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Comment by jasode | Hacker News Reader

I see several comments questioning the legitimate value of a peer-to-peer marketplace. Some cannot see any use other than illegal commerce (drugs, porn, etc).

It is true that such illicit trades will take advantage of that network but is it really impossible to envision legal business as the major activity? Yes, cars can be used as getaway vehicles from bank robberies and also smash terrorist bombs into government buildings. However, cars also have tons of other legitimate uses.

Consider that ebay has about 200 million users.[1] Their fees have been going up every year and they are now at 10% (which does not include the separate insertion fees.)[2]

If one can sell a legal item such as a $50 book on ebay, why not sell it on a p2p marketplace and avoid paying $5 of that sale to ebay? If not OpenBazaar or similar p2p architecture, what alternatives do folks propose?

Do 200 million ebay users have lawful reasons to avoid paying ebay commission fees?

At this point, I believe low-volume selling is too dependent on proprietary platforms such as ebay or amazonmarketplace. As an analogy using email, I'm glad that SMTP won over closed systems such as CompuServe, AOL, and Western Union's EasyLink. Even though SMTP email has many bad uses such as phishing, malware delivery, and spam, I'm still glad it won. The good uses outweigh the bad.

Can a more open platform for sellers without the stigma of illegal activity be realized?

[1]https://www.google.com/search?q=ebay+"200+million+users"

[2]https://www.google.com/search?q=ebay+raises+fees+10%25

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>Can a more open platform for sellers without the stigma of illegal activity be realized?

Probably not.

Cars weren't invented to make bank robberies more difficult to stop. These networks were invented, to a degree which shouldn't be dismissed when considering their acceptance by the mainstream, to make enforcing laws against trading in anything more difficult, if not impossible.

I think most people (not most people on HN, or in tech, but most people in general) would rather pay the extra few dollars than support the premise of a truly free market. While I would agree completely that there are perfectly legitimate uses for these networks, and there is nothing at all evil or malicious in the technology itself, I also think it would be disingenuous to state that their use in illegal activities is somehow orthogonal to their purpose.

> , I also think it would be disingenuous to state that their use in illegal activities is somehow orthogonal to their purpose.

The Haber Process[1] was a new way to manufacture ammonia in large quantities. Fritz Haber was originally motivated by Germany's war objectives to kill people via poison gas and explosives. Germany needed a lot of synthetic ammonia to do that.

Now, the Haber process is mass producing fertilizer and feeding the world.

It's possible to divorce the original evil uses of the technology from the later good ones.

The potential 200 million ebay and whatever millions of amazonmarketplace legal sellers can outnumber the criminals. The 10% ebay fees and 15% amazon commissions are very compelling motivators to create an "open SMTP" type of marketplace for sellers.

[1]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haber_process

The motivation for development was actually producing fertilizer, as it says in the article you linked.

Yes, my memory was not accurate and I should have specified Haber-Bosch Process & Carl Bosch[1] instead of Haber Process & Fritz Haber.

Apparently, Carl Bosch's refinements to the original Haber Process had the priority goal of ramping up Germany's war munitions instead of feeding the world.

[1]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Bosch

>It's possible to divorce the original evil uses of the technology from the later good ones.

Yes, but I would argue that doing so in this case means undermining the entire purpose of an anonymous, decentralized marketplace.

The first question most people are going to want an answer to when presented with something like OpenBazaar is "what are you going to do about the pedophiles, gun-runners, drug dealers, etc?"

If the free market's response to this is "nothing, so long as the customer gets what they paid for, everything is cool," then for most people accepting this equivalence will be a non-starter.

I think the only ways to avoid this problem are 1) hoping for a widespread shift in the way most people view the value of the force of law on commerce, 2) breaking the system enough so mainstream users are convinced of its legal integrity, or 3) pretending it's not an issue and redefining the terms by which it's sold to the public. And i'm not entirely certain the latter can scale.

I won't say it's impossible though.

> The first question most people are going to want an answer to when presented with something like OpenBazaar is "what are you going to do about the pedophiles, gun-runners, drug dealers, etc?"

And the answer is simple: treat them as early adopters. Learn from their needs, and find out how they attempt to game or break the system. (They certainly will.)

