Topic: So, you want to get sued by a scammer? (Read 1220 times)

I am very unhappy to say that there may be a problem with this argument. I had believed that Wright would not claim to be the original author of bitcoin in this case. I thought it would just weaken his case and make it easier to disprove his claims. I thought that he would just claim to be a victim of crime entitled to restitution. But it appears that Ontier LLP is asserting that Wright is the original author.

In this article:
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technology/c2-a335-billion-bitcoin-stolen-recoverable-hope-for-thousands-of-others/ar-BB1dYUEt
it says:

>Paul Ferguson, partner at ONTIER LLP, comments:
>
>    "Our client always intended Bitcoin to operate within existing laws, notwithstanding the original ethos of independence he envisaged for the digital currency.
>
>    We assert there are identifiable legal obligations attributable to those who develop and control Bitcoin. As a victim of theft of some serious magnitude, Tulip Trading is seeking recovery of its access to and control of its digital assets from those in a position to remedy its loss."
>
> The fact that someone has stolen Tulip Trading's digitally-held private Bitcoin keys does not prevent developers from deploying code to enable the rightful owner to regain control of its bitcoin.

This strongly suggests that Ontier will claim that Wright is the author of the software he was using to manage his keys and interact with the bitcoin blockchain. This means that, according to their claims, Wright did not accept the terms of the MIT license when he used the software. He didn't need a license because he was the author. That would mean that he never agreed that "in no event shall the authors or copyright holders be liable ...". Only people who acquired the right to use the software by accepting the license have agreed to that. If he has a right to use the software without accepting the license, then he is not bound by the terms of the license.

We need to distinguish between two instances of the bitcoin software. One is the software written and published by Bitcoin Core. If he has used that software, he is bound by the terms of the license, because there's no other way for him to acquire the right to use it.

But the other software is software that he claims to have written himself. He can use that software without accepting the terms of the MIT license, even if he distributed it under that license. As the author, he has the right to use the software he wrote, and he doesn't need to accept the terms of the license under which it's distributed to other users.

Importantly, he doesn't need to prove that he is Satoshi Nakamoto to get the court to accept this. He only needs the court to accept that he wrote the software he used. He might have written it himself, and yet not be Satoshi Nakamoto. Proving that he is not Satoshi Nakamoto, or that he had no involvement in the original development of bitcoin, won't be sufficient to bind him to the terms of the license. He could have written that software at any time prior to his alleged loss of his keys.

It's likely that he will be able to show the code of the software he claims to have used, and that software will have been written by him and by nChain and by Tulip. So his lawyers will be able to argue that the MIT license doesn't protect Bitcoin Core from his claims that they are obliged to comply with his demands by "deploying code to enable the rightful owner to regain control of its bitcoin", because he never accepted that license.

So his claim will have to be that the authors of Bitcoin Core, which is software that he never used, owe him a duty because of their power to help him recoup his losses, and that it's because he never used that software and never agreed to the terms of the license that that duty still exists.

But I think that it's very very likely that, at some time in the past, Wright, or an employee of one of his companies, downloaded and ran either the Bitcoin Core software, or some related software. For example, Bitcoin Cash forked away from Bitcoin Core in 2017, and Bitcoin SV forked in 2018. During the time when Bitcoin Cash existed and Bitcoin SV didn't, the Bitcoin Cash code was not written by Wright or by any of his companies, and there was no way for him to be able to use it without accepting the MIT license.

It also seems very unlikely to me that Wright wrote his own implementation of segwit. And yet he was allegedly using software that allowed him to use bitcoin successfully in 2020. Segwit was a soft-fork, so this is theoretically possible. He could have been running antique software that didn't notice that segwit was now everywhere and obligatory.

I think Craig Wright needs to be asked to swear under penalty of perjury that neither he nor any or his employees have ever used, modified or distributed bitcoin software that they did not write themselves, even for testing purposes. He needs to explain how his company, nChain, mined a record-setting 23Mb block on the Bitcoin Cash blockchain in September of 2018, without using any software written by the Bitcoin Cash developers, built on code written by Bitcoin Core.

