Copyright law safeguards the exclusive rights of authors to their intellectual creations, emphasizing reproduction, public display, and adaptation. A fundamental distinction within this realm is between the intangible creative work and its tangible representations. Owning a tangible embodiment (like a painting) does not grant rights to reproduce the intellectual work it embodies. This demarcation is critical in the dynamic landscape of non-fungible tokens (NFTs), as acquiring an NFT does not automatically confer rights to the associated work. Instead, rights hinge on explicit contractual terms accompanying the NFT transaction. As the world of NFTs continues to unfold in all sorts of directions, delving deep into the intricacies of copyright law is important for artists, investors, and legal practitioners navigating the digital frontier. This chapter offers insights into the various copyright implications associated with NFTs.
Frederik Temmermans, Sabrina Caldwell, Symeon Papadopoulos, Fernando Pereira · 5 authors
Advances in media content manipulation and artificially generated content pose new challenges to the assessment of media authenticity. While automated detection methods can provide meaningful insights and decision support in some scenarios, they cannot provide trustworthy and comprehensive information about the origin and provenance of media assets. Therefore, a longer-term approach should rather focus on secure and interoperable annotations related to the creation and provenance of media. In October 2020, the JPEG Committee initiated a standardization exploration named "JPEG Fake Media" to address these needs. Subsequently, since many of the requirements, for example related to secure annotation and identification of media assets, are also relevant to achieve interoperability in Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs) an additional exploration was initiated, specifically focused on standardization needs for NFTs. In April 2022 a first Call for Proposals on JPEG Fake Media was issued. Based on the responses to the call, a new standardization project named JPEG Trust was initiated to specify an interoperable framework for establishing trust in media production, distribution, and consumption. This paper presents the journey of JPEG to leverage formal methods of standardization in this context, starting from the initial JPEG Fake Media exploration, followed by the subsequent consideration of NFT use cases and requirements, through to the commencement of the new JPEG Trust international standard.
Open access
2 source records
Digital Media Forensic Detection
Advanced Steganography and Watermarking Techniques
Smart contracts, as a newly developed technology, may radically re‐shape traditional contractual relationships, transferring the power to perform and enforce from contractors to robots. This paper provides a framework which seeks to ensure that this transfer of power does not undermine vital consumer law values. The starting point is the well‐accepted idea of consumer law being based on values aiming to protect consumers as weaker parties in their relationships with traders and this will be built on using various new arguments. First it will be argued that any brave new world of smart contracts will still need the law to provide the sorts of rights it already does: smart contracts may enhance data preferences and improve choice up to a point, but they cannot produce market choices replacing the need for such legally mandated rights. Next it will be shown that to reflect underpinning protection values, some such rights must operate in particular ways. This includes rights concerning information and contract cancellation, conformity standards, remedies, and unfair terms: ‘time sensitive’ rights that must be available at certain stages of the relationship.
Non-fungible tokens, also known as NFTs, are a special kind of digital record of ownership that is utilized in a certain manner to guarantee validity and uniqueness of intangible goods. Due to its features, NFTs become interesting among art creators and even asset collector. Transactions on NFT create incredible values, which raises a number of legal issues, particularly in the realm of intellectual property rights related to copyright. This research aims to explains the connection between the existence of NFT and current copyright law in Indonesia focusing on the ownership and transfer of rights from the purchasing of NFTs. The author will try to compare on other jurisdictions (Ireland & Germany) concerning the copyright legal framework. Furthermore, the practice by licensing method in current NFTs marketplace will also be demonstrate through this paper. The research methodology employed is a normative juridical approach with an analytical and descriptive research design. Based on the research conducted, there is still a legal gap in Indonesian copyright law, particularly in the realm of NFTs and the idea of droit de suite, which has existed in intellectual property right concept globally. Finally, this paper will present several recommendations for the government and other relevant stakeholders upon NFTs transactions.
The tasks of education renewal, which are related to the revision of its content and pedagogy for sustainable development, are considered. The complexity of these tasks and their historical unprecedentedness are emphasized. The possibilities of digital technology in education in solving these problems are justified. The advantages of artificial intelligence, blockchain and zero-knowledge proof when combined to become education for sustainable development are analyzed. The most promising areas for their use in the renewal of education are listed.
