Was there a post by theymos stating he has actually taken any legal advice on any matter related to the forum?
It would be reasonable to presume that theymos has sought legal advice of one form or another, whether he admits it or not... yet if he specifically denies the seeking of legal advice or specifically studying up on the various topics (sometimes one of the most dangerous folks can be a layman who thinks that he knows the various legal nuances of matters, especially if they get fairly complicated in the context of running a world-wide forum on a topic that is not exactly uncontroversial). I would think that if he is not seeking counsel and/or doing a decent amount of his own due diligence, then he would likely be acting reckless and perhaps in breach of various duties that he arguably might have (including fiduciary duties and other kinds of duties that might apply), unless his denial of consulting and/or researching into matters were to be to just to throw us off. Don't get me wrong. I certain level of value can come from not discussing certain kinds of matters.
I have proclaimed that theymos has a very wide range of discretion, including the kinds of discretion that comes from ownership rights, yet the law is not always 100% clear in regards to the various boundaries, and the law is also not a static kind of a guidance, and surely there can be value in avoiding litigation, which has been discussed in various threads (even by theymos) from time to time...including various questions about compliance or non-compliance can come up whenever various kinds of authorities are requesting forum information (which has also been discussed or at least mentioned from time to time), and surely any forum administrator receiving such notices is going to have to try to figure out the various cooperation options that are available and the potential consequences, including jurisdictional variance, which are are likely not commonsensical in many of the cases.
From my thinking ("according to me," as some of our non-native-english speakers like to say.. hahahahaha), it would likely be irresponsible to either try to act upon common sense ideas or to presume knowledge of how to deal with potentially complicated and ambiguous kinds of topics, even if there had been a lot of layman's level research going on, and maybe even theymos had gone to law school, which may or may not help since even folks who specialize in law, may have to seek counsel from some other attorney (attorneys) who specializes in the kind of law that is currently at issue, and some attorneys are going to be more informed about the nuances of the law as it evolves, including a keeping up of the evolving areas of law as compared with other attorneys.
And sometimes, when courses of action are chosen, there can be purposeful choices to stay more within the straight-forward readings of what can and cannot be done, and other folks purposefully might choose to act within more risky kinds of bounds, and surely, I have no problem with the idea of acting somewhat conservatively, yet sometimes folks can go overboard in their level of conservativism, including in times like this where there has been some additional legal cover that has been given by various administrative pronouncements that are at least stating that they are going to be less hostile in a variety of ways.... Yeah, I understand that maybe there are 4-5 issues, for example and if the executive had clarified 2-3 of those issues, they might not have had clarified all of them, so there might be some waiting involved about some of the other areas, including erroring on the side of caution (which yeah, I have already given my own superficial assessment that too much conservativism might be going on).
Maybe he has but I cannot recall reading any post where theymos made that claim.
You don't need to read such specifics in any such post in order to presume both that some levels of legal counsel and/or legal researchhas been happening and/or that it would be a good thing to seek legal advice of some sort or another... including that theymos likely has few obligations to specifically describe the extent to which he has sought and/or is relying on legal advice, and sometimes attorneys will also advise against disclosing legal relations and/or the extent to which legal advice is relied upon, even though surely it can be helpful to have various legal memos in the file that might relate to the legal advice that was sought and what kinds of legal advice was given at various points in time.
As for his reservations about allowing mixers in the forum, I doubt he will change his opinion regardless of any legal advice he could receive (though it might be beneficial for him to at least have those discussions).
Of course it would be beneficial to have those kinds of discussions if they have not already been had, and surely there could be resources that could be consulted without consulting with any actual human (lawyer, lawfirm or variety of law firms or otherwise), yet I would think some level of due diligence would both be beneficial and it probably has already taken place at various times during the forum's history, including that there may well would have had been times in which those legal consultations were taking place in the earliest times of the forum... so there may well not need to be recent consultations in order for there to have had been various kinds of ongoing learning that might be based on the combination of earlier consultations and further learning along the way.
And, of course, as I already mentioned, the law is not exactly black and white as might frequently be presumed by folks, even though surely there are areas of the law that are more settled than others, and I doubt that any of us would presume internet related laws to be settled and/or communications about controversial and paradigm shifting technologies (whether bitcoin and/or shitcoins) to be settled either... By the way, surely one of the areas of the law that can become more problematic is when there are financial components involved, whether the forum is financially benefitting and/or members are financially benefitting. It would be nuts to presume that there have not been any legal consultations in regards to how to try to avoid litigation when the forum allows for various kinds of these activities.
I guess my main point is that aspects of theymos's chosen framework seems a bit overly conservative, and it may be good for him, the forum and forum members if he might be able to potentially seek the opinion of more than one legal counsel, to the extent that legal counsel might be influencing his level of chosen conservativism in regards to timelines to potentially revisit these kinds of matters and potentially if there might be some lightening actions that already could be taken based on our obviously having a less hostile environment in regards to mixers and various related third-party (internet communication services) liability topics.
