I'm genuinely asking to learn. - But couldn't developers already store arbitrary data within the blocks if they wanted to before Segwit? I remember there was a marriage certificate "in the blockchain" and other arbitrary data.
yeah they probably could but using OP_RETURN. limited to 80 bytes. so people can't go crazy. or it will cost them more than its worth to them. a self regulating mechanism.
It might be a very dangerous path because, who is "we", and does "we" speak for the whole community?
thats a good point. but if we make the basic assumption that bitcoin was meant to do financial transactions and not to store peoples' private data then we is everybody.