RE: Why “the code is law hence no fork” position with regard to the Ethereum DAO is inconsistent
https://m.reddit.com/r/ethereum/comments/4oo3ud/an_open_letter_to_the_attacker/
"Hi attacker,
I've reviewed your contract and do not consider it valid. Therefore I am making the decision not to enforce it.
Your refer to the code of your contact as authoritative. This is a fallacy.
According to the code that is responsible for administering your contract - namely, the code that mines the Ethereum network, each miner has complete discretion to decide for himself which transactions to include in a block. As miners we have the ability to decide not to recognize your transactions as valid. You knew this when you made the decision to manipulate the contract, so that was a risk you took, which appears to have backfired.
You are welcome to pursue your case in court. Good luck with that!
Sincerely,
A miner
Edit: excellent and thought provoking conversation all around! Thanks!
This has nothing to do with the morality of supposed theft or the original intent of the contract vs the code as written with bugs. That's not the issue here. The reason I consider the contract invalid is because I believe it is unenforceable: if the attack is an existential threat to ethereum then honoring it requires me to take a "suicide pill". Any code which can be weaponized against the network is invalid in my opinion. Others may disagree.
The attacker is welcome to pursue legal action with me, one guy, in another country, who signed no contract with anyone and who is running open source code that allows me to modify it at will. I will simply point out to the court that by the attackers own logic ("the code defines the rules") then he must also abide by the higher order code that mines - or invalidates - his contract."