jgarzik goes berzerk in #bitcoin-dev, wtf?

[paulie_w]

An Iranian joining the dev team, that would heat things up!

what an awesome idea

[niko]

I am late to this party, but in case anyone is still reading, here are my thoughts:

Regarding legality of what was said in IRC - discussions of this kind are perfectly legal in the US, Finland, and I am pretty sure in Iran, too. Regarding legality of providing Bitcoin software to individuals in Iran - I am not a lawyer, but even a lawyer would admit it's a complex issue depending on your jurisdiction and your specific actions.

Everything Adolf Hitler did in Germany was legal. Everyone should think about this for a moment.

Finally, and most importantly, there is the issue of hypocrisy: if my reactions to illegal actions are selective, I am a hypocrite. Specifically, if Jeff Garzik considers provisioning of open-source Bitcoin software to people in Iran to be illegal, and acts to prevent this from happening or even being discussed, he should be prepared to act in similar fashion when other illegal activities take place. For example, war crimes committed by the individuals in US forces or the government. What has he done about it? Dropping bombs and depleted uranium on the civilians?  Executives of Bayer who knowingly sold for profit HIV-infected materials, and FDA agents who were compliant?  Executives and workers of Trafigura, who knowingly and for profits dumped tons of toxic waste on people of Ivory Cost? Blackwater employees murdering civilians indiscriminately? Madeleine Albright, who claimed "the price was worth it" when asked about tens of thousands of children who died directly as a consequence of the US trade sanctions? The doctor behind MKULTRA experiments jn the US and Canada?  The Bush Five? Oliver North?

[MatthewLM]

Everything Adolf Hitler did in Germany was legal

Why did he go to prison?

[Nicolai Larsen]

Everything Adolf Hitler did in Germany was legal

Why did he go to prison?

He died.

[MatthewLM]

Everything Adolf Hitler did in Germany was legal

Why did he go to prison?

He died.

I'm talking about the coup d'etat, and the prison sentence Hitler got as a result.

[casascius]

For example, war crimes committed by the individuals in US forces or the government. What has he done about it? Dropping bombs and depleted uranium on the civilians?  Executives of Bayer who knowingly sold for profit HIV-infected materials, and FDA agents who were compliant?  Executives and workers of Trafigura, who knowingly and for profits dumped tons of toxic waste on people of Ivory Cost? Blackwater employees murdering civilians indiscriminately? Madeleine Albright, who claimed "the price was worth it" when asked about tens of thousands of children who died directly as a consequence of the US trade sanctions? The doctor behind MKULTRA experiments jn the US and Canada?  The Bush Five? Oliver North?

All of these are off-topic for #bitcoin-dev and I would expect persistence in discussing them after being asked not to would probably be met with similar results.

So would an in-depth discussion of the latest episode of Honey Boo Boo, or whether Anderson Cooper is gay, or the requirements to get into medical school.

[niko]

Everything Adolf Hitler did in Germany was legal

Why did he go to prison?

He died.

I'm talking about the coup d'etat, and the prison sentence Hitler got as a result.

I'm talking about everything he did in the Nazi Germany. Don't get distracted.

[Rudd-O]

Seems to me that it's also expressively forbidden for US citizens to create and distribute currencies?

Liberty Dollars was killed because the issuer behaved in a way that was clearly intended to defraud customers (designing the Liberty Dollar to look like US Dollars and encouraging businesses to give change to USD customers in Liberty Dollars without informing the customer). Stopping the issuer stopped the currency.
 

This is a lie -- in fact, it was the lie that was used to cage von NotHaus.  Liberty Dollars looked nothing like U.S. dollars -- the prosecution made the whole thing up to have an excuse to put von NotHaus in a cage.

[niko]

For example, war crimes committed by the individuals in US forces or the government. What has he done about it? Dropping bombs and depleted uranium on the civilians?  Executives of Bayer who knowingly sold for profit HIV-infected materials, and FDA agents who were compliant?  Executives and workers of Trafigura, who knowingly and for profits dumped tons of toxic waste on people of Ivory Cost? Blackwater employees murdering civilians indiscriminately? Madeleine Albright, who claimed "the price was worth it" when asked about tens of thousands of children who died directly as a consequence of the US trade sanctions? The doctor behind MKULTRA experiments jn the US and Canada?  The Bush Five? Oliver North?

All of these are off-topic for #bitcoin-dev and I would expect persistence in discussing them after being asked not to would probably be met with similar results.

So would an in-depth discussion of the latest episode of Honey Boo Boo, or whether Anderson Cooper is gay, or the requirements to get into medical school.

