5 ms·

It doesn't need to be all-or-nothing. The broad standard in most law (that I know of) is sufficient: if you can establish a _mens rea_, you're entitled to dama

It doesn't need to be all-or-nothing. The broad standard in most law (that I know of) is sufficient: if you can establish a _mens rea_, you're entitled to damages. Not that establishing intent to do harm would be easy, or that the law is effective or efficient. But if you're looking for a watermark to shoot for...

arp242 4y ago
But isn't it the court's job to find out if that's the case? I don't see what needs changing here. Or: the MIT license has essentially worked as intended for almost 40 years. Now one bad-faith troll abuses the court system. Do we really need to start panicking? Courts exist to settle disputes, and sooner or later some bozo will come by with a faux-dispute. It's kind of inevitable, and unless there's a structural problem – which doesn't seem to be the case – it doesn't strike me as something that needs new legislation.
- auxym 4y ago
  The problem is that a volunteer developer will now have to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars/pounds (according to nullc's comments in this thread) to defend against said bozo with a faux-dispute.
  - arp242 4y ago
    That's how the legal system works. Maybe it should work different, but that has nothing to do with specific legislation for open source authors. And being a volunteer doesn't guarantee immunity from lawsuits, nor should it IMO.
- nullc 4y ago
  Panic? no. But this isn't the case that someone is conjecturing that the licenses protections would be inadequate, it's a concrete example of a case where they haven't been enough to control costs. Maybe it's a one off fluke. Or maybe it isn't. I think that makes it worth discussing. I think it's not difficult to imagine alternative terms that would have been likely to have a stronger effect.
  - arp242 4y ago
    The dispute is essentially that Wright claims to be the legal owner of some Bitcoins, and that the developers of the Bitcoin network are preventing him from accessing them. Whether Wright owns the Bitcoins is disputed. Whether the Bitcoin developers actually can do anything at all is also disputed. However, the ruling stated that the dispute has merit in the sense that it's a real dispute and that there is a realistic argument from Wright's side. After reading the appeal ruling, the case seems to have far more merit than is presented. If you want to develop money-like software then you have to accept money-like responsibility. Where this responsibility starts or ends is currently unclear. I don't really have an answer what responsibility there should be, but a full rejection would be an absurdity: Bitcoin developers could legally push malicious updates which steal Bitcoins for example. In short: there is a legitimate dispute here. The legal system seems to be working as intended. > I think it's not difficult to imagine alternative terms that would have been likely to have a stronger effect. The MIT license has a very strong "no liability" statement. I don't really see how it can be improved. In many jurisdictions law takes precedent over contract. In the UK specifically liability cannot be signed away unconditionally and is always subject to reasonableness. This is the case for most jurisdiction, with the US being the notable exception I believe (although this may also differ per state). However, it seems to me the entire thing is only tangentially related to "MIT license" or "open source" at all.
    - nullc 4y ago
      > but a full rejection would be an absurdity: Bitcoin developers could legally push malicious updates which steal Bitcoins for example. That's incorrect and addressed explicitly in the trial court decision: a fiduciary duty isn't needed to prevent someone from behaving fraudulently. And what he demands is an affirmative duty to act, which isn't even necessarily found in a fiduciary context, and is almost never found otherwise. E.g. you could be falling off a cliff right in front of a police officer who need only toss you a rope to save your life, and the rope is already in his hand-- he has absolutely no obligation to do so (in the UK or in the US, as a matter of settled law). This is because duties to act are in conflict with duties to not act. If both can exist then there may be no safe move. In the US and UK we've decided that inaction is the safe move, so it's you to get sued for actions that cause harm and very hard to get sued for inaction that fail to prevent harm. Situations where it's reversed are special exceptions. In this case the true owners of the assets would obviously have not only a reason to sue but to seek criminal charges if the defendants aided the plaintiff (it's his case that the defendants are already in breach of their obligation to rescue him, even though he did nothing to convince them that the loss was real or the coins were his before suing). Moreover, essentially every user of Bitcoin bought into a system with certain well described properties, including the impossibility of directly recovering lost coins-- a fact that was explained quite clearly by Satoshi (who the plaintiff fraudulently claims to be!). If it were possible for the defendants to change that and they did, every user harmed by undermining the system in that way would have a clear cause of action against them. This kind of impossible bind is why our legal systems are extremely conservative in handing out these kinds of duties (both in the US and the UK, though the underlying case law is different obviously). It shouldn't be possible to accidentally and unknowingly end up being a fiduciary to total strangers who have no particular reason to trust you. > If you want to develop money-like software then you have to accept money-like responsibility Except no such duty has ever been found for commercial banks or central banks. If you claim to have lost your dollars you don't get to sue your bank or the fed to replace them for you. Moreover, many of the defendants (most I think now?) are no longer developers and many weren't long before this supposed loss. > I don't really see how it can be improved. An obvious change which has become common in commercial terms of recent years is to require explicit indemnification. It also could have more expressly set out the non-relationship between the user and the authors. One of the big problems here is that there will never be any compensation for the costs to us here. It's not like after we win all the costs will be covered and we'll receive a reasonable rate for the time spent defending it. We gave our labor away for what we hoped was the betterment of the world, with no direct benefit to ourselves for doing so, and in return this is what we get: It's a really bad deal, and so Wladimir saying he regrets it is no shock. The abuse and lack of gratitude from a few users that many high profile open source developers get is one thing... being dragged into a foreign court over something which isn't even argued to be your own fault is something else entirely. It's not like he argues that the results are on account of error or negligence on the part of the defendants-- much less malice! Heck if you wanted to claim that it was due to a design flaw in Bitcoin--- well the plaintiff claims to be the person who created it! (...who spent the early days of Bitcoin explaining that there was no way to recover lost coins and for good reason, because any mechanism to do so would require third party trust which the system was designed to avoid).

