Bitcoin Forum

There are so many examples of how domains can be forcefully transferred to another party, here are just two:

RICHARD BRANSON: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/02/21/richard_branson_xxx/ (https://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/02/21/richard_branson_xxx/)

FRANCE.COM: http://www.alphr.com/business/1009214/france-seize-france-com-domain (http://www.alphr.com/business/1009214/france-seize-france-com-domain)

So considering Roger Ver and his bitcoin.com domain is deliberately (or otherwise) all about "Bitcoin Cash" and is not about "Bitcoin" and the downloads lead to Bitcoin Cash wallets then should the bitcoin.org team try to take the bitcoin.com domain from Ver?

Too many people are conflating Bitcoin with Bitcoin Cash when it comes to anything from bitcoin.com and even sending funds from Bitcoin Cash wallets to Bitcoin wallets and vice-versa.

Here in cryptoland, disagreeing with people isn't a sufficient excuse to take their property from them.  I'll use this thread as a reference (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=3076103.0), since I've made all of these points before.  Having ownership of a particular domain name doesn't preclude Roger Ver from discussing ideas you personally disagree with.  One of the fundamental principles of cryptocurrencies that one would assume all participants are willing to adhere to is that your property is yours.  Saying that we can or should deprive someone of something they own over a difference of opinion is diametrically opposed to those principles.

Here's a direct quote from that thread I linked:


Stop drawing attention to Roger Ver is if he's somehow the source of all evil in the world.  It's giving him far more credit than he's due.  Plus, you're inadvertently strengthening his position by reinforcing the misguided notion that he's that powerful.  Make compelling arguments about why you believe he's wrong, don't take the authoritarian route of force and coercion, lest you create a martyr and make the situation even worse.

Thanks for the information you shared, indeed there are too many fork coin from the main coin, The wrong transfer and misuse is very easy to happen. It is important to check carefully when planning to use it!

Sure thing, well worth raising it in the community to get some views though.

this has nothing to do with disagreeing with someone. this is fighting scammers. for example if someone is scamming people on bitcointalk like selling a hacked account, spreading malware,... will you stand by silently and watch as others get ripped off?

if so then i have a total of 0.0399 bitcoin according to Roger Ver's website in the following 3 unspent bitcoin transaction output:
98782e6104f877bb60b746168d918d3e2b994f5c89d247654b009241df69c175
cc6055138f3b06fe880de26e86c797b6739e6e5e4f18b7dc5bd1dfdd336f3d49
38ff87687c3e68276fd522252b7f7d23ef54a6f0a6b9566e0096455b3fdfd358
you can see them as unspent in this (again according to him) bitcoin explorer: https://bitcoincash.blockexplorer.com/address/1JxAgzsnfiVuTHUEwSvx2P8DyhnnqXpy4B

do you think it is OK for me to sell my 0.0399 bitcoin to a newbie?

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Dbd7DkEU8AAgqen.jpg

so no one own that domain for now?

They may have a case if they can prove that the name is being used in bad faith. A bad faith registration is described on this page.
https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=1738d8db-1f83-439a-acd3-eb33a0d7647f

You will see that two intentions that can prove bad faith are these -

bitcoin.com is registered by Ver

bitcoin.org is registered by the bitcoin devs

If Satoshi will just reveal himself and file "domain squatting" against Roger Ver, then we could see Roger behind the bars. Same case if you luckily snatch the domain NIKE but will sell a competitor brand. The owner of Nike could file against you if you will sell a direct competitor brand inside their domain brand.

Same as with Roger Ver, he cannot just buy the bitcoin.com domain but promote his bcash there, and trash talk BTC core there.

But for the current case between Bitcoin Cash and Bitcoin is it a business category? as far as I know Bitcoin isn't trademarked

You can try to do something but honestly I doubt that there is much that can be done to address the issue between BCH and btc. I even saw that some people are considering to Sur rodger for the things he had done. But I doubt such things can happen. First of all he does put bitcoin plus bitcoin cash on the website so if you wanted to attack him by having the website that is not bitcoin oriented might be the wrong approach.  This guy has full bags of money and can acquire good lawyers and other people to help him and guide him how to get out of this problem.

