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I'm confused. Is the idea here that something from the United States is not bound by United States law because the person who made it doesn't want it to? Goog

I'm confused. Is the idea here that something from the United States is not bound by United States law because the person who made it doesn't want it to? Google's also bound by US law. They're also international This is just how the law works. What am I missing? Why does Ethereum get to be above US law?

yucky 4y ago
Isn't Google a US company? Ethereum is an open source protocol with an unknown number of applications. I'm not sure this works as an analogy.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- JohnHaugeland 4y ago
  I'm discussing the law, not an analogy. It's a real system that was made in the United States. You don't have to be a company to be subject to the law. If you make something in a country, it's subject to that country's laws. Think about it: you're basically suggesting that if you call something "a protocol," somehow it's no longer subject to the rule of law. We go through "well yeah but it's not a" every couple of years. The explanations given don't really change anything. Silk Road wasn't a company, and yet it was subject to US law. I see that I'm being downvoted again, even though I'm speaking politely in good faith. :( The truth is, though, as far as I can see, this is legally correct. You can't just sit in a country and ignore its laws and then say "well no, it's an internet thing, the laws don't apply." That isn't how countries work.
  - ouEight12 4y ago
    > It's a real system that was made in the United States Not sure that's true (most of the founder folk appear to be non-US based, and the foundation is Swiss if I'm not mistaken), nor is it what the US Govt is claiming. The SEC appears to be saying "45% of the validator nodes on the network are US based, therefore the transactions happened here, and our laws apply". Which is a horribly bad statistical assumption by an agency that would, one hopes, employ actual mathematicians. I'm far from an ETH fan, more old school BTC myself, but to me, this feels like an exact reminder of why centralization (Even at the country level) is bad, and I can only assume that someone somewhere, who is working on the "next generation of blockchain" just scribbled "GeoIP based node populations limitations/banning" onto their feature roadmap.
    - JohnHaugeland 4y ago
      > Not sure that's true (most of the founder folk appear to be non-US based, and the foundation is Swiss if I'm not mistaken) Sorry, I could have been more clear when writing. This was my fault. I meant this physically. The network nodes are physical, and they're in the United States. If you are from France, you go to Japan, buy a bunch of arcade machines, then bring them to the US, and make an arcade company, I'm likely to say you built your company here, even though you did your planning, financing, and purchasing somewhere else. That's (as far as I can see, maybe I'm wrong) what the SEC is actually arguing - a substantial portion of the physical network has been built here, therefore our laws apply. As far as I know, that's just a core concept in the law. Where the thing happens, physically, determines which laws the thing is subject to, worldwide. . > The SEC appears to be saying "45% of the validator nodes on the network are US based, therefore the transactions happened here, and our laws apply". Which is a horribly bad statistical assumption by an agency that would, one hopes, employ actual mathematicians. This is the norm in the legal system. I'm actually not entirely certain what assumption is being made here, or how mathematicians would be involved. Maybe this is because there's something I don't understand about the Eth network. I'm worried I'm missing something, or discussing the wrong thing. I thought from reading the document that this was just them saying "we know who these nodes are, they're American, and let's divide." Am I misunderstanding? As far as I understand it, what they're saying is "if any ETH goes over American nodes, then American law has to be considered when trying to figure out if ETH is legal in America." I believe that's entirely correct. I believe the observation they're actually making is "a bunch of Americans using American nodes are on this network - nearly half of it - so since that's at least one, it applies." . > this feels like an exact reminder of why centralization (Even at the country level) is bad As a gentle reminder, this was what Ross Ulbricht said, was that the rule of law was bad because he didn't like it, and therefore we should decentralize to evade the law. . There's a tendency, in my opinion, for these discussions to focus a lot on why each person thinks everyone else's opinion is wrong. I'll ask you directly. What do you think is right, here? I personally think that's a lot harder to answer. Should Ethereum, or if you prefer individual transactions, be bound to any country's laws? If so, which ones? If not, why not? If this isn't the right question to ask, can you suggest a better one to me? I think that after people have answered what they think is right, they'll find it's pretty similar to what people are saying is wrong. I am not able to see much wiggle room here. As I see it, if any decision is to be made, then the answer basically has to be one (or more) of