Are blockchain and copyright and privacy law on a collision
course?
Blockchains are decentralized public ledgers that can be used to
track and store information about cryptocurrencies, digital assets,
items in a supply chain, real estate and lots of other
things. They are generally viewed as being
"immutable," meaning that once data is written to the
ledger, it can't be modified or changed. Most of the
time, immutability is a good thing. But sometimes the law
gives people the right to have data on the internet changed or
removed. U.S. law, for example, gives copyright holders the
right to have infringing instances of their copyrighted material
taken down from the internet. The E.U.'s new General
Data Protection Regulation includes a "right to be
forgotten" that allows people to have some information about
them removed from websites. What happens when someone has a
legal right to remove or change data that is stored in an immutable
blockchain? Bloomberg News
