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Comment by cmeacham98 | Hacker News Reader

The "beneficial" property you're referring to is "can be easily used to fund criminal behavior", which is typically not a desirable feature in a payment system.

Many people believe LibGen/Sci-Hub are good forms of breaking the law - but if that is the case the solution is "make the things they do legal" rather than "make it easier to send criminals money over the internet".

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>which is typically not a desirable feature in a payment system.

I think it would be desirable. Some people will get into specifics of which laws they like to break and which laws they want enforced, but my experience has been most people like the ability for some laws to be broken and it is a good thing in regards to some laws being unjust. It is hard to get a standard because we would basically be asking which laws are moral/ethical and which aren't, which is its own messy discussion, but in general I find most people want some freedom to break away from and to weaken the legal system in some cases.

Sure, it might be a bandaid to a larger problem, but a bandaid is preferable to no bandaid even if the wound needs a long term resolution.

This is incoherent. Some laws are unjust so I can choose what laws I want to follow and that's good because .... (implication that breaking laws causes them to become more just as opposed to more enforceable)

> Some laws are unjust so I can choose what laws I want to follow

It depends on your sense of justice, but ultimately, you have to follow your personal conscience also. Some are driven more by upholding the law and others more by their personal conscience.

Justice is even above the gods.

Human attempts to codify it is only as good as it gets.

Criminals have never had issues sending or receiving money over the internet. This excuse is just a smokescreen.

I'm not aware of any jurisdiction in the world (or rational human being) where the defense "other people commit the same crime too!" is valid.

I think the wheel fell off here.

Just because criminals send money online, it does not mean that sending money online is criminal.

A government is just a group of people. They aren't your parents. Sometimes they are right and sometimes wrong. Why do they deserve a privileged position above all other groups of people?

Also you:

> Also, I'm not even sure I agree with the "a tool can be used for evil so therefore taking features away is good".

>The "beneficial" property you're referring to is "can be easily used to fund criminal behavior", which is typically not a desirable feature in a payment system.

It typically is. The alternative is a system where a central authority has absolute control over all monetary transactions, which is definitely not desirable.

Not the solution, a solution. Another seems to be bitcoin

The state's legitimacy is questionable. Who wants papers to have a copyright of 70+ years? Certainly less than 10% of the stakeholder population. And still they do.

Who wants movies to have 70+ years in copyright?

A state that does that might be too compromised. Not immediately amenable to reform. So illegal but moral actions sometimes can (and should) be taken.

> The state's legitimacy is questionable. Who wants papers to have a copyright of 70+ years? Certainly less than 10% of the stakeholder population. And still they do.

Maybe you live in a dictatorship, and I'm sorry if you do, but the majority of the world lives in democracies. The reality is that you're either wrong, or people just don't care enough about this issue to vote based on it.

There are entire political parties built around this issue (look up "pirate party") and they don't get a lot of votes.

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