
Anti-money laundering laws and copyright laws are similar and should be revised - drallison
http://pubpub.ito.com/pub/dmca-drm-aml-kyc-backdoors
======
marcosdumay
I'll grant that some revising is needed, but...

From the start copyright and anti money laundering laws have very different
intents and act upon very different subjects. Avoiding money laundering is a
laudable goal, while avoid the dissemination of information is not clearly so.

Yes, anonymous payment systems are something interesting, and it may be that
societies should let them flourish (I'm very ambivalent on this). But they are
not on the same league as free communication systems.

~~~
SilasX
>Avoiding money laundering is a laudable goal, while avoid the dissemination
of information is not clearly so.

You're not comparing apples to apples. The goal of money laundering laws is to
make it harder to profit from crimes, achieved by the means of e.g. violating
financial privacy.

The goal of copyright laws is _not_ to "prevent dissemination of information"
but to encourage better intellectual works by granting their creators
temporary control of them; this is achieved by the _means_ of restricting some
kinds of copying.

 _Both_ intents are noble; to characterize the _goal_ of copyright law as
"preventing the dissemination of information" is the wrong comparison.

~~~
over
You've introduced a means into your goal:

goal: "encourage better intellectual works"

means: "granting their creators temporary control of them"

There are other ways to meet that goal.

~~~
coldtea
> _There are other ways to meet that goal._

And yet, judging from international laws, all lawmakers worldwide seem agree
that a variation of the current method is the preferred one.

~~~
over
There are plenty of laws that give federal grants to artists and scholarships
to graduate students.

~~~
coldtea
Those are supplementary laws -- since all country also have similar copyright
laws too.

And 99% of those you mention are for avant garde, classical, jazz, traditional
and other endangered species of art.

------
contingencies
The premise of the article is interesting though a little bit of a stretch.
Personally I've had some exposure to AML/KYC training for Kraken's
implementation (~5% of global Bitcoin/conventional financial system exchange
volume at last estimate).

AML and KYC operate under a simple premise: if you don't comply, the
government in a given jurisdiction fines you heavily and/or removes your
license to operate. In practice, we've seen only 'slap on the wrist' (eg. for
the recent case of HSBC laundering cartel money).

The only way this works on a global basis is that the US goes around bullying
different countries in to theoretically agreeing to comply, because terrorism
blahblah. Enforcement in reality is weak to nonexistant: basically other than
looking at SWIFT traffic and extrapolating what they believe 'should' have
been reported (definitions are pretty vague in many cases), the US has no real
way to check on financial institutions.

Since basically the top 5-10% of capital holders routinely minimize tax
(launder money) and much of the developing world's capital is illegally
exported to western banks (Africa, China, etc.) and nobody blinks an eye, the
system as it stands could be said to actively encourage a fiscal divide based
upon selective enforcement.

To put it simply, money under any premise of central control acts as a
purveyor of political will. Personally, I have been extremely impressed at the
efficacy with which the US has threatened various Bitcoin/conventional
financial sysytem exchange operators in to complying, but simultaneously
deeply disappointed at the resulting enhancement of status quo.

Instead of the article's premise, I would posit the question: shouldn't high
barriers to financial institution licensing be the real target here? Reporting
is already arbitrary and vague, and somewhat useless to the government
compared to pre-existing SWIFT surveillance.

------
Kinnard
Money Laundering is Financial Thoughtcrime:
[http://www.americanbanker.com/bankthink/money-laundering-
is-...](http://www.americanbanker.com/bankthink/money-laundering-is-..). . . .
By Former Chief Foreign Exchange Dealer; Director of Credit Card Interchange @
Visa & Founding Director of the Bitcoin Foundation . . .

