Either corrupt staff or regression in quality of staff

typical dumb American thinking their constitutional rights extend past the government / legal situations and can be used in an international commercial setting. Sythe mods have every right to ban your dumbass for "pleading the 5th"

Im not saying I agree with how the current system is setup / working, but sythe can easily say the burden on proof for reports is on the defendant

 

Typically in a commercial dispute, when the burden of proof is on the other party, pleading the 5th is a valid strategy if no proof is presented. Simply because if no proof is presented, you will be right by operation of law. I think that's what @Grave is trying to say (correct me if I'm wrong). I don't think he's making a case about the US constitution being applicable to Sythe.org

 

Okay, no need to state something like this, it's a given. A website/company can decide to set whatever policies they want (within law) and Sythe staff can and do ban people for what they want, but it doesn't mean that's the best route.

So let me get this clear, you're making fun of the fact that America has due process? Other places do not, perhaps where you live and therefore you believe that ... it's possible to not have it? And you are assuming that I believe this to be an impossibility? I don't get it, what's your point? Someone can advocate for human rights, while understanding that other countries lack them. It doesn't mean they don't understand that.

Right, but this would be problematic. Would you like me to report you for allegedly scamming me, and then I post absolutely no evidence, but you have to reply back with evidence? How are you going to prove that you didn't scam me? Clearly, you deleted all the logs.

By the way you're not smart for quoting one part of my statement out of context. I never said I shouldn't have been banned or should have been banned for refusing to self-incriminate, I was just stating that it's pretty ironic they chose to avoid making a response here, and I did also reference other people being in a similar situation so this definitely wasn't just about me pleading the 5th. By the way, it's saying, I don't literally mean that the 5th amendment applies here on Sythe, I'm just spelling it out for you just in case.

So I'll elaborate on this a bit, but again, I do want to re-iterate to anyone reading, this was a soundbite of what I said and it's not remote close to the full message.

If we are to focus on pleading the 5th, in my case, all I was doing is basically saying that I did not need to respond to the allegations in that case because it was irrelevant. The report was not valid, and did not have enough evidence to show that I broke any rules, especially when you take into account precedent. Eventually, I did dispute this and the moderator who handled it was too lazy to actually read my dispute so he just unbanned me. In this specific case, and at this point I'll switch over to hypotheticals and allegations: a Sythe member, in my Discord, and not the official Sythe Discord, went on webcam. He stated that I posted a screenshot of him here, which was a screenshot of him, on webcam, live, at the exact second the screenshot was posted. Everyone who was there at the time could have viewed his webcam, so this was not leaking any information/private photos. It was also not even on the Sythe Discord. And as far as I remember, I didn't have an official Discord linked to my Sythe account, and/or the account being reported wasn't my official one. I was still banned, and then I was unbanned.

Anyway, pleading the 5th seemed to have confused staff at the time. If I had known they'd take it the way they did, I would have just replied and stated that the report is not valid.

 

Yeah , if rules are put in place why are staff changing it only when it works in the favour of the direction that they wish the report to go.
I definitely do not think that @Ethereumtrader was able to plan out such an elaborate scam attempt. The report did include some undesireable concidences of @4337 selling gold at the same time. I dont think he would waste time to cooperate for a week and provide confidential information.

My question now is, would the outcome be different if the amount scammed by the "hacker" was 0.5 ETH , would staff spend 6 days deciding to review in the favour of the victim and just get QBD to pay it? Or is this only dragged and being looked into further due to it being a large trade.
Maybe an outcome would have been different if @Ethereumtrader was a 5K+ donor or had more popularity?

I have been also been banned myself just for just having gyazo and same IP audit with someone else.
Will not understand how i would actually fake a discord account which i have conversations which are dated back to more than a year , because i could anticipate getting banned from sythe so that participate in a CDT event which i paid for.
I sent more than sufficient evidence as well including private videos of my desktop with time stamps etc and it still is not enough. I think even a dead donkey would know better than placing bans just based on IP Audits , Sythe Activity , or in @White 's case a similar name.

If only i was able to afford and rent some UTs.

 

Its easily a possibility to create that account to discredit ethereumtrader.
He even added me on discord and spoke with me informing how mods are completely ignoring him, and how what shocked the mods was how he reacted to such a large sum in their eyes.

Basically mods can't believe that 7k$ isn't something to die over, and his nonchalant behaviour when it came to it was a factor in it. mods are making reports over 98$ being sent with low Sat's for example like rofl.

