Large Language Models (LLMs) could be a useful tool for lawyers. However, empirical research on their effectiveness in conducting legal tasks is scant. We study securities cases involving cryptocurrencies as one of numerous contexts where AI could support the legal process, studying GPT-3.5's legal reasoning and ChatGPT's legal drafting capabilities. We examine whether a) GPT-3.5 can accurately determine which laws are potentially being violated from a fact pattern, and b) whether there is a difference in juror decision-making based on complaints written by a lawyer compared to ChatGPT. We feed fact patterns from real-life cases to GPT-3.5 and evaluate its ability to determine correct potential violations from the scenario and exclude spurious violations. Second, we had mock jurors assess complaints written by ChatGPT and lawyers. GPT-3.5's legal reasoning skills proved weak, though we expect improvement in future models, particularly given the violations it suggested tended to be correct (it merely missed additional, correct violations). ChatGPT performed better at legal drafting, and jurors' decisions were not statistically significantly associated with the author of the document upon which they based their decisions. Because GPT-3.5 cannot satisfactorily conduct legal reasoning tasks, it would be unlikely to be able to help lawyers in a meaningful way at this stage. However, ChatGPT's drafting skills (though, perhaps, still inferior to lawyers) could assist lawyers in providing legal services. Our research is the first to systematically study an LLM's legal drafting and reasoning capabilities in litigation, as well as in securities law and cryptocurrency-related misconduct.
The year 2021 was marked by the rise of NFTs (non-fungible tokens). The widespread use and sales volume of NFTs have created a wide range of legal problems regarding contract, property, capital markets, intellectual property, consumer law, and criminal and tax laws. The first step toward resolving these legal problems would be to define crypto assets and determine how they relate to NFTs. Even though most governments in the world have opted for the regulation of crypto assets, or at least are preparing to do so, NFTs fall into a grey regulatory zone. This is true for both civil law countries and common law countries. For instance, most NFT marketplaces in the world do not apply โknow your customerโ (KYC) and anti-money laundering (AML) requirements. The taxation of NFTs is highly debated. It can even be concluded that most countries are somehow reluctant to regulate NFTs and NFT marketplaces. To understand the legal regime that will be applied to NFTs, currently, the definition of the term โcrypto assetโ or โvirtual assetโ is observed. Is the regulation of crypto assets fit for the unique characteristics of NFTs? Should legal systems develop a specific and unique understanding of NFTs? Or has that time not come yet? Regulation, Web 3.0, NFT, Crypto assets, Digital assets, Blockchain
Currently, Deep learning techniques are being investigated by researchers as a way to automatically detect smart contract flaws. This strategy seeks to get beyond the drawbacks of employing expert-defined patterns for detecting vulnerabilities in smart contracts, such as low detection rates and inefficiencies. However, The majority of recent research focuses on extracting features from smart contract code using a single code representation, such as an abstract syntax tree, control flow graph, or program dependency graph. These single code representations may lead to erroneous vulnerability detection and missing semantic information. This paper introduces a method called FBB-VD that uses a graph neural network to combine multiple code representations and detect vulnerabilities in smart contracts. This method can cover a wider range of code and detect vulnerabilities more accurately through more detailed features. The FBB-VD method is more successful and accurate in identifying vulnerabilities in smart contracts when compared to approaches that just transform smart contracts into abstract syntax trees, control flow graphs, or program dependency graphs.
Blockchain technology has transcended its origins in cryptocurrency and is now poised to transform various aspects of the legal and business landscape by implementing smart contracts. Smart contracts, which operate on blockchain networks and are self-executing, programmable contracts, have the potential to completely change how agreements are made, carried out, and enforced. In order to shed light on their benefits, drawbacks, and potential future ramifications, this article examines the development of blockchain-based intelligent contracts and their influence on legal and corporate procedures. Traditional methods of managing and carrying out contracts are frequently time consuming, expensive, and prone to disagreements. Blockchain technology's smart contracts provide a decentralized, automated, and impenetrable means of drafting, carrying out, and upholding contracts. This article explains how smart contracts can streamline processes across multiple industries, including finance, real estate, supply chain management, and intellectual property by carefully exploring the technological foundations and real-world use cases of smart contracts. Smart contracts' potential societal and economic effects, such as decreased transaction costs, increased effectiveness, and improved. This article promotes interdisciplinary study and collaboration among legal scholars, technologists, and business professionals to fully realize the promise of blockchain-based intelligent contracts. It ends by imagining a time when smart time when smart contracts are fully incorporated into daily life, revolutionizing the way contracts are established and carried out in the digital age.