No, I'm not trying to be flippant. For ANY new, more privacy-minded tehnology, you have to expect that the dubious and/or illicit users will flock to it first. They are the ones who will actively seek out the communication and exchange mediums that are hard to monitor. Their presence will then act as a catalyst for media to write about the technology, effectively taking it from the fringes to mainstream.

PGP. Tor. Bitcoin. Hell, even the attacks on encrypt-by-default storage technology in mobile phones. The fearmongering of the law 3-letter agencies and the media's need to find new monsters under the bed all act as drivers for more widespread knowledge, and eventually through acceptance to adoption.

The pendulum swings, and right now it's starting the backswing towards more privacy-minded approaches.

I think you underestimate the average Joe's desire to save a few dollars... The key barriers I see are having to install special software and getting to grips with Bitcoin.

Perhaps it is possible to ship a client with some default blacklisting of certain products, sellers etc, if a person wants to avoid stumbling by accident across such stuff. (Maybe even such blacklists would become updated and mandated by law.)

You need to insulate the user from the Bitcoin transaction entirely. It should look to the user like they're paying in local currency. Unfortunately, we're not there yet. We know how to create an automated p2p currency exchange, we think. But nobody's done it yet.

oh yeah? you have a repo I can check out?

Uhm no. Wasn't that the entire point of my comment?

I read it more along the lines of "some folks and I have come up with a reasonable solution, but it's nowhere near production ready so no one would want to test it."

My bad

Ah, I see now. My apologies.

it's also worth considering that while existing middlemen are slightly more expensive they also offer strong consumer protections that are totally absent in these alternatives

OpenBazaar uses a three-way transaction. Buyer, seller, mediator. Only two keys are required to release or revert the transaction. In the event of a dispute The mediator is the final judge, they're supposed to decide based on evidence whether to release th payment to the seller or refund the buyer. I do not recall off-hand what the selection criteria is for the mediators, but I believe that it's not in the control of either party.

For a long time Alibaba.com was a haven for counterfeit goods. Some argued that was its primary purpose (and indeed there were hints of racism in this - claims that the Chinese did no original work etc.)

You can still get some counterfeit goods on Alibaba. That didn't stop the platform becoming valuable for legitimate purposes too.

> I see several comments questioning the legitimate value of a peer-to-peer marketplace.

The problem with P2P is that it requires a much more complicated architecture than if you simply use a more centralized model. There's the old joke: I had a scalability problem so I switched to a distributed system. Now I have n^2 problems.

It is true that many architectures are moving towards a more decentralized model, however, they still have a central controller typically.

When OpenBazaar seems more mature I will definitely consider listing (my entirely legal) items on it first, at least to experiment. Lower fees + I'm happy with Bitcoin = Win.

There are absolutely legitimate uses for this kind of platform. It's the online equivalent of the local boutique retail shop, street vendor, or home yard sale.

While there are absolutely benefit of a system like this for legal sales, the problem is most sellers of legal goods have many existing outlets that they can use. While they might not like the fees, most accept them as the cost of doing business. Since there are few organized marketplaces online for illegal goods, the first adopters (as with Silk Road) will most likely be the black market, which will likely stigmatize the marketplace, making it far less likely to be adopted by legal sellers.

I think the problem for "legal" users of distributed markets is not stigma; it's cost, ease of use, and likelihood of fraud or other problems with transactions. If a distributed market arose that was inexpensive, as easy to use as eBay, and not significantly more affected by fraud, I think it could be adopted by "legal" users.

Interesting that you used the example of eBay.

I remember reading about the alleged reason eBay acquired Skype.

Skype is a peer to peer network. The guys behind it were the guys behind Kazaa, an earlier peer to peer network.

In Skype's case, the network is used to send audio and video.

In Kazaa's case the network was used to send "files".

If I recall correctly the article said eBay planned to use the Skype network to allow buyers and sellers to communicate with each other, directly.

It's also interesting you mentioned SMTP. I do not think I have ever seen anyone mention it online but SMTP works well over a peer to peer network.

Peer to peer SMTP obviates the need for intermediary SMTP servers and third party "email providers". With peer to peer networking there is no necessity for users' data to be stored and forwarded by third parties.

Not to suggest anyone would be interested in that.

Microsoft owns Skype, not eBay. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skype_Technologies

Read the wiki you cited. Before MS, eBay owned Skype and that's the transaction he's referring to.

