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Craig Wright said he invented Bitcoin – lawyers proved him wrong

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Re: Craig Wright said he invented Bitcoin – lawyers proved him wrong

#71

Post by jiggawatts »

CamperBob2 wrote: post #31
throw101010 wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You misunderstand the point people saying this make. They know governments can suppress their freedoms ultimately but since Bitcoin is an open and public system, the measures governments have to use to "kill" it force them to limit very fundamental freedoms (like freedom of speech to restrict the publishing of its source code, freedom to consume the energy citizens purchase and/or produce how they want, neutral acces…

These kind of measures are political suicide in Western democracies CSAM has entered the chat. ("Why do you support child abuse, Senator?")

The fastest way to kill Bitcoin would be to use it to publish the torrent hashes of child porn. Since it is nearly impossible to erase information from the chain, this “taint” is forever. Any participant node processing the chain will be “distributing child pornography.”

That’s thoroughly illegal pretty much everywhere. Worse, it has a very powerful social stigma against it, which means you can’t even fight it in court.

Re: Craig Wright said he invented Bitcoin – lawyers proved him wrong

#72

Post by throw101010 »

jiggawatts wrote: post #71
CamperBob2 wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These kind of measures are political suicide in Western democracies CSAM has entered the chat. ("Why do you support child abuse, Senator?")

The fastest way to kill Bitcoin would be to use it to publish the torrent hashes of child porn. Since it is nearly impossible to erase information from the chain, this “taint” is forever. Any participant node processing the chain will be “distributing child pornography.” That’s thoroughly illegal pretty much everywhere. Worse, it has a very powerful social stigma against it, which means you can’t even fight it in cou…

It has already been done [1], the issue is that Bitcoin is not really made for large files storage, so you'd store hashes to a torrent as you suggested or you'd split parts of the illegal content that then would require some other protocol be recomposed... Historically that has not been enough to cause legal trouble for network participants, another reason is that this data can also be deleted from your own node once you are made aware of it. It's been an anti-Bitcoin talking point for many years, nobody really cares about it.

[1] https://blockchain.comsys.rwth-aachen.de/

Re: Craig Wright said he invented Bitcoin – lawyers proved him wrong

#73

Post by throw101010 »

sgt101 wrote: post #46
throw101010 wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You misunderstand the point people saying this make. They know governments can suppress their freedoms ultimately but since Bitcoin is an open and public system, the measures governments have to use to "kill" it force them to limit very fundamental freedoms (like freedom of speech to restrict the publishing of its source code, freedom to consume the energy citizens purchase and/or produce how they want, neutral acces…

The one fundamental that you have to understand about all government is that it is essentially a monopoly on violence. That monopoly enables things like taxation and broad social consensus and consent. But, it's there, and if Bitcoin began to chip away at the core of any state you can expect it to be used. Some people say that they can't take my gold. Some people say that they can't take my guns. But history says tha…

Sure, but as I said, if they come after Bitcoin, it's a good time to worry about a lot of freedoms your governments are supposed to protect/afford you... it could be seen as the canary in the mine in that regard.

Re: Craig Wright said he invented Bitcoin – lawyers proved him wrong

#74

Post by throw101010 »

ForHackernews wrote: post #65
throw101010 wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You misunderstand the point people saying this make. They know governments can suppress their freedoms ultimately but since Bitcoin is an open and public system, the measures governments have to use to "kill" it force them to limit very fundamental freedoms (like freedom of speech to restrict the publishing of its source code, freedom to consume the energy citizens purchase and/or produce how they want, neutral acces…

China banned bitcoin mining and now there's hardly any bitcoin mining in China. Maybe the legal wrangling would be more involved in western countries, but I can't see why enforcement would be any harder. ISPs already block bittorrent and blacklist domains. They could easily block bitcoin, too.

> Maybe the legal wrangling would be more involved in western countries, but I can't see why enforcement would be any harder.

For the USA, computer source code is considered speech protected by the First Amendment, there's not much "legal wrangling" you can do around this when it has been confirmed by the Supreme Court. Short of drastically restricting this right/freedom... don't think the US population would welcome this "wrangling" with open arms.

You're also missing the point I've made, China's ban and various blocklists have not killed Bitcoin, it is still used a lot in China these days, it's simply illegal to mine it... for now, they've gone anti to pro Bitcoin many times over the years.

