It's amusing the gymnastics people go through to justify electronic stealing.
It's amusing the gymnastics people go through to equate a civil, financial, business decision like copyright law with a moral issue like theft. I am not a net defender of IP laws, as they are protectionist and anti-innovation, but that doesn't justify people who's criticism of IP law is really just an excuse to steal movies and music they don't think they should have to pay for. If you have a valid criticism of the system, I'm quite open to hearing it. I'm already pre-disposed to not agree with IP law. But I don't agree with people who think there should be no consequence for putting the work of others on the internet (be it movies or music or writing) without the owner's permission, which is what things like Pirate Bay are, or that people have a right to download that work without paying the owner for it because 'internet freedom.' Because it isn't stealing. Stealing is a moral issue; we as a society have defined it as being "wrong" since the begining of civilization. Copyright violation is an invented crime, quite new in terms of human history. It is not "inherently" morally wrong (the romans had a phrase for this type of law, malum prohibita); it is "wrong" simply because the people who stand to profit from calling it wrong, declared it to be so. Now, if you want to call it what it is, a civil matter, I have no fight with that. But don't tell me it is morally wrong. Morality only works when we are all playing by the same rules anyways, and when it comes to large corporations, they don't play by ANY rules so it is kind of moot as far as I am concerned. Stealing is "inherently wrong." If I have a tangible object, you have no right to it. It doesn't matter if I made it or purchased it, it belongs to me. If you take it without my permission, that is "inherently wrong." I don't see the distinction between something I physically made or some form of art I made. If I made a movie, I own it, the same as if I crafted a physical object. My livelihood is dependent on my ability to sell tickets to see it, so I choose not to grant people permission to see it without paying me for it. If they don't want to see it at my price, the market will sort that out. Either I'll have to lower the price or stop making movies if I can't make a living at it. But these are based on voluntary exchanges. You deciding you have the right to see my work just because doesn't hold up, that's not a voluntary exchange, and that makes it stealing. It's property law; you're taking property that you have no right to. Doesn't matter if the owner is a starving artist or a mutli-national, mutli-billion dollar corporation. You don't have a right to take things you don't own, and you have not asserted any legitimate claim otherwise. 1. Stealing isn't inherently wrong. Look at every single other species on the planet, they all take whatever they can get without any sort of moral dilemma. Look at Human beings, for the overwhelming majority of the time we existed, we did the same thing. With the rise of civilization we "decided" we were better off agreeing to a moral code, so much so that it is now ingrained in us. I won't take your stuff and you won't take mine. I can't say this enough though, it only works if we are all playing by the rules! Corporations do not follow the code, and so they do not deserve to have it followed with them either. I mean you're free to follow whatever moral code you want to of course, as am I. 2. It isn't stealing. For most of human history, if I could play a song, I was free to play it. You didn't own it anymore than you owned how to bake a loaf of bread, or fashion a wheel. Somewhere along the line, very recently, groups of people *declared* that such a thing was immoral (not coincidentally, they stand to profit heavily from convincing you and I that it is immoral). As I tried to mention earlier, the Romans, upon whom much of our legal code is bases, specifically had a term for this type of law to differentiate it from moral laws like stealing. There is simply no precedent anywhere in western law for it to be stealing, and in fact quite the precedent for it to be nothing more than a procedural issue (like illegal parking). 3. You bring up an interesting point regarding free trade and western style free market economics. In theory yes, the free market will sort out the price of these things, and if the market determines some guy is worth 720 dollars a minute we consider that "fair". Of course western style, free market economics is very rarely free. In theory you would compete by providing a better product, or a lower price but in fact you demonstrate how it *really* works. Pass laws to make it illegal for anyone else to compete with you rather than provide a superior product at a superior price. But now we are getting way off topic. |
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fuck these bastards,nobody should pay for music or film unless its made by small independent labels