~~~
ddinh
The link seems to be invalid; here is a working one:
[http://www.americanbanker.com/bankthink/money-laundering-
is-...](http://www.americanbanker.com/bankthink/money-laundering-is-financial-
thoughtcrime-1058902-1.html)

~~~
AnthonyMouse
Which also links to this:
[http://www.forbes.com/sites/jonmatonis/2013/02/24/the-
cashle...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/jonmatonis/2013/02/24/the-cashless-
utopia-mirage/)

------
spangry
I don't really get the article's point on bitcoin and AML/CTF. The legislation
works by requiring financial institutions to bind real-world identities to
accounts, at the point of registration. Many bitcoin exchanges comply with
this in the same way banks do: they do the required ID check if you want to
set up an account (or when you want to transact in non-trivial volumes).

Most of the reporting under AML/CTF laws is automated, as there are a bunch of
'automatically report' rules like:

\- Any transaction over $10,000

\- Any transfer involving a foreign bank account, regardless of the amount

The manual reports are much rarer, and rely more on things like bank teller
judgment. Essentially they'll report 'structured' transactions that seem
designed to avoid triggering the 'automatic reporting' rules (e.g. someone
depositing $9,999 5 days in a row).

Of course there are tonnes of holes in AML/CTF, even for conventional
financial systems. For instance, if you want to transfer your money to a tax
haven, you first route the money through some non-suspicious country. Even if
that country has a data sharing agreement with the US, it's much harder for
investigators to follow the trail. It's hard enough to get two bureaucrats
from different departments to co-operate/co-ordinate. It's orders of magnitude
harder to achieve this across borders.

My point is this: yes bitcoin allows you to use a tumbling service, or coin
join, or whatever to sever the link between your transactions and your
identity. But this is also easy enough to do with conventional financial
systems. I don't think bitcoin has some special property here that presents
any kind of new problem for AML/CTF.

Perhaps the more relevant issue, which has nothing to do with bitcoin, is that
there are fairly trivial ways to avoid detection via AML/CTF laws, regardless
of your chosen medium of exchange. So the laws tend only to catch the less
sophisticated money launders/tax cheats.

Bitcoin doesn't pose any new questions, but the existing ones are still worth
answering: is the additional regulatory impost on financial institutions worth
the compliance gains from AML/CTF reporting? If the answer is 'no', then
perhaps we should just do away with them entirely.

------
ycmbntrthrwaway
Related:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11008398](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11008398)

------
throwaway_exer
Hi Joi.

I think you wrote down a list of facts and anecdotes that are valuable, but
you need to proof-read your work or collaborate with a greater intellect to
make a coherent point, maybe Eben Moglen?

------
x5n1
In another words totalitarian governments should be reformed. Laws did not
come into existence on their own. They were implemented by governments that
don't respect the will of the people.

~~~
nickff
It may surprise you to hear that most citizens do not care about privacy, and
actually support government surveillance, for a variety of reasons. If you
want a simple gauge of whether the public supports a measure without wanting
to read through polls, just look for a signing ceremony, and the date of
passage. Unpopular or politically risky things (like releasing Hillary
Clinton's e-mails) are done just before major holidays or events, and popular
measures are enacted Monday-Wednesday on a quiet week (, whereas the largest
group of Clinton's e-mails were released the day before the Super Bowl).

~~~
striking
Let's do some research!

Pew Research states that "A majority of Americans (54%) disapprove of the U.S.
government’s collection of telephone and internet data as part of anti-
terrorism efforts".[1]

So, right off the bat, we know that most people care about privacy. And maybe
this meme that so many people are uncaring or ignorant about privacy will
eventually die.

1: [http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2015/05/29/what-
america...](http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2015/05/29/what-americans-
think-about-nsa-surveillance-national-security-and-privacy/)

~~~
ktRolster
I see your poll, and raise you another! 60% favor renewal of the bulk-data-
collection programs. (Ha! Since 60% is higher than 54% I win! That's how you
do statistics, right?) [http://kron4.com/2015/06/01/poll-6-in-10-back-renewal-
of-nsa...](http://kron4.com/2015/06/01/poll-6-in-10-back-renewal-of-nsa-data-
collection/)

Interesting thing about all these polls, it's not split on party lines. The
two major parties (and independents as well) are divided about whether they
favor or oppose it.

~~~
striking
Great find! So I may be wrong, but at least we can agree that the outlook
isn't as bleak as some people think.