Yes without doubt he has money to hire top lawyers but in the end if the community stands for something then they should get together and try to do something about it.

no one owns bitcoin

and no the core team should not either
this is just a big assed ploy to give core team more centralised control of bitcoin

handing bitcoin.com to the core team is the opposite from decentralisation.

bitcoin is like dollar

america have dollar
australia have dollar
canada have dollar

in normal conversation a canadaian CAN happily say they have dollars in their pocket but it aint U.S dollar
in normal conversation a american CAN happily say they have dollars in their pocket but it aint canadian dollar

an australian forex CAN put.. "buy dollars or buy U.S dollars"
an american forex CAN put.. "buy dollars or buy A.U dollars"

if a european wants dollars the conversation is.. "do you want U.S at ~0.8Eur/$ or A.U at ~0.6/$"
if a fiat holder wants bitcoin the conversation is.. "do you want core at ~$9,000k or cash ~$900"

so the conversation is there is bitcoin core and bitcoin cash
so the conversation is there is U.S dollar AND A.U dollar

there would only be fraud if bitcoin cash was selling bitcoin cash coins at the bitcoin core rate
there would only be fraud if Australia was selling australian dollar at the american dollar rate

...

the bilateral split last summer. which was instigated by the BSCartel(barry silver portfolio of blockstream and bloq) ensured that
the 2 projects went in different directions

unlike clams which was a unilateral fork... bitcoin core and bitcoin cash done a bilateral split.. not unilateral
its not a
_________________core
            \_________cash
(unilateral)

or a
             _________core
_______/_________cash
(unilateral)

but was a
           __________core
______/
          \__________cash
(biilateral)

yep it was a bilateral split not a unilateral split..

core DO NOT OWN brand bitcoin............ no one does!!!

america dont own the dollar and cannot claim trademark rights ro it. and cannot claim that australia is a figment of peoples imagination

so just get used to talking about bitcoin the same way as "dollar"

so.. people..

get your heads out of the gutters of kissing cores ass.. and ask your self
are you protecting "bitcoins" decentralisation of no ownership, no centralisation..
or
do you want a central team core owning bitcoin.

lets reword the OP's question and see how you feel..

remember not to wear team core defence helmets.
wear the bitcoin decentralisation cap

just like wearing the dollar cap. and treat the question like a debate between america and australia.

many of you hopefully should surprise yourself at how team centralist defensive you are, rather than currency decentralist

I stand by the points made by franky1, no one owns bitcoin and there is no trademark conflict here, we are here talking about decentralization but what everyone here is having a different opinion, if there is bitcoin attached you need to move that to the core, core is a team that helps in developing bitcoin and it is not a centralized authority and they do not own bitcoin. If Roger Ver is misleading new investors, the investors need to learn about the market before investing rather than trusting anyone blindly and there is no way you could forcefully own a domain unless it is used for illegal purposes.

no
ok my last couple posts where ELI-5.. lets take it a layer deeper and go to ELI-15

core is a team that develop bitcoin-CORE.... NOT BITCOIN (2013-2016)

the core team do not develop other nodes they only develop one node bitcoin core.(2013-2016)
there are other nodes of other programming languages that in a decentralised world would run on the same currency network as core does.
in a healthy same network consensus competition of decentralisation..

but core want to own the network. to have no competition. unless the other nodes are subsiduaries of core and want to be SHEEP to core rules rather than consensus/decentralisated competition

think of it this way
imagine core as 'bank of america'(BoA)

the currency network which BoA runs on is U.S dollar. there used to be other banks that also run on the U.S dollar network.
BoA(bitcon core)
JPMorgan(bitcoinXT)
wells fargo(bitcoin classic)
goldman sachs(bitcoin unlimited)

all wanting to run on the U.S dollar network and all have to lobby with the nation on how U.S dollar regulations should change
(all wanting to stay on the same network and all wanting to use the beauty of satoshis 'consensus' invention of one network and upgrade by majority decision.)

but BoA REKT them
(2017+)
so now BoA own the U.S dollar network and those other banks are gone (for bitcoin analogy purposs only)
now BoA not only control a payment network. they want to claim they own "dollar" and say australians cannot say/trade or use "dollar" any more

I'm not saying we should do nothing, I'm saying we should consider carefully what actions we take and how those actions might reflect on us.  How you fight is sometimes more important than winning at any cost.  

