Why is this a free speech issue?

Where this is clearly a free speech issue is in the limited context of free and open source operating systems.

So in that world where somebody is one of many people contributing to the software that makes that operating system work, and you, as the user of that operating system, just kind of get it off the shelf and put it on a computer that you run, who is the person who's supposed to be obligated to make sure the software is doing the things the government's now saying the software as an operating system needs to do as far as creating age signals? Is it one of the thousands of open source developers? Is it Linus Torvald, the original developer of Linux? Is it the user because they've copied the software onto their computer, and it's their operating system? None of this really makes sense.

And if you want to start obligating just the open source developer community itself, you get pretty directly quickly into the case of compelled speech, which is under the First Amendment, you are not to be censored.

That, that's f- pretty well known.

We don't want prior restraint.

We don't want a government board of approval for publishing information.

That's concerning.

[laughs]

You want to say that this is, this is going to be significant and uncompromising.

I get it.

Um, so the release does not, um, call out DeFi.

It does not call out any particular crypto project, does not mention, say, Uniswap or anything like that.

You, you raised the question.

It's a good question, but I wanna be clear that the release is fairly neutral.

[laughs]

To be clear,

I still think most government regulations should fail the strict scrutiny test because I think it would be an extraordinary circumstance where there'd be a compelling enough government interest to justify some sort of blanket licensing regime for any kind of speech.

But that is the right place to engage with that.

Now, what was interesting is in the evolution of the First Amendment literature on software that grew out of the encryption cases like Bernstein.

And the most interesting case here is probably Corley in the in the Second Circuit started in the New York courts.

In Corley, the court is dealing with software.

It's actually CDs.

I think that's right.

it's

inefficient to force these companies to go get 53 licenses from different states and territories that all independently regulate their activities, right? So the question back then was, why don't we have a federal framework? And that's mostly what market structure is about.

It's about can we establish and house at the SEC and the CFTC some unified national oversight for trusted companies that hold people's crypto, that are deserving of regulation because people trust them with their crypto and they trust them with, say, best execution in a trade or something like that.

And mostly that's something that Coin Center supports, but doesn't get deeply involved in because if you walk like a duck and you quack like a duck, if you're kind of like a bank or other financial services provider, we just think there should be equal treatment.

You know, we don't think the banks should get special treatment.

We don't think the companies in the crypto space should get special treatment.

Where we get really involved, though, is on this developer liability question.

So, like, what do you say for

I've been in crypto for

way too long to not be far wealthier than I am.

Anyway, talking through clarity.

You know, it's funny.

I've even had to sort of struggle to call it clarity again.

Because for a long time when we were working in the Senate, it was the responsible innovation...

R.I.F.A. in Finance Act, which goes all the way back to like Lummis from years ago.

Why is that not, is that a correct reading? And if not, why not?