Re: [Bitcoin-development] Hosting of compiled bitcoin client

[Mike Hearn <mike@plan99.net>]

The laws in question are OFAC sanctions:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_of_Foreign_Assets_Control

The specific acts that enable this are varied. In theory they apply to
any US citizen or resident. The issue is not cryptography, it's "trade
with sanctioned countries", period, where making files available to
download is considered trade.

For Bitcoin to be available in these places, the sites and download
mirrors would need to be hosted outside the USA by non-citizens. EU
sanctions are primarily financial at this time, as far as I know there
are no attempts to prevent people from serving data to Iran.

Example of places where there are no sanctions in effect: Switzerland.
Unfortunately datacenter space in Zurich is quite expensive (as is
everything here).

I would not ever describe OFAC as "effective law". The SDN list has
repeatedly been found unconstitutional, representing as it does a
complete evasion of the judicial system. If you end up on the
sanctions list no evidence is required, no process is followed and no
appeals are possible. The list itself assumes names are globally
unique.