Bitcoin.org Loses in Court, Owes $48,600 to Self-Proclaimed Bitcoin Creator Craig Wright (businessinsider.com) 108
"A U.K. high court told Bitcoin.org it can no longer share the 2008 white paper that outlines what bitcoin is on its website," reports Business Insider, "delivering a victory to Craig Wright, a computer scientist who claimed he wrote the original document."
Wright won the copyright-infringement case he brought by default, after the website's anonymous founder, known as Cobra, decided not to speak in his defense in the proceedings in London. The ruling on Monday means Bitcoin.org must take the document down from its website. It must also pay Wright £35,000 ($48,600) toward legal costs, as well as put a notice of the court's order on its website for six months, said Ontier, the law firm representing Wright...
"This is an important development in Dr Wright's quest to obtain judicial vindication of his copyright in his white paper," said Simon Cohen, a senior associate at London-based Ontier... The Australian computer scientist claimed to be the original author of the white paper that was published in 2008 and describes what bitcoin is and how it works. Ontier said Wright took Cobra to court in order to prevent supporters of assets such as Bitcoin Core from using the white paper to mis-represent those assets as bitcoin...
"I didn't turn up because I didn't want to expose my identity," Cobra told Insider in a tweet.
Cobra shared more philosophical thoughts on Twitter: All your fiat based assets are ultimately secured by the same legal system that today made it illegal for me to host the Bitcoin whitepaper because a notorious liar swore before a judge that he's Satoshi. A system where 'justice' depends on who's got the bigger wallet. I don't think you could get a better advertisement of *why* Bitcoin is necessary than what happened today. Rules enforced through cryptography are far more superior than rules based on whoever can spend hundreds of thousands of dollars in court.
In later tweets he added: Sucks when you have billionaires determined to bury you in endless frivolous litigation... Normally it's the person who owes money who runs and hides, but I've repeatedly reached out to CSW to pay him his court ordered costs, and he doesn't seem to want to receive it. Perhaps he is running away from his money so he can make me in "contempt of court"?
"This is an important development in Dr Wright's quest to obtain judicial vindication of his copyright in his white paper," said Simon Cohen, a senior associate at London-based Ontier... The Australian computer scientist claimed to be the original author of the white paper that was published in 2008 and describes what bitcoin is and how it works. Ontier said Wright took Cobra to court in order to prevent supporters of assets such as Bitcoin Core from using the white paper to mis-represent those assets as bitcoin...
"I didn't turn up because I didn't want to expose my identity," Cobra told Insider in a tweet.
Cobra shared more philosophical thoughts on Twitter: All your fiat based assets are ultimately secured by the same legal system that today made it illegal for me to host the Bitcoin whitepaper because a notorious liar swore before a judge that he's Satoshi. A system where 'justice' depends on who's got the bigger wallet. I don't think you could get a better advertisement of *why* Bitcoin is necessary than what happened today. Rules enforced through cryptography are far more superior than rules based on whoever can spend hundreds of thousands of dollars in court.
In later tweets he added: Sucks when you have billionaires determined to bury you in endless frivolous litigation... Normally it's the person who owes money who runs and hides, but I've repeatedly reached out to CSW to pay him his court ordered costs, and he doesn't seem to want to receive it. Perhaps he is running away from his money so he can make me in "contempt of court"?
Don't show up, this is what happens (Score:5, Informative)
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So Craig Wright spent money on this lawsuit and will likely receive nothing in return. Perhaps to try and set a future precedent?
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So Craig Wright spent money on this lawsuit and will likely receive nothing in return.
He can now well the document as an NFT and make millions.
Seriously.
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And who's going to make Cobra pay?
It seems they don't even know who he is? And even if they do know, this is a UK court so they have no jurisdiction outside of the UK. So long as Cobra doesn't go there he can just ignore the judgement.
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Read TFS. He's repeatedly tried paying. So long as he keeps the receipts for attempting to disburse, he won't get some idiotic attempt at invoking contempt. If anything, it'll be Wright who receives that.
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Read TFS. He's repeatedly tried paying. .
No, he just claims he has. Like he claims he invented BTC but when people start to ask technical questions about it and make technical observations he suddenly becomes very quiet.
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Are you confusing Cobra with Craig Wright, the guy who didn't invent Bitcoin?
Cobra offered to pay by sending Bitcoin to one of Satoshi's known addresses, but for some reason Wright, who claims to be Satoshi, doesn't seem to want that. It's almost like he's lying, isn't Satoshi and doesn't control that address.
