[hef19898]

There are, regardless of regulation, from aerspace over drugs to finance, tonsbof law firms, counsultants and experts out there explaining the rules and how to follow them.

The problem is that a whole generation of wannabe start-up bros, starting with Uber the latest, just cannot be bother with learning and respecting rules it seems. Most of those flog to crypto lately.

[tolmasky]

Not that I have a ton of experience on this, but from what I've seen, lawyers do not generally have a unified opinion on stuff like this (stuff that has never been litigated on in general). A lot of them will tell you "this is what I think, but look, this is untested."

To separate this from the emotionally-charged subject for a second: just look at Google vs. Oracle. It took over a decade to decide whether APIs are covered by copyright or not. And the reality is that that was closer to a coin toss than any of us would like to admit, since it was trying to apply a law that in no way imagined something like APIs to APIs, and relied heavily on the judge/etc being able to wrap their heads around it. The verdict could have easily gone the other way. When it comes to how regulations apply to new technologies, the uncomfortable truth is that there is no "objective truth" to the law, and unfortunately comes down more to how much money the parties throw at the problem and legal process. I am sure on the Oracle side there were plenty of people talking just like you: "these people don't respect copyright and flagrantly copy APIs that are obviously protected IP and they think just because they're in hippy open source land the law doesn't apply to them". The reality is that until the verdict, there effectively was no rule around copyright and APIs.

For an opposite example: look at the famous case of Diamond v. Chakrabarty (1980). The patent agency rejected an application for a genetically engineered bacteria that could break down oil, saying you can't patent living organisms. It went to the Supreme Court, that decided 5-4 that they could. Are you going to sit here and tell me this was obvious from the beginning? Given that the patent agency had the opposite opinion than the Supreme Court, and that the Supreme Court was basically split 50/50 on the decision? Do we think they made the right decision given no background in biology? Do we think Chakrabarty was a wannabe biology bro that didn't care about the law, given that almost every lawyer at the time would have told you was commonly accepted did not allow patenting living organisms?

* > tonsbof law firms, counsultants and experts out there explaining the rules and how to follow them.*

Hopefully you see now that a ton of those law firms are out there telling you "I think we can win on this, it has happened many times before, and the reality is that law really isn't written until we make our case".

[hef19898]

If your compliance plan is based on "my lawyer told me will win this", you are already 90% screwed.

[tolmasky]

If that's what you took away from this, you must have not read it. I have given specific examples from case law that show that the law often just isn't defined in these new areas, and there is actually nothing better than "I think we can win this". The law is not a secret ledger that has the true rules that account for all future scenarios, that you try to guess from the outside, and can get right or wrong. The law often just comes down to making your case. I know that's not satisfying, but it is the way it is.

[krageon]

Coinbase hired those people though, and they didn't get anywhere.