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EFF Stops Accepting Bitcoin, Regifts All Donations
Gendou writes "The EFF issued a statement that it will no longer accept Bitcoin donations, has not used any of the donations, and will transfer all past donations to The Bitcoin Faucet. See also additional and forum threads."
Hahahahaha. Bitcoin sucks dick you Ayn Rand worshipping losers!
Plus Taco has a tiny penis that is so small that it takes the world's most powerful microscope to resolve. Hence why his wife jumps from one gangbang to another every night.
Hm, following news of high volatility, major security problems, and the fact that one compromised account panicked an entire exchange, can anyone claim they are surprised by this?
Palm trees and 8
Damn, I was just about to gift them enough for an Epic Mount.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
This, following the somewhat late realization that Hasbro lets you print your own Monopoly money...
Account -> Discussions -> Disable Sigs
How is a scam like Bitcoin in any way related to "defending freedom?"
Palm trees and 8
What does this have anything to do with being a "defender of freedom"? Why does the EFF have to support BitCoin?
I see what you did there.
93rd rule of Slashdot: No matter how obvious my sarcasm is, my comment will be taken seriously by someone.
If not being a defender of freedom means not supporting a scam (BitTulips), I'm okay with that.
Bitcoins are quite similar to most forms of fiat money. If enough people don't endorse it, use it or accept it, it's worthless.
In what way is mathematics (as realized in the form of bitcoin) a scam? Review the source code yourself.
Defending an unregulated alternative to government fiat currency is certainly defending freedom.
What relevance does that link have to the EFF?
The page mentions them nowhere, and the author of that piece doesn't seem to have any clear link to them.
The same way 'capitalism' is -- the freedom to bilk people out of their money if they're willing/uninformed enough to participate.
To the strict free market folks, that's a transaction which is just part of the system, and is 'self correcting'. That's why regulation is considered bad.
And, sadly, I'm only being partly sarcastic.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Not related, just an excuse to post trollish comments on how social darwinism is freedom and everything else is nazi-communislam.
In soviet russia the government regulates the companies.
They don't have to support the bitcoin movement, but to claim they defend internet freedom when they purposely removing bitcoin transaction support in order to avoid appearing to support the bitcoin movement, is absurd.
Not only is that article off topic, it completely misunderstands the premise of net neutrality. The EQUIPMENT that the "internet" resides on is not, the internet. "The internet" is like "speech" or "Writing" it's an intangible medium for relating information and it's owned by humanity as a whole. We've collectively decided that to connect to the internet, you need to do so in a neutral way. ISPs connecting you to something other than the internet do not have to do so in a neutral way. But if you want to provide INTERNET access you need to do it without prejudice against or for certain voices on the net.
I'm assuming you mean freedom for corporations to throttle your bandwidth and shape traffic while selling you unlimited* data plans. In that case then yes, the EFF is downright loathsome.
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So if I print out some "money", you would defend my right to try and buy groceries with it?
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
The EQUIPMENT that the "internet" resides on is not, the internet. "The internet" is like "speech" or "Writing" it's an intangible medium for relating information and it's owned by humanity as a whole.
Speech is made by a speaker. Writing is made by a writer. The fact that it is a concept does not mean it is not property. Property itself is an abstract concept. Investigate the source of that concept, and you will understand why intellectual property is property, and why "owned by humanity" is incoherent.
the currency/stunt will ceace to exist. Each time Slashdot talks about Bitcoins, they get a spike of interest. I implore the editors/publishers to stop publishing any stories about bitcoins. What started out as a $20 coin is (as I understand) now worth about $0.03 US dollars.
More likely your right to promote your "money" as an alternative currency and encourage adoption by merchants and consumers, thus validating your "money".
EFF's explanation made sense and was perfectly reasonable, while yours managed to hold almost as many misunderstandings of bitcoin as words. Bitcoin is not mtgox, and the Liberty Dollar lawsuit with the US Government should have clued anybody in on the fact that the gov is not gonna let anybody compete with the dollar.
