Real world analogues can be useful for thinking about these situations: would the mob be able to steal your money and avoid charges because they got five of their guys hired by your bank to approve the deal? (Or redirected a phone line, faked letters, etc.?)
The answer is no because there’s a clear victim, and this wasn’t taking advantage of a mistake like e.g. a casino game which didn’t have the right formula but rather clearly subverting the safeguards built into the system. In the real world, no judge is going to look at that and say “well, that’s what the code did. Nothing we can do about it even though everyone knows it’s theft!” and a jury isn’t going to believe you “accidentally” broke separate safeguards on multiple systems.
That’s just the basic stuff which would have been true a century ago. In this case you’d also want to think about the relevant laws wherever they are based — for example, the U.S. CFAA bans use of a computer contrary to how the owner intends you to use it. Even if this wasn’t so clear cut, I’d expect them to successfully argue that knowingly subverting an oracle would meet that threshold since you clearly knew how the system was intended to work.
The answer is no because there’s a clear victim, and this wasn’t taking advantage of a mistake like e.g. a casino game which didn’t have the right formula but rather clearly subverting the safeguards built into the system. In the real world, no judge is going to look at that and say “well, that’s what the code did. Nothing we can do about it even though everyone knows it’s theft!” and a jury isn’t going to believe you “accidentally” broke separate safeguards on multiple systems.
That’s just the basic stuff which would have been true a century ago. In this case you’d also want to think about the relevant laws wherever they are based — for example, the U.S. CFAA bans use of a computer contrary to how the owner intends you to use it. Even if this wasn’t so clear cut, I’d expect them to successfully argue that knowingly subverting an oracle would meet that threshold since you clearly knew how the system was intended to work.