What is the incentive for artists to produce if everyone is stealing? Music existed for how many literally thousands of years before copyright laws came into being? Exactly. Do you really believe that Johnny Galecki, Jim Parsons and Kaley Cuoco-Sweeting each deserve $1,000,000 for every 22 minute episode? I sure don't, and will never pay for any of their work, although I will download and enjoy it. The reason they can command such a high "salary" is because they can draw in enough viewers to watch the big bang theory. When there are more viewers, CBS can charge more for advertisements. Also it can be argued that if you are enjoying something, then you are receiving a benefit from it, if you are receiving a benefit from something without paying (even in the form of allowing advertisements to be served to you) then you are in the wrong Morality as a system only works when all parties involved in the system follow the rules. As we have seen time and time again, corporations do not follow any sort of moral code, doing what ever is most profitable regardless of what "moral" harm that may cause to other people. As such, when I interact with corporations, I behave the same way. The short answer is, corporations do whatever they can legally (and all to often, illegally) get away with and do not allow morality to interfere; if I can get away with watching their product for free I will do so, and will also not allow morality to interfere. |
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> tl;dr: Bitcoin needs truthtellers and whistleblowers from the banking and central-banking sector to come out and tell the world what is going wrong there. The Courage Foundation is supporting and protecting these people. Please support them with a donation as their cause is yours! < I sometimes get the feeling that we have reached a kind-of saturation point when it comes to people joining the Bitcoin economy because they realise the world-changing potential of the blockchain. I mean peole who understand the problems with our legacy financial and banking system and who are eager to throw resources and passion onto a technology they believe might help solve these problems. This is due to the fact that only an absolute minority of people understand how the legacy financial system works and therefor cannot see the benefit of changing it. Nobody has expressed this more precisely than Henry Ford: „It is well enough that people of the nation do not understand our banking and monetary system, for if they did, I believe there would be a revolution before tomorrow morning.“ I am talking about people shrugging their shoulders walking by a set of keys to unlock their chains and just carrying on because they are not aware of the fact that they are in chains and that this set of keys is the key to their freedom. Only when people understand the level of corruption and inequality ruling the legacy system they will understand the need for change and the fact that Bitcoin is the key for this change. Understanding leads to change, that easy. Truthtellers and whistleblowers from the banking world are important to raise awareness about these chains. Truthtellers like Carmen Segarra the other day, who published more than 47 hours of secretely recorded tapes from meetings of the FED-regulators with their to-be-regulated GS-bankers. She gave us an insight to the immoral ongoings inside the banking regulatory world just as Edward Snowden gave us an insight to the immoral ongoings inside the 'intelligence community'. In both cases reality topped our worst fears. These people are outrageously courageous and they usually get their lifes destroyed for telling the truth. We therefor need to help protect them and thus encourage more people to speak the truth. That's why I would like to ask you to support and donate to the Courage Foundation on https://couragefound.org/donate ( donation address 1courAa6zrLRM43t8p98baSx6inPxhigc). The Courage Foundation is as legit as a whistleblower support network can be with Sarah Harrison as a front woman and as the organisation which officially coordinates the support of Edward Snowden and Wikileaks-whistleblower Jeremy Hammond. If you too think that their work is really important let us show them how much we appreciate what they do and send some coins! Thanks! Joe Or, maybe it's just a trust-less payment system and nothing more? |
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Common wisdom, and logic for that matter, dictate that the hardware world will continually be consolidated into a few large players (Apple, Google, Samsung). We see this in the Apple vs Android wars.
But if you think about it, thats kind of like saying that there will only be a few websites on the internet, or only a few newspapers in circulation.
As the cost of production goes down, competition increases, and although large players will maintain their dominance for sometime, their market share will be cannibalized by young, innovative, hungry startups.
I think that as costs continue to go down, you will see the hardware market becoming more competitive rather than becoming more consolidated, Bitcoin can act as a "lowest common denominator" for these start ups that dont have access to a decent payment system, or who are uninterested in maintaining the status quo
Will.i.am is launching his own smart watch, the puls, by the end of the year. A lot of small start ups will be taking on the big guys, and they all need a payment system...
P.S. FirstBits would be great for these new wearable devices
I think your comparison is fatally flawed. You are attempted to compare a business that requires a huge amount of capital to start, like a device manufacturer, with a webpage that requires virtually none (anyone can make a webpage, not everyone can start a mobile device manufacturing company). |
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It's amusing the gymnastics people go through to justify electronic stealing.
