jgarzik goes berzerk in #bitcoin-dev, wtf?

[Gabi]

jgarzik is quite right. The SHA-256 algorithm is property of the US and export regulations for SHA-256 expressively forbid exporting the algorithm or products based on the algorithm to Iran.

Lololol. So US will invade europe if we europeans give bitcoin to iran?  

I have a awesome idea: stop hosting services in US.

Seriously, iran people are humans, it's not like they are aliens or zombies

[greyhawk]

Stopping the issuer stopped the currency.

How would you stop the Bitcoin issuer?

You don't. The examples illustrated that those former currencies were not illegal, but the behaviour of the issuer was illegal, thus killing the currency. With bitcoin illegal behaviour of certain issuers is irrelevant.

[Phinnaeus Gage]

Timing is everything.

+1 for wisdom

-1 for cowardice

Let me use an analogy.

If you start doing mma, will you gradually go the ranks, and then when you're ready, challenge the best fighter, or will you as a newbie challenge the world champ immediately ?

It depends on if your name is Bob Sapp. 

I was going to name some other, but held my pen till I read your post: http://www.bullshido.net/forums/showthread.php?t=116634

The last time I was banned here was due to posting off-topic, of which I probably was guilty, for my postings were getting somewhat out of hand. My last post, though its first part was off-topic (like in this post), the rest of the post was on-topic, but vague in nature, akin to if I only added a single sentence following the first sentence of this post.

That said, I hope this episode gets resolved in a satisfied matter. For the record, I'm leaning on the side of Jeremias, and not for the reasons of I-can-relate or feel sorry for him. Also, currently I have no ills toward jgarzik.

~Bruno K~

[casascius]

I am going to have to agree with jgarzik here.

We as a community are asking for swift trouble from US govt bullies if we are actively marketing Bitcoin to Iran.  It has nothing to do with whether it's legal, moral, ethical or not. We are lucky they have left this project alone thus far.  Doing anything that looks like marketing to Iran will change that quickly.

Also, bitcoin-dev is a publicly logged channel.  If I am a Bitcoin developer on a publicly logged chat channel where my actions could be scrutinized by the media and the world and someone wants to discuss Iran, kicking and banning in a publicly visible manner would be prudent.  That is truly not a good place to talk about that subject.

I sure as hell would not want to discuss bringing Bitcoin to Iran in any place where my discussion was being logged and published.

I'm disappointed. I shall not purchase US government physical bitcoins anymore!

Which part do you find disappointing?  Suppose we were dumb instead of smart and took the opposite stance and made a point of parading Bitcoin to Iran.  You would be so happy you might be willing to purchase physical bitcoins, except they'd probably be as hard to find and as expensive as Liberty Dollars as I'd be less likely to be around to continue to produce them.  Bitcoin and the blockchain might be bulletproof but community members, developers, and those facilitating exchange are not.  If I were jgarzik I would view someone wanting to discuss Iran with me in #bitcoin-dev as a threat to my personal safety.

If you (everybody) want to work toward bring Bitcoin to Iran while throwing middle fingers to governments, clearly you understand no one can stop you, do what you must I guess.  But, use your heads and do not publicly involve those individuals who are publicly involved with bitcoin under their real life identity.  I am disappointed that this isn't so obvious that it even has to be asked!

[myself]

I am going to have to agree with jgarzik here.

We as a community are asking for swift trouble from US govt bullies if we are actively marketing Bitcoin to Iran.  It has nothing to do with whether it's legal, moral, ethical or not. We are lucky they have left this project alone thus far.  Doing anything that looks like marketing to Iran will change that quickly.

Also, bitcoin-dev is a publicly logged channel.  If I am a Bitcoin developer on a publicly logged chat channel where my actions could be scrutinized by the media and the world and someone wants to discuss Iran, kicking and banning in a publicly visible manner would be prudent.  That is truly not a good place to talk about that subject.

I sure as hell would not want to discuss bringing Bitcoin to Iran in any place where my discussion was being logged and published.

I'm disappointed. I shall not purchase US government physical bitcoins anymore!

