Blockchain and Law
Resources focusing on the legal aspects of blockchain, including copyright.
| Resource | Summary | Type | Link | Date |
|---|---|---|---|---|
A beginner’s guide to self-sovereign identity (SSI) - DomiLabs (June 2021) | An article on What is SSI, What’s the Technology Behind SSI, and the future of your Identity. | News & Opinions | June 2, 2021 | |
A Bitcoin Mining Operation in the Finger Lakes Runs Up Against New York’s Climate Law, by Rosemay Misdary, Gohamist (February 2022) | Article on the Finger Lake’s bitcoin mining operation which faces challenges to New York’s climate leadership and community protection act. | News & Opinions | April 6, 2022 | |
The purpose of this paper is to identify a number of taxation, entity formation and operational issues
pertaining to Decentralized Autonomous Organizations. | Research Paper | January 12, 2022 | ||
A Museum Refuses To Return A Looted Statue, So The Locals Made It An NFT. Who Owns It Now? - WAC Weekly (May 2022) | Discussion on the Balot NFT project, using the NFT as a tool for decolonizing museums, and what it means for the primacy of on-chain art vs. its physical counterpart. | News & Opinions | May 23, 2022 | |
A Proposed Artist’s Contract for NFTs by Yayoi Shionoiri and Ryan Su | An article that also offers a template contract for sales of NFTs | News & Opinions | March 16, 2022 | |
Are NFTs Securities? And What Does That Mean For Museums? - WAC Weekly (January 2023) | A talk with law professor and artist Brian Frye about whether or not NFTs are financial securities, and what that means for museums who are interested in collecting either art NFTs or art with some on-chain component. | News & Opinions | January 31, 2023 | |
Ascribe | An early example of an NFT platform that attempted to provide digital rights management properties for artists (no longer active) | Platform | ||
At Miami Art Week, Immersive Digital Art Could Be The Way Forward For Web3 - WAC Weekly (December 2022) | What was the web3 presence like in the wake of a market crash, the FTX scandal, and increasing regulatory scrutiny? And how are digital and generative art evolving thereafter crypto brought them into the mainstream? | News & Opinions | December 14, 2022 | |
Bored Ape Yacht Club’s Yuga Labs Acquires CryptoPunks IP From Larva Labs, by Guillermo Jimenez, Decrypt (March 2022) | Yuga Labs has bought the rights to CryptoPunks, and its granting Punk holders full commercial license. | News & Opinions | March 11, 2022 | |
Bored Apes’ Generous Copyright Approach Besting Stricter CryptoPunks by Brady Dale, The Defiant (December 2021) | Article discussing the IP rights to BAYC and whether this has contributed to the success of the project | News & Opinions | March 16, 2022 | |
Buying the Constitution: The rise of DAOs in legal by Josepth Raczynski, Thomson Reuters (November 2021) | Could Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (DAOs) become the model for future business structures and transform the legal industry in the process? | News & Opinions | January 12, 2022 | |
Copyminter | a website that provides tools to examine if an NFT has been copyminted | Provider | April 27, 2022 | |
Copyright for NFT Artworks Is Still In The Lab - WAC Weekly (March 2022) | Article discussing what owning an NFT really means when copyright, commercial rights and IP are all still open questions. | News & Opinions | March 21, 2022 | |
Digital Art, Blockchainization and NFT: Legal Analysis by Olga Simson, V-Art, (March 2021) | Article discussing the legal implications of NFTs | News & Opinions | March 12, 2021 | |
Episode XII: NFTs: Art After Copyright? By Primavera De Filippi & Maria Riivari, Flash Art, (February 2022) | Article on copyright and NFTs, arguing that NFTs are not in fact a source of copyright infringement because the work is not stored within the NFT. They propose that hashes could be covered through copyright law to cover NFTs | News & Opinions | February 1, 2022 | |
Huge Mess of Theft and Fraud: Artists Sound Alarm as NFT Crime Proliferates by Lois Beckett, The Guardian (January 2022) | Article on the issues of copyminting in the NFT Space. | News & Opinions | February 9, 2022 | |
Is Smart Contract Copyright Museum-Quality? - WAC Weekly (May 2022) | Discussion on smart contracts, moving quickly from the basics of the software to the legal complexities. | News & Opinions | May 7, 2022 | |
Protecting NFT Artists’ Royalties Under Threat in the Bear Market - WAC Weekly (November 2022) | A discussion on the balance between smart contracts and social contracts in creating a fair market that works for artists and collectors. | News & Opinions | November 21, 2022 | |
Protecting Your NFT Art Collection From Fraud And Platform Failure - WAC Weekly (February 2023) | A discussion with ClubNFT co-founders Jason Bailey and Chris King about protecting an on-chain digital art collection, whether that’s keeping a wallet secure or preserving NFT art for the long term. | News & Opinions | February 16, 2023 | |
Rethinking Digital Originality By Frances Liddell, Flash Art (January 2022) | Article that dissects the term originality to consider how NFTs challenge this term and requires us to redefine in the context of the digital | News & Opinions | January 28, 2022 | |
SEC Targets NFT Creators, Marketplaces Over ICO-Like Sales: Report by Jeff Benson, Decrypt (March 2022) | Article on the recent report by the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) on their targeting NFTs as securities | News & Opinions | March 16, 2022 | |
Smart Contracts Aren’t, and other legal issues in blockchain and art - The Brooklyn Rail (January 2022) | Lawyers Erika R. Knierim and Sarah C. Odenkirk join Rail Editor-at-Large Charlotte Kent for a conversation about smart contracts. | Video | January 13, 2022 | |
Video | November 4, 2021 | |||
Tagsmart | An independent certification and DNA tagging solution for fine art | Provider | ||
Taking A Quick Dip into DAOs (WAC Weekly - Jan 12th 2022) | A few discussions on DAOs and Smart Contracts. | News & Opinions | March 4, 2022 | |
US Justice Dept. Charges 2 in NFT ‘Rug Pull’ Scheme by Danny Nelson, CoinDesk (March 2022) | News that two people have been charged for money laundering for an NFT rug pull/scam known as the ‘Frosties’ NFT project | News & Opinions | March 24, 2022 | |
What You Need to Know About NFTs and Taxes by Alex Roytenberg, Right Click Save (March 2022) | Article discussing the basics on collecting NFTs and trading crypto and how it is subject to US tax | News & Opinions | March 7, 2022 | |
What You Need To Know About Royalties And Licensing In Web3 - WAC Weekly (March 2023) | Cynthia Gayton is an attorney, speaker, and author. She talks about problems with copyright, royalties, and licensing with art on web3. | News & Opinions | March 22, 2023 | |
When a Museum Buys an NFT: Legal challenges and considerations by Schoenherr | Article on collecting NFTs/ acquisition and the issues of the separate linked file | News & Opinions | June 17, 2021 | |
Who Holds The Keys? The Issues With Putting NFTs In The Museum Collection - WAC Weekly (February 2023) | A talk with Tina Rivers Ryan, curator at the Buffalo AKG in New York, to talk about the challenges of acquiring Blockchain-registered artworks in a museum’s private collection. | News & Opinions | February 7, 2023 |