lol

Still, it's not by trying to prevent your customers from knowing your competitors that you'll keep them as customers. Actually, "desperate marketing" like this tends to backfire... it's like people that come to your home to sell you stuff. First thing I think to myself: if your product is really that good, why do you need to knock my door to try to convince me of it? Why isn't your product available at the Carrefour nearby?

Anyways, I'm among those who think you should consider publishing a directory - with the consent of your clients, of course, do not publicly list someone who doesn't want to be listed.

Every country in the world has less guns per capita than the US. Of the countries in this list, if I'm not mistaken, 97 have a lower homicide rate, while 108 have a higher homicide rate than the US.
What was your point again?

Let's just stop comparing different places in what concerns violence, shall we? Otherwise I could just compare New Hampshire with Washington DC, for example.
A less error prone approach would be comparing the same region before/after laws that made it harder/easier for honest people to acquire guns. And even that approach is not perfect as there are too many other variables that may influence it.

As long as you're not doing any harm to others, owning tings is a right, be it guns, drugs or whatever. Stop being a control freak and let people live their lives in peace.

It doesn't need to be that complex... the virus could just send the encrypted file to the attacker, patiently waits for the user to start his client and from this point on log everything the user types and send it to the attacker. The attacker could manually look for the password, it shouldn't be that hard I guess.

But anyway, yes, it adds complexity.

Companies are just "shared property", nothing more.
You may have a contract with a company, the same way you may rent a house that belongs to a married couple. Saying you have a contract with such shared properties is the equivalent of saying you have a contract with each of the owners of the said share property, proportionally.

I don't see how it could be any different, ethically speaking.

And btw, there's only one reality.

Let me try to make it clearer:

- Nethead took Roger property.
- Roger had a previous contract with Nethead via blockchain.info, in which Nethead had provided data which Roger was supposed to keep private.
- Roger used the data he had on Nethead due to this other contract in private to demonstrate to Nethead how he know he had Roger's money and his excuse was a lie. I highly doubt that this would be a violation of the contract mentioned above since the data was not made public by Roger.
- Roger's actions might have represented a breach of the contract he had with the other owners of Blockchain.info. But that's a problem between them, irrelevant to Nethead.

It's almost as if you didn't read the first phrase of mine you quoted.

Blockchain.info and BitcoinStore are just abstractions. They don't actually have any rights, they don't exist ethically. Only individuals have rights, and when under contract, obligations. Contracts may allow the creation of these abstractions, but in the end, there are always individuals behind them.

There were two individuals in this dispute: Nethead and Roger. It's their actions that count.


Roger owns part of Bitcoinchain.info AFAIK, he's not some random dude that asked for data and got it.
As an owner of Blockchain.info, he's probably bound by this privacy policy. I'm not sure if he did really broke it, as he didn't release blockchain.info data publicly, but that's irrelevant as I explained before - if he did broke the contract he had with Neathead as owner of Blockchain.info, such breach of contract is eclipsed by the fact that Nethead took part of Roger's property.

Now, if Roger also broke a contract he had with the other owners of Blockchain.info by gathering this data the way he did, that's another matter between them, irrelevant in what concerns Nethead.


They're much less wrong than Nethead's actions and therefore are forgivable.
His relations with the other owners of blockchain.info and his privileges in their application is a totally separate matter.


When I say "crime" I mean any violation of an individuals right, be it a slap in the face or murder - contract breaching is within.
These distinctions you mention are just administrative distinctions, separating different courts to rule over different issues.

Perhaps the word "crime" in English is not appropriate to describe every violation of somebody's rights. In my language it is fine enough. In French I know that it's not - the word crime is restricted to some serious offenses. Anyway, if that's the case, it's just semantics. Find an English word good enough to describe any violation of somebody's right and replace it whenever I said crime or criminal before.

You're talking about abstractions, while what matters are the actions of actual individuals.


I'm not arguing you should have such power no matter what.
I'm arguing that, if you happen to have - for example, because you happen to be an admin there - and you break your contract against me because you believe I'm violating your rights, then a few outcomes are possible after a "proper trial':

• I'm proved guilty of violating your rights. I took more from you than you took from me. Conclusion: I still owe you.
• I'm proved guilty of violating your rights, but it's decided that you ended up taking more from me than I took from you. Conclusion: You owe me in proportion.
• I'm proved innocent of violating your rights. Conclusion: you aggressed me and has a full criminal debt towards me, proportional to the actions you took against me.

That's what I'm arguing.
Rothbard explains it well in one of his texts, it was a text about police raids and searching for criminals. I searched it to link here but couldn't find it.


I don't know how this abstract entity is supposed to know this. But that's not the point. I'm not arguing they should give everybody the ability to demand people's data like that.

The way you put in OP is quite vague.

Actually, ethics says you may violate the rights of someone that has made a higher violation of your rights in order to catch him. Of course that, if I do so against you and further on you're deemed innocent, then I'm an aggressor that has a debt towards you - a basic principle that should be applied to state police and courts every time they execute those raids on innocents homes, btw.

That's already an objective ethical rule. But it would be nice if you could formalize that in contracts, of course.

Breaking the nose of someone and running is normally criminal. But if you're breaking the nose of someone and running to avoid a flash kidnapping, that's perfectly justifiable.
Disrespecting a contract is normally criminal. Disrespecting a contract to avoid the other party to steal from you is normally justifiable (unless of course the breach of contract implies you taking much more from the other party than what this party is taking from you, i.e., disproportional reaction).

