High Technology Attorney, Entrepreneur, and Computer Technologist; Lead counsel in large tech cases; Helped build Web 2 & 3 services that lots of people use.
I spoke yesterday to the Digital Entertainment Group or DEG about NFT legal strategy - here is the video below - I step through numerous weighty legal-tech issues for any NFT project beginning at about the seven minute mark. I hope you find it helpful.
Our legal team is working on judicial review to the High Court for
@KimDotcom
in NZ.
After 12+ years of injustice:
-Illegal Gov raid on family home
-Illegal spying (PM apologized)
-Withholding of evidence
-Destruction of evidence
-US blocked legal funding
-US judge recused
We are disappointed with today’s Judgment by the NZ Court of Appeal in the
@KimDotcom
case. We have now been to three courts each with a different legal analysis - one of which thought that there was no copyright infringement at all. We will seek review with the NZ Supreme Court.
The New Zealand Human Rights Review Tribunal in the
@KimDotcom
case found “...the Crown to be in clear breach of its obligations under the Privacy Act. There has been no breach of standards by Mr. Dotcom...”
@DavidSacks
The FDIC insurance for banks is the core utility for depositors seeking safety. Either funds are insured or not. The invisible hand will lead to automated solutions to stay below the 250K cap by simplifying load balancing over many banks.
Depositors looking for safety and near zero gain on funds ought not have the investing risks of a bank like
@SVB_Financial
Time for a “Metabank app” that is one unified interface to a hundred banks each with their own FDIC 250K limit so business savings are always insured - the
The force of the invisible hand is moving AI and GPT chats in the direction of tribalism - each tribe will attempt to “train” their AI implementation in the direction of “lack of bias” or the “truth” - namely answers the given tribe wants users to have - their will be liberal and
Ira (
@rothken
)
- Who will/can be responsible for feeding the A.I it’s training data?
- Could foreign intelligence feed data to A.I and tamper with other countries?
- What will the implications of this be?
In the
@KimDotcom
case our legal team is obligated to raise an uncomfortable issue with the New Zealand extradition court on US procedural fairness touching 10 years of rulings. A judge’s financial disclosure could impact a high-profile copyright case.
The views below are even more relevant today-when you combine illegal gov spying with refusal to hand over evidence of misdeeds. Dotcom's lawyer calls for case to be dismissed after court rules that New Zealand's GCSB illegally spied on Megaupload via
@inq
The gov’s illegal spying in the
@KimDotcom
case coupled with state refusal to provide relevant evidence amounts to extreme abuse. No court should entertain an extradition case so tainted with violations of basic human rights-it should now be dismissed in the interests of justice.
The Megaupload programmers’ plea in the
@KimDotcom
case was to some concocted fraud theory under NZ law NOT criminal copyright infringement alleged in the US indictment. The nuance is that such a gestalt criminal fraud theory is barred under US caselaw. SCOTUS in Dowling rejected
We are pleased that the New Zealand Supreme Court granted review of the US extradition case against Kim Dotcom. We believe that the Court will find that cloud storage providers cannot be held criminally liable for user copyright infringements under NZ law.
In the
@KimDotcom
extradition case the NZ Supreme Court found the lower court committed procedural errors and asked for submissions on how it impacts the case. Our legal team looks forward to pointing out that the government’s misconduct should lead to a denial of extradition.
The US Court in the
@KimDotcom
related cases today denied the DOJ’s motion to dismiss Mona Dotcom’s claim to her NZ house. The judge found that the motion was procedurally improper, premature, and that the Gov had not shown that Mona had "abandoned" her possessory interest.
Working on a new NFT standard:
1. Enhanced Authentication of NFT Content using ZKP tech;
2. Built in on chain Affiliate Program for Collectors;
3. Passive income for the Artist and Collectors by NFT HODL;
4. Enhanced consumer protection;
5. Royalties on chain
6. Minimal gas costs
Yuga wins big in their trademark case against Ripps et al by successfully opposing early motion to strike / dismiss:
“[T]he Court concludes that Defendants’ use of the BAYC marks is explicitly misleading …[and] …does not constitute nominative fair use.”
