This does not apply, because blocks are creative works. A block is not simply a random number, but rather a number that meets rigid and difficult criteria. In this sense, a block is more comparable to a work of art: randomly generated pixels do not constitute art, but pixels generated in a manner that is appealing does.
That is an interesting argument, but the determination as to whether or not it applies can only be given by a court. Since the number you speak of is never more than ten digits - like a phone number - and you can't copyright a number even when it clearly has some notion of creativity (e.g. "2424242424" or "8675309"), I doubt many courts will agree with this argument. Since any digital work is simply an integer, and digital works are protected, there has to be precedence on where the line is drawn. I'll see what I can find. |
|
|
|
In conclusion, this loophole should be closed as soon as possible. Luckily, closing this loophole is as simple as explicitly licencing a block under a copyleft licence. One like this will do: Bitcoin Block License
Attached to a block
Usage, distribution, or any form of duplication of the block this licence has been attached with must solely be regulated by this license. You agree to this license by copying, distributing, or building upon this block, in any manner. This license applies to the entirety of this block, where the copyright owner has an active copyright on the block.
You receive the right to utilize the block, without restrictions. You also receive the right to build upon the block, with any derivative called a "Dependent Block", without restrictions, provided you do not distribute any Dependent Blocks.
If you distribute this block, or any Dependent Block, you must either include this license attached to your block at time of distribution, or be obliged to permanently relinquish the copyright to this block, where legally possible. If, for whatever reason, the previous clause is inadmissible, your Dependent Block is bound by this license, regardless of circumstance.
Certain preceding blocks are licensed under other licences. This license applies to the maximum extent allowed under the licences of preceding blocks.
I couldn't have said it any better. I do believe that the software which manages the data can apply the license to data it manages under U.S. law as well. Not sure how it works internationally. I believe doing so will eliminate years of possibly legal stupidity if Bitcoin is ever challenged. |
|
|
|
This is almost certainly flawed from the start. Copyrights protect creative works. A private key is a random number completely devoid of creativity. It cannot be copyrighted. See Feist Publications, Inc., v. Rural Telephone Service Co., 499 U.S. 340 (1991), though, I am not a lawyer. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feist_v._RuralI'm seeking to avoid the application of Feist by arguing that the use of software to create a unique expressible idea, then expressing it, is copyrightable. Particularly if it is unique and original. My gut tells me that ownership of the private key is the thing to protect. I'm just not exactly sure how to get there. I would be willing to bet that a private key is more likely to be considered possible evidence of a right to spend, but not a token of the right itself, just the same way a dollar bill represents a US dollar, but doesn't necessarily represent that the person holding it has a legal right to it.
If I break into your house and steal your fiat cash, some stock certificates, and private keys, do I acquire the right to spend your cash and bitcoins and sell your stocks? With the cash, I don't necessarily acquire the right to spend it, even though I acquire the ability to spend it, and if I were to be caught having stolen and spent your cash or sold your stocks, I would be liable to you for depriving you of it and would likely owe you restitution. The dollar changed hands, but the right to spend it did not. If I'm not caught, then I become the owner of those only in a putative sense: I'm in possession, and since no one can prove otherwise, it's presumptively mine. That's pretty different than receiving it legally.
So clearly, I don't acquire any legally sanctioned right to spend your fiat cash by stealing it. I can think of no reason why the existing legal framework will suddenly be interested in treating Bitcoins any differently just because their ownership is proven technologically through numbers.
Thanks for this. My reasoning is that ownership can't even be established without property rights. So even though the concept is easy to understand (I own Bitcoins), legally Bitcoins have no standing as property. Not even intangible property because of how they work. So I'm trying to put it on an intellectual property track and see how far I can take it. |
|
|
|
If you have a purse full of coins and a wallet stuffed with dollar bills, do you need to go through complicated copyright arguments to set precedence for ownership?
Tangible property has a long history of property rights. So no you don't. Intangible property has a short history and limited precedence to draw from. Except possibly for copyright laws. |
|
|
|
The problem with your scheme is that none of it is true. The key is not copyrighted, nor copyrightable, and there is no performance, not at signing, nor when the transaction is broadcast, nor when the transaction is packed into a block. On top of that, keyholders don't modify the block chain, miners do. Oh, and there is no block chain.
