This open public research and development site explores the emerging field of computational law as social science, technical capability and business innovation.   This site is curated by MIT's Dazza Greenwood as part of Prof. Alex "Sandy" Pentland's work on Social Physics and Connection Science.

MIT Computational Law Report

Launching This Fall

Signup with this form for updates and notices about the MIT Computational Law Report.  To submit proposed content, the form on this page.

What is Computational Law?

Remarks of Dazza Greenwood to Tsinghua Computational Law Forum in Beijing on December 15, 2018  

Direct link to the video: https://youtu.be/AjXtIA4f9j4

Winter 2019 MIT-IAP Computational Law Course

For more info and to apply for instructor permission to participate in this workshop course, see: law.MIT.edu/learning

* Digital Assets, including 1) Ownership rights, valuation and provenance of digital property; and 2) Storage and exchange of digital property with electronic contracts, automated transactions and autonomous agents

* Digital Identity, including 1) Technology and architecture for autonomy and control of self-sourced digital identity and personal data; and 2) Using individual identity for valid, verifiable login to apps or services and for providing a legal acknowledgment, assent or authorization.

* Digital Contracts, including 1) Integrating ordinary digital contracts and blockchain "smart contracts" in automated transactions by individuals or businesses; and 2) Standard open-web stack design patterns for executing multiple digital signatures and electronic notarization on digital legal contracts.

The course includes tutorials and tools for prototyping with blockchain based smart contracts and computational modeling.  The course also includes a special module on Open Music use cases and student projects.

MIT Open Music Legal Hackathon

On Sunday, October 28th, join us at the MIT Media Lab for a day-long  legal and technology hackathon to learn about and develop solutions for musicians and artists to control their digital works. In collaboration with the Open Music Initiative and Legal Hackers chapters around the world, this distributed event will happen in venues across the word (San Francisco, New York, Tokyo, Kansas City, Dallas, DC, Vienna, San Paulo and other venues throughout the month of October, culminating with the legal hackathon at MIT. Learn more at LegalHackathon.org

Event Tracks

The event includes three tracks:

• the learning track for lectures, panels and tutorials, 
• the discussion track for small group focused conversations
• the hacking track for team-based rapid project development

Through the month of October, we are collecting key challenges and ideas from experts and the broader communities to seed discussion and creative work by small teams at the event.  At the end of the event, all of the project demos and other presentations will be published to a digital media gallery, that will be freely available and accessible to all through OpenMedia.Space and Archive.org.  

The event is free and open to all.  To participate, signup at: http://LegalHackathon.org For more information, reach out to Dazza Greenwood (dazza@media.mit.edu).

Resources

Learn about the Music Modernization Act, enacted by Congress a few days ago,  and how it enables novel business models and legal frameworks that can transform the music and media industry through innovative technologies.   Specifically, this new statute established a publicly accessible database for song ownership information and creation of a single licensing entity called the "Mechanical Licensing Collective" to administer mechanical rights and royalties for musical works.

Learn more at:

• Press summary from US House Judiciary Committee: https://goodlatte.house.gov/news/documentsingle.aspx?DocumentID=1298
• Music Modernization Act: What Is It & Why Does It Matter? (Guest Column) | Billboard: https://www.billboard.com/articles/business/8216857/music-modernization-act-what-is-it-why-does-it-matter-jordan-bromley
• A Hit Songwriter Explains Why The Music Modernization Act Is At A Tipping Point: https://www.forbes.com/sites/dannyross1/2018/08/02/a-hit-songwriter-explains-urgency-for-music-industry-overhaul-in-washington/#7ebcf08b4fdd
• Music Modernization Act Update: MLC Will Be Prohibited from Licensing Synch, Lyrics, Performances: https://www.digitalmusicnews.com/2018/08/03/music-modernization-act-mlc-mechanical/
• Why Won’t Anyone Budget the MMA’s Mechanical Licensing Collective? | Music Technology Policy: https://musictechpolicy.com/2018/06/06/why-wont-anyone-budget-the-mmas-mechanical-licensing-collective/
• In Support of the Music Modernization Act: Letter from Berklee President Roger H. Brown — Open Music Initiative: http://open-music.org/blog/2018/9/5/in-support-of-the-music-modernization-act-letter-from-berklee-president-roger-h-brown
• Congressional Text of the Statute: https://www.congress.gov/bill/115th-congress/house-bill/1551/text

Learn about open source smart/legal contract and blockchain-based data analytics tools you can use to hack the law for open music and media (including short "how-to" videos we have made with the project teams for each tool) at: http://legalhackathon.org/#resources including:

• Endor: https://www.endor.com
• Monax: https://monax.io
• OpenLaw: https://openlaw.io
• RChain: https://www.rchain.coop

2018 Computational Law and Blockchain Festival

Learn.  Hack.  Discuss.

2017 MIT Legal Forum on AI and Blockchain

October 30 & 31, 2017 at the MIT Media Lab

The inaugural MIT Legal Forum on AI & Blockchain mission is to provide a forum for legal scholars, practitioners, technologists and business professionals to (A) discuss the current and likely future impact of AI and blockchain technologies on the law, and (B) develop an initial framework for the evaluation, prioritization and practical application of AI and blockchain technologies to the law.  For more information, see: MIT.edu/Law and Law.MIT.edu/MITLegalForum

2017 Open Access Journal Special Issue: Computation, Law and the Net

"Computation, Law and the Net—The Future of Law in the Computational Social Science Era"

Special Issue:

Join me and my fellow guest editors of this special issue in co-creating this historic volume.  Together with the rise of computational power and the data deluge, the growth of the Internet ecosystem is the driver of a deep change in our lives. We are witnessing a development that not only is reshaping economies, societies and institutions worldwide, but is also impacting the way in which science is done.

