Library Genesis/SciHub[1], and its various access portals[2].
Honestly LibGen+SciHub is doing more for humanity than almost any organization I know of. It's the next generation complement (not replacement) of Wikipedia -- truly opening the entirety of Man's knowledge to anyone.
I don't oppose paying content creators, but I suspect the vast majority of people accessing this knowledge wouldn't do so under traditional publishing. This shows copyright is largely outdated, not serving society optimally as it should.
As for Bitcoin and blockchains... my opinion is that they are extremely useful for efforts like those (and other niches like totalitarian states), if not much else. Perhaps paradoxically I also (controversially) think they should be outlawed and/or heavily regulated (outlawed but as a lightweight non-criminal offense). The potential for theft and money laundering is too large otherwise.
In the limit where everyone used perfect secrecy coins, paying taxes would need to be largely voluntary. And I suppose we all know how well that would turn out.
So I think cryptocurrencies are meant to be underground. It will always be possible to acquire some under the censorship conditions they are really useful for. So restricting their usage mainly curbs trivialized laundering.
Thanks! That's a good example. Very niche, so it's probably not enough to sustain a robust financial network. But I agree they could happily piggyback on a more general "light crime" cryptocurrency.
Honestly LibGen+SciHub is doing more for humanity than almost any organization I know of. It's the next generation complement (not replacement) of Wikipedia -- truly opening the entirety of Man's knowledge to anyone.
I don't oppose paying content creators, but I suspect the vast majority of people accessing this knowledge wouldn't do so under traditional publishing. This shows copyright is largely outdated, not serving society optimally as it should.
As for Bitcoin and blockchains... my opinion is that they are extremely useful for efforts like those (and other niches like totalitarian states), if not much else. Perhaps paradoxically I also (controversially) think they should be outlawed and/or heavily regulated (outlawed but as a lightweight non-criminal offense). The potential for theft and money laundering is too large otherwise.
In the limit where everyone used perfect secrecy coins, paying taxes would need to be largely voluntary. And I suppose we all know how well that would turn out.
So I think cryptocurrencies are meant to be underground. It will always be possible to acquire some under the censorship conditions they are really useful for. So restricting their usage mainly curbs trivialized laundering.
[1] https://sci-hub.nu/
[2] e.g. http://booksc.org/howtodonate.php, it does support amazon gift cards too but I find that inconvenient