By your logic, which is technically exact, Bitcoins are not property nor can they be property. Which is the other side of the argument and I completely respect that. I'm still interested in trying to establish property rights using existing precedence. The miners are definitely a problem for my model so far. I'll try and work your other points in. Signing and broadcasting seem like a good candidate for "performance" as encrypted video broadcasts might provide precedence. Not sure I understand "there is no block chain" tho. Thanks for your input. |
|
|
|
The very question presupposes that a license is necessary. How about we think about it from the other side.
Who could make some sort of claim to the blockchain?
What sort of claim could they make?
And the third question, what would a judge think about such a claim when it was revealed that the content of the claim was intentionally uploaded, by the claimant, to a network designed with the sole function of widely distributing such things?
It's not necessary, it just makes the chain I'm building easier to establish. (i.e. the "right to spend" is protected by copyright law and is a valuable right). I think anyone could make a claim on the block chain if they filed it. There is only one item I could find with the word Bitcoin that has a registered copyright and its an episode of The Good Wife Episode #313 by CBS "Bitcoin For Dummies". They could claim authorship and first publication of collection of facts in a fixed tangible form that requires creativity to establish. (The data and indexes on a DVD). Then start a class action lawsuit against anyone using Bitcoin they decided to name for wrongfully distributing their intellectual property. I think the judge throws it out after years of churning through the court system. Holding the legal status of the "right to spend" hostage for years. I also believe that adding a provision to the software license can avoid this theoretical stupidity. It just has to say that the data it outputs it committed to the public domain. |
|
|
|
Again, relevance? Why would it be desirable to assert copyright claims to the blockchain?
Think of physical experiment, like Galileo using rolling balls on a track to invalidate the Aristotelian theory of motion. Galileo could claim copyright to his notes recording the motions, but it'd be ridiculous to claim copyright on the actual movement of the rolling balls. That's what you're trying to do with “copyright of the blockchain.” If you build a database on top of the blockchain with associated metadata, that'd be different. Blockchain.info holds copyright to their database with receiving-time and forwarded-by information on transactions. But the blockchain is not a record of physical events, it is those events. It's not copyrightable.
You point is valid, data itself is not copyrightable. That I understand. I'm trying to eliminate a layer of ambiguity for the right to modify an intangible asset using current copyright law (in the U.S. and broken as the law may be). In the model I'm trying to build, the private key is copyrighted by an individual. The "performance" of that individuals work is modifying the block chain with an entry. I believe it much easier to make this case if the property rights of the block chain are explicitly defined somewhere. My goal is to establish that private key is a "right to spend" using copyright law. Then I can defend the "right to spend" using the same law as a valuable property right regardless of the intangible nature of the assets it represents. That's the relevance. |
|
|
|
@dentldir have you read up on Investment Clubs at all.?
Just a little. My understanding is that you can form an investment club as long as its people you know and don't seek outside money. (So no advertising the club, no website chat about them). I don't think you need to register them either, but they do get separate tax treatment. I also believe if the club offers "interests" in the club, then they might be considered an investment company under the 1940 act. Each state applies its own laws to these clubs as well. See your local lawyer for the real details. |
|
|
|
No, but BFL as an entity is limiting it's contact with Bitcointalk.
Why ever would that be? /sarcasm |
|
|
|
I think your copyright argument is far too tenuous and detached from both the spirit and intent of copyright law and the actual protections it grants.
But even accepting for the sake of argument your previous points; how do you attach a copyright to the private key that is stored in the form of a brainwallet?
You are trying to establish a property right in the private key, right?
I respect that. I am trying to build a chain of precedence that supports my argument, but its a monumental task. I agree that the framework was not built with this in mind, but it is one that's getting worse for open source projects and open source ideals. I'm trying to turn that on it's head. Currently, I would say that using a brainwallet is a choice to protect your key as a trade secret. In other words, you are giving up copyright as your method of protection when the "expression of your idea" (the private key) is destroyed and there is nothing to copy. |
|
|
|
My understanding is that a database is protectable by copyright in the EU. The blockchain is not a database. Relevance? As a personal project, I'm trying to build a chain of legal precedence for using copyright law as a legal foundation for Bitcoin. So I'm trying to understand the source, data, and application in that context. This started from a thread in the Legal forum and led me to questions for the developers covering basic aspects of how everything is licensed or protected. I understand that the source is MIT/X11, but I'm unsure what applies to the data. Clearly they are public and you can copy them, but does anything specifically grant that right? |
|
|
|
The genesis block is presumably BSD-licensed, as it is part of the code? I am not a lawyer.
