This is not relevant to the point I made, which is about the problems of banning technology - and if it was relevant, it would have proved my point about it being ineffective.
If you can’t respond to my detailed point, can you give any example of a comparable technology ban? How did that go?
Guns are banned. While I’m not saying that the ban would be effective in the sense that 100% of people will follow the ban, it will be effective in that only the activists willing to spend time in prison will violate the ban.
It is my opinion that those kinds of activists are rare no matter what the cause is. If use of SAFE Network results in years of time in prison then no one except hardcore activists will use it. China has banned Bitcoin without even the threat of prison and now Bitcoin popularity has slowed while there is also the notorious firewall which is very effective.
China did not “ban” bitcoin. It prohibited banks from handling it. So there’s a problem with exchanges.
The thing is that use of the SAFE network will be something that many Chinese will wish to use for its own sake. Safecoin will likely bypass the need to interact with banks to be useful for commerce, because it will be spread amongst all users.
They can make a law, and that will certainly inhibit usage by a lot of people, but it will almost certainly make its “illicit” use all the more popular. It’s hard to bully a bunch of ants.
Most Internet users are not activists. Most users of the Internet don’t want to go to prison for SAFE Network ideals. If most people aren’t prepared to go to prison then if SAFE Network is banned most people will stay away from it.
I think a mistake or error people in these sorts of communities make, and it’s a sort of delusion, is they seem to think that how they feel about a project is how the whole world feels, or that their values reflect the values of the whole world, or that everyone in the whole world is a serious activist prepared to face prison for the sake of the project.
The reason SAFE Network or other pieces of software can be banned in most places is because Internet activists are rare, whether it’s China, Russia, or the United States. The psychology you see on this forum is also very rare even among activists, and to use SAFE Network requires a very high risk appetite.
If most people think the risk doesn’t outweigh the reward why are they going to bother trying to challenge the government and bypass the ban? Also let’s accept that in most countries the government controls the narrative and is also the moral authority. It might be that in China there are people who go out of their way to bypass the firewall or use Tor but the usage of Tor isn’t common in China and if SAFE Network is in a similar position politically then SAFE Network will not be common if governments don’t like it.
What would change this? Even if all the activists were to support SAFE Network initially, suppose that thousands of activists are jailed or have their bank accounts frozen, are put on government lists? Will they still have the same resolve we see today??
China didn’t ban Bitcoin but their actions slowed Bitcoin down tremendously. It could be that banning isn’t even necessary if the government can simply disapprove of it and people will be encouraged not to ask questions or touch it.
Most people my age used napster or bittorrent or something like it. Most people I know smoked weed. People who drive the speed limit are rare and annoying everyone goes 5 over.
You don’t have to be an activist to ignore rules that you will not be punished significantly for breaking.
If SAFE is marketed as a security platform. Which it is, lots of people will use it, not to be rebels but because they want their data to be very difficult to steal.
EVERY company that has a server with customer information on it is at risk for being hacked if they have not been hacked already. They will be negligent not to move their data to SAFE or something like it ASAP…
So it isn’t the pirates that SAFE is about. It is about Security. Goverments are fining and darn near prosecution companies for being negligent with data now – this is going to increase the need for SAFE, not decrease it.
The pirates and rebels are the ones profiting most from the current insecure system. They are the ones funding all kinds of criminal operations from stolen funds from hacks.
I’m all for looking at difficulties and opposition, government action, commercial special-interest flanking, etc. I’m not for assuming that when you’ve got your hands on something that is potentially different, to talk and speculate about, and even have confidence in, unique aspects with will operate differently.
I agree, sometimes we may be too hopeful. But then we have folks like you to adjust our expectations. Delusional, though, doesn’t quite fit, I think.
Bitcoin still moves forward. It’s the first currency without a flag. Seven years ago, it would have been easy to say that making it illegal would kill it. Not so easy to speak so now, though it still could happen in some places.
There are aspects of SAFE that are way beyond bitcoin and will play out differently. If the SAFE network works, many things will happen, many of them anti-SAFE. But safecoin is not a frontal attack on the monetary system, as bitcoin is, in large part. It’s not the charging elephant, it’s ants on the move.
Remember that China can’t really ban a network. They can block it (or at least try to).
No one gets prosecuted for using a network. You might get in trouble for how you use the SAFE network (like, to spread “foreign propaganda”), but that’s a separate matter and can get you in trouble on any network.
You assume governments will not punish it harshly. They could throw the book at activists. Why assume that governments will go easy on activists?
SAFE Network isn’t just another Bittorrent which can be used for piracy. We are talking about anonymous currency, and uncensored data. It’s not at all comparable to Bittorrent but if you want you can look at Kim Dot Com to have an example if you want to use that as a model. Also you can look at all the money laundering, tax evasion, and patriot act type laws.
Beyond all the legal weapons government has, they also have lists. The no fly list for example, or other lists similar to that which activists get put on, which literally can destroy lives, make it difficult to travel, etc.
Consider that all governments have expressed dislike for anonymous currency and how it can threaten democracy, and you can see quick easily that it’s not in the same league as Bittorrent in terms of how much governments might despise it. If some government determines SAFE Network is somehow a danger to their national security and they ban it then that is all it would take. Law enforcers will harshly punish anyone who uses it after the ban.
