I wonder, why the shareholders of GLBSE Real should be held liable for the actions of a criminal in creating GLBSE Fake? There operating partner, Nefario, identified the fraud as soon as it was known, and made no indication AT THAT TIME that there would be any compensation to the victims of the fraud. It was only later, after any reasonable person had a chance to know the state of the fake asset that Nefario extended the courtesy of compensation to the holders of GLBSE Fake. That he did so without the contractual ability to do so was identified almost immediately by the balance of the shareholders of GLBSE Real, and he was stopped from going forward with this plan. His courtesy offer to the holders of those fraudulent shares became an issue now, only because of the scammish behavior of Goat in trying to sell these worthless assets for a massive profit, knowing full well that they were Fakes, and had nothing backing them up.
GLBSE, for one, failed to protect its name, and any trademark that might be in the letters GLBSE.
Nefario, for another, allowed the known fake (and promised to be made real) asset, in his companies name, to continue trading on his exchange. I can't, for the life of me, understand why anyone would continue to claim this asset to be "fake" - It's been given some value in the past, and it's traded, and never been removed for having been fake (when all the other GLBSE 1.0 fake assets were removed). IOW, nefario allowed a fraud to continued to be perpetrated by allowing the asset to continue trading.
This shows, at least, gross negligence on nefario's part. We really ought to have a tag for that. I'm sure nefario had no intent to deceive people into losing their money. However, his appalling failure to remove dead and scam assets in the past, which seems to be negligence, has lead directly to this incident.
And, yes, I do believe that the exchange is going to become liable for the criminal actions of their users when those criminal actions become known, and any assets created are left to trade, as if created by legitimate issuers. This is the exchanges job to list and delist assets. Their negligence in their process is going to make them liable for damages to investors.
How is an investor to know this is a dead, or fake asset if it's still trading? Search these forums for clues?!