Seriously, your analogy is very flawed. BFL made no promises about the network hash rate, or about what percentage of the overall network hashrate you would own. They only promised to deliver a particular hashrate, and that is exactly what they have been delivering. I didn't order 0.03% of the network - I ordered 60 GH/s. Any risk as to what difficulty or price might be in the future is a risk on the buyer's part.
Flawed analogy or not, delivery time was a material term in the contract between the parties. The value of the item is and remains directly tied to delivery date, and they lied about the delivery date, claiming two or three weeks for damn near a year straight. People would not have signed up to preorder if BFL had told the truth about delivery time, which is apparently that they will deliver the bare minimum necessary to prevent a flood of refund demands, whenever the hell they feel like it.
Nobody forced BFL to make delivery time claims that were, at the absolute best, unrealistic. They specifically made those claims of delivery date in order to attract customers and put money in their own pockets. People who fell for those claims got suckered. They would have been mining for months had they purchased Avalon instead.
Now, we can sit around and argue that the relatively sophisticated customer base ASIC miners have simply could not have realistically believed these delivery date claims. In retrospect, they should have obviously been bullshit even at the time to anyone with any sense. I'm not defending the intelligence of people who committed any significant amount of money to preorders from BFL, especially since them acting like a bunch of noxious assclowns is not exactly anything new, and I really have to question the judgment of anyone who EVER thought this bunch of losers looked legit.
Josh Zerlan has done for PR what Atilla the Hun did for good table manners.
But still, people got at least partly ripped off. Putting myself in the shoes of someone who put down money on these things, I probably wouldn't sue if I got my rig and broke even, made a slight profit, or only lost a little. I'd just chalk it up as a life lesson and move on. Even if I set up practice as a lawyer suing over shit like this, that's probably what I'd advise, though I'd gladly roll the dice on a suit in one of the states where a really juicy Consumer Fraud Act (like Jersey has) allows for something like triple damages. In some jurisdictions, fee shifting is mandatory for the successful plaintiff. That means even if the client wins $100, the attorney gets paid whatever ridiculous hourly is considered "reasonable" in the state. Note: "reasonable" is a word that has a specific legal meaning, and the meaning is usually something like "batshit insane" in normal people language.
Frankly, though, I'd want to see what BFL actually owns before doing anything like that. I'd be amazed if this entity is even solvent. Their trickle of deliveries, constant desperate attempts to raise new cash, and utterly shady cast of characters, including career criminals like Sonny, strongly suggest a corporation that exists solely as an alter ego of some kind, and is solely incorporated in an attempt to keep any assets these clowns have safe from judgment. You'd probably have to do something like "pierce the corporate veil" (Google it) to get any money, and unless it was a lot, it would be completely not worth it.
But the idea this isn't a scam simply because they didn't explicitly advertise you'll get some fixed percentage of the hashrate of the whole network is utter bullshit. They made claims they didn't have to make about delivery date that are obvious lies and they had to know they were lies at the time. They solely made these claims to get other people's money. Those people entrusted their money to these scumbags, choosing them over other operations that. . .well. . .were making at least slightly less false claims about delivery date (this is where a lawsuit runs into trouble because almost all the others were making bullshit claims and BFL just ended up the World Champion of Bullshit).
Anyway, other than the really low-hanging fruit of sales to states with really consumer friendly fraud acts like I mentioned, they'll probably skate on this. But it isn't legal. And it isn't nice. And they're a bunch of dicks.
I would not say this about Avalon or other ASIC sellers. There's been a whole lot of bullshit going on and Avalon are not exactly a bunch of paladins. But none of the others compounded their shipping delays with pissing in the face of the customers whose money they were sitting on by sending out a disgusting troll to basically have a scat orgy all over their face. That's really why I want to see them razed to the ground, in a purely metaphorical sense of course.
Most of what BFL did is, while legally questionable, susceptible to a number of good defenses. And isn't legally likely to be profitable to sue over, because a good defense lawyer could raise all kinds of defenses, none of which I'm going to mention. It is no surprise to me that a career criminal like Sonny who doesn't want to end up back behind bars would go to a more subtle scam after his less subtle scam got him locked up with Bubba.
I don't have a horse in the race in terms of getting ripped off by them. But they've given a horrible face to Bitcoin, and this pisses me off. Any casual observer who had no previous opinion of Bitcoin and saw this would quite likely conclude that Bitcoin is a currency used by criminals, scammers and the scum of the Earth. Frankly, that well describes the principals of BFL. Scumbags. I don't like that.