Technodeterminism determines the main task for civil law when solving issues related to blockchain technologies and smart contracts. This task is connected with the search for answers to the question of the need to amend civil legislation in order to adapt it to new technological challenges or about the possibility of effective application of existing legal norms to the regulation of innovative civil relations. In the doctrine, there is a hypertrophied attitude towards blockchain and smart contract technologies. The standing exists that due to smart contracts, trust in people is replaced by trust in the code. Eschatological predictions were made about the beginning of the end of classical contract law, about emergance of «contract law 2.0». The paper states that the digital code will not be able to replace reality in the field of contractual relations. The revolution in contract law has not happened. Instead of the «revolutionary path» highlighted by some authors, there is a gradual evolutionary development of ideas about a civil contract. The civilistic doctrine has responded to technological challenges by becoming rhizomorphic in its interdisciplinarity, trying to comprehend the legal phenomena associated with the digitalization of public relations. The «ideological core» of the civil doctrine, the «core» of the concept of the contract, remained untouchable. A legal smart contract has remained a speculative phenomenon from a parallel reality, a simulacrum. The Russian and foreign doctrines are dominated by the traditional interpretation of a civil contract, since the concept of a legal smart contract is not able to solve the problem of its incompleteness. From the perspective of futurological perspective, it can be assumed that the traditional approach to the contract will retain its significance, and the digital code will have only an auxiliary, servicing value for the contract.
Sheng Li, Guanyi Wang, Gang Li, Can Wu · 5 authors
UNSTRUCTURED CryptoKitties, a trendy game on Ethereum which is an open-source public blockchain platform with a smart contract function, brought non-fungible tokens (NFTs) into the public eye in 2017. NFTs are popular because of their non-fungible properties and their unique and irreplaceable nature in the real world. The embryonic form of NFTs can be traced back to a P2P network protocol improved based on Bitcoin in 2012 that can realize decentralized virtual asset transactions. At present, NFTs have gained more attention and have shown an unprecedented explosive growth trend. We aimed to introduce the concept of digital asset NFTs into the medical and health field to conduct a subversive discussion on biobank operations. By converting biomedical data into NFTs, the collection and circulation of samples can be accelerated, and the transformation of resources can be promoted so the biobank can achieve sustainable development through “decentralization.”
Criminalistics and forensics need rapid development to keep up with the changes in the society that are caused by dramatic changes in information and telecommunication technologies. The paper addresses the issue of including a new subject related to the turnover of cryptocurrencies in criminalistic analysis. Investigative and court practice show that when crimes are committed cryptocurrency can be an object of the offense (e.g., in theft) or can be used by offenders in the mechanism of a crime (e.g., legitimization of proceeds of crime by cashing in). To successfully investigate such crimes, it is necessary to study the mechanism of formation in the cryptocurrency transactions used by criminals in order to provide scientific recommendations to law enforcers concerning detection, fixation, seizure and investigation of traces of a crime. The development of effective tools in criminalistics forms a priority task at the present stage. The authors associate the specifics of the investigation of crimes related to the cryptocurrency turnover with its electronic nature, which determines the criminalistic recommendations proposed in the paper. Urgent training courses for investigators seem to be a reasonable solution to the problem. They can train investigators specializing in the investigation of such crimes, and their training (retraining) should involve the best experts in the field of IT technologies and experts from foreign jurisdictions where law-upholders have already accumulated experience in countering such crimes.
Artificial Intelligence and blockchain technology now influence the intellectual property environment. For example, machine learning is now regularly used in trademark and patent searches in IP databases. Machine learning implementations in different IP areas, including patent tracking, copyright evaluation, and trademark comparisons, can now be seen more often. A vast range of LP notary implementations are proposed using blockchain technologies, and new networks emerge, using both AIs and blockchains to build new IP communities. The growth of such technology in LPP is mainly driven by the IT industries, particularly technology entrepreneurs. In the context of the non-registered IP rights such as copyright (which under the Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works and in many jurisdictions is not registrable) and unregistered design rights, blockchain technology can play an important role, too, because it can prove its conception, use and qualification (for example the countries where the design was first marketed and originality). Uploading the author or creator’s work and design data into a blockchain would produce a time-stamped record and solid proof of originality.So, IPO has laid the groundwork for the technology’s fusion into the IP ecosystem. Several other possible uses include ledger management, the creation of a monitoring authority to track the use of IP properties in the market and commercialization for investors via a bidding system. It will provide innovators with a centralized, government-backed market to attract investors and technology titans.
