Bitcoin Defense Lawyer Says Craig Wright Lawsuit Could Harm Open Source Software

Jessica Jonas, chief legal officer of the non-profit Bitcoin Legal Defense Fund, discusses the potential legal ramifications of a high-profile lawsuit against Bitcoin Core developers during the Bitcoin 2023 event in Miami on May 18.

The case in question is a UK legal action filed by Craig Wright, owner/operator of Tulip Trading. Wright is perhaps most famous for his claim that he is bitcoin creator Satoshi Nakamoto – a claim that has sparked another unrelated lawsuit.

I just wanted to say a quick reminder for BTC Core and Roger Inc.

You are in the grip of litigation. Those telegram groups, signal groups, others you think I don’t know about are all discoverable evidence and looting is a criminal offense. pic.twitter.com/vtjFmeGrRd

— Dr. Craig S. Wright (@Dr_CSWright) February 3, 2023

In the case of Tulip Trading and 14 named individuals allegedly involved in the open source development of bitcoin core and others, Wright alleges that said developers owe him a fiduciary duty. Jonas described the case as “an allegation that Tulip Trading allegedly owned 111,000 bitcoins and was hacked, allegedly, and that 111,000 bitcoins were lost in some Ocean’s 11 style hack.” Gave.”

To receive compensation for the alleged losses, according to Jonas, Wright is demanding that bitcoin developers “build a backdoor into the bitcoin core blockchain so that Tulip Trading can recover the allegedly lost funds,” a measure Jonas claims not to have implemented:

“They’re asking the court to order that this group of software developers write a patch to the software that diverts the funds. That’s not how bitcoin works. It’s impossible.”

Jonas explained that the bitcoin blockchain would have to work hard to implement such a change and then expect everyone in the world to shift to the new fork instead of continuing to use the existing core chain. Describing the area of ​​law surrounding fiduciary duty as “complex”, Jonas characterized the lawsuit as exceptionally dangerous for reasons beyond technical limitations.

Jonas claimed, “This case has actually already gone through an appeal and the appellate court found that whether or not open source developers should owe a fiduciary duty to the people who use their code is an issue.” is important.” Furthermore, Jonas described the potential threat to the open source community as “existential”. “Open source software makes up 97% of the world’s software,” he said.

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Jonas also framed the matter as a matter of free speech. Despite the fact that many of the defendants named in the suit are US citizens working in the US, the case is being tried in the UK following an appeals court ruling that the likely outcome was in the public interest in that country. The reason lies in jurisdiction. ,

According to Jonas, software development is considered free speech in the US and according to his assessment, “Tulip Trading is working in a UK court in a civil action to force many Americans to speak up.” While a UK court cannot necessarily enforce free speech laws in the US, Jonas pushed back against the idea that it would be far-fetched for a court to rule in Wright’s favor.

Bitcoin open source development is under the open source license of MIT. Because open-source software is generally available to anyone, anywhere, assigning fiduciary duty to developers could create a situation where someone in one country is liable for damages caused to someone in another, Because he contributed to the open source project. The current law, Jonas explained, is meant to protect open source developers from being sued by strangers:

“They’re volunteering their time to work on public infrastructure. They’re doing it for free. They’re doing it under the MIT license, which is supposed to protect them from things like this. “

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