[elaineo]

Now say, you took out a mortgage and came up with 5 million dollars. Another 100 people don't have any dollars, so they would like to seize your 5 million dollars with a patch. There's a clear majority vote to take your 5 million dollars. Should they be allowed to do that?

[ilaksh]

Its not anything like that though. Its more like the small group of investors with the most money in the pot are voting to protect the large amount of money 'hacked' away. Its not like a majority stealing money.

The idea of decentralization and objective rule by code is sound, but the other part of this is that it is an alpha system that was untested, and obviously this was a theft. Forking in this case does not invalidate the concept or the team or any of it.

It doesn't mean there will be people forking in the future to steal money.

It really seems like most people are operating on the same level that the kids were in my 7th grade class. Which is pretty bad, because it was full of dullards, children acting almost like monkeys, and actual juvenile criminals.

Honestly the common reaction here is at a middle-school level.

[elaineo]

If investors think it's theft, they should call the authorities.

The suspect (not "thief", because "theft" is determined in a court of law) can then be convicted via due process, which is a constitutional right.

After the Mt. Gox hack, users contacted authorities. The Mt. Gox hack lost $600M worth of bitcoin. They are now recovering some of their funds.

[Animats]

It's worth comparing the Madoff scam. It's been a long, slow grind, with lawsuit after lawsuit against many different parties. But 63% of the losses of direct customers of Madoff have been recovered.[1]

The anonymity feature of Etherium is why this can't happen with the DAO. Nobody knows who has that money. It's tied to a numbered account. They haven't been able to launder it yet, but everyone seems to assume they will be able to.

If Etherium were non-anonymous, this problem could have been unwound in court.

[1] http://www.madofftrustee.com/recoveries-04.html

[PeterisP]

That's a possible course of action, but in order to be practical and effective in restoring justice, it needs some technical abilities that Ethereum currently doesn't have and probably cannot have - namely, the ability within due process to (a) freeze the anonymous stolen funds during the trial and (b) after a (hypothetical) decision of court, seizing the funds against the will of the account's owner (e.g. trial in absentia).