Quote from: Ned Kelly on August 07, 2016, 03:43:10 PM

Quote from: StinkyLover on August 06, 2016, 02:49:03 PM

Quote from: Nxtblg on August 06, 2016, 01:10:08 PM

Quote from: suchmoon on August 05, 2016, 06:20:02 PM

I would suggest that you go ahead with your "legal implications". Don't forget to update this thread with how that works out, e.g. did the lawyers laugh at you immediately or just after they took your money, etc (pun intended).

OP: I want to sue somebody for X million.
Lawyers: Do they owe you?
OP: No, I was paid back what I was owed, but they have something else that's worth so much money and I want it.

You misunderestimate lawyers' agility. Wink

All a lawyer needs is some reasoning-by-analogy that's the kernel of a plausible theory and he's ready to go. If the legal beagle gets the idea that the Ethereum ---> forked Ethereum + Ethereum Classic is like a split of a company into two, called a "spinoff," then he has a theory he can work.

1) Show that every holder of Ethereum before the split block received equal amounts of Ethereum-Fork and Ethereum Classic;
2) Show that Ethereum Classic has a copy of The DAO which contains Ethereum Classic, and that draining this version of The Dao does not touch the Ethereum-Fork DAO's holdings in the least, thus demonstrating that the Ethereum Classic in the ETC-DAO is separate from the Ethereum-Fork held by the "real" DAO;
3) Tie (1) and (2) together by showing that token holders in The DAO pre-fork have equal amounts of The DAO tokens for each blockchain;
4) Drag in the analogy relating the one-blockchain-into-two to a corporate spinoff, for which there are lots of precedents to show that all shareholders in Company X are entitled to their aliquot shares in both company X1 and Company X2;
5) Possibly put an insta-expert on the stand to demonstrate that a) the fork reduced the value of the "real" Ethereum and b) there's a negative correlation between the value of Ethereum-fork and Ethereum Classic, which tightens up the Ethereum-as-corporate-property analogy. [This one might well be superfluous, and it is risky because the insta-expert would be subject to cross-examination.]
6) Demonstrate that The DAO is a creature of the Ethereum blockchain, has no life or value outside of it, and demonstrate that The DAO has value with the Ethereum blockchain - and that The DAO-Classic has value in Ethereum Classic.
7) Conclude by adducing standard company-split precedents that all say that a company which splits owes its shareholders aliquot stakes in both new companies - and demonstrate that this analogy is exact with respect to forked Ethereum and Ethereum Classic.

So yeah, I'd say that a lawyer would take his money. Cheesy

P.S. I'm no legal beagle myself, but I found this out when two mining-exploration companies were amalgamated into one (which became a producing gold mine, by the way) a long time ago. The two companies were called Golden Giant and Golden Sceptre, and they held deposits next to each other that were amalgamated into a new company called Hemlo Gold. As part of the re-org, which started off by merging Giant and Sceptre, each shareholder in each company got stock in three companies: Hemlo Gold, New Golden Giant and New Golden Sceptre. Never mind that the last two went nowhere; each shareholder was still entitled to a piece of all three because otherwise some corporate property from the temporarily-merged Giant-Sceptre company would have been unaccounted for.

The only risk with the above theory comes with the kernel analogizing a cryptocurrency to a corporation. But a capable lawyer could adduce the IRS ruling that cryptocurrency is property, and hope that the judge carries the ball the rest of the way by deciding that the analogy to corporate property is legally sound. It's not a sure thing, but it's a good-enough theory for a lawyer to take his money and sleep soundly at night. Wink

But what would they charge for that??? Imagine the research involved. Better start a crowdfund/ICO for legal costs!

I think Nxtblg made a valid point. And given ETC price right now, it's a several mil in white hat DAO. There is a real possibility of lawsuit against Etherium Foundation, if they decided to keep these money for themselves.

the EF are not the white hatters. FFS