On 10/24/05, Steve Schear <s.schear@comcast.net> wrote:
I don't think E-gold ever held out its system as non-reversible with proper court order. All reverses I am aware happened either due to some technical problem with their system or an order from a court of competence in the matter at hand.
Back in the days of such companies as emutualfun.com and stockgeneration.com there were cases where e-gold froze accounts without waiting for court orders. I was involved with the discussion on the e-gold mailing lists back then and it caused considerable hard feeling among the users. E-gold was struggling to deal with the onslaught of criminal activity (Ian Grigg described the prevailing mood as one of 'angst') and they were thrown into a reactive mode. Eventually I think they got their house in order and established policies that were more reasonable.
Its not clear at all that courts will find engineering a system for irreversibility is illegal or contributory if there was good justification for legal business purposes, which of course there are.
Yes, but unfortunately it is not clear at all that courts would find the opposite, either. If a lawsuit names the currency issuer as a defendant, which it almost certainly would, a judge might order the issuer's finances frozen or impose other measures which would impair its business survival while trying to sort out who is at fault. It would take someone with real cojones to go forward with a business venture of this type in such uncharted waters. CP