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Board Press
Re: 2012-10-09 Forbes.com - As Inflation Rages In Iran, Bitcoin Software Not Availab
by
Foxpup
on 10/10/2012, 07:18:50 UTC
Quote
Therefore, the export control determination has to be made by the project’s registered administrator on SourceForge, which for Bitcoin is lead developer Gavin Andresen

Well, I imagine Matonis is a little conflicted at this point, given that he is sitting on the board of The Bitcoin Foundation alongside the chief dev who has blocked Iranians from downloading the software .... seems like there might be a case for a hidden service on Tor mirroring bitcoin "official" repo.
The developers don't have a choice. Bitcoin uses strong cryptography, which, for reasons which don't really make sense, is legally classified as a military weapon under the Wassenaar Arrangement, and therefore illegal to export to "certain" countries. Simply making the source code available for download worldwide is legally equivilant to selling bombs to Iran. As fucked up as the law is, it must be obeyed if you want to avoid being jailed for arms trafficking.