Tonya Evans, professor of law at Penn State Dickinson Law School, returns to the Pod to discuss the state of play in the metaverse, and where intellectual property laws come in. She and Scott also answer listener questions on NFTs as investment vehicles, cryptocurrency regulations, and what makes Web3 different from Web2.0. Follow Professor Evans on Twitter @IPProfEvans.
Music: https://www.davidcuttermusic.com / @dcuttermusic
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I’m going to let you in on a Decoder secret: at the end of last year, I tasked our producers with finding better ways for us to cover crypto and Web 3.0 on Decoder. I don’t think it’s any secret that I’m fairly skeptical of crypto, but I want to come by that skepticism honestly—and on the flip side, I want to make sure to see its opportunities and benefits clearly. We’ve already done episodes on Bitcoin and DAOs, decentralized autonomous organizations, and we’re going to do more episodes as the year goes on.
Today I’m talking to Tonya Evans, a law professor at Penn State Dickinson Law. She teaches IP law, copyright, and blockchain. She also hosts the Tech Intersect podcast, where she covers how law and technology intersect. She has spent a lot of time thinking about crypto assets and how they interact with the law. Tonya’s point of view is that we shouldn’t just abandon many of the legal frameworks we have today—she just wants them to adapt to this new internet.
Links:
The counterfeit NFT problem is only getting worse
Instagram says sites need photographers’ permission to embed posts
BlockFi settlement with the SEC
A cringe rapper slash Forbes contributor allegedly found with billions in stolen Bitcoin
Constitution DAO Decoder episode
Alfonso Ribeiro Sues Fortnite Over Use of His Signature Fresh Prince Dance, The Carlton
The ‘Carlton dance’ couldn’t be copyrighted for a Fortnite lawsuit
Adi Robertson's reporting about Spice DAO
Tonya Evans' website, ProfTonyaEvans.com
Tonya Evans on Twitter
Transcript:
https://www.theverge.com/e/22708620
Credits:
Decoder is a production of The Verge, and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network.
Today’s episode was produced by Creighton DeSimone and Jackie McDermott and it was edited by Callie Wright.
The Decoder music is by Breakmaster Cylinder. Our Sr Audio Director is Andrew Marino and our Executive Producer is Eleanor Donovan.
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Olta Andoni, fintech and IP Attorney at Zlatkin Wong and adjunct professor at Chicago Kent College of Law, Tonya Evans, visiting Full Professor of Law at Penn State Dickinson Law School and host of the podcast Tech Intersect, and Stuart Levi, co-head of the Intellectual Property and Technology practice at Skadden Arps and coordinator of the firm's Blockchain and Digital Asset practice, break down the legal issues surrounding NFTs. In this episode, they discuss:
how the law looks at non-fungible tokens (1:25)
why owning an NFT is different from owning the rights to the underlying asset making up the NFT (3:12)
problems that blockchain solves for creators (5:09)
how corporations (aka content intermediaries) are handling NFTs (6:53)
what rights the purchase of an NFT gives a buyer (11:51)
derivative artwork, the fair use copyright law, moral rights, and how U.S. law views NFTs (15:53)
how to determine the jurisdiction of an NFT (25:00)
what type of legal recourse is available to artists whose art has been stolen and redistributed as an NFT (32:37)
the differences in the terms of services between NFT marketplaces (36:26)
why the first sale doctrine may not apply to digital assets (43:16)
what a buyer is getting when purchasing a blockchain license (46:12)
how NFT creators should protect their work (51:43)
whether a fractionalized NFT is a security (55:25)
how NFTs will change the business of content creation (58:44)
Thank you to our sponsors!
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Episode Links
People
Tonya Evans
Twitter: https://twitter.com/IPProfEvans
Penn State Dickinson Law: https://dickinsonlaw.psu.edu/tonya-m-evans
Relevant content:
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/tech-intersect-59-ping-prof-2-non-fungible-tokens-nfts/id1493143898?i=1000512485580
https://clarivate.com/darts-ip/blog/copyright-blockchain/
https://clarivate.com/darts-ip/blog/intro-to-ip-and-blockchain/
Olta Andoni
Twitter: https://twitter.com/AndoniOlta?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor
Zlatkin Wong: https://zlatkinwong.com/en/
Relevant content:
https://www.coindesk.com/stop-tokenizing-art-you-dont-own
Stuart Levi
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stuartlevi/
Skadden: https://www.skadden.com/
Relevant content:
https://www.mondaq.com/unitedstates/fin-tech/799182/emerging-discovery-issues-in-blockchain-litigation
Legal Links
Fair Use Doctrine:
https://pitt.libguides.com/copyright/fairuse#:~:text=The%20doctrine%20of%20Fair%20Use,teaching%2C%20scholarship%2C%20and%20research.
First Sale Doctrine:
https://www.justice.gov/archives/jm/criminal-resource-manual-1854-copyright-infringement-first-sale-doctrine#:~:text=The%20first%20sale%20doctrine%2C%20codified,interests%20of%20the%20copyright%20owner
Moral Rights:
https://www.copyright.gov/policy/moralrights/
Digital Millennium Copyright Act
https://www.copyright.gov/legislation/dmca.pdf
Visual Artists Rights Act
http://www.law.harvard.edu/faculty/martin/art_law/esworthy.htm
Miscellaneous Links
Banksy
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/banksy-nft-injective-destroy-art-digital-token/
Fractionalized NFTs
https://markets.businessinsider.com/currencies/news/sec-crypto-mom-hester-peirce-selling-nft-fragments-illegal-2021-3-1030250153
Dapper Labs License
https://medium.com/dapperlabs/nft-license-2-0-why-a-nft-can-do-what-mickey-mouse-never-could-27673d5f29aa
TechnoLlama Blog
https://www.technollama.co.uk/can-copyright-teach-us-anything-about-nfts
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