Re: Craig Wright said he invented Bitcoin – lawyers proved him wrong

#75

Post by m463 »

ruthmarx wrote: post #59
churchill wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fun fact: A Microsoft font also helped expose corruption by Pakistan's former PM, Nawaz Sharif [1]. Apparently, documents dated to 2006 were typed up using Calibri, a font that only went into public distribution around 2007. [1] https://www.theverge.com/2017/7/12/15961354/pakistan-calibri...

I guess it's prudent to remember to always use Times New Roman when committing fraud.

Note that although the Roman Empire started around 27 BC, Times New Roman is only good for fraud going back to 1932 AD.

Re: Craig Wright said he invented Bitcoin – lawyers proved him wrong

#76

Post by justinclift »

sgt101 wrote: post #46
throw101010 wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You misunderstand the point people saying this make. They know governments can suppress their freedoms ultimately but since Bitcoin is an open and public system, the measures governments have to use to "kill" it force them to limit very fundamental freedoms (like freedom of speech to restrict the publishing of its source code, freedom to consume the energy citizens purchase and/or produce how they want, neutral acces…

The one fundamental that you have to understand about all government is that it is essentially a monopoly on violence. That monopoly enables things like taxation and broad social consensus and consent. But, it's there, and if Bitcoin began to chip away at the core of any state you can expect it to be used. Some people say that they can't take my gold. Some people say that they can't take my guns. But history says tha…

> But history says that they can and will and have.

Indeed. The ability and willingness to use violence is how most of governments seem to have gotten their start(s).

Re: Craig Wright said he invented Bitcoin – lawyers proved him wrong

#77

Post by pests »

charlie0 wrote: post #51
pests wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No need to extract keys, the Bitcoin devs could just change the code. Even lock up the original and mint new ones for Craig. It's just code in the end. Similar to how Eth changed the code to nullify the DAO hack.

It's my understanding that simply changing the code doesn't really have an effect until all the nodes in the system update to use it.

Sue them all.

Re: Craig Wright said he invented Bitcoin – lawyers proved him wrong

#78

Post by nullc »

tim333 wrote: post #53
hollerith wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The most insane part was that an UK court allowed the lawsuit to be heard, and forced dozens of people not living in UK to pay big money to defend themselves. Minor correction: according to the wikipedia article on Wright, the Crypto Open Patent Alliance sued Wright, not the other way around. However, IIUC Wright's attempts over many years to fraudulently extract patent licensing fees and other undeserved benefits f…

I think that was a different court case. Wright has been involved in several.

You're both right and wrong.

Here is a summary of cases recently at play.

1. Wright defamation lawsuit against a podcaster. (UK)

2. Wright defamation lawsuit against a bitcoin fan. (UK)

3. Bitcoin fan's declaratory judgement claim over wright's threats of defamation litigation (the case above). (Norway)

4. Wright lawsuit against Bitcoin.org for copyright infringement for distributing the Bitcoin whitepaper (UK).

5. Wright lawsuit against a dozen current and former Bitcoin developers for failing to backdoor the Bitcoin system to enable Wright to "recover" billions of dollars of coins he says are his. Wright claimed he was owed billions of pounds of damages for this failure. (UK)

6. Crypto Open Patent Alliance (COPA) declaratory judgement claim against Wright triggered by threats of copyright infringement claims for distributing the bitcoin whitepaper. (UK)

7. Wright's lawsuit against 14 current and former Bitcoin developers and a number of Bitcoin related companies for infringing his copyright in the "Bitcoin block file format", copyright in the Bitcoin whitepaper (because there is a copy in the blockchain), and his database rights to the Bitcoin blockchain. This case claimed damages in the hundreds of billions of pounds. (UK)

Here is how they've played out and interacted: 1. Podcaster was bankrupt, abandoned his defense, Wright won but was only awarded 1 pound in damages because he lied about how he was harmed. Podcaster left with utterly ruinous legal fees, health compromised, etc.

2. / 3. Norway case was intended to preempt UK case due to very bad UK defamation laws. But Brexit happened and the Norway case no longer preempted and the Bitcoin fan had to face litigation in both jurisdictions. Defeated Wright in Norway, but Wright was granted an appeal which due to how the law works in Norway would essentially be a retrial. UK version of the case case gets stayed on the Norway appeal (but only after huge costs. Wright's target, a school teacher, was forced to abandon his career due to the time imposition. Norway appeal gets held pending COPA case by mutual agreement.

4. Bitcoin.org owner is pseudonymous, Wright and associates made various violent threats. Credible fear that absurd lawsuit was just to determine his location in order to make threats more coercive. In the UK you cannot defend yourself against a claim without identifying yourself (unlike the US where anonymous speech is connected to your 1A rights), so he lost by default. Website operator is ordered to pay nearly a million dollars in "costs" for his unopposed default and is unable to appeal the costs for the same reason as caused the default. Appealed, lost, Appealed to the UK supreme court, but lost. Bitcoin whitepaper and software were restricted on bitcoin.org.

