For the past few days, the cryptocurrency community has been discussing the recent actions taken by Craig Wright’s attorneys against web portals that host the original Bitcoin whitepaper. Letters have recently been sent to a number of websites asking for the paper to be removed for alleged copyright infringement.
Bitcoin White Paper Copyright Allegations
The digital currency space is controversial again as a number of web portals like bitcoin.org have been notified by the Craig Wright legal team asking them to remove the Bitcoin whitepaper from their website. Wright has claimed for years that he was the inventor of Bitcoin, Satoshi Nakamoto, but Wright has never proven this to the wider community.
We posted a note on CSW, the Bitcoin whitepaper, and Bitcoin Core’s recent promotions https://t.co/M2jP4FS24i
– Cøbra (@CobraBitcoin) January 21, 2021
Additionally, Wright claims to be the “legal owner” of the bitcoin.org domain, alleging that a group of people have taken control of the website and changed information. The current owners of bitcoin.org deny Wright’s allegations, emphasizing that Wright’s allegations are “unfounded” and the website refuses to comply.
“Yesterday both bitcoin.org and bitcoincore.org received allegations of copyright infringement of the Bitcoin whitepaper by lawyers representing Craig Steven Wright,” bitcoin.org said in a statement on the details of the incident. “In this letter they claim Craig owns the copyright of the paper, the Bitcoin name, and the ownership of bitcoin.org. 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 remove the white paper. We believe that these allegations are unfounded and we reject them, ”the operators of bitcoin.org emphasized.
The attempt to add the Bitcoin whitepaper back to the Bitcoin Core Github has been blocked, although it has been proven that the whitepaper is MIT licensed and the thread shows almost no “trollling”: https://t.co/LhUnXJhrdy
Total fear and total surrender. Bitcoin Core is dead as an IMO project.
– Cøbra (@CobraBitcoin) January 21, 2021
The owner of the website bitcoin.org, known by the pseudonym “Cobra”, also tweeted about the latest claims made by Wright’s lawyers. Additionally, Bitcoin Core’s senior custodian, Vladimir Van Der Laan, said on Github that the whitepaper “doesn’t necessarily need to be hosted here” in relation to the bitcoincore.org website, which has also been notified by lawyers. “If no one can refer to an explicit place where Satoshi licensed it under a free license, it is legally safer to remove it from the bitcoin-core.org website,” Van Der Laan wrote.
Cobra didn’t seem to appreciate Van Der Laan’s decision and tweeted about the legal letters. “You are being forced by a legal letter to change Bitcoin Core’s website and remove the whitepaper at CSW’s request,” Cobra wrote in response to Van Der Laan’s tweet on the issue. “They set precedents and legitimized his claims and made it more likely that his attack on bitcoin.org would be successful. No compassion, ”continued Cobra’s scathing criticism.
The current domain owner of bitcoin.org also tweeted how people can donate to the web portal’s legal fund against the white paper’s copyright claims.
Cobra tweeted:
If you would like to contribute to /bitcoin.org’s legal defense against CSW’s copyright claims regarding the whitepaper and alleged ownership of the domain. We have a donation address. We can’t let this go on.
Crypto advocates ridicule Wright’s attempts that the paper was open source and in the public domain
The topics have become a hot topic on social media, and crypto backers have been discussing the White Paper’s alleged copyright claims with great passion. Many Bitcoin proponents announced that they would host the white paper on their websites. Bitcoin supporter Bruce Fenton told his 55,000 Twitter followers that the Bitcoin whitepaper was open source and in the public domain.
“The white paper was in the original repo, which was licensed under MIT. CSW clings to straws here, ”insisted another person. Billfodl’s Twitter account stated that it also refused to remove the website’s hosted whitepaper.
“We also refuse to remove our white paper, just like Cobra Bitcoin,” said Billfodl’s Twitter account. “CSW and Calvin’s thugs don’t scare us.” The bitcoin.org legal defense fundraising address for the organization has started receiving a string of BTC donations since Cobra tweeted about the copyright infringement situation.
US Copyright Office “does not investigate the truth of any statement made”
In addition, there are other people who have claimed the copyright on the Bitcoin whitepaper in the past.
Wei Liu, a former executive at bitcoin mining company F2pool, easily registered a copyright on the bitcoin whitepaper, merely claiming to be the pseudonymous Satoshi Nakamoto and the author of the paper text. A statement by the United States’ Copyright Bureau on Wright’s 2019 copyright claim even stated that the government agency “does not investigate the truth of any statement made.”
What do you think of the latest Craig Wright claims? Let us know what you think on this matter in the comments section below.
Tags in this story
Bitcoin White Paper, Bitcoin.org, Bruce Fenton, Cobra, Copyright, Copyright Claims, Copyright Infringement, Craig Wright, Lawyers, Licensed, Litigation, Notice, Open Source, Public Domain, Satoshi Nakamoto, Vladimir van der Laan
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