According to who? You? Just because lightning nodes facilitates payments, it doesn't mean those intermediaries are responsible for the payment. Lightning nodes know absolutely nothing about the payment, other than the amount they're moving. They don't know neither the receiver nor the sender. This is exactly like telling me that the Bitcoin nodes are responsible for all Bitcoin users' transaction, because they propagate every single transaction. Or that miners have legal responsibility for every transaction they mine.

That's how it starts. They don't go all the way from the start. Gavin wasn't nuts in 2010, he slowly went crazy, visited CIA office, started proposing weird things for bitcoin, abandoned bitcoin development and eventually claimed the obvious scammer CSW is the real Satoshi!

As I said above, it seems like core devs go nuts after some time. Another case is Mike Hearn who dumped all his bitcoin and said "bitcoin has failed and is dead" back in 2016. lol

I assume the alternative would be BOLT12, which does not require hosting your own server and includes blinded paths and onion messaging over Lightning, which I understand means that payments can be anonymous and therefore impossible to block based on IP or country of origin.

But yes, I agree a far better way to go about things would be to encourage the use of BOLT12 rather than share details on how LNURL users can censor other users.

The bottom line is that we just don't know yet. The definition of a money services business (at least in the US) is so deliberately vague that it could absolutely apply to Lightning nodes if the government or other law makers want it to, just as it could apply to regular nodes or miners if the government want it to. None of this has been tested in court, so until either it is tested in court or some new clarifying legislation is passed, we don't know which way things will go.

If you think your government will start criminalizing people for running Lightning nodes, what makes you think they won't start criminalizing people for running regular nodes or for mining?

If I am a routing Lightning node, then all I am doing is updating the balances of my channels with my immediate connections. If you think that is going to be made illegal, then why would verifying and broadcasting "blacklisted" transactions or mining said transactions in to a block not also be made illegal?

Is your usual anti-lightning bias just clouding your thought process? Or are you just back to your usual nonsense of everyone being a good little citizen and doing exactly what your government tells you at all times, because as we all know, governments have never acted against the interests of the individual.

This is so stupid as calling Tor relays responsible for the activity they route, even if they know absolutely nothing about what it is and where it goes. Point me to the law that affiliates lightning nodes likewise.

With the exception of course that, in contrast with lightning node operators, Sam has illegally taken about $10 billion in FTX customers' funds. Yeah, what a great analogy.

I hate it when the tor project created that confusion. No, tor is not a browser, but that browser includes it.

You just run a tor node, and configure your bitcoin node to use it. Is actually rather simple.

This is the original tor project page: https://2019.www.torproject.org/

Note the 2019. I wish they kept the browser in a different domain or a subdomain...

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That's because you are using a casino in the normal net from tor. If the casino was running in tor (aka hidden server) they can't. That's what you do with bitcoin nodes, make them use a tor node that is not an exit node. Exit nodes is what they detect, they can't do nothing about bridges, especially those that don't advertise (which you can add manually in your configuration). In addition, deep packet inspection is resisted using obfs4 which is an option you need to setup when configuring your tor node, and its needed in certain countries to bypass their restrictive nationwide firewalls.

Just so you get it, tor lets you browse normal internet, but that's not all it does. Some people like to call resources inside tor "dark". It is a place to put content that resists censorship, but tor is not the only project doing it.

PS: The TOR project is a free and open source project from the US Navy, so they are probably still interested in keeping it running for their own benefit. But even if they don't, the community is carrying it on.

Historical anecdote: Satoshi used it to write in this forum.

you keep on trying the "not knowing" defence

you pretending to not know that A is not using As funds that D receives. then not knowing that the funds of a get 'promised' to B. but where B has to promise funds to C who promises funds to D

if you have not worked out about the promises aka IOU's that are not settled hense they are classed as IOU's.. not settled. then you still have alot to learn
if you dont understand what promises, commitments and borrowing is.. LEARN

so instead of telling me you dont know things or you are not sure of things.. GO AND LEARN

its obvious you dont want to learn from me and im not asking you to. im saying go learn yourself for yourself

but actually learn and not just recite the echo's someone told you

@Macadonian

ok let me just tell you

i am not like them i do not create buzzwords and try to make them go viral.
its their game to try to fame up their words

lightning balance borrowing is not a noun(name/buzzword) its an adjective(description)

i even described it after.. which you quoted thus now you know how lightning works

A is borrowing B 's balance to C and C is using his balance to D for A to pay D
thus yes borrowing. promising later settlements. aka IOU's

it is words that describe the process. not a random brand name/buzzword
blackhatcoiner pretends to be dumb and pretends he cannot understand things. even though i am dumbing down things for him and avoiding techno jargon because they do not like it when techno jargon is used.

