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Comment by zethraeus | Hacker News Reader

Since there's no censorship, it sounds like if OpenBazaar is successful it will be used to buy and sell illegal things.

How do you feel about that?

Illegality and immorality are different, and - speaking personally - I don't have an issue with the platform used for moral but illegal uses. If it helps people get medicine they need then I'm happy for them.

People using the tech for immoral transactions does bother me, but we've seen very little of it, and ultimately I strongly believe the benefits of free trade significantly outweigh the few people who abuse it.

>ultimately I strongly believe the benefits of free trade significantly outweigh the few people who abuse it.

Why?

I believe in decentralization and the benefits of anti-fragility.

Having only a handful of companies in the world exerting enormous control over online commerce is dangerous. The amount of data they control is staggering, especially when combined with data collected from other centralized platforms (social media, the banking system, government surveillance).

I don't like needing to ask permission to use those platforms in order to engage in something as fundamental as commerce. Alternatives need to exist, and OpenBazaar is the alternative to the tightly monitored and controlled online marketplaces.

The world needs a protocol and network for trade that no one company or government controls. That's OpenBazaar.

You said you want a network that no one company or government controls, but it sounds to me like what you actually built is a network for trade that no one controls.

What about a network that people could control, but not governments or corporations? That's a technical challenge if I ever saw one.

>what you actually built is a network for trade that no one controls

That's true in the same sense that no one controls the internet.

People can control their own portion of the network, they can ban peers and report listings to search engine providers. They can create a custom client that will only see certain types of listings.

Distributed networks aren't a new phenomenon, no one controls them either. If someone could control them they they wouldn't be distributed anymore.

There are ideas for governance systems (voting or other mechanisms), but if the network is permissionless then there's really no way to have an effective governance system (that I'm aware of).

There is an alternative: (small) business. The world is filled with people who would love to setup a trading business. You might remember it, we called it "shops".

These corporations are so huge, because you buy stuff from them. That is the only reason. You bought and still buy stuff from them, because you preferred convenience and cheap stuff to integrity. Now they've grown so huge there is no way to control them. We will pay the price now, thanks.

We don't need another child-porn and weapons distribution channel.

i agree

I think the benefits of access to a nation-wide or world-wide market have been enormous and will become even more so in the future. Unfortunately we are realizing that the costs of this transition, if we maintain our current path, are grave. A decentralized approach like OpenBazaar mitigates or eliminates many of the negative side-effects brought on by our current, mega-corporation-dominated access model. With regard to small businesses, an OpenBazaar type system would enable small businesses to trade with the rest of the world (and their local community) on their own terms, without any anti-competitive BS, and without sacrificing profit to platform fees.

The question is: can a distributed system match the value Amazon's service provides to the consumer?

Sorry, I disagree.

Just because Amazon sucks, does not mean we need to retreat into full-on anarchy over this. Craigslist is also a marketplace and it isn't the behemoth Amazon is.

Also, Amazon provides a lot more than just a market-place. Everything from "inventory tracking to tax collection to credit card processing". These are no trivial features.

You could have started a regular, centralised, open market-place - by the community, for the community type of deal - and get the same benefits. Of course, selling "medicine" would be difficult.. but we all know that is not what this is about, right?

Ok, let’s look at an example of illegal and immoral. What will you do when people sell child porn on your platform?

I'm not with OpenBazaar, but I believe with how it works it's not possible to do anything. It's decentralized. The government should go after nodes hosting the illegal content.

With this as a stated goal, The world needs a protocol and network for trade that no one company or government controls. That's OpenBazaar... going after the network as a whole doesn’t seem unreasonable. The FBI for example, probably isn’t still in their Atlas Shrugged phase.

How do you go after the network as a whole?

The nice thing about decentralization is that it forces government to be more surgical in their enforcement. State actors have all the tools necessary to identify and target individual bad actors. You have to be a real champion not to leak data or make a mistake over time. Bitcoin, for example, is much harder to hide than cash. In centralized systems it's just easier to be lazy and implement mass surveillance and absolute control - which a lot of people in the community disagree with.

Terrorism for example barely exists, and barely ever existed, but massive apparatuses that infringe on the liberties of billions of people have been implemented in the name of it.

Child porn, chemical/radioactive weapons trading, and assassination requests are the big 3 often cited - but really these too barely exist, and nations have more than enough resources to counter them with precision.

>The world needs a protocol and network for trade that no one company or government controls.

Strictly speaking, that is marketing hyperbole on their part as the world already has a lot of protocols and networks for trade that no one company or government controls, otherwise stuff like international mail would have problems.

International mail is far from being a distributed system like OpenBazaar.

> The FBI for example, probably isn’t still in their Atlas Shrugged phase.

Where can I read about the Objectivist FBI phase?

I'm not a lawyer but I can confirm that there's no more that we can do to control content than Google can for the web or email. We (OB1) follow US law in our services but we have no control of the p2p network.

