...
All companies that signed this NY Silbert Agreement should refer to their in-house
counsel(s) and potentially receive a second legal opinion from outside reputable
independent counsel, so they are fully aware of what they have willingly participated in
and created, and if possible, take corrective actions before any liabilities manifest.
...
Why is it that the companies get a say? They are centralised entities. Miners and users are the one who must decide, no one else.
You may be confusing Legal Obligations and Responsible Parties versus being a
simple Bitcoin participant that has no power to steer the network. The legal issue only
comes about from the chain split itself in conjunction with agreements with legal entities.
It is not that they "get a say", it is that they have individually injected their corporate
entitles into a possible liable situation, where the responsibility of the network and any
liabilities that could result, is no longer transferred to the Network and ignored
due to it non-enforceablity, but is directed toward those signing corporations, since they
have willingly and without coercion chosen to take on that legal responsibility.
Simple answer is that the Law does not care about if Users want to use the new chain.
The issue is who is now responsible for failures of and in the new chain. Originally, we all
agreed by high community consensus to move together, thus no one is responsible in
legal theory, but if a minority group of corporations (which are legally bound entities)
bind themselves with an agreement to support a new client that causes a new chain,
or others in the community do not join them, and that chain exists, it does so under a
different legal form than prior chains. This new chain has legal responsibility attached
through the agreements that the corporations have signed. In theory, if that chain
is edited or work is reversed to fix a Mt. Gox like theft in the future, or even if it isn't
edited or work is reversed, that is a catch 22 where I could bring suit against the signing
corporations for either choice. They are damn if they do, and damned if they don't.
That is why Satoshi designed the Network as is and High Community Consensus was
preferred. No one who is reasonable wants to take on liabilities like this. Currently, under
the way the current chain theory works, it is very hard to litigate someone because it is
the users who decide. But in this case, those exchanges have already agreed prior, thus
accepting responsibility automatically since they are legally bound entities already.
Basically, they are leading and not following the user. You must remember to consider
those businesses not a users themselves, but as banks. There are different and higher
standards for them, than for normal users.
The point of my posting was that this is a new precedent that has not occurred in Bitcoin
before and should be looked into more closely since there are serious liabilities possibilities
that can exist now, that was near impossible before.