& stop accepting bitcoin articles to be greenlit for the front page. Nothing to see here. Move along.
01:36AM up 426 days, 2:46, 1 user, load average: 0.14, 0.11, 0.05
For those who won't realize before clicking the link the story is to an objectivist periodical that was co-founded by Ayn Rand. Take that as you will.
Except you have no such right at least not in the US. Such is clearly stated in the constitution as being a power of the government.
Do you know how you increase knowledge? By sharing it. Culture? Same way. Common bonds? By sharing events.
Notice the sharing? You might want to investigate this entire concept of "humanity" a bit further.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
Not related, just an excuse to post trollish comments on how social darwinism is freedom and everything else is nazi-communislam.
Is it me, or is that what 98% of the Neo-Neo-Libertarians advocate now, Social Darwinism... which is closer to Nazism (in ideology) than anything else I know.
Get your Unix fortune now!
BitCoins cannot simply be created (or printed) at will and without cost, unlike dollars and Monopoly money. Hence, your entire argument is flat-out wrong. Currency is valued based on whether people are willing to trade it. If people stop trading in dollars, all those bills in your pocket will become worthless.
You are confused. Defending a currency is not the same as forcing somebody to accept it. Your grocer is not obliged to accept the notes printed by the government, as they are not obliged to accept Bitcoin.
Phillip.
Property for sale in Nice, France
Actually, you do have a right to print private currency in the United States, as long as you guarantee that it can be redeemed for USD and as long as you report and pay the appropriate taxes on transactions made in that currency. You can't legally use your private currency to settle a debt or to pay your taxes, but you can pay workers with it and use it to purchase goods and services. See, for example, this:
http://www.berkshares.org/
Now, Bitcoin is different, in that there is no guarantee of being able to redeem it for anything at all. This muddies the legal situation surrounding Bitcoin.
Palm trees and 8
There are several alternative currencies currently being used in the US. Look it up - google is your friend.
There's no problem printing money. The problem is getting people to see enough value in the money that you printed to accept it as a medium of exchange for goods and services. Now if you lie to people or somehow trick them into thinking that it has value (like saying, for example, that Collateralized Debt Obligations are "AAA" grade, cash equivalent investments when in fact you don't even have the signatures of the people whose fractional mortgages they represent on file somewhere) then it's a scam.
But going up to someone and saying "Hey, I printed up these cute pieces of plastic let's use them as currency" is not a scam. Otherwise cheques and credit cards would cease to exist overnight. What actually is the "value" of a big number on a piece of plastic in your wallet? The only good thing about it is that it's backed by a name like VISA or MASTERCARD or AMEX, and there's a perception of value. The merchant knows he's going to be paid. You have a feeling of security, and a monthly statement you can review. And that's it - a new currency is born.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
Alright, you're getting to the actual issue - cable companies provide crappy service. So why don't people switch to alternative cable companies? Because there aren't any. Why is that? Because local governments grant monopolies to these cable companies, and prohibit competitors from laying their own lines.
Attempting to band-aid one regulation with another does not lead to freedom.
Please stop posting Bitcoin stories. No one cares about Bitcoin. We don't give a rat's ass about Bitcoin. We could not care less about Bitcoin. We have no interest in Bitcoin. Bitcoin does not concern us.
The Bitcoin thing has gone off in a different direction than its promoters anticipated. They were thinking "payment system", like gift cards. The idea was that most Bitcoins would be tied up in people's "wallets", and spent slowly. All that static value would anchor the currency.
That's not what happened. Bitcoins turned into a speculative vehicle, with "miners" grinding away solving hashes and generating more Bitcoins, and flaky "exchanges" offering on-line trading. The exchanges are tiny; today's worldwide Bitcoin trading volume is comparable to the sales of one supermarket. The daily volatility is huge, even on days when there isn't a break-in. So no major retailer can accept Bitcoins; they don't know what they will be worth at the end of the day, let alone the end of the month.
In a speculator-dominated system, Bitcoins are a pyramid scheme. The scheme by which it becomes harder over time to generate Bitcoins favored early adopters by a huge margin.
