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>isn't ETH's "The Code is the Contract" ethos morally override any complaints people could make about unfair marketing? I am no moral authority, though I certa

>isn't ETH's "The Code is the Contract" ethos morally override any complaints people could make about unfair marketing? I am no moral authority, though I certainly have my opinions. I think the moral question breaks down to the following: 1. Do I have a moral obligation to perform a contract that I entered only as a result of fraud? Let me ask you, what if you and I enter a contract where I will pay you $10 to pull a string of my choice and you agree. After you enter the contract I show you the string and it is tied off to a trigger on a gun pointed to someones head, does the contract ethos morally override my unfair disclosure? That is obviously an extreme, but how about if you had a elderly parent who was on their death bed and I told your parent the Will makes you the sole beneficiary but it really made me the sole beneficiary, would you have a moral obligation to allow the Will/contract to stand that overrides your complaint about unfair representations? At the end of the day, people signed up for the DAO, but the DAO as executed was not what they signed up for, no matter how much people say that is the entire point of the DAO. If it were me I would feel no moral obligation to accept my losses as if it were losses based on a legitimate investment opportunity that simply didn't perform. I think people must determine for themselves what is moral, and while keeping ones word and fulfilling contractual obligations is a moral issue, it applies to all parties (the solicitor and investor), and that is why the law doesn't permit fraud, deceptive and unfair trade practices, contracts with minors, contracts with people who lack capacity to understand them, unjust enrichment, etc...

