Thread by @backus

You can view decentralization and cryptography as generalized tools for obeying the letter of the law but not the spirit.

I think the way they can systematically subvert legal precedent will eventually lead to impossibly tough Supreme Court issues.

Thread 👇

Napster’s death started the decentralization-case law mind game.

Napster’s centralized search made it liable for infringement

What do Kazaa/Limewire do? Package search into a protocol NO ONE owns. Historical case law wasn’t built for this. Nextgen p2p went to the supreme court

Supreme Court didn’t want to judge decentralized protocols by use (~98% illegal searches) because that may have also killed mp3 players.

Instead, they fell back to intent. Grokster clearly marketed to music pirates, so that killed them.

Takeaway:

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Aimster built a file sharing network on AIM. They encrypted traffic so they could claim ignorance (we assume).

Intent was clear (advertised free copyrighted music) but still hard to litigate

Circuit court called this “willful blindness” but unclear if Supreme Court would uphold

Imagine if “willful blindness” was enough to sue a biz for using encryption to mask responsibility for illegal activity in their product.

Decentralization and crypto can obfuscate away responsibility. Only leftover options are intent and trial-by-stats. Tough spot for courts

Decentralization as legal hot potato:

• Central search not allowed? Fine, it’s decentralized
• You want a client side filter? Fine, BitTorrent doesn’t have a search. Leave that to The Pirate Bay

Litigating decentralized products informs how the nextgen should evolve

Decentralization as digital war on drugs:

• Kill Napster? Dozens of replacements ready to step up
• Prosecute users? Political suicide. Who likes the DEA or RIAA?
• US hate you? Find a willing host. Compare extradition attempts of Escobar to @KimDotcom and Pirate Bay founders

How do you censor a permanent decentralized file store? Make a list of illegal files and ask everyone not to seed it?

How many free speech radicals do you need to invalidate this system? One?

Honestly, I wouldn’t be surprised if the Pirate Bay guys ran a contrarian IPFS node

Crypto as virtuous finger pointing:

Tor is great for anti-censorship in hostile countries. Cryptocurrency is great for Venezuela. Facebook uses BitTorrent to push code updates.

Is that how you use them?

How far can we take this ambiguity game? I’m not sure there is a limit

By the way, I’m speaking from an anthropological/historical POV here. I think my takeaways are accurate, but I’m not sure if this is good for us.

Crypto and decentralization could polarize us towards anarchy or authoritarianism. True cyberpunk