6 ms·

"You're allowed to talk about this speech, teach it in textbooks and include it in other written publications, but you're not allowed to actually speak it"

colinmhayes 4y ago
Executing code isn't speech. Code is speech, and it's being allowed.
- staringback 4y ago
  > Executing code isn't speech This is for the courts to decide I guess
  - makoz 4y ago
    Really? If I execute a script that DDoS someone, presumably it should not be treated as "speech" as if it is a protected right. That's such a hilariously slippery slope since you can arguably do "anything" via executing code.
    - arthurcolle 4y ago
      Nah your example is more like performing a magic spell that prohibits others from speaking (DDoSing a public service site, as an example)
    - nradov 4y ago
      Denial of service attacks are explicitly illegal under the National Infrastructure Protection Act (NIIPA). I don't think a defendant has ever successfully challenged that law on First Amendment grounds, so the basic legal issues appear to be settled. Of course as a practical matter it can be difficult to prosecute DDoS attackers under that statute. Either they don't leave hard evidence, or they hide in countries which don't extradite.
  - CrazyStat 4y ago
    Courts have already decided this decades ago. At least as far back as Junger v. Daley [1], where the courts recognize a distinction between the expressive power of code as it is read by a person and the functional power of code when it is executed. While the expressive power of code creates a first amendment interest, the functional power of code may create a legitimate government interest in regulating that speech. The applicable legal test is from United States v. O'Brien [2], which ruled that even though burning a draft card may be expressive speech, the government's interest in draft cards not getting burnt allows them to forbid it without falling afoul of the first amendment. Junger v. Daley was cited as precedent in Universal City Studios v. Reimerdes [3], where the courts ruled that the functional power of DeCSS being illegal under the DMCA was sufficient to justify banning the distribution of the DeCSS source code. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Junger_v._Daley https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Junger_v._Daley [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._O%27Brien https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._O%27Brien [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_City_Studios,_Inc._v._Reimerdes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_City_Studios,_Inc._v...
- vkou 4y ago
  If speaking magic spells aloud caused flesh-eating demons to be summoned into our prime material plane, you wouldn't be allowed to speak magic spells, either. Klaatu, Verata, Necktie. Speech is speech, code can be spoken, and it can also be executed. The former is speech, the latter is action. Making API calls and flipping bits in a computer is what crosses the line from one to the other.
  - cercatrova 4y ago
    > If speaking magic spells aloud caused flesh-eating demons to be summoned into our prime material plane, you wouldn't be allowed to speak magic spells, either. Yes? This is entirely reasonable if we analogize it to how fiction often approaches it. There might be some evil book, a necronomicon, or killing spells like in Harry Potter. In many fictional media, people are allowed to learn such spells, they're just not allowed to say the spells out loud. Reading and writing a spell is not the same as saying it and thereby executing it.
- yieldcrv 4y ago
  Okay that solves the First Amendment part, in your view (Citizens United is an example of ruling that transactions are speech, alongside its view that Corporations are afforded these protections) It doesn't solve Congress’ mandate to the Treasury where OFAC is used against entities that can appeal their own listing on the sanctions list. The smart contracts cannot currently do that.
  - colinmhayes 4y ago
    Citizens united is unique because it is specifically about political actions which are the whole point of the first amendment clause about speech according to originalists. You've also mischaracterized the ruling, which was that spending money on political action is speech, not transactions.
acdha 4y ago
That’s not right: you can even run the code as long as you don’t transact with the sanctioned parties. Matt Green could run a copy for his students to study as long as they don’t allow transactions which violate the sanctions laws, similar to how I can teach you to pick locks and practice but still expect legal consequences if I pick the locks at some stranger’s house.
- morpheuskafka 4y ago
  I'm not that familiar with this code, but if only specific wallet addresses and websites can be blocked, is there anything that stops people from just repeatedly cloning the service altogether and playing whack-a-mole with the government?
  - notch656a 4y ago
    That's the same argument I've presented below. The best response I've gotten so far is that there is basically 'precedent' for dealing with that of sanctioning the offender. Precedent is a nearly 3 year lag time... although I'm sure it won't take that long the next time
  - acdha 4y ago
    I think it's important to remember that the government agencies ignored cryptocurrency for a while because it wasn't being used enough to be worth dedicating resources to it. That changed at some point, with different thresholds for different agencies, but now they're aware of the activity and there are services like Chainalysis which make it easy for them to contract for monitoring as a service. I would bet that the time to respond is going to get increasingly fast since there's been a push for ransomware which picked up after that Colonial Pipeline attack and really picked up with the news that North Korea was laundering significant sums. There are two things which I think will change that game substantially: 1. As this is taken more seriously, companies trying to stay in compliance with the law are going to be enforcing KYC strictly. That's going to make it harder to use things like tumblers because not only will you be paying more to use the service but you'll also be getting tainted tokens which an increasing fraction of businesses either won't accept at all or will accept at a discount rate to compensate for the decreased utility. I think that ratchet effect is going to really limit future services like Tornado Cash: when there's a non-trivial risk involved for using it fewer people will participate and those who do will expect to be paid more. 2. These services depend on liquidity because anonymity is a function of how many people are running money through it. The Treasury department doesn't really care if you and and a few curious friends set up a proof-of-concept instance because unless you can also pump the equivalent of millions of dollars into the system it won't be used by the people they're concerned about (ransomware gangs, North Korea, etc.) since it would take millennia to launder money at their scale. This is similar to how the goal for counterfeiting paper money isn't set to “impossible” but rather accepted at a low frictional level as long as it's too risky for anyone to attempt a sufficiently large-scale counterfeiting operation which could actually impact the overall economy.
smsm42 4y ago
You allowed to speak it, you're not allowed to run actual transactions involving actual Tornado Cash funds through it. If you run this code on your property, it won't be Tornado Cash anymore, and as long as it doesn't interact with the prohibited properties, it's not prohibited. Of course, if you start doing the same TC did, you probably will get your very own designation pretty fast.

