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GitHub deleted accounts of people who contributed to Tornado Cash repos

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Re: GitHub deleted accounts of people who contributed to Tornado Cash repos

#441

Post by jakelazaroff »

blagie wrote: post #433
jakelazaroff wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Thing is, if I got banned from github, I couldn't contribute to pytorch or many other projects I've contributed to. And if I ran my own server, no one would contribute to mine. The value comes from the network.

That's between you and the maintainers of those projects. You can contribute to different projects, or they can use a different forge. Your argument is basically "GitHub shouldn't be allowed to deny me service because I want to use it," but you're not entitled to something just because you want it.

Re: GitHub deleted accounts of people who contributed to Tornado Cash repos

#442

Post by tedmiston »

aaronchall wrote: post #402
uranusjr wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thought they were contributing to the Python web framework called Tornado (quite popular especially before asyncio caught on, but still well-known nowadays).

Just reading the comments, I also was thinking this was about Python's tornado library until I recognized it wasn't that. The title needs improvement. CC @dang

I emailed a title suggestion switching to "... Tornado Cash ..." for clarification.

I wish typing "cc @dang" did something, but to the best of my knowledge it does not / isn't monitored vs email.

Re: GitHub deleted accounts of people who contributed to Tornado Cash repos

#443

Post by junon »

mananaysiempre wrote: post #145
PeterisP wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, Github blocking an account is not considered "punishment" according to criminal law or constitution, only standard contract law would apply and I believe Github has the right to terminate such contracts if they wish. This consideration would apply if and only if the government would actually pursue criminal charges against someone who contributed to TornadoCash - which they possibly would if someone would do st…

> Github blocking an account is not considered "punishment" according to criminal law or constitution I understand this to be the case. I don’t understand how anyone considers this to be even remotely sane.

Sanctions are orders to cease providing service, aid, goods or funding. Which part is unclear?

Re: GitHub deleted accounts of people who contributed to Tornado Cash repos

#444

Post by dang »

moron4hire wrote: post #20
prvit wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“Money laundering” is a fake crime designed to make it easier to prosecute people who may or may not also have committed real crimes.

Yeah, sure, and taxation is theft. Got it.

Would you please stop breaking the site guidelines like this? We've had to ask you several times before.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: GitHub deleted accounts of people who contributed to Tornado Cash repos

#445

Post by dang »

drexlspivey wrote: post #36
moron4hire wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, sure, and taxation is theft. Got it.

Yeah, sure, and sending money to protestors means you are a terrorist. Got it.

Please don't respond to a bad comment by breaking the site guidelines yourself. That only makes things worse.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: GitHub deleted accounts of people who contributed to Tornado Cash repos

#447

Post by [deleted] »

salawat wrote: post #348
bhaak wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernstein_v._United_States > After four years and one regulatory change, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that software source code was speech protected by the First Amendment and that the government's regulations preventing its publication were unconstitutional.

The 9th Circuit has also ruled that bees are fish[1], and has regularly bucked precedent that to most of the country is settled jurisprudence. [2] This escalating to a point one of the Circuit's own judges began lambasting the Circuit itself. [3] https://www.cnn.com/2022/06/06/us/california-bees-fish-court... https://www.courthousenews.com/carrying-guns-in-public-is-no... https://reason.com/2022/01/26/a-federal-judge…

[deleted]

Re: GitHub deleted accounts of people who contributed to Tornado Cash repos

#448

Post by vel0city »

IG_Semmelweiss wrote: post #409
vel0city wrote: post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An organization doesn't become a monopoly just because they are large. Otherwise you might as well claim McDonalds has a monopoly on food and Nike has a monopoly on shoes. There are tons of competitors to GitHub out there.

