 Hi everybody, it's Brian Wilson the co-instructor for the 2019 computational law course with Mila Rioja teaching assistant for the 2019 computational law course in our esteemed guest Michelle Gitlis from Blank Rome She's a partner there and co-chairs their Digital currencies working group and one of the things that we're going to be doing today with this smart legal contracts workshop is kind of recapping a little bit of what we touched on in the lecture, but also diving in a little bit more into some of the practical applicability of smart legal contracts with the specifically looking at the questions that you guys have submitted in pigeonhole kind of looking at some of the feedback that different people have there While the sessions live and ongoing and then also trying to weave in a little bit the the great feedback that we had yesterday from the in-person session that we did with the open music initiative where everybody kind of sketched out a framework for Publishing rights organizations to interact better with musicians um with the specific focus on The the copyright issues that kind of exist there and the way that the money kind of flows between the different rights holders that Are part of that ecology and so with that i'm going to hand it over to michelle and Let her take it away So are people i'm just trying to make sure i understand so are people going to ask questions or am i going Yeah, okay. Awesome. And where will i see the questions so they're on that link that i sent you perfect Hold on i can and then And then mila should be able to help uh Kind of disintermediate the questions with the The conversation Okay, i'm just trying to open it up in a different tab so that I can see I didn't realize i'm sorry. Do you want one of the questions is and i can start Yeah, so the first question that came in was Are there any companies that you find to be super exciting in the smart contract field with us and a special eye towards the music industry? You know, I think I think that the companies that you know have have been contributing and featured Oh, whoops, I did the wrong thing um with respect to this program are Are obviously very interesting. I think there's also um, I think there's also just in general um A need in the music industry to be able to understand and be able to effectuate Getting artists and authors and even in in photography artists in general their Payment for their contributions. Um, and so to the extent that smart contracts can help us More effectively Both disintermediate and also make sure payments get to the right people the right for owners I think that really helps um in terms of companies Um, I think what some of the accounting firms are doing is really interesting because their job is to audit the royalty payments And so that's that's sort of the last line of defense, which I like to say because You know if if the payments were not made correctly in the first place to the artist or the author or the photographer Any auditor can step in and can correct that mistake, but the auditors oftentimes They are only looking at a sampling of payments that were made because they are auditing Um, and so what we're seeing now is the audit firms are moving toward being able to do 100 auditing with smart contracts and artificial intelligence and things like that And I think it's really going to move the ball forward Um, well amazing. Uh, thank you for your first reply. That's quite quite interesting. So Let's hop on to the second question now Um And michelle, please feel free also to provide further information based on the lecture we already had so If you're able to extrapolate a little bit more on that I'm sorry. What would you like me to extrapolate on? Uh possible companies, uh that you'll find well, you talked about companies that exist in the market But what about companies that don't exist just yet and would be like a very fruitful, you know And could make things better in such way I think that to the extent that there are companies out there who can better Assess and assign revenue sharing agreements. I think that would be really helpful Um, there's also a question about amendments Um to smart contracts and I think that I think that perhaps there won't necessarily you can't amend a smart contract in a traditional way by erasing the contract that already exists You can just set up either a side module or another contract that would Um Coordinate with the already existing contract that's immutable to be able to effectuate the secondary or split payments That could come in the future that amended the contract Yeah, thanks. So we have brian back. Yes, sorry We were just discussing the very first question about what companies The shifter would be interesting and we extrapolated a little bit more Because we're talking about some companies that she knows and then she knows about like what could be like prospective companies or ideas Yeah, I I think the idea about Getting different perspective companies formed, especially in this space is always something that's really exciting um I I know it was only a year ago that we're uh, Really excited about in this course, especially like the advent of crypto kiddies As a real thing that was happening and now it's kind of pushed the envelope with regard to the What is possible with smart contracts and smart legal contracts? Uh, especially with like the this conceptualization of a non-fungible token um I I think Especially as it is considered kind of like a work of art in a similar way um the the idea that we could have something that You know In a digital world, but can be like tokenized and kind of reduced to Something that people recognize stores a certain value is a really cool and exciting thing um for moving forward uh with in with that in mind, I I don't know very much about non-fungible tokens and I was wondering if you could like kind of uh, Provide us with a little bit of information in there Um, I'm not sure I could I could speak um extensively on non-fungible tokens, but I'm sorry. We can't hear you I don't know if there's an error on our end or if it's on mute or Oh, I'm not on mute Oh It's Can you hear me Hold on just one moment bear with us and we'll try and get this figured out Because nothing happened if you could jump out and then jump back in using the same link. Uh, I want to see if that will work Okay Sorry