It's already too late to get in. The difficulty level has reached the point where buying and powering the new hardware is not cost-effective. And that was before the price of Bitcoins crashed. (The current price is around $13.)
Then there's the flaky exchange problem. Mt. Gox (formerly Magic, the Gathering Online Exchange) turns out to be two people in Tokyo. Tradehill is some company in Chile. All the other exchanges are too dinky to matter. Not one of them has the organization and resources of a typical small-town bank. Worse, they're not just "exchanges". They're depositary institutions, holding customer balances. Mt. Gox customers are now very aware of this, because they can't get at their money while Mt. Gox is down. Some people are worried over whether the money will be there when Mt. Gox comes back up.
The "exchanges" represent a mis-design of Bitcoin. There should have been a way to do an exchange in a distributed way, without the exchange holding customer assets. The NYSE and NASDAQ don't hold customer balances. Brokers do, but you can have your cash swept from a brokerage into a bank daily, or more often if the numbers get big. The Bitcoin exchanges are slow at delivering money - Mt. Gox has a daily transfer limit, and even when they were up, many users reported delays.
The EFF was right to bail.
If you had read the articles linked, you would have seen that yes, they are slowly releasing them so they aren't flooding the market.
Its not absurd at all, they don't have to support someones pet project...
Bitcoin has nothing at all to do with internet freedom - it is you that is trying to somehow link the two.
The "scam" is in how the proponents of Bitcoin constantly try to promote artificial scarcity with a resource that, by definition, is infinite in size.
There are an infinite number of mathematical codes that could be arbitrarily called "money". They might not be called "bitcoins", but they will be completely equivalent to bitcoins in value. So what is so special about BTC, beyond the hype that its speculators keep promoting for their own benefit? By any rational mathematical definition, bitcoins are worthless.
Not if that "alternative currency" is little more than a pump-and-dump scheme created to enrich its early adopters at the expense of latecomers.
The bitcoin concept might actually have a shred of respectability if anyone knew the true identity of its creator. For all we know, "Satoshi Nakamoto" is the front for a syndicate that has figured out the perfect crime: release the code for a worthless pseudo-currency after reserving a huge chunk of all possible "coins" for yourself and your cronies, hype said pseudo-currency to build a speculator's market, and then sell off your "coins" via dozens of anonymous proxies before the scam collapses.
The source code has nothing to do with Bitcoin being a scam. The fact that Bitcoin was designed to generate tremendous returns for its developers and early adopters, and siphon other currencies away from late adopters, is what makes Bitcoin a scam. You are talking about a currency that is inherently deflationary, and which will only see inflation at the very end of its life when the last adopters find themselves holding worthless tokens. The value of Bitcoin is based on speculation about how many more people will buy into the system.
Palm trees and 8
That the US can coin money doesn't mean that others can't make their own currencies. Other private currencies do exist, but generally in more limited contexts. Wii, Xbox, Kool-Aid, and Pepsi all have or have had points systems which can be used as currency by those that accept them, and nobody has cracked down on them.
This is my signature. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
Except majority of that "property" that is being spoken of here (the cables, pipes, etc.) was paid for by the government subsidizing the ISPs in order to promote the building of infrastructure. Instead of continuing to build the infrastructure that they were given money for, they kept it. Instead of increasing capacity by building infrastructure they are overselling and shaping.
Let's give it by a different example, look at phone lines. Net neutrality is analogous to the common carrier law in respect to telephony. According to that article and your argument, you must believe that the common carrier designation in the telephone industry should never have happened. That it is wrong for the government to have regulated and told a private entity how to use "its property". The argument is absurd on the face of it, the Internet should be considered a utility, a public resource. ISPs provide access to this intangible thing over which data is sent not only over their "property" but over the "property" of others. The innovation of tools, technologies, utilities, and services has flourished for years due to Net Neutrality.
It's amusing, because many opponents actually agree that the problems that Net Neutrality seeks to prevent are valid problems that should be dealt with, they just don't believe those problems will actually occur and thus government regulation to prevent them is unnecessary. This is proven false by the multitude of situations where ISPs have violated Net Neutrality principles and by the number of ISPs who've publicly stated they'd be willing to make specific services faster if they paid for it.
