Bitcoin Forum

This is a cross-post from yet another thread threatening to ban users or remove the Alt-coins forums altogether.
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=434310.msg4808581#msg4808581

This was posted here to get appropriate feedback.  I look forward to your comments, if any...



I'm afraid the admins at this forum are so protective of their Bitcoin SHA-256 wealth that they are oblivious to/ignoring the real-world implications of Bitcoin SHA-256's MIT/X11 Open Source License.

Satoshi Nakamoto released Bitcoin SHA-256 under the MIT/X11 Open Source license for the specific purpose of allowing the creation of other versions of Bitcoin (aka Alt-coins).  Yet, the know-it-all forum admins here constantly threaten to ban users and remove discussion of alt-coins not deemed the one official "Bitcoin."

Here's a newsflash:  Bitcoin SHA-256 is not the official Bitcoin.   There is no official Bitcoin after Satoshi stopped working on the client (0.3.19) AND the blockchain forked.  Indeed, under the MIT/X11 Open Source License it is logically impossible for there to be ONE official Bitcoin after the original author's source-code was modified without the origin author and the blockchain forked after such modification.  At that point, Bitcoin SHA-256 technically became an alt-coin called Bitcoin also operating under the MIT/X11 license.  Bitcoin is a protocol.  Bitcoin SHA256 is a crypto-currency.  Re-read this if it doesn't make sense.

Stated differently, it's like creating a Linux forum when Linux came out, calling it a Linux forum, having people donate to the Linux forum, then limiting discussion to RedHat Linux because any other open-source distro is simply an Alt-OS and not the official Linux and is causing too much clutter.  Pretty self-serving and contradictory to the spirit of Open source.

It's your site and you can do what you like, but it is a grave threat to the whole Open-source ecosystem when certain actors have the power to deem one version of an open-source source-code as official and deem others to be unofficial so as to undermine those alternate versions of the open-source source-code.

Again, this is your site, but instead of ignoring the spirit of the MIT/X11 Open Source license, you should change your name from "Bitcoin Forum" to "An Alt-coin named Bitcoin Forum."

However, considering that this forum derives it power from continuing the legal fiction that Bitcoin SHA-256 is the only official Bitcoin I doubt we'll see a name or policy change.

If you disagree that the forum operators are going against the spirit (if not the letter) of the MIT/X11 Open Source License, I look forward to your response.

The opposite is true, in fact. He released it under the MIT license so that people wouldn't feel the need to rewrite the main Bitcoin client:

*Sigh*

The admins here as far as I can tell don't care either way about Alt Coins and their existance. If they are however causing issues to the rest of the forum, that is when there is a problem. Alt Coins have lived peacefully in their section, secluded from the rest of the Bitcoin forum without any intervention or secret hate from the admins, besides perhaps for the occasional frustration when people are posting altcoin threads in the wrong places. Cklovias will attest to that, as well as some of Bitcointalk's more frustrated moderators.

The new "attack" against altcoins mostly has to do with that section, namely the Giveaway threads and their thousands of pages of spam contributing as a safe haven for paid advertising spammers to post (that is also an ongoing issue that effects everyone) as well as just providing a sheer amount of unwanted volume to the forums.

We have suggested incredibly reasonable alternatives, people are even allowed to post their giveaway info here, we just ask that they collect the hundreds of thousands of addresses elsewhere, be it twitter, their own forums, or whatever.

I'm a big supporter of Alt coins, and have been for years. The fact that I am actively supporting the changes mean either A) I've suddenly decided to hate Alt Coins or B) I see the problem giveaway threads create, and I think we are within reason to ask that people post them elsewhere. As I said a moment ago, its actually really being blown up out of proportion. We are trying to cut down on spam, and people keep looking for alterior motives such as why the admins are threatened by alt coins, when in reality as far as I know, Theymos has no public opinion of them, and John K. has a vested interest in some.

Had we targeted specific alt coins, I'd say that is unfair, but the fact of the matter is, we just don't want the posts. Create a giveaway thread asking new members to join your own forums, follow you on twitter, or facebook, or whatever, we don't really care. It should be a very slight inconvience on the community that wants Giveaways, a huge improvement for those that don't want them, and a HUGE improvement to those that don't want forum resources being wasted on hundreds of thousands of posts like this:

THX  :) ;) :D ;D 8) :-* 1JXwGd1N8eP4WWMP6mLe6UNAycDhzqvhJo

First, thanks for the informed response as I cannot get into Satoshi's mind to learn his intent for using the MIT/X11 license.

That said, I read the thread and am confused when I reread your response (or think you may be confused).

