- Craig Wright was yesterday awarded default judgement in the first of his Bitcoin whitepaper cases
- Wright took on Bitcoin.org developer Cøbra, who chose to forfeit the case so as to retain his anonymity
- Wright celebrated the empty victory, but tougher assignments await
Craig Wright has been awarded a default judgement in the first of his lawsuits against developers hosting the Bitcoin whitepaper. Bitcoin developer Cøbra, who continued to host the Bitcoin whitepaper on the Bitcoin.org site after Bitcoincore.org took theirs down in the face of Wright’s lawsuit five months ago, offered no defense against the charges of copyright infringement at London’s Business and Property Courts yesterday. This means that Wright was awarded a default win while Cøbra was left picking up Wright’s £35,000 ($48,500) bill. While the verdict will be recorded as a victory, and has been celebrated as such by the BS…B…BSV Enterprise Utility Blockchain or However You Want to Phrase The Words camp, morally it is as empty as Wright himself because it was not contested.
Wright’s Bitcoin Whitepaper Lawsuit Spree
Wright’s lawsuit against Cøbra was one of a spate he issued toward the end of January when he threatened “nuclear Armageddon” on the cryptocurrency industry. In falsely claiming to be Bitcoin creator Satoshi Nakamoto, Wright had demanded that copies of the Bitcoin whitepaper be taken down from certain websites, claiming that they infringe his copyright as he didn’t give them permission to host it.
Bitcoin.org and Bitcoincore.org were the first to feel his wrath, and while Bitcoincore.org acquiesced, fearing a lawsuit, Bitcoin.org, through Cøbra, refused to comply, leading to Wright pursuing legal action. In serving Cøbra with legal papers he was giving the developer a tough choice: either contest the suit and be forced to reveal his identity or retain his anonymity and forfeit it. This will certainly have factored into Wright’s thinking in terms of targets for his legal action – go for those who will have a harder time defending themselves.
Cøbra Forfeits the Case for Safety Reasons
While the Bitcoin community would have dearly loved Cøbra to sacrifice his anonymity for the greater good it would have been unfair to expect him to, and he chose not to for safety reasons, refusing to acknowledge the service of the papers and not entering a defense. The ramifications of this were that the judge had to take Wright’s filings on face value and award him a default judgement on that basis.
Wright’s legal team and BSV stooge Calvin Ayre shouted about their famous victory from the rooftops as you’d expect, but make no mistake – this was like a football team claiming a victory because the opposition didn’t turn up and so the referee awarded them the game. There was no actual contest, so any ‘victory’ is entirely empty in its merit. Not that this will mean anything to Wright – if you and your 16-year-old mates bully a 10-year-old out of his lunch money, you still got the lunch money, right?
Thankfully tougher assignments await Wright, such as the lawsuit from the Cryptocurrency Open Patent Alliance (COPA), where he can’t expect to score an open goal and claim a victory for all mankind.
