The forum isn't based in the US.

There are millions of laws. I'm probably breaking dozens right now somehow. I'm not going to let these laws stop me from doing what's best. As I mentioned previously, I'm not sure what the best course of action is with the Pirate case -- I'll decide this later after some public discussion.

No. The possibility of privacy concerns in these cases never occurred to me, since the stuff I've read has always been boring trade stuff.

That's never happened.

I only scanned through them to make sure that the SQL query (to archive them) worked as I intended. The PGP message blocks stood out.

I only read others' PMs without their permission during scam investigations, and I've only read a user's entire inbox a few times.

I noticed that some people communicated with Pirate using PGP-encrypted messages, which is smart.

I haven't decided yet what I will do. I want to see public discussion about it. It might not be necessary to release his PMs, so there's no point in arguing about it now, though.

Slots BTC Person
4 3 cablepair
1 1.5 Goat
2 1.5 TangibleCryptography
1 1.25 edd

I'm not going to publicly release the PMs until a few months from now, if ever. I'll create a topic about it then and we can have a public debate.

I will give them to the police if the police ask for them. Otherwise, I may post them publicly to help people find Pirate and obtain justice.

Pirates are hostis humani generis. I'm not going to preserve the privacy of someone who stole 500,000 BTC.

Slots BTC Person
4 3 cablepair
1 1 rate5
1 1 Garr255
1 0.75 dree12
1 0.5 squall1066

I'm not going to worry about following ridiculous laws like that. The forum isn't based in the US, anyway.

This.

Only me, Gavin, Satoshi, and Sirius can decrypt it.

NewLibertyStandard was the most visible exchanger at the time.

http://newlibertystandard.wetpaint.com/page/2009+Exchange+Rate

His pricing methodology will seem very strange nowadays... At the time, I performed similar calculations and thought he was charging too much.

Deleted posts are almost never removed from the database. A PM is removed from the database if the sender and all recipients delete it.

Full database backups are created daily, and all global moderators and admins can download the (encrypted) backups and implement their own rotation policies.

Slots BTC Person
1 1 rate5
1 1 Garr255
2 0.5 squall1066

New auction: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=104275.0

Note that I decreased the minimum increment from 0.5 to 0.25.

This is a long auction, lasting ~12 days.

In order to collect more money for the creation of good forum software, the forum is selling ad space in the area beneath the first post of every topic page.

Ads this week will be allowed to contain any non-annoying HTML/CSS style. No images, JavaScript, or animation (no marquee or blinking). Ads must appear 3 or fewer lines tall in my browser. Ads will be prefixed with "Advertisement:". Ad text may not contain lies, misrepresentation, or inappropriate language. Ads may not link directly to any NSFW page. Ads may be rejected for other reasons.

There are 10 total ad slots which are randomly rotated. So one ad slot has a one in ten chance of appearing. Eight of the slots are for sale here. Ads appear only on topic pages with more than one post, and only for people using the default theme.

The ad lasts 7 days starting from when I put it up.

Stats

Exact historical impression counts per slot:
https://bitcointalk.org/adrotate.php?adstats

Efficacy stats:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=54182.0

Info about the current ad slots:
https://bitcointalk.org/adrotate.php?adinfo

Auction rules

Post your bids in this thread. Prices must be stated in BTC per slot. You must state the max number of slots you want. When the auction ends, the highest bidders will have their slots filled until all eight slots are filled.

So if someone bids for 8 slots @ 5 BTC and this is the highest bid, then he'll get all 8 slots. If the two highest bids are 8 slots @ 4 BTC and 1 slot @ 5 BTC, then the first person will get 7 slots and the second person will get 1 slot.

- When you post a bid, the bids in your previous posts are considered to be automatically canceled. You can put multiple bids in one post, however.
- All bid prices must be evenly divisible by 0.25.
- The bidding starts at 0.5.
- The auction end time is 06:00:00 on September 10, UTC. Countdown. (The end time may be extended -- see below.)
- If two people bid at the same price, the person who bid first will have his slots filled first.
- Bids are considered invalid and will be ignored if they do not specify both a price and a max quantity, or if they could not possibly win any slots

If any valid bids occur less than 30 minutes before the auction end time, then the auction will be extended by 30 minutes. If any valid bids occur less than 30 minutes before the new end time, then the auction will be extended again, etc. The time will not extend beyond 6 hours total.

You must pay for your slots within 24 hours of receiving the payment address. Otherwise your slots may be sold to someone else.

Thanks! Have you decided to become an ascetic?