Author: Mike Hearn 2012-10-14 22:49:47
Published on: 2012-10-14T22:49:47+00:00
The laws in question are Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) sanctions, which apply to any US citizen or resident. The issue is not cryptography, but trade with sanctioned countries where making files available for download is considered trade. For Bitcoin to be available in these places, the sites and download mirrors must be hosted outside the USA by non-citizens. EU sanctions are primarily financial, and there are no attempts to prevent people from serving data to Iran. There are no sanctions in effect in Switzerland, but datacenter space in Zurich is quite expensive. OFAC has a SDN list that has been found unconstitutional because it represents a complete evasion of the judicial system. If someone ends up on the sanctions list, no evidence is required, no process is followed, and no appeals are possible. The list itself assumes names are globally unique.
Updated on: 2023-06-06T07:59:35.058626+00:00