pavel_lishin 10y ago
> Let me ask you, what if you and I enter a contract where I will pay you $10 to pull a string of my choice and you agree. After you enter the contract I show you the string and it is tied off to a trigger on a gun pointed to someones head I think this analogy is very flawed, because I could inspect the DAO code before investing in it. The string doesn't lead off-stage.
- logfromblammo 10y ago
  Even if it is flawed, the contract never said I couldn't untie or cut the string before pulling it (or move the head away from the gun). So I remove the string from the trigger, pull it, and walk away with $10. This illustrates the difficulty with rigid computer-enforced contracts. Clearly, both parties violated the intent of the contract by strict, bloody-minded adherence to its literal terms. The cleverest, most obfuscated contract writer thus wins against everybody but the cleverest, most analytic contract disassembler.
  - pavel_lishin 10y ago
    > Even if it is flawed, the contract never said I couldn't untie or cut the string before pulling it (or move the head away from the gun). So I remove the string from the trigger, pull it, and walk away with $10. Again, this is not an accurate analogy to the DAO contract, which I could fully inspect, and even theoretically run in a sandbox environment myself. Your analogy is more akin to what actually happened, which is that people said, "nah, we didn't mean that", and re-tied the string to something else.
  - h1d 10y ago
    I agree that is the current state but if that is going to be the case for time to come, I doubt it will fly as every investor needs to be the cleverest. If nothing is learned by the devs and if all they do is make investers look less angry, this project is not going anywhere.
    - logfromblammo 10y ago
      The same problem exists in non-networked investment vehicles. Clever people can create derivatives and convince less-clever people to buy them, not realizing that the math actually simplifies out to "heads, I win: tails, you lose". The capital markets industry has never been able to keep clever people from making a little more money for themselves at the expense of a lot of money that would otherwise have gone to investors. At least with ETH and its future competitors, the specific sort of cleverness that is required to profit is very close to the cleverness that I now possess. Not saying I'd put a dollar that I can pay actual bills with into ETH right now, just that it seems more approachable to me than traditional investment, barring only the low-fee index funds. But those are plenty good enough for me right now, as I tend to shy away from games of skill where merely good players are routinely slaughtered by expert hustlers.
- will_brown 10y ago
  The analogy was not to reflect the DAO but for the moral question: >Do I have a moral obligation to perform a contract that I entered only as a result of fraud? Further, I acknowledge it is an extreme, and offered a more real world example (which coincidentally includes the opportunity for review)...I represent the contents of a Will to your parent and they sign over everything to me because I told them it would go to you, sure they were on their death bed so it was more practical to rely on my representations (DAO marketing material) than read the Will/contract (DAO code) but they had the opportunity. Also lets assume there was no separate issue of lack of capacity in this example, because the would be a separate legal defense. What is your moral obligation?
  - EdHominem 10y ago
    Your questions posit that you're offering a deal you know is bad because you yourself rigged it. We have no reason to think that Slock.it took the currency, or intended to (unfairly) get any share of it. Their statements look stupid but honest. A better question would involve: "... but without me knowing, the banks simultaneously crashed, devaluing our currency so the payout is worthless ..."
  - pavel_lishin 10y ago
    Again, caveat emptor. The code is readable and runnable by everyone. In this case, the analogy is entering a contract without reading the contract.
marcus_holmes 10y ago
Why was the DAO as executed not what they signed up for? The DAO executed was code. The language used to describe it is immaterial. It's code. To understand what code does, you read the code. Reading just the comments doesn't cut it. The moral question isn't even interesting. It's irrelevant. We have exactly the same issue with existing legal contracts: if I tell you a contract is one thing, but it actually says something else, and you sign it, then you must perform the contract. It's your responsibility to read the actual contract before signing, not just listen to my description. The only difference here is that the contract is in code not legalese. There's no moral case to answer. If you can't or won't read the contract then don't f*ing sign it!
- will_brown 10y ago
  >if I tell you a contract is one thing, but it actually says something else, and you sign it, then you must perform the contract. That is actually the exact opposite of how the law works. If you enter a contract because of someones misrepresentations and you suffer damages as a direct result of those misrepresentations that is fraud and voids the contract.
  - marcus_holmes 10y ago
    My MBA legal lecturer was absolutely clear that when signing a contract what was said was irrelevant, what was in the contract was what was important. I think you're talking about a retail position maybe? Or possibly there's differences between US and Australian law in this regard. I'm not sure I see the point of having words in a contract if it can be voided because someone said something different once...
    - will_brown 10y ago
      There certainly could be differences in US and Australian law in this regard. >I'm not sure I see the point of having words in a contract if it can be voided because someone said something different once... It is not a simple as a one time statement being inconsistent with the contract, though the could be enough. Also there are many different theories of law I could pursue, but just one example: Fraud in the Inducement[1]: 1. The defendant made an intentional action, statement, or omission 2. The misrepresentation was material to the decision to enter into a contract 3. The plaintiff reasonably relied on such misrepresentation, and 4. The plaintiff suffered some degree of injury, usually economic harm And don't get me wrong I understand all the counter arguments as it relates to this single theory of law (but trust me there are more) which including: reliance on the marketing materials/solicitations were not reasonable because the included disclaimers to the effect the marketing materials were not accurate and the contract/code is controlling. In this case I don't think it would matter, because there is no doubt investors relied on these representations from the creators of the DAO including, the DAO was "100% safe", investments were subject to voting, there were safe guards allowing investors to "pull the plug" and get their investments back...not of that was true, was likely the reason investors invested and resulted in damages when it turned out they weren't true. [1] http://www.legalmatch.com/law-library/article/fraudulent-inducement-lawyers.html http://www.legalmatch.com/law-library/article/fraudulent-ind...

pavel_lishin 10y ago

> Let me ask you, what if you and I enter a contract where I will pay you $10 to pull a string of my choice and you agree. After you enter the contract I show you the string and it is tied off to a trigger on a gun pointed to someones head I think this analogy is very flawed, because I could inspect the DAO code before investing in it. The string doesn't lead off-stage.