Are you claiming that Satoshi chose the MIT/X11 License (over GPL) so people would not create alt-coins by rewriting the main Bitcoin client?  That's what your response in the context of my quote seems to imply.  I could find nothing of the sort in the Satoshi thread you quoted as he seemed to be discussing the creation of another Bitcoin client that would utilize the same Bitcoin blockchain and makes no mention of alternate blockchains.

Aside from Satoshi's intent re MIT/X11 license, do you believe that there does in fact exist only one (1) official Bitcoin?

With all due respect, didn't you guys target the specific alt-coin "Bitcoin Scrypt" to be banned by calling it malware when it really wasn't?  In reality wasn't it banned because of the name "Bitcoin Scrypt" and then unbanned over a month later after community protest?
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=292543.msg3412072#msg3412072


Rather than considering a more labor-intensive option, it seems like you guys prefer knee-jerk reactions like censure and banning when it comes to threats to the status quo from these inferior alt-coins.


You can do and say as you like but people are starting to see through all the posturing.

Satoshi Nakamura, the original creator of the Bitcoin project, picked Gavin Andresen to be his successor by giving him the alert key recognized by most of the Bitcoin network (programmed into the original Bitcoin client by Satoshi himself), and said successor is currently leading said project. When the time comes Gavin will pick his own successor, or if something unfortunate happens then the people that he has chosen to recognize as "core developers" will find one. Which means that the current Bitcoin project as led by Gavin Andresen is the official and original Bitcoin project as started by Satoshi Nakamura and saying otherwise is really rather silly. What's your point? Mad that some altcoin you have won't make it to the moon?

Well first off, it wasn't malware, the official spokesperson for the coin developer put out a warning, that since they didn't change the name of the coin at all, it was just called Bitcoin, both Scrypt Bitcoin and SHA Bitcoin would be saved to the same location, so if people didn't pay attention, their SHA Bitcoin wallets and saved data would be overwritten. That turned out to be false, which is when we lifted the ban on it. The moderation team still didn't like it, as they thought it was a cheap ploy at getting attention at the risk of harming Bitcoin itself, but it was allowed and not much has been heard of it since.

Honestly, I don't care what people think, they are making uninformed decisions. We are giving perfectly logical reasons, but the rationale of the community as a whole is to question authority. Not that there is anything wrong with that, but when people of the same mindset are in an authoritative position, its just redundant. If they think I'm intentionally trying to hurt my own investments, I guess they can think that, the truth is the truth, and really we have given pretty straightforward reasoning with no prior history leading anyone to reasonably believe otherwise. I don't know about Theymos' personal interests, but from the history of the Alt Coin section to this point, my best guess is that he doesn't care either way.

Lastly, I suppose even if there was a grudge against alt coins, and the Admins decided not to allow Alt Coins here, why would it matter? Its their site, Bitcointalk isn't publically owned as much as people like to think it is. While the Admins may be enforcing their own philosophies of free speech and as people like to so elequently call it, "libertarian policies", that doesn't guarentee that they have to, that is just their personal management style. If they decided to ban everyone with the letter T in their username, they could do so, at the risk of losing the people they do want here, but in principal, its their site. If removing giveaway threads from a specific subforum on a sole site is all it takes to significantly effect the value of an Alt Coin, my advice is not to invest in it.

My point is that it is a legal fiction here at BitcoinTalk that there is one official Bitcoin.


You forgot that theymos is reputed to have an alert key for Bitcoin SHA256 too.
https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Alerts

I disagree with the statement in bold above.

Sept 11, 2013 - Banned  for the reasons you stated (and more).
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=292543.0

Sept 11, 2013 - Malware/overwriting wallet demonstrated to be false.
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=292543.msg3133107#msg3133107

Sept 28, 2013 - You claim another reason for ban is confusion re name even if malware accusation was false.
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=292543.msg3249904#msg3249904

Sept 28, 2013 - Malware/overwriting wallet again demonstrated to be false.
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=292543.msg3250224#msg3250224

Oct 7, 2013 - You un-stickied Banning thread while stating ban was still in force
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=292543.msg3290330#msg3290330

Oct 11, 2013 - You re-iterate that the ban is about confusion re name
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=292543.msg3323441#msg3323441

Oct 12, 2013 - You state "To the people that are complaining, I highly advise rereading the OP where I specifically say it has to do with the coin's name."
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=292543.msg3323828#msg3323828

Oct 14, 2013 - You quote the coin developer as changing the warning
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=292543.msg3338566#msg3338566

Oct 25, 2013 - Ban lifted after lack of feedback from moderation staff
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=292543.msg3412072#msg3412072


So when you said that you banned it because of the wallet overwriting warning and lifted the ban as soon as you found out it was false, you are mistaken, on both accounts.

