on the table,


Ever since getting involved in bitcoin, it has been my goal to actually spend my bitcoins, and buy more on the open market as needed.  That helps stimulate and build the bitcoin economy.

Those with short memories, and trolls, forget that I have also given away over 15,000 bitcoins through various developer bounties.

I personnally confirm 5828 BTC received from jgarzik.

I never knew, and tbh you were starting to piss me off. I feel better nao.