What matters is notthe list of competitors, but instead the market share. I don't think anyone can say Nike has 20% of all US customers of shoes. But its almost certain that Github has > 20% of all US customers in software development. Here lies the point. In order to enforce antitrust, there should be a clear line that once crossed, you are deemed a common carrier or something to that effect. I think even as low as…

Nike has >30% of the revenues of the sports clothing industry. I guess Nike is a common carrier, they have to let me in their stores and the government must force them to sell their shoes at government regulated prices. If there's not a store near me, they must build one for me or offer me shipping at equal prices to everyone else. After all, they can't discriminate just because I'm far away from their closest distributor, they're a common carrier. Oh yeah, guess they need to build a store, because I don't have internet and I don't have a phone, so not making it available to me as someone who only walks through uninhabited deserts would be discriminating against a customer.

https://csimarket.com/stocks/competitionSEG2.php?code=NKE

I truly don't understand the logic of stating every organization with 10% market share of any kind of product is now instantly a "common carrier". To me that's massively watering down the meaning of "common carrier" past the point of usefulness. A common carrier classicially is when there's realistically no possible alternative. There's really only going to be one or two railways going through a city or town. It doesn't make sense for there to be a dozen different water systems or coax telecommunications providers or fiber providers or electrical providers in a city. But if Nike doesn't want to sell me shoes I can just go to Sketchers. Or Addidas. Or Vans. Or Footlocker. Or Journeys. Or Kohls. Or any other of a dozen different department stores. Or Target/Walmart/other big box store. If Nike doesn't want to sell me shoes, there's tons of other options. Even just buying Nikes at a different retailer! And that's just in person shopping, never mind the literally thousands of retailers online willing to ship me shoes!

But no. Nike is now a common carrier. They must do everything they can to ensure I can buy their shoes at a government-ensured fair price. So they must build a store in the middle of nowhere to ensure I can easily walk there, look at their wares, and decide I'd rather just buy from TOMS.

Then the idea that GitHub is a common carrier is even more distant. There's lots of options out there. You could use GitLab, Bitbucket, Team Foundation Server, JetBrains Space, Beanstalk, AWS CodeCommit, Google Cloud Source, Sourcehut, and so many others. They're all right there on the internet. You don't have to sell your house and move to the next county over to use Bitbucket. You just change your remote and push.

Re: GitHub deleted accounts of people who contributed to Tornado Cash repos

#449

Post by blagie »

jakelazaroff wrote: post #441
blagie wrote: post #433

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thing is, if I got banned from github, I couldn't contribute to pytorch or many other projects I've contributed to. And if I ran my own server, no one would contribute to mine. The value comes from the network.

That's between you and the maintainers of those projects. You can contribute to different projects, or they can use a different forge. Your argument is basically "GitHub shouldn't be allowed to deny me service because I want to use it," but you're not entitled to something just because you want it.

The reason we have antitrust regulations is because the world ended up in a very bad place without them.

This: "GitHub shouldn't be allowed to deny me service because I want to use it" isn't a fair paraphrasing of my argument. I don't think it's likely that github would ban me specifically.

My argument is Microsoft (and Google, Facebook, etc.) shouldn't be allowed to cancel/bankrupt/ostracize competitors, critics, political opponents, or others they don't like. That means we should all be able to access those platforms under equal RAND terms.

If Microsoft is allowed to play dirty, the major impact on me is indirect, in that we will have fewer checks-and-balances in society (people and organizations will be afraid to criticise them), less competition, less innovation, more political corruption, etc.

Antitrust hasn't kept up with technology. In this case, though, we developed perfectly good mechanisms (and learned what happens without them) a century ago.

Re: GitHub deleted accounts of people who contributed to Tornado Cash repos

#450

Post by jakelazaroff »

mindslight wrote: post #440
jakelazaroff wrote: post #437

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

Try applying your argument to the electric company. If a service operator has knowledge of a specific crime being committed one can make the argument that they're obligated to report the known details. But in general knowing that nonspecific criminals may be using your service does not imply that you have to shut your service down to hinder those criminals.

Tornado Cash isn't an electric company, though. There are different rules. Financial institutions are often subject to KYC rules that require them to proactively vet their customers.

You're writing as though this were uncharted legal territory, trying to reason from first principles when you can truly consider a business a criminal enterprise, but we've had laws on the books for decades for the express purpose of stopping people from doing exactly what Tornado Cash does.

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