nika

I like how you just assert-- sans any evidence or argument-- that they are trying to "get around things intentionally". You don't even say what things.

Don't bother, I don't care. I'm just amazed at the BS this topic has elicited from people, and I am done defending these guys.

All the BS is just proof of why the country is going to hell- why the FBI was able to steal $7M in gold, silver and platinum and get away with it.

It is because you, and the rest of the ignorant government "educated" americans can't be bothered to think critically.

One of the signs you're dealing with a troll is that their ignorance is all the justification they need to make personal attacks, and they stay relentlessly focused on such attacks while failing to provide any substantive argument for their position. Often even failing to actually state their position.

There are too many trolls on HN. This is why the site sucks.

Says the college student who, let me guess, never worked at microsoft.

As someone who has, PMs are not technical people, at least not in that company at the time I worked there.

I think ignorant college students who are not smart enough to know the limits of their own knowledge are the reason that hacker news has gone the way of slashdot.

Oh, since you're probably under 20, slashdot used to have good discussion from actual engineers who were knowledgable, then it got overrun by ignorant gnu weeneis around 2001 or so-- back when you are 8.

You called him misguided and childish. You lose the argument.

That is the first definition from the dictionary definition. It is very difficult to debate an issue with people who are not aware of the basic definitions of the terms, and, despite their ignorance, make snide characterizations like "your pretend definition".

That they were not passed as government money is an affirmative defense.

That you idiots keep chiming in making personal attacks and espousing your ignorant perspective as if it was relevant is what makes this site pointless.

I'm not even involved with the Liberty Dollar. Why am I wasting time defending them against people with no integrity like you?

I have looked at the relevant laws, an the liberty dollar does not violate either. They never passed it off as government money, nor did they mint any coins. (Coins are government only, so to have minted them they would have had to pass them off as government money.) These are not easily mistaken for government money, and there are a variety of other currencies, such as disney dollars, that are passed off, are physical objects, and are exchanged "as money would be" (though that phrase is not relevant legally, that standard is your opinion.)

There is no law prohibiting private currency.

Disney Dollars: http://www.disneydollars.net/ BerkShares: http://www.businessweek.com/smallbiz/content/jul2007/sb20070.... Buy Local—With Town Currency Dollar alternatives, such as BerkShares in Massachusetts, are shoring up local economies by keeping money in the community Microsoft Points: http://www.xbox.com/en-US/Live/MicrosoftPoints Pittsboro Plenty: http://www.democracynow.org/2009/4/9/north_carolina_town_pri....

No, you're rewriting it by omitting the relevant clause. The race discrimination is one of the clauses that can invoke it, not the only one.

Let me quote it with line breaks for readability:

"Whoever, under color of any law, statute, ordinance, regulation, or custom, willfully subjects any person in any State, Territory, Commonwealth, Possession, or District to the deprivation of any rights, privileges, or immunities secured or protected by the Constitution or laws of the United States, "

So, anyone who dies this.

"or to different punishments, pains, or penalties, on account of such person being an alien, or by reason of his color, or race, than are prescribed for the punishment of citizens, "

Or who does this based on race, residency....

"shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than one year, or both"

Shall be punished.

You can invoke the law by doing the first set of things, or by doing the second set of things.

It is an OR clause, meaning if A OR B are true, then the penalties apply. IF there were an AND on race, it would be the way you read it.

"They were minting physical coins."

No, they were not: "a piece of metal stamped and issued by the authority of a government for use as mony"

"They called them dollars." So does disney: http://www.disneydollars.net/

"Just because they decided they didn't think they were legally coinage"

This is a dishonest characterization. They had opinions from independant council, the secret service, members of federal reserve branches, etc, all saying that the product was legal.

"very obviously the intent." You believe this because you want to believe it. However, the decade of actions that the organization took, between 1998 and 2008, involved monthly newsletters, and repeated production of brochures, the website, and other writing all of which made it clear that people who had liberty dollars were not to put them forth as if they were us government money. They spent the majority of their educational effort in conflict with what you claim is their "obvious" intent.

"Their whole disclaimer is delivered with a wink and nudge."

I understand that you feel you can just tell lies about people and somehow you feel justified in doing so. But in honorable society, doing so reflects very poorly on your own integrity. I have to wonder, what motivates you, who have clearly no knowledge of this organization or its actions, to attack them with these dishonest smears?