You should probably talk to a lawyer, because given what’s been said in this thread alone, you’re never going to be able to argue that you didn’t knowingly facilitate. Love it or hate it, new laws make that problematic even for Google.

I mean, this is damning: Illegality and immorality are different, and - speaking personally - I don't have an issue with the platform used for moral but illegal uses.

Why do you think that is damning?

I believe a bunch of legislation has language regarding being "aware" and "knowingly facilitating." Safe harbor goes out the window if you know things are going on and do nothing. How being p2p factors in is beyond my armchair.

Because Google isn't aware of pirate/CP search results on their platform?

I too think this statement matters with regards to law. Knowing that your platform can be used nefariously is one thing, being ok with it is another. Once the witch hunt starts it can get tricky fast.

And SESTA/FOSTA will apply to them too. It's a horrible set of laws.

Does that apply to software developers as well as service providers? Wouldn't the Tor project get prosecuted into the ground under such legislation?

It's obviously damning because it shows that he knows he's potentially facilitating illegal activity.

A blacksmith knows good and well that his newly forged hammer, meant for building and construction, is also used for destruction and despair.

I'm pretty sure a vanishingly small number of hammers actually get used for destruction and despair, so I would have no problem being involved in hammer production.

It does not just matter that something CAN be used for evil, it matters how likely it WILL be used for evil.

It seems you fully understand op's point!

Google can and does delist content, for example in response to copyright violations.

I don't think you're able or willing to delist content right?

Well that what happened to the guys behind piratebay. They weren’t responsible for the actual content, but they were still convicted since they made it possible. Right or wrong, sometimes how the tech actually work doesn’t matter.

The piratebay had direct access to their database index and deleting content was as easy as running "delete from torrents where torrent_hash='xyz'". This case is different, there is no way for openbazaar to delete remote nodes hosted by other people. It's like ordering Google to delete content hosted on someone else server, they can remove it from their index but the server would still be online accessible to all.

Well they weren’t convicted because they didn’t delete it, they were convicted because they made it available. The hash is still not the actual content, which were One of their actual argument in their case. Depending on where you live there are serves cases where making things available is criminal. Have ISPs ordered to block domains etc. VPN is illegal in China etc.

> Well they weren’t convicted because they didn’t delete it, they were convicted because they made it available.

They did. The piratebay default search engine allowed people to find illegal content. That's why they got in trouble. If Google Chrome default search engine had CP and drugs on it, they'd get into trouble too. Anyone can use chrome to find CP but Google is ok because they don't enable it by default. As long as OpenBazaar default search engine does not contain anything illegal and forces people to use a different search engine to find illegal stuff, they will not get into trouble.

The law they broke was “assist in copyright infringement”, not that they actually broke “copyright infringement”. The law don’t care about the tech, it’s about the intentions.

The piratebay had a list of most popular keywords directly linking to illegal content. Also their very name _pirate_bay made them a target for bad intent. OpenBazaar doesn't link to or has anything in its name offering or encouraging illegal content. I used to work for isohunt by the way who got shut down by the MPAA and it was because of these details that they lost. If OpenBazaar never links to anything illegal and does not host hashes or any other data of anything illegal, then they'll be fine. Another point is that OpenBazaar is at least so far not profiting from anything illegal such as showing ads on pages featuring illegal content, that was a big point against bittorrent search engines.

Building a system with the specific goal of making it impossible to follow the law does not make it acceptable.

I would assume that if law enforcement becomes aware of it they buy it and find a way to trace it back to the seller.

Authorities will go after the platform instead of going after the people responsible.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

"I don't have an issue with the platform used for moral but illegal uses. If it helps people get medicine they need then I'm happy for them."

You really, really should not have said that. It will probably come back to bite you. Even if it doesn't, why even take the risk in making a statement like that in today's climate?

I do appreciate the word of caution.

I've gone beyond the point where any given act of self-censorship is more beneficial than speaking the truth of the situation.

My position: over the next few generations, adoption of decentralized technology will result in an enormously more peaceful and prosperous humanity then the centrally-controlled alternative. If we take the path of reliance on systems that are controlled by a few powerful organizations then we are at their mercy. The alternatives must exist for those who want to opt out.

I can obviously be accused of naivety, but if I'm open about my motives and my expectations it seems less likely to be accused of malicious intent.

I don’t think you’ll be charged with naivety, more likely that’s what your attorney will desperately try to plead. Of course, your words cited by GP will make that impossible.

Good luck, you’re really going to need it!

Don't let fear paralyze you. If those pushing the boundaries censored themselves based upon the fear of being persecuted in the future, we'd have no progress.

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 and the client protocol and servers. Otherwise, the inventors of tcp/ip, http, bittorrent, telnet and more would be in prison.

> You really, really should not have said that. It will probably come back to bite you. Even if it doesn't, why even take the risk in making a statement like that in today's climate?

Hey now. Let's not shame people for speaking truth to power. This is a great forum for it.

This is admirable. Totally fucking admirable!

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