Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

FetLife Announcement

pastebin.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 110 posts

Re: FetLife Announcement

#81

Post by zakk »

pjlegato wrote: post #78
zakk wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You didn't get my point. I'll try to make it clearer. Nowadays the right to free speech is enforced in a passive way, so-to-say: "Congress shall make no law [...] abridging the freedom of speech". However the Constitution was written in a different era, when doing nothing to abridge the freedom of speech was effectively granting freedom of speech to everyone. Today on the Internet a few corporations can effectively a…

You are proposing the creation of a new right entirely, not merely stronger enforcement of existing rights. Note that I am not taking any position on whether such a new right would be a good or bad idea. I am merely pointing out that what you envision is in no way within the scope of the existing First Amendement.

Correct, I suppose that an active enforcement of free speech could be defined as a new right, maybe that wasn't clear.

Re: FetLife Announcement

#82

Post by mcdoug »

spangry wrote: post #67

Why not Bitpay? I'm not associated with them, and have never been on the merchant side of the transaction, but it seems like a 'safe' bitcoin option. And based on my quick read of their merchant TOS[0] bitpay shouldn't (in theory) have an issue with the nature of FetLife's business. As an aside, it's fun to watch a bunch of old, technically-illiterate and conservative financiers unknowingly sow yet another little see…

They did try Coinbase before and said that it accounted for less than 0.1% of their transaction volume. People just don't use BitCoin enough. I imagine if it was a higher percentage, you could make the case that switching to BTC-only would drive it higher, but at such minimal numbers, staking your entire business on it seems like a bad risk.

Re: FetLife Announcement

#83

Post by tptacek »

mfringel wrote: post #53
tptacek wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Businesses aren't allowed to discriminate against protected classes, but can discriminate against non-protected classes, and can apparently even impinge on protected classes in some ways when their restrictions aren't arbitrary (are tied to some reasonable business concern) and are applied universally. These boundaries don't appear to have anything to do with the First Amendment.

One novel way to think about the First Amendment is that it constrains two specific actors. 1) It explicitly constrains the US Government. 2) It implicitly constrains anyone who approximates the coercive power of the US government. #1 is self-explanatory. #2 implies that, in the US, anyone who attempts to use overwhelming coercive power of any form to silence speech tends to get looked on poorly by the law. If Fetlif…

That is indeed a novel way of looking at the First Amendment.

Re: FetLife Announcement

#84

Post by x1798DE »

kirykl wrote: post #60
Coding_Cat wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can't they just pay boringCorp Ltd. in Bitcoin for use of their "bussiness solution" (that is managing your infrastructure or providing the bitcoin transaction platform). The boringCorp Ltd can cash out for ActualMoney(tm) and I'm sure there is some way of accounting to get that money back to where it needs to go.

Why commit a crime (money laundering) to hide a non crime?

It's not money laundering to rearrange your payment structure to avoid currency conversions. If half your customers pay you in Yen and half your customers pay you in dollars, it's not a crime to use the Yen directly to pay your Japanese expenses.

Same goes with bitcoin - if you can find a server company that accepts your bitcoin - you're under no obligation to only buy things using dollars, assuming you are properly reporting your transactions.

(Disclaimer: IANAL)

Re: FetLife Announcement

#85

Post by Jordrok »

jonlucc wrote: post #21
mschuster91 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think the objection today has mostly to do with the fact that they want to tell us what we do in our bedrooms. Yeah we already see the first signs with Trump defunding abortion organizations. However I don't believe Trump to be behind this, much more Mike Pence. And I'm really, really afraid that someone will either successfully impeach, maim or kill Trump - because then Mike Pence will succeed him, without anyon…

I live in Indiana, and I've been living under a Pence government with a Republican supermajority for the last 4 years. It's better than Trump. Yeah, Pence picks ridiculous fights that cost the state a lot of money and he's a socially regressive person who wants to impose his views on everyone, but he's not an unhinged, unstable narcissist. He doesn't make all of his policy within minutes of it being shown on a cable…

This x1000. Policy-wise, I disagree with Pence on just about everything, but I would take him in a heartbeat over Trump. Pence actually has experience governing and seems to be capable of compromise and handling criticism (see: the Hamilton incident).

Trump on the other hand is a total wild card. He's just as likely to blow up and cause all kinds of unintended consequences as he is to actually accomplish the goals he claims to be aiming for.

Re: FetLife Announcement

#86

Post by zakk »

pzone wrote: post #70
lightedman wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Honest question: do we need better enforcement for the First Amendment rights in the current digital era?" No. What we need is a bill of rights to protect us from corporations that would censor us and otherwise work with the government to oppress our rights. Plain and simple, all big business needs to be regulated at this point. They've proven themselves unworthy of being given free-roam.

It's not lack of regulation that causes businesses to shut down accounts associated with "indecent" content. It's heavy handed regulation that means payment processing companies have to glance over their shoulder every minute in fear that some conservative regulator or lawmaker mounts an effort to attack their business.

Do you have any evidence that payment processing companies are dropping business customers because they fear lawsuits?

Re: FetLife Announcement

#88

Post by sre_ops »

mfringel wrote: post #53
tptacek wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Businesses aren't allowed to discriminate against protected classes, but can discriminate against non-protected classes, and can apparently even impinge on protected classes in some ways when their restrictions aren't arbitrary (are tied to some reasonable business concern) and are applied universally. These boundaries don't appear to have anything to do with the First Amendment.

One novel way to think about the First Amendment is that it constrains two specific actors. 1) It explicitly constrains the US Government. 2) It implicitly constrains anyone who approximates the coercive power of the US government. #1 is self-explanatory. #2 implies that, in the US, anyone who attempts to use overwhelming coercive power of any form to silence speech tends to get looked on poorly by the law. If Fetlif…

First amendment does not cover redress from private businesses dealing with non-protected classes.

Re: FetLife Announcement

#89

Post by seanp2k2 »

LordKano wrote: post #50
zakk wrote: post #35

Two or three big players in the credit card market can effectively shutdown a business. Honest question: do we need better enforcement for the First Amendment rights in the current digital era? Shop owners cannot decide who enters in their shop, should digital service providers be allowed to discriminate? The same happens when someone is banned from Facebook and Twitter: of course there are other options, but he won'…

Two or three big players in the credit card market can effectively shutdown a business. Which is just the tip of the iceberg as to why the idea of a cashless society is so terrifying. Shop owners cannot decide who enters in their shop, should digital service providers be allowed to discriminate? Oddly enough, if you belong to a group or political faction that is highly reviled, they certainly can. Remember when a Wal…

Re: right to refuse service http://www.legalmatch.com/law-library/article/restaurants-ri...

Re: FetLife Announcement

#90

Post by robhu »

problems wrote: post #48
robhu wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it is provable that Coinbase is being used as a means of bypassing VISA et al's restrictions on sites like FetLife, what is stop VISA et al doing the same to Coinbase?

You can already proxy around the CC companies in all too many ways. Buy gift cards, cash cards, heck, prepaid VISA cards for example. They're not going to bother going after this kind of thing, they'd lose money over it. It doesn't make sense from a financial perspective.

Ah. It turns out FetLife were also banned from Coinbase because Coinbase doesn't want to be cut off as a result.
Post reply on HN