Also ethereumtrader added me and grave not really to push his agenda, he genuinely seems okay with it and just assumes he more or less got scammed by the website than the individual

 

Agreed for sure . A scam is a scam , regardless of amount. Sure he is well to do , but should not be ignored regardless. Maybe mods think that $7K is a small amount for a multi-millionaire / "lunch money" for him so he should just take the losses and just ban him off the site since his a newcomer anyway and has 99% chance of being a ban evader/scammer right?

Report would 100% had a different outcome , if he was maybe an active sythe user / had some rep / trade between qbd & 4337 did not happen or the amount scammed was deemed unnessecary to do further evidence by staff and just demand a repayment.

 

Lawyers spend 3 years at minimum in rigorous school for a doctorate after completing a 4 year bachelors.

Then they're expected to have a distinguished career of practically at minimum 10-20 years of judicial clerkship or work at a top law firm likely earning an average of about $300-450,000 a year in each of those 10-20 years (note, average obviously skewed higher towards end).

After all that you may or may not become a judge depending on who will appoint you. Within these distinguished individuals we call judges, we still get slightly split and sometimes directly contradictory rulings.

During a lawyer's career and as a judge, anti-bias training is mandatory every year.
If a judge knows any of the parties or heaven forbid have an actual interest in the outcome of the decision, they are required to recuse themselves.

Amongst these distinguished and well paid individuals, yet we occasionally find corruption.

That is a description of the individuals within the US Judicial system (A multi-billion dollar machine) who are expected to have consistent and well drawn rulings that usually consist of opinions that range from 20 to 100 pages of the judge's LEGAL writing.

Furthermore, the judge is required to follow precedent where applicable (in the law of contracts most issues are settled at this point and are decided by precedent, there's few if any new law by case or statute coming out with respect to contracts, and primarily what is the matter in contention on this site), and explain why that precedent applies to the present case to support the ruling. Otherwise they risk reversal upon appeal (which essentially means the trial judge messed up and is not incentivized by any judge who wants to move to a higher court than trials).

With all that being said, without commenting on the merits of your claims, do you really think that the people making these decisions are as trained, educated, and regulated as the standard of justice that is "normally" acceptable?

 

actually mind boggling that I've been saying this stuff for over a year and people thought I was trolling

 

Perhaps staff should take this into account and then as a result, instead of trying to make the job easier for themselves, realize that until we do happen to get a judge on the staff team, they are not qualified for what they're doing and therefore should be more careful when it comes to avoiding false positives. They should also at the very least stick to the basics when it comes to anything even slightly resembling a fair justice system and have the burden of proof universally on the reporter and have a very strictly defined level of evidence required. Also maybe take things slowly and not automatically giving some people a counter-claim unless it is specifically requested by that person in a separate dispute.

Staff are treating bans more like infractions as they see fit, and they fail to see that the relative intelligence to power ratio isn't exactly one to one.

And then maybe to become a staff member, at the very least require a certified IQ test with them scoring at least in the top 75% of intelligence. That should weed out anyone who is unable to open a door from being a staff member.

 

They’re free to hire me hehehe

In all seriousness if not someone experienced in these transactions with a Judicial background (I suppose that might be hard to find, and retired judges I’ve worked with charge about $1000/hr for mediation and arbitration) - someone with simply a JD and contracts experience wouldn’t be too hard to find.

But also, they would laugh at what is called “admissible evidence” here, and would probably devise a trial process significantly different than here (if you expect it to resemble how things would work in a US court).

 

I've had decisions made against me where staff have contacted me privately saying they don't agree with the decision and I was done unfairly, especially regarding the 'I__d i_ a p__o' incidents. Gladiator is the only staff member who I've seen be consistently fair and doesn't involve himself with user-to-user politics.

In summary, demote video to ex-staff and demote Gen to Global mod.

 

Hey man, thanks for responding. I usually don't post much other than for actual commercial purposes but this is a rather interesting topic. I did read 5-6 pages of the thread you linked and want to mention a couple things.

Before that, I'd like to concur in that rotations seem to be a nice sounding solution but at the same time there will be differences in capability, effort, education, and perspective - and there's still someone who "decides" who is on what rotation. I think it is probably one of the better ideas but would love to help brainstorm how to address some of those flaws.

1. The issue of applicable law - Sythe/Richard (I believe that's his name, not sure), stated that Sythe is a self-governing body with respect to civil dispute resolution.

Absolutely, it is it's own body and has that right. It's also deleterious to any dispute resolution system to use inconsistent law. First, you can state where you want applicable laws from and actually stick to it rather than referring to legal doctrines that may or may not be applicable depending on what the chosen governing body of law is and what case law/statutory law has been produced thereof.

