Legal Software: Cambridge Workshops on Legal Aspects of Blockchain Technologies: Storify, links, and resources

Two workshops on legal aspects of blockchain technologies were held in Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA, 15-18 January 2015, at MIT and Harvard’s Berkman Center.

January 15-16, 2015: Technical and Legal Workshop: Blockchain: Cryptocurrencies and Distributed Ledgers, at MIT Media Lab

January 17-18, 2015: Berkman Workshop on Crypto-equity and the Law, at Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University

Click here for the agenda of the Berkman Center workshop.

The agenda for the MIT workshop seems to be unavailable.

Organizers of these events included Primavera de Filippi , Constance Choi , and Joel Dietz .

One Twitter hashtag for the workshops was #decentlaw

Click here for a storify of images and Twitter tweets from the events.

These workshops have been announced on the Website of the Berkman Center’s study group on Legal, Social, and Economic Aspects of Cryptoledger-based Technologies.

Here is a description of the MIT workshop, from the announcement:

[…] A workshop examining the interplay between blockchain technologies including distributed cryptoledger technology, decentralized identity, and policy frameworks and legal infrastructure for existing regulatory regimes. The workshop will gather select lawyers and entrepreneurs involved in the deployment of distributed ledger applications, in order to sketch out a techno-legal framework that could resolve foundational issues common to these emerging innovations.

The goal is to examine the current applications and potential opportunities of cryptocurrency and distributed ledger technologies in order to create a viable working document outlining appropriate adaptations and integrations to existing legal infrastructure and policy frameworks. The workshop participants will distill the current state of the art of blockchain-related technologies into a set of recommendations and open questions concerning potential applications of distributed architecture and how they can be regulated within the existing legal and policy frameworks, as well as recommendations with regard to different areas (e.g., modification of existing financial services laws to distributed architectures (i.e., travel rule for p2p transfers), identification of common business models exempt from oversight, model safe harbors and scalable requirements for startups, blockchain innovations relevant to AML/KYC/financial controls/corporate governance, permission-based requirements, appropriate sphere of regulated activities, CSBS or NYDFS proposed policies). […]

Here is a description of the Berkman Center workshop, from the announcement:

[…] A workshop organised in the framework of the Study group on Legal, Social & Economic Aspects of Cryptoledger-based Technologies at the Berkman Center for Internet & Society, examining the interplay between blockchain technologies including distributed cryptoledger technology and existing legal infrastructure or regulatory regimes. The workshop will gather a small group of lawyers and entrepreneurs involved in the deployment of distributed cryptoledger-based applications in order to sketch out a techno-legal framework that could resolve the issues that most of these applications are currently facing, without hindering their distributed potential and decentralized character. […]

The goal is to examine the current applications and potential opportunities of cryptoledger technology to create policy recommendations outlining appropriate integrations to existing legal infrastructure. Ideally, the document will contain a set of recommendations concerning potential applications of distributed cryptoledger technology and how they can be regulated within the existing legal framework, as well as recommendations with regard to different areas that should either be better regulated or rather be left unregulated. The workshop participants will also come up with potential recommendations (in the US context) to reform existing laws or regulation that may prevent innovation around these technologies. […]

Click here for other posts about legal applications of blockchain technology.

HT @compleatang