According to a growing and heterogeneous literature, the computational social science paradigm is drastically increasing our understanding of social dynamics and our ability to manage social complexity. Seen in this perspective, computational social science (CSS) represents a topic of great interest for the legal world. The law itself is at the same time a social phenomenon and an ordering factor of social life. CSS, on the one hand, promises to shed a new light on socio-legal dynamics, on the other, it is gradually providing innovative tools capable to support public institutions in a series of legally relevant activities spanning from policy design to rule making, from regulatory impact analysis to law enforcement. The use of online experiments, sentiment analysis techniques or agent-based social simulations in the legal world are just a few examples of an uncharted scientific and applicative landscape that is worth being explored.

This Special Issue aims at bringing together contributions discussing research issues at a theoretical level or presenting projects and applications of CSS that can be considered relevant for the legal field.  For more inforat http://www.mdpi.com/journal/futureinternet/special_issues/future_of_law

Dazza Greenwood, JD
Guest Edit

Keywords

2017 MIT Computational Law Lecture Series Kickoff

"The Path to Predictive Coding: eDiscovery Search in the Big Data Era"

Tuesday Hack Night is Back: February 7th, 2017

Refactoring  Warehouse Receipts From Paper Documents to Electronic Transferable Records

Join Massachusetts Legal Hackers and MIT Computational Law researchers for a focused legal hack session with Mark Weber of the MIT Digital Currency Initiative as we use law governing Electronic Transferable Records to help refactor paper-based warehouse receipts into the form of blockchain-backed digital, networked objects!  Hacknight Wiki page of background resources and context:  https://github.com/ComputationalLaw/TransferableRecords-LegalHacking/wiki/Hack-Night-With-Mark-Weber  

The general idea is to refactor legally valid and enforceable warehouse receipts from paper documents to digital records.  we will explore:

1) Identifying system design requirements or constraints by starting with a walk through of the rules governing "Transferable Records" under UETA and ESIGN; and

2) Identifying contract design requirements or constraints by starting with a walkthrough of a standard, international "Trading Partner Agreement" appropriate for participation in relatively open commerce platforms, exchange networks and multi-player market systems (not a big buyer supply chain trading partner).  

The goal for this hack night is to develop a bullet list of potentially important requirements, constraints and other design goals for migration from paper to digital Warehouse Receipts, derived from a rapid but focused walk through of relevant legal rules.  The intention is to derive that bullet list from legal rules governing warehouse receipts in the form of electronic transferable records in the practical context of some likely types of rules governing parties using the digital warehouse receipt system derived from very standard trading partner and other commercial umbrella agreements.  While these two sources are far from comprehensive sets of all the legal rules impacting a system for digital warehouse receipts, they do provide a core "DNA-like" set of coherent, widely accepted, authoritative, definite, timely, relevant and achievable foundation to build upon.

RSVP at: https://www.meetup.com/Massachusetts-Legal-Hackers/events/237379403

2017 MIT/IAP Computational Law Course

MIT-Course.ComputationalLaw.org

exploring legal issues and technology options arising from data analytis, blockchains, individual identity systems and automated transactions

The January 2017 computational law course features a two-day module exploring use of Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality for data analytics, we call DataVR.  For more information on this module, see: http://datavr.xyz  The 2017 course covers data analytics, blockchain smart contracts and other emerging legal technology topics, featuring expert lectures, self-study materials, groups discussion and hands-on, project-centered experiential learning. For more information on this Continuing Legal Education (CLE) offering, see: law.MIT.edu/Computational-Law-Course

Enrolled participants in the January 23+24 module on DataVR can use the syllabus as a live workshop schedule

Analytics and Blockchain for Community Centered Financial Institutions

The Fully Automated Legal Entity Prototype

For more information: https://law.mit.edu/automated-credit-union

To request updates or get involved: contact us

Blockchain Legal Intensive

A month-long PrototypeJam at http://MIT.edu/law/blockchain

Research Spotlight: Temporal Public Data Exploration of US Code

Use the below interactive public data visualization tool to compare the rate of change in each title of the US Code. This visualization tool is being shared now as an example of how law can be presented as data in a way that enables any person to do basic data exploration. Note however, the underlying data is still in the process of being cleaned and not yet reliable as an accurate measure.  

Ongoing Research: Uniform Law Adoption Analytics

There are many facets of the law to which data science and computational legal science methods can be applies and many aspects of such science that can be applied to any given facet of the law.  One of the promising entry points being pursued by the Legal Science research team here at the MIT Media Lab is with an important body of statutes known as "Uniform Law".  The #LegalScience research team is now commencing a research study to explore the data and systems comprising uniform laws of the states and territories of the United States.

                               

                 Preliminary Uniforn Law Analytics and Visualizations

                 Please Share Your Comments/Questions/Ideas? 

Please see our ARCHIVE for prior eCitizen.MIT.edu version and content.