8 ms·

I can literally feel how Ethereum changes the law. I mean, seriously, no need for lawyers anymore. On ethereum it's is simple: You got fucked, live with it. "Ba

I can literally feel how Ethereum changes the law. I mean, seriously, no need for lawyers anymore. On ethereum it's is simple: You got fucked, live with it. "Bad faith? It's the code, didn't you read it?"

easytiger 9y ago
In that future, ironically, Gold acquires even more value as a hedge
justinjlynn 9y ago
"It's all there black and white, clear as crystal. [...] You get nothing. You lose. Good day, sir."
- sdenton4 9y ago
  Furthermore, I suggest you do what your parents did, and get a job, sir! The bums lost, Lebowski!
- jeffwass 9y ago
  You skipped the juiciest part of one of my favorite scenes of that movie. [scared the bejeezus out of me when I was little, I didn't realise for some time it was pure satire and no adult would be expected to understand him]. So I feel obligated to post the full bit (from wikiquote) >Wonka: [angrily] Wrong, sir! Wrong! Under section 37B of the contract signed by him, it states quite clearly that all offers shall become null and void if - and you can read it for yourself in this photostatic copy - "I, the undersigned, shall forfeit all rights, privileges, and licenses herein and herein contained," et cetera, et cetera... "Fax mentis, incendium gloria cultum," et cetera, et cetera... Memo bis punitor delicatum! It's all there! Black and white, clear as crystal! You stole Fizzy-Lifting Drinks! You bumped into the ceiling, which now has to be washed and sterilized, so you get... NOTHING!!! You lose! GOOD DAY, SIR! [returns to work]
  - secabeen 9y ago
    >[scared the bejeezus out of me when I was little, I didn't realise for some time it was pure satire and no adult would be expected to understand him]. Yeah, as a kid, I too thought Wonka was serious. It took viewing it as a much older person to see the satire there.
    - justinjlynn 9y ago
      I thought the most ironic part of applying it to this situation is that, just like in the story, the rules were then changed to suit the whim of the enforcer. Meaning, of course, that the rules never meant anything anyway, except to the disadvantage of one party.
jacopofar2 9y ago
Except for that DAO of last summer, in that case the law changed...
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- theseatoms 9y ago
  Ethereum's original sin
  - davidgerard 9y ago
    The DAO hit every objection from smart contract skeptics, bang bang bang - legal code doesn't work at all like computer code, immutability means you can't fix mistakes, immutability means you can't deal with changes in circumstance, immutability means you must code with 0 bugs - but even we were surprised when they went "lol immutability guarantee" the second the big boys were in danger of losing money.
    - munificent 9y ago
      It's almost as if software technology can't magically solve problems inherent in the flawed nature of humanity.
      - cyphar 9y ago
        That's a strawman of what GP said. Of course technology can't solve humanity's flaws. The point was that smart contracts caused many problems they weren't meant to, which was exemplified by the DAO hack. Smart contracts failed to deliver on their promise and the fallout proved that when it came down to brass tax, nobody with skin in the game would respect a smart contract's execution anyway.
        vocatus_gate 9y ago
        FYI the term is "brass tacks" not "brass tax"
taspeotis 9y ago
Matt Levine has some thoughts [1] on that matter. [1] https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2016-06-17/blockchain-company-s-smart-contracts-were-dumb https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2016-06-17/blockchai...
- ep103 9y ago
  Great article!
- stupidcar 9y ago
  That dude's read a lot of DFW.
  - aisofteng 9y ago
    What makes you say that?
  - rocky1138 9y ago
    Excuse my ignorance, but what is DFW?
    - forax 9y ago
      Not positive, but guessing David Foster Wallace
  - taspeotis 9y ago
    There's a little bit more information here [1]. [1] https://www.reddit.com/r/badeconomics/comments/6cnzs8/matt_levine_of_bloomberg_view_ama_starts_on_524/dhw1w9g/ https://www.reddit.com/r/badeconomics/comments/6cnzs8/matt_l...
- ianamartin 9y ago
  That's a good article, and the point about him reading a lot of DFW is hilarious and accurate. But I think of this issue in slightly different terms that are more simple. There's a ton of case law about what constitutes a contract that pretty much all countries have. Clearly understanding the contract you are getting into is a prerequisite for the contract being enforceable in most places. The simple fact is that this is never going to hold up in court when people start suing. No one gets into a contract with the understanding that they can be robbed, and that's just okay. No rational person would do that. And I think it's a fair case to say that no rational person did clearly understand the contract as presented and agree to it. The courts are going to to shut this down, in my opinion. You can't just write into a contract that you might get stolen from or murdered or whatever bad thing and then that bad thing is suddenly okay. "Okay, this guy didn't read the fine print on that used car loan. Let's go rape his wife and kids now. He said it was okay!" That's not how it works. Etherium deserves to get hammered for this.
xadhominemx 9y ago
it creates such a bad alternative to the current system it's certain not to come about.
cookiecaper 9y ago
Won't happen. People need to believe that the justice system will hear their pleas and consider factors on-balance, and then proceed in fairness. In real law, there are several potential overrides available to stop egregiously unfair outcomes that would otherwise be legally valid (estoppel, unconscionability, etc.). People will not accept a system that does not have the appearance of fairness (regardless of its actual fairness). One of the things that cyberpunks fail to grasp is that people don't want a perfectly immutable, fixed system. They want to feel that their sense of justice and moral righteousness can be satisfied. Stuff that drops people off right at "sucks to be you" doesn't really work; there must be some type of recourse available even if it doesn't have a 100% success rate.
- dsfyu404ed 9y ago