Tokens are units digitally represented in a distributed ledger or blockchain. The various uses of this technology have the potential to transform a wide array of economic activities, from traditional commercial transactions to sophisticated financial undertakings. This paper explores the similarities and differences of tokens with traditional legal instruments in commercial law and how tokens could offer superior solutions, provided that proper legal foundations are established for their operation, including aspects of the law of securities and consumer protection law.
Introduction. This scientific article dedicated to certain aspects of such virtual benefits/assets as the NFT token (non-fungible token) and place of them in the obligations relationship. The legal framework and legal practice regarding non- non-fungible token is currently absent, which is a characteristic situation not only for domestic jurisprudence, but also for the world. In view of the above, there is a need to investigate the nature of this phenomenon. Summary. The article analyzes the proposed legislative definition of "virtual asset" in relation to the NFT token. The study of individual features of this phenomenon makes it necessary to turn to its displayed technical characteristics at the current stage. Yes, it is determined that the NFT token performs an authentication function and cannot exist independently without its attachment to another object of civil rights. Without such a combination, exclusively as a code (a set of signs), the token cannot be regarded as an intangible (virtual) benefits, since the token certifies a subjective right to another object of civil rights, and therefore should be considered precisely as an asset (benefits), which has a providing nature. Attention is focused on the fact that one of the main problems of legal uncertainty in this category is the question of what exactly individuals acquire when buying an NFT token, since in fact the token is usually associated with another object, which gives it a real value. The relationship between the non-fungible token and the start-contract was analyzed and the possible legal consequences of their interaction determined. Conclusions. Non-fungible tokens exist in a decentralized system and are closely related to the smart contract already at the stage of their creation, therefore, provided there are no imperative requirements from the law, the latter can be considered as a type of civil law contract, which, in turn, due to constant interaction the connection between them makes it possible to single out certain features of the binding nature of this phenomenon.
The subject of this study is the legal-economic analysis of the non-fungible token phenomenon. Due to the a priori accessibility of many tokenized intellectual products, the ability to monetize them by copyright methods turns out to be hard to implement. The paper puts forward a hypothesis that token owners apply innovative monetization methods, which do not stand on the prohibition and restriction of access to the protected results of intellectual activity. Instead of deactivated copyright restrictions, token buyers receive some new, additional, non-trivial economic utility that researchers have not reflected yet. If this utility exists, we should identify, analyze and include it in the equation of relations regarding NFT. The second hypothesis of the study stems from the first one. It states that the results of creative activity in the post-economic society take the place of a new etalon of value, which replaces the materialistic standard of worth based on rarity. The consensual value contained in tokenized works brings additional motivators for token purchasers and compensates for the lost sources of income. Our goal is to put and verify the scientific hypotheses of tokenized works' additional non-obvious value existence. We suppose that this innovative utility substitutes traditional copyright ban-based monetization abilities. The research's purpose is also to theoretically generalize its results and formulate a legal-economic concept that explains the motivation for the purchasers of non-fungible tokens and sets the regulations for the NFT market. Methodology. The study of the non-fungible token phenomenon and the verification of formulated hypotheses conducts from the standpoint of the law, economics, an interdisci-plinary legal-economic โ institutional point of view, as well as with the help of the monistic copyright doctrine of the People's Republic of China. The research methodology also includes an analysis of the relevant body of knowledge and various points of view of the scientists on the subject of research. The study's main result is the novel elaborated concept of the non-fungible token owner's moral right. This concept fills the rising doctrine of utilitarian digital rights with legal-economic essence. We constructed the non-fungible token owner's moral right consisting of two powers: the right to designate one's name as the owner of a token for a specific creative product and to demand such an indication from others; and also, as a duty of NFT platforms to support the function of informing about the name or pseudonym of the token's owner. Analysis of the appropriate accumulated knowledge, development, and verification of formulated hypotheses on tokenized works' consensual value and additional economic utility, allowed us to achieve the goals of this study. We resolve the issue of token purchasers' motivation and legal-economic grounds for their rational behavior by formulating and substantiating the concept of non-fungible tokens' owner moral right.
Aditya Ranjan, Aditya Singh, Amit Kumar, B S Prashanth ยท 5 authors
A court case governance system is a decentralised judicial system that uses blockchain technology to create a tamperproof, transparent, and secure form of record-keeping for legal processes. A distributed ledger powered by a network of computers is known as blockchain technology. Every transaction is digitally entered into the ledger, encrypted, and verified by the network of users. A court case governance system using blockchain technology can produce smart contracts, which are self-executing contracts with the contents of the agreement between the buyer and seller being directly placed into lines of code. Decentralising the process of automating contracts and arbitrating legal issues is possible with the help of these smart contracts. Users are given the power to draught and execute intelligent contracts, and disputes are resolved through decentralised arbitration. This strategy enables a method to incentivize jurors to evaluate cases fairly and accurately since judgements are upheld by smart contracts.