In the law of contracts there is a separate governing body for purchases of goods rather than services called the Uniform Commercial Code and it directly contradicts/removes/adds elements to sales of goods that aren't present in an equivalent transaction if it were a service. The distinction has to be known by the trier of fact and judge to know how to interpret the situation, and we need to know (this is one of the unique challenges Sythe faces) whether virtual transactions and of what kind are referred to as either a service or product.

"In any civil dispute arising from commerce taking place between two parties who are members of Sythe.org, the law of the State of California/Delaware/New York/etc., shall applied in the resolution of such a dispute."

US Law is derived from UK Common Law. There's not much difference between our systems and the US has 400 million people (more lawyers, more law, more states to choose from, more cases to refer to, and probably easier and cheaper access to a legitimate legal scholar/professional).

Issue I: All your mods/dispute mediators, arbitrators, judges, or otherwise must now be familiar (and ideally intimately knowledgeable) about the law of that chosen governing body.
Issue II: They must be able to iterate it in a way that actually applies to the present case (I will give an example for this shortage in the thread you linked later). This takes lots of practice.
Issue III: The cases have to be written in great detail and in such away that they are generally applicable to similar cases and can be referred to in future decisions.
Issue IV: You actually have to require these new mods/judges/arbitrators/mediators to state precedent cases.
Issue V: You have to choose the breadth to which you are going to apply real world law, you can't just apply some law and not others that are directly related to to the resolution of the dispute (I will give an example of this too).

Issue I: There's just no way a number of legal scholars/lawyers can be hired, but I suppose few can. More importantly, there should probably be mandatory writing, reading, and legal training (of some minimal sort).

Issue II: I see most mods/judges (which I will admit of course I have no idea what goes on in private, what they know or don't know) - commenting in 1-2 sentences how the "feel" about the present case. "I feel it's obvious that so and so is scammed by so and so"

Great. Why is it so obvious? How is this conclusion reached? A real judge writes half a novel in terms of length explaining why he decided certain things.

Issue III: Let's refer to the doctrine that Sythe/Richard used to establish that the transfer of ownership rights does not take place wherein a party that has no such right attempts or nominally conveys upon another party property to which he has no such right.

He says "if this is a rent-to-own situation, A sold to B and B had no right to sell to C because he didn't pay it off so B cannot give any ownership rights to C".

Sure, true. How does that apply to the present case? What the is rent-to-own? There are 2 methods of what I understand they are referring to as "rent-to-own".

(1) Lease-option = You may exercise the right to purchase the asset when the lease expires.
(2) Lease-purchase = You agree to rent the asset for a specified period of time before ownership.

Let's note that both of these type of purchases are fairly uncommon.

First of all, in the law of property, when there is no otherwise specified terms (which can change the type of property rights attached to the property) it will be assumed the transaction is in fee simple absolute (modern law) and this is the overwhelming majority of cases in property in the US today.

Fee simple (for short) means full bundle of rights associated with ownership. These are the right to use/possess, enjoy, dispose, exclude, and control.

Here is a real life example. You go to the local Chevy dealership and buy a corvette for $750 a month for 3 years with a $20,000 down payment. What rights do you have?

You own the corvette in fee simple (full rights) but it is subject to reversion to the original owner (conveyor), in this case the loan issuing institution, upon default.

So can you sell that corvette? Yes, you can (contrary to what Sythe was saying). You'd still be liable to the bank for the agreement you made in terms of the $750 a month, but you can do whatever you want with your corvette even though it's not paid off yet.

In the present case, the seller issued the buyer a loan in the form of a pre-payment plan secured against the property (the account). The "magic words", as property professors will say, were "I sold XXX to so and so". That is enough for the assumption of fee simple, not a lease-purchase or lease-option.

Furthermore, when asked if he was allowed to resell, the original owner (O) stated yes without specifying that he meant only after it was paid.

> Our Corvette guy defaults

Does the bank walk up to his corvette on his property with their extra key, open it up and drive it away?

No, there is required notice (this is basic to US Constitutional Law), and specifically required time periods and forms of notices one must provide to the individual in default before they can repossess the property. You can't just grab the property even if you truly were not paid 24 hours late (whether this is specified in the terms or not, there is simply no way after being 1 minute in default you're allowed to "repossess" the property).

Furthermore, there was no specification in terms of default (perhaps other than the assumption of some sort of repossession). What happens if you're 1 minute late? Etc. This is again, a unique issue of Sythe. Are you going to full fledged follow real life law (in which case there are real answers to what proper procedure and assumptions are, but you would need to know contract law like actually, not just wikipedia which only gives you snippets of the puzzle and is probably difficult for someone without legal experience to put into the correct context when trying to understand what it says) - or are going to simply decide it arbitrarily through Sythe?

