Quote from: mizerydearia on September 02, 2011, 09:18:42 PM

Quote from: casascius on September 02, 2011, 04:09:49 PM

Having people take coins that don't belong to them doesn't represent the "real world"... unless you're talking about the uncivil portion of the world where everybody is poor and outlook is bleak. To you who took the coins and claimed they were yours to keep, I consider you equivalent to a scammer. You took advantage of a service someone provided you as a favor, and you stole something with the nonsensical justification that you "could".

That's the same way it works in poor neighborhoods. No one there has anything, and part of that is because they have to spend their life protecting what little they've got, because someone else feels justified to take it just because it's not locked down. That's not the way to prosperity. No one gets ahead except at somebody else's expense - the net result is the entire community stands still. On the other hand, in less desperate places, opportunities to steal are boundless, but people rarely take advantage of it because they choose to do things that get them ahead without setting somebody else back - community thrives and prospers as a whole.

If the idea is that the person who built the service that sent the coins is in error and should have known better, perhaps you're right. Perhaps he should have known better than to provide a useful service and pitch in his time and talents to provide something to improve the bitcoin community. Perhaps no one should do a damn thing for Bitcoin and take the risk that a fucker like you might grab their nuts and twist them.

What a fucker you are. I don't know you, or the person you stole from (yes, stole), but I will be very gratified if I ever hear you got your ass handed to you for this.

This theft is a setback for all of us as a community.

Yeah, BenDavis didn't steal the exchange's money, he stole the community's money, which could potentially be yours. ^_^ Therefore, that means if everyone at the exchange tried to withdraw their money, they couldn't because BenDavis has some of them, the exchange doesn't have them anymore.

The exchange is still liable to the people who want to buy/sell just like when a bank gets robbed they can't tell you "sorry, your money was stolen so we can't honor your withdrawal request". The exchange is even more liable because it was an error in their script that caused the problem, ergo their fault the money is gone. When a bank is robbed you can't blame the bank unless they have really sub-standard security in place that invites robbery, which can also be equated to this particular case. One can easily argue that the code wasn't sufficiently secure from error and that puts the liability on the exchanger.

Also, does ANYBODY really want to bring the authorities into this? The last thing anyone should want is bitcoin being mentioned in court documents. Bringing suit or prosecution on anyone for misappropriation of bitcoins only brings scrutiny on the entire system and probably hastening it's demise just like happened to egold and so many other anonymous ecurrencies then everybody loses.