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 ยท 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 reโshape 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 wellโaccepted 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: โtime sensitiveโ rights that must be available at certain stages of the relationship.
Abstract Image rights enable individuals to stop the unauthorized use of their publicly identifiable attributes, typically their name, likeness, voice, or other personal indicia (in sum, their โimageโ). Unlike widely recognized intellectual property rights like copyright, patents, and trade marks, image rights have developed in a piecemeal, organic fashion, with differences in their nature and scope in various jurisdictions. Nonetheless, we conclude from an evaluation of approaches in the US, Europe, China, and the UK that image rights protection is on a growth trajectory, having undergone an overall expansion in the past twenty years, especially with the advent of the digital era. Turning to the present and future of image rights, we discuss emerging applications of image rights in the context of deepfakes, influencer marketing, digital avatars, and non-fungible tokens (NFTs). Additionally, online platform guidelines and actions are coalescing into de facto protection of an individualโs persona in an increasingly borderless, digital world. In such an environment, the interrelationships between a personโs autonomy, dignity, privacy, and economic aspects of reputation will require a more joined-up approach which is starting to emerge. We discuss this harmonizing trend as well as the current practical difficulties in enforcing image rights online, and suggest some solutions to these issues.
Purpose Technical advantages embraced by blockchain, such as distributed ledger, P2P networks, consensus mechanisms and smart contracts, are highly compatible with addressing the security issues of transferring and storing judicial documents and obtaining the feedback and evaluation of judicial translation services in cases with foreign elements. Therefore, based on this, a consortium blockchain-based model for supervising the overall process of judicial translation services in cases with foreign elements is proposed. Design/methodology/approach Some judicial documents are required to be translated when there are language barriers in cases with foreign elements. The purpose of this paper is expected to address security issues, which is ignored, in the process of translating judicial documents. Findings The experimental results show that the model constructed in this paper can effectively guarantee the security and privacy of transferring and storing translated judicial documents in cases with foreign elements, and realize the credibility and traceability of feedbacks and evaluations of judicial translation services. In addition, the underlying network communications is stable and the speed for processing data can meet the requirements of practical application. Originality/value The research in this paper provides an innovative scheme for judicial translation services in cases with foreign elements. The model constructed is conducive to protecting the security of the transfer and storage of judicial documents and improving the efficiency and modernization ability of hearing cases with foreign elements.
In the last decade, use of cryptocurrencies in various fields has increased phenomenally. It offers many benefits to the users. It also has emerged as one of the major challenges for law enforcement agencies across the world. Research has been conducted to identify forensic artefacts for various cryptocurrencies used in different wallets and on different platforms. This paper aims to analyse and sum up the existing literature on forensic investigation of cryptocurrencies. This review paper makes mention of forensic investigation of six different cryptocurrencies, 30 different types of wallets and 49 different types of forensic artefacts. It also mentions 25 different tools used in forensic investigation. The paper briefs about seven different cryptocurrency visualisation and analysis tools. Finally, the paper highlights research gaps in this field.
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 ยซcontract law 2.0ยป. 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 ยซrevolutionary pathยป 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 ยซideological coreยป of the civil doctrine, the ยซcoreยป 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.
This brief chapter focuses on smart contracts and cartel law. It argues that smart contracts have the potential to unsettle competition law. They are a step in an ongoing process of technological evolution, from enterprise-software powered big-box store chains, to Web 1.0 e-commerce, to algorithmic competition, and ultimately to further stages we cannot yet imagine. As markets and their substitutes and complements evolve, so too must competition law, if it is to continue to serve consumer welfare and the public interest.
This chapter highlights the primary legal concerns that apply to all jurisdictions grappling with cryptocurrencies, specifically those concerns which pertain to various types of criminality, including hacks and thefts, frauds and scams, money laundering and tax evasion, and terrorist financing and rogue actors. It considers the differing legal treatments of cryptocurrencies along a spectrum (most-to-least tolerant) and assign various jurisdictions along that spectrum accordingly. The chapter discusses international efforts to harmonize cryptocurrency regulation and oversight and offers some prognostications about the future of cryptocurrency legality. Money laundering is a very serious and systemic concern regarding cryptocurrency, as it can be easily used to engage in transactions that would sidestep the traditional financial system with comparative ease. For this reason, it is frequently described as โa convenient tool for money launderingโ. Countries have responded to the emergence of cryptocurrency in a variety of ways, from extreme positivity to outright hostility.
Sheng Li, Guanyi Wang, Gang Li, Can Wu ยท 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 โdecentralization.โ
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 creatorโs 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 technologyโs 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 ยซprocurementยป 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.