everybody All right, we can see you. Is that better? Yes. Now we can hear. Okay. Thank you. Sorry about So you were asking about non-fungible tokens Yes, so so that's you know, that's a token. That's that's unique Right. It's not it's not like a cryptocurrency like bitcoin And I think I think what's interesting is the concept that And some companies are starting to do this that you can create your own work and use either a non-fungible token Or use some type of music platform that will pay you royalty So instead of just putting your work up on the internet or putting your work up on the platform There's a new mechanism for you know, seeing new artists or undiscovered artists to generate their own money through Using a token or a block or a blockchain rather than an established artist who we know already has an arrangement With a record label or something like that or with amazon for books to get paid Okay, so with with that in mind you kind of see this And I think I know the answer to this but I just want to make I don't want to say something that Could be wrong I I want you to have the oh my gosh Am I on mute? Was I on mute? No, nobody's on mute um, so kind of in that vein do you see this move towards decentralization as one that uh As one that will open up parts of the market to like the smaller players more so than the larger players um I would I'm not sure I'd say open the market up and at least provide access to and at least provide a mechanism by which people who are either unrepresented or you know I guess when when People started being able to self publish their own books and sell them on amazon That was that was a really big deal. And I think we're starting to see the music industry move to the same place um, I think the identification and distribution of royalties in general is something that's really Um ripe for the use of blockchain, but also the idea that you don't need an intermediary You don't need an agent. You don't need a record label to be able to sell and monetize your music That's important right that helps that helps the quote struggling artist that helps everybody um And I think it'll bring more people and more diversity to market Hold on we're still having one bit of trouble and we think it may be on our end But I think I may know a fix for it. So just a couple of seconds. Okay, no worries All right, so we Have hopped on with another computer. Are you able to hear us michelle from? Yeah, this is much better Okay, we we still are having some trouble on our end uh here with your audio and i'm not sure how to Okay, wait there Can you try and say something real quick testing? Yes, okay Back i'm so i'm so sorry about that Um it cut out in the middle of what you were saying about non-fungible tokens Okay, so so we we know that A non-fund fund fundable token represents something unique right and so um, I think that that's that may be a potential way for for artists um and authors and other types of people who are who are creating art or creating music to potentially market and get paid for their contributions um the other side the other side of um The coin so to say Is creating additional platforms that are decentralized where people don't need agents They don't need record labels to be able to get paid for the music or the content that they're creating And you know, that's that's important because it means that more people can get Their deliverables heard and also get compensated um, and we know that there's companies like dot blockchain that are you know specialized in in helping people Get to market and get paid for the content that they're putting out there Nice had had previously been kind of uh closed off or In a way, uh Inhibited or limited by the the uh high cost of that it takes to get in and so I think that's In terms of just the ethos of uh Blockchain, I think that lies very well with uh, what the whole point of it is Going back to kind of like satoshi's white paper vision of And even some of the stuff by uh, some of the earlier stuff by nick sabo um Sorry, we had another feedback thing Uh Let me pull up some of the pigeonhole feedback really quickly so we can get to more of the questions um So, uh kevin points out that's or Yeah asks Um, so smart contracts work only for controlled compositions Can we make uh clever contracts that allow for works with multi stakeholders? Like a Beyonce song where there might be different like a lot of different people who were either sampled or Um accredited with having some contribution to that song. Would there be a way to make smart contracts that allow for Um those works to kind of be disintermediated um to Oh, you you froze at the end of the at the end of the question Um, but I I read the I read the question So So I think what you were saying was is there is there a way to The multiple stakeholders to be able to make a smart contract that allows the multiple stakeholders to participate Yeah And I don't I don't profess to be a developer Or a coder but from a from a legal standpoint, we know that if we can draft The terms of a legal contract we're working with the coders and the developers to be able to implement that on blockchain Um, whether we can do that today. I've not seen that yet today But I find it hard to believe that it's not possible and just because I haven't seen it doesn't mean that it's not out there And to that point, I think one of the things that Uh, they went over yesterday a little bit in the working session that we did in person was involved two composers who collaborated together to create like one song and some of the insight that came out of the There is an architecture where you can do it Whether that's it it just involves the level that you want the payment to come from so whether that's you know, you Have your You have it whether you want it to go directly from the pro so the the rights management organization who's Getting the money to all of the artists or whether you want it to be at a lower level where you create some sort of investment vehicle or kind of like a Some sort of autonomous entity that the money is instead sent to where the permissions of that autonomous entity are such that you know, it it's set so that any time a A composition is created and it is sent to say party one Of the organization who helps create the song it also Based on our the arrangement setup in the smart contract