It's amusing the gymnastics people go through to equate a civil, financial, business decision like copyright law with a moral issue like theft. I am not a net defender of IP laws, as they are protectionist and anti-innovation, but that doesn't justify people who's criticism of IP law is really just an excuse to steal movies and music they don't think they should have to pay for. If you have a valid criticism of the system, I'm quite open to hearing it. I'm already pre-disposed to not agree with IP law. But I don't agree with people who think there should be no consequence for putting the work of others on the internet (be it movies or music or writing) without the owner's permission, which is what things like Pirate Bay are, or that people have a right to download that work without paying the owner for it because 'internet freedom.' Because it isn't stealing. Stealing is a moral issue; we as a society have defined it as being "wrong" since the begining of civilization. Copyright violation is an invented crime, quite new in terms of human history. It is not "inherently" morally wrong (the romans had a phrase for this type of law, malum prohibita); it is "wrong" simply because the people who stand to profit from calling it wrong, declared it to be so. Now, if you want to call it what it is, a civil matter, I have no fight with that. But don't tell me it is morally wrong. Morality only works when we are all playing by the same rules anyways, and when it comes to large corporations, they don't play by ANY rules so it is kind of moot as far as I am concerned. |
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It's amusing the gymnastics people go through to justify electronic stealing.
It's amusing the gymnastics people go through to equate a civil, financial, business decision like copyright law with a moral issue like theft. |
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Fiat money usually hold its purchasing power relatively stable domestically, just because it is centralized. Although the commercial banks get tons of money from FED, they carefully watch the CPI index and do not let those money flow. They could even create deflation by simply raise the loan requirement (loan is the only way those money could enter circulation)
But for a decentralized system like bitcoin, the money is widely spread among many actors, and can enter the circulation at any time, very unpredictable. There is no way to stabilize the money supply on market, so exchange rate will always fluctuate to find a balance
However, if merchants use a fixed universal bitcoin price for their product/services around the globe, then it is possible to stabilize its usage. A hamburger will be 0.01 bitcoin anywhere in the world, when people get used to this, they will forget about the exchange rate of bitcoin and start to use bitcoin as a unit of value
Well that's all well and good, but who is going to dictate the prices, and who is going to enforce compliance? |
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fuck these bastards,nobody should pay for music or film unless its made by small independent labels
What is the incentive for artists to produce if everyone is stealing? Music existed for how many literally thousands of years before copyright laws came into being? |
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I've been going over the history of modern banking, and right from the start when banks were little more than goldsmiths with vaults they already couldn't stop themselves from loaning out deposited client gold to other clients (e.g running a fractional reserve scam).
is it possible that humans by nature simply cannot hold other people's money for long periods of time without their greed leading either to them loaning out other people's money or downright running away with it?
it seems to me bitcoin's solution of being your own bank is the only way to keep your precious money from being stolen by one elaborate scam or another.
How is that a scam? Why else would a bank accept your deposit, and pay you interest for it, if not to loan it out? That's the whole point of a bank. its a scam because you did not agree for the bank to loan your money out when you opened a checking account, indeed no one tells you that's what they are going to do with it. if they did tell you and you agreed you would have specified how much risk you allow the bank to take with your money and how much interest they are going to be paying you for that risk. But you did agree to it. No one made you walk into the bank, give them your money, and sign all those papers you signed but didn't read. go ahead and read them, nowhere will it say they are going to lend your money out. and by the way you are forced to open a bank account by the government to pay taxes. No, you aren't. I lived for years without a bank account and had no problem paying taxes. |
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I've been going over the history of modern banking, and right from the start when banks were little more than goldsmiths with vaults they already couldn't stop themselves from loaning out deposited client gold to other clients (e.g running a fractional reserve scam).
is it possible that humans by nature simply cannot hold other people's money for long periods of time without their greed leading either to them loaning out other people's money or downright running away with it?
it seems to me bitcoin's solution of being your own bank is the only way to keep your precious money from being stolen by one elaborate scam or another.
How is that a scam? Why else would a bank accept your deposit, and pay you interest for it, if not to loan it out? That's the whole point of a bank. its a scam because you did not agree for the bank to loan your money out when you opened a checking account, indeed no one tells you that's what they are going to do with it. if they did tell you and you agreed you would have specified how much risk you allow the bank to take with your money and how much interest they are going to be paying you for that risk. If you think its such a good business then why dont you start bank? Easy money, no? if you have zero morals and have no problem to rob your fellow countrymen and you have the tens of millions of dollars it costs to comply with all the regulations i can't think of a better business for the rich sociopath. of course you run the risk of an angry mob with pitchforks lynching you once the economy starts to fall apart... Without getting too off topic, this is the sort of inane, lunatic rambling that leads the average person to look at bitcoin and say "um yea no thanks". Back on topic, you keep saying all this stuff as if the "bank" came into your house and took your money. If you are doing business with a bank it is quite the opposite; YOU chose to do business, and went out of your way to engage in business with the bank. You do not have to if you do not want to, you know. |
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I've been going over the history of modern banking, and right from the start when banks were little more than goldsmiths with vaults they already couldn't stop themselves from loaning out deposited client gold to other clients (e.g running a fractional reserve scam).
is it possible that humans by nature simply cannot hold other people's money for long periods of time without their greed leading either to them loaning out other people's money or downright running away with it?
it seems to me bitcoin's solution of being your own bank is the only way to keep your precious money from being stolen by one elaborate scam or another.