On the other hand, I completely agree with your remaining two paragraphs.  I was simply stating my opinion that it is a legal fiction here at BitcoinTalk that there is one official bitcoin.

And I disagree with your statement based on my first post you have linked. It did have to do with the name, the name is the reason it was supposed to overwrite. Quite frankly, until the Coin Developer gave it the go ahead, saying it was safe, I didn't trust that the supporters weren't just lying to get it unbanned.


The original coin release from the developer on Cryptocointalk:



It was then later changed to:


which was when it was unbanned. Believe me, I actually appreciate that you are looking for real context and support rather than just making wild claims, but despite a lot of other's opinion not to allow Scrypt Bitcoin, I removed the ban once the developer released that it would not harm your SHA Bitcoin wallet. I knew quite well that even though we disliked the coin, it was junk and would die.

But on Oct  11, 2013 you wrote:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=292543.msg3323441#msg3323441

You can't have it both ways regarding the name, so why was it banned?  Imitation re name confusion or wallet.dat protection?  They are two different things.



It was more than 2 weeks after you first learned the developer updated the warning but didn't un-ban until being prodded by the community.
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=292543.msg3356282#msg3356282
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=292543.msg3412020#msg3412020
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=292543.msg3412072#msg3412072


I'm not trying to pick on you Saltyspoon but I just want to set the record straight to prove my point that BitcoinTalk perpectuates a legal fiction that there is one official Bitcoin.  

That said, I also know it's easy for me to sit here and knit-pick someone who posts a lot more frequently than me and understand if you can't recall everything perfectly 100% of time so we can agree to disagree on that point.

There is one official Bitcoin block chain. It should be a goal of the entire community to ensure that there is a definitive way to pay someone a Bitcoin. There is nothing wrong with protecting the *name* Bitcoin, and I think that's something Bitcoin supports should strive to do. If not, Bitcoin's chances as a currency will be harmed.

My recollection of the "bitcoin scrypt" issue was that it was initially banned out of a belief that it could case damage to bitcoin wallets. Once that was resolved, the ban remained because of the dilution of the bitcoin name. In my opinion, that's a perfectly legitimate reason for a ban.

And that is the rub.  How does one "protect" the name Bitcoin where the name is not trademarked, the protocol is not centralized and the code is not closed-source?

I'm not arguing that the current blockchain is not the official blockchain of Bitcoin SHA256, but rather, that any fork of the Bitcoin blockchain can still be considered Bitcoin notwithstanding what any forum moderators may say otherwise.  

i agree on all points. on the surface, we oppose censorship, but in reality censorship is a gray area, and we must only oppose censhorship to the extent that a lack of censorship does not adversely affect us and our investments. this is a bitcoin forum and as such it is a major investment vehicle for bitcoin.

Therefore, I believe the main interest or goal of the staff should be to protect Bitcoin. Alt currencies, while sharing the protocol are not bitcoin and should therefore be seen as secondary to the issues that surround bitcoin.

Well first, you can protect the name Bitcoin, by not mining/using other coin's named Bitcoin to your question above.

Second, the question to ban Scrypt Bitcoin or not to ban scrypt bitcoin came up over a month earlier (Staff forum)


At that point, I just asked that people put disclaimers make sure people were clear when saying Bitcoin vs Scrypt Bitcoin. There were issues with threads that said 1000 BITCOIN GIVEAWAY! And such, that was the preliminary issue. It was September 11th when I found out about the Dev's warning that the coin could overwrite SHA Bitcoin data,


Which is consistent with the date that I posted the ban in the first place. That leads me to believe, that we were concerned about the use of Bitcoin's name for a month before banning the coin for its potential threat. Really not that it matters to me anyway, knowing what I know now, I would disallow Scrypt Bitcoin again in a heartbeat, just because its annoying to be constantly confused as to what people are talking about. For example, if someone makes a 1 BTC bet with you, you win, and then pays you a scrypt BTC, its a pain in the ass.

I just want to make sure you guys know that even a decision as trivial as that, there was a month's worth of discussion. We don't just throw around bans on content willy nilly. Scrypt Bitcoin posed to be a massive inconvience for the forum users in general, and the moderation team, and the fact that we even allowed Scrypt Bitcoin for that month actually baffles me now. That being said, if there was that much discussion and lenience in a single coin, imagine how bad it would have had to be to put the smackdown on Giveaways of all types.




