Crypto facing bans on rights to discussion

[Dean Collins]

Reading this article today
- https://www.manatt.com/Insights/Newsletters/Advertising-Law/Cryptocurrency-Pays-Price-for-Alleged-Harm-With-Ad

 

 

I’m kind of curious what peoples thoughts are around these issues?

 

In the light of……

-        The social networking site Facebook, banned advertisements for crypto-related and other speculative financial products as of January 2018.

-        Just a few days after Google’s announcement, news reports speculated that Twitter would be next to prohibit advertisements for initial coin offerings as well.

-        New gun content rules on YouTube send one gun channel to Pornhub - https://nypost.com/2018/03/22/gun-videos-turning-up-on-pornhub-ahead-of-youtube-ban/

 

 

How come gay bakers are a constitutionally protected species according to SCOTUS ….but crypto startups and gun reviewers can have their rights trampled on like the unwashed floor mats at an all you can eat buffet.

 

I know YouTube, Facebook and Google are private companies and as such they get to determine what content goes on their site. But at the same time I cant help but wonder….shouldn’t all “currently fully legal” topics be freely shown and discussed?

So if YouTube bans a baking video channel that only reviews gay wedding cakes…..its a national emergency, but if YouTube bans some rednecks who like to talk about and shoot AR-15’s at plywood….this is ok. (InRange isn’t a small content provider either….they had 145,000 registered subscribers. I can imagine a lot of startups on silicon beach would be very happy with these kinds of numbers).

If Facebook is allowed to ban discussions about Crypto……we are all lead to believe this is fine. But whats next? eg if they then use their powers to prevent us talking about startups looking to compete with Facebook…..then isn’t it the same? What about governments around the world banning discussion on encryption and security methodologies “because it makes an educated society harder to monitor”

 

Our free rights to new ideas are being infringed upon. Last time I checked…..this isn’t what the internet is about.

 

Thoughts?


Cheers,
Dean
P.S. I hope people get my humor about Gay Bakers, I fully support SCOTUS position. I just don’t understand why the EFF isn’t pursuing our other rights to discuss legal topics on these social media venues. Also I posted this here as I want to get the thoughts and input from smart people that I know are reading this here…..if you feel this isn’t appropriate venue feel free to respond at - https://www.facebook.com/LiveCourtChat/posts/1632872166780926  instead, ….well at least until challenging “the Man” is still allowed on Facebook anyway J.

 

[Geoffrey Litman]

Hi Dean

I will digress... But there is some relevance.. 

What gets included or not included in any media platform that broadcasts goes way back. As we all know. 

Whoever owns that platform  will impose their values. 

Rules, standards, laws and guidelines of the day will also be an influence. As well as monetary benefits, if any. Just plain ignorance as well. 

Small platforms can be controlled more than big ones. 

FB or TW  were built to make money not to disseminate information in a sociallly acceptable way, whatever that may mean. 

Unlike a newspaper anyone can write anything. How many see what any one person writes depends on their popularity within the that world. 

So we see an (r) evolution going on. Trying to now edit. 

How and what they prevent from being displayed will always be an issue in one way or another. Can't please everyone as the saying goes. 

Have a great day. Geoff
(sent from mobile)

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[Clifford Heath]

Ponzi schemes and similar financial fraudulence are illegal, and we have enough history of financial analysis to know how to define that. 

A lot of these crypto schemes should also be illegal on the same basis, but even experts can't yet define boundaries. It's reasonable to me that some public protection should be in place. 

Clifford Heath 

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[Sujit Shah]

Really? What would you call Fiat currencies?

backed by nothing but threat of military and manipulation of media

Astounding how the oligarchs control the world ...

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xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

"There must be ingenuity as well as intention, strategy as well as strength. "

 

[Clifford Heath]

... control  ...

You got it in one. Control means stability, so money today is likely to be still worth something tomorrow. 

As opposed to most crypto-scams. 

[drllau]

> Our free rights to new ideas are being infringed upon. Last time I checked…..this isn’t what the internet is about.

Just a legal clarification ....protected free speech is context of political arena and to a lesser extent social sphere (bar defamation), it is NOT the same as commercial verbiage. The classic example of restriction is forbidding to (falsely) yell FIRE in a crowded theatre. Because of popularity of ICO and its skirting of securities laws, the financial regulators have (rightly or wrongly) started paying attention with the US taking a more principled approach unlike others which are based more on form (eg China outright no-no). The SEC response is to apply the Howey test where an farmer claimed he was selling oranges whereas SEC said that substantively he was taking investors monies for an orchard plot. The basic premise is that contribution of capital with little control/oversight fosters fraudulent behaviour so as "public interest" to encourage the legitimate raising of entrepreneurial capital (otherwise we'd be back to feudal grants or state banks), there must be someone (naturally a govt bureacracy) to protect the "mentally deficient" and financial illiterates. Now the proper question is based on the fact that we have a distributed global ledger with NO jurisdiction (or more precisely overlapping) what would the ecosystem respond with correcting the information assymetry? We need the equivalent of fact checker or collective wisdom of crowd like wikipedia to ferret out the out and out ponzi schemes, Nigerian letters and Madoff sleigh of hand. The fundamental problem is that this is tending to be a public good in that you have diverse unconnected speculators vs a concentrated group of vested interests which makes it hard to control, hence the rather heavy handed top-down approach (bans, AML, etc).

I've some speculative thoughts on this based around shorting of tokens with bounties for insider-info but typically ICOs are tightly controlled with little free float or liquidity so it's still a battle. As for free (libre) speech I think we should be a little careful to distinguish the cases so that efforts are focused on the libertarian issues and not repeating slogans out of context. A lot of (somewhat useful in establishing lines) laws become ineffective in the internet and crypto-economics only goes so far to foster the right incentives for actors. Personally I think that ICOs are actually a mix of trust deeds, employment contracts as well a games of chance so ram-rodding blanket securities laws into the mouth of financing software projects will decrease the amount of FOSS.

Lawrence