How is that a scam? Why else would a bank accept your deposit, and pay you interest for it, if not to loan it out? That's the whole point of a bank. its a scam because you did not agree for the bank to loan your money out when you opened a checking account, indeed no one tells you that's what they are going to do with it. if they did tell you and you agreed you would have specified how much risk you allow the bank to take with your money and how much interest they are going to be paying you for that risk. But you did agree to it. No one made you walk into the bank, give them your money, and sign all those papers you signed but didn't read. |
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I've been going over the history of modern banking, and right from the start when banks were little more than goldsmiths with vaults they already couldn't stop themselves from loaning out deposited client gold to other clients (e.g running a fractional reserve scam).
is it possible that humans by nature simply cannot hold other people's money for long periods of time without their greed leading either to them loaning out other people's money or downright running away with it?
it seems to me bitcoin's solution of being your own bank is the only way to keep your precious money from being stolen by one elaborate scam or another.
How is that a scam? Why else would a bank accept your deposit, and pay you interest for it, if not to loan it out? That's the whole point of a bank. |
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with bitcoin deviating from all predicted trend lines and constantly dropping in price
the hash rate and difficulty is just inversly climbing up and up
So the result is clearly all those mid level bitcoin miners are left with loss ultimately have to quit and mining becomes only a market for the whale like players with lots of money who make bitcoin mining more centralized!
by 2012 domestic bitcoin became a thing of the past..
by 2014 even mid level mining players have to quit
mining affordable by diamond and coal mine owners?
The opposite. As soon as bitcoin increased enough in value to where it was profitable to create dedicated mining devices, the outcome was inevitable. I'm not sure what you mean by "leading to..."; virtually all mining is completely controlled, directly or indirectly, by a small number of individuals. Much of the current "control" is by operators of pools. If the decisions made by the pools are not generally accepted by the community as a whole then the control will go away Most of the "control" is by a small number of asic manufacturers who, if push came to shove, could easily run without any of the major pools, or without the community. Consider too that not only do they control a substantial share of the hashing power directly, but they indirectly control the rest in that they decide who can mine, and in what amounts they can mine. There is nothing you, me, or any "community" can do to change that. I agree. But that misses another point. The reason why people tend to prefer pooled mining is because of risk aversion. Solo mining offers a low probability of a high reward. Pooled mining offers a high probability of a low reward. The latter is more attractive to most people for the same reason that people generally prefer to invest the bulk of their cash in low-risk low-reward investments rather than lottery tickets. Indeed this is the case even if the net discounted return from pooled mining is actually lower than from solo mining. Of course none of this has anything to do with ASICS. It is simply a reflection of the low probability of any given solo miner mining a block. The solution is simply P2P pooled mining which avoids the centralized control problem. That isn't really a solution though. The obvious problem with that is that if you're a major asic supplier with a substantial share of the hashrate, you can simply create your own pool. Or hash solo. |
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There have been a couple of folks get their bank wire turned back, but I believe it depended on the bank. Now, one of them was a bank in London who also thought what Alpha was doing was crazy. I dunno if it's on the fightalpha webforum or not, but I know it's in this thread somewhere. It may take a lot of searching, but start around the July timeframe and work forward.
Right, but we're talking about enforcing a judgement. Reversing a bank transfer or performing a chargeback means the payment processor reversed the charges, which does not require anything from AT. Winning a judgement and then successfully collecting on it which is what that person wants to do) means they presented AT with a court order and AT then returned their money. The former is, relatively speaking, easy to do as it does not require compliance from AT. The latter, is almost impossible since it requires compliance from AT, and they have demonstrated time and again they are not going to comply with the law. I am almost certain no one has successfully enforced a judgement against them and gotten actual money out of it. |
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with bitcoin deviating from all predicted trend lines and constantly dropping in price
the hash rate and difficulty is just inversly climbing up and up
So the result is clearly all those mid level bitcoin miners are left with loss ultimately have to quit and mining becomes only a market for the whale like players with lots of money who make bitcoin mining more centralized!
by 2012 domestic bitcoin became a thing of the past..
by 2014 even mid level mining players have to quit
mining affordable by diamond and coal mine owners?