If he used Bitcoin Core software even once, for curiosity or testing or any other reason, then he accepted the MIT license, and he accepted the terms, which prevent him from holding the developers liable for anything.

A single witness who testifies that Bitcoin Core software, or Bitcoin Cash software based on it, was used, modified or distributed by Wright or Tulip, may be sufficient to convince the court that the license was accepted, and that the developers can't be held liable. Bitcoin SV appears on its face to be a version of Bitcoin Core modified and distributed by people associated with Wright. This could not have been done without accepting the terms of the license. If that happened at his instruction, then he is bound by the terms of the license.

He certainly does want people to cave into his demands. But for Core to cave in, they would need to hard wire an unsigned transaction into the code, which would be disastrous, whether they did it voluntarily or were forced by the court.

I don't think he's telling the truth, but I do think he's thought it out carefully. His story was engineered to make the court case possible. Looking at the elements of his story:

* He says his computer was hacked and the keys were deleted and the hackers didn't take the money, they just left it at that address. This is extremely unlikely to be factual, but it's perfect for bringing this case. If the coins had been moved by hackers, there would be no way to seize them without taking money from people who are likely innocent. The coins would have been split up and moved to multiple addresses and moved again from there. Seizing them would require seizing funds from lots of different addresses, and the people who owned those addresses would most likely be people who bought bitcoins legitimately from an exchange. So to bring the case, he needed the coins to not move.

* He claims to be the victim of a crime. If he had just said, "I lost the keys", then he wouldn't be able to belligerently make demands. He'd be admitting that it's his own fault that he no longer has access to them. In fact, if he's telling the truth, it is his own fault. He knew that keeping private keys on a computer connected to the internet, and not keeping a paper copy, is insecure and can lead to loss of funds. He knew his hard drive could have failed. He didn't memorize a seed phrase for his private keys. In practice, he just lost his keys and forgot the information that would let him recover them. It's entirely due to his own negligence that he no longer has access to that money.

* He says the wallets were owned by Tulip Trading Ltd, and not by him personally. This is important, because corporate ownership of assets is established through documentation, not possession. When Tulip became the owners of the bitcoins at the address, it happened through paperwork, not through a bitcoin transaction. He will just have to show that paperwork. Tulip Trading Ltd will have a copy of a contract which shows that they paid shares or fiat money for the coins at that address. There is nobody else who claims to be the real owner of that address. Yes, there are people who claim to be entitled to some of the money, but they don't claim to be the legitimate owners of the key to that address. Tulip paid for that address and the coins at it, and they have the receipts, and the ownership is uncontested. That may very well be sufficient for the judge to dismiss any claims that they're not the rightful owners.

About jurisdiction, I think he's in a strong position, because, according to his story, he was a victim of a crime committed in the UK, and the UK courts are the correct venue for that case. Because he'll just be asking the courts to coerce the bitcoin devs, and those devs will be represented by lawyers standing in front of the judge, it would not go down well at all to try to argue that the judge can't enforce his rulings. That would be like saying to the judge, "We're not going to do what you say, and you can't force us." That's not a wise thing to say to a judge.

Right now, I think the best argument would be to say that he accepted the terms of the MIT license, which states in part:

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR
IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY,
FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE
AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER
LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM,
OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE
SOFTWARE.

and that his claim is that, contrary to the terms of the license, the authors are obliged to rectify losses he incurred due to his own negligence. And that granting him the relief he seeks would invalidate the MIT license and expose all authors of open-source software to liability for the unforeseeable consequences of negligence by users. In bitcoin's case, it would mean that anybody who lost their keys or forgot their password could sue the developers.

That's skipping a few steps, though.  First the court has to establish jurisdiction to see if any rulings could feasibly be enforced.  Good luck with that.

Then, Faketoshi would have to convince the court the coins are actually his.  He doesn't have a particularly strong track record of winning the court's favour with his conduct and total lack of credible evidence.  Again, good luck there.

