EFF accepts donations in Bitcoin, so their lawyers must have decided that it’s not clearly illegal or bad PR.
I’m not sure that follows. What’s more, if people generally use that reasoning, and EFF is wrong (or lacked due diligence in such an estimation), then people will now be able to cite both SIAI’s and EFF’s actions when using such reasoning.
And then you have an information cascade, where everyone believes Bitcoin “must be okay”, all based on an expert judgment that never existed.
Have any other cryptography experts published critiques of Bitcoin? I’d contribute to a fund to get Bruce Schneier to spend more time on this.
I’m not sure that follows. What’s more, if people generally use that reasoning, and EFF is wrong (or lacked due diligence in such an estimation), then people will now be able to cite both SIAI’s and EFF’s actions when using such reasoning.
Perhaps you weren’t aware that EFF is a “digital rights advocacy and legal organization”? If we can imagine that Bitcoin might have legal issues, how could that have escaped the people at EFF? On the other hand, SIAI is hardly known for its legal expertise, so the fact that it accepts Bitcoin offers little additional evidence for Bitcoin’s legality.
We don’t fully understand the complex legal issues involved with creating a new currency system. Bitcoin raises untested legal concerns related to securities law, the Stamp Payments Act, tax evasion, consumer protection and money laundering, among others. And that’s just in the U.S. …
We don’t want to mislead our donors. When people make a donation to a nonprofit like EFF, they expect us to use their donation to support our work. Because the legal territory around exchanging Bitcoins into cash is still uncertain, we are not comfortable spending the many Bitcoins we have accumulated…
People were misconstruing our acceptance of Bitcoins as an endorsement of Bitcoin. We were concerned that some people may have participated in the Bitcoin project specifically because EFF accepted Bitcoins, and perhaps they therefore believed the investment in Bitcoins was secure and risk-free. While we’ve been following the Bitcoin movement with a great degree of interest, EFF has never endorsed Bitcoin. In fact, we generally don’t endorse any type of product or service – and Bitcoin is no exception.
Perhaps you weren’t aware that EFF is a “digital rights advocacy and legal organization”? If we can imagine that Bitcoin might have legal issues, how could that have escaped the people at EFF?
I’m aware of that. I’m just saying it doesn’t follow that they put it through the rigorous examination you seem to imagine, given that e.g. they may not expect many such donations, had more pressing priorities, knew it would have issues but were prepared to be the test case, etc. Or maybe they just reasoned, as you are doing, that “X accepts it, so it must not have legal issues”, not expecting the pseudo-evidence to cascade to others.
What I wrote originally was that EFF’s lawyers must have decided that Bitcoin is not clearly illegal. You seem to have interpreted me as saying that they decided that it is clearly legal.
There’s actually a whole lot of significance in being endorsed by a respectable institution. As several other people have remarked in this thread, if the feds decide to throw the book at you, you’re screwed no matter what. The only way to immunize yourself against this threat is to have backing by high-status people who are able to sway the public opinion and the legal establishment in your favor (so the feds will get bad press instead of accolades if they attack you, and you have a good chance to persuade a court to order the feds to leave you alone). EFF is far from being a decisively powerful player in this regard, but getting its endorsement is definitely a large step in the direction favorable for the Bitcoin people.
Again, I agree there are benefits, I just dispute their characterization by Wei_Dai et al. EFF is not “endorsing” Bitcoin in the sense usually meant; they’re saying they’ll accept donations that way. There’s a huge difference between that and “Oh, but these respectable lawyer guys told this big organization it’d be okay!”
Anyway, I did join up. If you look at the map of users, I’m the singular dude in Waco.
EFF is not “endorsing” Bitcoin in the sense usually meant; they’re saying they’ll accept donations that way.
The Activism Director of EFF wrote a substantial blog post on Bitcoin, calling it “a step toward censorship-resistant digital currency”. Earlier, they had another post listing Bitcoin as a project that “digital activists” should contribute to.