colinmhayes 4y ago

Executing code isn't speech. Code is speech, and it's being allowed.

staringback 4y ago
> Executing code isn't speech This is for the courts to decide I guess
- makoz 4y ago
  Really? If I execute a script that DDoS someone, presumably it should not be treated as "speech" as if it is a protected right. That's such a hilariously slippery slope since you can arguably do "anything" via executing code.
  - arthurcolle 4y ago
    Nah your example is more like performing a magic spell that prohibits others from speaking (DDoSing a public service site, as an example)
  - nradov 4y ago
    Denial of service attacks are explicitly illegal under the National Infrastructure Protection Act (NIIPA). I don't think a defendant has ever successfully challenged that law on First Amendment grounds, so the basic legal issues appear to be settled. Of course as a practical matter it can be difficult to prosecute DDoS attackers under that statute. Either they don't leave hard evidence, or they hide in countries which don't extradite.
- CrazyStat 4y ago
  Courts have already decided this decades ago. At least as far back as Junger v. Daley [1], where the courts recognize a distinction between the expressive power of code as it is read by a person and the functional power of code when it is executed. While the expressive power of code creates a first amendment interest, the functional power of code may create a legitimate government interest in regulating that speech. The applicable legal test is from United States v. O'Brien [2], which ruled that even though burning a draft card may be expressive speech, the government's interest in draft cards not getting burnt allows them to forbid it without falling afoul of the first amendment. Junger v. Daley was cited as precedent in Universal City Studios v. Reimerdes [3], where the courts ruled that the functional power of DeCSS being illegal under the DMCA was sufficient to justify banning the distribution of the DeCSS source code. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Junger_v._Daley https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Junger_v._Daley [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._O%27Brien https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._O%27Brien [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_City_Studios,_Inc._v._Reimerdes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_City_Studios,_Inc._v...
vkou 4y ago
If speaking magic spells aloud caused flesh-eating demons to be summoned into our prime material plane, you wouldn't be allowed to speak magic spells, either. Klaatu, Verata, Necktie. Speech is speech, code can be spoken, and it can also be executed. The former is speech, the latter is action. Making API calls and flipping bits in a computer is what crosses the line from one to the other.
- cercatrova 4y ago
  > If speaking magic spells aloud caused flesh-eating demons to be summoned into our prime material plane, you wouldn't be allowed to speak magic spells, either. Yes? This is entirely reasonable if we analogize it to how fiction often approaches it. There might be some evil book, a necronomicon, or killing spells like in Harry Potter. In many fictional media, people are allowed to learn such spells, they're just not allowed to say the spells out loud. Reading and writing a spell is not the same as saying it and thereby executing it.
yieldcrv 4y ago
Okay that solves the First Amendment part, in your view (Citizens United is an example of ruling that transactions are speech, alongside its view that Corporations are afforded these protections) It doesn't solve Congress’ mandate to the Treasury where OFAC is used against entities that can appeal their own listing on the sanctions list. The smart contracts cannot currently do that.
- colinmhayes 4y ago
  Citizens united is unique because it is specifically about political actions which are the whole point of the first amendment clause about speech according to originalists. You've also mischaracterized the ruling, which was that spending money on political action is speech, not transactions.

