On the legalities... there is no jurisdiction to try this in.

If there was, the case would be
"He sold me a bunch of funny money, that didn't do what i wanted it to do"
and the judge would laugh his ass off.

But, if there was a president about tokens being worth something AND there was a court that could try this, then

• according to contract law, that these tokens were meant for X,Y,Z and not for voting was well known, and all parties were working on that assumption. Thus there is an obligation on those tokens.
• Ned had to disclose those obligations to anyone he sold those tokens to.
• Ned only sold steemit.com, and since there was a huge emphasis, by him and others (changing logos...) then the sale of steemit.com does not come with controlling interest in STEEM blockchain.