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Bitcoin Legal Defense Fund is fighting for the future of open source software

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Re: Bitcoin Legal Defense Fund is fighting for the future of open source software

#31

Post by LegitShady »

UncleEntity wrote: post #28
batmaniam wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except the fire is not on your side. It's on the money's side. So really, it's just money vs money. Or specifically, YOUR money vs billionaire's money. Who do you think will win that fight? The fundamental flaw of the court system is that it's biased towards those who have money due to how politics work. Here's food for thought, why isn't Prince Andrew in any serious trouble regarding the Epstein rapes? I don't know…

I’m confused, is the French fighting spirit supposed to symbolize the validity of the lawsuits in this analogy?

I'm pretty sure the french fighting spirit is burning shit in the streets when they try and raise the pension age.

Re: Bitcoin Legal Defense Fund is fighting for the future of open source software

#32

Post by hgsgm »

nullc wrote: post #22
sowbug wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

TL;DR: yes, but if outlandishness crosses over to deceit, you risk penalties. Anyone can file a lawsuit if they pay the filing fees. If they hire a lawyer, the lawyer must uphold the ethical standards of the bar, which carry suspension/disbarment penalties. Those standards generally include a good-faith belief in the legal merits of your client's case, adherence to all laws and court procedures, speaking up when you…

Wright's been civilly found to commit perjury-- but they just hit him with a fine and he keeps going. He was hit with a criminal contempt charge two decades ago for perjury and forgery in court, sentenced to 30 days in jail but he got it reduced to community service. But even if it hadn't been-- so what? He'd probably ultimately benefit from it by spinning it into a story about that time when he went to jail in for s…

Even worse, he wins more than he pays for his perjury, due to Britain's criminal-protecting libel laws.

Re: Bitcoin Legal Defense Fund is fighting for the future of open source software

#33

Post by evilspammer »

midmagico wrote: post #23
evilspammer wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> seize millions of USD worth of assets you don't own, but that's the gist of it yes Technically true, but he's looking for $4 b-b-billion. Some thoughts about this that interest me: - Things like the Bitcoin Cash fork & DAO fork arguably set the precedent that the developers control the funds. They never should have done that because now anybody can argue "you did it for them, why not me?" And this time it's being a…

That is a lie—in terms of funds being controlled specifically absent owner signatures, by the developers, how did even Bitcoin Cash set such a precedent? In fact, there are specific counter-examples with Jeff Garzik's godmode patches which were so roundly denied and rejected that they were DOA. Ethereum is irrelevant because of how much total premine it was and how they misrepresented it, and misrepresented the invol…

It wasn't a lie. What's the direct counter-evidence for the key ownership? I was not aware of that.

I saw someone comment above that one of the keys in question signed a message saying that they were not Wright, which is a good example for that particular key.

My comment you replied to specifically mentioned a scenario where the key owner did not defend themself. So we are talking about different scenarios.

In any case, I wasn't lying when I posted what I referred to as my thoughts, & certainly do know what I'm talking about. Thanks for the correction.

Re: Bitcoin Legal Defense Fund is fighting for the future of open source software

#34

Post by evilspammer »

midmagico wrote: post #29
wizzwizz4 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The overall community consensus to run that code is cooperative, *not* coercive. We don't disagree. Many people act like the consensus algorithm is somehow magically obviating the need for a consensus among humans. One must inherently trust that, if one is to use something like Bitcoin. Functionally, as long as the consensus is to install the latest version of Bitcoin Core, Bitcoin Core's maintainers control Bitcoi…

No, that's incorrect. There is no fundamental trust; you were describing control in a coercive sense among the developers by directly asserting that developers have specific control over the funds in the system. This is obviously not true, has never been true, and I have no trouble predicting that it will never be true. What I took exception to was the fact that you were asserting developers themselves control funds,…

> No, that's incorrect. There is no fundamental trust; you were describing control in a coercive sense among the developers by directly asserting that developers have specific control over the funds in the system.

> This is obviously not true, has never been true, and I have no trouble predicting that it will never be true.

IANAL, especially considering the number of jurisdictions involved.