  And the inverse also applies. People (groups and individuals) want to be able to throw their power around and leave people they don't like at "sucks to be you". This behavior has been the status quo for millennia.
  - cookiecaper 9y ago
    Eh, dictatorships and oppressive systems still work hard to appear fair and even-handed. That's why they have such elaborate propaganda machines. Anyone who wants to maintain power in virtually any setting (communal, corporate, governmental) must create an impression of fairness and equity, at least to the extent that a good portion of the people are not willing to risk their [reputations/jobs/lives] to throw off the "oppressors". It's not an accident that virtually all powerful corporate bosses and politicians are so image-conscious and superficial; it's a matter of survival for powerful people.
- ryandvm 9y ago
  Not sure why you're being downvoted because you're exactly right. The crypto-anarchists love to say "the code is the law", but the reality is that losing your retirement savings because somebody forgot to mark a method private is a pretty shitty outcome. For all its warts, a legal system backed by a jury of your peers is still the best way of sorting out the actual intent of a contract when the shit hits the fan.
bnbn66788 9y ago
Which is the minority opinion of the more "neckbeard" crowd that disproportionate control of the platform. If it scales to be a relied upon social tool, their foot-down rhetoric would likely come under heavy scrutiny.
draw_down 9y ago
Yeah! Well, uh... except that one time.... mumblemumble
oh_sigh 9y ago
Odds etherium does another hard fork to fix this bug?
- shpx 9y ago
  The DAO held nearly 14% of all ethereum in existence, 153,000ETH is less than .2%. 153,000 / 93,405,120[0] = 0.001638025838 [0] https://etherscan.io/stat/supply https://etherscan.io/stat/supply
  - sum627u 9y ago
    And there's more Ethereum now. The DAO was a ~$50 million fraud. This was a ~$30 million fraud. Obviously this is totally different and there's nothing we can do about it and it's just fine. People should have known better than to use parity with this bug in it.
    - firebones 9y ago
      Reminds me of the Winston Churchill story: “Churchill: "Madam, would you sleep with me for five million pounds?" Socialite: "My goodness, Mr. Churchill... Well, I suppose... we would have to discuss terms, of course... " Churchill: "Would you sleep with me for five pounds?" Socialite: "Mr. Churchill, what kind of woman do you think I am?!" Churchill: "Madam, we've already established that. Now we are haggling about the price.” We've already established that they will fork. Now we are haggling about the price. [1] http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/300099-churchill-madam-would-you-sleep-with-me-for-five-million http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/300099-churchill-madam-would...
      - lsc 9y ago
        Considering how powerful, famous and charismatic he was, I think, makes one consider that maybe it was Churchill who was being insulted, not the socialite. "Would you sleep with me?" "Maybe for a million dollars..."
    - jsmthrowaway 9y ago
quickthrower 9y ago
Not just the code but hopefully the compiler and processors (at large i.e. Intel) have no bugs that causes unintuitive behaviour.
- davidgerard 9y ago
  Good thing that isn't the case! WHOOPS that already happened in Solidity didn't it https://medium.com/@muneeb/solar-storm-a-serious-security-exploit-with-ethereum-not-just-the-dao-a03d797d98fa https://medium.com/@muneeb/solar-storm-a-serious-security-ex...
blueprint 9y ago
Well, you know, except for the whole "we, the central governors, will hard-fork if we get scared that there's an existential threat to the blockchain" thing.
tzs 9y ago
I realize that was probably satire or sarcasm or both, but since I've seen people actually seriously take that position I'm going to go ahead and respond as if it was serious. How do these smart contract deal with the real world? I can see how they can work for things that entirely involve activities that take place on the block chain (e.g., a smart contract that automatically pays a crowd funded project if and only if it meets a threshold for pledges by a deadline, and refunds the donors otherwise). But suppose our contract is something like I will pay you $X in Ethereum when you deliver to me 125 bales of Surat cotton, guaranteed to be middling fair merchant's Dhollorah [1], delivered at the Liverpool docks from Bombay on the next sailing of the Peerless. How do we put all of that into a smart contract? Can a smart contract trigger payment only when the cotton arrives? Can it check to make sure it arrived on the ship specified in the contract? And what happens if it turns out that there are two ships named Peerless, unrelated to each other, one of which is sailing from Bombay to Liverpool in October, and one in December? I only know about the December one, and it is on that one that I'm expecting the cotton. You only know about the October one, and so it is on that one you send the cotton. The cotton arrives before I'm ready to deal with. Unless dealing with all that can be included in the smart contract, and executed by the smart contract without human intervention, lawyers will still be needed...and they will be needed almost as much as they are now. PS: my cotton hypothetical is based on a real case: Raffles v Wichelhaus, EWHC Exch J19, (1864) 2 Hurl & C 906. There really were two unrelated ships both having and neither deserving the name Peerless, and both working the India / England trade routes, both scheduled for Bombay to Liverpool, one in October and one in December. [1] Dhollorah is a very dirty cotton of a longish staple, which when cleared is very white, as if bleached. For for more than you probably ever wanted to know on this and other types of cotton, see the book "Cotton Spinning and Weaving: A Practical and Theoretical Treatise" by Herbert Edward Walmsley, page 71. It's from the late 19th century and is public domain now I believe, and you can find it on Google Books.
- Gigablah 9y ago
  > neither deserving the name Peerless Sir that is a prejudicial statement and I want it stricken from the record.
- sniffles 9y ago
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
dingo_bat 9y ago
Unless you're the lead developers and lost money. Then we'll just hard fork the entire protocol.