The guy was kicked out because he was supposedly promoting illegal activity, not because he was off-topic. I was wondering if Jeff Garzik did anything regarding illegal activities I listed above. I hope he comes here and help us understand what happened, and more importantly what will be happening in the future regarding his involvement with Bitcoin and people in Iran.

[Rudd-O]

Besides, why the hell are we to accept getting bossed around by the USA all the time? USA is imposing all kinds of regulations internationally.

It's their algorithm. US government institutions (NIST and NSA) invented it and own it.

This is a crazy theory that has no basis in fact OR law.  You have no idea what you're saying.  The algorithm isn't even patented or copyrighted -- when the U.S. government produces any intellectual inventions, they are not property of anyone.  Read the law before talking nonsense.

[MatthewLM]

Everything Adolf Hitler did in Germany was legal

Why did he go to prison?

He died.

I'm talking about the coup d'etat, and the prison sentence Hitler got as a result.

I'm talking about everything he did in the Nazi Germany. Don't get distracted.

He broke international law, does that count to you?

[Rudd-O]

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.

Why are people ignoring this fact. It is illegal.

It's not a fact, and it isn't even legally correct, to say that SHA-256 is "property" of anyone.  People doing business as "U.S. government" may threaten you with a cage if you give an implementation of SHA-256 to people they dislike, but that doesn't mean "SHA-256 is their property" -- it only means that these people are sociopaths.

[Rudd-O]

To give an example of how far Iran has to go to avoid any U.S. dollars, look at how they sell oil.
First they ship the oil for sale to Turkey. They cannot be paid in dollars so they take Turkish Lira. Then they go shopping for gold bars in Istanbul. The gold is then brought in small amounts to Dubai by couriers. From there the gold can be used to buy things Iran needs.  

This gets Iranians +1 cleverness points in my book.  A peaceful solution to an agressive threat by sociopaths.

[casascius]

This is a lie -- in fact, it was the lie that was used to cage von NotHaus.  Liberty Dollars looked nothing like U.S. dollars -- the prosecution made the whole thing up to have an excuse to put von NotHaus in a cage.

Unless the prosecution made up the photos of them circulating on the Internet, I'd have to disagree.  They aren't replicas, but they are similar enough in style to be plausible as US dollars.

[chrisrico]

All of these are off-topic for #bitcoin-dev and I would expect persistence in discussing them after being asked not to would probably be met with similar results.

So would an in-depth discussion of the latest episode of Honey Boo Boo, or whether Anderson Cooper is gay, or the requirements to get into medical school.

Ok, so after the warning if you changed the topic to translating Bitcoin into a foreign language, should that be met with a ban?

13:22:34 <jgarzik> On topic or /ban.
13:23:00 <ThomasV_> jeremias: let us discuss how to translate bitcoin-qt in farsi
13:23:05 * Joric votes for topic
13:23:38 <jeremias> ThomasV_: yes, I've got couple of guys who would be probably willing to do it
13:23:49 <jeremias> multibit is probably already translated to Farsi, any other clients?
13:24:03 * jeremias was kicked by jgarzik (encouraging illegal activity)
13:26:07 * jgarzik sets mode: +b *!*@*.fi

Note the warning, then the switch to on topic discussion, and then the ban. In fact, it looks like Jeff was so zealous in the wielding of his banhammer that he initially banned everyone from Finnish ISPs.

Unless the prosecution made up the photos of them circulating on the Internet, I'd have to disagree.  They aren't replicas, but they are similar enough in style to be plausible as US dollars.

This looks more like monopoly money than federal reserve notes to me.

[casascius]

This looks more like monopoly money than federal reserve notes to me.

Agreed on the colored notes, but definitely not on the coins.

[Daily Anarchist]

tl;dr

Governments love cowards who don't challenge their authority.

[casascius]

tl;dr

Governments love cowards who don't challenge their authority.

They also love fools who challenge it so overtly so that they can be taken down with a minimum of public outcry.

[chrisrico]

Mike, Farsi is spoken natively in (according to Wikipedia) Iran, Afghanistan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Bahrain, and Azerbaijan.

I don't understand why you're defending the ban so hard.

[FreeMoney]

the only acceptable explanation is that jgarzik knows something about the technical limitations (weaknesses, vulnerabilities) of the currency as it stands. anything else is extremely suspicious.

Right... when you compare the probabilities of [someone being nuts or having a bad day or disagreeing with your values] to [critical bitcoin vulnerability] it's all just so clear.