Last week I explored this question with Verge podcaster Nilay Patel on his popular show DeCoder. Nilay explained:
A lot of Web3 ideas seem to run directly into the existing legal system in complicated and sometimes very funny ways. The NFT world seems to have an impressionistic understanding of copyright law. DAOs, well, they aren’t actually recognized as legal entities in most states. So in a very technical sense, they can’t actually do anything in the real world. But all these things still exist, and at some point, the law will have to catch up.
So, 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.
Read the full transcript here.