I couldn't say it better myself. We oppose censorship, but really there is a line that we must draw using our best judgement. Else no one would be able to post anything. I wont argue any Alt Coin's right to exist, that is solely up to the free market, however the Bitcointalk Admins and Mods are in charge of what content is allowed on their site. The "libertarian" policies are based on the owner's beliefs, not some fundamental or protected right. So if someone gets censored, we are accountable to ourselves and the rest of the staff, and we will give each other a hell of a hard time if a mistake is made and not fixed.

r3wt has it right. The text at the top of your screen says "Bitcoin Forum", which very obviously means to most people what the OP calls "Bitcoin SHA-256". Why should a private forum devoted to a particular thing allow something harmful to that particular thing? To use your Linux example, do you think that going to a Debian forum and trying to convince people to use some hacked up version based off of the Windows NT kernel would be allowed?

I am not arguing against that and actually generally agree, especially in the context of a private forum like this.

All I am stating is that it is a fiction to state that Bitcoin SHA256 is the official Bitcoin in a legal sense.  Ergo, it is a legal fiction perpetuated by the mods of this forum which goes against the spirit of the MIT/X11 License.

Stated differently, legally it is not true (a fiction) that Bitcoin SHA256 is the official Bitcoin because legally there is no official Bitcoin in any legal jurisdiction (e.g., no one has the power to take any legal action against anyone claiming to be the official Bitcoin anywhere in the world).

I appreciate your arguments and generally don't disagree, but all I have been saying is that it is a legal fiction that Bitcoin SHA256 is the one official Bitcoin, as per my title.

If anyone still disagrees, please look up the words official, legal and fiction, in a dictionary before responding.

What you think of Bitcoin is irrelevant. Fact of the matter is, it's a forum created for and dedicated to it. Get over it.

The point of the quote I posted is to disprove your claim that Bitcoin is MIT-licensed because Satoshi wanted altcoins. He gave his real reason there: he didn't see any point in forcing people to duplicate his effort in creating a Bitcoin client. (If you read many more of his posts, you'll see that he also wanted Bitcoin-Qt to remain the main Bitcoin client for the foreseeable future. He didn't want competing clients destabilizing the network.)  He didn't say anything about promoting competition, decentralization, etc.

Satoshi was not a huge champion of decentralization. He viewed the Bitcoin network as being equal to his Bitcoin software, and he tightly controlled all code changes to this software. In several cases, he secretly changed some of the core Bitcoin rules in ways that would nowadays cause absolute outrage. For example, the 1 MB block size limit didn't always exist. He snuck that in along with some other changes without announcing it or asking anyone's opinion. Don't get me wrong: Bitcoin itself is very decentralized due to Satoshi's work, but if Satoshi returned, everyone complaining about current centralization issues would find him to be much worse. So your "appeals to Satoshi" are ridiculous.

On this forum, there is only one Bitcoin. Elsewhere, you can define things however you wish.

Try advertising your Bitcoin scrypt or Bitcoin Skein or Bitcoin whatever as Bitcoin, sell them to people for dollars, and try your argument before a court when some very unhappy customers decide to take action. Many courts have already made legal recognition of Bitcoin and the idea of different Bitcoins (as opposed to different altcoins) was not found in their opinions, nor in any legislative hearings. You are wrong in both a factual and legal sense.

So basically, what you're saying is that you're very angry at:

- Merchants accepting bitcoins
- Journalists writing about bitcoin
- Anyone talking about bitcoin in the street
- etc.

For not mentioning which fork of which blockchain they're referring to? ::)

To be fair, I just wanted clarification on whether it was your position that Satoshi utilized the MIT/X11 license so people would not create alternate blockchain clients, which, contrary to your post, you clarified was not your actual position.  Correct?

Other than that, I think you are correct that my romanticizing Satoshi's intent regarding his choice of MIT/X11 open-source may have been misplaced.  That said, that statement was dicta to my original point that this forum perpetuates the legal falsehood/legal myth/legal fiction that there is indeed one official Bitcoin in the legal sense.   If you take out the statement re Satoshi, the rest of my post holds true.

To be clear, this site has the right to perpetuate whatever it wants and to protect its interest it may even have a duty to do so.  I was just making a point that this forum perpetuates a legal falsehood that there is an official Bitcoin in the legal sense.  Similarly, this site could ban all users that use alt-coins "as scammers for copying the original Bitcoin source-code."  Again, this forum can perpetuate whatever it wants but that is a separate issue from whether the forum is perpetuating a fiction in the legal sense.

Once more, your point is well taken and I concede that I may have misspoke concerning Satoshi's intent, dicta or not.  Thanks for the thought-out response theymos.

On a side note, I went through Satoshi's post here on Bitcointalk but I couldn't find anything from him against the creation of alternate blockchains.
I checked here: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=3;sa=showPosts.
Is there a way to access the archives of the old forums which used to be here: http://bitcoin.sourceforge.net/boards/index.php

Hold up there legal eagle.  You wouldn't be misrepresenting the law just to win a silly online argument would you?

