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There's a difference between being an anonymous owner of a domain registered at a central authority which can be compelled to turn over the domain and an anonym

There's a difference between being an anonymous owner of a domain registered at a central authority which can be compelled to turn over the domain and an anonymous contributor to a codebase which cannot be compelled to modify code if their identity is not known. The default judgment to me is a flaw in the legal system, if an anonymous party cannot defend themselves, how can an anonymous party be sued? This default judgment is a shame. The proper default judgment should've been "who exactly are you suing?" He can't demand coins he doesn't even know exist, he can't even prove the coins exist to a court without keys to show that they exist. Being private would absolutely prevent this vector, he'd have to have the keys to prove to a court he owns the coins, which means he wouldn't have to prove anything to a court, he would only have to move the coins. Interesting vector with impersonation sites, I'll have to roll that one around in my head for a while.

nullc 5y ago
> owner of a domain registered at a central authority which can be compelled to turn over the domain and an anonymous contributor to a codebase Agreed. But imagine that there is no normie accessible place on the web to get non-malicious Bitcoin software. And anyone running a site distributing it is at risk if their identity is leaked. What effect is that going to have in the long run? "There are levels of survival we are prepared to accept." -- Bitcoin would survive in such a state, but I don't think it would be a great outcome. > The default judgment to me is a flaw in the legal system, if an anonymous party cannot defend themselves, how can an anonymous party be sued? This default judgment is a shame. Fully agreed. > He can't demand coins he doesn't even know exist, he can't even prove the coins exist to a court without keys to show that they exist. He's actually argued that he could just demand the developers issue more coins too. And he doesn't have keys, but that isn't slowing him down! The big legal flaw he exploits is that if you go to trial it can be extremely expensive (esp in the UK where you pay the other sides legal costs for every failed motion, and wright sticks a whole firm on his case). ... normally the expense of trial is protected against by preliminary motions like summary judgements. But in a summary judgement the court assumes all disputed facts favor the non-movant, and wright fills his cases with forgeries to makeup whatever disputed fact he needs to keep the case going. The huge volume of forgeries which require expert analysis and debunking also add massively to the cost of being in litigation with him. His goal isn't to win (though I'm sure he'd be happy if he did)-- his goal is to burn time and the opponents resources.
- betwixthewires 5y ago
  > What effect is that going to have in the long run? This is where we get off in the weeds about the architecture of the internet. Ideally, we would have a decentralized domain registry and everyone would use tools like onion sites for everything. Hopefully that is the outcome, but likely not.
- AnimalMuppet 5y ago
  But all of this has to be fairly expensive for Wright, too...
  - nullc 5y ago
    It's profitable for Wright. His litigation is financed by is advanced fee fraud victims who think they're going to score billions worth of Bitcoins. So the more lawsuits Wright can file, the better for him.
- maccolgan 5y ago
  Sounds like this is a failure of the UK judicial system, not bitcoin in general.
pmyteh 5y ago
The courts generally will act against anyone within their jurisdiction. In the UK we have the contra mundum injunction, for example, which is a legal order enforceable against the world. These orders occur occasionally in things like witness protection (noone may name this person) and narrower 'persons unknown' ones in the context of public protest (you can get an injunction against whoever has tied themselves to your development site, for example, without having to find out their names first). The common thread is that they are defendable against, but not without potentially losing your anonymity. So someone can turn up to contest the injunction against the protestors, but whether their name is made public is then in the hands of the judge (public justice normally means that parties names are in the public domain). Likewise, the anonymous contributor could show up to make a case (the court will have tried reasonably hard to effect service so they're aware) but at significant risk to their anonymity, which is only going to be defended by the judge on public interest grounds, not simply because the contributor would prefer it. While this can lead to harsh outcomes, it's not completely without sense. 'I'm hiding, you can't sue me' creates a hole for lawless behaviour, and the legal system is more or less intended to stop that kind of thing.
- nullc 5y ago
  I think it would generally be just to allow the anonymous defendant to at least make a motion to strike out the claims while preserving their anonymity. In this case we have a lot of reason to believe that the plaintiff brought the case exclusively to learn the defendants identity. E.g. Before bringing the action they offered $10 million dollars to acquire the domain, and have made threatening remarks. Not to mention no actual advantage is gained by removing the Bitcoin whitepaper from a single website, as there are easily found mirrors on thousands of locations all over the world, and since Wright's initial threats that includes the websites of several national governments, US congress, research institutions, and some of the largest financial institutions in the world (e.g. Fidelity). This privacy invasion belief was only furthered when after the case the plaintiff refused to accept the ordered costs payment from anyone except the defendant and only if they identified themselves (also, after the case the plaintiff pretty much said as much). Their case was seriously deficient too, e.g. falsely misstating that a US copyright registration was evidence of authorship even when the copyright office had made an unprecedented move of saying exactly the opposite in the matter of this specific case. Failing to disclose that there were other copyright registrants, failing to disclose that the supposedly infringing whitepaper was distributed under the MIT license and so on. Not to mention that there were major equitable issues, e.g. the whitepaper has been on the website pretty much since it was written some 13 years ago without issue-- placed there by its (actual) author. Cobra wrote a letter to the judge and attended the hearing via zoom, and the judge took the position that he was required by the law to ignore the letter. But at the end of the day the UK courts are powerless to protect cobra from harassment or even assassination so exposing his identity just didn't make sense. Particularly since Cobra is outside of the UK (or so I believe, no one in the bitcoin ecosystem seems to know cobra by any other identity). And this is why you can't access the Bitcoin whitepaper at its original location or download the bitcoin software on bitcoin.org from within the UK today. They're now seeing an additional nearly million usd worth of costs for their unopposed default judgement too. O_o