The question is not about property, and if that's the only argument that is made then you have no argument. An electricity company can't charge you more for your electricity if you're running a pool or if you have a big screen tv. Your water company can't change the rate of water flowing to your house if you're using hot water vs cold water, using a tub vs a faucet. So why should your ISP be able to slow your web browser down vs streaming video? Why should your ISP be able to give preference to Hulu over Netflix just because Hulu paid them money?
You want a solution to the problem of bandwidth supplying? Build infrastructure, throttle a PERSON who is using too much bandwidth, not the protocol.
When accepting bitcoin, EFF gave credibility to this money and as any fiat money credibility is what it needs. Now EFF doesn't accept anymore, they take back this credibility.
I think in both case, this was on purpose by EFF. They did the first move because they though bitcoin was an interesting experiment. They do the second move because bitcoin is now an ugly mess.
1. We don't fully understand the complex legal issues involved with creating a new currency system.
2.We don't want to mislead our donors. When people make a donation to a nonprofit like EFF, they expect us to use their donation to support our work. Because the legal territory around exchanging Bitcoins into cash is still uncertain, we are not comfortable spending the many Bitcoins we have accumulated.
3. People were misconstruing our acceptance of Bitcoins as an endorsement of Bitcoin. We were concerned that some people may have participated in the Bitcoin project specifically because EFF accepted Bitcoins, and perhaps they therefore believed the investment in Bitcoins was secure and risk-free. While we’ve been following the Bitcoin movement with a great degree of interest, EFF has never endorsed Bitcoin. In fact, we generally don’t endorse any type of product or service – and Bitcoin is no exception.
Your grocer is not obliged to accept the notes printed by the government
This is false in many countries. Learn about legal tender laws. Not all countries have them, but many (most?) do.
Actually, you are wrong, the grocer IS obliged to accept notes printed by the government as long as he/she has already provided you a good or service... note the text on a FRN, "this note is legal tender for all debts, public and private". Now, granted, TECHNICALLY the grocer doesn't have to accept the bills as payment, but in doing so, he would be cancelling your debt... so, either you succeed in paying with bills, or you don't have to pay at all.
Do you know how you increase knowledge? By sharing it.
I increase my knowledge by learning. I don't believe I have ever increased my knowledge by regurgitating what I already know.
The fact that more people could learn certain information if it was provided for free doesn't justify the theft of that information. Do you think creators will continue to create if they know their products will simply be stolen and "shared"? By wanting the unearned, you undermine the whole system.
The problem is getting people to see enough value in the money that you printed to accept it as a medium of exchange for goods and services
That is a problem that is easily solved: give people a fixed exchange rate, and back your private currency with the government's currency. Over time, people will accept the private currency, perhaps out of regional pride, or perhaps because it has some useful property (e.g. maybe you put more private-currency dispensing ATMs in the region than there are other ATMs, or you give merchants some special incentive, etc.).
Palm trees and 8
You don't increase freedom by adding regulations on top of past failed regulations. The monopolies that local governments have given to cable companies should be undone.
Yes and those monopolies were granted completely out of the blue without any lobbying on the part of the telecoms and cable companies. No, they clearly made huge public outcries against these monopoly grants that the local municipalities forced upon them. Are you fucking kidding us? Seriously, these telecoms and cable companies bought the people who are granting them those monopolies and are clearly colluding with each other so they don't have to actually compete. Hence why you never really see Time Warner or Comcast competing nor AT&T and Verizon when it comes to DSL.
The coins haven't made it into the faucet yet. The faucet founder, Gavin Andresen (one of the core bitcoin developers), is still trying to determine when and how he will bring the donations in. http://forum.bitcoin.org/index.php?topic=20185.0 Meanwhile, the faucet funding has been pretty flaky, at least in the last 24 hours. Yesterday morning (US time), it was dry, yesterday evening it had some small funding, and now apparently it is dry again. I'm curious how big the EFF donation will really be.