My guess is that he's totally reliant on the threat of litigation.  He just wants everyone to cave in to his silly demands.  He doesn't have a case.

That is what they will argue in court. But Wright's lawyers will argue that it is normal practice in the software industry to require users to upgrade to a new version of the software in order to be able to continue using it. They will argue that hard forks have happened in the past. They will argue that upgrading to the next version of Bitcoin Core when it is released is what nearly all users will do. They will point to the Ethereum hard fork, which was performed in order to restore funds to their rightful owners, and which succeeded.

They will say that, yes, it is possible that some miners will continue to mine on the old chain and will refuse to upgrade. The court is not being asked to coerce those miners, and it is not being asked to coerce people to use a particular version of the software.

The court is only being asked to coerce the bitcoin devs to include a feature in future versions.

Bitcoin Core won't be required to coerce people to run the latest version of the software. They'll be required to include the code needed to comply with the court's ruling in future releases.

As pointed out here (https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.56454576), nothing will happen because Bitcoin Core devs cannot force people to use a particular version of the software.

That's exactly what it would do, and that's exactly what he intends to do. I would like to believe that it's not going to happen, but right now I don't see anything that will stop it.

Yes, it would ruin bitcoin's value proposition. Bitcoin owners don't want that. But a court will make the decision. The court will rule in favor of the law, and bitcoin's value proposition isn't important to courts at all. If the court believes that bitcoin's value is partly due to its ability to facilitate crime by depriving lawful owners of their wealth when hackers or thieves have unlawfully acquired the private keys, then the court will enthusiastically smash that part of bitcoin's value proposition out of existence.

So many people here believe that Wright is motivated by money, or attention. No, no, no. Read his writings. He doesn't like attention and he isn't short of money. He wants power. He wants to destroy Bitcoin Core.

It's not that clever.  A considerable portion of the value proposition of Bitcoin is that no one can seize your funds.  In the event it could be proven it's possible for people to file frivolous lawsuits and subsequently be awarded coins that don't belong to them, it would completely annihilate that value proposition.  The coins he would obtain in such an event would be worth very little after vast swathes of people abandon crypto for good and the entire crypto ecosystem goes into freefall.  Which is precisely why it's never going to happen. 

Maybe he'll bag the BSV coins and effectively kill his own shitcoin.  That's at least somewhat plausible.  In fact, fingers crossed on that outcome.  I'd love to witness the mass-uglycry when all the faketoshi fanboys get rekt by their own messiah.

More importantly, it will establish the precedent that coin devs *do* have the power to confiscate funds from one address and give it to another address without a valid signed transaction. They will hard code it into the source code. txid deadbeef doesn't need a signature check.

Then they'll claim: Bitcoin SV complied, therefore it is possible for Bitcoin Core to also comply, and their claims that it's technically impossible are false.

The whole point of this is to get courts to understand that they can force the Core devs to seize bitcoins and do with them what the court demands. The claim that "It's technically impossible" will be proven to be false. It requires a hard fork, but it's possible.

His story about being hacked is almost certainly false. But it's a cleverly chosen lie. It allows him to ask the courts to force you to seize money, and allows him to prove that it's possible.

I need help

My name Alain Andre Desarzens How i can get my report and my url address for bitcoin,org

id goldy888

THank You
Alain
[email protected]
[email protected]
same IP
   

Normally staff gmaxwell knows what is obtainable, before creating such topic he might reason the positive impact and negative impacts of this before making it known to community, now  that's the reason while some people here write topics on poem concerning scammers, because any process whereby a scammer come in contact with who ever they really wants to scam, they don't set back or set the person free, and their is no way such person can recover whats been highjacked by a scammer.

You still holding this position franky1?

"Bitcoin Association" (nchain staff operating under another name) have pretty much announced that they intend to help Wright steal those BSV that he's demanding.  

True, most of them are coins rightfully belonging to MTGox creditors, but give him time...

