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Comment by cctt23 | Hacker News Reader

Ideologically I like where you’re coming from, but legally speaking I think you’re going to prison.

I view it similarly to the creation of BitTorrent. Yes, it was used to facilitate illegal activity, but the creators of the technology themselves didn't host the infrastructure or break the law. We shouldn't be afraid to build new things just because they can be abused.

Also we monitor the network and the overwhelming majority is legal trade. If that changed at some point then it might be a different question.

Bram Cohen didn’t go on Hacker News and invalidate every safe harbor a defense counsel needs, either. Just to be clear, you’ve said, in writing, on behalf of your company, that you are aware of illegal activity happening on your network, that you’re okay with it, and that you monitor the network on which illegal activity is taking place and have determined the legality thereof (enough to know a minority is illegal), and to ice that holy shit cake you even fired a warning shot at pharmaceutical regulators planetwide.

That manner of legislative and regulatory flout is a heat-seeking company missile, and can only end with your eventual incarceration.

Abort thread. Talk to lawyer about further HN commentary. Your discussion here is plainly legally actionable by any investors concerned about your fiduciary responsibilities, and this page will almost certainly be printed out as an exhibit in several legal proceedings, some potentially criminal. I appreciate and respect the change you’re trying to drive, where you’re coming from, and your optimism, but you really, really need to understand the peril you’re in, as unfortunate as it is.

I’m dead serious. DPR got life without parole. They’re not messing around.

Repeat after me: I have no knowledge of illegal activity taking place on the platform, and condemn it.

We live in such a fucked up world that people with good intentions need to lie so they can have a bit of protection against those who would use them as a scapegoat from people who abuse those good intentions, even though everyone knows it is a lie.

FWIW and don't take it personally, but i do hope you are wrong and overreacting.

People that refused to tell obvious lies that everybody knew about used to be burned in a plaza or just thrown away from society.

In fact, they are still thrown away from society. Just in a slower manner. That's some progress anyway.

(I agree entirely, but one should endeavor to make that statement the truth to avoid the sharp end of the stick.)

That fucked up world is called the world, and the world as it’s always been. None of us has to like that, and we can try to change it, but it’s still the world. Ignoring reality in favor of what we want to be true is magical thinking.

Reality changes if society stops accepting it.

See: literal millions of people marching in S Korean streets in recent years because their gov was corrupt.

Correct me if I'm wrong but didn't DPR go well beyond creating a piece of software that might be abused, well beyond even making public statements indicating knowledge of illegal activity? I seem to recall attempted murder for hire, and a few other things that might have had some role to play in that sentence.

For a criminal action to take place, there has to be a violation of existing law. What law do you see being broken here, by the creators of the software, or users? Assuming they are diligent about keeping illegal content and activities off of servers they control.

Has anyone ever been prosecuted for making software, or using it, that was used by another in the commission of a crime? Perhaps there is existing law related to people who write and release software that was intended only for malicious use that could extended.

In the crypto/ICO space, the people getting into hot water have charges related to violation of finance and securities law.

"Has anyone ever been prosecuted for making software, or using it, that was used by another in the commission of a crime?"

Are you serious?

Humour me please!

Every author of virus, worm or ransomware in the wild. Even some cryptography programs were illegal to use not long ago. Specific programs with the intent of committing crimes.

Is it really so easy as to pretend you don't know? Surely that can't hold up for very long.

Bram Cohen didn’t go on Hacker News and invalidate every safe harbor a defense counsel needs, either. Just to be clear, you’ve said, in writing, on behalf of your company, that you are aware of illegal activity happening on your network, that you’re okay with it, and that you monitor the network on which illegal activity is taking place and have determined the legality thereof (enough to know a minority is illegal).

Yeah, he’s going to prison, but that doesn’t mean he’s wrong about the potential value of his platform, and it doesn’t mean his motives aren’t good. It probably does mean that idealism is a shitty defense in court though.

> Yeah, he’s going to prison

No he's not.

As I said in another comment, as far as I know, as long as they don't host any nodes with illegal content, they shouldn't get in trouble just for publishing the protocol, the client protocol and p2p servers code. Otherwise, the inventors of tcp/ip, http, bittorrent, telnet and more would be in prison. And no, just saying "I'm ok with people using it for evil" is not a reason to go to jail, 1st amendment comes into play here. Now, if they start relaying nodes with CP on it, even by accident, that's a difference story of course. My guess is that their software comes with only their safe node on it and people will use search engines to get nodes addresses with CP on them. If anything, this will give more work and trouble to Google, not OpenBazaar.

I wouldn't put anything past the jerks. But truly, what he's said is not very different from what the Tor Project says. And they're primarily funded by the US government.

And like Tor, it's primarily a framework.

If I were doing it, I'd rather be anonymous. But then, I'm just very cautious.

Anonymous from whom? I think you should keep in mind that once 3 letter agency is on you then you'd rather be as famous as Kim Dotcom. At least then you have a chance of some people or organizations like EFF helping you.

If you're "anonymous" they could just charge you not just for your words in public, but for awful reasons and nobody will stand for you since you're just overall ciminal.

First they'd have to find me. And I don't mean as Mirimir. I'd be easy to find, for a TLA. But other personas, I could make them very hard to deanonymize and locate. I've studied many of the major takedowns over the past decade or so. And they all involved quite obvious failures. I wouldn't speak English, for example, but rather another language that I don't use often,

While this is a fascinating subject in theory, in practice I can't imagine deanonymisation is really that hard for three letter agencies, and to a lesser extent five eyes et al. Especially if you paint a large target on yourself like OP claiming to have monitoring capabilities on his network.

I'm going with the "be famous or be afraid" school of thought of your parent comment.

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