    > I see several comments questioning the legitimate value
    > of a peer-to-peer marketplace.

No, you see comments questioning the legitimate value of an anonymous or pseudonymous peer-to-peer marketplace.

Also, you misunderstand what eBay provides: eBay provides marketing and payment handling. That's what their margin is for. You are entirely welcome - today - to set up a webpage, list your wares, and accept Bitcoin for them. The problem is that there's little centralized reputation management there, and also, no-one is ever going to find your stuff. Unless a p2p marketplace is solving those needs, what benefit does it provide over nginx + a bitcoin wallet?

A part of the problem is that something truly secure will equally be useful for legitimate and illegitimate uses. There's no way to make a safe that only keeps honestly earned money. Any solution with a backdoor added exclusively for use against bad guys is inherently unsafe, and this will bite good guys sooner or later.

This article explains this in greater detail: http://techcrunch.com/2013/07/06/tools-for-treason/

Why does a distributed marketplace intended for legal trade need to run on Tor? Do you need anonymity if you're selling towels?

> need to run on Tor?

I don't know the technical details of OpenBazaar. From the article this thread is about, it says:

"OpenBazaar is open-source software that runs a peer-to-peer network that can be used with the Tor anonymizing network."

I interpreted that in the literal sense that it "CAN" be used and not "MUST".

If the only possible way to use the OpenBazaar client is to log into Tor, that would understandably raise skepticism about its ambitions for legal trade. A representative from OpenBazaar is in this thread and maybe he can clarify that technical detail.

As for hiding my sales of legal items, maybe I don't want my friends to know that I sold that ugly shirt they got for my birthday. I'm sure there are all sorts of legitimate reasons for being an anonymous seller of legal goods.

Just as an aside, use of Craigslist obviously avoids these fees, with the caveat that market participants be within the same physical vicinity. I wonder if there could be a potential for some sort of integration. I bought my truck in another state using CL, and flying one-way with cash in hand.

OpenBazaar developer here. This is the "nothing to hide" argument that we've seen used to much by the NSA and governments.

The answer is that we believe people simply have the right to privacy in trade. Here's a discussion by the OpenBazaar team on the matter:

https://github.com/OpenBazaar/OpenBazaar/issues/189

Do you want your credit card company to know exactly where you've shopped for the past two years? Would you like your employer to know what porn movies you enjoy? Would you want your neighbourhood burglars to know exactly how much money you spent on your brand new Swiss watch this month? Is it OK if your super-market chain only offers discounts to you on the condition that you don't buy anything from other super-market chains?

Should your wife be able to scrutinize what trips you went to and how much you spent on expensive chocolate and alcohol without your permission? Discover before her birthday that you bought her a ring as a present? Would you feel alright if Google used all your shopping history to show you targeted ads? As a seller of rare books, do you want the prices of all purchases to be published to potential candidate sellers instead of being treated as trade secrets? Would you want your annoying jealous nephew to know you've booked snowboarding tickets to Austria without inviting him?

Is it acceptable for these things to be posted on the Internet and commented-on by Redditors?

Please, I invite you to post your credit card records for the past year here. We'll be happy to look over them and leave some comments for you. After all, you've got nothing to hide, yes?

Anonymity is important for people. For some people, it's more important than others. Different people have different needs. Sometimes anonymity is a matter of life and death, sometimes it's just a matter of personal privacy and the right to be left alone. Users can use the anonymity feature as they see fit, but we need to be there to protect them if they require so.

And, yes, some trade can be only marginally legal or completely illegal. Sometimes illegal trade is ethical, and laws vary from country to country. At least at the trade level, we should be free and anonymous. What if your Internet provider disables the Internet in your country by secret warrant request of the government if you live in North Korea, or Turkey in the times of Twitter-censorship, or Egypt in the time of the revolt, or Iran at times of war? Is it OK to leak to your government that you purchased an antenna off of OpenBazaar to access the Internet through mesh networks? Sometimes the penalty can be death.

Not everyone lives in free regimes where privacy is a matter of a warm, cozy feeling and convenience. People need privacy in trade to be free.

That said, freedom comes at a cost, and the price for being free is not low :)

Well said!

Thank you for your work on OpenBazaar, and for your comment here.