easytiger 9y ago

In that future, ironically, Gold acquires even more value as a hedge

justinjlynn 9y ago

"It's all there black and white, clear as crystal. [...] You get nothing. You lose. Good day, sir."

sdenton4 9y ago
Furthermore, I suggest you do what your parents did, and get a job, sir! The bums lost, Lebowski!
jeffwass 9y ago
You skipped the juiciest part of one of my favorite scenes of that movie. [scared the bejeezus out of me when I was little, I didn't realise for some time it was pure satire and no adult would be expected to understand him]. So I feel obligated to post the full bit (from wikiquote) >Wonka: [angrily] Wrong, sir! Wrong! Under section 37B of the contract signed by him, it states quite clearly that all offers shall become null and void if - and you can read it for yourself in this photostatic copy - "I, the undersigned, shall forfeit all rights, privileges, and licenses herein and herein contained," et cetera, et cetera... "Fax mentis, incendium gloria cultum," et cetera, et cetera... Memo bis punitor delicatum! It's all there! Black and white, clear as crystal! You stole Fizzy-Lifting Drinks! You bumped into the ceiling, which now has to be washed and sterilized, so you get... NOTHING!!! You lose! GOOD DAY, SIR! [returns to work]
- secabeen 9y ago
  >[scared the bejeezus out of me when I was little, I didn't realise for some time it was pure satire and no adult would be expected to understand him]. Yeah, as a kid, I too thought Wonka was serious. It took viewing it as a much older person to see the satire there.
  - justinjlynn 9y ago
    I thought the most ironic part of applying it to this situation is that, just like in the story, the rules were then changed to suit the whim of the enforcer. Meaning, of course, that the rules never meant anything anyway, except to the disadvantage of one party.

jacopofar2 9y ago

Except for that DAO of last summer, in that case the law changed...

