Craig Wright wins another appeal against Dorsey, Block, BTC developers, et al.
Hope no one here is using open source software from the UK or distributing open source software which eventually ends up in the UK--<p>Because the UK court of appeals thinks it&#x27;s okay, in effect, if individuals located in other countries are forced to undertake millions of dollars in costs going to a full trial over a claim that they were violating the copyright of the file format of an MIT licensed piece of software, initiated by a person who (fraudulently, in this case) claims to be the initial author of the software.<p>At first instance the claimant here danced around disclosing that the file format was originally distributed as part of the software (presumably as it would have opened him up to having his case discarded on the basis that our use of it was unambiguously licensed)-- causing the trial court to throw out the claim on the basis that a work must be fixated in a durable form to be eligible for copyright protection.   The claimant appealed, and the appeals court allowed the claim to move forward.<p>Recently the UK appeals court overturned a decision in another case by the same claimant where he sued a journalist for defamation for saying he wasn&#x27;t Bitcoin&#x27;s creator.  The court found that Wright&#x27;s case was willfully false and awarded only 1 pound in damages (the journalist was forced to abandon his defense due to running out of money), the appeals court concluded that the judge could not diminish damages just because of misconduct in the case.<p>Previously the UK appeals court overturned a dismissal in yet another case by a shell company owned by this claimant against the many of the same defendants in this latest appeal.  In that case, the claimant alleged &quot;hackers&quot; stole 111k Bitcoin that he claims without real substantiation belong to him and that the collection of mostly-former Bitcoin developers have a fiduciary duty to add a cryptographic backdoor into the Bitcoin system to allow the claimant to &quot;recover&quot; these coins.  The court at first instance found that he had no serious prospect of success and overturned the claim only to be overturned by the appeals court.<p>The UK has long been known as a popular destination for libel tourism ( <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.opendemocracy.net&#x2F;en&#x2F;prigozhin-government-russia-ukraine-hack-libel-slapp&#x2F;" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.opendemocracy.net&#x2F;en&#x2F;prigozhin-government-russia...</a> as a recent and particularly offensive example )-- but the vulnerability to abuse is apparently not limited to libel claims.<p>Of course, we fully expect to win the lawsuits-- both because he&#x27;s obviously not the owner&#x2F;rights-holder and because the claims would still be absurd for the true owner given the statements and licensing made by the creator of the system-- but the problem is that to get there we&#x27;re looking at over ten million of dollars in total costs in each case.  In our case we&#x27;ve been able to find funding, but not every open source developer that might be targeted with these sorts of claims would be as fortunate.  The fact that you can expect to ultimately win is irrelevant if you&#x27;re bankrupted before you get there (as the aforementioned journalist discovered; even his reprieve on damages was overturned).