Which part do you find disappointing?  Suppose we were dumb instead of smart and took the opposite stance and made a point of parading Bitcoin to Iran.  You would be so happy you might be willing to purchase physical bitcoins, except they'd probably be as hard to find and as expensive as Liberty Dollars as I'd be less likely to be around to continue to produce them.  Bitcoin and the blockchain might be bulletproof but community members, developers, and those facilitating exchange are not.  If I were jgarzik I would view someone wanting to discuss Iran with me in #bitcoin-dev as a threat to my personal safety.

If you (everybody) want to work toward bring Bitcoin to Iran while throwing middle fingers to governments, clearly you understand no one can stop you, do what you must I guess.  But, use your heads and do not publicly involve those individuals who are publicly involved with bitcoin under their real life identity.  I am disappointed that this isn't so obvious that it even has to be asked!

+1

[cbeast]

Didn't Iran invent language? They should not have exported that.

[Serith]

I am going to have to agree with jgarzik here.

We as a community are asking for swift trouble from US govt bullies if we are actively marketing Bitcoin to Iran.  It has nothing to do with whether it's legal, moral, ethical or not. We are lucky they have left this project alone thus far.  Doing anything that looks like marketing to Iran will change that quickly.

Also, bitcoin-dev is a publicly logged channel.  If I am a Bitcoin developer on a publicly logged chat channel where my actions could be scrutinized by the media and the world and someone wants to discuss Iran, kicking and banning in a publicly visible manner would be prudent.  That is truly not a good place to talk about that subject.

I sure as hell would not want to discuss bringing Bitcoin to Iran in any place where my discussion was being logged and published.

I understand your reasoning, but there is a danger of taking it too far, incrementally it can bring community to a point where it will agree with some drastic change of Bitcoin protocol. For example, it is possible to hard fork Bitcoin to accept source address as valid only if it was produced from a seed that belongs to a government, so government will be in control of issuing new address and will map real identity to every bitcoin transaction. Which is why I was infuriated with Peter Vessenes, Executive Director of Bitcoin Foundation, who made a careless comment about Bitcoin privacy which made me believe that he will be ok with a change like that.

[theymos]

I would not have banned Jeremias. (And he's welcome on this forum.) We aren't likely to gain much ground by strictly following stupid laws and trying to change the political/legal environment. IMO, widespread agorism is the best way to reduce the government's control over us. Iran might be a good place to try this sort of thing on a large scale.

But in case I'm wrong, it's probably not so bad to have parts of the Bitcoin community that are more concerned about laws. Just so long as our most important principles don't get lost while trying to follow laws.

[Gabi]

Didn't Iran invent language? They should not have exported that.

I am sure it's illegal to use language because iran invented it. We are all criminals.

[sunnankar]

If they want to use it in Iran they'll have to figure out their own way to get it. Or use an eWallet service. Whatever.

Precisely. The issue is who bears the cost in the fight for freedom?

If a particular person in Iran wants freedom then they should pay the cost for it. Trying to shift the cost onto jgarzik or any other Bitcoin devs results in moral hazard because individuals want to freeride off others contributions. The Bitcoin devs are already paying tremendous costs in terms of specialization of labor in the fight for freedom.

Those who think the Bitcoin dev team should pay increased costs for the fight for freedom to extend the benefits to individual persons in Iran who may or may not want that freedom is not only destructive to the Bitcoin product but economically inefficient.

The Bitcoin Project does not need to go looking for dragons to slay; instead, Bitcoin should be a passive weapon that dragon-slayers can pick up when they go looking for dragons.

[justusranvier]

How many people are aware that you can do anonymous IRC over Freenet?

There's already an existing #bitcoin channel in FLIP that could stand to have some more traffic.

[casascius]

I understand that it's much easier for someone from Finland to promote Bitcoin to Iran than it is for someone who is from the US. It's a delicate situation. Personally I'm taking a strong stance on this one and I'm forced to call cowardice on certain people, no choice.

I can't speak for jgarzik, but maybe if you were discussing Iran with him in somewhere more private than a chat channel whose logs are published to the world.  Who knows, maybe he would say "jesus christ, this is big news for bitcoin, but can we please not fucking discuss it where others are watching?"

I see nothing wrong with enjoying alcohol, but if I had to live for a year in Saudi Arabia and one day had a local news crew pointing a camera at me and someone asked me to talk about my previous employment at a US brewery (despite it being totally legal), I'd be like hell no!  That's just common sense, not cowardice.