> Please, I invite you to post your credit card records for the past year here. We'll be happy to look over them and leave some comments for you. After all, you've got nothing to hide, yes?

That's a ridiculous counter argument. If I buy a bunch of towels/etc. from an online merchant, I have every reason to believe they will not use any information they gather to publicly embarrass me or otherwise do me ill will. Their business relies on them not abusing their customers. If they showed any indication that they aren't trustworthy, I wouldn't do business with them.

On the other hand, I don't have any reason to trust someone on the internet requesting my credit card records in exchange for the privilege of being publicly embarrassed when they post it on the internet. The argument is never "I've got nothing to hide", the argument is that I have no reason to hide my Amazon purchases from Amazon.

Most of your examples are either non-issues or not realistic. My credit card company does have a right to see how much and where I'm spending - I'm borrowing their money when I make a purchase. I don't know of any service I use that sends my porn history to my boss (unless I decided to do it at work on computers owned by my employer). I don't know of any supermarket discount program that prevents you from shopping elsewhere - every rewards program I've ever seen is structured to encourage you to shop with them more, not punish you for shopping elsewhere. My wife has every right to scrutinize our bank account - if I didn't trust her I wouldn't have married her. If she finds out what her birthday present was, that's her loss for ruining the surprise, not mine. My annoying jealous nephew can get over himself - if he wants to come on trips with me then he needs to be less annoying.

If I don't want any of these things posted publicly on the internet, I a) won't post them publicly on the internet, and b) won't share the information with anyone that I don't trust to refrain from posting it publicly to the internet. Anonymity is not the same as privacy - privacy comes from keeping personal information to yourself.

So, to reiterate the grandparent poster asked, why does a distributed marketplace intended for legal trade need to run on Tor? Do you need anonymity if you're selling towels?

> The argument is never "I've got nothing to hide", the argument is that I have no reason to hide my Amazon purchases from Amazon.

The argument most definitely is "you've got nothing to hide." This argument is bandied about a lot. With some sort of idea that your entire life should be laid bare before the whims of law enforcement/signals intelligence agencies. The idea always comes with the assumptions that:

- If you want to hide something from others is means that you must be guilty of some sort of crime, and deserve to be punished.

- All employees of said law enforcement/signals intelligences agencies are will never abuse their power for any reason, and if they do it's probably for a "good reason" (e.g. see Supreme Court Justice Scala(?) arguing law based on "Jack Bauer" scenarios).

I'm going to take a karma hit for this one, I think...

Well, the conversation has apparently gone from asking why someone needs total anonymity when conducting completely legal activity online to protecting oneself from signals intelligence agencies. I have a vested interest in protecting my sensitive information online from identity thieves, scammers, people who would want to rob or injure me and people making arguments like the one I responded to who would likely use my information to embarrass me in an attempt to make a point about having "nothing to hide." When I have a credible reason to add the cops or the NSA to the list, I'll start taking measures to hide my perfectly legal activity from them as well.

The reason I don't fear them isn't because I believe they're infallible, free from abuse, etc. - the reason is that I'm significantly more likely to be assaulted by one of the hundreds of people that walk past me on the way to work than targeted by a rogue NSA agent trying to collect my online activity, and yet I can still walk down the street without being scared of everyone around me.

In the mean time, I know that if the NSA or FBI wants to target me they need a court order, and if I'm going to be arrested and tried in court the cops need evidence of illegal activity to convict me. When I see credible evidence that this is not the case, I'll take steps to protect myself from them. Despite more than a year of Snowden revelations, however, Greenwald and friends have yet to show evidence of a single American being thrown in jail because of the vast, Orwellian surveillance state that has supposedly developed around us.

If it was happening, that would have been the first thing they reported a year ago. The fact that they have yet to come up with anything tells me that in that giant trove of the NSA's deepest secrets, there is nothing to indicate any harassing or incarceration of regular citizens.

so, you don't believe that it's a fragile system, before you saw it break?

I've followed the reporting that Greenwald, Poitras, Gellman et al. have put out fairly closely, but I've also watched the debates, watched several of the Congressional hearings, read both of the PCLOB reports, quite a few of the declassified documents, etc. The conclusion I've come to is that talking about nuances in surveillance law doesn't bring in advertising dollars, but you can't go wrong by stirring up hysteria talking about all of the things the NSA could technically do without showing evidence of them actually doing it. This is the Ebola scare of the tech community.

