431–440 of 526 posts
The commenters saying be reasonable, they were sanctioned, GitHub had to do this, should look into the last time code was made illegal or similar turmoil and what the developer community did in response…It was not accepting sanctions or govt failures to understand code as “well that’s that.” - Phil Zimmerman (PGP) was under criminal investigation for arms exports by releasing the code for consumer encryption. The cas…
This is an overreach, and it is going to backfire. The target here is a software package, essentially speech so, one step down That hill. At least congress isn't deluded, corrupt, and senile enough to try this. Edit: further, it seems they're going to have to shut down Ethereum too, because Tornado Cash's contract is a person, and subgroup of Ethereum under the definition of entity which falls under the definition of…
If the software is performing actions that are illegal, such as money laundering, for an entity that is a threat to national security, that is no longer covered by free speech. Right? Having or writing the code may be covered by free speech but actually using it to do something is not the same thing. I don't believe that EO is related to this case. These are OFAC sanctions against the entity Tornado Cash and its rela…
To rephrase, since Ethereum network, which is an person in the context of the EO, facilitates Tornado Cash's contract, it is "complicit" with the activities as well.
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No. I disagree. Github should not be able to block anyone they want. We went through this about a century ago with railways, antitrust, and Standard Oil. I won't step through the details, but can provide more background if anyone cares. We landed with the concept of a "common carrier." Railways, as well as telecommunications companies, ISPs, public airlines, bus lines, taxicab companies, phone companies, cruise ships…
> As an individual or a small business, ones does not have an alternative to - Microsoft Word — Google Docs? Apple Pages? Zoho Docs? OpenOffice? - GitHub — GitLab? sourcehut? Bitbucket? Gitea? - Facebook — Twitter? Instagram? TikTok? SnapChat? The thing about Git is that it's free software. Anyone can run their own server for very little money. If you get banned from the railroad, you can't just get your own train.
The value comes from the network.
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No. I disagree. Github should not be able to block anyone they want. We went through this about a century ago with railways, antitrust, and Standard Oil. I won't step through the details, but can provide more background if anyone cares. We landed with the concept of a "common carrier." Railways, as well as telecommunications companies, ISPs, public airlines, bus lines, taxicab companies, phone companies, cruise ships…
> As an individual or a small business, ones does not have an alternative to github Why do you say that?
And that's where all the developers who contribute to my projects have accounts.
There's nothing magical about the github system, but it's where the network of projects and developers lives.
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Companies try not to break laws in general. If they think doing business with you will create a liability for them, they have a freedom of association right to deny you service.
Giving a legal answer to a moral question is backwards, I think. I understand the mechanics of how it works, but I’m asking how it should, not whether it does. (Franklin’s opinions on how trials ought to go are also hardly representative of the legal practices of the late 18th century.) It is not at all a universal opinion that non-natural persons should have freedom of association at all or in this manner. I’m not t…
OFAC sanctions can be appealed.
People on Twitter are either wilfully dumb or simply ignorant. GitHub had to do this. It was required of them by law. Tornado was sanctioned . > These prohibitions include the making of any contribution or provision of funds, goods, or services by, to, or for the benefit of any blocked person and the receipt of any contribution or provision of funds, goods, or services from any such person. This is, unambiguously, di…
Does Tornado being sanctioned mean that everyone who has contributed in the past also needs to be blocked? (It’s not clear from the thread whether the people blocked contributed after, or only before, the sanction.) For what it’s worth, I don’t see much evidence of people being upset at GitHub in the thread. There’s talk about decentralized alternatives, but not much actual pinning the blame on them.
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> it is being used by itself to go after a piece of software that provides general financial privacy to anybody, and not merely financial privacy for criminals The archetypal laundromat also does normal folks’ laundry. It just also launders money for criminals. I’m sure they would happily layer money for non-criminals but nobody does that. > banking analog would be if the feds went after brick and mortar banks for al…
> I’m sure they would happily layer money for non-criminals but nobody does that. This thread is full of these blind assertions that nobody except criminals wants financial privacy. They are patently false. > If they did that without checking anyone’s identity and then, after learning—from law enforcement no less—that criminals were using them to launder money, kept going, business as usual, hell yes they’d be shut d…
If the operators know that people are using their service to launder money, and they keep operating their service without doing anything to prevent that, then… yes? What do you think should happen? They just get to keep doing crime?
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Oof. The confusing title could do with some editing then (capitalize 'Tornado' for one).
I thought they were contributing to the Python web framework called Tornado (quite popular especially before asyncio caught on, but still well-known nowadays).
The commenters saying be reasonable, they were sanctioned, GitHub had to do this, should look into the last time code was made illegal or similar turmoil and what the developer community did in response…It was not accepting sanctions or govt failures to understand code as “well that’s that.” - Phil Zimmerman (PGP) was under criminal investigation for arms exports by releasing the code for consumer encryption. The cas…
A legitimate example of free speech. Zimmerman published his code in the appendix of scholarly book, in addition to posting online in source & binary form.
> - Aaron Swartz passed away via suicide in 2013 under threat of 35 years in prison and a lot else for downloading from JSTOR programmatically
A terrible example, and not comparable to your first example. Swartz gained physical access to a network room he was not supposed to be, inside a building he was not supposed to be, connected a laptop to a LAN he was not granted access.... When you say programmatically, you must mean the parts where he proceeded to download JSTOR using his laptop? Has was criminally trespassing, accessing a network he knew he wasn't allowed to access. The tragic outcome was due to... hate to say it, he had well known mental issues that amplified the stress he felt when being indicted for a crime he knew he was guilty.
So I get what you're saying, but you might want to limit your examples to abjectly reasonable ones that withstand scrutiny. Otherwise it might look like a bandwagon, generalization, or even false dichotomy.
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> I’m sure they would happily layer money for non-criminals but nobody does that. This thread is full of these blind assertions that nobody except criminals wants financial privacy. They are patently false. > If they did that without checking anyone’s identity and then, after learning—from law enforcement no less—that criminals were using them to launder money, kept going, business as usual, hell yes they’d be shut d…
> You're basically saying that once a service gets used by a criminal, then operating that service becomes illegal because it is furthering criminal acts. If the operators know that people are using their service to launder money, and they keep operating their service without doing anything to prevent that, then… yes? What do you think should happen? They just get to keep doing crime?