On Friday, 18 March 2022 17:04:27 CET f...@centromere.net wrote: > On Fri, 18 Mar 2022 12:41:44 +0100 Paul Boddie <p...@boddie.org.uk> wrote: > > On Friday, 18 March 2022 10:18:06 CET f...@centromere.net wrote: > > > Perhaps a statement about this pending legislation would be > > > relevant and on topic for FSFE: > > > > > > https://www.coincenter.org/new-crypto-sanctions-bill-targets-publishing-> > > > > > code -facilitating-transactions/ > > > > A statement about US legislation targeting cryptocurrency exchanges > > that allegedly facilitate sanctions evasion? > > My understanding is that the legislation is going to attack node > operators -- i.e. users of free/open source software.
Alright, but this is US legislation. So, what can the FSFE do about it? Is it more important that the FSFE make a statement about this than, say, the war on Ukraine which may actually affect FSFE members directly? > My intent is to draw attention to the fact that code is speech, and any > effort to stop people from writing and distributing code is an attack > on free speech itself. Is it stopping people from writing and distributing code, though? If the legislation is as draconian as these lobbyists suggest, Free Software developers would be one of many, many affected interests. For a start, some very big corporations would be on the hook for facilitating "crypto" transactions. Are the likes of IBM, Dell, HP, Microsoft worried? I think that if I were American, wrote some fairly generic code, and then unbeknown to me it ended up running a "crypto" exchange and I were hauled into court to account for my "crimes", the whole thing would overturn the basic legal framework of that nation. If the software were "cryptoexchange in a box", things might be slightly different but you can probably go to jail just for writing malware today. Obviously, malware is rather different in fundamental character from something which might pass as a general trading or exchange platform, which would make pursuing developers a lot more complicated in the latter case. However, you can bet that there is an entire, well-established industry around financial services that would be at risk from such a law and very motivated to see it fail. > > Free Software developers definitely need protection from bad law, but > > the "crypto" business does not deserve our sympathy. > > If you don't stand up for the worst of society, don't expect others to > stand up for you. Well, I will stand up for basic freedoms, certainly. But I am not about to be cajoled into propping up the activities of "the worst of society", or wherever the "crypto" business sits in those rankings, on the say-so of some Washington lobbyists. And again, they are Washington lobbyists, even though I concede that what happens "over there" could also happen "over here". Then again, I think that a lot more needs to be done with regard to financial transparency and tackling fraud and corruption, and I imagine that sooner or later the "crypto" exchanges will receive even more scrutiny than they already do. Although people will protest restrictions on their supposed freedoms, I will observe that some of these people have not particularly noble motivations for resisting further regulation and the curtailment of their activities. > > In case you might be wondering, the author there is Andrew Tanenbaum > > whose reputation in computer science is well established. And he > > isn't wrong about how people have been rather too easily convinced > > that "crypto" offers a solution to problems that could otherwise be > > easily fixed if people genuinely cared about things like poverty and > > opportunity. > > I will not deny that some people are motivated by greed and use virtual > currency to get rich quick. Nor will I deny that some people think > "blockchain" is a magical data structure that can solve all the worlds > problems. I don't think those facts are relevant, because my focus > remains on free speech, even the speech of those with whom I disagree. Free speech is not limitless, though, even though there are swathes of the electorate in the US and other places who fail to recognise this. People do actually have a right to be protected from harm, and that necessarily restricts the capacity of other people to harm them. Don't bother quoting Voltaire on this, as is so often done: many readers of this list are likely to be living in countries where there is no "absolute" free speech and justifiably so. Anyway, here is the act itself: https://www.menendez.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/ digital_asset_sanctions_compliance_enhancement_act_of_2022.pdf Not being a lawyer, maybe I am not reading the act correctly, but "open-source software" is mentioned as a mere artefact alongside "any communication protocol" and other things in the context of the deliberate acts of individuals conducting sanctions-busting distributed finance operations. If you want to read that in the broadest possible (and probably nonsensical) way, that would be one huge dragnet incriminating quite a few people. To be honest, having spent some time looking into this, it all feels like an opportunity for a bunch of "crypto" profiteers to get others to defend their turf in some kind of moral panic: a predictably juvenile "government is coming to get you" ruse. So, now I would actually be even happier to no longer have them wasting everybody else's time. Paul _______________________________________________ Discussion mailing list Discussion@lists.fsfe.org https://lists.fsfe.org/mailman/listinfo/discussion This mailing list is covered by the FSFE's Code of Conduct. All participants are kindly asked to be excellent to each other: https://fsfe.org/about/codeofconduct