Secession is the right of all sentient beings.
'Intellectual property' has many legal similarities to physical property, but it's nature is inherently quite different. Copyrights and patents are regulations that exist at least nominally for the benefit of the public. Assuming that you are part of the laissez faire crowd, you should oppose or at least hope to limit such heavy-handed government interference as the copyright and patent systems bring.
As for net neutrality, the current environment is toxic to any and all competition, so free market arguments don't apply. The linked article talks about new ISPs entering, but that doesn't happen because it generally can't. Also, the claim that ISPs are the same as other private property owners is hardly accurate. It's pretty bold to call the infrastructure THEIR private property when so much of it is located on the private property of others, likely without any consent given by the landowner. It's the local government that they generally do actual business with, and most of the agreements include at the very least the exclusion of direct competition.
This is my signature. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
Actually, I believe they are.
The monopolies that local governments were paid by the cable companies to give out should be undone.
FTFY. They should also pay us back all public money given to them to build their infrastructure and they better remove their cables from public-owned land. "Their property" should also removed from public lands at their own cost or they better pay fair market value for the land they are using. It's amusing to listen to little Randtards like yourself whine all about how the government is doing all this bad stuff and should get out of their "private property" when they only way they would have been able to lay that "private property" was because the government gave them grants of money and land to do so.
It's amusing, because many opponents actually agree that the problems that Net Neutrality seeks to prevent are valid problems that should be dealt with, they just don't believe those problems will actually occur and thus government regulation to prevent them is unnecessary.
Except for the fact that those problems are occurring? Have you been living in a hole for some time now?
...bitcoin forum members have been tracing the stolen bitcoins from the recent thefts, including the 25,000 bitcoins stolen from "allinvain" (which /. covered). Some of them appear to have been donated to the address the EFF listed for donations. There's no way to know what the motive was behind those transfers -- Actual support for the EFF? Trying to throw people off? -- but it sure doesn't make the EFF look good. Those bitcoins might be the ones that the EFF is trying to leak back into the "economy" little by little via the bitcoin faucet.
I'm thinking of buying into Bitcoin for the first time because of all the negative news lately. The best time to buy is when everybody else is selling.
What you describe is not a pyramid scheme, it is a run on the bank. That is precisely what Bitcoin is going through.
I am not saying it's good or bad. I am merely pointing out that this is nothing new for any type of currency. Liquidity is always a consideration and every currency; past, present, and future has had to deal with runs on the bank at various times.
The real "tell" will be if Bitcoin survives the run.
"Their property" should also removed from public lands at their own cost or they better pay fair market value for the land they are using.
Public property should not exist. Do not punish people who have taken advantage of an unjust situation - blame the people who created the unjust situation: the local government politicians.
the only way they would have been able to lay that "private property" was because the government gave them grants of money and land to do so.
The status quo isn't justified by its own existence. The fact that the government prohibited people from owning land without first getting permission from the government does not imply that that original prohibition was just.
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So me reciting a bunch of memorized facts "increases knowledge"? Me performing bad Youtube covers of Lady Gaga songs "increases culture"? Me inviting everybody into my bedroom to watch me have sex with my girlfriend "increases common bonds"?
Notice that none of what you've said makes any sense? You might want to investigate this entire concept of "rational coherence" a bit further.
And your argumentum ad hominem is relevant to whether or not the arguments presented by the linked article are valid in what way, exactly?
Oh that's right, it's Slashdot... "LOLAYNRANDLOL" is considered a valid counterpoint here.
The most liquid commodity.
Deleted
I just figured this out: spoiler alert.
This whole BitCoin thing is fiction. An over-zealous Slashdot editor got the idea to produce original episodic content for the site, and signed up some hardware vendors and electric utilities to sponsor it. BitCoin doesn't actually exist, and anyone who claims it does is obviously part of the production team. Or one of the sponsors.
