With the help of Derek Robertson
Over the past 24 hours, a video of a bearded man who caressed lines of computer code with the help of an auto-tuner has achieved minor virality on the Internet.
In addition to being entertaining, the video gets to the heart of an important legal question that hinges on the digital age: How does the First Amendment apply to computer code?
In the song by musician Jonathan Mann, the lyrics are lines of code from Tornado Cash, a software tool called a “mixer” used to obscure the origins of cryptocurrencies, which the Treasury Department sanctioned last week after being used by North Korea. hackers.
The refrain of Mann’s song — “This is illegal” — argues that the sanctions amount to a dubious constitutional ban on discussing the Tornado Cash code itself.
It is not clear whether the sanctions actually outlaw the recitation of the code, melodically or otherwise. But they include what appears to be the first ban on interacting with blockchain addresses controlled by self-executing code (sanctions typically prohibit transactions with accounts controlled by specific people or entities). And as crypto advocates mull legal challenges to the sanctions, they are relying on First Amendment objections.
A showdown over the constitutionality of the sanctions would reopen decades-old questions about the code’s legal status. In all likelihood, it would be just the first major skirmish in a broader fight over the application of the First Amendment to blockchain systems, one that crypto advocates have been predicting for years.
In the early 1990s, the Justice Department launched an investigation into a programmer who had released an encrypted messaging system, Pretty Good Privacy, under the rationale that the software—which had the potential to hamper U.S. espionage capabilities—was calculated as a munition, and was therefore subject to an export ban. The government eventually dismissed the case, and in 1999, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled on First Amendment grounds in favor of another programmer, Daniel Bernstein, who challenged the application of export controls on cryptographic code.
This week, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which represented Bernstein in the 1990s, expressed reservations about the Tornado Cash sanctions, arguing that the government does not have the power to stop the distribution of computer code.
The EFF did not immediately respond to a request to discuss its First Amendment reservations in more depth. But crypto advocacy group Coin Center, which is considering a lawsuit over the sanctions, fleshed out its First Amendment objections in a lengthy analysis published Monday. The analysis argues that the purpose and effect of the sanctions is to have a chilling effect on people exploring the very idea of cryptocurrency mixers.
While this only affects a particular class of blockchain applications, the question of how far First Amendment protections extend to information transmissions within blockchain systems may have deeper implications. Bitcoin advocates have long argued that both Bitcoin source code and Bitcoin transactions are protected by the First Amendment.
But what if they are wrong, and the government can ban Bitcoin?
Many legal experts contend that speech protections for computer code depend on context, weakening or disappearing when someone runs the code with a computer.
“People would argue that this is more like action than speech,” First Amendment attorney Bob Corn-Revere, a partner at Davis Wright Tremaine, told me.
But Corn-Revere, who served on Bernstein’s legal team, said there has been a dearth of court rulings on the issue since that case. While new software applications have raised new legal dilemmas, he said, new guidelines for where and how computer code moves from the realm of speech to the realm of action have yet to be followed.
“That’s the unanswered question,” he said, “as far as where the courts go.”
Another unlikely crypto-world alliance it’s revealing how unpredictable the fault lines around new technology can be.
As POLITICO’s Sam Sutton reported today for Pro Subscribers, the crypto industry is flexing its growing muscle on the Hill to convince lawmakers to stay out of the stablecoin business. The Federal Reserve has explored the concept of a “digital dollar” for some time now, and Rep. Jim Himes (D-Conn.), who released a proposal for the Fed’s digital dollar earlier this year, told Sam that not only do private stablecoin providers see a central bank digital currency, or CBDC, as a “Potential Threat”, banks don’t like it either, seeing it as “a potential disruptor to their very profitable payment systems”.
It’s an obvious alliance if only because, like you may have heard (often), the crypto industry and the banking industry don’t exactly agree with each other on many things. Apparently, neither did Sens. Kristen Gillibrand, a progressive standard-bearer, or Cynthia Lummis, of deep red Wyoming, who sponsored this year most of crypto legislation. The next unlikely team around a crypto policy issue – if it ends regulatory circle classification, THE INTERNATIONAL relationships, or perhaps even rural revitalization – will officially become a trend, according to the old editorial rules. – Derek Robertson
Crypto may be corrupted, but it seems that “meme coins” are making a comeback.
Mostly worthless joke crypto tokens – most notably championed by Elon Musk in the case of Dogecoin, which he has grown so much that it is more or less it stopped being a joke – have seen a sudden surge in their value as of late even amid the overall decline of cryptos, with Dogecoin scoring about 11 percent over the past week as of this writing, and the Shiba Inu almost 20 percent. (And yes, they’re almost all still named after dogs, from “Akita Inu” to “Zelda Inu.”)
Of course, these are matters of degree. The current value of Dogecoin hovers around eight tenths of a cent. The Shiba Inu is mere fractions of a penny stretching into six figures. Trading these coins is, in essence, a game: There is no promise of technological transformation, financial anonymity or wealth creation, just by playing with small amounts of money on your phone.
Provided, as always, one isn’t too greedy, they’re probably one of the lowest-stress and certainly one of the lowest-cost tools to dip your toe into the crypto market – but to be clear, as they say in the forums and subreddits that comprise the communities that these coins are essentially’ purpose, “This is not financial advice.” – Derek Robertson
Stay in touch with the whole team: Ben Schreckinger ([email protected]); Derek Robertson ([email protected]); Konstantin Kakaes ([email protected]); AND Heidi Vogt ([email protected]). Follow us @DigitalFuture on Twitter.
Ben Schreckinger covers technology, finance and politics for POLITICO; he is a cryptocurrency investor.
If you have forwarded this newsletter, you can register and read our mission statement in the given links.
