Craig Wright, an Australian entrepreneur who claims to be the creator of Bitcoin, has won a court ruling in the U.K. ordering bitcoin.org to stop hosting the research paper that first described the cryptocurrency.
Wright claimed that the site infringed his copyright in the paper, which was authored by the mysterious and pseudonymous Satoshi Nakamoto. The court returned a default judgment after Cobra, bitcoin.org's pseudonymous operator, chose not to respond formally to the lawsuit, citing a desire to remain anonymous. Wright was not required to provide evidence of his authorship to the court, which judged in his favor in the absense of a defense.
"Unfortunately, the court rules allowed for me to be sued pseudonymously, however, I couldn't defend myself pseudonymously," wrote Cobra on Twitter. "So I was put in an impossible situation of losing my privacy or losing the case in a default judgment. It sucks, but there's nothing more I could have done, really."
Wright's claim to be the creator of bitcoin seems to be given little credence by experts, and the BBC once reported that he backed off promises to provide 'proof' after 'complaints that earlier evidence he had published online was misleading.'
The court victory, however, offers a legal gloss to Wright's position that has already paid dividends: it has been widely reported that the court ruled that Wright is Satoshi Nakamoto and that bitcoin.org was forced to remove the white paper. In fact, the ruling was a default judgment on copyright interest in the white paper, and it is still live at https://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf, albeit with a superficial hurdle for U.K. IP addresses.
