On Mon, Jan 16, 2012 at 9:37 PM, Kyle Henderson <k...@old.school.nz> wrote: > For those that believe one particularly noisy country in the North America > region with a policy called SOPA or PIPA directly affects Bitcoin - can you > point out precisely where it does so?
In addition to the concerns about internet freedom and domain name system filtering which are against the interests of bitcoin users and the bitcoin system generally, SOPA contains new requirements for payment networks which may adversely impact Bitcoin services businesses and limit their ability to do business in the US and other places where similar legislation is adopted. There are many millions of potential Bitcoin users in the US, so US law matters for our ecosystem even though far from all Bitcoin users are in the US themselves. (21) PAYMENT NETWORK PROVIDER- (A) IN GENERAL- The term `payment network provider' means an entity that directly or indirectly provides the proprietary services, infrastructure, and software to effect or facilitate a debit, credit, or other payment transaction. [...] (i) PREVENTING AFFILIATION- A payment network provider shall take technically feasible and reasonable measures, as expeditiously as possible, but in any case within 5 days after being served with a copy of the order, or within such time as the court may order, designed to prevent, prohibit, or suspend its service from completing payment transactions involving customers located within the United States or subject to the jurisdiction of the United States and the payment account-- (I) which is used by the foreign infringing site, or portion thereof, that is subject to the order; and (II) through which the payment network provider would complete such payment transactions. If you really want to go for the more extreme interpretation, it's not hard to conclude that the Bitcoin system itself is a "payment network" by the definition under the act, and if so in theory the AG's office could— without due process— order miners and mining pools located in the US to, for example, not process transactions containing the well known addresses of targeted infringing sites (e.g. The Wikileaks donation address). Though I personally think this is far out. I also think that other people will covered the SOPA/PIPA awareness (e.g. Wikipedia is shutting down for 24 hours) more than we could possibly do with our own resources. But this attitude of it being someone elses problem? I think thats nonsense. We live in _one world_, one world which is getting smaller every day. The value of a network—or of a economy— comes from the number of potential connections it can make. One reason Bitcoin is good is because it deconstructs some of the old barriers and anything that risks imposing new ones is a threat to us all. So, don't participate because bitcoin.org's help would be so small as to be pointless— sure. But because it doesn't matter? hardly. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Keep Your Developer Skills Current with LearnDevNow! The most comprehensive online learning library for Microsoft developers is just $99.99! Visual Studio, SharePoint, SQL - plus HTML5, CSS3, MVC3, Metro Style Apps, more. Free future releases when you subscribe now! http://p.sf.net/sfu/learndevnow-d2d _______________________________________________ Bitcoin-development mailing list Bitcoin-development@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/bitcoin-development