2. I doubt I'll be able to implement it entirely myself regardless.
3. even if I or someone else does, what is bad about it, exactly? It'll be just software. A set of Ruby/JS files. Everyone would be able to run a node so clearly punishing a mere guy who turned idea into reality, but who doesn't run the operations himself, won't be a feasible option.
This is dangerously naive. This is exactly what "they" do, if only to brutally discourage anyone else from trying it.
Said example must include:
* open source implementation released to the public
* author did not directly do anything obviously illegal, or profit by anyone else doing it
* overwhelming force under colour of law
* He built some software to upload images to a web site.
* A porn site then used it without his knowledge.
* He was sentenced to death.
Miss a detail, change the story.
Purposely remained anonymous because he knew they would target him. Bitcoin foundation claims that as creator of Bitcoin, he is liable for every transaction under new FinCen laws being considered. https://bitcoinfoundation.org/blog/?p=163
It would help if the author of this software doesn't call it 'Silk Rd 2.0' or reference online narcotics trade in any way. It should be called 'P2P open marketplace' which makes a huge difference during your trial when they claim you purposely set it up to violate US law instead of being able to argue you are an innocent software developer. Just look at weev's trial how they manipulated everything he said on IRC to make him look as criminal as possible.
Stephen Watt (the_uT) also merely wrote a piece of software he didn't use himself, nor did he profit from and he went to prison after Albert Gonzales used it to steal a ton of money with. It was sort of released to the public, dumped in an IRC room
[1] http://www.amazon.com/Antifragile-Things-That-Gain-Disorder/...
It might not be true, but remember, absence of evidence is not evidence of absence and this is a case where risk really is unbounded, so you better be cautious.
Man, I really wish people would stop saying this. It's just completely false. It's a basic result of probability theory that if A is evidence of B, ¬A is evidence of ¬B.
The trick is that the strength of the evidence is not equivalent. It is not correct to say "Evidence of strong evidence is strong evidence of absence". More generally, A is strong evidence of B does not imply that ¬A is strong evidence of ¬B.
We have an absence of evidence for æther, but we are pretty certain that if it exists, we would have evidence of it. Our confidence of that is strong enough to state with some confidence that æther does not exist. For practical intents and purposes, we can say that the absence of evidence of æther is evidence that it does not exist.
Not all absences of evidence are made equal, some are more significant than others.
Otherwise all crypto projects are off limits, including Tor and Bitcoin
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2013/01/coder-charged-for-g...
The difference between offering BackTrack isos for download and running live, free Backtrack VMs.
A traditional, non-distributed service is often backed by centralized entity (corporation, nonprofit or private person), so many of the consequences are directed at them. Whereas with a diffused individuals running their own, it would be harder to as easily control.
Believe it or not, V for Vendetta is not actually a handbook on how to run a democracy.
“A government afraid of its citizens is a Democracy. Citizens afraid of government is tyranny!”
The ones that have been harassed in my memory is the Cryptocat dev and Winny. Don't mark your software as having a political purpose and more of a general tool and I think you'll have less harassment in your future.
Again, it's apples to oranges, but you can see how the court's line of reasoning could go the same direction.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arista_Records_LLC_v._Lime_Grou...