So to answer your question, I believe it's an ugly system with a lot of warts, but I have yet to see it break.

> you can't go wrong by stirring up hysteria talking about all of the things the NSA could technically do without showing evidence of them actually doing it.

A couple of questions:

* Are you a fan of the "benevolent dictator" ideal? (The idea that forming a dictatorship is ok so long as the dictator has the best interests of the people in mind)

* Do you agree with the NSA's redefinition of the word 'collect' to mean that something is only "collected" when a human see it? If not, then why would you trust people that attempt to redefine common terms to mean things that normal people wouldn't expect in the hopes of deceiving them while appearing to be completely honest and up-front?

> Are you a fan of the "benevolent dictator" ideal?

I'm not an authoritarian if that's what you're getting at - and this is getting way off topic...

> Do you agree with the NSA's redefinition of the word 'collect' to mean that something is only "collected" when a human see it?

I'm going to repost part of an older comment I wrote that addresses the issue:

This is the actual legal definition of 'collected' per DoDD 5240.1-R[1]:

"C2.2.1. Collection. Information shall be considered as "collected" only when it has been received for use by an employee of a DoD intelligence component in the course of his official duties. Thus, information volunteered to a DoD intelligence component by a cooperating source would be "collected" under this procedure when an employee of such component officially accepts, in some manner, such information for use within that component. Data acquired by electronic means is "collected" only when it has been processed into intelligible form."

That would include sent to the NSA, processed by algorithms and stored. The "read by a human definition" as far as I can tell comes from the EFF selectively quoting that definition[2] and drawing their own conclusions from their selective quotation, not the regulation itself. As the regulation itself states, as soon as any DoD intelligence components receives it and processes it, it is considered collected.

The misunderstanding is compounded by Clapper's June 9th 2013 interview with Andrea Mitchell, where he tries to explain that there's a legal difference between collecting content and metadata and fails miserably[3]. Mind you, Clapper is not part of the NSA. That's not an excuse, since as DNI he should know better, but it does explain it somewhat...

[1] http://www.dtic.mil/whs/directives/corres/pdf/524001r.pdf (see page 15)

[2] https://www.eff.org/nsa-spying/wordgames#collect

[3] http://www.nbcuni.com/corporate/newsroom/nbc-news-exclusive-...

I hope that answers your questions. (and, btw, I hate it when people downvote because they don't agree with someone. I think it should be reserved for actual abuse, so I voted you back up a point if it matters to you).

    > The answer is that we believe people simply have the 
    > right to privacy in trade

That's nice and all, but then all your examples are anonymity in PURCHASE, where OpenBazaar primarily appeals to people who need anonymity in SALE.

People who ignore the massive body of work that is Common Law, and the safeguards it provides are doomed to repeat them. Common Law wasn't dreamed up by some idiot politicians, it's the result of hundreds of years worth of "how do we protect the public?".

Which is why you'll find that it's 100% legal to purchase items with cash, under an assumed name, with a mask on, through an intermediary, or whatever the hell else you want, but it's generally illegal to sell anonymously because "caveat emptor" just doesn't cut it.

So come on, let's get some examples of legal goods for sale where there is any significant benefit in the seller having anonymity...?

Using Tor isn't required.

I'm not familiar with the architecture of openbazaar, but whereas with centralized services like amazon and ebay only your credit card and the marketplace have access to your full history (and people tend to trust these entities, begrudgingly or not), in a p2p model, the marketplace is everyone in the network. While for most people its reasonable to trust a reputable organization for their legal transactions, very few people would be comfortable letting any scriptkiddie with an hour of time analyze the public network activity and get access to their entire purchase history. In order to avoid this drawback of a p2p architecture, additional privacy guards must be used.

Well no, but if I'm doing nothing wrong, then you have no need to see it.

> Do you need anonymity if you're selling towels?

Yes. When I sell towels, I put my business reputation on the line. Not my personal one. The customers don't know my real name.

Tell me this. When was the last time you knew the full name of a store clerk you interacted with? The name tag might say "Sally", but is it really "Sally"? Or is it "Sally Smith" or "Sally Jones" ?