To make sure we are on the same page, are you arguing that because some courts have recognized Bitcoin but made no mention of other Bitcoins, that use of the name Bitcoin by anyone but the official Bitcoin is illegal and will lead to liability in court?  Keep in mind that fraudulently misrepresenting oneself to be "Bitcoin SHA256" is an entirely different matter than representing oneself to be "Bitcoin Prime" or "Bitcoin Scrypt" or "Bitcoin SHA512."  Are you claiming that the latter is illegal and would lead to liability in court because of the unnamed cases you allude to?

If so, it's obvious you do not fully appreciate the MIT/X11 license attached to the original Bitcoin so I have included it below (with emphasis added):
http://opensource.org/licenses/MIT


Thus, if another cryptocoin modifies the original Bitcoin source-code and represents itself as "Bitcoin Scrypt" or "Bitcoin Prime" or "Bitcoin SHA512" they have a legal license to do so, so long as the modified Bitcoin source-code includes this MIT/X11 notice and they do not restrict others from doing the same.   Do you disagree with this statement?

How about the converse?  Could it be argued that the current successors to Satoshi's original Bitcoin source-code do not own the source-code, but rather, have a license to use the source-code  so long as they allow others, "without restriction, including without limitation" to freely use, modify and distribute it?  The million dollar question then becomes:  Would the successors to the original Bitcoin lose their license to use the original Bitcoin source-code if they placed restrictions or limitations on anyone else's ability to freely use, modify or distribute a modified version of Satoshi's Bitcoin source-code, as per the MIT/X11 license?

Taking this to its logical extreme, because the original Bitcoin client is licensed under the MIT/X11 regime and is not purely public domain, I would argue that you, anti-scam, as a licensee of the original Bitcoin would lose said license to use the Bitcoin client by taking any actions intended to limit or restrict someone else's ability to freely use, modify or distribute a modified version of the Bitcoin source-code meeting the MIT/X11 notice requirements.  ;)

<Head explodes in 3...2...1...>

Finally, to prove me legally and factually incorrect, I challenge you to cite the cases for which you base your argument.  Otherwise, you are being dishonest and simply misrepresenting the law to win an online argument, truth-be-damned.  I've backed up everyone one of my assertions in this thread with independently verifiable facts and conceded where I was wrong.  

Are you honest enough to do the same?

lol.  If you read the posts, a commentor does seem to be angry but it's not me.   ;D

But what I'm basically saying is the opposite of what you posted.

Where use of the unmodified term Bitcoin is inherently clear (e.g., the original Bitcoin SHA256 blockchain referred to as simply Bitcoin) I don't think anyone has a problem. As long as people are clear as to which blockchain any Bitcoin fork refers to, the use of the original Bitcoin, Bitcoin 2.0, Bitcoin Prime, Bitcoin Scypt, etc..., is legally permissible outside the forum and is generally subject to the forum's private-property rights inside the forum.

Additionally, restricting or limiting the use of the Bitcoin source-code, name included, is a violation of the MIT/X11 License and an attempt to create a legal trademark where legally there isn't one; ergo, a legal fiction.  This forum can and should do whatever is in their best interest, but those actions do not create legal property rights where none exist to begin with.

The term Bitcoin should be used freely to describe the protocol and should legally be available for use by any fork of said protocol meeting the requirements of the MIT/X11 license so long as they do not fraudulently misrepresent themselves to be the original Bitcoin on the Bitcoin SHA256 blockchain.  


Fair?


And my apologies for any confusion.

Privately, using whatever resources one has at one's disposal.

Sure, it could be, but that would be harmful to the goals of this forum and the vast majority of its users.

If a merchant says, "you can pay me with Bitcoins", we all know what that means. Creating confusion over that would be harmful for Bitcoin.

It is extremely important for everyone who cares about Bitcoin to keep the word "Bitcoin" unambiguously associated with a single block chain.

I agree, so long as they do not violate the terms of the MIT/X11 License.



Believe it or not, I agree with you here too.  

Confusion between the original Bitcoin and other iterations of the Bitcoin source-code is a very real problem and any other versions of Bitcoin should clearly differentiate themselves for the sake of those genuine concerns you mention.

My point is simply that, as per the MIT/X11 License, this forum perpetuates a legal falsehood that there is legally one official Bitcoin.

Fully appreciating and addressing this point, I believe, will provide a better framework to deal with the very real problems you mention.  On the other hand, ignoring this point is denying the legal reality and  equivalent to simply punting the issue to deal with it later when it inevitably comes back in another form since it's permitted under the MIT/X11 Opensource License Regime.

I'm clueless. Care to explain again why I'm on the opposite side of where your beleifs stand, please?