Unfortunately, many americans think like you do. The FBI calls them terrorists, railroads them and people think the justice system works.

It is no wonder things are moving the way they are in the USA if your views, as I suspect, are widely echoed.

The first definition of coin: "a piece of metal stamped and issued by the authority of a government for use as mony"

These were not coins. They were not issued under government authority, nor were they represented as such.

I don't think anyone denies that there are areas where the constitution is not sufficiently detailed. However, the constitution still says what it says, and many actions that are considered "legal" today do not fall into the areas of constitutional vagueness, but are simply laws that violate the constitution that have never been sufficiently challenged.

The constitution is pretty black and white, and this is a good thing, because it means you can tell what is set out by it, and what is up to the legislature.

All the areas where the constitution enumerated powers it gave the legislature a free hand to determine what is right.

Thus for the areas that the constitution does address, it is pretty black and white and it is meant to be enforced by the people.

... and it really isn't hard to understand, nor does it require much interpretation. Just careful reading.

I won't attempt to argue that the Liberty Dollar wasn't a misguided enterprise. Even when the law is on your side, the fact that the government controls the courts assures that you'll never get a fair trial.

You're misunderstanding the constitution and what the "right to create currency" means. There are many currencies in circulation, and there have been many state and even private currencies over the years. Even today there are localities that make their own currencies- such as the Ithica Hour http://www.ithacahours.com/

What the constitution reserves to the federal government is merely the power to determine how many grains of silver are contained in a given dollar.

Thus, actually, the current paper US dollar, which is not denominated in silver, is illegal, it is counterfeit!

Thus it is clear that tradition has long ago seperated from the law. But this is relatively recent. In 1930s it was that the government made ownership of gold illegal and switched from silver certificates to unbacked dollars, but even then the dollar was backed internationally with gold, until Nixon closed the Gold window in the 1970s and defaulted the US government.

An excellent book on the history of Money in the USA, is "The Creature from Jekyll Island" by G. Edward Griffin.

Alas, the wayback machine won't let me see the video, but even the name of it is bad since it contains the word "coin".

Most may assume that "dollar" means USD, but that is not the legal meaning. Dollar is a generic term, as Canadians use it, for instance. But further, if I were to say "20 USD in Silver" I'd be referring to the US dollar and I'd be naming a price for this amount of silver. This is no different than saying "$5 in coffee beans".

Edit to add: My real point is to disagree with the idea that the liberty dollar advocated (generally) passing it off as US government money, as they spent a great deal of effort trying to prevent that perception or anyone associated with the organization doing so.

I'll concede that you saw a video where someone didn't make it explicit enough that it wasn't government money and that put you off of the idea... and in fact your quote might even be exact. In which case you are not misremembering.

My point isn't really to debate the video, so much as the intent of the organization.

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/currency

1. something that is used as a medium of exchange; money. 2.general acceptance; prevalence; vogue. 3. a time or period during which something is widely accepted and circulated. 4. the fact or quality of being widely accepted and circulated from person to person. 5. circulation, as of coin.

Currrency can refer to physical money. But it also refers to gift cards, visa cards, and any thing else that is, quoting the first definition, a "medium of exchange". Since you called a gift card a "medium of exchange" while saying it wasn't "currency" the dictionary proves you wrong.

Your understanding of my mental state and argument is also wrong, and I think you're projecting.

Since you apparently aren't familiar with the dictionary definition, I trust you will apologize for your assertions about my lack of knowledge.

After the fact you are able to try and prove that the money or assets were not used in the commission of a crime. How one could ever prove a negative is beyond me, and the burden of proof is higher than that required by the constitution which (IIRC) take the innocent until proven guilty perspective.

These poker sites have not been convicted of anything, nor was there a court proceeding where the siezure was proposed and the owners of the property had an option to defend their rights.

Further, as we've seen in case after case, even in situations where the victims are not involved in crime at all, the courts are stacked against them.

It would be cut and dry if you could show any "utterances" from the Liberty Dollar / NORFED, where they represented their products as US government money.

They did not, and further, they were careful to put disclaimers on their warehouse receipts, and various features on the physical pieces to make it clear that this was not being represented as government money. For instance, ever piece contained a copyright statement on it, something the government would not do.

