4 ms·
Intriguing concept, but malicious is orthogonal to illegal, although they are often correlated. Namely, in several jurisdictions, including the one that the pa
by niftich 10y ago
Intriguing concept, but malicious is orthogonal to illegal, although they are often correlated.
Namely, in several jurisdictions, including the one that the paper is presented in, (D)DOS is illegal -- a different point to debate -- making this particular proof-of-work both malicious and illegal.
A more intriguing one would be one that's merely (debatably) malicious but not per se illegal, like, say, password hash cracking, which is similar enough to existing PoW schemes to make feasible.
- dnautics 10y agoThere is something fascinating about making Proudhon's "property is theft!" Real.
- rcthompson 10y agoIn jurisdictions where it's illegal, would possession of this currency constitute evidence that a person committed a crime?
- wongarsu 10y agoIt wouldn't proove that you committed the crime, since you could have gotten the currency through other means. It's also not certain proof that somebody committed a crime, since the currency could have been mined by someone for whoom this was legal. On the other hand, if the DDoS target is located in a country where DDoS is illegal, then in that jurisdiction possession of the currency is certainly evidence that some unknown party participated in the DDoS. That might give police certain priviledges around confiscating any coins, depending on jurisdiction.
- thaumasiotes 10y ago> malicious is orthogonal to illegal, although they are often correlated Interesting choice of words. Orthogonal variables are by definition uncorrelated.
- niftich 10y agoMy bad about the incorrect usage. Please disregard the original phrasing, as my point is that all four combinations of [malicious, illegal] are possible, with an attempted-but-botched observation that sometimes malicious things are made illegal.