logfromblammo 10y ago
Even if it is flawed, the contract never said I couldn't untie or cut the string before pulling it (or move the head away from the gun). So I remove the string from the trigger, pull it, and walk away with $10. This illustrates the difficulty with rigid computer-enforced contracts. Clearly, both parties violated the intent of the contract by strict, bloody-minded adherence to its literal terms. The cleverest, most obfuscated contract writer thus wins against everybody but the cleverest, most analytic contract disassembler.
- pavel_lishin 10y ago
  > Even if it is flawed, the contract never said I couldn't untie or cut the string before pulling it (or move the head away from the gun). So I remove the string from the trigger, pull it, and walk away with $10. Again, this is not an accurate analogy to the DAO contract, which I could fully inspect, and even theoretically run in a sandbox environment myself. Your analogy is more akin to what actually happened, which is that people said, "nah, we didn't mean that", and re-tied the string to something else.
- h1d 10y ago
  I agree that is the current state but if that is going to be the case for time to come, I doubt it will fly as every investor needs to be the cleverest. If nothing is learned by the devs and if all they do is make investers look less angry, this project is not going anywhere.
  - logfromblammo 10y ago
    The same problem exists in non-networked investment vehicles. Clever people can create derivatives and convince less-clever people to buy them, not realizing that the math actually simplifies out to "heads, I win: tails, you lose". The capital markets industry has never been able to keep clever people from making a little more money for themselves at the expense of a lot of money that would otherwise have gone to investors. At least with ETH and its future competitors, the specific sort of cleverness that is required to profit is very close to the cleverness that I now possess. Not saying I'd put a dollar that I can pay actual bills with into ETH right now, just that it seems more approachable to me than traditional investment, barring only the low-fee index funds. But those are plenty good enough for me right now, as I tend to shy away from games of skill where merely good players are routinely slaughtered by expert hustlers.
will_brown 10y ago
The analogy was not to reflect the DAO but for the moral question: >Do I have a moral obligation to perform a contract that I entered only as a result of fraud? Further, I acknowledge it is an extreme, and offered a more real world example (which coincidentally includes the opportunity for review)...I represent the contents of a Will to your parent and they sign over everything to me because I told them it would go to you, sure they were on their death bed so it was more practical to rely on my representations (DAO marketing material) than read the Will/contract (DAO code) but they had the opportunity. Also lets assume there was no separate issue of lack of capacity in this example, because the would be a separate legal defense. What is your moral obligation?
- EdHominem 10y ago
  Your questions posit that you're offering a deal you know is bad because you yourself rigged it. We have no reason to think that Slock.it took the currency, or intended to (unfairly) get any share of it. Their statements look stupid but honest. A better question would involve: "... but without me knowing, the banks simultaneously crashed, devaluing our currency so the payout is worthless ..."
- pavel_lishin 10y ago
  Again, caveat emptor. The code is readable and runnable by everyone. In this case, the analogy is entering a contract without reading the contract.

marcus_holmes 10y ago

Why was the DAO as executed not what they signed up for? The DAO executed was code. The language used to describe it is immaterial. It's code. To understand what code does, you read the code. Reading just the comments doesn't cut it. The moral question isn't even interesting. It's irrelevant. We have exactly the same issue with existing legal contracts: if I tell you a contract is one thing, but it actually says something else, and you sign it, then you must perform the contract. It's your responsibility to read the actual contract before signing, not just listen to my description. The only difference here is that the contract is in code not legalese. There's no moral case to answer. If you can't or won't read the contract then don't f*ing sign it!

will_brown 10y ago
>if I tell you a contract is one thing, but it actually says something else, and you sign it, then you must perform the contract. That is actually the exact opposite of how the law works. If you enter a contract because of someones misrepresentations and you suffer damages as a direct result of those misrepresentations that is fraud and voids the contract.
- marcus_holmes 10y ago
  My MBA legal lecturer was absolutely clear that when signing a contract what was said was irrelevant, what was in the contract was what was important. I think you're talking about a retail position maybe? Or possibly there's differences between US and Australian law in this regard. I'm not sure I see the point of having words in a contract if it can be voided because someone said something different once...
  - will_brown 10y ago
    There certainly could be differences in US and Australian law in this regard. >I'm not sure I see the point of having words in a contract if it can be voided because someone said something different once... It is not a simple as a one time statement being inconsistent with the contract, though the could be enough. Also there are many different theories of law I could pursue, but just one example: Fraud in the Inducement[1]: 1. The defendant made an intentional action, statement, or omission 2. The misrepresentation was material to the decision to enter into a contract 3. The plaintiff reasonably relied on such misrepresentation, and 4. The plaintiff suffered some degree of injury, usually economic harm And don't get me wrong I understand all the counter arguments as it relates to this single theory of law (but trust me there are more) which including: reliance on the marketing materials/solicitations were not reasonable because the included disclaimers to the effect the marketing materials were not accurate and the contract/code is controlling. In this case I don't think it would matter, because there is no doubt investors relied on these representations from the creators of the DAO including, the DAO was "100% safe", investments were subject to voting, there were safe guards allowing investors to "pull the plug" and get their investments back...not of that was true, was likely the reason investors invested and resulted in damages when it turned out they weren't true. [1] http://www.legalmatch.com/law-library/article/fraudulent-inducement-lawyers.html http://www.legalmatch.com/law-library/article/fraudulent-ind...