\section{Ethics considerations}

Ethical considerations are at the root of this project.
At their essence, donations are ethical acts in which individuals empower third parties to act in a manner compatible with the value system of the donor.
In addition to protecting the privacy of the donor, and thus allowing them to give to charity without fear of repercussions, the Donau system has several other effects, which we consider from an ethical standpoint.
We briefly discuss two of them here, namely: 1) the risk of criminals using the Donau for money laundering, and 2) the (dis)proportionality of administrative burden on charities.

%Current systems oblige donors to go on record and report their donations to their government,
%explicitly linking them to the causes and institutions they support.
%This has a self-censoring or chilling effect, due to fear of potential future repercussions in complex and volatile political climates:
%information may linger inside of the bureaucratic system and later cause unforeseeable harm.
%Support for certain organizations and their linked causes
%can lead not only to stigmatization but also to physical harassment, or far worse.
%Such concerns about real-world consequences of revealing one's support for various causes creates stress for donors,
%and the current approach to provide tax benefits for donations encroaches on the privacy of those who do not wish to reveal who they support.

\input{threats}

\subsection{Administrative burden}
Issuing donation receipts is a significant administrative cost for charities.
This burden can disproportionately affect smaller organizations
--- many of whom may work around ``niche'' causes linked to (combinations of) cultural, sexual, ethnic, religious and minority issues ---
without the
human resources needed to efficiently and adequately provide donation receipts to donors.
This reverses the tax incentives for donating and may discourage potential donors from giving, creating a feedback loop that prevents the organizations from raising the necessary funds to grow.
Even if charities do reliably provide donors with tax receipts (by mail or email), these can easily get lost, and organizations may get a surge of replacement requests from donors before tax filing deadlines, adding to this burden.

Donau alleviates this problem by integrating the issuance of donation receipts directly into the donation protocol and storing them automatically in the donor's device.
This could have a disproportionately positive effect on smaller charities, equalizing the administrative burden (with respect to donation processing) across charitable organizations.
This in turn would potentially lead to greater tax justice and a healthier philanthropic climate.

\section{Open science}
\subsection{Access to software}
The associated software does not place any ethical dilemmas upon the users.
It is delivered as free/libre open source software, available under GNU
Affero General Public license v3 or later
\ifanonymous
and available in a public repository.
\else
in the
repository \url{git.taler.net/donau.git}.
\fi
Anyone is able to download, compile, install, modify and redistribute the software as they wish, conditional to respecting this license.
\ifanonymous
We will submit the code for the artifact evaluation.
We do not use github and thus cannot use their anonymizing tools but can make
the code available upon request, but need some time to scrub identifying
information.
\fi