Re:Don't show up, this is what happens (Score:4, Informative)
Nevertheless Cobra has complied. The notice is on the website and the paper has been taken down. Might have run into hosting issues, e.g. DMCA, if he had not. Wight has shown himself to be litigious.
So in this case being anonymous doesn't seem to have helped much, or limited the reach of the court's ruling.
The only good news is that he hasn't as yet paid the costs because Wight is not accepting payment to one of Satoshi's known Bitcoin addresses for some reason. It's almost like they are totally different people and Wight doesn't control that address.
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Nevertheless Cobra has complied. The notice is on the website and the paper has been taken down. Might have run into hosting issues, e.g. DMCA, if he had not. Wight has shown himself to be litigious.
So in this case being anonymous doesn't seem to have helped much, or limited the reach of the court's ruling.
The only good news is that he hasn't as yet paid the costs because Wight is not accepting payment to one of Satoshi's known Bitcoin addresses for some reason. It's almost like they are totally different people and Wight doesn't control that address.
I just came from bitcoin's website. I did not see any such notice you claim is there, AND, I downloaded the paper. Their server (IP 138.68.248.245) is in the DigitalOcean cloud, based in New York. Apparently bitcoin is not bound by UK law.
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I just had another look to confirm. Using a VPN from a UK address the message is there and the paper has been replaced by a text file with a quote from Satoshi. Using a US address there is no message and the paper is available.
Looks like the court order only affects requests from UK IP addresses.
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At this point intime I wouldnt be surprised at all to see something like the government probably confiscating his website or forcing registrar to ban the site all out of spite if he doesn't. Although I did read where he's tried to pay it but the guy is ducking him. Maybe they just wanna screw the site over for real and try to get court to take the domain or wipe it from the net.
Person who failed to show won (Score:1)
If you don't show up to court, you generally lose
Ahh, but the creator of the white paper very much won.
Bitcoin.org lost slightly.
The real loser, were the various government agencies backing the lawsuit hoping the real creator of Bitcoin would step forward....
A clumsy attempt I would say.
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"Looks Like" (Score:1)
Looks like just a single conman.
Yes just some single guy... that's sure what it looks like.
Because defiantly a single guy with zero outside help would go to all this trouble.
Yes, nothing to see here at all, especially now that it failed.
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Came here to post this.
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With the future still very much decided, this post right here will end up being right, or very very wrong. The wheels of government regulation turn slowly.
How long were bearer bonds in existence before their use by money launderers highlighted and they all went away? Nobody issues them any more, and any that are cashed in are destroyed. Specifically because they were an untraceable instrument to transfer money between people anonymously. Sound familiar?
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*much undecided.
Stupid lack of an edit button
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The copyright wasn't acknowledged. The request to have the document removed from the site was granted; the reasons for the request didn't even need to be explored if there was no contest.
Where things got silly was forcing it to go to court and then not showing up. That's basically a guaranteed way to get hit with a large legal bill.
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It's almost like the players in this little game are incredibly ignorant, incompetent, and / or untrustworthy. That's exactly the kind of people I want backing my currency of choice.
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Exactly. This doesn't establish any facts, or else I could just endlessly sue large corporations claiming to be the owner of them and if one doesn't challenge it in court, then the court would somehow "find" me to be the owner?
No. No fact was established by the court. The case was unrepresented for defence, therefore it wins by default. That win sets no precedent and establishes no facts about the case whatsoever.
All you had to do was turn up in court. This is why your "anonymous" life will always suck
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or else I could just endlessly sue large corporations claiming to be the owner of them and if one doesn't challenge it in court, then the court would somehow "find" me to be the owner?
You could - it would be a contrived claim that some random person was the rightful owner of them most likely lacking a believable argument, and detectable from a mile away. Up to the point where a few challenge back over the slander title, and the courts figure out what you're up to and ultimately sanction and block further
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Why would he show up? We all know how this is going to end. This idiot Craig is going to hoop and howl about how he won and demand someone pay for it. Nobody is going to admit it and he will be stuck with is own legal bills.
His claim to the ownership of the papers in question will like wise be ignored. They will stay up, and probably just be mirrored somewhere else. So all he has done is made it worse.
Like wise he might even win his "case" in court saying he is Satoshi, and demand that the bitcoi
Cobra (Score:2)
Wright won the copyright-infringement case he brought by default, after the website's anonymous founder, known as Cobra, decided not to speak in his defense in the proceedings in London.
I know nothing about this case, but if you don't answer a lawsuit you can expect to lose by default. It isn't an incitement of the legal system or fiat currency that this is the case.
