Topic: Is copying a wallet file theft (Challenge for IP opposed libertarians) (Read 3600 times)

Are you aware that no one really owns land in the US?  What they really own is an interest in the land.  And you can totally take someone to court over violations of interest in something you don't own.

So, no, copying the wallet file is not theft.  But if you then deprive the real owner of their interest in the bitcoins controlled by the keys in that wallet, you will find yourself in court.  (Assuming that the victim knows where to find you.)

If you don't wanna risk people making copies of your keys, don't let anyone see them.


If someone managed to clone my house keys i would be upset at myself for being careless (would only get upset at them if they use those copies without my authorization; but there would be a bit of conflict between emotion and reason within me,  i would want punish them, but my rational side would try to insist i shouldn't be mad at them 'cause i gave them permission by giving them the keys)

Most IP opposed libertarians believe there is such a thing as "private information". It's a part of the personal integrity. You don't have a right to copy information from someone without their knowledge. (Key-shapes, personal photographs, political opinions) However in possetion of such information, you may use it as you wish. The crime should be taking it in the first place.

Copying someone's wallet file without their authorization is like taking a photography of someone's house keys (or keys to whatever), printing it to scale (with perspective corrected) and using the print as template for grinding your own copies of the key.

Fractional reserve banking has been around for a very long time but until 1913 it was not able to create sustained inflation and the inflation at the rates you see today did not being until 1971. Before that (1913), in the presence of fractional reserve banking there were almost 200 years of sustained deflation, the only exceptions being periods of war where the government issued bonds and inflated the actual money supply.

Contrary to what modern economists theorize would happen that period was also the period great GDP growth in the US.

For an excellent and relatively politically neutral monetary history pick up a copy of Mike Maloney's "Rich Dad's guide to investing in gold and silver" or check out he's movie "Why gold and silver" at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E5VNAEmmBQM

PS Guys let's dial down the judgemental negs, most people are just trying to help and differ on how that would be best accomplished.

Inflation is a natural part of the fractional reserve banking system.

Inflation as we know it is not natural. It is the result of manipulation by governments.

I suggest you watch this video, if you want to understand what the Federal Reserve is, how it operates, and who it serves.

Keep in mind that your average Internet libertarian thinks government efforts to assist people born into poverty are criminal but demands that the government manipulate it's own currency (which they have option of not using) to prevent them from ever losing any of their (likely unearned) wealth as a result of natural inflation. In other words, they want the entire economy manipulated to subsidize the savings of the rich, but are disgusted by minor subsidies to help the poor. Complete hypocrites!

LOLOL @ your signature billyjoeallen

A company without concern for competition is a company not properly serving its customers. There is no solution except to develop new competitive edges. There should be no solution except to develop new competitive edges.

A competitive edge is not a property. It cannot be "stolen".
If you are the only baker in a town, that's a competitive edge you've got. But you can't forbid me to open a bakery in the same town.
Intellectual property is a monopoly, and there should be no monopoly at all.

I agree with everything you said, I honestly do. But how do you solve the side I stated's concerns?

Trade secrets eventually get out. Copyrights eventually expire.  This is a good thing. You are ignoring the other side. There is a world of difference between profiting at the expense of your competitors (market share) and profiting at the expense or your customers. Whether through secrets or legal temporary monopoly, the competitive edge should only last long enough to foster innovation.  beyond that, it net harms society because we are all consumers.

The problem is that copyright producers have an incentive to capture the regulatory process (yes I'm talking about you, Disney). The benefits are concentrated and the costs are distributed. Consumers everywhere are harmed while only a few benefit. Can anyone seriously argue that we need a 100 year copyright on Mickey Mouse in order to promote creativity in entertainment?  

A wallet.dat file is not intellectual property. It is a trade secret. guard it with your life, but don't come crying to me or Uncle Sam if you let it get copied. I don't want my tax dollars spent chasing down whoever took your money when you were too stupid or careless to secure it.

Trade secrets are not a form of intellectual property, as defined by current law. This is exactly how copyrights and patents should be treated as well.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trade_secret#Protection


If a disgruntled employee discloses a trade secret to a competitor, the competitor is free to use it, but the employee has breached his contract.

Hold up,

If I copy something that is a trade secret that gave a company a competitive edge, one they laboured into existence, they lose that edge. That edge was a scarce resource. They produced it at cost in time and resources, I reproduced the information the edge derived from at no cost, while still leaving them with a copy of the information, but no longer with the intangible that lead them to labour to produce the information to start with.

How exactly do you "take a copy", considering it's locked up in our gun safe at home?

Theft is when you take something and the original owner doesn't have it anymore.
Copying is when You take something and you both have something.

If you copied someone's bicycle, they would still have the same utility of their original bike.
If you copied someone's wallet and then emptied it, they would not have the same utility as before. 

IP is artificial scarcity, scarcity created by the threat of force.  Bitcoin is natural scarcity, which is to say scarcity is in the nature of bitcoins.