The digital development in the Russian Federation is to a large extent reflected in the specific relationship that emerges in the procurement procedure for State and municipal institutions as a result of the contractual system in the area of procurement. The term «procurement» refers to the acquisition of goods, construction or services; it is the process of determining the need of a solvent audience, identifying the supplier (its search and choice), as well as concluding and executing the terms of the contract, whether delivery of the goods, Performance of the work or services required by the terms of the contract. The article provides a brief overview of the process of digitization of the contract system in the procurement section and details the features of the digitization of the public contract, identifies the specific nature of the contract in the context of digitization and identifies its shortcomings, opportunities for the use of smart contract technologies in the conclusion and execution of government contract were considered. Keywords: digital, contract, government contract, smart contract, blockchain, Smart contract, contract system, automation, EIS (also a single information system), electronic information platform, electronic document management system, electronic signature, EPC, electronic document, portal, procurement of goods and services, procurement.
This paper aims to study the impact of legal technology, smart contracts, and automated enforcement technology on the future civil law system. As technology continues to advance, the digital revolution is posing new challenges and opportunities to traditional civil law systems. The rise of smart contracts and automated enforcement technology will bring about revolutionary changes in contract law and liability law, thereby increasing the efficiency of legal services, reducing the risks of disputes, and providing a broader range of possibilities for the future legal system. This paper will analyze the potential of these new technologies and explore the legal, ethical, and security issues associated with them in order to provide profound insights into the development of future civil law.
Jannik Woxholth, Dirk Andreas Zetzsche, Ross P. Buckley, Douglas W. Arner
Abstract At the height of the ‘crypto winter’, with several crypto intermediaries filing for insolvency and subjected to schemes of arrangement, who owns what and who has a claim on what becomes all important. At the same time, distributed ledger technologies are frequently presented as a digital solution to these perennial problems of competing claims to the same asset. This article makes two contributions to the literature. First, we show that neither current technology nor law solves the competing claims issue. Second, we suggest policy solutions based on a comparative legal analysis. In essence, the law must: (i) recognize property rights in crypto-assets; (ii) protect bona fide purchasers that receive crypto-assets from a transferor who exerts control over private keys; and (iii) facilitate the enforcement of titles in crypto-assets by the interplay of private and financial law. While full harmonization of national private laws is out of reach, some level of international consensus around these three principles would strengthen the impact of private law in the proper ordering and enforcement of claims to crypto-assets.
The paper examines the legal status and treatment of crypto assets in the context of contractual obligations. The analysis begins by considering the evolution from cryptocurrencies to crypto-goods, with special reference to definitions and terms used in the context of private law transactions. Then, the author focuses on the contractual parties under the EU Regulation on Markets in Crypto Asset (MiCa, 2023) and the Serbian Digital Assets Act (DA Act, 2020), where crypto-assets are predominantly treated as investment assets. Special attention is given to e-money tokens in the context of monetary obligations, as well as to Non-fungible tokens (NFTs) that have not yet been covered by regulations. The paper also refers to the contracting of crypto services, exploring how contractual relationships are formed and regulated, and elaborating on legal transactions based on contracts within the blockchain environment and tokenization. In conclusion, the paper draws attention to the problematic terminology used in the Serbian Digital Assets Act (2020), stating that the term "digital asset" (srb. "digitalna imovina") is too broad and inadequate, and proposes the term "crypto asset" (srb. "kripto dobro") which is defined through two key elements: the private nature of the good and the use of cryptography within the Digital Ledger Technology (DLT). This paper correlates the general theory of contract law and nominate contracts when the contractor's performance is in crypto.