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Wright won the copyright-infringement case he brought by default, after the website's anonymous founder, known as Cobra, decided not to speak in his defense in the proceedings in London.
I know nothing about this case, but if you don't answer a lawsuit you can expect to lose by default. It isn't an incitement of the legal system or fiat currency that this is the case.
Actually it is. The judge should have a brain and be able to see what is going on.
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Oh? What would you suggest the judge should have done in this particular case?
Do please cite the appropriate legal precedents, because I promise, the judge will.
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Actually it is. The judge should have a brain and be able to see what is going on.
The role of a judge is to make a judgement based on the facts presented to them and in line with current laws and legislation. One side presented their facts, the other side didn't even bother to turn up to present theirs therefore the judge made the ruling on the facts he had which had been presented to him.
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Actually it is. The judge should have a brain and be able to see what is going on.
Who says the judge didn't see what's going on? A claims "I have a copyright to this paper, remove it from your website". Whatever the judge believes, at the very minimum B has to appear in court and say "No, you don't have the copyright, prove it". At that point, A, who didn't write the paper, would be stuck. But B didn't turn up in court.
So all the judge has seen is "I have a copyright to this paper, remove it from your website", and nobody contradicting it. And that's what he has to judge by.
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at the very minimum B has to appear in court and say "No, you don't have the copyright, prove it"
Yes, I see how these rules work.
seems like a nice little game to ban anonymous speech globally, but still pretend we have our precious human rights democracy freedoms.
about par for the course these days,
as is the usual nerd-commintariat bum rush to defend power, and the strained coulda-shoulda copes that everything is still fair and makes sense.
Again and again lately I feel the guy who talks like a total irc clown has more a priori credibility than everyone around him.
still my president [youtube.com]
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Would it really have been that hard for Cobra to hire a lawyer to show up and plead his case? IANAL but I would assume that Cobra wouldn't have needed to personally show up in court if a lawyer was there representing him. This would preserve his anonymity and prevent a summary judgement.
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Judges also follow the rule of law, and if the law says that someone must show up in defense of a civil proceeding, and they don't, it's pretty clear what happens. I don't know UK law, I'm not a lawyer / barrister. I don't know if it says that or not, but I'll bet the lawyers do, and the judge does.
What is the judge supposed to do? Not follow the law because someone is making the choice that their anonymity is more important to them than defending against this civil action? That was the choice that was
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Perhaps.... But (1) They should not be able to get a default without properly serving the defendant first --- which is impossible to do without knowing their identity. There's no way they could have been properly served with the lawsuit: It suggests that the person suing may have made a fraudulent misrepresentation to the court that somehow they found this person and served them, And,
(2) if he's not in the UK and the domain's not registered by an entity in the UK, then this ought to not mean anything
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>-- which is impossible to do without knowing their identity.
Where in the *world* did you come up with such a ridiculous and incorrect notion.
In the US, there are provisions for service by publication. There have been various orders upheld for service by facetwit and the like. I can't imagine that Britain does't have roughly similar provisions.
Yes, you have to get a court order for such things and show your attempts at personal service, but such orders are *not* hard to get.
And for someone clearly hidi
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In the US, there are provisions for service by publication.
Service by publication is also impossible without having legal name to identify your defendant to be sued -- there's no way to write a message to publish to put someone on notice without having the name.
Without a name you have no way of establishing who the notice is being given to or who is being sued. Also a judgement and order would have no way of stating who must follow the order without the name of the person being ordered.
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>Service by publication is also impossible without having legal name to identify your defendant to be sued
again, no, that's just not the case. At Common Law, using a name makes that your name.
Now, it may be impractical to *enforce* the judgment while the person is still anonymous, but that's a detail, not the substance.
>Without a name you have no way of establishing who the
>notice is being given to or who is being sued.
Again, just no.
It's the "entity commonly known as abcwebsite.com"
>Also a jud
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Again, just no.
It's the "entity commonly known as abcwebsite.com"
Congrats, you just ordered a person/organization who does not exist as a legal entity to do something -- this is no different from issuing an order for a dead person to come tell you something. It's not legitimate legal procedure: you won't be able to get your order recognized by other courts, esp. in other countries.
There is no legal entity named bitcoin.org. Some person or company you haven't identified or established jurisdiction ove
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I don't know if you are deliberately not understanding, or just refusing, or . . . .
You are attempting to impose limitations on the law that the law just won't recognize.
Issuing an order against a person or group that have a presence in a jurisdiction, and can demonstrably be given notice, is well within the power of a court. And it remains contempt to defy such orders.