Using a hybrid method of "Some things from real life" and "some things from Sythe" doesn't work and is understandable in why it yields inconsistent and contradictory results. At the same time, I have a profound appreciation for the fact that Sythe faces VERY unique challenges in dispute resolution because of the nature of these transactions.

Issue IV: You see now how application of part real life law and entire real life law yield substantially different results. However, if you want consistent results and a proper system, you would of course have to use entire real life legal principles (which means you need someone who knows the lot of principles regarding contracts and has resolved disputes of contracts with clients or in court to know what exactly the limitations, expectations, and procedures are. A legal student isn't a lawyer yet even after reading 100s of pages a day for 3 years. It don't mean squat until you can say something useful for your client in front of a real judge. Then you're a lawyer.)

This leads to the next point, No one here is a CIA network engineer/hacker who can get 100% surefire data on every person involved in every transaction in every computer they use to know what their every move truly was.

What is admissible evidence then? Pretty much everything that is "evidence" in Sythe cases, can be altered or tampered with and has no level of assurance as to what it went through prior to being presented to the "court", if you will. In a criminal case the police hold physical evidence, in a civil case, lawyers gather physical evidence/documents in discovery.

Wtf do I know about what messages were deleted, photoshopped, etc. prior to someone posting it on Sythe? Of course there may be some evidence that can be ascertained with screenshare and whatnot, but what evidence on a completely virtual forum cannot be substantially altered or frauded with ease?

Anyhow I can go on and on, and because this topic is interesting I took the time to reveal some interesting points of discussion. Please note I have nothing against individuals reporting or individuals on Sythe staff, I think both face unique issues that are difficult to resolve, but some of these points may be taken into consideration when devising a solution.

I wouldn't want to leave this post without some constructive info so I'd add my $0.02 on what potential things we might do to resolve inconsistent disputes:

(1) Require at least a cursory legal examination for anyone involved in dispute resolution of the laws of the chosen governing body.
(2) Require people write contracts if they want to transact - this sounds cumbersome but it would probably save countless man-hours in essentially "discovery", and would probably end disputes instantly and more consistently.

It doesn't have to be a real full-length contract, all though I would recommend them for more expensive purchases.

It can be this through Sythe message:
Price (Units of Currency): 400
Currency: USD/EUR/GBP/CAD/AUD/BTC/LTC/ETH/etc.
Description of Goods/Services: User A will sell me 500M OSRS GP.
Duration: He promises to deliver within 30 minutes of cleared payment.
Account of Recipient/Sender: BTC Address/PayPal address/Email address.
Form of Delivery: In-game F2F trade, e-mail, etc.

That would basically solve 99% of issues on Sythe.

ex: "But he said 5 payments blah blah". Sorry, it clearly says "sell" which assumes fee simple absolute (transferal of full bundle of rights upon initial conveyance with a reversion to the original owner in the case of default). Since no terms were decided with respect to the procedures of default, we assume the buyer will get 20% of the total duration of payments in order to catch up, and will be notified through Sythe when he is in default, in the present case that means he has 1 week to correct default which triggers after initial notice of default. (This is an example of some rule that you can make specific to Sythe, that mimics that of real life statutes)

B-b-b-but I meant he can't sell it until he's done paying it off.

Sorry, specify it next time - the term 'sell' automatically triggers the assumption of a fee simple absolute conveyance unless otherwise specified.

Better yet, I would probably omit account trading disputes entirely from potential resolution. Simple knowledge of certain details with respect to the account is enough to recover it. How tf are you going to prove someone does or doesn't have knowledge when you buy it? How do you know who has knowledge of it when you buy it - could be anyone? When it's recovered? Most accounts are resold. Very few are sold by original owners.

This will solve evidentiary issues - why would anyone not discussing payment terms or ToS through Sythe for confirmation be subject to the trial process or jurisdiction of Sythe? If you want Sythe to help litigate a case between you and a different Sythe member, confirm the details of each transaction on Sythe?

The US courts have no interest in settling disputes (even civil commercial disputes that have implications on US citizens) if the defendant (or plaintiff, I suppose) is a foreign entity that has no commercial exposure or intent other than simply putting their products in the stream of commerce, the US Supreme court ruled that it is unconstitutional to even exercise jurisdiction over them See Asahi.

Anyhow, fun discussion, interesting perspectives and points. Hopefully this serves as a source of constructive use.

Best,
VGP