It seems totally possible to me that a BTC developer could be rubber-hose compelled by the legal system to publish a patch, just as they might compel a bank to refund someone's stolen funds. Governments sometimes protect from "compelled speech." But what if the speech is publishing "from=acct1 to=acct2 value=100" to a blockchain? How is that different from a banker being compelled to click a button in their own UI, thats value is the same thing?

Secondly, you are right that people would probably fork and not update if the developers became compromised... then the new developers would have the same thing happen to them and become compromised. As long as the developers aren't anonymous they will be a SPOF. (This is why my initial comment said KYC killed bitcoin - its entire premise fails when it is nonymous.)

Finally, cryptocurrencies as a whole are just BTC, ETH, and a bunch of nothing. Repeated forks of BTC because of legal drama, departing/jailed developers, will rapidly move the BTC forks into the nothing category. Without consensus on a path forward (to fork or not to fork) both sides of the network are diminished. It isn't even clear if Wright's goal is to get 4b, or just to destroy BTC far enough to collect the ashes.

Re: Bitcoin Legal Defense Fund is fighting for the future of open source software

#35

Post by smoldesu »

evilspammer wrote: post #34
midmagico wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, that's incorrect. There is no fundamental trust; you were describing control in a coercive sense among the developers by directly asserting that developers have specific control over the funds in the system. This is obviously not true, has never been true, and I have no trouble predicting that it will never be true. What I took exception to was the fact that you were asserting developers themselves control funds,…

> No, that's incorrect. There is no fundamental trust; you were describing control in a coercive sense among the developers by directly asserting that developers have specific control over the funds in the system. > This is obviously not true, has never been true, and I have no trouble predicting that it will never be true. IANAL, especially considering the number of jurisdictions involved. It seems totally possible…

> a BTC developer could be rubber-hose compelled by the legal system to publish a patch

> you are right that people would probably fork and not update

One of us is misunderstanding how the Bitcoin core works. You're correct that a BTC developer could be compelled to publish a "bad patch", but nobody is obligated to accept it. If it's sufficiently controversial (eg. "accept my new ledger!"), there wouldn't even need to be a fork in the first place. It would die as a PR, and if it was forced through then miners would almost certainly protest since it undermines their authority.

You're right in the strictest possible purview of "this is possible", but Bitcoin's community would be left bereft. Anyone who tries modifying the ledger knows the weight of what they're suggesting, that's why it just doesn't happen.

Re: Bitcoin Legal Defense Fund is fighting for the future of open source software

#36

Post by nullc »

PretzelPirate wrote: post #30
rwmj wrote: post #13

A user on HN is one of those affected. He posted a very detailed story about his awful experience: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34685029

That's not just a HM user, that's Gregory Maxwell who was the main Bitcoin developer after Gavin Andresen left. Maxwell has is own history of drama, but I can certainly agree with him that Craig Wright sucks.

> who was the main Bitcoin developer

I'm flattered, but that's not so! I was a relatively insignificant developer (e.g. 163 mostly minor commits to a project that has had >24k)-- though I've been frequently targeted in public, in part due to my own error in choosing to discuss Bitcoin with naysayers rather than just ignoring them. If you wanted to call me an formally outspoken Bitcoin philosopher, I wouldn't argue!

But the post in question was on a thread about Wladimir who was, in fact, lead developer of the Bitcoin Core project for many years, and the most active developer as far back as 2011. He posted shortly after Wright won an appeal overturning our summary dismissal stating that he regretted ever participating in open source specifically because the MIT license waver of liability was not, apparently, strong enough to get an abusive lawsuit dismissed on a summary basis. (the page is now down as he's mostly dropped off the internet since).

Re: Bitcoin Legal Defense Fund is fighting for the future of open source software

#37

Post by wizzwizz4 »

smoldesu wrote: post #35
evilspammer wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> No, that's incorrect. There is no fundamental trust; you were describing control in a coercive sense among the developers by directly asserting that developers have specific control over the funds in the system. > This is obviously not true, has never been true, and I have no trouble predicting that it will never be true. IANAL, especially considering the number of jurisdictions involved. It seems totally possible…

> a BTC developer could be rubber-hose compelled by the legal system to publish a patch > you are right that people would probably fork and not update One of us is misunderstanding how the Bitcoin core works. You're correct that a BTC developer could be compelled to publish a "bad patch", but nobody is obligated to accept it. If it's sufficiently controversial (eg. "accept my new ledger!"), there wouldn't even need t…

> It would die as a PR, and if it was forced through then miners would almost certainly protest since it undermines their authority.