Whether or not it is practical to enforce the order, or to export it to another country, isn't even vaguely relevant to the power to issue
Bitcoin vs copyright troll (Score:2)
Alright slashdot cast your votes for what you hate more, a copyright troll or Bitcoin itself!
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Which you'll say again in 1-2 months.
Is this the new "fusion power is only 50 years away!" ? "I'll be vindicated in another 1-2 months, or maybe another 1-2 months after that!"
Good to know you're trying to be a rain maker [wikipedia.org]. 'I told you so' means far less if what you told someone is basically inevitable on any long-term time scale unless an absolute crash to zero happens.
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Autists do love repetition. Have any new material?
So you have a problem with people that have autism, bigot?
Wright claims he's autistic [bitcoin.com] - what if he (or, the real potentially autistic author) did write that paper, likely thanks to his autism, that led to the creation of Bitcoin?
I guess your hate for people with autism means you'd have to abandon Bitcoin, wouldn't it, bigot?
Joke's on him (Score:5, Insightful)
Bitcoin.org have agreed to send his $48,600 to Satoshi's Bitcoin wallet. Since he's stated on numerous occasions that he is in fact Satoshi, he should have no difficulty collecting his legal fees ...
Oh man (Score:2)
Please let this come true!!!!
Re: Oh man (Score:2)
In your wet dream. If theyâ(TM)re not prepared to appear in court then this statement counts for nothing and this court judgement is just an opening salvo.
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It was once claimed that Craig and Calvin had 1500 GPU's running 24x7 in an attempt to reverse Satoshi's P2PK transactions. I haven't heard an update on that for a while.
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Bitcoin.org have agreed to send his $48,600 to Satoshi's Bitcoin wallet. Since he's stated on numerous occasions that he is in fact Satoshi, he should have no difficulty collecting his legal fees ...
This all day. A proper 'Fuck You' to Wright.
Joke is on them (Score:2)
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Unless there is a specific codicil, such as attachment of earnings, specifying a means of payment, you can pay your debts with whatever you like, including labour, as long as the other party agrees.
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This story has been around for a very long time, but I have yet to see anyone cite an actual example where it worked out like that. Had the
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This story has been around for a very long time, but I have yet to see anyone cite an actual example where it worked out like that. Had the ex-husband lost his job for reasons out of his control, that would be one thing, but intentionally quitting to spite his ex-wife can put him in contempt of court.
Please tell me how that can put him in contempt of court. The divorce settlement as agreed by both parties is she got half his salary. His salary is now a few thousand a year. That is the fault of her lawyers for not stipulating a minimum or putting in terms like "half of his current salary."
The ex-husband would have been back in front of the judge very quickly if the woman had even a marginally competent lawyer, and he would have to answer for why he took those actions because the divorce settlement would have been based on an expectation of future value.
If I remember right, the wife petitioned for a hearing, and the judge did nothing saying: "A deal is a deal." As for competent lawyer, a marginally competent lawyer would not have agreed to that deal because half of any
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>Please tell me how that can put him in contempt of court.
Speaking as an actual lawyer who once upon a time had the misfortune of practicing in that area . . .
"willful underemployment" *is* a concept recognized by family law courts in support matters. I once got a support order based on this concept, which left his new lawyer flustered when I refused to even discuss or approach my client about adjusting support based on his income. "But I already *have* the order based upon what he could earn, and did
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In your case, was the support ordered by the court or was it a divorce settlement? And if the amount is not considered spousal support but a settlement offer, does it change the dynamic? In the case I remember, the terms was the wife got 50% salary for X years instead of assets like the house as settlement for the divorce. As such it was not written as spousal support.
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In the one that I got the order, it was a bitter case where they were fighting over every last thing. Husband of 20+ year housewife moves to next location first to set up their home, and instead shacks up with her best friend . . .
Anyway, it wouldn't have mattered whether it was agreed or not. Nevada law (at least at the time) keeps jurisdiction in the court to modify support for the duration it is paid. So if someone pulled that stunt, and the payee's attorney was competent, an order would issue modify
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No, not at all.
A settlement in such a case becomes an order of the court, and is subject to the same modification rules.
And even if a particular state *didn't* have the common ongoing jurisdiction rules, I would expect the judge to simply void the settlement for bad faith or fraud.
It is ancient Common Law that good faith is an element of every contract. It's going to be hard to convince someone from your description that the high earner didn't intend to change jobs at the time the deal was made.
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Judges like parties dicking around with the terms even less. That's a one-way ticket to a pissed-off judge, and that tends to end badly. As hawk mentioned, they've seen just about everything, including willful underemployment, and judges in numerous states can and have ordered liquidation of assets to compensate for the reduced income (search for "willful unemployment" and "liquidation" and you'
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No citations and working off of memory of something you once heard heard about. Not too solid a foundation there.