Now I can sit back and enjoy the daily BitCoin story, secure in the knowledge that it is all just entertainment, and not actually a Glenn Beck-style ploy to involve gullible Slashdot readers in an elaborate Ponzi scheme. I was starting to get worried about unnecessary power consumption and the misapplication of scientific computing clusters, but it's all just CGI, isn't it? Bravo!
Anyway, good luck guys, it's been a great series so far. Hope you win that Emmy!
So.... Where was the ad hominem? "objectivist", "periodical", or "Ayn Rand"?
Ah yes, LOL indeed.
Soon we'll see guys standing on streetcorners with signs.
Homeless. Hungry. 11 kids to feed. Please help. 1BYjEs25Eo2Bz7MS4wnN81EkEjD5S2KXPV
-- -- Warning. Do not stare directly at the sun.
A fee for a service, even if charged after the service is rendered, is not the same as a debt.
Private businesses aren't required to accept US Dollars in exchange for goods or services. Even the Treasury says so:
http://www.treasury.gov/resource-center/faqs/Currency/Pages/legal-tender.aspx
"This note is legal tender for all debts. Public and private"
The only way you around this in most countries is to use a barter economy and not accept money at all. If your grocer says that a dozen eggs will cost you a sack of birch wood, that's fine. But once he starts accepting money, he can't turn down government printed notes.
Bitcoin is a currency used to buy and sell drugs, nothing more. The Bitcoin people keep pushing stories to keep it in the news.
At least in this case the EFF did the right thing and didn't want donations based on on drug money.
Everything you say is basically right, with one exception: The promoters must have known all along (or should have known - point 1 however suggests they knew or were very very lucky in their choice of algorithm)
1. The growth curve for bitcoins was chosen to be increasing in exponential difficulty. Even if they wanted a maximum number of bitcoins (which they argue for dubious economic reasons) They could have chosen any curve - straight line, S-curved, etc., they deliberately chose a growth function which maximizes the return for early investors.
2. The bitcoin software is nearly useless for actual commerce. It's just about good enough for a speculation market place - but would break if any significant amount of goods were being bought or sold in bitcoin. But the promoters don't care!
(i) Transactions take hours to complete - and no solution is proposed for this
(ii) Every client records every transaction in the network. This is a huge file already, barely practical to download with no real commerce just speculation -- and this file would grow proportionally to actual usage. There is supposedly a proposed solution which reduces this file size somewhat, but it's still huge, and it still grows in proportion to usage. So that's no solution - especially since this proposed solution is not actually being implemented anyway.
3. The size of the bitcoin economy is always quoted as being the number of bitcoins multiplied by the price of the last bitcoin sold.
That's not how you calculate an economy's size!
That's how you calculate the value of an asset, such as gold, or pork bellys.
Nobody would calculate the size of the US economy for example this way - the number of USDs in circulation, etc. You can calculate a real economy's size by looking at goods bought and sold.... but bitcoin promoters don't care about that, especially since virtually nothing is bought or sold in bitcoin..
with the last few brake ins and one mass selling crashing the currency it was only a matter of time before the few people accepting them would say this is a bad idea. as someone said hear aruldy it cost more to power the systems to mine them then its worth now. not to metion working the gpus that hard all the time just is a bad idea so facter in replacing those in a few month and the cost is way to high. being the horders have relised this and started dumping there stock of coins the value has crashed. it was ment to increse the value as they got harder to mine but thats just not how money works people just turn to other currencys or even the barter system.
Technically, stating that other people are comparing something to the Nazis is not the same as comparing something to Nazis. In fact, it sounded more like he was invoking Godwin's law on the Bitcoin defenders* rather than taking an action that would justify calling it on him.
* I would have preferred to see some evidence to back up his claim; without that, it seems like a bit of an ad hominem. Unfortunately, there's enough crazies on both sides of the debate that Godwin's law is likely to come up somehow even sooner than usual.
To begin with, I'm pretty sure the reasons they cite for Bitcoin to be illegal would make every other form of digital currency also illegal (Liberty Reserve USD, Linden Dollars, PayPal USD, c-gold, Webmoney, etc.): sounds kinda dumb.