Since we're talking about trust… what would happen if it were waved through the PR process, bypassing those checks entirely? (Do miners normally conduct code reviews?) What if it were obfuscated, disguised as something else – perhaps complete with tests "proving" that it was, in fact, that something else. It's been done before: http://underhanded-c.org/.

> Anyone who tries modifying the ledger knows the weight of what they're suggesting, that's why it just doesn't happen.

In other words… you're trusting that everyone in "Bitcoin's community" wants Bitcoin to continue to exist, and won't do things like this?

Re: Bitcoin Legal Defense Fund is fighting for the future of open source software

#39

Post by evilspammer »

smoldesu wrote: post #35
evilspammer wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> No, that's incorrect. There is no fundamental trust; you were describing control in a coercive sense among the developers by directly asserting that developers have specific control over the funds in the system. > This is obviously not true, has never been true, and I have no trouble predicting that it will never be true. IANAL, especially considering the number of jurisdictions involved. It seems totally possible…

> a BTC developer could be rubber-hose compelled by the legal system to publish a patch > you are right that people would probably fork and not update One of us is misunderstanding how the Bitcoin core works. You're correct that a BTC developer could be compelled to publish a "bad patch", but nobody is obligated to accept it. If it's sufficiently controversial (eg. "accept my new ledger!"), there wouldn't even need t…

I totally may be misunderstanding. I see that developers and miners work with and for each other because of their mutual stake in the network (there is some "trustless." :))

I think if even 1 developer has a court order for them to push to master, it will happen whether anyone wants it to, since GitHub is already known to mindlessly abide by government requests. (see popcorntime dmca)

The people who merge or pull the code have the ultimate decision. But it's a problem. Who is accepting the code and who isn't? The developer can be disallowed from contributing to the code if this change isn't accepted. (Explicitly not "compelled speech" to "not say" something - this would be a gagball.) So the next patch comes. The question of who is forking and is who isn't raises from 50%/50% to 25%/75% until the numerator approaches zero. For the sake of networking the question isn't "whether I want to accept this patch" but "whether I think most people will accept this patch."

So the miners have a endless chain of developers who are asking for this patch or no more patches. For the miners to have leverage with developers they need to be able to take over the code themselves. The next set of developers will have this issue, ad infinitum, unless the cycle is broken somehow.

IMO the solution has to involve zero knowledge proofs which is the closest we can get to preventing rubber-hose legal attacks. Since XMR probably won't gain the traction to become a competitor to BTC, BTC will probably have to integrate it or continue to suffer from problems like this.

edited to add addendum:

The incoming/departing core developers & the open source nature of the BTC codebase also presents an issue. Unless the miners are reviewing each pull indiscriminately, they are trusting the code developers to have merged PRs that they want. How does an open source contribution, blessed by a core developer, become trustless? Anonymity is necessary to prevent core developers from being compelled, but names are necessary for trust of core developers.

Re: Bitcoin Legal Defense Fund is fighting for the future of open source software

#40

Post by nullc »

evilspammer wrote: post #39
smoldesu wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> a BTC developer could be rubber-hose compelled by the legal system to publish a patch > you are right that people would probably fork and not update One of us is misunderstanding how the Bitcoin core works. You're correct that a BTC developer could be compelled to publish a "bad patch", but nobody is obligated to accept it. If it's sufficiently controversial (eg. "accept my new ledger!"), there wouldn't even need t…

I totally may be misunderstanding. I see that developers and miners work with and for each other because of their mutual stake in the network (there is some "trustless." :)) I think if even 1 developer has a court order for them to push to master, it will happen whether anyone wants it to, since GitHub is already known to mindlessly abide by government requests. (see popcorntime dmca) The people who merge or pull the…

Why do you think miners matter? Why do you think github matters?
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