the following: 1. The country where the hardware is running gets to set the laws 2. The countries where the transaction is happening get to set the laws 3. Both 1 and 2 (this is what I believe current international law supports) 4. No laws apply 5. The scale is something different than "country," but otherwise still 1-3 It's not clear to me what other options even exist. (Maybe I'm missing stuff?) I think that as soon as people try to look for anything other than those five, and realize that something has to be chosen, they might start coming to some different viewpoints. Do you prefer one of those five? If not, do you have an alternative, or maybe a replacement question? I don't think almost anyone actually wants a lawless anarchy like in #4. But also, I think this discussion is rejecting countries as arbiters of laws here on the presumption that that's somehow obviously wrong, and it's not obvious at all, to me. Who else would do this but governments? Just my beliefs, though. I'm happy to be wrong, and if you can think of a sixth option, I would like to know what it is, even if you don't think it's the right choice. . I also have a really hard time with the amount of pollution this is all dumping, even after POS, to be honest. I think that gets downplayed too much. It's why I've never been willing to participate. Just the ETH POW -> POS change dropped a third of a percent of the entire planet's power, they said, and that doesn't quite half-fix the consumption. A third of a percent of the entire planet, for less-than-half-fixed, for the second largest network. Two large countries' worth of pollution to, in effect, run a stock trading simulation. Here, we debate whether the transactions should be subject to the laws of the countries. I honestly am not certain that I think any of this stuff will be legal in ten years, with the massive environmental damage it's doing in climate change's 11th hour. Pakistan's under water, the Great Salt Lake is about to be a dust bowl, the Atlantic Deep Water Formation is failing, we lost Antarctica's three largest ice shelves this year ten years early (conger, thwaites, glenzer,) the Colorado River is drying up, most hydro dams can't produce much power anymore, &c. Food's getting expensive, that's the world's #1 predictor of war, historically, and it looks like it's only going to get worse. I could write this paragraph for pages. We're starting the real environmental problems, and it will speed up every year. The pitchforks are coming soon, people will want to place blame, and they aren't going to stop with the Koch brothers. I know I sound extreme when I say this, but I believe we will live to see a time where waste of pollution for personal wealth gain will be seen as criminal, because that's going to be the only practical way to stop the carbon economy, and look what the alternative is. I say this because even the Federal Government is saying "we have less than ten years left" and nothing is changing. There's nothing ethically wrong with blockchain on a clean grid, but the grid isn't clean, and this bragging about 50% stuff is a clear sign that we can't have honest discussions when money is in play. People like to measure how much of it is solar, but PV solar is 76% natural gas backed on average, US DOE numbers, and CSP 71%, something absolutely nobody wants to face. Wind's hardly different "It's difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on not understanding it." - Upton Sinclair
  - c3534l 4y ago
    The airplane was invented by the Wright Brothers, does that mean someone on a flight from Japan to South Korea is bound by US law? I can understand if the SEC said that all compute nodes residing in the United States, and any organization likewise located here is under their jurisdiction. I'm not a lawyer, so I can't argue whether the SEC is legally correct, but it seems absurd to me to claim jurisdiction over an intangible idea whose related productive work occurs all over the world.
  - herbst 4y ago
    > If you make something in a country, it's subject to that country's laws. I don't know how this would be true. If anything operating from a country makes you subject to their law. I've wrote plenty of software while travelling. But I operate it from my homebase. That's a huge difference
    - JohnHaugeland 4y ago
      > > If you make something in a country, it's subject to that country's laws. > > I don't know how this would be true. If anything operating from a country makes you subject to their law. We're saying the same thing. If you create something, and the thing you created is in country X, you made the thing in country X. It doesn't matter if you're in country Y at the time. If I'm sitting in the United States, and I make something entirely on Japanese AWS servers, I built it in Japan. I wasn't in Japan, but the place it was built is Japan. "I built it in X" doesn't mean "I was in X and I built it." "I built it in X" means "I built it, and the place it is is X." We have trouble because it's only recently that these two concepts are meaningfully separable. I'll phrase myself differently. If a thing has been made, and its location is in Country X, then it is subject to the laws of Country X. I accept that I wrote this poorly and that it's subject to misunderstanding that is my fault.
  - throwaway743 4y ago
    iirc the main authors of Ethereum are not US citizens nor did they develop it in the US.
