OK, but what is your opinion on the Silk Road? You say you don’t think about it, but I invite you to think about it. Do you think it should be banned? Or regulated? Or is it fine and should be left alone?
It already is banned, what they sell is illegal. Apparently you want to ban bitcoin, ban Tor, ban the internet, ban computers and then nuke the site from orbit just to be sure. That is an overreaction.
It already is banned, what they sell is illegal. Apparently you want to ban bitcoin, ban Tor, ban the internet, ban computers and then nuke the site from orbit just to be sure. That is an overreaction.
The Silk Road is a platform which has not been banned. 99% of what people sell on it has been banned though. I ask again, do you think the Silk Road should be banned?
PS. I want to ban bitcoin, not any of those other things.
The Silk Road is a platform which has not been banned. 99% of what people sell on it has been banned though. I ask again, do you think the Silk Road should be banned?
PS. I want to ban bitcoin, not any of those other things.
There should not be drug control in the first place. Silk Road already is banned as much as it can be banned without unjust overreaching. Bitcoins is just another tool, the same as all those other things I listed. If your threshold for banning something is that it merely be useful in the commission of a crime then there is no principled limit to banning everything until we are naked. Banning everything still would not stop crime.
There should not be drug control in the first place. Silk Road already is banned as much as it can be banned without unjust overreaching. Bitcoins is just another tool, the same as all those other things I listed. If your threshold for banning something is that it merely be useful in the commission of a crime then there is no principled limit to banning everything until we are naked. Banning everything still would not stop crime.
Shall I take your answer to mean that you think the Silk Road shouldn’t be banned?
Shall I take your answer to mean that you think the Silk Road shouldn’t be banned?
What does “ban Silk Road” mean anyway? How can you possibly make it stop without destroying more than you should, initiating force? It is not the case that banning bitcoin would even slow down Silk Road because they can use plain old cash though the mail, WOW gold transfers, or a hundred other things.
What does “ban Silk Road” mean anyway? How can you possibly make it stop without destroying more than you should, initiating force? It is not the case that banning bitcoin would even slow down Silk Road because they can use plain old cash though the mail, WOW gold transfers, or a hundred other things.
I am not a technical person but I guess banning Silk Road would involve the authorities taking control of the domain name, after getting permission first by a court of law.
I don’t want to consider Bitcoin for the time being, I am trying to specifically gain your view on the Silk Road. Should I take your answers to mean that you think the Silk Road shouldn’t be banned?
Mr. non-technical person, what you guess at is impossible because there is no domain name. Read up on how TOR and Onion Routing works, a fully anonymous encrypted data transport protocol including a separate domain name system and the whole is itself a peer to peer protocol which no central control point. The whole thing is already internationally implemented. All the court orders in the world are completely useless.
The Silk road is already banned and they continue to operate in defiance of the law. Piling court orders on top of the laws accomplish nothing, but people are going to try anyway. I do not have an objection to attempting to enforce the existing law. I do have an objection to the Wesley Mouches of law enforcement demanding ever more authority in an attempt to make inherently unworkable laws work anyway.
Mr. non-technical person, what you guess at is impossible because there is no domain name. Read up on how TOR and Onion Routing works, a fully anonymous encrypted data transport protocol including a separate domain name system and the whole is itself a peer to peer protocol which no central control point. The whole thing is already internationally implemented. All the court orders in the world are completely useless.
The Silk road is already banned and they continue to operate in defiance of the law. Piling court orders on top of the laws accomplish nothing, but people are going to try anyway. I do not have an objection to attempting to enforce the existing law. I do have an objection to the Wesley Mouches of law enforcement demanding ever more authority in an attempt to make inherently unworkable laws work anyway.
Then the only solution is to require Tor to log all of its users ie. names and addresses available for law enforcement inspection, and to require Tor to restrict access to illegal websites (such as SilkRoad, child porn sites, terrorist websites, etc).
I do not think this is an unworkable law, or an overstepping of power. This is the police protecting people from terrorism, child porn, contraband, etc.
Then the only solution is to require Tor to log all of its users ie. names and addresses available for law enforcement inspection, and to require Tor to restrict access to illegal websites (such as SilkRoad, child porn sites, terrorist websites, etc).
There is no such entity referred to by the name of TOR that can be subject to the law or required to do anything. TOR is a technology, a method of manipulating bits. As a method it is primarily an abstraction put into the form of computer instructions. Perhaps the military and CIA funding for the organization developing TOR can be removed but the idea is already known well enough to keep it alive by other developers and the source code is open for all to read.
Looking over the project’s sponsor list we see that BBG.gov is a million dollar plus level sponsor for the last three years. BBG.gov is a U.S. government agency called the Broadcasting Board of Governors having some relationship to the Voice of America and other “Radio Free (Country X)” projects America funds. Their employees are government employees in the Federal civil service. Today they are advertising five job openings at the GS-11 and GS-13 level. The same government can both fund a “war on drugs” and subsidize the efforts of drug dealers. The contradiction should be resolved by halting the “war on drugs”.
I do not think this is an unworkable law, or an overstepping of power. This is the police protecting people from terrorism, child porn, contraband, etc.
It is fundamentally wrong to understand the role of the police or the government as a whole as protecting. That is a consequence of what the government does, but not the method it may employ. The only method permissible to government and its agents is retaliation for objectively demonstrated rights violations, retaliation that can only be justly directed at particular individuals and not entire classes and collectives of people (i.e. people who use TOR or bitcoin without violating rights).