And the thing is.. either the reasons they cite for them dropping Bitcoin donations are correct (i.e. Bitcoin use is illegal) and, in that case, they are BAD LAWYERS for having accepted Bitcoin donations in the first place.
Or they are not. And in that case, they're just a bunch of pussies that are rejecting donations freely given by others (since Bitcoins do have a non-zero nominal market value, today), besides being BAD LAWYERS.
After this, I sure won't send them any more donations to these incompetents/pussies (strike what doesn't apply).
I disagree. These Bitcoin stories are great comedy. This is like watching a train wreck in slow motion, made all the more amusing by the people riding the train shouting out the windows at those jumping off, calling them fools and insisting that the train will somehow swerve around the obstacle and keep going.
I love how the only consistent defense of Bitcoin is that "ordinary" currency suffers from all the same problems. First off, that's not true, but even if it was, Bitcoin's problems are on steroids. That defense is like refusing to leave a burning house because it's uncomfortably hot outside.
------RM
Property itself is an abstract concept. Investigate the source of that concept
That's easy enough. The source of the property concept is the fact that some goods are rivalrous. That is, use of the good by one party makes use of the good by another party impossible. Obviously we need a mechanism to manage who gets to use what good.
you will understand why intellectual property is property
I'm not following. Intellectual "property" is not rivalrous, and so it should not be considered property.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
As much as we would defend your right to *try* to buy groceries by trading anything you have (legally) for merchandise from the grocer, sure. That doesn't mean we'll fight until you succeed. We'll merely defend your right to try to negotiate a mutually-agreeable deal with the grocer. We've always had the right to trade with each other. There's no good reason for a government to prevent that, saying you *can't* trade pigs for beer if you want to. So it's a liberty that should be defended. And the only entity you fight when defending liberties is the government -- not individual grocers, etc., as they're not the ones imposing a lack of freedom. Maybe a lack of choice (by all agreeing that bitcoins suck), but not of freedom.
And so you would be denying their freedom to take donations in the form of their choice by demanding they take your volatile, fly-by-night currency?
Actually, I think it's no longer legal to pay your employees in alternative currencies either, unless they agree to it. It also cannot be a stipulation of employment that you accept it.
It's internet debate. You're not supposed to know the meanings of words before you use them.
But going up to someone and saying "Hey, I printed up these cute pieces of plastic let's use them as currency" is not a scam. Otherwise cheques and credit cards would cease to exist overnight. What actually is the "value" of a big number on a piece of plastic in your wallet? The only good thing about it is that it's backed by a name like VISA or MASTERCARD or AMEX, and there's a perception of value. The merchant knows he's going to be paid. You have a feeling of security, and a monthly statement you can review. And that's it - a new currency is born.
That's not really a new currency, just a different exchange medium. It's still using US Dollars as the currency, just electronic representations of them.
No it's not. They don't support BitCoin themselves. They would probably defend someone using it, if said case aligned with their mission, but that doesn't mean they have to accept them.
That only works if you consider property rights to be the be-all, end-all of rights. Many of us don't.
Depends on who you're talking about. Personally, I value my freedom far more than I value an ISP's freedom. And my freedom includes being able to access the content on the internet I want without being hindered by the ISP for not going with their "preferred partners".
Public property should not exist.
Why not? Why should every square inch of the world be owned by someone? Why should public parks and nature reserves not exist?
Do not punish people who have taken advantage of an unjust situation
Why not? They knew exactly what they were getting into.
And if a location can only support one company? Should they just be beholden to whatever that company wants?
So wait, considering the bias present in an article is an ad hominem now?
Even if there was no government involvement, telecommunications would still tend towards a natural monopoly. It's a common issue in any area with a very high capital cost to enter a market, which certainly includes digging up roads and laying cable. Once one company has gotten established, it just isn't viable for another to enter - not only do they have to compete against an incumbant that has a head start on customer loyalty, but there is the risk said incumbent would just drop prices sharply to drive competitors out.
The same thing applies to things like water, gas, sewage... anything that needs infrastructure built. It's only a reliable profit-maker if no-one else is providing the service already.
