IDEAS SoCal AI & Data Science Conference 2018

Discussing legal implications of blockchains, including how to address issues with jurisdiction, liability, and enforcement with respect to disputes that arise involving such decentralized systems. Specifically, as physical real-world assets become tied to blockchains such issues become particularly important as disputes arising from either error in smart contract code or fraud will become more prevalent and will have to be addressed. If forethought is not put into contract drafting and the smart contract coding then the result will be situations where multiple countries may have jurisdiction and laws applicable to the transaction at issue may conflict as arguably every physical location a node is located will be a point for jurisdiction. Also discussing additional unintended complications arising from use of blockchains that people fail to realize. For example, how crypto assets are stored would be important in divorce cases. Additionally, illegal content can be embedded on blockchains and then more easily and anonymously distributed – i.e. copyright infringing materials, revenge porn, malware, etc.