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
theseatoms 9y ago
Ethereum's original sin
- davidgerard 9y ago
  The DAO hit every objection from smart contract skeptics, bang bang bang - legal code doesn't work at all like computer code, immutability means you can't fix mistakes, immutability means you can't deal with changes in circumstance, immutability means you must code with 0 bugs - but even we were surprised when they went "lol immutability guarantee" the second the big boys were in danger of losing money.
  - munificent 9y ago
    It's almost as if software technology can't magically solve problems inherent in the flawed nature of humanity.
    - cyphar 9y ago
      That's a strawman of what GP said. Of course technology can't solve humanity's flaws. The point was that smart contracts caused many problems they weren't meant to, which was exemplified by the DAO hack. Smart contracts failed to deliver on their promise and the fallout proved that when it came down to brass tax, nobody with skin in the game would respect a smart contract's execution anyway.
      - vocatus_gate 9y ago
        FYI the term is "brass tacks" not "brass tax"

taspeotis 9y ago

Matt Levine has some thoughts [1] on that matter. [1] https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2016-06-17/blockchain-company-s-smart-contracts-were-dumb https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2016-06-17/blockchai...

ep103 9y ago
Great article!
stupidcar 9y ago
That dude's read a lot of DFW.
- aisofteng 9y ago
  What makes you say that?
- rocky1138 9y ago
  Excuse my ignorance, but what is DFW?
  - forax 9y ago
    Not positive, but guessing David Foster Wallace
- taspeotis 9y ago
  There's a little bit more information here [1]. [1] https://www.reddit.com/r/badeconomics/comments/6cnzs8/matt_levine_of_bloomberg_view_ama_starts_on_524/dhw1w9g/ https://www.reddit.com/r/badeconomics/comments/6cnzs8/matt_l...
ianamartin 9y ago
That's a good article, and the point about him reading a lot of DFW is hilarious and accurate. But I think of this issue in slightly different terms that are more simple. There's a ton of case law about what constitutes a contract that pretty much all countries have. Clearly understanding the contract you are getting into is a prerequisite for the contract being enforceable in most places. The simple fact is that this is never going to hold up in court when people start suing. No one gets into a contract with the understanding that they can be robbed, and that's just okay. No rational person would do that. And I think it's a fair case to say that no rational person did clearly understand the contract as presented and agree to it. The courts are going to to shut this down, in my opinion. You can't just write into a contract that you might get stolen from or murdered or whatever bad thing and then that bad thing is suddenly okay. "Okay, this guy didn't read the fine print on that used car loan. Let's go rape his wife and kids now. He said it was okay!" That's not how it works. Etherium deserves to get hammered for this.

xadhominemx 9y ago

it creates such a bad alternative to the current system it's certain not to come about.

cookiecaper 9y ago

Won't happen. People need to believe that the justice system will hear their pleas and consider factors on-balance, and then proceed in fairness. In real law, there are several potential overrides available to stop egregiously unfair outcomes that would otherwise be legally valid (estoppel, unconscionability, etc.). People will not accept a system that does not have the appearance of fairness (regardless of its actual fairness). One of the things that cyberpunks fail to grasp is that people don't want a perfectly immutable, fixed system. They want to feel that their sense of justice and moral righteousness can be satisfied. Stuff that drops people off right at "sucks to be you" doesn't really work; there must be some type of recourse available even if it doesn't have a 100% success rate.

dsfyu404ed 9y ago
And the inverse also applies. People (groups and individuals) want to be able to throw their power around and leave people they don't like at "sucks to be you". This behavior has been the status quo for millennia.
- cookiecaper 9y ago
  Eh, dictatorships and oppressive systems still work hard to appear fair and even-handed. That's why they have such elaborate propaganda machines. Anyone who wants to maintain power in virtually any setting (communal, corporate, governmental) must create an impression of fairness and equity, at least to the extent that a good portion of the people are not willing to risk their [reputations/jobs/lives] to throw off the "oppressors". It's not an accident that virtually all powerful corporate bosses and politicians are so image-conscious and superficial; it's a matter of survival for powerful people.
ryandvm 9y ago
Not sure why you're being downvoted because you're exactly right. The crypto-anarchists love to say "the code is the law", but the reality is that losing your retirement savings because somebody forgot to mark a method private is a pretty shitty outcome. For all its warts, a legal system backed by a jury of your peers is still the best way of sorting out the actual intent of a contract when the shit hits the fan.

bnbn66788 9y ago

Which is the minority opinion of the more "neckbeard" crowd that disproportionate control of the platform. If it scales to be a relied upon social tool, their foot-down rhetoric would likely come under heavy scrutiny.