Pilfering the BSV side of just these 111k coins will yield $21 million dollars -- that will fund plenty of bullshit litigation.

My understanding is that he's doing that, too.  BTC, BCH and BSV are all included in his legal shenanigans.  He seemingly wants the coins on all forks.  Even though he is the figurehead for BSV, I'd honestly doubt that even the BSV devs would go along with this.  It would destroy any shred of credibility that chain had remaining.  And I'd estimate there's zero chance BTC or BCH devs will give in to his demands.

It's honestly a stretch to see where faketoshi takes it from here.  I can't imagine how you'd escalate things any further from this point.  Fingers crossed this is his "last hurrah" and after this he has exhausted all other avenues and finally gives up.

He claims that he’s Satoshi, he claims that Bitcoin Cash SV is the real Bitcoin, then why doesn’t he tell his developers to change the rules in the real Bitcoin, then send the coins he wants to his own address?

“Satoshi”, https://twitter.com/magicaltux/status/1364872416187404292

Looks more like an own-goal to me.  By resorting to this desperate act, Faketoshi is proving beyond doubt they are nothing like satoshi.  These are not the actions of someone who respects a decentralised system where no one is in a position to "restore" (LOL) access like this.

More SLAPP? This from hodlnaut’s Twitter, which he was also sued by Craig Wright just for saying that, “Craig Wright is a scammer and a fraud”.

CSW is currently building a case against the CORE DEVELOPERS. Hahaha.





Another one of his A-game trolling?

Long as the record is set straight among us that this guy here is not the real Satoshi Nakamoto, then we shouldn't have a problem anymore even kf he tried his bestest to claim ownership and all. Let's prove to him that he's a nobody here and that noone believes him, that way the guy will finally see for himself that nobody really cares at all. Then again, the thing here is that the court cannot outrule the possibility that the dumbass is Satoshi himself, just as much as they can't say he is. So until proven otherwise, the court can label him as a scammer yet at least within the bounds of the law.

https://opencrypto.org/members/

Oh just found out about COPA there ya go, good replacement for bitcoin foundation

https://www.coindesk.com/square-crypto-consortium-craig-wright-bitcoin-white-paper-claim

Craig is absolutely not Satoshi. He doesn't have a single piece of evidence to the contrary.

Each scientific paper provides arguments based on new findings based on problems taken from the field. We watched as many publishers renovated every copyrighted work and made revisions. this guarantees the validity of copyright itself. and can be accounted for academically.

extraordinary for you

not in all states. simple solution for CSW. file a claim in a state that doesnt have anti-slapp

but the slapp game CSW is playing is not to silence opponents. its to pester opponents into costing the opponents time and money. hoping the opponents balance their books and calculate its cheaper to just pay CSW to go silent.

CSW wants to fake-wins by showing he has received settlements or the opponent has given up fighting CSW worthless game for CSW to declare himself winner.
he then wants to use the fake-wins to then do book/movie deals
(because thats what he promised would be his revenue methods to repay calvin and other investors he scammed)

the more people that shout about CSW the more targets he can get to con money out of them. he doesnt want people to stop talking about him

best defense is ignore CSW. dont make him a topic of conversation. ban him from conferences. stop him from having a platform.

..
now as for free speech. everyone has the freedom to wiggle their tongue and flap their lips. but thats the extent of freedom of speech.
you are not entitled or 'righted' by law or constitution to any platform/app/microphone to amplify your speech.
unless YOU OWN the platform/app/microphone.
by owning an amplifer/platform. you can give permission and invite others to use your microphone/app/platform. but then you are responsible. platforms are not 100% absolved of responsibility. even with DMCA s.230
twitter/facebook/bitcointalk. is not a human right.
and moderation is actually a responsibility platforms have to think about

rights come with responsibility.
hense why when wiggling your tongue.. slander is a thing.
hense why when writing a blog.. libel is a thing

media have 'editor-in-chief' to moderate what their employees write and worthy of public knowledge without it causing backlash to the platform/employee.
yep you may not believe it but mainstream media have to be careful too.