For further details (since the judge ordered the liberty dollar website taken down): http://www.chambersburglibertydollar.com/disclaimer.htm

My understanding of economics is sufficient that I understood we'd be having a housing bubble in 2001, and by 2007, I'd profited massively from it and gotten out, well before the crash of 2008. All of that came from my application of economic principles.

I don't think I'm entitled to my own facts. But I have read the laws here, and I find your response to be devoid of any actual argument or citation of facts and full of smear and insinuation.

Actually, the document was written with the intention that anyone could read it and easily tell if their government was violating it or not. There have been a lot of people making up a body of work commonly called "Constitutional law" but much of that body of work seems to serve the purpose of trying to say that you can't just read it.

But if you read it, it is very clear.

"The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."

It is cut and dry. All of these siezures are not taking evidence, they are stealing property.

Money is property, it is not evidence of any crime, especially when it is electronic funds in a bank account.

I think Blogger Bob is the TSA? But the DHS is the ones that were behind the seizure of "torrent" domains, without any kind of court ruling or trial.

I wish we had access to the proposed legislation.

I find the idea of the white house writing secret legislation to be very troubling.

You're misremembering. The primary educational effort of the Liberty Dollar focused on, whenever someone asked what it was, or you offered it, making clear that it wasn't US currency. Nobody associated with the Liberty Dollar in any official capacity would call it "a new dollar coin" and as the word "coin" is one of the magic ones that denotes government money. They might say "its 20 dollars in silver" or "a silver piece". And if asked if it was "real" or "genuine" they were told to say "It is not government money, its better" or "its genuine silver, but it is not made by the US government".

They were very careful because passing it off as if it were government money would be a crime. Despite not doing this, they have been lied about to the point that even you are misremembering.

There are many reasons to decide to not be involved with the liberty dollar-- not the least of which is the indoctrination that "money" must come from the government, something I had to overcome myself. But the claim that they were pretending it was government money is not one of them.

The entire point of NORFED-- the National Organization for the Repeal of the FEDeral reserve-- was that government money was not as good as silver rounds.

Visa is a currency. So are travellers checks and regular old checking checks and coupons. All of these are also denominated in dollars. If you were to take some time and study the actual laws, and also check out the legal opinions, from members of boards of federal reserve branches, as well as the secret service and lawyers that were obtained before the Liberty Dollar project was started you'd recognize just how absurd this case is.

But most people do not do the research. Most people assume that only the government can "make money" and most people fall for the idea that putting the word "dollar" on something somehow makes it counterfeit. It is this ignorance that lets them get away with such crimes.

I'm not trying to call you ignorant (as a pejorative). I'm just trying to say that I read the relevant laws, including the ones cited in the case against NotHaus et. al. and they do not prohibit what the Liberty Dollar was actually doing. Not at all.

In fact, the only thing illegal would be to make exact copies of US currency and pass them off as real. That is counterfeiting.

I can make a currency out of coffee beans or silver and try to get people to trade in it... and there's nothing illegal about it.

It is also known as barter.

Here it is: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/18/usc_sec_18_00000242----...

USC 18-242

I called it a felony though the law only makes it one if a "dangerous weapon" is involved.

I had the opportunity to see Pastor Niemoller's cell once. Out back, behind the building, they had the execution wall.

Your reference to Bitcoin is apt, as the government siezed $7M in gold, silver and platinum from a political organization who was advocating the use of generic silver and gold rounds instead of depreciating paper currency.... and just a few weeks ago succeeded in railroading the leader of that organization.

The DHS (and now FBI) believes that all .com domain names are "located in the USA". It is not hard to get a judge (generally they are pretty ignorant of technology) to go along with this. Therefore, even if the registrar and the company are overseas, the FBI is able to sieze the domains.

Since I doubt the US government will start respecting international law (and ICAAN is international agreements, to which the US government has agreed) the only solution to this will be a viable alternative DNS system.

This is a serious threat to any startup... even though you're not engaged in gambling, they are constantly expanding the "crimes" they will use to sieze domains.

Reagan is the one who signed "asset forfeiture" into law. I remember at the time reading newspaper articles claiming this was "just going to be used to keep drugs off the streets" and how "law enforcement are outgunned and now can defend themselves against drug dealers".

