Learn how a British judge’s ruling restricts access to Bitcoin’s whitepaper on Bitcoin.org amid an ongoing legal dispute.
Breaking news: A British judge has essentially barred UK users from seeing Bitcoin’s lauded whitepaper on the Bitcoin.org website. In the context of Craig Wright’s lawsuit against Bitcoin.org, the choice was made.
Website for Bitcoin: the most recent information about the release of the whitepaper
Since there isn’t an official Bitcoin website, the Bitcoin.org website isn’t exactly the official Bitcoin website.
The bitcoin.org domain is the one that is most closely associated with being Bitcoin’s official website, despite not officially being it. Satoshi Nakamoto registered the domain directly in August 2008, before the highly famous whitepaper had even been released.
However, Bitcoin is an unowned, open-source protocol, so it is impossible to refer to even Satoshi Nakamoto’s own website as “official.”
However, posting at least the Bitcoin whitepaper on this page would be more than logical.
Whitepaper for Bitcoin, recent news
The document that Satoshi Nakamoto used to introduce the Bitcoin protocol on October 31, 2008, is technically not a “whitepaper,” yet everyone now refers to it as such.
On that very date, Nakamoto posted an announcement about it to the Cryptography Mailing List, clearly stating that it was a PDF that could be downloaded from Bitcoin.org.
Therefore, it really is absurd that that website shouldn’t host and post that PDF.
It is important to keep in mind that the original Bitcoin protocol was entirely included in that PDF, though it underwent some unusual changes over the following few years.
Suing Craig Wright
A few years ago, Craig Wright, who identified himself as Satoshi Nakamoto, filed a lawsuit against the owners of the Bitcoin.org website.
If he were the genuine Satoshi, that would imply that he built the website, but he has no control over it and, as of yet, doesn’t seem to have any connection to it.
Given that Wright claimed to be the author of that whitepaper and did not provide his consent for Bitcoin.org to publish it, a complaint was made for copyright infringement. Wright does, however, acknowledge that he is not Bitcoin.org’s proprietor.
The issue is that the site’s administrators chose to remain anonymous by using the alias Cbra and declining to give their names to the UK court. They were defeated as a result of being unable to participate in the court case.
In fact, the court sided with Craig Wright, citing the 2016 UK Supreme Court decision in R (at the request of C) v. Secretary of State for Justice and the argument that an anonymous defendant cannot make statements without identifying himself.
Craig Wright failed to prevail
Therefore, the decision to forbid the publication of the whitepaper on the Bitcoin.org website does not recognize Craig Wright’s ownership of the document’s intellectual property; rather, it recognizes Cbra, who opted to maintain his anonymity, as having lost.
It is assumed that Wright’s intention was for Cbra to come out of the closet and that the website’s anonymous operator would now be better off revealing his identity. Not least because Bitcoin.org must pay £500,000 ($640,000) in legal expenses for Wright as a result of the conviction.
However, given that Satoshi has been completely missing for more than ten years, it is improbable that C-bra is Satoshi Nakamoto. Indeed, ownership of Bitcoin.org most likely shifted to others due to his disappearance, but it most definitely did not pass to Craig Wright.
When Craig Wright’s business partner Calvin Ayre tweeted in 2021 that Bitcoin.org’s lawsuit would force C-bra to disclose himself, C-bra replied that he would vigorously defend Satoshi’s whitepaper.
Ayre implied very directly at the time that Wright owned the copyright to that whitepaper, but the judge evidently disagreed with the self-styled Satoshi (also known as Faketoshi) on this point.
However, it is still true that you may download the fictitious original PDF at bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf.