Yup. People will post libertarian anti-copyright arguments to defend piracy, but those same people will dismiss anti-net-neutrality arguments written by the same libertarians. Personally, I think the libertarians have got it all wrong. I haven't read an anti-copyright argument or an anti-net-neutrality argument I actually agree with. (Just to see what they have to say, I've read partway through the article, and there are some obvious flaws.)
Wait a fucking second. If I donate something to a US non-profit with clear mission statement/statement of incorporation/whatever and the charity decides to just give away my donation to the first person to visit a web page, aren't they behaving fraudulently?
Of course a donor doesn't get to say exactly how his donation is used, but it surely must fall within the stated purpose for which donations are accepted? Or are US charities entirely caveat donor?
It's amusing, because many opponents actually agree that the problems that Net Neutrality seeks to prevent are valid problems that should be dealt with, they just don't believe those problems will actually occur and thus government regulation to prevent them is unnecessary.
Except for the fact that those problems are occurring? Have you been living in a hole for some time now?
Read the very next sentence after that
This is proven false by the multitude of situations where ISPs have violated Net Neutrality principles and by the number of ISPs who've publicly stated they'd be willing to make specific services faster if they paid for it.
I know it's already happening and specifically said so.
Do you think creators will continue to create if they know their products will simply be stolen and "shared"?
Yes, they will. Just like they have for the last thousands of years. The only thing wrong with Randians is that their theories fail 100% when tested against reality.
I increase my knowledge by learning. I don't believe I have ever increased my knowledge by regurgitating what I already know.
Of course. You never learned anything from anybody. You just learned on your own. Everything you know was either paid for at a fair market price, or was discovered on your own. The only thing scary about Randians is how deluded they are about their own capabilities, and their control over their position in life.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
I'm sorry, but I wasn't making any sort of argumentum ad hominem at all because I wasn't making any argument. I was just letting people know that the article is written by an objectivist in an objectivist periodical. What exactly is the issue?
Do not punish people who have taken advantage of an unjust situation - blame the people who created the unjust situation: the local government politicians
How about we blame both? Though, according to most conservatives, it is perfectly fine for the local governments to create the monopolies just not for the federal government to do it. What should happen is that the monopolies given to local companies should be eliminated so that some competition can start to form. In addition, Net Neutrality needs to be enforced to protect consumers and innovation. Maybe when there's enough competition we won't need to enforce Net Neutrality and a "free market" may actually work, but right now there is no "free market" with ISPs. Telecommunications companies should be divested from content producing companies. ISPs should be a utility selling a dumb pipe.
Public property should not exist
So, public parks, nature reserves, etc. should all be privately owned? Gimme a break. The only reason why parks and such still exist is because governments use public property to prevent corporations from bulldozing it and building on it.
Bitcoin is still traded at 14$ a piece. Granted, the volume went down from millions to a tenth of that, since the biggest exchange has locked the accounts. Don't you guys have the moral need to check facts before posting?
Well, this guy already had 3 serious problems...
I agree it's not absurd.
At this stage, the only advantage that accepting Bitcoin over Dwolla payments is that in the Dwolla case both merchant and customer need Dwolla accounts, whereas accepting Bitcoin would allow adhoc purchases (similar to how you can just enter your credit card details to pay without necessarily "signing up").
Of course, that one advantage isn't enough to outweigh the disadvantages. Somebody above said that with Bitcoin they got the crypto right, but forgot about the economics. To that I'd add that in deliberately distancing themselves from Government controlled currency, they couldn't also take advantage of regulations which protect market participants against manipulators. (Not that the regulators do a stellar job mind you, but that's more a matter of resourcing and will, not ability).
I don't expect it to succeed, but I'm favor the concept. We need decentralization in all areas, especially commerce.
More specifically, the whole global financial system is a pyramid, at least as far back as countries moved away from money backed by gold reserves. Now countries get rich based upon market performance or how much investors trust that the country will be able to repay its debts.
Remember eGold? Of course you do.
"MIT betrayed all of its basic principles."