nullc 5y ago

> owner of a domain registered at a central authority which can be compelled to turn over the domain and an anonymous contributor to a codebase Agreed. But imagine that there is no normie accessible place on the web to get non-malicious Bitcoin software. And anyone running a site distributing it is at risk if their identity is leaked. What effect is that going to have in the long run? "There are levels of survival we are prepared to accept." -- Bitcoin would survive in such a state, but I don't think it would be a great outcome. > The default judgment to me is a flaw in the legal system, if an anonymous party cannot defend themselves, how can an anonymous party be sued? This default judgment is a shame. Fully agreed. > He can't demand coins he doesn't even know exist, he can't even prove the coins exist to a court without keys to show that they exist. He's actually argued that he could just demand the developers issue more coins too. And he doesn't have keys, but that isn't slowing him down! The big legal flaw he exploits is that if you go to trial it can be extremely expensive (esp in the UK where you pay the other sides legal costs for every failed motion, and wright sticks a whole firm on his case). ... normally the expense of trial is protected against by preliminary motions like summary judgements. But in a summary judgement the court assumes all disputed facts favor the non-movant, and wright fills his cases with forgeries to makeup whatever disputed fact he needs to keep the case going. The huge volume of forgeries which require expert analysis and debunking also add massively to the cost of being in litigation with him. His goal isn't to win (though I'm sure he'd be happy if he did)-- his goal is to burn time and the opponents resources.

betwixthewires 5y ago
> What effect is that going to have in the long run? This is where we get off in the weeds about the architecture of the internet. Ideally, we would have a decentralized domain registry and everyone would use tools like onion sites for everything. Hopefully that is the outcome, but likely not.
AnimalMuppet 5y ago
But all of this has to be fairly expensive for Wright, too...
- nullc 5y ago
  It's profitable for Wright. His litigation is financed by is advanced fee fraud victims who think they're going to score billions worth of Bitcoins. So the more lawsuits Wright can file, the better for him.
maccolgan 5y ago
Sounds like this is a failure of the UK judicial system, not bitcoin in general.

pmyteh 5y ago

The courts generally will act against anyone within their jurisdiction. In the UK we have the contra mundum injunction, for example, which is a legal order enforceable against the world. These orders occur occasionally in things like witness protection (noone may name this person) and narrower 'persons unknown' ones in the context of public protest (you can get an injunction against whoever has tied themselves to your development site, for example, without having to find out their names first). The common thread is that they are defendable against, but not without potentially losing your anonymity. So someone can turn up to contest the injunction against the protestors, but whether their name is made public is then in the hands of the judge (public justice normally means that parties names are in the public domain). Likewise, the anonymous contributor could show up to make a case (the court will have tried reasonably hard to effect service so they're aware) but at significant risk to their anonymity, which is only going to be defended by the judge on public interest grounds, not simply because the contributor would prefer it. While this can lead to harsh outcomes, it's not completely without sense. 'I'm hiding, you can't sue me' creates a hole for lawless behaviour, and the legal system is more or less intended to stop that kind of thing.

nullc 5y ago
I think it would generally be just to allow the anonymous defendant to at least make a motion to strike out the claims while preserving their anonymity. In this case we have a lot of reason to believe that the plaintiff brought the case exclusively to learn the defendants identity. E.g. Before bringing the action they offered $10 million dollars to acquire the domain, and have made threatening remarks. Not to mention no actual advantage is gained by removing the Bitcoin whitepaper from a single website, as there are easily found mirrors on thousands of locations all over the world, and since Wright's initial threats that includes the websites of several national governments, US congress, research institutions, and some of the largest financial institutions in the world (e.g. Fidelity). This privacy invasion belief was only furthered when after the case the plaintiff refused to accept the ordered costs payment from anyone except the defendant and only if they identified themselves (also, after the case the plaintiff pretty much said as much). Their case was seriously deficient too, e.g. falsely misstating that a US copyright registration was evidence of authorship even when the copyright office had made an unprecedented move of saying exactly the opposite in the matter of this specific case. Failing to disclose that there were other copyright registrants, failing to disclose that the supposedly infringing whitepaper was distributed under the MIT license and so on. Not to mention that there were major equitable issues, e.g. the whitepaper has been on the website pretty much since it was written some 13 years ago without issue-- placed there by its (actual) author. Cobra wrote a letter to the judge and attended the hearing via zoom, and the judge took the position that he was required by the law to ignore the letter. But at the end of the day the UK courts are powerless to protect cobra from harassment or even assassination so exposing his identity just didn't make sense. Particularly since Cobra is outside of the UK (or so I believe, no one in the bitcoin ecosystem seems to know cobra by any other identity). And this is why you can't access the Bitcoin whitepaper at its original location or download the bitcoin software on bitcoin.org from within the UK today. They're now seeing an additional nearly million usd worth of costs for their unopposed default judgement too. O_o