If we as a community claim that Bitcoin doesn't need a central authority to regulate it, then call in a central authority to settle a dispute like this, it's fair to say that wouldn't look good.  Some outsiders may even see it as being two-faced or duplicitous.  Also, if you set a precedent that it's okay for authorities to step in and start seizing domain names, where does that end?  Plus, even though it's probably not popular, I'm inclined to agree with some of franky1's points on this.  People are far too quick to take sides and pick a bandwagon, which inevitably leads to centralisation.  Rather than escalating the conflict further, is there a better path?

It's not factually correct for anyone to claim that BCH is Bitcoin, since they have neither the accumulated proof of work, nor the economic majority to backup that claim.  That is a step too far and we should be making that clear.  However, they're free to argue the belief or opinion that their vision of Bitcoin might be closer to what is described in the whitepaper.  And, crucially, you're free to argue it isn't.  Each group are free to pursue their vision of how to scale, unhindered by the other.  So the question is how, exactly, do we react to them claiming that BCH is Bitcoin?  I just happen to think that this thread is a dumb idea and shutting them down or having regulators step in to strip them of the domain name isn't likely to make the situation better.  

so australia should not use "dollar" because america has more population

the solution is simple
"bitcoin" is for conversational purposes the same conversation nations have about "dollar"

in conversations with people that ask for a dollar. .. ask 'is that US or AU you want'
in conversations with people that ask for a bitcoin. .. ask 'is that core or cash you want'

as long as australia dont charge the US rate... as long as america dont charge the AU rate
as long as cash dont charge the core rate... as long as core dont charge the cash rate

then there is no conflict or fraud.. its just opening the mind to the broader conversation and understanding of decentralisation

like i said..
australians will continue to say they have "99 dollars but the U.S aint one" no matter how much america want to cry they own the dollar
americans will continue to say they have "99 dollars but the A.U aint one" no matter how much australia want to cry they own the dollar

whats next..
india Vs pakistan fight over "rupee"
Mexico Vs Philippines fight over "peso"
 .. based on what.. population

Many people are going to lose their bitcoins when they think the bitcoin cash wallets being downloaded from bitcoin com website as bitcoin wallets. I don't think Ver realizes here that he is playing with peoples dream and money here and he should be made liable for it. I hope the lawsuit coming up against him succeeds.

IF people paid ~$9k for a bitcoin cash.

i doubt any did.

It's either he willingly let it go, or not but the only authority that can force him to give it up would be a law court and that would only be served on the host of the website itself or he is arrested for contempt of court aside that there is nothing that can make him drop that domain as that would worth a whole lot of money at this time. What I expect that he should do is to change the name to what he  believes at this time and stop causing confusion all over the internet and I won't even support the idea that it should be forcefully taken because going that route would even negate the whole of to what freedom stands for as it has even added more value to crypto before he switched sides.

That's certainly a helpful analogy, which I don't disagree with (apart form one bit I'll come to shortly), but it's not quite an accurate representation of what is happening here.  The issue isn't their usage of the "Bitcoin" name for their chain itself (at least for me, anyway.  But I can't speak for everyone here).  

The crux of it is the bitcoin.com website isn't making a clear enough distinction that their incompatible currency is something different to the one which some inexperienced buyers are expecting to obtain when they mistakenly buy the wrong one.  A small part of the blame does fall on them for being careless, but a much larger proportion of the blame can be directly attributed to the way in which bitcoin.com are marketing their version of the "dollar", as if there is only one and it's supposedly theirs.  It's flagrantly manipulative.

To use your analogy, if you had freshly arrived from another planet and knew nothing about human fiat currency, you went to a local currency exchanger and requested to buy dollars, but ended up being given Canadian dollars when you wanted New Zealand dollars because the exchanger you used had a financial interest in New Zealand dollars, you wouldn't be very happy about it.  There needs to be some serious and noticeable effort on the part of bitcoin.com to disambiguate between the two distinct currencies for this issue to be resolved without further escalation.

