Legal threats by self-proclaimed Satoshi Nakamoto, Craig Wright, have
caused one site to remove what he claims is “his” Bitcoin whitepaper.
But others are refusing to give up so easily.
Craig Wright, the Australian computer scientist who claims to be
Bitcoin inventor Satoshi Nakamoto, has threatened legal action against
the owners of two Bitcoin (BTC) websites whom he accused of stealing his whitepaper and other intellectual property.
As announced on
Jan. 21, Bitcoin.org along with another website, Bitcoincore.org, had
received allegations of copyright infringement from Craig Wright’s
lawyers. The counsel reportedly claimed that Wright, as Bitcoin inventor
Satoshi Nakamoto,
was the legal copyright holder of the Bitcoin whitepaper, that he owned
the Bitcoin name and trademark, as well as the two websites listed
above. The announcement stated:
“Yesterday both
Bitcoin.org and Bitcoincore.org received allegations of copyright
infringement of the Bitcoin whitepaper by lawyers representing Craig
Steven Wright. In this letter, they claim Craig owns the copyright to
the paper, the Bitcoin name, and ownership of bitcoin.org.
The
announcement continues, “They also claim he is Satoshi Nakamoto, the
pseudonymous creator of Bitcoin, and the original owner of bitcoin.org.
Bitcoin.org and Bitcoincore.org were both asked to take down the
whitepaper. We believe these claims are without merit, and refuse to do
so.”
But while the owner of Bitcoin.org (a pseudonymous developer known as Cobra)
has stated his refusal to be intimidated by the threat of what they’ve
called “false allegations”, the owner of Bitcoincore.org has already
thrown in the towel.
According to Cobra, their co-accused over at Bitcoincore.org acquiesced to the requests of Craig Wright’s lawyers almost immediately. Cobra’s announcement stated:
“Unfortunately,
without consulting us, Bitcoin Core developers scrambled to remove the
Bitcoin whitepaper from bitcoincore.org, in response to these
allegations of copyright infringement, lending credence to these false
claims.
Cobra said the local copy of the whitepaper
hosted on Bitcoincore.org was removed within less than two hours, adding
a link to the Github modification which shows the change was made:
“The
Bitcoin Core website was modified to remove references to the
whitepaper, their local copy of the whitepaper PDF was deleted, and with
less than 2 hours of public review, this change was merged.”
All
references to the Bitcoin whitepaper have apparently been removed from
the Bitcoincore.org website. Cobra declared that this act of
self-censorship would only lend credence to the notion that Craig
Wright’s claims were legitimate:
“By surrendering in this
way, the Bitcoin Core project has lent ammunition to Bitcoin’s enemies,
engaged in self-censorship, and compromised its integrity. This
surrender will no doubt be weaponized to make new false claims, like
that the Bitcoin Core developers ‘know’ CSW to be Satoshi Nakamoto and
this is why they acted in this way.”
However, the owner
of Bitcoincore.org, and current maintainer of the Bitcoin code, Wladimir
J. van der Laan (@orionwl on Twitter), responded quickly, telling his Twitter audience that this issue was not a hill worth dying on:
“So
let this be clear: I'm happy to maintain the bitcoin core code, but I
will not personally be a martyr for bitcoin, it's up to you as
bitcoiners to protect it.”
Craig Wright has brought several lawsuits against various figures
in the cryptocurrency space for in some way refuting the notion that he
is Satoshi Nakamoto, and the true proprietor of Bitcoin. None of the
cases have been settled in his favor thus far.
Van der Laan
appeared to suggest that the easiest course of action was to play ball
with Wright’s lawyers, adding that his focus remained on the Bitcoin
system itself. He tweeted:
“This
thing is about decentralization and distributed systems, not personal
macho posturing, i have no interest in that and definitely don't get
paid enough to do so.”
Cobra ended his announcement on
Bitcoin.org by reiterating the open-source status of the MIT license
under which Bitcoin and its whitepaper were published, stating:
“The Bitcoin whitepaper was included in the original Bitcoin project files with the project clearly published under the MIT license by Satoshi Nakamoto. We believe there is no doubt we have the legal right to host the Bitcoin whitepaper.”
Cobra said the Bitcoin whitepaper
will continue to be hosted on Bitcoin.org, and that they hoped other
websites would follow suit in resisting Craig Wright’s attempts at
intimidation.
