In this episode, we meet Primavera De Filippi, author of the recently published ‘Blockchain and the Law‘, from Harvard University Press (co-authored with Aaron Wright).

Primavera is interested in how the law will change to accommodate blockchain — and how blockchain might replace parts of the law. We’ve already seen how P2P filesharing strained the world’s copyright law: what changes will be ushered in by P2P money?

We discuss the future of blockchain-based technologies, and whether decentral systems are doomed to create new incumbents and new forms of centralisation; whether (and how) forking could be a solution against this ‘re-centralisation’; and how Ethereum’s smart contracts may have a fatal flaw that the philosophy of law already knows about.

Primavera De Filippi is a permanent researcher at the National Center of Scientific Research (CNRS) in Paris, a faculty associate at the Berkman-Klein Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University, and a Visiting Fellow at the Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies at the European University Institute. She is a member of the Global Future Council on Blockchain Technologies at the World Economic Forum, and co-founder of the Internet Governance Forum’s dynamic coalitions on Blockchain Technology (COALA). Her fields of interest focus on legal challenges raised by decentralized technologies, with a particular focus on blockchain technologies. She is investigating the new opportunities for these technologies to enable new governance models and participatory decision-making through the concept of governance-by-design.

Showrunner & Host Jamie King | Editor Lucas Marston (Hollagully)

Original Music David Triana | Web Production Eric Barch

Presented by TorrentFreak

Sponsored by Private Internet Access

Executive Producers: Mark Zapalac, Eric Barch, Nelson Larios, George Alvarez.

For sponsorship enquiries, please email [email protected]

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