i purposely use ELI-5(explain like im 5) to avoid 98% of his responses of "i dont understand" and yet he again tries to just go into dumb mode

now he is trying  to go super dumb by pretending that certain things must be a buzzword he doesnt know. rather then reading the context and learning how lightning works to understand the description

its that simple

the reason i speak to certain people with words like idiot and dumb. is becasue for a couple of years they have been shouting the same snake oil sales pitches loving and adoring lightning and trying to recruit people but always avoiding learning about the reality. they only care about speaking of the best case scenario utopian sales pitches. and due to it being a few years of opportunity to learn the real lightning network and also their discussions about legislation, jurisdiction and regulatory classification..  and the risks that lightning presents and the flaws and even the dev reports of issues they cant and wont resolve. but they continually advertise that lightning is the best..  yet they still have not took the time to think for themselves

even in 2021 and 2022 they knew about the legislation and regulatory working of payment facilitators. OELEO and them had discussions where they were trying to say that it meant bitcoin was a PF but then they went on the defence when i corrected them saying lightning routing is a PF.. not a bitcoin dev nor a bitcoin node nor a asic

yet as you can see this week they are playing dumb, and starting the same games again. denying lightning regulatory classification and then trying to swing the debate to pretend that in their mind bitcoin is more like a PF not lightning.. where in reality the opposite is true
lighting network is the middle man payment system of using funds to facilitate other peoples payments for a fee

this game of theirs is not new. so this is why i insult them. because they play the same game repeatedly but then play ignorant. and thats why they earn the insults

if it was a one time mistake no problem. if it was a two time mistake followed by them taking the time to learn.. no problem. but their snake oil salesman rhetoric has been going on for years

the whole "censorshp resistant" buzzword they throw about is pathetic too
they pretend bitcoin never had a consent system. and they think it should never have one again.

oeleo
in this topic you said how things are too vague, and it needs to be tested in court
then just now you said how lots of lawyers have said it means what you say it means

pick one narrative and stick with it. as it seems its you that is not sure about how regulators treat lightning thus play ping pong games of narratives to go back and forth

also no it does not mean those laws mean that bitcoin nodes are a PF just because lightning routing is implied as being a PF
because its not about running a node on a network relaying payments.. its about HOW the payments are facilitated that counts

learn how bitcoin payments differ to lightning payments

now please dont go back and forth with "i dont understand" "too vague " needs testing" and please do try to learn understand im not nor ever have been the type that wants or needs people to follow my words or opinion... every time i have seen you fall down a hole of being wrong about something, due to your over indulgence of being pro-snake oil sales hyper about a sub network.. i have simply said to just go DYOR do your own research

but it seems you just get angry that i break your sales pitch for the subnetwork adoration rather then take the time to research how the real world impacts the crypto world and vice versa

how about care a more about the potential recruits you are trying to sway to your favoured alt network. more so than if you have failed in your sales pitch

EG if there is things that can get people arrested. tell people the risk and how they can reduce their risk.. instead of "dont worry, just wait until you appear in court" style of mindset

now getting on topic
for those using lightning and are using your balance to allow payments for others(routing) be VERY CAREFUL.. financial regulations do apply

and right now regulators see things like doing PF for countries on the sanction list is a higher priority for regulators to find and sort out, more so then other financial crimes right now

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oh and some other hints..
things called "honeypot trap"

autorities do go out and get involved in illicit deals to then arrest the people they done deals with
EG police undercover doing drug deals to catch a dealer
EG police undercover doing prostitution deals to catch a prostitute/pimp
EG bitlicence agents doing account registrations with unlicenced exchanges
EG us embassy agents living in russia seeing which services allow russian residents access to world value/funds

and yes if you are doing a defi where you are moving your fiat to a russian and swapping msats.. they can find you out by many ways.. including the LNURL (aka invoice link) the payer/payee relationship
(one of many examples)

so dont play dumb when it comes to things that can get people into alot of legal problems
..make people whom you try to recruit aware of the risks of the alt networks you want them to move over too

and yes regulators know all about lightning. they have it listed as a privacy enhancing financial tool. which is why US regulated exchanges like coinbase does not accept lightning (coinbase is sister company to the devs sponsorship group that made lightning.. yep when a group that paid for lightnings creation and deems it their product has sister companies that refuse to use said product.. you know something is up)
because using lightning is a red flag when it comes to suspicious activity

i do apologise that i have to keep bursting your dream utopian bubble of hyped up misleading promotion of a sub network. but real people do actually want to be risk aware. and not just sold a dream