The opposite. As soon as bitcoin increased enough in value to where it was profitable to create dedicated mining devices, the outcome was inevitable. I'm not sure what you mean by "leading to..."; virtually all mining is completely controlled, directly or indirectly, by a small number of individuals. Much of the current "control" is by operators of pools. If the decisions made by the pools are not generally accepted by the community as a whole then the control will go away Most of the "control" is by a small number of asic manufacturers who, if push came to shove, could easily run without any of the major pools, or without the community. Consider too that not only do they control a substantial share of the hashing power directly, but they indirectly control the rest in that they decide who can mine, and in what amounts they can mine. There is nothing you, me, or any "community" can do to change that. |
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with bitcoin deviating from all predicted trend lines and constantly dropping in price
the hash rate and difficulty is just inversly climbing up and up
So the result is clearly all those mid level bitcoin miners are left with loss ultimately have to quit and mining becomes only a market for the whale like players with lots of money who make bitcoin mining more centralized!
by 2012 domestic bitcoin became a thing of the past..
by 2014 even mid level mining players have to quit
mining affordable by diamond and coal mine owners?
The opposite. As soon as bitcoin increased enough in value to where it was profitable to create dedicated mining devices, the outcome was inevitable. I'm not sure what you mean by "leading to..."; virtually all mining is completely controlled, directly or indirectly, by a small number of individuals. |
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You don't really need a CC just use a debit card with the visa/mastercard logo.. they act just like a cc and coinbase will never know. No, they know and they know immediately. Already tried that. Of course they know, (not sure why that guy thought different). In any case, your best bet will probably be a secured credit card. I obviously don't know how bad your credit is but it probably isn't all that good based on what you said. Anyone can get a secured card though. They tend to be very expensive but it may be your only option if you simply have to have a CC. I don't know of any that carry the visa logo off the top of my head but google it. |
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Accepting a settlement offer will not effect your ability to go to court should they not pay. That would be just one more document in your favor proving they owe you the money. Proving they owe you the money is not going to be that difficult as they are in violation of several laws to begin with.
At this point, time isn't really an issue. Many months ago when many people, myself including, were urging people like you to jump ship and press the legal issue time would have mattered. At this point so much time has elapsed it makes no difference any more really.
Despite someone mentioning a rumor, I have not seen any evidence of anyone actually enforcing a judgement against the company and collecting cash.
You should claim the amount owed, including all legal fees. In theory, you should come out of this "whole".
All of this is moot though. At this point in time, there is no product, no money, and no siezable assets. Anything that may have been there at some point is long since gone (remember, we're dealing in BTC which by it's very nature is "off the books" to begin with, before all the accounting tricks). If they make any offers to settle I would take them, as at this point it is simply totally unrealistic to think you will recover any losses by getting a judgement and being able to enforce it. That ship sailed many months ago.
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Assume for the sake of argument that the Fed bans bitcoin use in the USA.
The IRS has already released guidelines on how to pay capital gains taxes on Bitcoin. You think the Feds will ban it and end this revenue stream? Of course not, as I said in my post right before that. Hence the "assume for the sake of argument...". The question posed by OP was not "would they" but "could they". I believe the answer to be no, they wouldn't, but that yes obviously they could if they wanted to. One interesting thing though, the IRS ruling really has nothing to do with it. The IRS has released rulings on how to pay taxes on all sorts of things that are illegal, and in fact it is a legal requirement in the USA to pay taxes on things even if they are illegal. So their guidelines don't really tell us much about what the government intends to do anyway. |
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in the 1920's alcohol was banned.... moonshine business was still brewing
in the 19xx's exstacy was banned... many party popping pill pushers were still popping
in the 19xx's weed was banned.. many stoners were still smoking
in the 19xx's cocaine was banned.. many stoners were still snorting
governments cannot stop technology, they can only stop people they catch from using it
Right, but the fundamental difference there is that none of those things you mentioned require a third party to have use. You can get drunk by yourself. Assume for the sake of argument that the Fed bans bitcoin use in the USA. No major retailer is going to accept them, so, apart from purchasing already illegal things (like now), what exactly are you going to do with it? Hold on to it? But of course, if it's banned and no retailers accept it and never will accept it, all the speculators exit the market meaning it's value plummets. At the end of the day, a currency that can't actually be used to buy things has no value. I imagine it would still have some small value for people purchasing other banned goods, but that's about it. |
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