It was obvious to me then that this was a violation of due process. Also, it is not authorized by the constitution, and thus every act of seizure under it is criminal act. (There is a federal law that makes it a felony to violate constitutional rights under color of law. Fourth amendment prohibits this.)

Notably, Bush the First, Clinton, Bush the Second and Obama have not made any moves to undo this legislation.

Meanwhile, this has been used to take money from bikers on their way to buy a motorcycle, and random motorists in Florida and Texas who get pulled over for speeding. "It could be drug money" says the "law enforcement officers" who take life savings and then spend it on themselves.

Just because they haven't seized your assets yet, doesn't mean you aren't at risk.

When the government can take whatever it wants, without any legal restraint, and in violation of the ultimate law of the land, that government is not a legitimate government.

We should be outraged. We should be throwing the bums out-- from Obama down to the local state congresspeople or local sheriffs and judges who fail to take actions overturning this, or who themselves participate in this. It does not matter what party they are from, they are all culpable, and they are all criminals.

Edited: I removed the reference to my property that was stolen by the FBI because it prompted many people to attack me below. I really would rather the discussion be about how to resolve this issue for domain names, or maybe some discussion about how to overturn these seizure laws.

Edited: I've made the legal case in defense of those wrongfully convicted. I cannot keep up with the tide of people who have no citations of the law, but are quick to disparage me personally, for my crime of defending victims here.

Frankly, I think that the ease with which people assume that "naturally" these people were "bad guys" and therefore what they did was "illegal" despite the law and the constitution, is the very proof of my central point that the government is out of control, and they are getting away with it because people can't be bothered to challenge the belief-- taught by government in government schools-- that the "rule of law" holds sway.

I've been investing for a long time. I've lived thru two bubbles already- the dotcom bubble and the housing bubble. I lost money in the first and made a killing in the second.

I won't say whether this is a bubble or not, but the number one thing I look for is businessweek (or newsweek) saying that "things have changed!" A mainstream publication putting the bull market on its cover is the prime indicator that it is a bubble and that it will be a painful crash.

It is almost a cliche.

The real bubble right now is in the dollar. We've been able to inflate, an export that inflation, for nearly 100 years, and we got away with it because of military might and manufacturing might (and bretton woods). 2 of those 3 are gone and the last one is losing respect rapidly. It is gonna be a bloodbath when those dollars come home to roost. (and it will kick off a bubble in gold.)

Maybe the bursting of this "tech bubble" (if we're in one) will be the trigger that causes the end of the dollar bubble.

Unfortunately I'm not aware of business week putting the dollar on the cover and saying "This time its different". (But maybe one of their covers for gold will count.)

How many reading this article, and are disgusted by these clearly unconstitutional actions, are still living in the USA? How many of you are paying taxes to the very government that is using this money to fund this harassment, among other illegal activities?

You're providing material support to a terrorist organization! (presuming some number of harassed people are terrorized by the harassment.)

What are you doing to compensate for this material support? Are you going to stop it, withdraw your support? Or are you going to expend energy to compensate for the aiding these oppressors?

This is a rhetorical question. I've my own answer, and I hope you have yours.

Maybe they were thinking they could buy the name from cisco, which is what happened pretty soon after. Have you considered the possibility that Apple had talked to cisco quite a bit prior to announcing the iPhone, and knew they were going to be able to acquire the name, and the subsequent "noise" cisco made about suing apple was a negotiating tactic?

Their agreement was pretty mild-- cisco wanted apple to support its VPN technology on the iPhones which they did.

Apple generally, if it finds someone else owns a name it wants that doesn't already infringe on one of Apple's names, buys the name from them.

It doesn't just copy the name and wait to be sued, as Amazon did here.

Not just a library, and something that really makes development for iOS easier is Unity. http://unity3d.com

It may not be free, but it is well worth the money. I use it for non-game apps because development is so rapid.

What would really make my iOS life easier is a good RSS client. I'm hoping for something that I can give a URL to and which will give me back an NSArray of dictionaries of entires, or something like that.

Too much to ask? Or should I just go the XML parsing route? (which seems like it would be a lot of work and brittle) I've not yet dug into this, but this is the next set of functionality I have to work on.