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Comment by pdx | Hacker News Reader

Since it's legal for me to pay legal tender for software, for jpegs, for mp3's, and other digital constructs, how could a legitimate argument be made to make it illegal for me to pay legal tender for a bitcoin?

Since it's legal for me to take legal tender for software, for jpegs, for mp3's, etc., how could a law be passed to make it illegal for me to take legal tender in return for a bitcoin?

If I advertise that I want to buy bitcoins, how can they stop me from spending my dollars/euros on them? If I advertise that I have bitcoins to sell, how can they stop me from doing so?

Now, if I advertise that I both buy AND sell them, at some bid/ask spread, than perhaps I have blundered in to an area where they can, indeed, regulate me.

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Software, jpegs, and mp3s are digital versions of things the law has seen before (well, software not quite, which is why there are still some controversies regarding it).

What you wrote reminds me of the anti-spam service that attaches an X-Header to emails with a little copyrighted Haiku, and thus considers spammers to be in violation of copyright.

If each bitcoin contained a little tiny piece of poetry you could make it robust against a legal challenge. It would just be a micro-poetry market.

Since it's legal for me to pay legal tender for software, for jpegs, for mp3s, and other digital constructs, how could a legitimate argument be made to make it illegal for me to pay legal tender for copyright-infringing files?

Since it's legal for me to take legal tender for software, for jpegs, for mp3s, etc., how could a law be passed to make it illegal for me to take legal tender in return for copyright-infringing files?

If I advertise that I want to buy copyright-infringing software, how can they stop me from spending my dollars/euros on them? If I advertise that I have copyright-infringing files to sell, how can the stop me from doing so?

I won't pretend it's not silly, but only so long as you stop pretending that governments have never made illegal the exchange of certain bit patterns.

In principle, a government can make any kind of property contraband.

Nonsense. Either bitcoins are illegal now, based on already existing law, or they are not.

If they are not already illegal, than the paranoid among us can say they will be made so later. However, such an action does not happen in a vacuum. That law must be written in some way so as to continue to allow other forms of digital commerce.

The discussion I would like to have is whether such a law could be written, which would disallow commerce in a particular digital commodity which harms nobody (not stolen cc numbers, not child porn, etc) while allowing other forms of digital goods to continue unhindered.

The thing that jumps immediately to mind, of course, is child porn, which is a digital commodity that is illegal to buy/sell/own/ or even possess. I question whether they would have as much success in the court of public opinion with bitcoins.

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