The only way that the possibility even exists is to implement a hardfork, and the hardfork would need to have super-majority (17/21) support from the witnesses.
There isn't really a way to do a hardfork that prevents witnesses from doing another hardfork.
I guess that makes sense. If launching a hardfork is essentially just getting everyone congregated onto the next iteration of the chain -- the I suppose you could rewrite the rules however you'd like.
If that's the case -- then wouldn't it also be possible to roll-back the chain to before the funds were powered down, and then go after the funds?
You'd think that the best way to secure the funds would be to leverage the influence that comes with the stake and ensure that responsible witness are in (or remain in) top slots -- rather than scattering these funds all over the place...
If there was a rollback, that would affect other user's balances as well - so that would not good.
Steemit has enough stake to unilaterally choose the witnesses themselves if they decided to use it.
Which sort of makes pointless the whole concept that
An alternative would be for them to vote to replace witnesses, which while I can't speak for them, is something I believe they would prefer to avoid doing
Using their stakes in such manmer would simply signal the end of the entire steem Blockchain .
As it is, the steemit team need to comply .otherwise witnessesay as well start packing their bags and moving to other blockchains.
Users will become distressed as well and start powering down more.