Comment by SamPatt | Hacker News Reader

Comment by SamPatt | Hacker News Reader

Hey HN, this is Sam Patterson, operations lead on OpenBazaar.

Please note that this open source project is about 6 months old, and not production ready. It has just started integrating Tor, but should not be considered private or secure yet.

We welcome testers, we are about to release 0.3.0 sometime in the next few days. Our Github is here:

https://github.com/openbazaar/openbazaar

We've gotten a lot of attention from the recent dark net markets being shut down. As I've said elsewhere, viewing OpenBazaar as SR 3.0 misses the true potential of creating a protocol, network, and client that allows individuals or companies to conduct trade directly with each other online.

We welcome feedback on our project, I'm happy to answer questions, and of course we'd be delighted if you want to join us. Let's make trade free.

I think you should reconsider integration of Tor. This is quite likely to end badly for you. If the police reports are true SR2 had 150,000 users: if even a fraction of those decide to migrate to OpenBazaar at some point, any legitimate usage will likely be overwhelmed by illegal usage. That would put you in the unenviable position of being the next DPR, except not anonymous (Silk Road sold books as well as drugs but that didn't matter).

Your best bet is to just not ensure IP addresses are recorded and unobfuscated. That'll help tip the balance towards legal activity.

I'm not sure it's equivalent. What you're saying is that whoever wrote the stack that SR used should be prosecuted for facilitating the site's creation.

This is simply a project in the same way BitTorrent is a project - it can be used for many things, illegality being just one, and even if that is the main usage pattern (which isn't clear at this point), that's no reason for the creator to be punished.

Tell that to the creator of cryptocat

TMK, he was never prosecuted. Baited, yes.

Nope. PHP is overwhelmingly used for ordinary, legitimate websites and has no particular features designed to aid criminal usage. It's all about volume and intent.

if each transaction has to involve a mediator i suspect they would be the one in the frame when it comes to facilitating illegal activity

DPR and the SR2.0 guy profited from illegal transactions. That wouldn't be the case here. No different in my view from the developers of bittorrent or tor itself.

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