SOPA and Bitcoin

I'm going to blatantly steal from this thread.

From the proposed the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA):

(b) Denying U.S. Financial Support of Sites Dedicated to Theft of U.S. Property-

(1) PAYMENT NETWORK PROVIDERS- Except in the case of an effective counter notification pursuant to paragraph (5), a payment network provider shall take technically feasible and reasonable measures, as expeditiously as possible, but in any case within 5 days after delivery of a notification under paragraph (4), that are designed to prevent, prohibit, or suspend its service from completing payment transactions involving customers located within the United States and the Internet site, or portion thereof, that is specified in the notification under paragraph (4).

3) DESIGNATED AGENT-

(A) IN GENERAL- Each payment network provider and each Internet advertising service shall designate an agent to receive notifications described in paragraph (4), by making available through its service, including on its Web site in a location accessible to the public, and by providing to the Copyright Office, substantially the following:

(i) The name, address, phone number, and electronic mail address of the agent.

(ii) Other contact information that the Register of Copyrights considers appropriate.

(B) DIRECTORY OF AGENTS- The Register of Copyrights shall maintain and make available to the public for inspection, including through the Internet, in electronic format, a current directory of agents designated under subparagraph (A).

If you were running a website served by PayPal, and PayPal received a notification that you were somehow in violation of copyright in accordance with SOPA, an "agent" would be contacted at PayPal and all payments to your site would be blocked.

So, the question becomes, what would happen if your payment processor was Bitcoin?

It would not be possible to stop Bitcoin payments to your site. Even if it was possible, most Bitcoin e-businesses already generate a new address for each payment. With such a setup, it would not even be possible to associate your site with a Bitcoin address.

There would be no "agent" for the authorities to contact, as Bitcoin isn't run by any organization and has no employees.

Could they have the site shut down instead? That's a whole other problem, but technologies like Namecoin, TOR, and Meshnet will help in that regard.

So, if you're running an online business and you're worried that you could be affected by SOPA, you should probably start reading up on how to begin accepting Bitcoin payments. It's quite simple, really, and with the assistance of applications like Bit-Pay, you wouldn't have to worry about currency risk, either.

Posted in: bit-pay,PayPal,sopa