Quote from: iamnotback on June 18, 2016, 09:29:01 PM

Quote from: yefi on June 18, 2016, 09:18:03 PM

Quote from: leopard2 on June 18, 2016, 06:09:19 PM

Yeah just that you cannot legally give away stolen funds...so the miners would make themselves legally vulnerable.

Vulnerable to what, a lawsuit? That's about as fanciful as the idea the daoattacker will sue the Ethereum Foundation really. It would also bring in to question the whole legality and regulation (or lack thereof) of TheDAO.

This doesn't mean I think they'll accept it of course.

If mining is decentralized, I think it is impossible to enforce a court decision on the miners because new miners can pop up any where. You'd need some totalitarian total world control over the Internet and block the protocol.

Doesn't seem plausible near-term in current state of the world.

More likely any court decision would be enforced on the exchanges. New exchanges could pop up, but they can also be regulated.

Perhaps any class action suit if any might attempt to name any of those prominant insiders who have profited by promoting and selling ETH such as Vitalik, Tual, etc.. I am not sure if a lawyer would advise that or not, and whether it could be successful. I hope they've retained counsel.

Quote from: iamnotback on June 19, 2016, 12:15:01 AM

Quote from: manselr on June 19, 2016, 12:11:01 AM

Quote from: cjmoles on June 18, 2016, 09:49:54 PM

Well, he would lose in court and I personally never received a "cease and desist letter." If it forks, it's the community that's forking it....he'd have to send everybody a "cease and desist." And, the intent of the contract is what will take precedence in a court and it was obviously not intended for the exploiter to steal all our funds. Maybe he'd get one count of wire fraud per investor frauded....He should take the profits from his ETH short and run before a hot curling iron introduces his butt hairs to a perm, IMHO!

How would he lose? He did avid by the rules of the DAO smart contract, he did not modify anything as far as I know, so being strict the definition of decentralized smart contract, he did not do anything illegal... very tricky scenario.

The argument is there is no one the court could pinpoint to enforce such a ruling on. The miners, exchanges, users, and devs would all play a role in the community outcome, yet no one can be identified as responsible for that outcome.

Whereas, if the developers and foundation push for a fork and politik for a 51% attack on the protocol, then the attacker potentially accuse them of being in control of the enterprise and sue them. So that is why I say it is very risky for them to fork. OTOH, if they don't fork, they might be vulnerable to a class action suit from the n00bs who had their ETH taken from them by the "smart" (too smart = dumb) contract. This is why I made a thread to ask if the developers who have promoted this so carelessly without conspicuous warnings, could be in deep legal trouble now? They appear to me perhaps the easiest to target with a lawsuit, but IANAL so I am pondering what is their risk?

But note the "attacker" may have committed an illegal action or at least violated contract law, so in that case is unlikely to reveal identity and sue. Thus I was thinking the safest is to fork, but that has the risk of the n00bs potentially accusing them of being in control of the coin and class action sue them for the exchange rate losses. So it seems those who created and promoted ETH and DAO (without sufficient warnings of risks) may have a legal quagmire, but IANAL so I am just hoping they have retained adequate counsel.

Quote from: https://blog.ethereum.org/2014/05/06/daos-dacs-das-and-more-an-incomplete-terminology-guide/

Bitcoin is an interesting case here. In general, it seems to be much closer to a DAO than a DO. However, there was one incident in 2013 where the reality proved to be rather different. What happened was that an exceptional block was (at least we hope) accidentally produced, which was treated as valid according to the BitcoinQt 0.8 clients, but invalid according to the rules of BitcoinQt 0.7. The blockchain forked, with some nodes following the blockchain after this exceptional block (well call this chain B1), and the other nodes that saw that block as invalid working on a separate blockchain (which well call B2). Most mining pools had upgraded to BitcoinQt 0.8, so they followed B1, but most users were still on 0.7 and so followed B2. The mining pool operators came together on IRC chat, and agreed to switch their pools to mining on B2, since that outcome would be simpler for users because it would not require them to upgrade, and after six hours the B2 chain overtook B1 as a result of this deliberate action, and B1 fell away. Thus, in this case, there was a deliberate 51% attack which was seen by the community as legitimate, making Bitcoin a DO rather than a DAO. In most cases, however, this does not happen, so the best way to classify Bitcoin would be as a DAO with an imperfection in its implementation of autonomy.

Quote from: iamnotback on June 19, 2016, 12:42:25 AM

Quote from: smooth on June 19, 2016, 12:18:22 AM

Quote from: anthonydar on June 18, 2016, 08:44:32 PM

If 51% of the miners decide to fork, I think I will follow the majority and support the fork to get back the money from the attacker.

Satoshi had a term for that, he called it attacking the network:

As long as a majority of CPU power is controlled by nodes that are not cooperating to attack the network ...
- Satoshi Nakamoto (bitcoin.pdf)

So, no, there has been no "hack" or "attack" so far, but Vitalik, Tual, and their cronies are working on one.

Soft forks are 51% attacks. At best, when done for relatively-benign upgrade purposes, they demonstrate a vulnerability of the network and should still raise some level of concern that the developers and miners are able to conspire to pull off a 51% attack. When done transfer control over coins, that is outright theft.

Smooth if forks are authorized by a protocol that was designed in the coin from the start, i.e. an ability to vote on changes by stake holders for a PoS coin (e.g. DASH), then that appears to not be a 51% attack. But otherwise I agree with you, and when you have the same group of devs from the ICO able to control the politik then they are essentially running the enterprise.

There is a grey area where someone from the outside creates a fork and the users and miners spontaneously decide to switch over to it. This can be argued to be a feature of decentralization and open source, and necessary to correct deficiencies. Yet it is still a 51% attack. If done with proof-of-burn, then it is not a 51% attack.

But your analysis of the issues here seems to be oversimplified because the law interacts with all this to create more complex scenarios. Please read this:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1517223.msg15271289#msg15271289