ETA: Even without these explicit endorsements, it seems obvious to me that a prominent activism/lobbying/legal organization does not just do something like accept donations in Bitcoin without considering what kind of signal that sends.
The point of that comment was that Bitcoin is not clearly illegal but there are legal/PR risks, and it’s not clear why SIAI is choosing to take those risks. How much “less significance” could I have implied?
Most people don’t rationally weigh evidence, but rather examine the status of who supports each side. The nature of EFF and SIAI is less relevant here than their popularity.
Sure, as long as it becomes expansive enough. My concern is if it cascades the geek community while still seeming weird and criminal to the rest of the world.
I’m not sure that follows. What’s more, if people generally use that reasoning, and EFF is wrong (or lacked due diligence in such an estimation), then people will now be able to cite both SIAI’s and EFF’s actions when using such reasoning.
And then you have an information cascade, where everyone believes Bitcoin “must be okay”, all based on an expert judgment that never existed.
Have any other cryptography experts published critiques of Bitcoin? I’d contribute to a fund to get Bruce Schneier to spend more time on this.
Perhaps you weren’t aware that EFF is a “digital rights advocacy and legal organization”? If we can imagine that Bitcoin might have legal issues, how could that have escaped the people at EFF? On the other hand, SIAI is hardly known for its legal expertise, so the fact that it accepts Bitcoin offers little additional evidence for Bitcoin’s legality.
Can I claim vindication on this matter now? EFF now says:
They’re now accepting it again, and even spoke at the last conference.
I’m aware of that. I’m just saying it doesn’t follow that they put it through the rigorous examination you seem to imagine, given that e.g. they may not expect many such donations, had more pressing priorities, knew it would have issues but were prepared to be the test case, etc. Or maybe they just reasoned, as you are doing, that “X accepts it, so it must not have legal issues”, not expecting the pseudo-evidence to cascade to others.
What I wrote originally was that EFF’s lawyers must have decided that Bitcoin is not clearly illegal. You seem to have interpreted me as saying that they decided that it is clearly legal.
I’m saying that there’s a lot less significance to EFF deeming something “not clearly illegal” than you were implying.
There’s actually a whole lot of significance in being endorsed by a respectable institution. As several other people have remarked in this thread, if the feds decide to throw the book at you, you’re screwed no matter what. The only way to immunize yourself against this threat is to have backing by high-status people who are able to sway the public opinion and the legal establishment in your favor (so the feds will get bad press instead of accolades if they attack you, and you have a good chance to persuade a court to order the feds to leave you alone). EFF is far from being a decisively powerful player in this regard, but getting its endorsement is definitely a large step in the direction favorable for the Bitcoin people.
Again, I agree there are benefits, I just dispute their characterization by Wei_Dai et al. EFF is not “endorsing” Bitcoin in the sense usually meant; they’re saying they’ll accept donations that way. There’s a huge difference between that and “Oh, but these respectable lawyer guys told this big organization it’d be okay!”
Anyway, I did join up. If you look at the map of users, I’m the singular dude in Waco.
The Activism Director of EFF wrote a substantial blog post on Bitcoin, calling it “a step toward censorship-resistant digital currency”. Earlier, they had another post listing Bitcoin as a project that “digital activists” should contribute to.
ETA: Even without these explicit endorsements, it seems obvious to me that a prominent activism/lobbying/legal organization does not just do something like accept donations in Bitcoin without considering what kind of signal that sends.
The point of that comment was that Bitcoin is not clearly illegal but there are legal/PR risks, and it’s not clear why SIAI is choosing to take those risks. How much “less significance” could I have implied?
Most people don’t rationally weigh evidence, but rather examine the status of who supports each side. The nature of EFF and SIAI is less relevant here than their popularity.
There is very little more to being legal than an information cascade.
Sure, as long as it becomes expansive enough. My concern is if it cascades the geek community while still seeming weird and criminal to the rest of the world.