> Whatever the terms of theDAO, there WILL be judges to find that what just happened to it is theft.
I am not completely sure if it went to court and it was litigated fully it would be found that the theDAO smart contracts that were buggy could be rolled back to what was "intended" as there was language that specifically denied that form of reasoning. theDAO clearly fucked up but that doesn't invalidate a contract. The intent in the contract was actually clearly declared, the smart contract was binding in its form. The smart contract's intent was its code. It's code was buggy. Thus one will have to litigate in court whether intent can inferred from buggy code and whether a software bug can be rules as outside of intent. Rolling back transactions like that are really exceptional.
I think it is quite interesting. A lot of people in the stock market have lost money because of software bugs, although everyone didn't agree beforehand that that software was the intent. I think it could go either way with theDAO's software contract if it was litigated.
That said you could possibly sue the implementers of the smart contract for negligence to try to recover the loss, or those that advertized theDAO as a viable investment vehicle for false advertizing or misleading one about safety, both of those are much more straight forward legal avenues.
I am not completely sure if it went to court and it was litigated fully it would be found that the theDAO smart contracts that were buggy could be rolled back to what was "intended" as there was language that specifically denied that form of reasoning. theDAO clearly fucked up but that doesn't invalidate a contract. The intent in the contract was actually clearly declared, the smart contract was binding in its form. The smart contract's intent was its code. It's code was buggy. Thus one will have to litigate in court whether intent can inferred from buggy code and whether a software bug can be rules as outside of intent. Rolling back transactions like that are really exceptional.
I think it is quite interesting. A lot of people in the stock market have lost money because of software bugs, although everyone didn't agree beforehand that that software was the intent. I think it could go either way with theDAO's software contract if it was litigated.
That said you could possibly sue the implementers of the smart contract for negligence to try to recover the loss, or those that advertized theDAO as a viable investment vehicle for false advertizing or misleading one about safety, both of those are much more straight forward legal avenues.