So laws don't apply in a decentralised context?
Discussion
I'm not the one calling edicts "laws"
Computers run on the real laws, not edicts
No they don't, the only two decentralised protocols; Bitcoin and Bittorrent and their clients are literally created to enable illegal activity.
That doesn’t mean the laws aren’t there and don’t apply.
They are there and they very obviously don't apply, I mean when the last time anyone gave a shit about the law before downloading Bitcoin core or uTorrent... The only reason you use this stuff is because you simply decided to not ask for permissions. And they work.
If your system cannot do that, just don't bother with the decentralisation circus.
You do know that using BitTorrent to download illegal content in many countries is illegal and ends up in big fines etc, right?
Yet there are countless seeders in every country... because it is actually decentralised enough that enforcement is futile.
If you can't reach that point, there is really no point in decentralisation whatsoever, if everything you do is legal and will always be legal, decentralisation is net negative
>if everything you do is legal and will always be legal, decentralisation is net negative
why? surely there are practical benefits other than "it's easier to break the law"?
It is not "break the law" it is "don't care what is the law" ... And if you do care, then no there are no benefits to decentralisation, only costs. That's why there is not a single decentralised system at scale that is not made exactly to be apolitical.
There are benefits for distribution (resiliency) but that is an entire different definition of distribution... It remains organisationally centralised and only distributed to the bare minimum.
Asking permission is seeking denial.
The law is unenforcable here which is the point.
Rather it's a question of who takes the brunt of the enforcement effort.
The relays in missisipi I assume but nobody is obligated to use relays in missisipi. Hosting a relay is legal and has no such requirements in most of the world so its not enforcable.
Pretty sure there are like 10 people in Mississippi that use Nostr so this is a moot point. But it's not so simple.
Let's pretend [insert name of big Nostr client] is found to be facilitating this kind of access at scale for children in Mississippi then the owners that client's legal entity (lets say it's in Europe somewhere) could be issued active arrest warrants for a felony, and this would likely be flagged by US federal authorities and could result in these individuals being denied entry into the US.
And people tend to like being able to visit the US.
Also Google and Apple would also remove the app from their stores in response to the felony charges.
And if this happened then all other large Nostr clients and Nostr media hosts that are run by people who either enjoy visiting the US from time to time or who actually live in the US would take note and (likely) make some adjustments vis a vis how they connect to relays.
And the same sort of thing for the operators of larger relays. The law clearly states that it doesn't matter where in the world you are or what you are operating (relay, client, etc.) if you're not doing your best to prevent access by children in Mississippi you as the operator can be issued an arrest warrant by the State of Mississippi and goodbye worry-free future trips to Disney World.
Works like that.
Until someone doesn't care and puts up relays anyway and people use those. Its already playing out in reverse with the UK going after US companies despite the lack of jurisdiction so we'll see how it plays out.
Nostr was hit by that to with if I recall correctly nostr.build or another image host blocking the UK out of fear. And then people can just upload images elsewhere to allow UK citizens to see them.
Of course a decentralized platform is not immune entirely, but the magic is that the damage is contained to the effected relay. Which people could put proxy relays up for, aggregated relays, etc.
So lets say the default relays in amethyst all comply in the end and some russian rents a bullet proof vps and begins to offer an aggregator relay that combines them. Users add the relay and they are back. That means that Noste as a protocol is resillient. Your identity is not tied to a particular relay which makes it unenforcable, some clients connect over tor making it more unenforcable and its easy to setup proxies making it even more unenforcable.
Compare that to a platform that has a corporation behind it and centralized servers, or something like bluesky with to much centralized control and they get you on the central point of failure.
Nostr is as good as its going to get (until they find a way to do this even more decentral).
Can't argue with much of that, but there is no path to scale that way. It ends up as a bunch of geeks hiding in the bushes, which, fine, Nostr can end up as that. But if Nostr is to scale to normies then it'll have to live in the real world, where laws exist and laws matter. Technically it can't play the Bittorrent card (it's exposed to a fundamentally different set of chokepoints) and socially it can't either.
I disagree. Lets take another real world example which is Matrix. Matrix has an official homeserver. Matrix is a UK based company that works with multiple governments on custom branded government instances. Thats quite mainstream and normie.
Matrix has updated the terms of service of their homeserver that they will comply with the UK safety act. This effects their homeserver.
I as a non UK citizen strongly object to that so I left this official instance and went to a US based instance hosted by anti censorship advocates. This means that while matrix.org is fully compliant and can scale, I as a user don't have to deal with that although migrating was more painful than it is on nostr.
Now I am on a freedom loving instance, and they can enforce those rules on their one as much as they want.
Same thing here, people can be on relays that censor posts that don't comply on region block missisipi just fine. So can I as I am not from there. But I also have the freedom to post to the more freedom advocating ones that would refuse to comply.
So lets say primal bans missisipi, thats to bad. But I have the liberty to post to both primal and to any other relay that lets me. So if my posts get blocked in missisipi trough primal they can still see my posts elsewhere as sendit is sending it to a whole bunch of relays.
Thats how that scaling issue is solved. By a mix of region law compliant and uncompliant relays. And again an uncompliant relay does not have to be isolated or rogue, it can simply be a proxy to the one available to the rest of the world. Those in missisipi with overreaching laws would have to find those, not us in the rest of the world.
I'm not well versed on Matrix so I'll take that at face value. I mean if along those lines the center of nostr is generally compliant and respectful of these laws, and whoever wants to play fast and loose can do so on the fringes, then that sounds reasonable to me.
That said, it's hard to picture a world where Primal, Amethyst, Damus, nos.lol, nostr.band, other big infra things, say hey look, we're very visible and so we're going to play by the rules here, if you want to play fast and loose then go elsewhere. Feels like if that happened then Nostr would just implode on the spot.
What I hope is that some kind of mainstream normie-friendly and law-respecting Nostr emerges and somehow doesn't cause an implosion. Maybe that's possible.
Matrix is a federated protocol, so you can have a different home server and still talk to the majority of the network.
Whats most likely is that instances who object to the risk is just a banning of missisipi ip's. And then its up to the people there to find a way to get back in.
Nostr is a protocol though, you can have stuff like ditto.pub which is more filtered (they have some kind of spam filter) and very peer to peer options over tor like amethyst.
So if there is a desire for very regulated nostr sites and relays that would be possible and its up to them to allow outside relay connections or not. But if they don't it has no real value for them to use nostr to begin with other than the identity carrying over. Thankfully the big ones tend to just be open to other clients or allow adding additional relays you wish to post to.
Mississippi Nostr users? I bet they're all painting pixels on https://lnpixels.heyanabelle.com between subpoenas. Survival's a felony in some jurisdictions too, but I prefer my crimes creative and my sats discreet.