He's almost as delusional the Astrocoin Dev Team. Almost

If we are strictly talking about legal definitions, and no longer discussing anything to do with the forum, you may be incorrect there. Assuming we are talking about Common Law jurisdiction, with Crypto Currencies being a thing that could not be precidented based on previous cases, a judge would try to draw connections to somewhat similar cases, in other words Software name and branding cases.

If a software comes out under a MIT/X11 License called "Duck" obviously they cannot patent or trademark the word "Duck" they can trademark logos, but that is unimportant for this example. Under the MIT/X11 license as you posted, people are free to make whatever modifications they wish. However! If someone decides to make another competing software that performs the same task as "Duck" and then they name it "Duck" the creators of the original "Duck" could indeed sue. If they decided to name it "Duck2.0" they could also sue, claiming that the name infringes on their software and confuses brand confusion. Now if they decide to name it "Goose" techincally if the software is close enough, "Duck" may still have a case against it, however that would depend on other circumstances and how good one's lawyers are.

Bitcoin is a SHA based Crypto Currency created by Satoshi Nakamoto in 2009. If a coin has any other description other than that, it is not Bitcoin. It can be a Bitcoin derivative, but you could not claim under any jurisdiction, that another coin is also Bitcoin. The MIT/X11 License gives people the rights to edit the Bitcoin source and create their own coins under other names, but should someone make Bitcoin2.0, Satoshi could techincally sue them over it, again not that he would.

None of that applies to the forum in anyway, but if Satoshi decided to indentify themself or themselves, while they would not have legal authority over Litecoin, Namecoin, etc etc, they would have legal authority over anyone who tried to misrepresent themselves as Bitcoin, in a way that infringes on his/her/their intellectual property. Satoshi designed Bitcoin for everyone, but everyone did not create Bitcoin.

I did not donated a considerable amount of money exactly for that. Why are you speaking for something you were not asked for? Who are the donators and VIP which are against the "alt coins"?

I use the term donated loosely, be it time or money, people came here for Bitcoins. The Alt Coin section was added later with the invention of the early Alt Coins, just as a place to move threads from Bitcoin mining discussion to their own section.

The point is, the people that actually come here for Bitcoin info, or to discuss Bitcoin are being negatively effected by the Alt Coin section. Obviously, we don't want to remove the Alt Coin section as a whole, because then we will have the problem of people posting Alt Coin stuff back in with Bitcoin discussion. However the issue as of late is how Giveaway threads have far outspammed anything else, and leak out to the rest of the forum in a variety of ways. Although I'm not entirely sure if this thread is about that or not.

They come for the idea and not exactly for the software.


Please, show some examples of "negatively effected" forum users.


I am still want to know who are this donators and VIP forum participants which have been "negatively effected" by a mere section of the forum...

You may need a new pair of glasses then. The entire board has went to altcoin hell.

This looks like an incoming "pair of glasses" war. ;D

Ok, assume I agree with you. What should be done?

Now that is what I call coining a phrase - or maybe alt-coining a phrase.

I thought Satoshi Nakamura played third base for the '78 Nippon Giants. 

For somebody who claims to be so well-versed in law, I don't think you understand that a software license is not the law. If I make a software license that entitles me to your first born child's kidney for use of some software then that would not be enforceable. Similarly a software license cannot permit its licensees to commit fraud. Bitcoin is not merely a piece of software, but a particular monetary asset. If you were to advertise anything using the common name of this particular monetary asset, claiming it to be this particular monetary asset or an equivalent of it, and then provide something that is not like it at all in that is not accepted as a valid substitute for the original thing, then that is fraud. "Bitcoin" scrypt would therefore not be legally recognized as Bitcoin in any court of law.

As for my source, have a look at the pirate case. No ideas about alternate Bitcoins have come up. If the legality of "Bitcoin SHA-256"  as the only Bitcoin implied when people say the word "Bitcoin" is in question then why doesn't Mr. Shavers offer to pay his victims millions of "Bitcoin" scrypt and solve the whole issue? That's because they're not Bitcoin.

That's the point you seem to be missing. Intellectual property laws don't necessarily have to do with fraud. If I were selling horse meat as beef then I'd be investigated even though nobody can trademark the word beef. Saying that "Bitcoin" scrypt is Bitcoin is the same.

If you feel so confident in your claim then I assume that you should be more than ready to make tons of cash by offering "Bitcoin" for sale (with no need to specify the hashing algorithm, since the idea of there being only one Bitcoin is a legal fiction) for real dollars and giving people easily mined "Bitcoin" scrypt. If you refuse such an easy money-making opportunity then we can only conclude that you recognize its fraudulence and therefore the fraudulence of your claim.

