Selling LAND in Decentraland: The Regime of Non-fungible Tokens on the Ethereum Blockchain Under the Digital Content Dir
Rewind to the early 1990s: an infant World Wide Web recently created by Tim Berners-Lee was starting to redefine the way people were connected globally. First came communication services (e.g. e-mail) and a shift from physical to digital marketplaces (e.g
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act Rewind to the early 1990s: an infant World Wide Web recently created by Tim Berners-Lee was starting to redefine the way people were connected globally. First came communication services (e.g. e-mail) and a shift from physical to digital marketplaces (e.g. ecommerce). Then came the rise of Internet platforms, in what is now deemed to be Web 2.0. The critics of Web 2.0 claim it is a spoiled version of early Internet promises: freedom from surveillance, online safety (even through anonymity)—in a nutshell, more control and power for the user. The answer to the problems of Web 2.0 is thought to be the third era of the Internet, namely the Decentralized Internet, based on (among others) blockchain technology. While a lot of literature has focused on the legal implications of blockchain assets such as cryptocurrencies from a banking perspective, not the same can be said about the consumer protection angle necessary in tackling the hype that has affected users who spent valuable financial resources on investing, playing on or using blockchain- based platforms. This chapter aims to make a contribution to fill this research gap, and focus on Decentraland, a virtual world where LAND, a non-fungible token is traded in order to allow users to build their own spaces on these plots. In doing so, the chapter elaborates on the notion of Internet of Value, and looks at the inner workins of Decentraland from the perspective of European law, more specifically the Digital Content Directive. Keywords Decentraland · Blockchain · Digital Content Directive · Consumer protection · Tokens · Internet of value
C. Goanta (*) Maastricht Law & Tech Lab, Faculty of Law, Maastricht University, Maastricht, Netherlands e-mail: [email protected]
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 A. Lehavi, R. Levine-Schnur (eds.), Disruptive Technology, Legal Innovation, and the Future of Real Estate, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-52387-9_8
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1 Introduction Rewind to the early 1990s: an infant World Wide Web recently created by Tim Berners-Lee was starting to redefine the way people were connected globally. First came communication services (e.g. e-mail) and a shift from physical to digital marketplaces (e.g. ecommerce). Then came the rise of Internet platforms, in what is now deemed to be Web 2.0—prosumers generate content on social media platforms such as Youtube, Facebook, Instagram (e.g. social media), or offer their individual services on peer-to-peer or gig platforms such as Uber, AirBnB or Taskrabbit. These developments have been both lauded and criticized. On the one hand, the Internet as we know it dissolved geographic distances, created new industries, facilitated the distribution of goods of services and empowered individual employment. On the other hand, it gave rise to new questions about what is real and what is fake: what to do if someone posts fake reviews; who to hold accountable for fake news; how to prevent a new
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