draw_down 9y ago

Yeah! Well, uh... except that one time.... mumblemumble

oh_sigh 9y ago

Odds etherium does another hard fork to fix this bug?

shpx 9y ago
The DAO held nearly 14% of all ethereum in existence, 153,000ETH is less than .2%. 153,000 / 93,405,120[0] = 0.001638025838 [0] https://etherscan.io/stat/supply https://etherscan.io/stat/supply
- sum627u 9y ago
  And there's more Ethereum now. The DAO was a ~$50 million fraud. This was a ~$30 million fraud. Obviously this is totally different and there's nothing we can do about it and it's just fine. People should have known better than to use parity with this bug in it.
  - firebones 9y ago
    Reminds me of the Winston Churchill story: “Churchill: "Madam, would you sleep with me for five million pounds?" Socialite: "My goodness, Mr. Churchill... Well, I suppose... we would have to discuss terms, of course... " Churchill: "Would you sleep with me for five pounds?" Socialite: "Mr. Churchill, what kind of woman do you think I am?!" Churchill: "Madam, we've already established that. Now we are haggling about the price.” We've already established that they will fork. Now we are haggling about the price. [1] http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/300099-churchill-madam-would-you-sleep-with-me-for-five-million http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/300099-churchill-madam-would...
    - lsc 9y ago
      Considering how powerful, famous and charismatic he was, I think, makes one consider that maybe it was Churchill who was being insulted, not the socialite. "Would you sleep with me?" "Maybe for a million dollars..."
  - jsmthrowaway 9y ago

quickthrower 9y ago

Not just the code but hopefully the compiler and processors (at large i.e. Intel) have no bugs that causes unintuitive behaviour.

davidgerard 9y ago
Good thing that isn't the case! WHOOPS that already happened in Solidity didn't it https://medium.com/@muneeb/solar-storm-a-serious-security-exploit-with-ethereum-not-just-the-dao-a03d797d98fa https://medium.com/@muneeb/solar-storm-a-serious-security-ex...

blueprint 9y ago

Well, you know, except for the whole "we, the central governors, will hard-fork if we get scared that there's an existential threat to the blockchain" thing.

tzs 9y ago

I realize that was probably satire or sarcasm or both, but since I've seen people actually seriously take that position I'm going to go ahead and respond as if it was serious. How do these smart contract deal with the real world? I can see how they can work for things that entirely involve activities that take place on the block chain (e.g., a smart contract that automatically pays a crowd funded project if and only if it meets a threshold for pledges by a deadline, and refunds the donors otherwise). But suppose our contract is something like I will pay you $X in Ethereum when you deliver to me 125 bales of Surat cotton, guaranteed to be middling fair merchant's Dhollorah [1], delivered at the Liverpool docks from Bombay on the next sailing of the Peerless. How do we put all of that into a smart contract? Can a smart contract trigger payment only when the cotton arrives? Can it check to make sure it arrived on the ship specified in the contract? And what happens if it turns out that there are two ships named Peerless, unrelated to each other, one of which is sailing from Bombay to Liverpool in October, and one in December? I only know about the December one, and it is on that one that I'm expecting the cotton. You only know about the October one, and so it is on that one you send the cotton. The cotton arrives before I'm ready to deal with. Unless dealing with all that can be included in the smart contract, and executed by the smart contract without human intervention, lawyers will still be needed...and they will be needed almost as much as they are now. PS: my cotton hypothetical is based on a real case: Raffles v Wichelhaus, EWHC Exch J19, (1864) 2 Hurl & C 906. There really were two unrelated ships both having and neither deserving the name Peerless, and both working the India / England trade routes, both scheduled for Bombay to Liverpool, one in October and one in December. [1] Dhollorah is a very dirty cotton of a longish staple, which when cleared is very white, as if bleached. For for more than you probably ever wanted to know on this and other types of cotton, see the book "Cotton Spinning and Weaving: A Practical and Theoretical Treatise" by Herbert Edward Walmsley, page 71. It's from the late 19th century and is public domain now I believe, and you can find it on Google Books.

Gigablah 9y ago
> neither deserving the name Peerless Sir that is a prejudicial statement and I want it stricken from the record.
sniffles 9y ago

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

dingo_bat 9y ago

Unless you're the lead developers and lost money. Then we'll just hard fork the entire protocol.