Author: Jameson Lopp 2018-02-13 15:45:55
Published on: 2018-02-13T15:45:55+00:00
The Bitcoin protocol developers are not responsible for defending Bitcoin against perceived social attacks. Brian Lockhart agrees and suggests fighting such attacks with social and marketing-based efforts rather than relying on courts or governments. Jameson Lopp believes that the proposed solution to disincentivize fork coins from using the word Bitcoin by altering the license terms is useless unless an entity intends to make use of court systems. He argues that any defense against a social/marketing-based attack should also be social/marketing-based. Meanwhile, Natanael suggests that the trademark holder should prohibit any reimplementation that's not formally verified to be perfectly compatible from using the name, but it adds legal uncertainty and doesn't affect anybody forking older versions of Bitcoin or using existing independent blockchain implementations. Additionally, being unable to even mention Bitcoin is overkill, and the software license doesn't affect the blockchain data.
Updated on: 2023-06-13T00:41:45.044854+00:00