5 ms·

How does this law translate to decentralized contracts/subscriptions? It may not be possible to support these analog mediums on an Ethereum smart contract for e

by elwell 5y ago

How does this law translate to decentralized contracts/subscriptions? It may not be possible to support these analog mediums on an Ethereum smart contract for example.

ferdowsi 5y ago
Seems like smart contracts aren't so smart if they don't support easy cancelation mechanisms.
- elwell 5y ago
  Our future digital overlords might choose to integrate humans into the hivemind to support these analog cancellation requests, but gas costs would certainly spike.
neltnerb 5y ago
Why? Can't a company make it so that there's a "cancel contract" method? I am not an Ethereum expert, I just don't understand, to be clear. I'm sure this is far more basic than what you know how to do, but this seems pretty simple to add a "cancel contract" method that seems like it'd meet the requirement to be as easy to cancel as it was to set up. The account status seems like they can at any time just read it off the smart contract, they already do for balance monitoring each month in this example. https://www.sitepen.com/blog/smart-contracts-a-tutorial https://www.sitepen.com/blog/smart-contracts-a-tutorial Is the issue that there will be a bunch of extraneous data on the chain or something when, say, Verizon puts their entire customer database onto Ethereum?
- elwell 5y ago
  I was more so referring to having to support the handing of a napkin to an employee.
  - Spivak 5y ago
    You'll probably have to make it so that either party can cancel contracts.
topkai22 5y ago
I'm a bit ignorant of smart contracts and I'm not a lawyer, but presumably the service provider would have to take whatever action would invalidate the subscription. It gets weird with escrow though, because it's possible the law could treat money in escrow (like in a contract account) as already prepaid- if you wrote a contract to be paid every month for 12 months provided that a given key to a service stated valid and funded the escrow for the 12 months, it's possible the court would rule that you bought 12 months of a product, not a subscription. I'm not aware if this has been litigated.
antihero 5y ago
I don't think the law really cares about this sort of thing.

by elwell 5y ago

How does this law translate to decentralized contracts/subscriptions? It may not be possible to support these analog mediums on an Ethereum smart contract for example.

ferdowsi 5y ago

Seems like smart contracts aren't so smart if they don't support easy cancelation mechanisms.

elwell 5y ago
Our future digital overlords might choose to integrate humans into the hivemind to support these analog cancellation requests, but gas costs would certainly spike.

neltnerb 5y ago

Why? Can't a company make it so that there's a "cancel contract" method? I am not an Ethereum expert, I just don't understand, to be clear. I'm sure this is far more basic than what you know how to do, but this seems pretty simple to add a "cancel contract" method that seems like it'd meet the requirement to be as easy to cancel as it was to set up. The account status seems like they can at any time just read it off the smart contract, they already do for balance monitoring each month in this example. https://www.sitepen.com/blog/smart-contracts-a-tutorial https://www.sitepen.com/blog/smart-contracts-a-tutorial Is the issue that there will be a bunch of extraneous data on the chain or something when, say, Verizon puts their entire customer database onto Ethereum?

elwell 5y ago
I was more so referring to having to support the handing of a napkin to an employee.
- Spivak 5y ago
  You'll probably have to make it so that either party can cancel contracts.

topkai22 5y ago

I'm a bit ignorant of smart contracts and I'm not a lawyer, but presumably the service provider would have to take whatever action would invalidate the subscription. It gets weird with escrow though, because it's possible the law could treat money in escrow (like in a contract account) as already prepaid- if you wrote a contract to be paid every month for 12 months provided that a given key to a service stated valid and funded the escrow for the 12 months, it's possible the court would rule that you bought 12 months of a product, not a subscription. I'm not aware if this has been litigated.

antihero 5y ago

I don't think the law really cares about this sort of thing.