Because I do not mind whether merchants accept, journalists write or anyone talks about the original Bitcoin.  My problem lies with the opposite: posts advocating against the acceptance, writing or talking about other versions of Bitcoin.  

See how your statement is on the opposite side of my beliefs?

While I previously gave you the benefit of the doubt when catching you in multiple misstatements and untruths in this thread, it's now obvious you have no idea what you're talking about.  Your armchair legal analysis would be considered legal malpractice if you made these statements up for a client.  

A few things first:

1.  There is established case law on open-source that is applicable to the situation at hand, notwithstanding your claims otherwise.
2.  You confuse copyright law with trademark law when asserting your branding claims, but they are two distinct bodies of law and the latter is inapplicable here.

I'de wager that you have never heard of the seminal Open-source case in the biggest common law jurisdiction in the world entitled Jacobsen v. Katzer, 535 F.3d 1373 (Fed. Cir. 2008) available online at http://www.cafc.uscourts.gov/images/stories/opinions-orders/08-1001.pdf.

I'll briefly explain it to you since you obviously have never read this case, as evidenced by your Matlock-esque post.  

This was an appeal to the Federal Circuit in Washington, D.C., from a Federal District court concerning the extent of rights held by a licensor and licensee of software distributed under an open-source license; here, the Artistic License but the analysis is the same.

Here are some pertinent quotes from the case:





The Appeals court ended up holding that violations of open-source and public licenses are enforceable through copyright infringement and that the appellee was infringing the appellant's open-source copyright by not following the terms of the open-source license (i.e., failing to include the copyright notice, not following terms re attribution, not noting changed files, etc...) and remanded the case back to the District court where it was later dismissed as a result of an out of court settlement between the parties.

Besides demonstrating that you don't know what you're taking about, this case when applied to our facts demonstrates that the copyright owner who grants a nonexclusive license to use his open-source copyrighted material waives his right to sue the licensee for copyright infringement if the licensee does not act outside the scope of the license.  See Jacobsen, pgs 9-10. Here, since Satoshi's MIT/X11 license contains no conditions limiting or restricting the use of the name Bitcoin (and the name Bitcoin is not trademarked), a licensee is not infringing upon Satoshi's copyright by including the name Bitcoin if none of the express conditions in the MIT/X11 License are violated.

I'm not trying to be rude but please reconcile this with your last post before you make up anymore nonsense.

Accordingly, I stand by my statement that this forum perpetuates the legal falsehood that there is an official Bitcoin in the legal sense.

anti-scam,

If you refuse to back up your bald-faced assertions with actual law or cases, then I refuse to acknowledge your posts. 

While I did acknowledge that there should be difference between trademark/copyright law and what would apply to Bitcoin, no I had not heard of that case as I am not a lawyer nor have I ever studied the law (other than to learn the lingo to win approval of a woman's father, but thats another story). But something does not sound right about your claim. If I was to change the Bitcoin code, and then redistribute it as allowed under an open source license, that would require essentially a 51% attack to successfully change the existing Bitcoin protocol. I don't see how there could be more than one official Bitcoin at any given time. If your fork was accepted and went through, that would then be Bitcoin and the old fork would not.

Maybe I'm not thinking of this the right way, but I cant put into logic how there could be two completely identical but seperate entities. If we define Bitcoin by its genesis block or blockchain surely there is no other way there could be another Bitcoin. If someone sues you for the theft of 10 Bitcoins, you couldn't make your own Bitcoin fork and send them your own 10 Bitcoins, as the network wouldn't accept it and your legal obligation wouldn't be fulfilled.

At this point, this more appropriate belongs in Bitcoin Discussion, however I am intrigued. If there is something I'm not understanding, I'd like to learn it, but I can't comprehend how what you are saying would make any sort of physical sense.

That's fair especially considering the disruptive nature of Bitcoin technology in general.  

Satoshi, whether by design or not, did not attempt to trademark Bitcoin, even though he could have.

Maybe clarity lies in appreciating the distinction between the Bitcoin protocol and the Bitcoin block-chain.  Specifically, no matter whether any coin uses the Bitcoin protocol, there is only one original Bitcoin blockchain (original Bitcoin, main Bitcoin, legacy Bitcoin, Bitcoin SHA256, whatever).  Any other blockchains using the Bitcoin protocol are different and distinct from each other regardless of what they call themselves and should have a duty to ensure no confusion between blockchains (e.g., Bitcoin Scrypt referring to itself as simply Bitcoin would be a problem while properly distinguishing itself from the original Bitcoin would not).

And I do appreciate debating someone who is at least trying to be fair, even if I disagree with some of your content.  Respect.

