Subject: Re: [Bitcoin-development] Criminal complaints against "network disruption as a service" startups

From: Justus Ranvier <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 13 Mar 2015 17:03:24 -0500

On 03/13/2015 04:48 PM, Mike Hearn wrote:
> That would be rather new and tricky legal territory.
> 
> But even putting the legal issues to one side, there are
> definitional issues.
> 
> For instance if the Chainalysis nodes started following the
> protocol specs better and became just regular nodes that happen to
> keep logs, would that still be a violation? If so, what about
> blockchain.info? It'd be shooting ourselves in the foot to try and
> forbid block explorers given how useful they are.

I'm not talking about keeping logs, I mean purporting to be a network
peer in order to gain a connection slot and then not behaving as one
(not relaying transactions), thereby depriving the peers to which
operator actually intends to offer service of the ability to connect.

That someone wants to run a large number of nodes in order to make
their own logs more saleable, does not mean they are entitled to break
the protocol to make other node operators subsidize their log collection.

Especially if a data collection company is deploying nodes that do not
relay and aggressively reconnect after a ban, it seems like they'd
have a hard time arguing that they were not knowingly exceeding
authorized access.