4 ms·

IANAL but I expect that anyone admitting to this will find themselves in jail very quickly, at least in the US. The legal system isn't fond of $50 million cons

by powera 10y ago

IANAL but I expect that anyone admitting to this will find themselves in jail very quickly, at least in the US. The legal system isn't fond of $50 million cons based on one paragraph of legalese.

masklinn 10y ago
Unless the attacker is an author of DAO or Ethereum I fail to see where the con would be.
- powera 10y ago
  It is clearly theft and whatever legal mumbo jumbo he provides doesn't change that. I'd personally say the claims that this is somehow legal is the con, but I agree it's not entirely clear.
  - jsprogrammer 10y ago
    If a valid contract was entered and accepted, where is the clear theft? Supposedly DAO has the ability to cancel the transaction anyway. Failing to cancel will be additional de facto evidence of the validity of the contract.
    - woah 10y ago
      I anal, but I'm pretty sure that the law mostly operates off what the intent of a contract was.
      - jsprogrammer 10y ago
        I have read the article, and the terms are very clear (assuming the article is accurate): the code specified the actual intent and all other claims are void.
        powera 10y ago
        The intent was to set up an autonomous corporation, not to be bankrupted by the first person to find a security hole.
    - powera 10y ago
      You're begging the question here. He's trying to use spurious legal claims to prevent cancelling the transaction. His success at that can't make his legal claims valid.
      - jsprogrammer 10y ago
        Who is the "he" you are referring to?
        powera 10y ago
        The attacker. Who can't say that it's illegal to block his money, and use the lack of blocking as an argument in a court of law.
    - rvense 10y ago
      At least in my country contract law is regulated by regular laws, especially contracts between consumers and corporations. There are definitely limits to what rights you can sign away and some of these are based on more general, open-for-interpretation definitions, using terms like "reasonable", "expectable" and the concept of "bonus pater familias" ("good family man", apparently referred to as the Man on the Clapham Omnibus in the UK), i.e., what would a regular, reasonable, moderately educated person expect. I don't know about America, but I would assume there are somewhat similar protections, at least for consumers. Honestly, I'm almost in favour of letting the attacker keep the money to hold some of these foxhole converts to their own ideology. But I am quite sure that at least here, a contract which purports to be about proportionate sharing of a mutual pool of money but happens to contain a loophole that allows one person to run away with the pool would be void, and exploiting the flaw regarded in the same way as exploiting any other code flaw to obtain unauthorized access to a computer system - hacking. Of course, my country's legal system has a often proven itself incapable of understanding how computers work, so who knows what they'd conclude, but I can't imagine that it is as clear cut as some suggest.
  - dave2000 10y ago
    It's hard to justify a statement like "it's clearly theft" given the amount of time and money and legal resource that was used in the Google/Oracle case about the use of an API.
schoen 10y ago
An important question for the future is to what extent the legal system will let people opt out of using it to adjudicate particular disputes. Historically that's been difficult or impossible outside of limited contexts, like mandatory arbitration, although courts have also been fairly OK with venue restrictions. But a related question here (which there was already a 600-post HN thread discussing) is whether people who intend to opt out of court adjudication of disputes are willing to stand by that intent when something bad happens to them.
digler999 10y ago
have you heard about the $40mm comma ? http://www.businessinsider.com/this-typo-cost-america-about-40-million-2015-1 http://www.businessinsider.com/this-typo-cost-america-about-...
charonn0 10y ago
Is it a con, though? I don't know much about DAO but everything I've read recently suggests that this situation, at the very least, is a lot more nuanced.

by powera 10y ago

IANAL but I expect that anyone admitting to this will find themselves in jail very quickly, at least in the US. The legal system isn't fond of $50 million cons based on one paragraph of legalese.

masklinn 10y ago

Unless the attacker is an author of DAO or Ethereum I fail to see where the con would be.

powera 10y ago
It is clearly theft and whatever legal mumbo jumbo he provides doesn't change that. I'd personally say the claims that this is somehow legal is the con, but I agree it's not entirely clear.
- jsprogrammer 10y ago
  If a valid contract was entered and accepted, where is the clear theft? Supposedly DAO has the ability to cancel the transaction anyway. Failing to cancel will be additional de facto evidence of the validity of the contract.
  - woah 10y ago
    I anal, but I'm pretty sure that the law mostly operates off what the intent of a contract was.
    - jsprogrammer 10y ago
      I have read the article, and the terms are very clear (assuming the article is accurate): the code specified the actual intent and all other claims are void.
      - powera 10y ago
        The intent was to set up an autonomous corporation, not to be bankrupted by the first person to find a security hole.
  - powera 10y ago
    You're begging the question here. He's trying to use spurious legal claims to prevent cancelling the transaction. His success at that can't make his legal claims valid.
    - jsprogrammer 10y ago
      Who is the "he" you are referring to?
      - powera 10y ago
        The attacker. Who can't say that it's illegal to block his money, and use the lack of blocking as an argument in a court of law.
  - rvense 10y ago
    At least in my country contract law is regulated by regular laws, especially contracts between consumers and corporations. There are definitely limits to what rights you can sign away and some of these are based on more general, open-for-interpretation definitions, using terms like "reasonable", "expectable" and the concept of "bonus pater familias" ("good family man", apparently referred to as the Man on the Clapham Omnibus in the UK), i.e., what would a regular, reasonable, moderately educated person expect. I don't know about America, but I would assume there are somewhat similar protections, at least for consumers. Honestly, I'm almost in favour of letting the attacker keep the money to hold some of these foxhole converts to their own ideology. But I am quite sure that at least here, a contract which purports to be about proportionate sharing of a mutual pool of money but happens to contain a loophole that allows one person to run away with the pool would be void, and exploiting the flaw regarded in the same way as exploiting any other code flaw to obtain unauthorized access to a computer system - hacking. Of course, my country's legal system has a often proven itself incapable of understanding how computers work, so who knows what they'd conclude, but I can't imagine that it is as clear cut as some suggest.
- dave2000 10y ago
  It's hard to justify a statement like "it's clearly theft" given the amount of time and money and legal resource that was used in the Google/Oracle case about the use of an API.

schoen 10y ago

An important question for the future is to what extent the legal system will let people opt out of using it to adjudicate particular disputes. Historically that's been difficult or impossible outside of limited contexts, like mandatory arbitration, although courts have also been fairly OK with venue restrictions. But a related question here (which there was already a 600-post HN thread discussing) is whether people who intend to opt out of court adjudication of disputes are willing to stand by that intent when something bad happens to them.

digler999 10y ago

have you heard about the $40mm comma ? http://www.businessinsider.com/this-typo-cost-america-about-40-million-2015-1 http://www.businessinsider.com/this-typo-cost-america-about-...

charonn0 10y ago

Is it a con, though? I don't know much about DAO but everything I've read recently suggests that this situation, at the very least, is a lot more nuanced.