The Bitcoin whitepaper has returned to the Bitcoin.org website.
The Bitcoin whitepaper has been re-uploaded to the Bitcoin.org website after Craig Wright’s failed attempt to prove in court that he is the pseudonymous founder of the protocol, Satoshi Nakamoto.
Hennadii Stepanov, the administrator of the Bitcoin.org website, announced the return of the Bitcoin whitepaper by sharing a link to the PDF of Platform
Legal restrictions forced Bitcoin.org to restrict access to the Bitcoin whitepaper to UK-based users. Instead, it displayed the following poignant quote from Satoshi Nakamoto: ‘It takes advantage of the nature of information that makes it easy to spread but difficult to suppress.’
In 2021, Wright successfully sued Cobra, the anonymous group that runs the website, for copyright infringement, and the website was ordered to remove the white paper PDF.
Wright won by default after Cobra, the pseudonymous owner of the website, decided not to defend. This resulted in Cobra paying £35,000 ($40,100) of Wright’s legal fees. Wright applied for U.S. copyright registration for the Bitcoin white paper in 2019.
In 2023, Wright sued 13 Bitcoin Core developers, Blockstream, Coinbase, and Block for copyright violations related to the Bitcoin white paper, file formats, and database permissions on the Bitcoin blockchain. sued a group of companies including (Block).
The Bitcoin Legal Defense Fund responded by highlighting the trend of malicious lawsuits against prominent Bitcoin contributors. According to the defense fund, these lawsuits hinder development because of the time, stress, cost and legal risks involved.
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But Wright’s copyright victory no longer matters. This is because his claims that he was Satoshi Nakamoto and that he wrote the white paper were conclusively proven to be false, invalidating his copyright claim.
The detailed ruling came in connection with a lawsuit filed against Wright by the Crypto Open Patent Alliance (COPA), a coalition of prominent companies seeking to block Wright from asserting ownership of Bitcoin’s core intellectual property.
COPA alleged that Wright engaged in an elaborate forgery and fraud scheme to fabricate evidence to support his claim as Nakamoto.
Craig Wright’s assets worth 6.7 million British pounds ($8.4 million) have been frozen after a British court approved a plan to prevent him from dodging court costs.
The Bitcoin whitepaper is now covered by the MIT Open Source License, allowing anyone to reuse and modify the code for any purpose.
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