Time for a renewed push to get EFF to accept Bitcoins?

[n8rwJeTt8TrrLKPa55eU]

The clowns at the EFF need to reevaluate who's side they're on. We got Wordpress now...

Thats not how opposition or a battle against legal authorities works.

Please don't forget: legal authorities aren't fighting Bitcoin at the moment.

The moment this changes, and authorities start actually to put pressure on (not just threatening), any large commercial entity will jump ship so fast that you can't even say "meh". Then will be the time for the EFF to come to help.

This is important to keep in mind. What Bitcoin represents is a fight against the largest and wealthiest special interests in the world that control the monetary and legal systems. Governments derive their power from ideology. In the fight for freedom violence is not an option because the governments can inflict violence to such a great degree.

Nevertheless, we are seeing the market mobilizing and the chess pieces are being put in place. Even better it seems to be arising out of chaos as spontaneous order with coordination without cooperation.

Remember, ideas can only be overcome by other ideas. Power and force are impotent against ideas. Open source publishing, and WordPress is THE leader in this regards, is the spear-tip when it comes to the delivery mechanism of ideas. The spear-shaft is the monetary system.

The platform that has allowed the spread of ideas to such a large degree has now embraced Bitcoin.

This places any legal authorities in a very precarious position if they attempt to fight Bitcoin because WordPress has reframed the issue from allowing people to buy illegal drugs to empowering people's freedom of speech. Those with a soapbox who can spread ideas are going to increasingly become Bitcoin's defenders because it is the shaft that allows the spear-tip to be forced through inferior ideas. Thus WordPress's veiled threat:

With Bitcoin we join a new digital economy that doesn’t leave anyone behind, essentially making financial transactions open source — something WordPress.com is behind 100%. We’re proud to support bloggers from all over the world by providing a Bitcoin option.

To any regulators it means this: We will fight you with litigation and we have the financial resources to hire attorneys. We have the moral high ground because of our position regarding freedom of speech. We can lay claim to the power of that moral high ground because of our ability to transmit those ideas far and wide. Thus, if you attack us then it will be like attacking freedom of speech.

Just think: How many millions of bloggers will donate to WordPress if they ask for help defending a Bitcoin related lawsuit? What type of a PR nightmare would that create for the governments? You saw how the market and Internet mobilized against SOPA and PIPA. And who was one of the leaders in that? WordPress.

And if governments are stupid enough to attempt to litigate against WordPress, assuming there actually is any legal issue with accepting bitcoins, think of how swift, how powerful and how vicious the Internet's reaction would be to their attempt to stifle freedom of speech. And who will probably be on the vanguard as defense counsel? The EFF (so don't be too hard on them; I think their reasons for not accepting Bitcoin are specious).

So just keep pressing forward. This is a revolution of ideas and minds are being changed one at a time. And those with inferior ideas, like limited freedom of speech and closed source money, are losing position and will be checkmated soon.

This is a great, inspiring post.

[Roger_Murdock]

Yeah, sunnankar nailed it with that one. Outstanding post!

[SimonL]

sunnankar, fantastic breakdown. That was beautifully succinct and insightful.

[rowyourboat]

A suggestion to improve acceptance from EFF/wikipedia/whoever..

The bitcoin foundation should establish individual donation addresses, each associated with a large organisation people are interested in donating bitcoins to, eg:

Wikipedia 17qq5A3XKfrxpJRSC5LH6APjvTDb9hTms
EFF 3e4frt588gdwo844t93hg8943h9348hg984g8
etc..

Donations are made by bitcoin holders to these addresses with a date of return if the organisation persists in not accepting bitcoin.  If they do decide to accept bitcoin, the bitcoin foundation hands over the wallet.dat file, and the organisation gets to keep the bitcoins.

If they do not accept bitcoins by a certain date, all donations are returned to the original addresses from which they were donated.

Having $100k in donations sitting in a wallet file staring at you is much more likely to encourage acceptance than nagging and email bombs I think.. kind of like positive blackmail

[casascius]

A suggestion to improve acceptance from EFF/wikipedia/whoever..

The bitcoin foundation should establish individual donation addresses, each associated with a large organisation people are interested in donating bitcoins to, eg:

Wikipedia 17qq5A3XKfrxpJRSC5LH6APjvTDb9hTms
EFF 3e4frt588gdwo844t93hg8943h9348hg984g8
etc..

