[verdverm]

The code was taken down by a private company, where your free speech does not apply. This is closer to the debate about content moderation on social media, because after all, github is more like a social media site than most realize. GitHub suspended the developer accounts of their own accord, likely to cover their ass.

The Tornado Cash case is all about money laundering, the fact that there was code to automate the process is besides the point.

[randomran01234]

GitHub can do whatever it likes as a private company. But there are laws that protect against chilling effects:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chilling_effect

The bigger problem is whether republishing the source code would make you a target of the sanctions. If a user republishes the source code on Ethereum, pirate bay, Gitlab, or another host then it is reasonable to assume their actions might be interpreted as “supporting the Tornado Cash project” which makes them a target of the sanctions. If a user modifies the code and republishes it probably will fall under same risks.

[JohnHaugeland]

Chilling effects laws have absolutely nothing to do with a company's voluntary decisions. That's a bizarre misunderstanding of their usage.

[randomran01234]

US sanctioning an Ethereum contract address and unrelated source control providers deleting user accounts and repositories is a good example of chilling effect in action. The individual developers are not in scope of the sanctions, and are not sanctioned entities. Not even the source code or its many individual repositories are directly sanctioned, but chilling effect is leading hosting services to erase it all as a precaution.

https://harvardlawreview.org/2020/02/the-establishment-claus...