Kings of Leon – the first band to release an album as an NFT. Photo: CC by 2.0
www.flickr.com/photos/raph_ph/
people to have access to that one book – whilst on the other hand, it wouldn’t make sense for the library. It would be similar to timesharing.”
No police
For decades rights owners have been try- ing to hold back the internet tide of free access to content. But NFTs are not part of this traditional defence of ownership. They originated from blockchain which is a decentralised system. “The whole point is that it’s not like Google where there’s a centralised organisation, it’s a whole lot of people being responsible. Everything gets recorded on the blockchain and the block- chain is immutable, so even transactions that are infringements – thefts and frauds taking place – they will always be there. But that’s all.
“If a platform is centralised it can be policed. You can get an injunction to stop people accessing the platform which blocks anything behind the platform. That’s not the case with NFTs. In some cases people have been defrauded – a recent well known example was three valuable Bored Ape NFTs being stolen by hackers. Opensea and Rarible, the platforms where NFTs are traded, stepped in to save the day. But while one group of people said ‘that’s good, well done’ anoth- er group was saying ‘what are you doing? We are meant to be decentralised’.”
AI and IP Dinusha says: “There has been a lot writ- 24 INFORMATION PROFESSIONAL
ten about it – about who is the owner etc. It’s a very important question. If you think about theories of international property, we’ve always had human creators, so you know who the rights holder is, you know it follows the incentive theory and that the creator should be incentivised to create again. But if the work is created through AI or an algorithm, then do you reward the software creators or the people input- ting the data? Or someone else? “It’s very much a live issue. Last month the IPO was seeking views on this and other related questions and whether there should be a change in the law. Their posi- tion has been challenged in courts around the world, the most recent was the Dabus case in the UK (
www.bbc.co.uk/news/technol- ogy-58668534) but there are different legal opinions and different legal outcomes in other jurisdictions – some say you do need a human inventor, others saying the opposite.
“It is important because international law can cope with nuanced differences but not in significant matters like who is an inventor. We need consensus because we have international law which enables application for worldwide patents. “But AI and other technology may well highlight cultural differences. For example, some countries are very much into moral rights while some others are into economic rights. So I think we should expect some differences in how ownership of AI is perceived in different jurisdic- tions. The difference will be dependent on
differences in the foundations of their IP laws. But I think on some level, we should be aiming for consistency.”
3D Printing
“Before 3D-printing people were used to reproducing music and film, but it was all in that creative side where copying was much easier. Copying something like a handbag, that was not for the average consumer. When 3D printing came along it opened the door for people like me – or someone who is not very technical - to be able to create a physical product through software called computer aided design (CAD). In 2009, 3D printing opened up to the av- erage consumer and like in everything in the digital world, platforms popped up with CAD files for 3D-printing. Here you could find someone doing something like a mock-up of a rabbit and quite often, next to it, would be protected content like My Little Pony or Pokémon, available to download and be printed.”
Not illegal?
“But there are grey areas in relation to infringement, when it comes to CAD files. Yes, 3D-printing opened up new types of file sharing and people found new infringing content, but the issue has not been resolved. My first project was for the UK Intellectual Property Office in 2014-2015. They wanted us to
March 2022
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