legal issues

[delulo]

Was there some legal due diligence? What is the legal status of PM? Would a blockchain based PM be different in that respect? Best- and worst-case scenario?

[psztorc]

I have no clear idea. Most of the smart people I've mentioned it to seem to think that (in the United States) there would be a clear distinction between [1] creating this software, and [2] creating a specific Market (for example one that could be construed as a commodity (ie price of gold).

In general, laws today are so vague that anyone can be arrested and convicted of anything. It really comes down to the opinion of jurors or Senators.

I guess the worst case scenario would be that everyone involved with the project is assassinated by the military. I don't think that the actual ongoing operation of the software would be affected, though.

[psztorc]

I do advise some groups who want to "[1] create the software", but outside of my proof of concept am not doing it myself. I have no idea what my legal status is, because, as I said, the average innocent person commits multiple felonies a day.

[delulo]

I guess the worst case scenario would be that everyone involved with the project is assassinated by the military. I don't think that the actual ongoing operation of the software would be affected, though.

At least something...

Apart from all the legal tricks, let's try to think what the parts are that might upset people (rightfully or not):
- Risk to be defrauded by the PM operator (in case of a centralized PM by the operator or if the voting model of a decentralized PM fails) for a lot of money especially if the PM is big.
- A scenario I would be worried about myself: Someone goes short on a company's stock -> attacks this company (bombing plants, injecting poison into food the company produces) -> takes profits anonymously.  There was a discussion here https://bitsharestalk.org/index.php?topic=2921.0;all

Any arguments or measures to prevent these two scenarios (the first one you addressed with your whitepaper, the second one is more interesting)?

[psztorc]

Your "second scenario" is an interesting question. Theoretically, one would think this is a problem, but a non-negligible set of individuals can already short a company's stock more or less anonymously (with the option to do something horrible to purposefully drive the stock price down), yet we don't really see these things happening.

My guess is that individuals rich enough to speculate in stock markets have too much to lose by going to prison to try something like this. Its just a guess. Empirically we don't see this type of behavior.

[delulo]

I think the difference is the degree of anonymity that is possible with public key cryptography.
Let's assume it becomes a problem would there be measures to excludes such PM / bets?

[psztorc]

Not on a company's stock price.

Branches have coordination-rules, on what exactly constitutes Un-resolvable Decisions (something off-topic or impractically vague). I had always planned to start off the first Main Branch (which I expect to be the only Branch for a while) with a No-Violence rule resembling "Any Decision will be voted Un-resolvable if it refers in any way to human-induced violence, including murder, assassinations, military activities, court-ordered-death-penalties, acts of terrorism, etc."

It seems wise to be cautious about that, certainly at first. And respect our predecessors, who learned a few lessons the hard way.