After a year or so being part of writing the Dutch National Blockchain Research Agenda, the Lab is now part of a winning consortium which puts parts of that research agenda in practice.
Together with TU Delft’s Blockchain Lab, Erasmus University, the Dutch Ministry of Interior, and others, we will be working on trustworthy blockchain applications in the next 4 years, due to a generous, 1.5M Eur NWO grant, and a similar amount of private contribution.
Alexandra and Valeria participated at Gikii 2019 organised at Queen Mary University of London on 9-10 September 2019.
Valeria focused on the issues raised by Libra’s promise to create a decentralized and permissionless financial ecosystem open to anyone. Alexandra addressed the dystopic future of having a decentralized and portable digital identity standard provided by Facebook.
The presentation can be found online here
Blockchain&Society Policy Research Lab Lunchtime talk
The Lab organised another iteration of the Lunchtime talks at the Institute for Information Law (IViR) on 6 September 2019.
Andres Guadamuz presented on the topic of his recently published paper entitled “All watched over by machines of loving grace: A critical look at smart contracts”.
Smart contracts are coded parameters written into an immutable distributed ledger called a blockchain. There has been increasing legal interest in the application of these self-executing programs to conduct transactions. Most of the scholarly and practical analysis so far has been taken the claims of this technology being akin to a contract at face value, with legal analysis of contract formation, performance, and enforcement at the forefront of the debate. This article discusses that while smart contracts may pose some interesting legal questions, most of these are irrelevant, and smart contracts should be understood almost strictly from a technical perspective, and that any legal response is entirely dependent on the technical capabilities of the smart contract. The article proposes that smart contracts are not contracts for all practical purposes.
Dr Andres Guadamuz is a Senior Lecturer in Intellectual Property Law at the University of Sussex and the Editor in Chief of the Journal of World Intellectual Property. His main research areas are on digital copyright, open licensing, software protection, cryptocurrencies, blockchains, and complexity. Andres has published two books, the most recent one of which is “Networks, Complexity and Internet Regulation”, and he regularly blogs at Technollama.co.uk. He has acted as an international consultant for the World Intellectual Property Organization, and since 2005, he has been involved with Creative Commons Scotland (while lecturer at University of Edinburgh and Associate Director of the SCRIPT Centre), Costa Rica and now the UK.
The presentation slides are available online.
https://libra.org/en-US/white-paper/
Facebook’s Calibra cryptocurrency is on its way.
It’s mission is to “enable a simple global currency and financial infrastructure that empowers billions of people”.
At TILTing 2019 the Lab presented a study on the legal instruments that are, as of today, applicable to blockchain-based digital assets under European law, and the relative enforcement challenges. The broader question to be tackled is whether and how regulators deal with such challenges, and what are the interests at stake. http://ipkitten.blogspot.com/2019/05/tilting-perspectives-2019-report-2.html
Catalina Goanta of Maastricht University organized an excellent workshop on Courts and Internet Governance, focusing on the intersection of court system and decentralized technologies.
Balazs presented his chapter co-authored with Alexandra on the logics of decentralization.
This conference builds on an initial exploration of the topic of decentralization held at the Faculty of Law at Oxford University in March 2019. The event takes the overarching theme of Internet governance, as the vast majority of the data-related issues as illustrated above has been shaped by the increased interconnectivity, use and architecture behind the Internet. The first panel tackle Internet governance from the perspective of the legal certainty necessary for stable markets and societies. The second and third panel zoom into court activity with respect to issues related big data collected, stored or linked online, as well as the circumstances underlying the lack of more litigation relating to blockchain-related wrongs.Source: Courts and Internet Governance – events – Maastricht University
The dutch parliament organized a workshop on blockchain tech. Merloes Pop, a member of our Advisory Board represented the Lab.
The debate quickly focused on the issue of legal and institutional conditions of blockchain adoption. Sadly, it was not clear for many, what kind of changes are desirable, or necessary for the desired change.
We, luckily have some ideas. Blockcain infrastructure, if we stop looking at it as a decentralized source of ultimate disruption may actually be a pretty good vehicle to export European jurisdiction and power to the developing world. This is not the libertarian dream, but rather a distopian one, unless you believe that using digital technologies to project power may actually be beneficial. Keep tuned.
Join us Friday afternoon at our “To Decentralize Everything, Hash Here: Blockchains and Information Law” panel at Tilting Perspectives 2019 conference
Blockchain is the latest technological hype to promise disruptive decentralization, especially as it relates to information goods and services. While one of the goals of decentralized technologies is to operate without the need to adhere to existing legal systems, blockchains face challenges of compatibility with these systems so as to facilitate wider adoption. This panel examines these challenges from the perspective of information law, focusing on their treatment under the legal regimes of copyright, data protection and competition. Panelsts will be Balazs Bodo, Alexandra Giannopoulou, Valeria Ferrari, Daniel Gervais and Jurgen Goossens
Source: Program for Friday, May 17th
Blockchain solutions have been proposed to restrict the power of these big middlemen. But Dr Bodo warns that these could struggle to translate the complexity of the old system into the inflexible logic of computer programming, without introducing new power injustices.‘The question is not blockchain per se – blockchain is a wonderful technology,’ he continued. But, he says, there is an open question about what happens when blockchain challenges the power of the law and the power of existing institutions.
Between 14-17 February we were in Washington DC at the American Association for the Advancement of Science meeting, proudly representing European science and research in the US together with Philip Howard and Sarit Kraus.
Our panel is on how technology affects society. Check out the program here.
