Andrus Nomm, a former programmer from the defuct file sharing website Megaupload was arrested earlier this week before entering a guilty plea and being sentenced this same week. Nomm plead guilty to felony copyright infringement and was sentenced to one year and one day in jail. One of Megaupload's lawyers confirmed for the New Zealand Herald that Nomm was involved in a deal or agreed to come to the US. Among other charges Nomm is accused of watching at least one pirated TV Show. It, as always, remains important to note that his prison sentence is happening exactly because he came to the United States of his own volition and still finds himself having walked into the prison himself.
Category Archives: The Law
Quebec Regulator: Bitcoin Businesses Need A Licence
Operators of Bitcoin ATMs and exchanges in the province of the "economic shithole" known as Quebec, Canada must now obtain a licence from the Autorité des marchés financiers after amendments were made by the AMF to the Policy Statement to the Money Services Business Act.
The requirement of a licence now means that businesses operating Bitcoin ATMs and exchanges in Quebec will now be obligated to keep a record of financial transactions in addition to verifying the identity of customers. Continue reading
Bitcoin Group Limited Run Afoul Of ASIC
The Australian Securities and Investments Commission today issued a stop order upon Bitcoin Group Limited which prohibits the company from making any further statements about its much discussed yet yet to surface IPO. Continue reading
Bill Would Ban Federal Employees From Porn Breaks at Work
The Federal Times reports that if a new bill introduced by North Carolina Republican Representative Mark Meadows becomes law, the viewing of pornography on United States Government computers by its employees would be prohibited. It is unknown what effect this ban would have on the morale of United States Government employees seeing as in some of the more forlorn agencies it can take two to six hours of pornography viewing to make the workplace environment bearable.
Purported Silk Road 2.0 Dataset Up for Auction
Someone who describes their self as a having been "hired by Dread Pirate Roberts a/k/a Blake Benthall as lead programmer for Silk Road 2.0" is offering for sale a dataset which they allege contains numerous record relating to and source code for running the Silk Road in its second incarnation. The first portion of the sale is occurring on Darkleaks, an information market which is advertised as being trustless and provably fair. Continue reading
USD Fraud Collapses: Suitability of USD for Law Abiding Citizens In Commerce Questioned
LeapFrog Enterprises Inc, trading as LF on NYSE dropped to $2.35 a share earlier, down in a straight line from a $2.57 opening today, and from a $12 peak two years ago (a 80.41% loss). Continue reading
There is nothing new in the world. Except for the history you didn't know.
From the defunct Bruce Wagner1 Bitcoin podcast2 :
Bruce Wagner : When was the last time you chatted to satoshi
Gavin Andresen: Um… I haven't had email from satoshi in a couple months actually. The last email I sent him I actually told him I was going to talk at the CIA. So it's possible , that…. that may have um had something to with his deciding.
Yes, it is… possible.
One of the Early Bitcoin Morons ™. Pedophile / gay prostitute / showman with the camera in demo mode. ↩
Specifically, "The Bitcoin Show: Special Bitcoin Conference Coverage: 08/20/2011" – discussing an event in June 2011. The original website (onlyonetv.com) has been purged, but the podcast itself is still available from various sources including, ironically, Apple's iTunes. ↩
A Discussion of Military Strategy in the 21st Century
Rehashing the "end of Linux" aspirations of systemd is probably not necessary, but another piece of the puzzle falls in place, with ESR's eminently quotable: Continue reading
DC Court of Appeal Upholds Redaction of Protocol to Shutdown Wireless Networks
Today in a case between the Electronic Privacy Information Center and the United States Department of Homeland Security the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia protected the Department's desire to prevent full disclosure of "Standard Operating Procedure 303" from the public record. SOP 303 is a protocol maintained by the Department of Homeland Security which is alleged to concern a plan for shutting down wireless networks during "critical emergencies." Continue reading
TurboTax Stops Filing State Tax Returns Due To Massive Fraud
United States tax preparation company TurboTax, a subsidiary of "financial software" developer Intuit, has discontinued its e-filing service for state tax returns due to concerns over massive fraud. Reportedly Utah was the first state to raise concerns to the company identifying 28 returns as fraudulent with a further 8,000 suspected fraudulent returns. Minnesota followed by refusing to accept state returns filed through Turbo Tax after users reported logging in and seeing TurboTax show their taxes already had already been filed for them. Alabama similarly flagged 16,000 returns as likely fraudulent and insists that their computer and network security practices are in no way connected to the existence of fraudulent returns. Continue reading