[greyhawk]

Didn't Iran invent language? They should not have exported that.

They certainly should have patented it at WPO.  

[Technomage]

Casascius and everyone else, I think there is some confusion here. No one is proposing we launch a massive marketing campaign to get Bitcoin to Iran. Even I think that is not a smart move. However, I strongly think we shouldn't be actively reducing the possibility of regular people in Iran to use Bitcoin.

In fact I think that translating Bitcoin-Qt to Farsi, LocalBitcoins to Farsi etc, is a noble goal. Just like translating them to all other languages is. I think it's smart to provide the tools for people to use Bitcoin if they wish but actively and publicly encouraging people in Iran to use it is not necessarily a good idea and I understand the risk it might pose.

Making it harder for them to use Bitcoin in purpose is in my mind ethically worse than anything. From a practical sense active promotion would be stupid as well though, so why won't we find a middleground. The reaction Jeff had in IRC was not a middleground, the ban was out of line. Jeremias didn't encourage illegal activities, all he wants is to make Bitcoin available everywhere.

[Gabi]

Point is, do you guys realize that the bitcoin client can be easily downloaded from the website? And it does not state "if you are from iran do not download" lol

banning someone because he wrote an article?   That sucks, a lot.

[cbeast]

This discussion isn't about politics, but about fear. I am seeing a disturbing trend in Bitcoin development towards centralization with e-wallets (bitcoincard), tainting, coloring, proof-of-stake, etc. It is what it is. The threat from the state is real.

[Technomage]

I would not have banned Jeremias. (And he's welcome on this forum.) We aren't likely to gain much ground by strictly following stupid laws and trying to change the political/legal environment. IMO, widespread agorism is the best way to reduce the government's control over us. Iran might be a good place to try this sort of thing on a large scale.

But in case I'm wrong, it's probably not so bad to have parts of the Bitcoin community that are more concerned about laws. Just so long as our most important principles don't get lost while trying to follow laws.

I agree with this. Bitcoin community is a diverse bunch and that is good. I would never have reacted this way without the ban, that was out of line. I already knew Jeff thinks this way so I'm not massively surprised about how he reacted but I thought it was out of line. I'm an IRC veteran (almost 15 years now) so I have experience in moderating it. The only reasoning I could see for the ban was fear and that is concerning.

[casascius]

Casascius and everyone else, I think there is some confusion here. No one is proposing we launch a massive marketing campaign to get Bitcoin to Iran. Even I think that is not a smart move. However, I strongly think we shouldn't be actively reducing the possibility of regular people in Iran to use Bitcoin.

I don't think kicking someone off an internet chat channel is actively reducing the possibility of Iran use of Bitcoin.

In fact I think that translating Bitcoin-Qt to Farsi, LocalBitcoins to Farsi etc, is a noble goal. Just like translating them to all other languages is. I think it's smart to provide the tools for people to use Bitcoin if they wish but actively and publicly encouraging people in Iran to use it is not necessarily a good idea and I understand the risk it might pose.

I didn't see any disagreement with translating it to Farsi, I just saw a well-founded unwillingness to allow it to be discussed in a publicly logged bitcoin developers' chat channel.

[Technomage]

I don't think kicking someone off an internet chat channel is actively reducing the possibility of Iran use of Bitcoin.

Based on his comments before the ban he is very much against talking about it at all. There are many other public venues of talking about it and I think this thread and the coverage it currently has in Reddit is actually much more public than a darn IRC channel. What he did gave it 100 times more publicity than it would've got if there was just a discussion in an IRC channel.

I also wanted to comment on the Silk Road comment that you removed and I'll just say that I think the policies regarding talk about Silk Road are ridiculous as well. Silk Road is an anonymous marketplace by definition. Talking about it, using it, does NOT imply illegal activities. Silk Road itself is NOT illegal. I have actually consulted this with a lawyer because we've run into users in our service that talk to us about Silk Road. As long as the user doesn't mention drugs or other illegal substances, we have no problem providing service to people who mention Silk Road.

[becoin]

I can't believe my eyes when reading all this bs reasoning.  

So, we should discourage Iranians using bitcoin because the US government says so? Are you crazy?