Quote from: reyals on December 12, 2012, 02:34:16 AM

Quote from: wdBTCtrader on December 12, 2012, 12:58:12 AM

Quote from: reyals on December 11, 2012, 11:28:44 PM

Quote from: hazek on December 11, 2012, 10:43:54 PM

Quote from: reyals on December 11, 2012, 10:28:32 PM

But anyway I'd personally stake out the postion that you can safely call bitcoins property...

You can call anything property, the trick is getting enough people to agree.

That's why I brought up intellectual property. IP only 'exists' as property because everyone concerned agrees it is rather then any physical existance of the property.
I think simply calling bitcoins property is the easier leap then trying to extend those 'property rights' into other realms of law. For example the bitcoin theft debate.

I think domain names can provide a good parallel in this example and have been found to be property in several cases.

Have a look at this...

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=807966

I'm about half way through... but I'm not sure what you're stabbing at? He seems to be just making the argument that virtual property need laws to protect them? I'll have to finish it later though.

I think it really breaks down about how far you simply want to take the 'property' argument.
Are bitcoins property in the eyes of webster's? Yes
Are bitcoins property in the eyes of the law? I'd say in many cases yes.
Are bitcoins property treated the same way your car is? Ok now you're going to run into trouble. This is where the author of the paper seems to want to take things.

The paper establishes a scientific basis on what characteristics a virtual property must possess to be "comparable" to properties in the common sense. One of them is rivalrous, i.e. the CAPACITY for it to be restricted to one person only. This is provided by the bitcoin network, because an unspent output can be protected by secret keys, for an indefinite time (persistence...).

E.g. a music file CAN NOT be virtual property on that basis, because once it's copied you loose control over who has access, so you can not establish rivalrousness. Thats why you need a different legal handle to protect artistic content.