LatteLazy 4y ago
The English language is from England. So is it fair and right that you can only use it if you agree to be subject to english law? To pay english taxes to the english crown?

yucky 4y ago

Isn't Google a US company? Ethereum is an open source protocol with an unknown number of applications. I'm not sure this works as an analogy.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
JohnHaugeland 4y ago
I'm discussing the law, not an analogy. It's a real system that was made in the United States. You don't have to be a company to be subject to the law. If you make something in a country, it's subject to that country's laws. Think about it: you're basically suggesting that if you call something "a protocol," somehow it's no longer subject to the rule of law. We go through "well yeah but it's not a" every couple of years. The explanations given don't really change anything. Silk Road wasn't a company, and yet it was subject to US law. I see that I'm being downvoted again, even though I'm speaking politely in good faith. :( The truth is, though, as far as I can see, this is legally correct. You can't just sit in a country and ignore its laws and then say "well no, it's an internet thing, the laws don't apply." That isn't how countries work.
- ouEight12 4y ago
  > It's a real system that was made in the United States Not sure that's true (most of the founder folk appear to be non-US based, and the foundation is Swiss if I'm not mistaken), nor is it what the US Govt is claiming. The SEC appears to be saying "45% of the validator nodes on the network are US based, therefore the transactions happened here, and our laws apply". Which is a horribly bad statistical assumption by an agency that would, one hopes, employ actual mathematicians. I'm far from an ETH fan, more old school BTC myself, but to me, this feels like an exact reminder of why centralization (Even at the country level) is bad, and I can only assume that someone somewhere, who is working on the "next generation of blockchain" just scribbled "GeoIP based node populations limitations/banning" onto their feature roadmap.
  - JohnHaugeland 4y ago
    > Not sure that's true (most of the founder folk appear to be non-US based, and the foundation is Swiss if I'm not mistaken) Sorry, I could have been more clear when writing. This was my fault. I meant this physically. The network nodes are physical, and they're in the United States. If you are from France, you go to Japan, buy a bunch of arcade machines, then bring them to the US, and make an arcade company, I'm likely to say you built your company here, even though you did your planning, financing, and purchasing somewhere else. That's (as far as I can see, maybe I'm wrong) what the SEC is actually arguing - a substantial portion of the physical network has been built here, therefore our laws apply. As far as I know, that's just a core concept in the law. Where the thing happens, physically, determines which laws the thing is subject to, worldwide. . > The SEC appears to be saying "45% of the validator nodes on the network are US based, therefore the transactions happened here, and our laws apply". Which is a horribly bad statistical assumption by an agency that would, one hopes, employ actual mathematicians. This is the norm in the legal system. I'm actually not entirely certain what assumption is being made here, or how mathematicians would be involved. Maybe this is because there's something I don't understand about the Eth network. I'm worried I'm missing something, or discussing the wrong thing. I thought from reading the document that this was just them saying "we know who these nodes are, they're American, and let's divide." Am I misunderstanding? As far as I understand it, what they're saying is "if any ETH goes over American nodes, then American law has to be considered when trying to figure out if ETH is legal in America." I believe that's entirely correct. I believe the observation they're actually making is "a bunch of Americans using American nodes are on this network - nearly half of it - so since that's at least one, it applies." . > this feels like an exact reminder of why centralization (Even at the country level) is bad As a gentle reminder, this was what Ross Ulbricht said, was that the rule of law was bad because he didn't like it, and therefore we should decentralize to evade the law. . There's a tendency, in my opinion, for these discussions to focus a lot on why each person thinks everyone else's opinion is wrong. I'll ask you directly. What do you think is right, here? I personally think that's a lot harder to answer. Should Ethereum, or if you prefer individual transactions, be bound to any country's laws? If so, which ones? If not, why not? If this isn't the right question to ask, can you suggest a better one to me? I think that after people have answered what they think is right, they'll find it's pretty similar to what people are saying is wrong. I am not able to see much wiggle room here. As I see it, if any decision is to be made, then the answer basically has to be one (or more) of the following: 1. The country where the hardware is running gets to set the laws 2. The countries where the transaction is happening get to set the laws 3. Both 1 and 2 (this is what I believe current international law supports) 4. No laws apply 5. The