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?
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?