Subject: [Bitcoin-development] Something people are forgetting about the Gentoo / Luke-jr censorship issue

From: xor <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 10 Oct 2014 18:22:18 +0200

Hey folks,

FYI the issue is that Luke-Jr wants to include code which can censor stuff like 
SatoshiDice transactions because he thinks they are denial of service:
https://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=524512

While everyone is jumping on the neutrality Bitcoin should have, you're 
forgetting that there are also *legal* implications:
The *technical ability'* to filter certain types of network traffic can cause you 
to be legally liable to *USE* it to filter illegal stuff. 
So even if the filter code is disabled by default, it can put Bitcoin users in 
legal danger: Law enforcement can try to force them to use it.

This for sure depends on the country you are living in, but in general I think 
it can be agreed that it will be a lot easier to defend a "my node relays 
everything uncensored" policy against law enforcement if you wouldn't even 
have the technical ability to filter stuff because the code just cannot do it 
anyway. 

So please do not even include this code as disabled, and if possible do not 
even write or publish it :)

Also, as I don't have a Gentoo bugtracker account, can someone please add this 
comment there?

Thanks & Gretings,
	xor - a developer of https://freenetproject.org/