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Blockchain & Intellectual Property @ Internet Librarian 2016

Post author By griffey
Post date October 21, 2016
4 Comments on Blockchain & Intellectual Property @ Internet Librarian 2016

Below are the slides from my presentation given at Internet Librarian 2016 concerning the blockchain and how it may change our perceptions about intellectual property. The blockchain provides for something unique in the history of our digital world, that of provable digital scarcity. The fact that we can have scarce digital objects for which ownership is publicly provable is a very odd concept, and is contrary to the last 20 years of thinking about digital objects. That concept, along with the peculiarities of data storage on the blockchain, should interest information professionals for its potential.

Alongside the general interest, blockchain driven tech stands to change the way the Internet and Web are structured and move power away from the center and towards the edges and the users of the systems. I’ve written about why this should be interesting to libraries, and I continue to believe that the next 5 years will see a slow motion movement towards these technologies.

By griffey

Jason Griffey is the Director of Strategic Initiatives at NISO, where he works to identify new areas of the information ecosystem where standards expertise is useful and needed. Prior to joining NISO in 2019, Jason ran his own technology consulting company for libraries, has been both an Affiliate at metaLAB and a Fellow and Affiliate at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University, and was an academic librarian in roles ranging from reference and instruction to Head of IT at the University of TN at Chattanooga.

Jason has written extensively on technology and libraries, including multiple books and a series of full-periodical issues on technology topics, most recently AI & Machine Learning in Libraries and Library Spaces and Smart Buildings: Technology, Metrics, and Iterative Design from 2018. His newest book, co-authored with Jeffery Pomerantz, will be published by MIT Press in 2024.

He has spoken internationally on topics such as artificial intelligence & machine learning, the future of technology and libraries, decentralization and the Blockchain, privacy, copyright, and intellectual property. A full list of his publications and presentations can be found on his CV.
He is one of eight winners of the Knight Foundation News Challenge for Libraries for the Measure the Future project (http://measurethefuture.net), an open hardware project designed to provide actionable use metrics for library spaces. He is also the creator and director of The LibraryBox Project (http://librarybox.us), an open source portable digital file distribution system.

Jason can be stalked obsessively online, and spends his free time with his daughter Eliza, reading, obsessing over gadgets, and preparing for the inevitable zombie uprising.

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