First of all we are really sorry, both our cameras stopped working half way through the video, luckily the sound recorder was still working and we have sound, but we lost video after minute 45.
The Panel is split into two sections. The first section Law and the DAO will be covering questions like:
• What is the DAO and what is the community of token holders?
• Who is legally responsible for and liable for acts or omissions of the DAO?
• Can the DAO or the token holders sue or be sued?
• Is the DAO creating (or can it create) a new legal paradigm, or will existing legal frameworks (legal corporate structure, etc) simply be applied onto/around the core automated processes of DAOs.
The second section Law and Blockchain will be addressing:
• Can smart contracts function as legal contracts and vis-a-versa.
• What will the practice of law look like in the era of smart contracts and blockchain? What will change? Will all lawyers be coders? Will human judgment still be required? Will courts and judges be replaced?
• How will DAOs, blockchains and smart contracts change the law itself (property law, IP law, tax law, criminal law)?
• Part of the vision of blockchain is freedom and empowerment, but with public blockchains, what happens to the right of privacy and the right to be forgotten?
The panel was chaired by Stuart Mast – with over 15 years of experience practicing law at some of the biggest international law firms. He has been involved with startups as a founder, partner, investor and evangelist. As a lawyer, Stuart is particularly excited about the role law can play in helping to advance the developments in the blockchain ecosystem, as well as the remarkable opportunity we now have to think about how law, and the ways we regulate ourselves and resolve disputes, can be reinvented.
Stuart was joined by:
• Stephen D. Palley is of counsel in the Washington D.C. office of Anderson Kill. He focuses his practice on litigation, trial practice and insurance coverage. He has recently published articles on determining jurisdiction when a DAO is sued, and on how to sue a DAO.
• Lorna Brazell is a partner at Osbourne Clarke. Her work includes litigation in the English courts, oppositions and appeals at the European Patent Office and the management of parallel actions across Europe and beyond, as well as IP diligence reviews, opinions, international portfolio management and patent licensing. She is a contributing author to Hoegner’s 2015 book on the Law of Bitcoin.
• Raoul Lumb is an attorney in Hill Hofstetter’s Technology Team. He assists clients with a wide range of commercial contract issues, as well as advising on intellectual property and regulatory matters. He acts for clients drawn from all across the Technology sector, including software developers, online entrepreneurs and hardware manufacturers.
• Sean Murphy is a corporate partner in Norton Rose Fulbright’s London office. He advises a broad range of clients on FinTech-related matters, including financial institutions, regulators, investors, start-ups and mature technology companies. Sean is the global co-chair of Norton Rose Fulbright’s technology international business group and leads the global distributed ledger and blockchain practice group.
We’d like to thank the London Ethereum Meetup (http://www.meetup.com/ethereum/) event sponsors and organizers:
B9lab: http://b9lab.com/
BTL: http://btl.co/
Slock.It: https://slock.it/
CryptoCompare: https://www.cryptocompare.com/
Havas Media: http://www.havasmedia.com/