You don't know, and you don't care. All you know is you went to a business (with a prominent name and location), and bought a towel. If you're happy with the towel, you'll go back. If not, you'll write bad reviews.

At no time do you know the full name or address of the store clerks you interact with. Therefore, it is completely appropriate for the clerks to demand the same level of anonymity online.

Now, this isn't always true. You might have a neighborhood hardware store you've been going to since you were 5. You might know the full name and home address of the owner. But that is his choice. It is entirely inappropriate for you to demand to know his full name and address, or to forbid him from operating behind an anonymous "Hi, I'm Bob" nametag.

You don't currently need to reveal your identity to customers when doing business online, but complete anonymity is something else altogether.

I might not know the full name and address of the store clerk, but his employer certainly does. That clerk is representing his business and should be held accountable to business for anything he does. If I have I bad experience purchasing from that store, it doesn't matter to me that it was a bad clerk - it's Local Towel Sales, Inc. that's not going to get my business in the future.

I also as a customer don't need to know that "Sally Smith" owns the corner store, but the owner of the lot that she's renting out for her storefront certainly does. If she's running her business in such a way that it affects the value of the property or will result in legal action, she needs to be held accountable to someone.

It works exactly the same online. When I buy a product that Online Towel Sales, Inc. posted to eBay, I don't care about who posted the product online or packed it up and shipped it, I only care that it came from Online Towel Sales, Inc. and will choose whether or not to do business again with them based on that experience. Likewise, if the owner of Online Towel Sales is using eBay to peddle illegal counterfeit towels or something, eBay needs to know who to hold accountable because they have a vested interest in not having their website associated with illegal activity. I'm not going to come back to eBay if it gets a reputation for being a criminal safehaven.

It could have been "Fred".

If that store harms me in some way, then I can come back with the cops, serve it with a lawsuit, or complain in a public forum.

In any case, the store is "stuck" with its identity and the employees involved will not only be fully identified, they might even go to prison. Or, at the very least, customers will know not to shop there and the store will have a very hard/expensive time starting with a clean slate reputation.

Stores are semi-anonymous for employees, but their enclosing corporations have Registered Agent addresses on file to receive (enforceable) process.

I lose all consumer protection by using something OpenBazaar.

    > Yes. When I sell towels, I put my business reputation on
    > the line. Not my personal one

lolwut? If you're the cashier, yes, you get a little bit of implied anonymity.

If you're the business owner, absolutely and categorically not. Firstly, in every sensible country you are required to prominently display and let customers know the name of the legal entity with whom they're dealing. Secondly, in almost every sensible country, the owners of a business and the directors of a business are public record.

I have no clue at all why you think "store clerks" have any relevance to this discussion at all.

In my world view (also OpenBazaar developer) I think OpenBazaar shouldn't make false promises on delivering anonymity, not even Bitcoin can do that.

I believe that OpenBazaar's initial motive was to distance itself from DarkMarkets as the opportunity to directly link people worldwide for trade without intermediaries, or barriers of entry to the market outweight the needs of those looking to trade anonymously.

I foresee market forces killing off the sellers that prefer to remain anonymous and misterious unless they're selling special items.

In practice I believe people will be less scared to transact with someone who has an identity, who can be accountable. Honor and trust are necessary for all kinds of commerce.

If it were up to me, I'd build OpenBazaar to work flawlessly on the OpenInternet, if anybody needs to use the technology in a different way the code is open and I'm sure they'll find a way to try to hide themselves, but I think it's a fool's errand, no amount of Tor will hide you from the authorities if they want to get you.

I think the size of illegal markets as big as they can be are minuscule compared to the new era of trade I envision, never in our history we have been able to directly trade with anybody else out there. Centralized ecommerce outfits like ebay and amazon have only given us a glimpse of what's possible, but as good as they are, they can't scale to 100% of the planet, I believe a great p2p solution can do this and the consequences of this will be of historic importance.

This slide stack will give you the bigger picture OpenBazaar should be going after http://www.slideshare.net/yiibu/the-emerging-global-web

Worrying ourselves with pleasing users that want to be on Tor, at this point in time, I believe is a waste of time that draws the wrong kind of attention to the project. There's a much bigger opportunity to be seized, a truly world changing one.

Google searches aren't valid citations.

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