In the
@KimDotcom
case we uncovered illegal spying by the gov in 2012 and the prime minister was forced to apologize. The case nine years later, should be dismissed in the interests of justice. Civil liberties are at stake: via
@nzherald
The Senate is asking the US Copyright & Trademark offices to weigh in on NFT IP issues. One bug in my view is that NFT license agreements do not usually meet the “clear and conspicuous notice” & “opt-in consent” standards for enforceable contracts-especially on secondary sales.
The current NFT ecosystem is too complicated. It needs to be simplified. We are building open source code to make buying, selling, & creating NFTs easier and safer.
1. Onchain royalties & legal terms
2. Each NFT is its own store anywhere
3. NFT Search engines NOT marketplaces
The Assange case includes the Doctrine of Specialty in the US-UK Extradition Treaty and UK discretion:
“1. A person extradited under this Treaty may not be detained, tried, or punished in the Requesting State except for: (a) any offense for which extradition was granted...”
About six years ago today the NZ gov with US support initiated a military style raid on a family with children in a non violent internet copyright case-Here are my views from a 2012 interview: Lawyer for
@KimDotcom
says case wrong on facts, wrong in law
We rolled out
@TreeTrunk_io
a new NFT standard:
1. Authentication of NFT Content by ZKP tech;
2. Downstream royalties for Artists & Collectors on-chain;
3. Passive income for the Artists & Collectors by NFT HODL;
4. License terms in NFT;
5. Artists design their own “trees”
This Wire Fraud indictment against an OpenSea employee for using confidential information on NFT drops & homepage placement could be a roadmap to make a criminal out of almost worker or influencer on an NFT project who preemptively transacts on material confidential information.
2023 with AI apps like ChatGPT, DALL-E, and Stable Diffusion will be the year of “weaponized fair use” of copyrights. Copyrighted works can be ingested, obscured / summarized, and reconstituted into new works attenuated from its origins. Let the AI copyright policy debates begin!
Today is the 10th ann of the government’s raid on
@KimDotcom
& his family over the dual use tech - Megaupload. Cloud storage providers ought not be held criminally responsible for the acts of users. This interview I did 10 yrs ago is still relevant today:
Congrats to
@GabrielJWeis
and the
@TheStoicsNFT
collaborators on perseverance in your NFT drop. Great Art by great artists. I am a Stoics supporter and the art will be displayed in a special place!
@nftnow
Nate was convicted for essentially “front running” NFT art - which is generally legal or at least not criminal in the IRL art world - and breaching a less than precise confidentiality agreement - which tends to be a civil wrong but rarely a criminal wrong (outside of the
The OpenSea employee has defense arguments against Wire Fraud. The core allegation is breach of a confidentiality agreement with OS. The 2nd Cir held-A contractual promise can only support a claim for wire fraud upon proof of fraudulent intent “at the time of” contract execution.
NFT Bug Alert US Law: 17 USC 203 allows the artist to terminate some copyright licenses 35 years after the grant putting at risk some long term NFT collections. Physical art has the “first sale doctrine” but NFT-digital art does not and is usually licensed by the artist to buyer.
@brian_armstrong
The communications between the SEC and Coinbase need to be scrutinized - the SEC mandate is to protect investors - why approve a Coinbase IPO and then sue to enjoin the same services? You can call it estoppel, fair notice, or some other label against the SEC conduct but the
The SEC has sued Coinbase for a smorgasbord of securities violations. This case will settle but at what cost? There is something wrong when the government stays on the sidelines for many years watching an entire blockchain industry grow and instead of engaging in carefully
The
@opensea
NFT royalty issue is solveable with onchain royalties like our open sourced EIP-4910 or similar. This puts the decision in the hands of artists, not platforms. Once NFTs move to onchain royalties then platforms compete on discovery, traffic, & search engine quality.
After listening to the
@CopyrightOffice
roundtable it seems like the NFT ecosystem is vulnerable:
1. Lack of binding license agreements on secondary sales;
2. Lack of robust labeling at consumer point of sale;
3. Unenforceable royalties;
We built to help.
In this video podcast I discuss:
1. Why the indicted
@opensea
employee has robust legal defense arguments;
2. Two huge legal bugs facing the NFT ecosystem that puts projects & collectors at risk (hint - not securities issues);
Please forgive audio quality
Depositors looking for safety and near zero gain on funds ought not have the investing risks of a bank like
@SVB_Financial
Time for a “Metabank app” that is one unified interface to a hundred banks each with their own FDIC 250K limit so business savings are always insured - the
The Yuga Labs lawsuit, important for brand protection, may raise “bet the NFT PFP model” issues-winning bolsters the NFT ecosystem losing harms it. E.g. plaintiff’s “unlawful use in commerce” is an affirmative defense. Is BAYC NFT an unlawful security? What will discovery show?
