Take my viewpoint as mostly applying to major European countries and the US. In those countries, there is something called rule of law, albeit imperfect of course and not always respected, but in principle rule is law is strictly framing any prosecution.

Any traffic “crime”, be it human trafficking, child pornography, drugs dealing, war weapons dealing, pirated movies or whatever needs material actions committing the reprehensible actions and knowledge of said actions.

There is no such thing as “potential abusers”. Either someone by its actions has fulfilled the legal framework incriminating a said “crime” and as such that person is liable from prosecution. Or that person has not committed said “crime”. Especially in criminal matters, where legal incriminations are of strict interpretation.

To go back to your example of something illegal happening in New York City. In a bunch of NYC streets, you can go to find all kind of drug dealers. Does it make anyone walking in those streets or even accidentally seeing a drug deal happening a complice of said drug dealer ? The answer, drawing from (centuries) of court cases, is obviously no -- one has to commit deliberate materials actions in that sense.

May I invite you to have a reading of the major legislations in US or Europe on “crime” committed through the transit of an online service providers, and how the responsibility of said service providers are strictly scoped. Theirs responsibilities are only engaged in case of no-cooperation with a judicial authority, when a specifically designated “crime” instance is happening or might have happened.

In that sense, I can only invite you to have a survey of decisions on online decisions matters yielded by the US Supreme Court, the European Court of Human Rights or the Court of Justice of the European Union (e.g Ahmet Yildirim v Turkey App no 3111/10 18 December 2012). In all those decisions, the judge don’t say freedom of expression is absolute, rather they use standard heuristics to make a balance among competing interests (freedom of expression, right of intellectual property, public order, etc).

So far there has never been decisions saying that absolute and timely unbounded technical filters that would deprive some of their usage of Internet and therefore of its freedom of expression. This is even the contrary, if an absolute filter would not be able to dissociate legal contents from illegal content, it should not be introduced as it’s encroaching too much on freedom of expression (CJUE, 26-04-2022, aff C‑401/19).

Again, in the present situation, I’m understanding and maybe I’m misunderstanding your arguments so feel free to correct. But I’m understanding it’s like if you were the New York Times editorial board, which is a private company, you would take the initiative by all technical means to try to censor what the Washington Post, USA Today or the Los Angeles Times have decided to publish in their own private publications.

No, in case of obviously illegal content you would seen published in the Los Angeles Times, the right move would to notify some law enforcement authority, and let those people do their jobs. This is not for nothing that anyone working at the average law enforcement authority or judicial authority in a role of responsibility would have followed years of training and studies, most of the time something like 5 years of studies

Sadly, Internet is giving too often the (false) impression that one can be an expert in any topic, including legal matters, and this without real training or practical experience.

Now, if you think that a local or international law governing what one can say or publish in a Bitcoin block is far too lax, as it’s not fitting your specific viewpoint, you’re free to engage in political lobbying in Washington D.C or Bruxelles or whatever any other hub of other worldwide regulatory area. But, I’m humbly believe we start to be very far from Bitcoin protocol design and a cypherpunk write code ethos...

And I’m saying all of this with a mark of intellectual respect for anyone working or hacking on Bitcoin Knots, everyone knows that I can be highly critical of Bitcoin Core too at times. Be sure I’m always trying to favor a meritocracy of ideas and open discussion of said objective ideas and facts over tribalism.