Bitcoin Forum

do you guys think it would be a good idea if the bitcoin community developed a set of "acceptable uses" for bitcoin trading, for instance banning illegal goods or certain kind of services? So basically should the bitcoin community self-police the use of bc around the net, before goverments start doing it?

maybe something like a code of honor of sorts...

KNEEL BEFORE ZOD!

Seriously, is it me or does 99% of the population each want to impose their own morality on everyone and everything?

No is the answer; currency is amoral and does not need a code of honour.  Tell you what though: if there is a product you don't like, think is illegal, or even just should be illegal in your opinion; feel free not to buy it.

No.

No. Also, in you sig, "triple" is how you spell that word.

There are rules for this forum, but you can't make rules for money without an army to back them up.

There are some basic rules defined by the protocol and implementation. It was determined to be a minimal amount of rules for the currency to exist, everything else is up to currency users.

I'm not in favor of any sort of enforcement of almost anything even if it were possible.

If there were some sort of a poll of various kinds of use examples with 'yes' or 'no' answers, and the resulting tallies were publicly displayed, I'd spend a few moments filling it out and likely be fairly honest about it.

The utility would be in providing some single easy to understand graphic which, in theory, reflects the 'mindset of the community', and that could be used to point people who are curious about that sort of thing.

No

 
Yes, that's a good idea. Freedom does not mean that everything should be allowed. Freedom only means that you are allowed to do everything which doesn't hurt others. Therefore it does not make bitcoins a "less free" currency if we would state that we e.g. don't want to see a bitcoin slave market.

Of course, this statement is (hopefully) self-evident because the vast majority of people (also in the bitcoin community) agree that there should be no slavery at all. But, for instance, when politicians start to demonize bitcoin by claiming that some people created bitcoins for the purpose of doing criminal and evil things, one could easily point to such a "code of honor". This code of honor would then signalize that most bitcoin users are not aiming for a opportunity to do "evil" things without getting caught. But that they rather want to have a currency which is more trustworthy than fiat currency, a way of online payment which is more convenient than paypal and credit cards etc, which they just want to use for their everyday buying and selling.

Maybe, such a code of honor could than be used as a guideline for deciding to which bitcoin businesses the wiki (or other bitcoin-related websites) should link and to which not. Formulating such a code of honor has nothing to do with any enforcement of rules (which anyway cannot be done without the use of force in meat space). It would rather be a way to formulate the "mission" of bitcoins, as the majority of bitcoin users sees it. And this would be, in my opinion, a good thing.

Put it this way, lechuck:

Suppose the community developed a set of "acceptable uses" that excluded something you wanted to do. Suppose that sending bitcoins to people under 18 years old was not an accepted use, yet you wanted to send some bitcoins to your children.

Would you still think it was a good idea to have this "code of honor"?

Let's say there's an rules saying you can't buy cocaine with bitcoins... what the fuck is going to stop people from buying cocaine with bitcoins? There are rules saying you can't buy cocaine with USD.... >.>

NO.

BTC should be unregulated, anonymous, and accepted anywhere  ;) ...

Thanks for the thread and raising the subject - but no.

(OT - dang that avatar messin' with me head!)

I agree on more rules on this forum. See also the threads in Meta.

But for BTC itself? No. The software does not judge motives and never will :p