Future of NFT Platforms:
1. Each NFT will be it’s own non custodial store with an embed code - mint once transact anywhere - even in a blog;
2. IP owners will sell original NFTs on their own domains - keeping their own traffic;
3. NFT Search engines will be a key discovery tool;
Building LegalTech software to solve problems in the NFT ecosystem like:
1. Proof of binding licensing agreements;
2. IP licensing by content owners across game & “metaverse" systems with onchain royalties;
3. Digital evidence capture via blockchain;
-Interested in helping? DM me
NFT Analytics of the day: On OpenSea 5% of all addresses account for approximately 80% of the NFT profits made on secondary sales. In 2022 lets aim to expand NFT profits to a wider group.
If someone mints NFTs that point, in an unauthorized manner, to another person’s copyrighted works on IPFS, and market & profits from such NFTS, and purchasers download the NFT content to their wallets and other apps, it is an arguable case of “secondary copyright infringement.”
NFT tech is more important than ever for innovation and artist expression.
In light of crypto headwinds manifested by
@SBF_FTX
& others we go back to basics. This video answers the question on why NFT tech has strong legal and economic foundations.
#HODL
Questions that NFT projects ought to answer yes to:
1. Do you rep & warrant ownership of the NFT content IP?
2. Did you register copyrights in the content?
3. Do I have a commercial license?
4. If a 3rd party infringes the content will you send a DMCA notice or take legal action?
Dear NFT projects,
Please include in (or immediately add to) your NFT licenses “commercial rights” allowing NFT holders to selectively permit metaverse platforms to use the NFT art, pfp, or digital asset & to render it in new works in 2D & 3D in interactive entertainment software
Here, in this video, I provide in about three minutes the future of NFTS. The
@garyvee
and
@KeithGrossman
driven NFT projects are great early examples.
Ok my nerd law brain asked ChatGPT to write a memo on copyright law in the style of Shakespeare 🤪
To whom it may concern:
Greetings, fair readers! Let us speak of the law of copyright, a subject most weighty and worthy of contemplation.
The SEC has sued Coinbase for a smorgasbord of securities violations. This case will settle but at what cost? There is something wrong when the government stays on the sidelines for many years watching an entire blockchain industry grow and instead of engaging in carefully
Just created a beta GPT. “Case Brief Genius.”
I love the debugging process rather than write a lot of code one engages in a natural language argument with the development AI to make incremental refinements that combine removing bugs while adding new ones 😂
The evolution of Ordinals ought to include a Bitcoin metadata standard, for example a JSON, to help protect artists and consumers:
1. The standard JSON can then be predictably ingested to show key information at the point of transaction to help make informed decisions;
2. It
Today chatting with:
-an innovator who works with the co-founder of Ethereum on their new NFT tech;
-a brilliant programmer / music producer who wrote over 200K lines of code for his NFT; and
-a special guest discussing art of an iconic anonymous artist!
The time has come
@opensea
,
@dfinzer
and
@blur_io
to implement NFT onchain royalties and NFT/IP onchain license consent management to protect artists and collectors. The EIP-4910 technology works. Happy to collaborate to implement on your platforms.
The new EU copyright rules will likely chill internet startups and small online businesses that don’t have or can’t afford the technical infrastructure to strictly comply
Rest In Peace my friend
@jin_diesel
you made the world a better place by bringing the best out of people. Jin Yu, Clubhouse Influencer, Dies of COVID Complications: 'Heart Is Shattered,' Says Sister
The SEC action against Coinbase employees alleges:
1. the crypto is (unlicensed) securities on the platform &
2. defendants’ tips on “confidential” new crypto listings is “insider trading”
If 1 is adjudicated isn’t Coinbase really the target with downside & no ability to argue?
@beeple
Our team built “on-chain” royalties into our new NFT EIP-4910 standard. Cutting out NFT royalties on secondary sales will become harder in the future.
AI systems will be used as “anti infringement” song output devices one should be able to prompt “provide lyrics to a love song in the style of [famous musician] about [fill in] but avoid using strings of four or more words from any of their songs.” The user takes responsibility.