Donations are made by bitcoin holders to these addresses with a date of return if the organisation persists in not accepting bitcoin.  If they do decide to accept bitcoin, the bitcoin foundation hands over the wallet.dat file, and the organisation gets to keep the bitcoins.

If they do not accept bitcoins by a certain date, all donations are returned to the original addresses from which they were donated.

Having $100k in donations sitting in a wallet file staring at you is much more likely to encourage acceptance than nagging and email bombs I think.. kind of like positive blackmail

I thought of this, but it's problematic and not likely to sit well with an organization.  From their perspective, they would see it as a 3rd party organization using their good name to solicit donations and then blackmailing them with money that is already rightfully theirs.  It's arguably some sort of fraud.  Suppose I started accepting donations for a religious organization that doesn't believe in contraception, converted it all to condoms, and then told the religious organization that a million condoms are waiting for them to liquidate on the open market and get back USD.  Yes, I realize there are holes in the analogy, but that's still the way they'd see it, and the way they'd make it sound when they started complaining to the press, law enforcement, etc.

This is a better way to go about it: I create a vanity address (1Wikipedia....etc) and then send MY donation there and noisily inform Wikipedia that this money is sitting there with their name on it reserved for the taking.  If that address happens to accumulate more anonymous donations I didn't ask for, well... that's not my problem now.

[n8rwJeTt8TrrLKPa55eU]

I wonder what would happen if one were to send to Wikipedia some physical Casascius coins as a donation, but do so anonymously and without providing a return address.

Would they destroy them?

Throw them away?

Put them in a safe, for future use in case they ever accept BTC?

Would some lowly intern get tasked with converting them to USD?

Or would it motivate them to finally put in place a Bitcoin-accepting mechanism?

[bg002h]

I should think a place like McDonald's would have more to gain.

[Panama Jack]

A suggestion to improve acceptance from EFF/wikipedia/whoever..

The bitcoin foundation should establish individual donation addresses, each associated with a large organisation people are interested in donating bitcoins to, eg:

Wikipedia 17qq5A3XKfrxpJRSC5LH6APjvTDb9hTms
EFF 3e4frt588gdwo844t93hg8943h9348hg984g8
etc..

Donations are made by bitcoin holders to these addresses with a date of return if the organisation persists in not accepting bitcoin.  If they do decide to accept bitcoin, the bitcoin foundation hands over the wallet.dat file, and the organisation gets to keep the bitcoins.

If they do not accept bitcoins by a certain date, all donations are returned to the original addresses from which they were donated.

Having $100k in donations sitting in a wallet file staring at you is much more likely to encourage acceptance than nagging and email bombs I think.. kind of like positive blackmail

I don't think this is a bad idea at all but I ultimately believe that bitcion wil reign supreme at the end of the day so those slow adopters do so at their own loss. I'm not going to pester anyone into accepting it. If it never grew more than the level it is now I would be perfectly happy. It serves my needs fine - I can buy gold and I can buy national currencies with it. With those I can buy anything else.

[rowyourboat]

I don't think this is a bad idea at all but I ultimately believe that bitcion wil reign supreme at the end of the day so those slow adopters do so at their own loss. I'm not going to pester anyone into accepting it. If it never grew more than the level it is now I would be perfectly happy. It serves my needs fine - I can buy gold and I can buy national currencies with it. With those I can buy anything else.

My concern is that if the volume of bitcoin being used for illegitimate things is significant compared to legitimate uses, we are more likely to see aggressive government regulation which will slow the spread of the currency.  If the balance is tipped towards legitimate uses (like wordpress etc) before regulation occurs it will be much more difficult for government to justify regulation, and much easier for the community to argue against government intervention.

[Stephen Gornick]

Here's an effort by Erik Voorhees where he decries Wikipedia's rejection of bitcoin.

Wikipedia needs to answer for this...

"Wikipedia, in how many ways must we reiterate this hypocrisy which runs perfectly counter to your stated mission? Why is your prerequisite for donation that the medium be backed by coercion and tyranny?

[BLOG] - The Full Faith and Credit of Wikipedia
 - http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=127141.0

Wikipedia and the EFF are two peas in a pod on this -- likely the same donor pool.   Of course, pleasing their donors should not be the main factor of their mission though.

[Stephen Gornick]

Sorry for necrothread, not sure if there is a more recent one of the topic.

Anyway, today this happened:

Anyone know of retail businesses in the Bay Area that accept bitcoin payments?

- https://twitter.com/marciahofmann/status/328618584836304896

@marciahofmann is a senior staff attorney @EFF.

