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

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11–20 of 52 posts

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

#11
post #3

So I am confused, if I claim some one hacked me, I basically can forum shop, and state outlandish accusations, because "I got hacked"?

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 believe a law is about to be broken, etc.

The client (you) will eventually be called as a witness, and you can go to jail if you lie on the stand or otherwise present false evidence. Unfortunately, the penalties seem to happen a lot less often than the perjury. That's partly because perjury is a criminal offense, carrying a higher burden of proof than a civil claim.

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

#14

Craig Wright, the guy who brought this lawsuit, has been suing people left and right for years. He lost a high profile case last year against a podcaster who called him a fraud. The judge ruled against Wright and found that he had "advanced a deliberately false case and put forward deliberately false evidence until days before trial".

But here is what winning means for his target: In addition to years of his life tied up in this, "Craig Wright has just submitted a bill of costs for £3.379m for his costs of my dropped defences and a two day hearing in February 2021. Defences I dropped due to excess cost My whole budge to trial was £1.3m." ( https://twitter.com/PeterMcCormack/status/165230790417358029... )

Obviously he's fighting the costs, which are due to earlier phases of the proceedings where McCormack tried to get the case summarily dismissed and was unsuccessful, resulting in Mr. Wright being awarded costs.

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

#15
post #3

So I am confused, if I claim some one hacked me, I basically can forum shop, and state outlandish accusations, because "I got hacked"?

Basically yes in this case, the guy has made a career out of our broken legal system.

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

#16

Craig Wright, the guy who brought this lawsuit, has been suing people left and right for years. He lost a high profile case last year against a podcaster who called him a fraud. The judge ruled against Wright and found that he had "advanced a deliberately false case and put forward deliberately false evidence until days before trial".

> He lost

Sadly this is not true. Wright was ruled to have won the case but had the damage award reduced to only 1 pound.[1] (Wright is being bankrolled by billionaire Calvin Ayre. They are not worried about the money here.)

How someone can win a case while found to have "advanced a deliberately false case and put forward deliberately false evidence until days before trial" just goes to show how utterly deranged the British legal system is. As long as it is such, scammers like Craig Wright and Calvin Ayre will continue to torment innocent people.

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/aug/01/craig-wri...

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

#17

Craig Wright, the guy who brought this lawsuit, has been suing people left and right for years. He lost a high profile case last year against a podcaster who called him a fraud. The judge ruled against Wright and found that he had "advanced a deliberately false case and put forward deliberately false evidence until days before trial".

> He lost Sadly this is not true. Wright was ruled to have won the case but had the damage award reduced to only 1 pound.[1] (Wright is being bankrolled by billionaire Calvin Ayre. They are not worried about the money here.) How someone can win a case while found to have "advanced a deliberately false case and put forward deliberately false evidence until days before trial" just goes to show how utterly deranged the…

It's more complicated than that, as the judgement wrote:

> looking at the “big picture”, Dr Wright was awarded only nominal damages, so Mr McCormack is the successful party, as were the defendants in Joseph v Spiller and FlyMeNow,

...and the court awarded McCormack his costs for the trial on an indemnity basis-- which still doesn't cover his time lost and stress due to this, but it's about as good as you can get as a defendant. EXCEPT, in the interest in finality the court declined to reverse a ruling from an earlier stage of the trial that awarded Wright his costs, and Wright has now delivered his bill of £3.379m, still attempting to deliver on his public promise[*] of ruining McCormack.

So the fact that Wright "won" £1 isn't preventing a somewhat just outcome this case... because the court still rightfully regarded that as a loss for the purpose of awarding costs. The bigger issue is that the UK awards costs incrementally and so has left McCormack potentially paying Wright's inflated costs for his earlier efforts to get the deliberately false case discharged. And, of course, Wright is appealing is his "win" too.

Since Wright himself isn't funding his litigation, this suit was well worth his time in chilling his critics. And it has worked too: it's been difficult to get outlets cover what he's doing, except in the form of repeating both-sideism rendition's of Wright's press releases. I had previously been told outright by a least one journalist at a big publication that they didn't want to print on his claims being falsified because they didn't want to get mired in litigation.

[*] The most recent of which was also breach of a court embargo in the ruling on the case, which Wright was sent up for contempt for ... which had no effect "Faced with a 17,000-word skeleton argument advanced by Wright’s new attorneys, buttressed by 1,600 pages of legal authorities, [The court] concluded that the cost of continuing outweighed the benefits." in other words, he simply DOSed the court and the court dropped it.

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

#18
post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ideally you wouldn't use it as an excuse to seize millions of USD worth of assets you don't own, but that's the gist of it yes.

> 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…

[deleted]

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

#19

Craig Wright, the guy who brought this lawsuit, has been suing people left and right for years. He lost a high profile case last year against a podcaster who called him a fraud. The judge ruled against Wright and found that he had "advanced a deliberately false case and put forward deliberately false evidence until days before trial".

> He lost Sadly this is not true. Wright was ruled to have won the case but had the damage award reduced to only 1 pound.[1] (Wright is being bankrolled by billionaire Calvin Ayre. They are not worried about the money here.) How someone can win a case while found to have "advanced a deliberately false case and put forward deliberately false evidence until days before trial" just goes to show how utterly deranged the…

Could the deranged British legal system then be turned against those two, with equally vexatious retaliatory lawsuits? Fight fire with fire, as it were.

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

#20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> He lost Sadly this is not true. Wright was ruled to have won the case but had the damage award reduced to only 1 pound.[1] (Wright is being bankrolled by billionaire Calvin Ayre. They are not worried about the money here.) How someone can win a case while found to have "advanced a deliberately false case and put forward deliberately false evidence until days before trial" just goes to show how utterly deranged the…

Could the deranged British legal system then be turned against those two, with equally vexatious retaliatory lawsuits? Fight fire with fire, as it were.

"never wrestle with a pig – it gets mud all over you and the pig likes it". It would probably be just about as effective as piling cash and a wheelbarrow and lighting it on fire.

For whatever their motivations they already seem to be intentionally racking up their legal bills as high as they possibly can. Some have suggested that since in the UK it's possible for non-attorneys to own firms that this could be used to launder money (Wright's known sponsor spent a decade on a DHS most wanted list for money laundering), though I've seen nothing but speculation. ... whatever the reason they clearly don't mind spending on litigation.

If you win anything they won't pay-- they already have an unpaid judgement against them for ~$140 million dollars in Florida-- their latest gambit in that case has been to announce Wright's wives are actually the plaintiff, that they've fired the plaintiff's attorney and appointed their own. ( Probably a good place to read was the real plaintiff's ultimately unsuccessful motion to strike the fake one's appearance https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.flsd.52... the entire docket there is confusing now because you have to scroll to the bottom of each brief to find out if its the real plaintiff or the fake plaintiff).

Wright himself almost certainly couldn't pay-- he has no known source of funding except from extracting money from sponsors via his creator of Bitcoin fiction. Losing cases in and of itself hasn't made him stop or even really slowed him down. Engaging with him in civil court at all is necessary to prevent the personal ruination of his targets, but doesn't seem like a likely path to make him quit.

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