Emergence of non-fungible tokens (NFTs) has led to considerable changes in the creative industries markets associated with the emergence of fundamentally new opportunities for the transfer and protection of intellectual property rights. The explosive growth of the NFT market has led to close attention of both regulators and market participants to the problems of legal regulation of the turnover of these digital assets. The lack of a legal definition gives rise to problems related to the delimitation of NFTs from other digital assets named in the legislation. This article examines the legal nature of NFTs, distinguishes them from securities, digital rights, digital financial assets, digital currencies and utilitarian digital rights. The author analyses the draft law on NFT and draws conclusions about the prospects for legal regulation with special emphasis on the legal problems of acquiring NFTs. Based on the study, the author concludes that it is possible to classify NFT as "other property" and that it is necessary to develop a special legal regime.
Cryptocurrencies, introduced in 2009 with the first cryptocurrency, Bitcoin, have grown significantly in recent years and attracted attention globally. One of the main characteristics of cryptocurrencies and their key innovation is that they are underpinned by distributed ledger technology (DLT) or blockchain as a type of DLT. This technology enables cryptocurrencies to be transferred, stored or traded electronically within DLT-based systems in a peer-to-peer manner among (pseudonymous) system participants across the world without the involvement of the usual central trusted authorities or intermediaries such as banks. This raises the question of if, and how, one should ascertain internationality for cryptocurrency transfers taking place within truly global systems underpinned by DLT for private international law purposes. This article aims to raise awareness of and address the question of internationality in the context of cryptocurrency transfers in DLT-based systems. It considers internationality in private international law, potential factors that might be relevant in ascertaining internationality for cryptocurrency transfers through a comparison to that for electronic funds transfers (EFTs), and the approaches of the International Institute for the Unification of Private Law (UNIDROIT) and the Hague Conference for Private International Law (HCCH) on internationality in their current projects concerning digital assets and digital economy respectively.
This article addresses the lack of comprehensive studies on Web3 technologies, primarily due to lawyers' reluctance to explore technical intricacies. Understanding the underlying technological foundations is crucial to enhance the credibility of legal opinions. This article aims to illuminate these foundations, debunk myths, and concentrate on determining the legal status of crypto-assets in the context of property rights within the distributed economy. In addition, this article notes that the intangible nature of crypto-assets that derive value from distributed registries, and their resistance to deletion, makes crypto-assets more akin to the autonomy of intellectual property than physical media. The article presents illustrative examples from common law (United States, United Kingdom, New Zealand) and civil law (Germany, Austria, Poland) systems. Proposing a universal solution, it advocates a comprehensive framework safeguarding digital property - data ownership - extending beyond the confines of Web3. This article presents a comprehensive, multi-layered approach to the analysis of tokens as digital content and virtual goods. The approach, universally applicable to various of such goods, scrutinizes property on three distinct layers: first, the rights to the virtual good itself; second, the rights to the assets linked to the virtual good; and third, the rights to the intellectual property intricately associated with the token. Additionally, the paper provides concise analysis of the conflict of laws rules applicable to virtual goods. It also delves into issues concerning formal requirements for the transfer of intellectual property rights, licensing, the first sale (exhaustion) doctrine, the concept of the lawful acquirer, and other crucial aspects of intellectual property in the realm of virtual goods, particularly within the emerging metaverse.
Blockchain is a peer-to-peer distributed ledger technology that makes the records of any digital asset transparent and immutable and works without involving a third party. Hence, it is independent of a third party and termed as ‘decentralized’. Blockchain is an emerging technology and is gaining a lot of popularity, as it is scalable and also has the ability to manage risks. Blockchain is transforming the way value is exchanged, it has expanded technical capabilities to achieve a higher level of innovation and developer products. Blockchain is the most recent technology that can be adopted for data security. This paper aims to make any legal contracts, such as agreements, and property registries, as well as other assets in India using blockchain for solving issues like avoiding third parties, brokerage services, trusty transactions, etc. It makes it safer as well as non-repudiable. We are proposing a Web3 system that is providing a platform for both parties to make legal contracts using smart contracts and deploy it on blockchain to make safer contracts by inheriting blockchain properties. A smart contract is a digital contract that automatically executes the terms of an agreement by itself. In layman’s terms, it is a computer code that holds the terms of a contract. It stores in decentralized, distributed public blockchain networks that contracting parties can access from anywhere and at any time. With these designs, this digital type of contract runs on blockchain nodes that cannot be changed. This makes the smart contract legal contracting decentralized, free of brokerage services as well paperless that is digital. This solution demands transparency, participation and cooperation society demands. Hence, would help to obstruct corruption and make government services more efficient.
