[dcow]

That is not my view.

I am not talking about what GH is at liberty to do; clearly they can do whatever they want. I’m asking about what they’re legally bound to do as a result of these sanctions. I find the precedent here more fascinating and troublesome (as an open source author myself) than the instance of the code in question.

[deeg]

As we've seen with Alex Jones even free speech is not absolute (for the record I agree with the rulings against Jones). If the code is designed to facilitate illegal activity I can see how that could be shut down by the government.

[dcow]

Alex Jones got sued. It’s very different. The government did not pass a law saying he can’t share conspiracy theories directly or that certain theories are off-limits. He just conducted himself in such a way as to cause enough other problems and thus give people grounds to sue him (and win).

[misnome]

Specifically as I understand it ,he got sued then deliberately didn’t try to fight it, and defaulted.

[gerikson]

The linked Treasury doc references Executive Order 13694, which has its own wikipedia page https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_Order_13694.

[lysergia]

Code is a form of speech. It’s the way the code was used that frightened the authorities. Just the way certain forms of cryptographic code were reframed as a ‘munition’ in the first crypto war.

[bb88]

Code is just documents or written speech, and should be regulated as such. So code vs written documents shouldn't be legally different.

So I guess a good question is: should it be illegal to tell people how to launder money? I would say no because I think laws should regulate behavior not speech.

I think for example that people should be able to make arguments why punching a Nazi should not be illegal, say, and maybe the best way to do it. But punching is clearly illegal, and threatening a Nazi directly should also be illegal.

However with abortion, some states that have made abortion illegal are trying to make it illegal to talk about where to get abortions, or how an abortion is performed. So if that is deemed legal by SCOTUS, then expect all kinds of laws to restrict speech in that manner.