Quote from: LegalEagle on October 18, 2012, 12:01:52 PM

Are you guys really suggesting that there would be no way to recover stolen bitcoins in civil court? Huh

What about fraud, that doesn't involve an illegal use of a computer?

Do you really think a judge would allow you to defraud someone of $10k in bitcoins and say, "oh sorry, it's not fraud because you didn't take anything of value"??

I'm not saying that, but I am saying that the plaintiff's attorney or the prosecutor will need to be prepared to give the judge a brief with something better than "obviously . . ." and "a bunch of professors and attorneys think . . . ", and I think it would be pretty interesting to imagine what, exactly, that brief will say.

I am not saying that BTC is the same as points in sports - but, let's say that in the upcoming World Series, an umpire makes a call that effectively hands one team a win and the other a loss. Can the losing team successfuly go to court and ask the judge to order MLB to award them an extra point, or a do-over on a particular pitch? No - if they tried, the judge would tell them to go away, even though there's a lot at stake, the court is not going to get involved with the internal governance of a game or a sport.

I'm not so sure the result wouldn't be the same if there were a dispute about WoW gold or other game accomplisments/awards - I am not nearly as confident that you are that there are any contractual rights in WoW gold, and that if there are, that a court is going to impose its judgment over that of the owner/publisher/operator of the game.

There are some people who want to say that BTC is essentially a giant game like WoW - personally, I think that argument will not be successful, but all of us (pro- and con-) are going to have to come up with something better than "obviously, my position is correct" if we want to prevail in court.

I also see a tremendous difference between a Player v. Blizzard dispute about WoW gold, and a User v. User dispute about BTC - in the first case, there's a contract/TOS, and the court can order Blizzard to simply credit the player's account with extra gold. Regarding BTC, it can't simply be created out of thin air (other than mining), so for one guy to get more, someone else has to have less.

I gather that I ultimately agree with you about the correct answer for many of these questions - but I have yet to find a judge who will go along with something merely because a brief recites that the desired result is "obvious" or "clear"; in fact, my experience has been that the more often terms like that appear in a letter/brief/conversation, the less clear or obvious the proposition is that is being advocated.