Skip to main content

Daniel Fraga Became the Subject of Extortionate Fees as a Consquence of Publishing Political Criticism

The story of how a Brazilian man was able to use bitcoin to evade a corrupt judge’s extortionate demands has been published by Panampost. The story recounts how Daniel Fraga was able to utilize a loophole stemming from Brazil’s lack of legal classification surrounding bitcoin to avoid a slew of arbitrary fines incurred through Daniel publishing media that was critical of a local Sao Paolo mayoral election.

During the Brazilian 2012 local electoral season, Sao Polo citizen Daniel Fraga uploaded a video to Youtube that criticized a candidate running for mayor in Sao Jose dos Campos. The video expresses Fraga’s criticisms of the candidate for requesting the judiciary to mandate the removal of negative internet memes about his campaign from Facebook.

Fraga’s video also focusses on the judge who empathized with the candidate’s request, going as far as establishing a fine for dissidents who circulate ‘offensive’ memes. Undeterred, Fraga continued to record videos detailing the situation, resulting in the judge suing him and requesting financial compensation for ‘moral damage’. As the situation intensified, the judge would eventually demand 5,000 BLR ($1,500 USD) for each instance that the events were mentioned in publicly uploaded content. The judge even requested a ‘secret of justice’ provision in the case, which would effectively act as a gag order.

Fraga’s Story Highlights the Disruptive Potential of Cryptocurrency When It Exists Outside of a State’s Regulatory Apparatus

Brazilian Man Uses Bitcoin to Evade Judge's Extortion

Fraga refused to back down, recording further videos covering the topic and encouraging his followers to share the story across social media. In order to evade the quickly mounting fines, Fraga turned his entire personal wealth into bitcoin – which was outside of Brazilian juridical classification.

In 2014, Fraga was sued by a state representative from Rio de Janeiro seeking to prevent Fraga from producing videos, and again requesting financial remuneration as damages. The case would eventually award the politician the entirety of Fraga’s banked wealth – a total of approximately 15 Brazilian Real.

Fraga’s story highlights the disruptive potential of cryptocurrency when it exists outside of a state’s regulatory apparatus. The growing development of cryptocurrency regulations by nation states has largely been framed as illustrative of states’ embracing bitcoin – however it may be likely that the development of national virtual currency regulations is chiefly motivated by a desire to subvert and limit cryptocurrency’s disruptive potential.

Do you think that cryptocurrency will be able to retain its disruptive potential despite greater government intrusion?

Images courtesy of Shutterstock

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Floyd Mayweather Baby Mama Sues for $20 Mil ... He's a Despicable Liar

Floyd Mayweather could lose tens of millions of dollars from his big payday if his baby mama gets her way ... because she's just filed a lawsuit claiming he ruined her with lies to save his own ass. Josie Harris, who has 3 kids with Floyd, claims he lied through his teeth in an interview with Katie Couric just 2 weeks before the big fight ... when he claimed Josie was in a drug-fueled rage and he had to "restrain" her during their infamous 2010 domestic violence incident. Point of fact ... Floyd was convicted of domestic violence and spent two months in jail. Josie recounts her terror in the lawsuit, explaining how she and Floyd had broken up ... but he flew into a jealous rage that night, broke into her home and viciously attacked her while she was sleeping on her couch ... and her kids saw part of the beating. Harris says she is now labeled a drug addict thanks to Mayweather's lies -- and was embarrassed and humiliated on a global scale.   Her lawyer, Dan Friedl...
Post a Comment
Read more

Dangerous sex Positions For Men

The most common cause of pénile injury is found among the variety of potentially dangerous positions used for séxual intercourse. The most popular is the ‘woman-on-top’. This type of position can result in an impact between the pénis against the female pelvis or perineum that can easily traumatize the pénile cylinders. A pénis becomes érect when the lining of the cylinder within it is engorged with blood.  A pénis fracture can occur when there is trauma to the eréct pénis, resulting in a rupture of the cylinder lining. This very painful injury is often accompanied by an abrupt, distressing cracking noise that is immediately followed by dark bruising of the pénis due to blood escaping the cylinder. In ten to 30% of pénis fractures, the urethra is damaged and blood may be visible at the urinary opening. Given these signs, an injury should be relatively simple to diagnose, right? You would be surprised, even with the unsettling sounds of a fracture occurring, many men...
Post a Comment
Read more

Google, harder to search for results from other countries

For a long time, there was an easy way to conduct a Google search in a country other than the one you’re in. If you wanted to get results specific to Japan, for instance, you would visit www.google.co.jp; to get Australian results you would visit www.google.com.au — but this trick no longer works. Google has announced that it will now always serve up results that are relevant to the country that you’re in, regardless of the country code top level domain names (ccTLD) you use. The reason given is a little bizarre. The search giant says that the change has been introduced because of the way people are using the search engine these days. It says: “around one in five searches on Google is related to location, so providing locally relevant search results is an essential part of serving you the most accurate information.” The argument seems counterintuitive, however. Anyone who has changed the ccTLD has done so consciously, and for a reason — for Google to override this decision is strange...
Post a Comment
Read more