"At the very least, the decision provides a strong precedent for the idea that Storm and Semenov, despite designing the software, were not actively involved in money laundering."
By the looks of it, Tornado Cash is as "uncontrollable technology." And if Roman Storm had created a second Tornado Cash that was also uncontrollable, and perhaps even harder to censor, and seemingly for no financial gain--I don't know if I think it was wise for his court case, but it would definitely be very "Cypher Punk."
But he built (or at least is running) another money transmitter that is very much controllable, with admin upgradeability and closed source.
It's romantic to think of, say, someone who is mad at censorship, and, I don't know, The Man, finding a a way to get every book, movie, and song ever put on the internet (legally or illegally) and create some kind of site/portal that lets any person with an internet connection experience them without any trace or proof of doing so. And the portal could never be closed or prevented. Just so people could enjoy it. Not so anyone can make any money from it.
But the giant plagiarism machine that is AI kind of does that, except rather sh**illy (sh**tilly?). I mean, I suspect you could tell it to regurgitate some training data undigested, but that's prohibited, mostly (I suspect) because it would reveal the massive amount of unlawfully attained data. Or purposely made impossible, but again, because it would reveal the massive amount of unlawfully attained data. It's quite possible it would be extremely easy, and probably useful for tweaking and improving, to keep undigested copies around, but I wouldn't be surprised if it was purposely avoided simply to try to avoid culpability. And all the AI companies are definitely doing it to make money.
In fact, I don't believe anyone would go through the trouble of building a hypothetical uncontrollable portal to the world's creative output for free and for everyone. Because who can afford to spend their time, or spend the resources to hire others, to do that? Who would risk going to jail for that? There are people who would do that for zero personal reward, and there are people who have the resources to possibly make it happen. But those Venn Diagram circles do not overlap. They aren't even in eye sight of each other.
Kind of like the Venn Diagram of the people who really are hurt by debanking and the ones mentioned in this Substack.
"At the very least, the decision provides a strong precedent for the idea that Storm and Semenov, despite designing the software, were not actively involved in money laundering."
https://medium.com/chainargos/is-tornado-cashs-roman-storm-running-an-unlicensed-money-transmitter-while-out-on-bail-b46008a6af26
And, because I think it relevant:
https://medium.com/chainargos/hammering-thorchain-its-totally-centralized-with-hard-coded-admin-keys-15a8876e149a
By the looks of it, Tornado Cash is as "uncontrollable technology." And if Roman Storm had created a second Tornado Cash that was also uncontrollable, and perhaps even harder to censor, and seemingly for no financial gain--I don't know if I think it was wise for his court case, but it would definitely be very "Cypher Punk."
But he built (or at least is running) another money transmitter that is very much controllable, with admin upgradeability and closed source.
It's romantic to think of, say, someone who is mad at censorship, and, I don't know, The Man, finding a a way to get every book, movie, and song ever put on the internet (legally or illegally) and create some kind of site/portal that lets any person with an internet connection experience them without any trace or proof of doing so. And the portal could never be closed or prevented. Just so people could enjoy it. Not so anyone can make any money from it.
But the giant plagiarism machine that is AI kind of does that, except rather sh**illy (sh**tilly?). I mean, I suspect you could tell it to regurgitate some training data undigested, but that's prohibited, mostly (I suspect) because it would reveal the massive amount of unlawfully attained data. Or purposely made impossible, but again, because it would reveal the massive amount of unlawfully attained data. It's quite possible it would be extremely easy, and probably useful for tweaking and improving, to keep undigested copies around, but I wouldn't be surprised if it was purposely avoided simply to try to avoid culpability. And all the AI companies are definitely doing it to make money.
In fact, I don't believe anyone would go through the trouble of building a hypothetical uncontrollable portal to the world's creative output for free and for everyone. Because who can afford to spend their time, or spend the resources to hire others, to do that? Who would risk going to jail for that? There are people who would do that for zero personal reward, and there are people who have the resources to possibly make it happen. But those Venn Diagram circles do not overlap. They aren't even in eye sight of each other.
Kind of like the Venn Diagram of the people who really are hurt by debanking and the ones mentioned in this Substack.