In 2021, the Collins English Dictionary named “NFT” as the word of the year, and within the first ten positions in its ranking are the terms “crypto” and “metaverse”. Thus, we can see how three words out of ten refer to concepts that are based on the same technology: the blockchain. This famous cryptographic tool, celebrated and criticized at the same time, is nowadays a worldwide phenomenon that goes well beyond the specific expertise of programmers and computer engineers and it intertwines with several other fields, such as the law. For this reason, I believe that any attempt to provide a legal analysis of the blockchain needs to be founded in a multidisciplinary approach in order to mirror the complexity of this object of inquire. Therefore, the current thesis aims at exploring the mutual influences between law and technology by adopting a specific methodology called, indeed, “Law and Technology”. In particular, this work presents two main goals, which are strictly linked: a) analyzing the interrelations between the blockchain technology and some of the main branches of the Italian private law: property (“proprietà”) and copyright (“diritto d’autore”); b) understanding how this technology is currently applied or can be potentially applied in order to achieve some of the objects proper to private law. It has to be noted that several words used in the current thesis belong to the ICT world and are, for this reason, in English. Wherever it is possible, an Italian translation is provided; but this kind of specific terminology often revealed to be hard or impossible to translate without confusing the correct meaning: consequently, I kept the original English terms. These technologies have been developed mainly in the US and in the UK and therefore they are conceived in common law systems. For this reason, the two abovementioned goals will be integrated with a comparative law approach, which will analyze the legal remedies for these technologies in the US and in England, chosen as major case studies. As it will be soon clear to the reader, this is exactly one of the most pressing issues of the topic analyzed: the legal protections of the intangibles applied in these two countries finds their justification in a legal tradition (common law) which is different from ours (civil law). The consequence is that, when “importing” this technology, possible misunderstandings can arise also in the legal field. Moving on to the thesis structure, the work has four chapters and a conclusion discussion at the end. The first chapter will describe the studied phenomenon focusing on its origins and functioning. Specifically, it will provide the definitions of the four primary technologies: blockchain, smart contract, digital token and NFT. In terms of methodology, such definitions will rely not only on the legal literature, but also on the ICT framework, in order to delineate an analysis as complete as possible. It will be immediately evident that, because of the on-going development of the topic, clearcut technical definitions are hard to establish, and this results in several statutory efforts that are not able to provide enough clarity to the subject. Moreover, the chapter will underline both the advantages (such as: disintermediation, protection, flexibility, etc.) and the disadvantages (block anonymity, oracles problem, the lack of environmental sustainability, etc.) related to these technologies, with a specific attention towards the possible legal implications. The second chapter will try to undercover the mutual interrelations between law and these technologies. To do so, firstly it will describe the development in the digital era of two categories which are primarily involved: property and copyright. On one hand, the chapter will explore the legal implications of the phenomenon of dematerialization on the concept of property and on the growing importance of access. On the other, it will summarize the primary “metamorphoses” of copyright in the digital era. In light of these considerations, the analysis will cover the legal framework concerning smart contract, crypto-asset and NFT within the Italian-European legal system, emphasising the complexity of a precise systematic placing. The third chapter is articulated into three case studies which aims at clarifying at a practical level the interrelations between law and blockchain within Italian legal system. In particular, the first paragraph will examine copyright: on one hand, advantages and disadvantages of the use of blockchain in the field of copyright will be discussed; on the other, the new artistic/financial phenomenon of cryptoart from a legal point of view. The second paragraph will discuss the possible implementation of the blockchain technology in the digital public ledgers in order to assess if this application can be suitable for the circulation of real estates. The third paragraph will illustrate the reasons for the application of this technology