When did I imply or say it was anything other than an anecdote?
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That is not how things work.
You do understand the difference between a judgment and a settlement, right?
And yet I tried to find the source of your story and found [ljlawlv.com] these [divorcenet.com] Both of which directly contradict your story and your believe in how divorce courts work. Believe me, they've seen people try to pull every trick in the book and they are ready for it.
You do understand there is a difference between a judgement ordered by the court and a settlement, right? You do understand also that there was no child support ordered in my example, right? Basically to counter my example you brought up a situation that did not occur.
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Court-ordered costs and judgements would have to be paid as per the court's instructions. Likely they would not see Bitcoin as an acceptable method of payment unless all parties agreed to it and it was so ordered by the court.
For a start, it's not even legal tender, so it's like suggesting to the court that you sent him 10,000 bananas and they have the same value so he should just accept them. It doesn't work like that, and there's nothing to distinguish Bitcoin and bananas in legal terminology here... th
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Bitcoin.org have agreed to send his $48,600 to Satoshi's Bitcoin wallet.
Not accepted as a form of payment in the UK legal system.
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What rules? (Score:1, Insightful)
Rules enforced through cryptography are far more superior than rules based on whoever can spend hundreds of thousands of dollars in court.
What rules? Rules you have to volunteer to be subject to?
Seems to me that what this demonstrates is that rules enforced through society in the real world (that you can't volunteer out of) are far more superior, in terms of end result, than rules based on maths and promises. Your cryptographic rules were powerless to stop it, just like they are still powerless to prevent ICO scams and other crypto scams.
The courts are an unfair system. But how is Bitcoin or any other cryptocurrency any different? There
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"Hey The Evil Atheist, there's a huge mountain of gold on the parking lot outside that abandoned office on Main Street with a sign that everyone is welcome to grab some. We're all going there, do you need a ride?"
"Nah. It will run out eventually and this is yet another of these "who got there first" spiels, and I don't play that game. Instead I will just sit here and complain later."
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everyone is welcome to grab some
The people who grab the most was the people who could afford it most. So even from the beginning, there was always imbalance built in. That was the complaint of Cobra - that people with more money has more influence in the court. Guess what, that goes the same with bitcoin.
Learn to think critically, dickhead.
Re: What rules? (Score:2)
There's no money in bitcoin that people didn't put in. For everyone who makes a dollar, someone loses a dollar.
If bitcoin is a pile of gold in a parking lot, you're not invited to come get some. You're invited to add to the pile, in return for the promise of getting to take more from the pile later on.
legal tender (Score:2)
This is exactly the situation that 'legal tender' exists to prevent (in the UK at least)
He pays the money into court and that will avoid any possibility of action against him for non payment.
Not sure who is the bigger moron (Score:2, Insightful)
The liar claiming he's Satoshi, or this Cobra idiot who thinks him not showing up for a court case somehow proves that the legal system is corrupt and prefers those who have the bigger wallet, and that this has something to do with how fiat currencies work.
This isn't in any way something which supports the need for bitcoin. If anything it just shows that all the players in bitcoin are off their med and don't have a clue how the world around them works.
Fiat money is backed by a legal system and central banks
Those the court know the identity of "Cobra" ? (Score:2)
Shouldn't this be easy (Score:1)
Anyone claiming to be the creator of bitcoin should be able to log into the Satoshi account in front of the judge. If they can't do that, seems pretty obvious they're not who they claim to be and the case can be tossed out with the option of charging the plaintiff with perjury and maybe contempt of court depending on what the rules are in the UK.
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Somewhere the real Satoshi are taking notes. I wouldn't risk being on that cabal's bad side after the global hyperinflation comes: Roko's Basilisk times twenty-one million.
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Well, there's not really any "logging in" when it comes to crypto wallets. You either have the keys and can make transactions using the wallet (thus proving one's identity) or you don't (merely proving you're a liar).
I suspect CW might not be in a hurry to collect that money because the real Satoshi could then prove fraud, identity theft, and damages.
Just because you call it "Justice" (Score:1)
Court standing (Score:2)
Why did the UK grant Craig Wright standing to bring the case without evidence that he is the author of the paper? Isn't proof-of-copyright a requirement before bringing such a case?
Smart idea? (Score:1)
Sure, he won. Now what? If he's the founder then could he be sued? Mt. Gox, other exchanges that robbed people?
Guess we'll see.