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Szabo’s raising valid concerns about legal liability for node operators and I believe that’s worth taking seriously. The OP_RETURN expansion does create real risks when data becomes “readily viewable by standard software.” But here’s where I differ from calling for censorship: the legal risk argument cuts both ways. If we start filtering transactions because of potential liability, we’re pre-emptively accepting that some transactions are “illegal” before any court decides. That’s worse than the risk itself. The solution isn’t spam filters that decide what’s monetary, its node operators understanding their legal position and making informed choices. Run Tor, run pruned nodes if you’re concerned about storage liability, understand your jurisdiction 🤷‍♂️

Replies (4)

Freedom is illegal. Freedom always comes with trade offs. Total Orwellian control over the world doesn’t stop criminals. It only empowers the worst ones. Framing the conversation as if governments have jurisdiction over your nodes means you’ve already lost the plot. “If you don’t do this then they will ban it” The whole entire thing is noncompliant. The whole point of Bitcoin is to route around the state without direct violent confrontation. Of course it empowers the worst type of people as well. But governments spend very little time and energy handling the worst kind of people because they are made up of them. They steal, they murder, they abuse children, and they tell you where you can’t smoke. The trade offs of freedom are worth it. Anyone starting the conversation with how node operators need to out comply the state is not being helpful. Despite what PODCONF says, compliance is not defiance. If you have an ounce of dignity, you need to be comfortable with understanding you are an outlaw. View quoted note →
I am not terribly moved by the legal liability argument. I will gladly endure the persecution of a hostile state for standing up for what I believe is right. I am, however, moved by the moral argument. I look at it similar to the porn issue on Nostr. I run my own relay, and I am under no illusions that filtering porn from my relay is going to make much impact on Nostr as a whole at all. However, I can have a clear conscience knowing that I am not contributing to it with my relay. Same with filters on my node. It's not going to have a lot of impact on keeping non-monetary transactions, especially those containing data I find to be immoral, out of the blockchain, but I will know that my node is not contributing to the problem, and since I am creating block templates with my node's mempool, I know that if I ever found a block, it would not be contributing to the issue. So I see a lot of reason to have the option to filter your mempool if you want to do so as a node runner, and that taking that option away is not the route we should be going. Not so node runners can bend to the will of any state, but so they can be faithful to what they believe is right. Particularly since doing so in this context in no way imposes their view of what is right on anyone else. They are deciding it only for their own individual node.