In civil cases a court should rule based on the preponderance of evidence (not beyond reasonable doubt), so a signature verified by a graphologist, a RSA signature or a witness will suffice. There's no such preponderance against a hacker that published a ripped copy, and in any case the reparations don't trickle down to the users of his ripped copy.
That's why IP authors insist very much on treating information as property: it's the only way they can encroach on established forms of property, in the attempt to strike a "fair balance" between the interests of authors and individuals. No such balance exists.

That's a good point. But then, can you prove the hand-signature on a paper was really done by me? Even something signed with a cryptographic private key is not 100% sure, as the key could have leaked.

Theoretically speaking, if you accept the eula, you're accepting its terms. Proving you accepted it is another story. That's why trials should be done by courts whose decision both parties in a dispute directly or indirectly agreed to respect.

No, not really... I was exactly trying to say that making an unauthorized copy is a form of trespassing. Even if you were given the right to enter the couple's house. Actually, even if they authorize you to watch the video, but said: "Don't copy". If you copy, you'd be doing an unauthorized use of their property.

A valid contract should feature non-repudiation, for example you keep the other paper copy, or a witness/arbiter exists. Can you prove I have clicked the dialog and not skipped over it using a debugger ? You can't, as such I've never entered a contract with you. That's precisely why my property can't act as your legal proxy, if it's really my property I should be able to control it for my non-violent purposes, and have no obligation to use it to correctly represent you in the contractual matter at hand.
It's all rather pedantic because, as you agree, a hacked copy without the EULA is clearly not a binding contract.

Wait, how is a wallet file intellectual property?   Does that mean that the money in my bank account is IP too?

You are mixing up trespass (getting the original copy of the video), and copyright (the controlling of copies of your 'work' outside your property).

I have to disagree there. It doesn't matter the format of a contract, as long as it is voluntary and explicit.
The same thing you said about a sequence of bytes could be said about a sequence of words printed on a piece of paper. Both are valid forms of contract.


Well, that's what eulas are for...


But you have no right to use their properties without their consent, and that includes making a copy.

If you didn't get the owners authorization to make that copy, the act of copying is a violation of their property rights. But then, if you pass the video to somebody else, the couple cannot make the same accusation against this third party.

The property is claimed on the physical assets those bitcoins stand for, not for the string of bytes themselves. Once I move the amount to some other secure key, you can distribute the old wallet far and wide, I don't care. Suppose a city has a database that stores the exact location and size of every citizen's piece of land. If you would hack into that database and modify those records, you would be attempting to deprive me of physical property; it just so happens that the bitcoin database is distributed, yet stealing bitcoins is still stealing physical property.


If the program spawns a dialog blackmailing me to click or else, it's not a valid contract. I'm using my private property in every way I see fit, including clicking on any dialogs I might desire. The mere act of generating a sequence of bits does not give the author partial ownership of my physical property, nor does it transforms my computer into his agent in my house. It's my choice to let my property operate on said sequence or not, or to modify, extend and publish that sequence, because information is not property.

People are free to enter into mutual, limited agreements regarding sharing of information. They can impose on each other financial penalties if the information leaks to the outside, and so create a limited private form of intellectual property, if they feel this beneficial for them. They however have no right over what other people do with their information after it inevitably leaks.

A porn movie with your wife is a contractual agreement between you two. The one who betrayed the contract wilfully or due to negligence should pay. I have no obligation to help you meet your contractual obligations, or to help you succeed in business or love.

It's amazing how "mechanical" our world has become. Let me give you a different scenario.

You and your wife have shot a private porn movie (for your own eyes only). I take a copy of it, but you don't lose the original. Would you not have felt you lost something ? (like your exclusive right to view it)

Correct.

It's their property, you have to respect their property rights, you cannot just take it.

This. I really dont understand where the debate is.

So if software launches and tells you you are binding yourself to the agreed terms if you use it does that qualify?

Eulas do qualify. To those who sign them, obviously. If you get a copy of a program for free with no eula, nobody has any recourse against you.

That's the main problem with IP. You may try to simulate them with contracts. But contracts can not be extended to someone who has never signed it. It's like a marriage contract which predicts punishment to the lover of the unfaithful spouse!

So why don't Eulas qualify?

The permission has to be explicit.

Ok, so but what if you connected to a game server which I owned and I stole them during the connection, you allowed me some limited interaction with your PC, why doesn't that extent to my copying your files?

Not to mention that if you accessed the computer of someone without this person's authorization, it's a violation of his property rights.

In other words, if I don't authorize you to copy my wallet, there's no legitimate way you can do it.

My attempt to answer like an Anti-IP Libertarian:

Copying someone's wallet file isn't theft, but emptying it is. Theft takes the use of property away from its owner, "IP theft" does not.

Hi there non-Intellectual Property Libertarians,

Here's an interesting one. Is copying someone's wallet file theft?