Good call. The genesis block is in main.cpp as both a comment and a snippet of code. So that much has an MIT/X11 license in source form. So thats something. I can't find anything else that assigns any protection to the .dat files though. Thanks. |
|
|
|
|
To receive your coins from the mining pool you will need a wallet. Try blockchain.info for an online one with decent privacy and security. Or download the block chain with the qt-client.
|
|
|
|
So I don't know why GPUs work when it's CPU-specific but whatever. Anyway, the code is built to run on a standard computer processor instead of code that sort of works on a processor but works better on a GPU and way better on a completely differently structured chip. So in theory, to build a faster miner than a computer processor, you'd have to build a faster computer processor than Intel and AMD. Like I said, no idea why GPU mining works when they specifically say it's CPU-friendly only but who knows  Unlike SHA256, scrypt is both compute and memory hungry. Current GPUs have enough of both to go around, but require a lot more creative programming to get scrypt working on them. The author of cgminer was clever enough to make that happen, although I think he wishes it would just go away. |
|
|
|
License? Mere collections of facts are not subject to copyright laws anywhere in the world that I'm aware of.
My understanding is that a database is protectable by copyright in the EU. Also, if a collection of facts is a complication requiring creativity, it is copyrightable in the US. I was just wondering if the developers already applied some legal protection for the "openness" of the block chain. In the form of licensing, copyright, etc. Thanks. |
|
|
|
I do, however, intend to continue aggressively pre-paying the loan in order to decrease the exchange rate risk that has already hurt me pretty good.
Call options on Bitcoin would be great if the legal framework for them wasn't so murky. |
|
|
|
|
Is there an existing license on the block chain that puts it in the public domain?
Thanks.
|
|
|
|
|
You know my take on it. Going the intellectual property route via copyright gets you exclusive rights to reproduce, create derivative works, distribute copies, perform the work publicly, and display the work. (Copyright Act of 1976).
You'd have to argue that the performance is the modifying of the public domain block chain: i.e. to "Spend" the coins.
Since copyright rights are exclusive, you have an exclusive right to spend. Which gets you to property. Now you can draw from all manner of precedence in U.S. law for digital works being property.
|
|
|
|
Haven't seen that request, but if they're requesting personal information there's a few points they need to clear up first:
1. If the information is for AML purposes then which AML supervisor are they registered with? In the uK there's about 8 different supervisors, depending on the nature of your business (IF your business is one subject to the AML legislation). The obvious one for them would be the FSA (which covers financial service providers) but there ARE others (e.g. casinos have the gambling/gaming commission). If they're requesting information for AML purposes then they need to be registered with one of the designated supervisory bodies.
2. If it's for AML purposes then a link please to their AML compliance policy.
3. If not for AML purposes then what is this information going to be used for? And how long will it be retained for? This is information they're obligated to provide under the Data Protection Act.
4. Irrespective of the answers above, link please to their DPA compliance policy/statement?
5. Can GLBSE please confirm that they have professional indemnity insurance covering them against loss or misuse of clients' data.
6. What is their intention in respect of anyone who refuses to provide the documents but requests their funds returned? Will they just keep the money? Report them as a suspected money launderer? Turn their BTC over to the police?
As soon as I receive the request referred to in OP I'll be emailing requesting the above information (can't check my email right now - assume that's where it is). If they refuse to answer the questions but persist in requesting the information then I will next send a formal request for my funds (providing my name/address but not giving any documents which would allow identity theft).
+1000. This is totally worth quoting as many times as possible. Do you really want to contribute to an identity theft database? They should also provide the documentation for the entity requesting the documents. |
|
|
|
While it's not very clear, I think that the right having bitcoins in your wallet gives you the right to possess, use, and enjoy a determinable thing. It's not really a chattel, but the law is definitely going to have to stretch in some manner in order to accomodate BitCoin. I know there are a lot of problems with this application, but that's the nature of this topic.
I think its a great idea to try and pin down the property rights as they relate to Bitcoins. Bitcoins are definitely intangible. It's important to note that the Bitcoins aren't actually stored in your wallet. They are just an accounting entry in the public block chain. If you delete your wallet.dat, the coins are out there forever. The private keys in the wallet.dat give you the right to "spend" the coins. Essentially, they give you the right to possess, use, and enjoy a determinable thing. |
|
|
|
|
Show Posts