Splits it and has it sent to all of the parties that are necessary So I I think there's definitely a way that it could be done what that might actually look like I Remain a little bit less sure of Hold on and I'm gonna get to the Get to the questions on this laptop. Sorry for Sorry for all of the technical difficulties in this. Um, no, that's okay Is mark joining I Had thought he had the link, but I'm not sure I he did send us a message with some feedback while the While the session was going so I I think he is out there But mark if you're out there, we would love to love for you to join so that we could kind of Talk a little bit more about some of the some of the goings on of yesterday and And now I just got to the pigeonhole widget So Ivan mentions that the Audits of music usage could eventually be performed by AI reading the blockchain. Is this something Any auditors you mentioned are currently working on and it said, you know who these groups are For sure. Um, I can't I can't disclose the names of the people who I'm doing work with for it for it. Um, but Definitely AI is a huge huge component of Ensuring that the auditors who want to use blockchain to audit the music royalty payments are able to review All of the different records and contracts that they need to review to be able to do Whether it being 85 or 90 or 95 percent or even 100 percent audit So AI is a huge component and I always love to Talk about how AI and blockchain can be married together. It's it's a pretty it's a pretty magical solution Yeah, so One of the one of the areas that I work in is with I was mark here I'm here. Oh Hi everyone. There's a recent comment about The compatibility of AI Its potential applications with blockchain I think You know just in some of the work that I've seen and been doing in the insurance space At the enterprise sort of level it seems like the only way to kind of take catalog of a lot of these digital assets involves Using some form of AI whether it's machine learning to kind of Get an understanding of what is there and then a Kind of like blockchain sort of back end where you can then take what is there and kind of Make it so that you have an absolute record of it that everybody agrees on and that is You know widely Accepted as the kind of single source of truth that that seems to be kind of like the the combination Are there are there any other areas that What is one of the other areas that You have seen or that you can hypothesize about that Would see this combination of the two together as a as a particularly Particularly advantageous combination Is that for me or for? Sorry, I my fault Sorry, I thought it was remark Um Basically just wondering about the uh, you know, what are some other examples of The combined, uh synergies of Blockchain with AI Um, I think certain certainly we've seen it in the in the legal context in terms of Researching and being able to cull records public public filings on on say Pay serve with the courts You know when we used to do legal research It was all it was all manual First it was in books and then it was online and now we're able to have use AI to scan Documents and be able to give us outputs and say here's here's the cases that were cited in a brief That looks very similar to an issue that you were citing to and here are the cases that you should look at I mean that was something that you know It wasn't even a thought in our minds 10 years ago And those tools are readily available to us now because of of AI um in terms of blockchain And the combination of it. I think what you're what you may start to see that in the bankruptcy context I think that there's a lot of potential applications for trustees in bankruptcy using blockchain to help Manage claims against the estate and to use AI. It's so Intensive the amount the volume of information that the trustee needs to get through that I've heard that people are looking at pairing blockchain and AI in that context Okay It's really helpful. I think because You know knowing that there are like a couple of use cases That where this can happen Also, I think starts getting people thinking about it and getting people open to the ideas of it and then starting to think about it And you know potentially new contexts where you know people haven't Even really begun to think of it. And I think this Kind of music vignette that we were able to do yesterday Uh is one area where it was um, you know, particularly helpful And I want to give market chance to kind of introduce himself and then provide like a little bit of Talk about what we were able to go through yesterday and then kind of steer the discussion a little bit from there Well, hi joinic I'm flattered that I've been given this role because I'm really the interloper here I'm neither an attorney nor a soccer engineer nor in the music business But I've acquired a boatload of information in the two and a half days that I've been participating in the course Yesterday's in person session involved George Howard from the open music initiative Uh Two gents from uh redbill music house and two gents from ibm When we basically did a walkthrough of of of what? What smart contracts might be able to bring to the open music initiative? With the ability of helping emerging And uh and uh enable them to um Uh make a sustainable living Um the way we ultimately mapped this out was discuss the purpose uh legal technical and social aspects of this from the perspective of these three entities and this perspective of the artist um And uh looking over my notes, uh Uh the issues that we have uh in tandem with michelle's topic are How to deal with uh the performing uh rights organizations, uh It's a very fragmented marketplace Uh, they're granted monopolies by government action Uh, so it necessitates that there are many many intermediaries in the current uh value chain Um, we talked about um Contracts that are simple enough for artists to to use um because song splits can get uh complicated um And uh get amended over time Uh that assignability of rights is a requirement To the fire drill as you guys can Um We have to leave for a fire thing apologies about this. We will get this sorted out at some Thank you It's gone Sorry about that Sorry about that Um sorry for the bonding Um I'm gonna leave it to one of the assistant For the project software Um We should be And uh I'm saved uh on your zion