US financial regulator: We could regulate Bitcoin “if we wanted”

Re:US financial regulator: We could regulate Bitcoin “if we ... by mikeyouse on Tuesday May 07, 2013 @03:07PM (#5670050)

I felt this deserved a separate response since it's attracted so much attention. It is immensely unhelpful to pretend to be offended by a phrase since you personally have only ever encountered it while reading Frederick Douglas.

The concept of trespass to chattels is a very import question in digital law. It would serve the community to understand it better since the theory is largely where the CFAA gains legitimacy.

Some starting points:

* In relation to Aaron Swartz's case: http://www.forbes.com/sites/ericgoldman/2013/03/28/the-compu...

* Eric Goldman from the Forbes article has an entire series regarding TtC: http://blog.ericgoldman.org/archives/trespass_to_chattels/

* Cyberproperty Law from the Indiana Law Review: http://indylaw.indiana.edu/ilr/pdf/vol40p23.pdf

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Re:US financial regulator: We could regulate Bitcoin “if we ... by drcode on Tuesday May 07, 2013 @03:16PM (#5670115)

You could certainly be right that the phrasing was intended in this manner. Clearly though Mr. Chilton was falling over himself to use the terms "money laundering" and "drugs" as much as possible. He was trying to use the nastiest, dismissive language he could to describe bitcoins, and given that the use of the term "chattel currency" is virtually unprecedented on the entirety of the internet it certainly seems worth raising an eyebrow at the use of this phrasing.

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