scale is something different than "country," but otherwise still 1-3 It's not clear to me what other options even exist. (Maybe I'm missing stuff?) I think that as soon as people try to look for anything other than those five, and realize that something has to be chosen, they might start coming to some different viewpoints. Do you prefer one of those five? If not, do you have an alternative, or maybe a replacement question? I don't think almost anyone actually wants a lawless anarchy like in #4. But also, I think this discussion is rejecting countries as arbiters of laws here on the presumption that that's somehow obviously wrong, and it's not obvious at all, to me. Who else would do this but governments? Just my beliefs, though. I'm happy to be wrong, and if you can think of a sixth option, I would like to know what it is, even if you don't think it's the right choice. . I also have a really hard time with the amount of pollution this is all dumping, even after POS, to be honest. I think that gets downplayed too much. It's why I've never been willing to participate. Just the ETH POW -> POS change dropped a third of a percent of the entire planet's power, they said, and that doesn't quite half-fix the consumption. A third of a percent of the entire planet, for less-than-half-fixed, for the second largest network. Two large countries' worth of pollution to, in effect, run a stock trading simulation. Here, we debate whether the transactions should be subject to the laws of the countries. I honestly am not certain that I think any of this stuff will be legal in ten years, with the massive environmental damage it's doing in climate change's 11th hour. Pakistan's under water, the Great Salt Lake is about to be a dust bowl, the Atlantic Deep Water Formation is failing, we lost Antarctica's three largest ice shelves this year ten years early (conger, thwaites, glenzer,) the Colorado River is drying up, most hydro dams can't produce much power anymore, &c. Food's getting expensive, that's the world's #1 predictor of war, historically, and it looks like it's only going to get worse. I could write this paragraph for pages. We're starting the real environmental problems, and it will speed up every year. The pitchforks are coming soon, people will want to place blame, and they aren't going to stop with the Koch brothers. I know I sound extreme when I say this, but I believe we will live to see a time where waste of pollution for personal wealth gain will be seen as criminal, because that's going to be the only practical way to stop the carbon economy, and look what the alternative is. I say this because even the Federal Government is saying "we have less than ten years left" and nothing is changing. There's nothing ethically wrong with blockchain on a clean grid, but the grid isn't clean, and this bragging about 50% stuff is a clear sign that we can't have honest discussions when money is in play. People like to measure how much of it is solar, but PV solar is 76% natural gas backed on average, US DOE numbers, and CSP 71%, something absolutely nobody wants to face. Wind's hardly different "It's difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on not understanding it." - Upton Sinclair
- c3534l 4y ago
  The airplane was invented by the Wright Brothers, does that mean someone on a flight from Japan to South Korea is bound by US law? I can understand if the SEC said that all compute nodes residing in the United States, and any organization likewise located here is under their jurisdiction. I'm not a lawyer, so I can't argue whether the SEC is legally correct, but it seems absurd to me to claim jurisdiction over an intangible idea whose related productive work occurs all over the world.
- herbst 4y ago
  > If you make something in a country, it's subject to that country's laws. I don't know how this would be true. If anything operating from a country makes you subject to their law. I've wrote plenty of software while travelling. But I operate it from my homebase. That's a huge difference
  - JohnHaugeland 4y ago
    > > If you make something in a country, it's subject to that country's laws. > > I don't know how this would be true. If anything operating from a country makes you subject to their law. We're saying the same thing. If you create something, and the thing you created is in country X, you made the thing in country X. It doesn't matter if you're in country Y at the time. If I'm sitting in the United States, and I make something entirely on Japanese AWS servers, I built it in Japan. I wasn't in Japan, but the place it was built is Japan. "I built it in X" doesn't mean "I was in X and I built it." "I built it in X" means "I built it, and the place it is is X." We have trouble because it's only recently that these two concepts are meaningfully separable. I'll phrase myself differently. If a thing has been made, and its location is in Country X, then it is subject to the laws of Country X. I accept that I wrote this poorly and that it's subject to misunderstanding that is my fault.
- throwaway743 4y ago
  iirc the main authors of Ethereum are not US citizens nor did they develop it in the US.

LatteLazy 4y ago

The English language is from England. So is it fair and right that you can only use it if you agree to be subject to english law? To pay english taxes to the english crown?