[marcus_of_augustus]

Ha! ... so I wonder when EFF will wants to haz back those 3000 btc donations that they "couldn't possibly keep"?

[casascius]

I was thinking of auctioning on eBay an original sheet of 330 uncut "series 1" Casascius Coin private keys and then donating the proceeds to the EFF.  This transaction and corresponding donation would be done entirely in US dollars.

These key sheets will not be used in coins, they are simply the unused portion of the original 11,000 keys I generated (with corresponding series 1 hologram) with the spelling error, and the reason they won't be used is chiefly because of the spelling error, and secondarily because I used up thousands of the 2011 coin blanks with "series 2" stickers, leaving a surplus of these.  Somebody will want them, but it's not my place to "sell" it for my own gain.  The EFF could use the money though, I support their work.  I have eight uncut sheets.  Anyone want to give an indication of interest?

[virtualmaster]

Exactly, the way I understand it the EFF has cancelled accepting bitcoin. Because they don't want to leave the impression they have a self interest in fighting for bitcoin, in the case they have to do so.

Then they should stop using the internet also.

Game. Set.  Match. 

I understand EFF needs to draw a line and not promote a technology (and the shouldn't) however the argument that they can't use a technology without being compromised is (as indicated above) weak.   Other than the internet they have been involved in cases related to domain name disputes, digital content, and strong encryption.   Do they also strip themselves of those technologies.  Winning cases and lobbying on behalf of FREEDOM in those areas also directly benefits themselves.   In the payment arena, the EFF accepts PayPal which could be a source of future legislation or legal action.

Lastly it isn't like EFF is suing to get clarification on legal rights of Bitcoin.  They are simply accepting the status quo while saying they (and by extension nobody else) should use it because the legal area is gray.

So the legal aspects are gray, therefore nobody should use it.  If nobody uses it then there will never be a legal challenge.  Without a legal challege the legal aspects will remain gray.

I mean if it requires Congress explicitly declaring Bitcoin legal before the EFF will defend it then why do we need the EFF?

Exactly. EFF is doing good work in defending digital democratic rights but only for what they think it belongs to it. And doing free transactions with a decentralized currency it doesn't fit in their concept of human digital rights.
I think they would protest if somebody gets arrested when he doesn't reveal his wallet password to the police or to the border control because they defend the individual rights for encryption.
But they wouldn't move a single finger if all bitcoin miner, OTC and local trader gets arrested and jailed for 5 years simple because creating and trading virtual currencies doesn't fit to their concept of digital rights.

[evilpete]

EFF's position is an unfortunate, but probably necessary one.

At some point there is going to be a huge fight over Bitcoin in court.  EFF will be there.

However, one standard court tactic is to attack and undermine witnesses / participants if you can.  Sometimes it is easier to attack or discredit the witness than their argument, especially if there is a perception of conflict of interest.

If EFF is funded by Bitcoin then when the inevitable court fight happens it will be used against them.  You could make persuasive arguments that EFF is only involved out of self interest and that their involvement is a conflict of interest itself because they're there to protect their funding source.  It's a load of crap, but that sort of thing adds up in court.

You can bet that there are avid Bitcoin users within EFF, but the EFF entity itself has good reasons not to.  It is unfortunate but understandable.

[casascius]

I visit DefCon every year and EFF is a prominent sponsor/supporter and very available.

I am just going to say this: EFF is not oblivious to bitcoin, and they DO understand.  Their silence is not indifference or conspiracy.  They - the individuals not the organization - may even own Casascius Coins and think they are pretty.  They do not need a "renewed push", they can be trusted to accept Bitcoins when they think the time is right and not when anybody else says they should.

[Freebanking.org]

EFF stopped accepting Bitcoins because of the legal uncertainties and questions about reporting requirements.

The FinCEN guidance only raised more questions instead of providing answers.  There is no sense beating up on non-profits trying navigate the rules that the government doesn't understand.

[Kazimir]

As of today, we can more or less donate bitcoins to the EFF: now that Humble Bundle has finally come to their senses and started accepting Bitcoin, we can buy a bundle for any desired amount of BTC and putting 100% on charity, assigning everything to EFF.

But it would make more sense if they just accepting Bitcoin directly.

[Stephen Gornick]

buy a bundle for any desired amount of BTC and putting 100% on charity, assigning everything to EFF.

Ha, nice!

It will be interesting to see how they react to that!