arp242 4y ago

But isn't it the court's job to find out if that's the case? I don't see what needs changing here. Or: the MIT license has essentially worked as intended for almost 40 years. Now one bad-faith troll abuses the court system. Do we really need to start panicking? Courts exist to settle disputes, and sooner or later some bozo will come by with a faux-dispute. It's kind of inevitable, and unless there's a structural problem – which doesn't seem to be the case – it doesn't strike me as something that needs new legislation.

auxym 4y ago
The problem is that a volunteer developer will now have to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars/pounds (according to nullc's comments in this thread) to defend against said bozo with a faux-dispute.
- arp242 4y ago
  That's how the legal system works. Maybe it should work different, but that has nothing to do with specific legislation for open source authors. And being a volunteer doesn't guarantee immunity from lawsuits, nor should it IMO.
nullc 4y ago
Panic? no. But this isn't the case that someone is conjecturing that the licenses protections would be inadequate, it's a concrete example of a case where they haven't been enough to control costs. Maybe it's a one off fluke. Or maybe it isn't. I think that makes it worth discussing. I think it's not difficult to imagine alternative terms that would have been likely to have a stronger effect.
- arp242 4y ago
  The dispute is essentially that Wright claims to be the legal owner of some Bitcoins, and that the developers of the Bitcoin network are preventing him from accessing them. Whether Wright owns the Bitcoins is disputed. Whether the Bitcoin developers actually can do anything at all is also disputed. However, the ruling stated that the dispute has merit in the sense that it's a real dispute and that there is a realistic argument from Wright's side. After reading the appeal ruling, the case seems to have far more merit than is presented. If you want to develop money-like software then you have to accept money-like responsibility. Where this responsibility starts or ends is currently unclear. I don't really have an answer what responsibility there should be, but a full rejection would be an absurdity: Bitcoin developers could legally push malicious updates which steal Bitcoins for example. In short: there is a legitimate dispute here. The legal system seems to be working as intended. > I think it's not difficult to imagine alternative terms that would have been likely to have a stronger effect. The MIT license has a very strong "no liability" statement. I don't really see how it can be improved. In many jurisdictions law takes precedent over contract. In the UK specifically liability cannot be signed away unconditionally and is always subject to reasonableness. This is the case for most jurisdiction, with the US being the notable exception I believe (although this may also differ per state). However, it seems to me the entire thing is only tangentially related to "MIT license" or "open source" at all.
  - nullc 4y ago
    > but a full rejection would be an absurdity: Bitcoin developers could legally push malicious updates which steal Bitcoins for example. That's incorrect and addressed explicitly in the trial court decision: a fiduciary duty isn't needed to prevent someone from behaving fraudulently. And what he demands is an affirmative duty to act, which isn't even necessarily found in a fiduciary context, and is almost never found otherwise. E.g. you could be falling off a cliff right in front of a police officer who need only toss you a rope to save your life, and the rope is already in his hand-- he has absolutely no obligation to do so (in the UK or in the US, as a matter of settled law). This is because duties to act are in conflict with duties to not act. If both can exist then there may be no safe move. In the US and UK we've decided that inaction is the safe move, so it's you to get sued for actions that cause harm and very hard to get sued for inaction that fail to prevent harm. Situations where it's reversed are special exceptions. In this case the true owners of the assets would obviously have not only a reason to sue but to seek criminal charges if the defendants aided the plaintiff (it's his case that the defendants are already in breach of their obligation to rescue him, even though he did nothing to convince them that the loss was real or the coins were his before suing). Moreover, essentially every user of Bitcoin bought into a system with certain well described properties, including the impossibility of directly recovering lost coins-- a fact that was explained quite clearly by Satoshi (who the plaintiff fraudulently claims to be!). If it were possible for the defendants to change that and they did, every user harmed by undermining the system in that way would have a clear cause of action against them. This kind of impossible bind is why our legal systems are extremely conservative in handing out these kinds of duties (both in the US and the UK, though the underlying case law is different obviously). It shouldn't be possible to accidentally and unknowingly end up being a fiduciary to total strangers who have no particular reason to trust you. > If you want to develop money-like software then you have to accept money-like responsibility Except no such duty has ever been found for commercial banks or central banks. If you claim to have lost your dollars you don't get to sue your bank or the fed to replace them for you. Moreover, many of the defendants (most I think now?) are no longer developers and many weren't long before this supposed loss. > I don't really see how it can be improved. An obvious change which has become common in commercial terms of recent years is to require explicit indemnification. It also could have more expressly set out the non-relationship between the user and the authors. One of the big problems here is that there will never be any compensation for the costs to us here. It's not like after we win all the costs will be covered and we'll receive a reasonable rate for the time spent defending it. We gave our labor away for what we hoped was the betterment of the world, with no direct benefit to ourselves for doing so, and in return this is what we get: It's a really bad deal, and so Wladimir saying he regrets it is no shock. The abuse and lack of gratitude from a few users that many high profile open source developers get is one thing... being dragged into a foreign court over something which isn't even argued to be your own fault is something else entirely. It's not like he argues that the results are on account of error or negligence on the part of the defendants-- much less malice! Heck if you wanted to claim that it was due to a design flaw in Bitcoin--- well the plaintiff claims to be the person who created it! (...who spent the early days of Bitcoin explaining that there was no way to recover lost coins and for good reason, because any mechanism to do so would require third party trust which the system was designed to avoid).