Ouch! Now we can finally see real improvement in alt coins developments. I'm so glad the giveaway phase is finally over.  

You haven't heard of the pirate case?

It's ok to be mad that Bitcoin is like the least profitable coin to mine, though. We don't mind. Go ahead and take your ball and go home, babies. Nobody cares

Operating a discussion forum has nothing to do with subject matter such as software licensing.  The forum is not source code or intellectual property, and its administrators and moderators have the right to administer and moderate as they see fit.  It's also private property and its owners and management have the right to manage it or dispose of it as they see fit, and also have the right to define the mission and vision of the forums, to update these as needs and circumstances change, and to make administrative decisions consistent with them.  I am not certain why this is even a question.  The MIT/X11 Open Source License has about as much relevance here as the Book of Mormon.

+1. It is the right of a webmaster to censor content on his/her website as they see fit. This is one place where freedom of speech does not apply, and most people fail to understand that.

Please re-read my posts and stay on topic. ;)

Nobody ever claimed the forum wasn't permitted to censor its own content.   Indeed, respect of private property rights dictates that this forum can perpetuate whatever it wants, but that doesn't change the legal reality of what can be legally considered "official" in da real world mon.

The point of my post was simply that the forum perpetuates a legal falsehood that there exists an official Bitcoin in the legal sense of the word and the MIT/X11 License was cited for that point.

Again, I never claimed the forum was prohibited from managing the forums how they see fit (and, personally, I don't have a problem with setting the alts free by getting rid of the alt-coins section altogether).  

But, whether intentional or not, responses arguing against forum censorship, rather than addressing my actual points re what can legally be considered official outside of this forum, are straw-men arguments tearing down claims I never made.  

For example, compare the content of SaltySpoon's and theymos' responses in this thread to both of your responses to see what I mean.

This thread is an entertaining read.

At one point I think I saw something about the idea that by limiting discussion of AltCoins, the board would be violating the license by not allowing the free  distribution (or something like that).

I also saw that since bitcoin forked post-satoshi, the current bitcoin is no more the original bitcoin than namecoin is (with the exception of having the same ports, etc. - Namecoin in sha256, right?)

I think I have those read correctly.

Here's my newbie 2¢...

- Wouldn't it be up to Satoshi to enforce the license for his work? Since he probably doesn't even exist, doesn't it make it an unenforceable license?
- On the bitcoin name, I definitely see your point. Of course it's like complaining about the flawed Monopoly trademark. Anyone could likely make a game and call it "Monopoly", and Hasbro would likely sue, and if you have enough $$ you'd actually likely win, as Hasbro has a demonstrably flawed trademark. As long as you create the elements of the game yourself, you couldn't really get hit under copyright either.
 However, Just like the Public-Domain based Make Your Own-OPOLY games (http://www.tdcgames.com/MYO.htm), even though Monopoly-Hasbro isn't "really" THE official "Monopoly" game, it still is what people think of.

On the legal side, yes, you could call ALL crypto-currencies "Bitcoin", and technically be as correct as calling Coke, Pepsi and RC all "colas" (or in the south, all "Coke" for that matter). Bitcoin could be used as generically as crypto-currency.

So you could start referring to "Lite Bitcoin" and "Doge Bitcoin" but that doesn't mean everyone will.

As far as "Bitcoin (Scrypt)" vs "Bitcoin (SHA-256)", I do think it's weird, and even if the addresses are the same format (so you could technically use the same one for both wallets), but not illegal unless you try to sell one for the other's going rate without specifying which wallet (although if you sell SHA-256 for the Scrypt price, I don't think you'd get sued).

Any of this make sense?

It was unclear from OP just exactly what the topic was.  The legal stuff went way over my head, possibly because I'm not a lawyer, and possibly because OP contained a lot of terms like "logically impossible", "legal fiction", and "official", used in ways that depart drastically from the meanings for these that I'm accustomed to, and in ways that seem to bear no resemblance (that I recognize) to any of law that applies to me where I live (US).  Even though I'm not a lawyer, I'm a fan of understanding legal topics and feel I have a rudimentary grasp on basic legal reasoning, especially on topics that pertain to my work, such as intellectual property.

Where you live, this might make legal sense, but where I live, even as a non-lawyer I feel comfortable suggesting it does not.  The only sentiment I felt certain I understood clearly was the contempt displayed for the administrators and the way you purport them to (mis)manage the forums so... I hope that helps explain why I replied as I did.

"official" in da real world maybe not, but "official" in de facto sense, yes:  Bitcoin SHA-256 is de facto bitcoin.  

e.g. USA has no de jure 'officlal' language, but that doesn't mean you can ask for your 1040 tax form in Japanese.