Post
Topic
Board Bitcoin Discussion
Merits 12 from 3 users
Re: Project Anastasia: Bitcoiners Against Identity Theft [re: Craig Wright scam]
by
nullius
on 17/02/2020, 20:50:26 UTC
⭐ Merited by GazetaBitcoin (10) ,JayJuanGee (1) ,gmaxwell (1)
“Motion to compel people to apologise to me”?

One of Last of the V8s’ links eventually somehow led me to an exemplary demonstration of Faketoshi’s legal acumen.  Red boldface is mine; ordinary boldface and italics are as in the original fakery (so to speak):

https://web.archive.org/web/20190604133326/https://craigwright.net/blog/bitcoin-blockchain-tech/satoshi-and-science/
Quote from: Craig Wright (2019-05-30)
In time, if I have to, I will work one by one through every person in the BTC community, until they all either wear orange suits, apologise, or disappear. No exceptions. [...]

The process of what’s going to happen is that I’m going to make people like Roger Ver, Vitalik Buterin, and the Core team stand up in court and formally apologise or be in contempt. They can work out how long you get to stay in prison when you’re in contempt and choose when they want to come out of the orange jumpsuit and apologise. You see, I don’t care whether you believe. Belief has nothing to do with science. You could say that you don’t like me and that in your opinion I haven’t given strong enough evidence, which sorts of things are legal and covered under free speech. Lies, defamation, and hate crime are not covered under free speech.

[...]

You get your day in court. You get to make claims about how I lied. Then, I get to show how you were spreading false information and that nothing you’re bringing up is true.

After doing so, you apologise. Such is how truth works. Such is how the legal system works.

How it works—really?  Where?  Is that “how the legal system works” in exactly the same sense that “Craig Wright invented Bitcoin”?  Or did he just tip his hand about jurisdictions in which he may potentially file frivolous lawsuits?

I pose that in the form of a question to the forum legal-eagles, who must understand my natural incredulity at the notion that judges be some finger-wagging schoolteachers who say, “Now, now, you must apologise—go sit in the corner wearing the (orange) dunce hat, until you say you are sorry.”  Of course, hereby only considering the point arguendo, courts in various places (apparently including Australia) may consider whether or not a defendant has apologised, as a factor mitigating or aggravating monetary damages for defamation; and judges in many if not most jurisdictions may enter injunctions to restrain defamatory speech under penalties for contempt.  But there is a world of difference between any of that, and ordering an apology, viz., ordering compulsory speech under penalty of some “remedial”* imprisonment of indefinite term.

(* In some jurisdictions, imprisonment to compel compliance with a judicial order is called “remedial”, in contradistinction to “punitive”, on the ostensible grounds that its purpose is to remediate an ongoing contempt, and not to punish the contemnor.  This logic is questionable at best, whereas indefinite imprisonment for stubbornness is in fact quite punishing, no matter what legal fiction may be applied.  Anyway, this is irrelevant to the curious question of how Faketoshi expects for judges to find his hated heretics in contempt in the first instance—not only as a factual matter whereas he is in fact lying, but also as a legal matter.  I would suggest that as a matter of law, Faketoshi’s argument would be less frivolous if he were to claim that all Faketoshi Deniers are insane, and seek orders committing them to mental institutions.  The Flat Earthers may have similar luck with that strategy, methinks:  People who believe that the ground beneath their feet is a giant ball rotating at high speed are obviously insane!)

I hesitate to call this a facial absurdity, only because defamation law varies widely, and I am not an international law expert (or even a lawyer).  I cannot be sure that some jurisdictons outside my legal reading may have extremely stupid laws that I would find abhorrent in principle.  (Happens all the time.)  I think that Faketoshi is probably just making this up as he goes along, per his usual custom;—falsus in uno, falsus in omnibus, after all.  However, I cannot be sure of it here—not as I am sure that he is a liar and an identity thief and he is not Satoshi Nakamoto.

Again, that is considering the legal question arguendo (‘for the sake of argument’).  Even if such a jurisdiction exists, Faketoshi would need to prove his case there; and that would require a jurisdiction so corrupt and/or stupid that its courts could be “somehow” persuaded to doing tantamount to adjudging heliocentrists liable of heresy “defamation”.

And not as I can call facial absurdity on this—say what!?

Quote from: Craig Wright (2019-05-30)
Lies, defamation, and hate crime are not covered under free speech.

Putting aside my free speech principles against “hate” laws, just how does Faketoshi suppose himself to be a victim of a “hate crime”?  Is the class of Satoshi Imposters a protected group?  Perhaps a race or religion?  What about people who denied others’ suspicions that they were Satoshi?  Did Hal Finney commit a hate crime by denying his own Satoshihood?

Quote from: Craig Wright (2019-05-30)
Alternatively, the way I’m going to clean up the space is to force every single person involved in the space to either swear they are Satoshi and created Bitcoin or back down and apologise.

This requires no further comment for anybody who knows anything whatsoever about how laws actually work anywhere.  Or simple logic, for that matter.  Or—sanity.

By the way, I am impressed that gmaxwell has incurred such hatred; I must work harder!

Quote from: Craig Wright (2019-05-30)
...people like Greg Maxwell are the opposite of what Bitcoin creates...

O, what a prospect.  I shudder to imagine the glee with which “Dr.” Wright fancies this:  The Great Greg Maxwell forced to kneel and recant—no doubt whilst muttering beneath his breath, E pur si muove!



Speaking of Greg Maxwell, he just made an important post in another thread.  I will hereby excerpt only a part; I recommend reading the whole thing:

And yet, as we are today Gavin has still never fully retracted his endorsement. He left it at an 'I'm not sure what happened, maybe I was fooled. It doesn't matter anyways'-- something which wright's promoters continues to use to promote wright's legitimacy.

Probably the most significant thing I can say on this subject is that *none* of the core-devs upon hearing Gavin endorsed the guy thought this was at all evidence of the claims-- even before seeing the publication of the obviously faked signature.  The idea that Gavin was hacked, was being coerced, was being paid off, was a scammed idiot, or was attempting a desperate attempt at taking over Bitcoin after he was unable to convince people through the merit of his arguments were all considered serious possibilities. We discussed the possibility that wright got his hands on of an early block private key that was mined by someone other than satoshi, and was planning on exploiting the ambiguity about who mined what-- and that Gavin fell for that because of one of the might have fallen for it due to the aforementioned reasons. The only people that thought his endorsement was persuasive were people that hadn't worked with him on technical matters. The people who would know best how to weigh the evidence of that endorsement didn't find it remotely persuasive. And in the aftermath, when Wright's public signature turned out to be fake Gavin's response wasn't to adopt complete transparency and help take out and protect the Bitcoin community from the guy that had supposedly conned him. Take that for what you will.



[I will be replying on that thread to something else that gmaxwell said there.  For the benefit of those following this thread and not that one, I will edit this space with a cross-reference and a brief quotation of my reply.]