on the traceability of the supply chain, outlining the technical and legal advantages and disadvantages. In this section, a special focus on the food supply chain will be presented, as this sector includes several examples also in the Italian context. Within each case study, some examples of the contemporary use of the blockchain technology will be considered. At the end, brief concluding remarks will be discussed. The fourth chapter will try to provide a targeted summary of the phenomenon in the US and UK contexts of common law. The first paragraph has a brief introduction concerning the potentiality of comparative law to conceptualize the various aspects of a transnational phenomenon. Next, will be seen the main aspects and partitions of the law of property, emphasizing its "natural" propensity to protect intangibles things. At the end, the two approaches of the United States and England will be analysed, which are quite different despite belonging to the same legal family. In the former system we will see a predominant role of federal and state legislations, whereas in the latter an activist judiciary was inspired by non-binding acts of the executive in its case law. Il Collins English Dictionary nel 2021 ha eletto “NFT” [Non-Fungible Token] la parola dell’anno ed inoltre, fra le prime dieci posizioni, si possono leggere anche i termini “crypto” e “metaverse”2. Tre parole su dieci di questa classifica hanno dunque alla base lo stesso strumento informatico: la blockchain. Celebre, amata e odiata, questa tecnologia dell’era digitale è ormai un fenomeno internazionale che sconfina dal mondo dei programmatori e degli ingegneri informatici e si interseca con molte branche del sapere, tra cui il diritto. Per questo motivo, nell’analisi giuridica della blockchain è necessario adottare un approccio il più possibile multidisciplinare nel tentativo di delineare e precisare i contorni di questa complessa materia. L’elaborato si propone di ricercare le reciproche influenze tra diritto e questa tecnologia, attraverso il metodo definito, per l’appunto, “Law and Technology”. In particolare, questa tesi si prefigge due obiettivi strettamente collegati: a) analizzare le interazioni fra la blockchain ed alcuni istituti cardini del diritto civile, la proprietà ed il diritto d’autore; b) comprendere come questa tecnologia sia attualmente impiegata o possa essere utilizzata per perseguire alcune delle finalità proprie di detti due istituti civilistici. Sin dall’inizio della ricerca, sarà chiaro che molte parole presenti nel corso della trattazione appartengono all’area informatica ed esse, com’è noto, sono in lingua inglese. Ove possibile si è cercato di tradurre, ma in presenza di una terminologia tecnica che spesso risulta intraducibile oppure la cui traduzione rischia di sviarne il contenuto, si è conservato l’idioma originale. La maggior parte di questi strumenti informatici, infatti, provengono da oltreoceano e oltremanica e pertanto nascono in un sistema giuridico di common law, diverso da quello del nostro ordinamento. In tale direzione, sarà necessario anche adoperare gli strumenti propri del diritto comparato per perseguire gli obiettivi di questa tesi, esaminando, in particolare, quali siano le tutele apprestate per queste tecnologie dagli Stati Uniti e dall’Inghilterra, scelti come casi studio rilevanti. Come si vedrà, una delle più grandi problematiche risiede proprio in questo: le tutele dell’intangibile nel common law hanno alla base degli istituti giuridici in parte diversi rispetto al nostro ordinamento e per questo, “importando” la tecnologia, spesso si creano incomprensioni ed incertezze a livello giuridico. Quanto alla struttura dell’elaborato, il testo si articola in quattro capitoli e presenta al termine delle conclusioni finali. Nel primo capitolo vi sarà la descrizione del fenomeno tecnologico spiegandone l’origine ed il funzionamento. Nello specifico, saranno definiti i quattro principali strumenti oggetto della tesi: blockchain, smart contract (lett. “contratto intelligente”), digital token (“token digitale”) ed NFT. A livello metodologico si è cercato di tratteggiare queste tecnologie avvalendosi non solo della letteratura giuridica, ma anche, all’occorrenza, di quella informatica per dare un quadro il più possibile completo all’analisi. Sin da subito risulterà chiaro che, a causa dell’evoluzione della materia, difficilmente vi sono delle definizioni chiare a livello tecnico e questo spesso si riflette in tentativi legislativi che lasciano molti dubbi ermeneutici all’interprete. Inoltre, si cercherà di evidenziare i vantaggi (ad esempio: la disintermediazione, la sicurezza, la versatilità etc.) e gli svantaggi (l’anonimia del nodo, il problema degli oracoli, la scarsa sostenibilità ambientale etc.) che tali tecnologie comportano, con particolare attenzione a quelli che possono avere implicazioni giuridiche. Nel secondo capitolo, si cercheranno le reciproche influenze tra il diritto