Are Bitcoins Ownable?: Property Rights, IP Wrongs, and Legal-Theory Implications - Softcover

Graf, Konrad S.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1517410371 ISBN 13: 9781517410377

Publisher: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2015

Synopsis

Bitcoin has fresh implications for economics and law at many levels. This book addresses whether bitcoins ought to be considered ownable under an action-based approach to property theory, which—like bitcoin itself—transcends the boundaries of existing positive law jurisdictions. Beyond instinctive answers is a rich opportunity to examine the many technical facts and legal-theory issues involved. Bitcoin has a unique new place among types of economic goods, between the physically and spatially defined goods of property theory and the copiable, abstract ideas, patterns, and methods associated with IP rights. It does not fall so easily into existing categories. The author brings together here for the first time his work in an approach to legal philosophy grounded directly in the analysis of human action, which he has termed action-based jurisprudence, with his several years of writing about bitcoin from a monetary theory perspective and contributing through articles, presentations, and video productions to raising general public understanding of how Bitcoin works on a technical level.

About this title

About the Author

Konrad S. Graf has written groundbreaking articles on the new field of Bitcoin monetary theory, and created the Bitcoin Decrypted introductory video lecture series. He also formulated and is developing the action-based jurisprudence framework, which argues for more explicit applications of action theory in an integral approach to legal philosophy. He has spoken on bitcoin and on legal theory at conferences in Europe and Australia. In addition to his independent research and writing activities, he has worked as a professional Japanese-to-English translator since 1998.

Review

Additional description:

The context includes relationships among crypto-anarchist thought, conventional legal administration, and ideal legal practice, as well as related philosophical issues such as the combined use of multiple knowledge fields and the ethics of legal practice. Among the book's central themes is whether and how the same principles that both support property rights in measurable objects and locations and argue against IP claims in copiable ideas and abstractions may apply to the unique new case of bitcoin.

Edition details

• Publisher: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform
• Publication date: 2015
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1517410371
• ISBN 13: 9781517410377
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 92