"I am disappointed by those who are characterizing the use of this intentional feature as "theft". I am making use of this explicitly coded feature as per the smart contract terms and my law firm has advised me that my action is fully compliant with United States criminal and tort law."
There's much argument over whether this is a hoax.
There's a good writeup in American Banker.[2] They question whether the rules should be changed.
Patrick Murck, a lawyer and researcher at Harvard University's Berkman Center:
"The contract is the code, it's unstoppable code, it's unbreakable, it's self-executing and autonomous — right up until everything goes wrong. And then, 'No no no no, that's theft!' Which is some social norm that we've attached to it that's not based in the code, and then we're going to stop the whole system and basically bail it out," he said. "Is this something we're going to do every time a smart contract fails? Or is this just because there are a lot of [Ethereum] insiders in the DAO?"
[1] http://pastebin.com/CcGUBgDG [2] http://www.americanbanker.com/news/bank-technology/what-the-...