The main mistake of Roger here was being too impulsive. Perhaps the customer was innocent. So maybe the best action on Roger's part was to only act after some mediation decided he's right - he had the time to do so anyway. On the other hand, professional mediation would likely cost much more than 5BTC. And he was convinced the guy was a liar. If he's really correct, his actions would be justifiable in comparison to the actions of Nethead.

Anyway, it wouldn't hurt to state what you say in the TOS - that they have the right to break their contract with you if you steal from them is something that's ethically deductible anyway, explicitly stating it would help making it clearer.

Meh, wallet encryption is purposeless against trojans, the only protection it may offer is against an attacker with physical access to your computer, like a dishonest roommate or something. And if you use ubuntu, your home dir may be encrypted natively, so wallet encryption becomes more of a placebo feature than anything.


Nice.

No, blockchain.info data was not made public by Roger, it was the Nethead himself who did it.
The information Roger made public was provided to Bitcoinstore.

Yes, but with the remark that Nethead was actually holding something that belong to others (theft), while Roger's mistake was simply to act on impulse and publish the liar's personal details publicly - and honestly, I'm tempted to think like Rassah here and ask "What's the fucking problem in that? Should we really be that passive and let thiefs always get away, cleanly, without even some public shaming?"

Oh, come on...

I was restraining myself from posting in this late drama since it was too much "storm in a glass of water" to my taste, but this abandon of self-respect here is not necessary.

No, Bitcoin does not need dishonest people. Actually, nothing does. Assuming the guy is really refusing to refund the mistaken transaction (what really seems to be the case), he's dishonest and we are better off if he just disappears.

It's okay and admirable to recognize your own mistakes. I just don't think they were that serious to justify all this drama... publicly posting the individual's personal details might have been unappropriated... But he shouldn't have lied and kept your money either. There were mistakes from both sides, but Roger's mistakes were certainly less serious, from a moral/ethical perspective at least.

You don't need to lower your head that much. Unless I'm wrong about something, that individual own more apologies to you that you own to him. You're falling at "troll baits" here and humiliating yourself.

BitcoinJ with its SVP model certainly ticks performance, privacy and decentralization boxes, at least when compared to alternatives. The only box you mention where some doubt could remain is "security"... since you're the lead developer of BitcoinJ, I must say this last comment of yours sounded suspicious... you don't trust BitcoinJ's security?

You'll hardily achieve anything meaningful.

You'd have perhaps more chances by attempting to talk with exchanges, since you probably know the owners of many of them, asking for an eventual block of this individual if he ever tries to cash out the money he owns you. But I'm not sure exchanges would accept to do this, as it could backfire on them.

I don't know what you can do. Fortunately it's not a huge amount, it won't hurt you that much.


This is true.

The "part 2" problem could be "solved" if bitcoin.org did not link directly to bitcoin-qt.

Before downloading bitcoin-qt, everybody should be exposed to the fact that it will download the entire transaction history, and index it locally, what's a very costly operation. People should be prevented that, if they want to avoid that, they can download a lightweight client like MultiBit or Electrum.

What I mean is that I think the direct links on bitcoin.org should be removed and everybody should have to pass through this page (or an equivalent) before downloading anything.

I can't afford to read the almost 20 pages for the UK report right now, but I looked it quickly and it seems to include things ranging from harassment to murder, while the US statistics start on "aggravated assault".
Are you sure the comparison you are making is pertinent? Could you point me to the page of the UK report that shows the statistics concerning only actually violent crimes?

No. I believe the concept of Open Carry itself is quite an US thing. I don't know of any other place where there is such distinction (concealed vs open carry).

That said, the Swiss are allowed to transport their gun, without a particular license, AFAIK. Gun transportation must be done in such a way that a surprising attacker could have some time to shoot you before you react. For instance, the gun must be unloaded, perhaps locked somehow etc... I don't know the details as I don't live in Switzerland, but gun carry and gun transportation are not the same thing. The idea of gun transportation is not to have it ready for use, but just to be allowed to move it from your home to the place you'll practice/hunt with it and vice-verse.


In the text you quoted yourself he mentions hunting rifles and handguns (which include revolvers, but it's not limited to). So no, by the text you quoted yourself, he cannot be saying that Swiss can only own revolvers.

And I believe they might be allowed to legally buy automatic rifles, but it might be more strict. Honestly, I don't know much, I just happen to have a friend which has some family members in Switzerland so he tells me some stuff once in a while. You'll find more reliable info on the net if you want to.


That nails it quite well. It's disturbing.

I believe you're talking particularly about their military guns. If I'm not mistaken they can buy other guns, with different (less strict) restrictions.

But... how is this post of yours a reply to the one of mine you quoted?

These numbers don't tell much. It would be more interesting to see a ranking of "gun owners per capita" instead of "guns per capita", although even still I don't believe any strong correlation would be found.
Guns per capita doesn't tell much. You take France, for instance, it's quite high on that ranking, showing more than 0.3 guns per capita. But I'm pretty sure that much less than 30% of French people own guns. What happens is that hunters own many guns each.
Considering the deterring effect on violence, I'd say a homeowner with a pistol and a homeowner with multiple automatic rifles are almost equivalent. But still, you can't put all guns in the same bag either.

It's way too difficult to try to come out with numbers for such things. The approach from John Lott in his book is probably the most reasonable I'm aware of, but even that is far from "scientific".