Quote from: DeathAndTaxes on August 26, 2013, 04:43:15 AM

You are free to use and distribute a fork of the client without any checkpoints. Checkpoints aren't required. Assumming an attacker isn't attempting to DDOS your node by filling it with years worth of bogus blocks or try to perform a 51% attack months deep in the chain the lack of checkpoint will have absolutely no effect on your node.

So if you are worried then remove the checkpoints, compile it and use that node. If you are really worried set up an online mirror and advertise your checkpoint free version.

It is not just change of button color or font size, it is protocol specification change.
If one fork has checkpoints and other does not - then they do not have consensus on how to select main blockchain, and this could lead to blockchain fork (at least theoretically).
Bitcoin already has consensus mechanism, and it is the foundation - block-chain with bigger combined work amount is the winner, period.

In a same way as we have checkpoints now, it is possible to freeze BTC on particular address - tune a bit validation rountine (just like checkpoints validation), wait for update of majority of clients - and vu à la. I bet, governments would love this feature, keep going!
Any kind of such validation is poison to trust for the most important of Bitcoin features - decentralization.