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{{a|devil| | {{a|devil| | ||
[[File:NyanCat.png|450px|frameless|center]] | [[File:NyanCat.png|450px|frameless|center]] | ||
}}The [[ | }}The [[blockchain]]’s unique selling point is ''uniqueness'': an entry on the ledger is fixed, immutable, unalterable and unique for all time. It cannot be changed, without editing every node on the [[distributed ledger]], and it cannot be duplicated. This sense of uniqueness, which is encoded into the design of a [[distributed ledger]], quite alien to the engineering of the internet, which depends on duplication as a means of transmission. | ||
===The internet: duplication by design=== | ===The internet: duplication by design=== | ||
The internet not only allows, but ''encourages'' lossless copying: that’s the essence of its [[End-to-end principle|end-to-end]] architecture. This brought to a head a conundrum for [[intellectual property]] laws that had been brewing since, arguably the time of the [[Jacquard loom]]. The idea of “intellectual property” was forged in an analog age, where the distinction between an ''original'' and a ''copy'' was clear and [[Ontology|ontologically]] fundamental. Also, the cost of generating copies was non-trivial and did not easily [[scale]]: since intellectual property was necessarily embedded in a physical [[substrate]] — to read a novel you needed a physical book — you could treat [[intellectual property]] as if it ''were'' physical property. To all intents, it ''was''. | The internet not only allows, but ''encourages'' lossless copying: that’s the essence of its [[End-to-end principle|end-to-end]] architecture. This brought to a head a conundrum for [[intellectual property]] laws that had been brewing since, arguably the time of the [[Jacquard loom]]. The idea of “intellectual property” was forged in an analog age, where the distinction between an ''original'' and a ''copy'' was clear and [[Ontology|ontologically]] fundamental. Also, the cost of generating copies was non-trivial and did not easily [[scale]]: since intellectual property was necessarily embedded in a physical [[substrate]] — to read a novel you needed a physical book — you could treat [[intellectual property]] as if it ''were'' physical property. To all intents, it ''was''. | ||