It’s better not to assume to know how governments will react but we do know governments basically all say they don’t like anonymous currency. So whatever the reaction is going to be, it’s not going to be in my opinion a “soft touch”. I would say also that the uncensored nature and the fact that anything could be put on SAFE network, it is the combination that will probably be the trigger for a crackdown.
Especially in a place like Russia.
That can easily change. Why assume the lawmakers will just sit and watch and not change laws which they can write? And there are laws they could enforce too like the tax laws.
I don’t assume anything.
I know that it will be quite hard to prove anything about SAFE.
It certainly is compatible to bittorrent. You can store your DVD collection on SAFE, share it and there is no way to unpublish it, prove who published it, take it down etc etc… And bittorent is alive and well even though most of it’s use is illegal nearly everywhere. It is alive because it is nearly impossible to kill.
SAFE Network doesn’t have to be killed. They just have to make it some sort of underground thing which can never become popular. Harsh punishments on the activists who use it would marginalize it.
Just because it might not happen in some countries it doesn’t mean other countries wont go to extreme measures to ban SAFE Network. The only way SAFE Network would be like Napster or Bittorrent is if it could go mainstream prior to a crackdown but that isn’t even a guarantee.
I am skeptical about whether or not SAFE Network can reach mainstream popularity. The idea is good but it really depends on a lot of variables.
You cannot control governments. Just hack around them.
If it is undetectable and unprovable, it is going to be hard to build a legal case.
If you live in a country where legal cases are not nessesary, SAFE is the least of your concerns.
Lists don’t require a legal case. They don’t even reveal reasons why certain bank accounts are being closed.
If you read any of my posts you would interact with the idea SAFE will reach mainstream popularity because it is the only known way to keep your data secure and safe from hackers.
Everyone focuses on the minor criminal details – when the truth is that the insecurity of the current system is a massive boon to crime, and SAFE kills the Billions and billions of dollars hacking criminal rackets that exist now…
SAFE eliminates serious criminal activity and enables petty criminal activity that is already possivle via other unstoppable channels.
I never said SAFE Network is a bad idea but it’s not actually the only way. There are other similar networks like SAFE Network and it is very possible that there will be other networks the governments like more.
If SAFE Network were launching with industry support I might be more confident in it going mainstream but I don’t see a list of big fortune 500 companies talking about using SAFE Network.
It is possible SAFE Network can go mainstream but it’s not at all guaranteed that it will. It’s possible something on top of Bitcoin can do exactly what SAFE Network can do, but without anonymous transactions. It’s also possible to do similar stuff over Ethereum or other projects.
The data storage component isn’t so controversial. The controversial part is the Safecoin itself and the anonymity. With Bitcoin it’s not anonymous so governments tolerate it because they can analyze the network and the chain. If Bitcoin were totally anonymous I don’t think we’d be seeing Wall Street and all these big companies jumping on it.
And if SAFE Network is to go mainstream it would need to approach the same sort of companies, and they have to comply with regulations which might remove layers of anonymity.
It doesn’t need to go mainstream to be successful.
Many developers may use it as a back end to hold data securely, and the users may not even know they are using SAFE… Having a worldwide available database that is inexpensive to use and has security built in is a pretty neat feature…
Like I said - if the technology exists in a stable state, IT professionals will be negligent not to use it. The current systems are BROKEN – most likely beyond repair.
The thing is – SAFEcoin is likely to be totally insignificant outside SAFE.
I suspect such… It will be an accounting feature within the SAFE environment and will likely be as relevant as any of the the other Alt-coins to the rest of the world. I may be wrong, but I kinda doubt it. SAFEcoin is cool- but it is rather late to arrive to the cryptocurrency party.
That doesn’t make SAFEcoin insignificant – The value of SAFE is in the network. The currency enables the network and that is pretty darn important.
Luckybit, again, the key word is activists. They don’t ban networks.
Torrents aren’t banned, satellite dishes aren’t either (even when they were officially illegal!), VPNs are also not banned.
They will make the users’ lives miserable, but if you’re found to be downloading porn or The Capital, they won’t give a shit about you.
But if you’re deemed an anti-state or anti-party activist (counter-revolutionary), you will be busted even if you use telnet. Or stay offline.
@luckybit what is your point? Scare us? So much energy to make your point but what we can do about that? Manifesting against the governement?
If it happen it happen. That will not prevent me to sleep well.
I agree with everything else you say here, but I think this is unlikely. I think safecoin will be extremely significant, but in ways very different than other cryptocurrencies, late to the party or not.
The anonymity features might make it very desirable for illegal uses. But because there are no large aggregations of it, at first, anyway–outside of crowdsale participants–those elements will wish to buy it for cash. That means that it will be given value in terms of the local currency, and so why wait for someone to offer cash? Why not start buying things from friends, family and other real people with it? This sort of thing will be very hard to make illegal, especially since the software is all open source and other peer to peer operations will crop up using the Crust and Routing layers, at least.
Of course, I agree that the purpose of safecoin IS the SAFE network, but that won’t keep safecoin from doing its job extremely well and driving volumes of people to contribute resources to the network.