acdha 4y ago

That’s not right: you can even run the code as long as you don’t transact with the sanctioned parties. Matt Green could run a copy for his students to study as long as they don’t allow transactions which violate the sanctions laws, similar to how I can teach you to pick locks and practice but still expect legal consequences if I pick the locks at some stranger’s house.

morpheuskafka 4y ago
I'm not that familiar with this code, but if only specific wallet addresses and websites can be blocked, is there anything that stops people from just repeatedly cloning the service altogether and playing whack-a-mole with the government?
- notch656a 4y ago
  That's the same argument I've presented below. The best response I've gotten so far is that there is basically 'precedent' for dealing with that of sanctioning the offender. Precedent is a nearly 3 year lag time... although I'm sure it won't take that long the next time
- acdha 4y ago
  I think it's important to remember that the government agencies ignored cryptocurrency for a while because it wasn't being used enough to be worth dedicating resources to it. That changed at some point, with different thresholds for different agencies, but now they're aware of the activity and there are services like Chainalysis which make it easy for them to contract for monitoring as a service. I would bet that the time to respond is going to get increasingly fast since there's been a push for ransomware which picked up after that Colonial Pipeline attack and really picked up with the news that North Korea was laundering significant sums. There are two things which I think will change that game substantially: 1. As this is taken more seriously, companies trying to stay in compliance with the law are going to be enforcing KYC strictly. That's going to make it harder to use things like tumblers because not only will you be paying more to use the service but you'll also be getting tainted tokens which an increasing fraction of businesses either won't accept at all or will accept at a discount rate to compensate for the decreased utility. I think that ratchet effect is going to really limit future services like Tornado Cash: when there's a non-trivial risk involved for using it fewer people will participate and those who do will expect to be paid more. 2. These services depend on liquidity because anonymity is a function of how many people are running money through it. The Treasury department doesn't really care if you and and a few curious friends set up a proof-of-concept instance because unless you can also pump the equivalent of millions of dollars into the system it won't be used by the people they're concerned about (ransomware gangs, North Korea, etc.) since it would take millennia to launder money at their scale. This is similar to how the goal for counterfeiting paper money isn't set to “impossible” but rather accepted at a low frictional level as long as it's too risky for anyone to attempt a sufficiently large-scale counterfeiting operation which could actually impact the overall economy.

smsm42 4y ago

You allowed to speak it, you're not allowed to run actual transactions involving actual Tornado Cash funds through it. If you run this code on your property, it won't be Tornado Cash anymore, and as long as it doesn't interact with the prohibited properties, it's not prohibited. Of course, if you start doing the same TC did, you probably will get your very own designation pretty fast.