In a recent tweet, self-proclaimed Bitcoin creator, Dr. Craig Wright, indirectly accused Apple of violating copyright laws by including the Bitcoin white paper in its macOS operating systems without permission.
The accusation comes after blogger Andy Baio recently discovered that the foundational text of Bitcoin, written by the pseudonymous founder Satoshi Nakamoto in 2008, is buried deep inside new MacBooks. Baio found a copy of the white paper in an innocuous file, “simpledoc.pdf,” included as part of Apple operating system MacOS, and discovered that it has been integrated into every copy of macOS since Mojave in 2018.
The Bitcoin white paper details the decentralized nature of Bitcoin and outlines its underlying technology, the blockchain. The document has been widely circulated and is available for free on the internet.
Despite this not being the first time that the Bitcoin white paper has been sighted in Apple’s operating system, Dr. Craig Wright took to Twitter to accuse the tech giant of violating copyright laws. He responded to a message that stated that Apple might be infringing upon copyright and asked for his view on the matter, by simply replying “Yes.”
Craig Wright is an Australian computer scientist who claims to be the Satoshi Nakamoto. According to him, he was involved in Bitcoin’s creation along with his friend, the deceased computer security expert Dave Kleiman. However, his claims are not widely accepted by the cryptocurrency community, which remain highly skeptical of his assertion.
The Bitcoin white paper has been the subject of copyright disputes in the past. In 2019, Bitcoin.org was ordered by a UK court to remove the white paper from its website after Craig Wright sued the website’s owner, claiming that the paper infringed his copyright.