5. Wright defeated on jurisdiction grounds. Successful appeal. Case ordered to be split into a preliminary issue trial for him to prove he ever owned coins in question. Wright abandoned the case after three years and millions spend on both sides a day before his disclosure for the preliminary issue trial was due. Court made a followup ruling that his case was completely without merit.

6. 7. A preliminary issue trial in ordered for 7 on the question of Wright being Bitcoin's creator, since he couldn't own those rights without being. This is merged into the COPA declaratory judgement case which is over the same question. This merged trial is called the "identity trial" in much of the documentation.

So this is why there is why there is some confusion as to Wright being the claimant or the defendant in the recent trial: He was both, claimant with respect to 7 and defendant with respect to 6, and the trial was jointly a trial of both cases.

At the conclusion of the joint trial, which found Wright's claims to be fraudulent, 6,7 were lost. The court also acted to eradicate the outstanding costs in cases 1, 4. Wright abandoned cases 2 and 3.

Wright is appealing the identity trial currently. You can take a look at his new twitter account for an idea of how that's going: https://x.com/CsTominaga/with_replies

[I'm a defendant in 5 and 6]

Re: Craig Wright said he invented Bitcoin – lawyers proved him wrong

#79

Post by nullc »

ruthmarx wrote: post #60
Tuna-Fish wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He attempted to sue Bitcoin core devs to alter the algorithm to hand over Satoshi's coins. On the basis that he lost the keys and that the maintainers have a duty to him to help him recover them. Every part of the lawsuit was just batshit insane. The most insane part was that an UK court allowed the lawsuit to be heard, and forced dozens of people not living in UK to pay big money to defend themselves.

> forced dozens of people not living in UK to pay big money to defend themselves. At the risk of not being able to enjoy castles and blood pudding on vacation, couldn't they just ignore the suit?

Unfortunately most developed nations are generally willing to domesticate the foreign judgements of other developed nations. There are exceptions, e.g. the SPEECH ACT makes many UK defamation claims largely unenforceable in the US... but even if you think you'd be able to block enforcement in your own jurisdiction, if you are wrong you likely forfeit being able defend the claim on its merits.

You also have to deal with any organizations you do business with who are exposed to the UK being ordered to take adverse actions like freeze or seize your accounts.

Because an outlaw in the UK is no joke either, you'd potentially have to spend the rest of your life at risk of being arrested if by happenstance you found yourself in that jurisdiction (e.g. due to a rerouted aircraft), face discrimination from future employers or potential business contacts because of the specter of a judgement hanging over you.

That said, had we not been able to secure funding for our defense we might well have defaulted anyways: if the defense would have bankrupted us, we'd be better off saving our funds and hoping to avoid enforcement of the judgement bankrupting us. But fortunately, Jack Dorsey and the chaincode founders stepped up.

Re: Craig Wright said he invented Bitcoin – lawyers proved him wrong

#80

Post by nullc »

solarengineer wrote: post #9
Tuna-Fish wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He attempted to sue Bitcoin core devs to alter the algorithm to hand over Satoshi's coins. On the basis that he lost the keys and that the maintainers have a duty to him to help him recover them. Every part of the lawsuit was just batshit insane. The most insane part was that an UK court allowed the lawsuit to be heard, and forced dozens of people not living in UK to pay big money to defend themselves.

Do the defendants have the right and the opportunity to sue for legal fees and damages for having to fight this vexatious court case?

We were awarded our legal fees. However, these the legal fees are only a part of the total cost, which includes lost income from the time expended, disruption of our personal lives, alienation from our passions and professions, damage to our reputations from false claims spread by Wright in furtherance of his fraud, etc. At least one of Wright's targets were hospitalized over stress induced cardiac problems due to the litigation.

We can bring separate fraud charges for some of these damages, though they're not likely to be entirely recoverable. However, Wright appears to be a lifelong grifter with little to no personal means to pay any judgement and attaching his sponsors for this litigation would be an extra level of difficulty. Even ignoring the potential of non-recovery, doing so would mean years of additional mud wrestling with this pig ("and the pig likes it!"), and a further impact on our lives which we'd just like to continue. We might be forced to however, because he and his conspirators seem to be showing little sign of stopping and going on the offensive might be necessary because simply losing and paying costs may not be enough to stop them.

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