Free software and fiduciary duty

Posted Feb 10, 2023 12:23 UTC (Fri) by Wol (subscriber, #4433)
In reply to: Free software and fiduciary duty by gmaxwell
Parent article: Free software and fiduciary duty

> But for some reason the UK courts think that this fairy tail is a reasonable enough justification for individual volunteer developers, some of whom-- like me!-- haven't worked on bitcoin for many years, to face millions of dollars of legal costs under a potential threat of billions of dollars in damages and potential imprisonment.

You're also missing a major DIFFERENCE between the UK and US systems. The UK system tends to work in "bite size" chunks, so it's quite likely there will be a mini-trial on "do the bitcoins even belong to the defendant?". Hopefully that will be amenable to summary judgement, especially if the defendants can show the provenance of said coins.

And once the plaintiff loses credibility with the Judge, the whole mess is likely to be dismissed very quickly.

Cheers,
Wol