As for the bit I disagree with:


Doesn't that somewhat undermine your own previous argument:

You rightly point out that the Core team don't own Bitcoin, but then you yourself call one of the chains "Core" in an attempt to differentiate it from Bitcoin Cash.  Calling it the "Core chain" is factually incorrect and you're making the same mistake bitcoin.com are making.  Core don't own the BTC chain either.

A better example of what could be asked is for clarity would be:
in conversations with people that ask for a bitcoin. .. ask 'is that BTC or BCH you want?'

Not only is it more neutral, but also clearly indicates that no one owns either chain.

At the moment the lawsuit against Ver is just hearsay and nothing has been confirmed. It will take lots of people donating a few coins to gather enough traction for the process to start and even then there is no guarantee Ver will lose. One thing is for sure Ver will fight any attempt of liability against him and ironically he will use FIAT money gained from selling Bitcoins to pay the best lawyers to protect his name and Bitcoin Cash.

lol
your funny
(core own the core chain(the one with cores rules, core bips, core policies. the one with cores segwit)
yes. the one that you can only change the network if you use cores BIPs process and then get into cores github code.


the bitcoin core chain does not and should not own the brand "bitcoin"
core can USE the brand bitcoin core. but cannot try to censor decentralisation by saying only core should own bitcoin
locally within the cabin fever, people can for abreviate say "i have 99 bitcoins but a cash aint one"

the bitcoin cash chain does not and should not own the brand "bitcoin"
cash can USE the brand bitcoin cash. but cannot try to censor decentralisation by saying only cash should own bitcoin
locally within the cabin fever, people can for abreviate say "i have 99 bitcoins but a core aint one"

the U.S dollar banking system does not and should not own the brand "dollar"
U.S can USE the brand dollar. but cannot try to censor independance by saying only the U.S should own dollar
locally within the cabin fever, people can for abreviate say "i have 99 dollars but a canadian aint one"


maybe you are toooo deep in the mindset of the bitcoin core network being "bitcoin" that you cant see beyond the cabin door in the cabin fever you locked yourself into

take a few steps back. and clear your mind. think of the BILATERAL fork as a TWO way split (hint:fork) and realise NEITHER are the original.
again
think core as america and cash as canada

using the analogy
shouldnt bitcoin.org do the same and disambiguate between the two and not promote core as just "bitcoin"

or
thinking using the dollar analogy

swap.com for new zealand and org for U.S

That's certainly one interpretation.  Another would be that a significant proportion of network participants are happy with the way that works and allow it to continue.  Even if you personally aren't happy with the Core BIPs, SegWit, et al, there isn't enough opposition to the way things are being done for a supermajority of participants to feel it necessary to change it.  But it doesn't mean that the Core team "own" anything, or that they and only they can make the sole decisions.  That's an oversimplification.  Ultimately, people are still free not to run that code if they don't agree with the changes being made.  



And along with that, as above, they don't own the BTC chain either.  It just so happens that most of the non-mining full nodes and the miners currently agree with their implementation.


So you're calling it the Core chain as if they do own it, but they don't.  They're one of the dev teams working on the BTC chain.  Other clients and developers exist.

As an example, I wouldn't ask 'is that "Bitcoin" or "Bitcoin ABC" you want', because they're just one of the dev teams in BCH and Bitcoin ABC don't own the BCH chain.  I'm not arguing the point you're making, just that you're guilty of the same thing.  

Just keep it simple and call them:

"BTC" or "Bitcoin"
"BCH" or "Bitcoin Cash"

Because those are their names.  It's not "Bitcoin Core" or "Bitcoin ABC", unless you are referring to a specific dev team's repository and the code contained therein.  Chains aren't named after dev teams.

---

Further, I direct your attention to DannyHamilton's post in another thread (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=3402249.msg36207854#msg36207854) to reinforce those points.

If only Satoshi has registered Bitcoin.com the same time as Bitcoin.org was registered