4 ms·

Is there an organization covering the legal defense fund of these devs, or a crowdfund effort that you know of? Supporters of cryptoassets or not, I think we ca

by aliqot 4y ago

Is there an organization covering the legal defense fund of these devs, or a crowdfund effort that you know of? Supporters of cryptoassets or not, I think we can all identify with this being a big problem that can bite us, as developers of free software, in other ways if we don't make a stand here with a case as visible as this. This is a dangerous precedent.

nullc 4y ago
We're currently being supported by a recently created defense fund: https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/pipermail/bitcoin-dev/2022-January/019741.html https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/pipermail/bitcoin-dev/2022... So far we've been able to keep our costs fairly modest, but as the case (now cases) go to trial the costs will likely balloon rapidly. It's always a concern though because support might stop at some point, especially since the total cost is more or less unbounded. For example, in the defamation lawsuit against Peter McCormack his sponsored pulled out after the funds expended crossed a million UKP sticking Peter in the middle of some complex and expensive litigation and forced to withdraw most of his defenses because he couldn't afford the cost of them. Fortunately, at the 11th hour he was able to prove that the claimed damages the case rested on were totally fabricated (the plaintiff claimed to have been dis-invited from academic conferences; McCormack got a statement for the organizers that Wright's submissions were rejected by peer review for being rubbish), resulting in McCormack ending up with a 1 UKP judgement against him ... plus some 900k UKP in legal costs (which he's currently fighting to get dismissed). A challenge future fundraising may face is that the time-scales of court are not compatible with the attention span of the public-- the number one thing I hear when I have updates is "oh, is that still going on?". The second most common is "that guys a joke-- just ignore him, he only wants attention". Well, I wouldn't argue that he's not a joke, but even a joke can cause tremendous damage especially when everyone's reaction is to ignore it. The opensats fundraiser was able to raise about $1.5 million dollars for hodlnaut's defense, which on one hand is a tremendous success--- but on the other hand is about an order of magnitude too low. Which is why I'm attributing problems here to the legal system and inadequate protections of open source licenses in light of them (MIT's waver of liability is arguably stronger than most too) rather than saying the community hasn't stepped up in support.
- robocat 4y ago
  > UKP I presume you are referring to https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Pound_sterling https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Pound_sterling ? If you are doing it because of political beliefs, perhaps avoid that on HN, and should maybe using the £ symbol would be a suitable compromise instead? Although maybe it was just a typo, given you used “dollars” later to refer to USD
  - nullc 4y ago
    I had absolutely zero idea that there was any political baggage in using that string. Care you make a suggestion that doesn't involve a key I don't have on my keyboard?
    - jsnell 4y ago
      The ISO currency code is GBP. I can't imagine using that being a political statement. (And I'd never heard of anyone calling it UKP as a political statement, but presumably it would have something to do with Northern Ireland being a part of UK but not part of Great Britain.)
      - aliqot 4y ago
        you got all that from what he said? I read it as "UK Pound" and just assumed it was a uk vs eu thing that changed.
        nullc 4y ago
        I'll avoid it in the future, 'pounds' is just confusing by itself to us Americans because its a common unit of weight. "He owes 100 pounds" "pounds of what? flesh?"
        robocat 4y ago
        I’m very sorry: I read far too much into a simple typo, and I jumped to an ill-thought-out conclusion in my confusion. My apologies.

by aliqot 4y ago

nullc 4y ago

We're currently being supported by a recently created defense fund: https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/pipermail/bitcoin-dev/2022-January/019741.html https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/pipermail/bitcoin-dev/2022... So far we've been able to keep our costs fairly modest, but as the case (now cases) go to trial the costs will likely balloon rapidly. It's always a concern though because support might stop at some point, especially since the total cost is more or less unbounded. For example, in the defamation lawsuit against Peter McCormack his sponsored pulled out after the funds expended crossed a million UKP sticking Peter in the middle of some complex and expensive litigation and forced to withdraw most of his defenses because he couldn't afford the cost of them. Fortunately, at the 11th hour he was able to prove that the claimed damages the case rested on were totally fabricated (the plaintiff claimed to have been dis-invited from academic conferences; McCormack got a statement for the organizers that Wright's submissions were rejected by peer review for being rubbish), resulting in McCormack ending up with a 1 UKP judgement against him ... plus some 900k UKP in legal costs (which he's currently fighting to get dismissed). A challenge future fundraising may face is that the time-scales of court are not compatible with the attention span of the public-- the number one thing I hear when I have updates is "oh, is that still going on?". The second most common is "that guys a joke-- just ignore him, he only wants attention". Well, I wouldn't argue that he's not a joke, but even a joke can cause tremendous damage especially when everyone's reaction is to ignore it. The opensats fundraiser was able to raise about $1.5 million dollars for hodlnaut's defense, which on one hand is a tremendous success--- but on the other hand is about an order of magnitude too low. Which is why I'm attributing problems here to the legal system and inadequate protections of open source licenses in light of them (MIT's waver of liability is arguably stronger than most too) rather than saying the community hasn't stepped up in support.

robocat 4y ago
> UKP I presume you are referring to https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Pound_sterling https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Pound_sterling ? If you are doing it because of political beliefs, perhaps avoid that on HN, and should maybe using the £ symbol would be a suitable compromise instead? Although maybe it was just a typo, given you used “dollars” later to refer to USD
- nullc 4y ago
  I had absolutely zero idea that there was any political baggage in using that string. Care you make a suggestion that doesn't involve a key I don't have on my keyboard?
  - jsnell 4y ago
    The ISO currency code is GBP. I can't imagine using that being a political statement. (And I'd never heard of anyone calling it UKP as a political statement, but presumably it would have something to do with Northern Ireland being a part of UK but not part of Great Britain.)
    - aliqot 4y ago
      you got all that from what he said? I read it as "UK Pound" and just assumed it was a uk vs eu thing that changed.
      - nullc 4y ago
        I'll avoid it in the future, 'pounds' is just confusing by itself to us Americans because its a common unit of weight. "He owes 100 pounds" "pounds of what? flesh?"
        robocat 4y ago
        I’m very sorry: I read far too much into a simple typo, and I jumped to an ill-thought-out conclusion in my confusion. My apologies.