Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Cryptocontracts Will Turn Contract Law Into a Programming Language

thoughtinfection.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 91 posts

Re: Cryptocontracts Will Turn Contract Law Into a Programming Language

#21

Post by andrewfong »

futuresense wrote: post #11

This seems like just the sort of thing big banking would've caught whiff to and become engaged in. Though I imagine it would remain under wraps...not the sort of thing well suited to be interfacing the general public. At least until perhaps some startups had gotten the ball rolling on this ball of wax. But for big multinational (secret) interactions? How better to enforce contracts? The advantages on that scale of av…

I think there's been some work being done here with derivatives trading contracts. Derivatives can be fairly complex to begin with and are sometimes easier to understand as code (e.g. when things are defined recursively).

Re: Cryptocontracts Will Turn Contract Law Into a Programming Language

#22

Post by dctoedt »

Contracts are sort of like computer programs, read and executed by people -- by the parties; by constituencies within a corporate party; and sometimes by judges and juries -- instead of by CPUs.

Except that, unlike people: [EDITED FOR STYLE]

* CPUs don't come up with imaginative reasons why they supposedly needn't follow a clear, unambiguous program instruction.

* CPUs don't experience buyer's remorse and decide they like another program better.

* CPUs never have to be persuaded to comply.

EDIT: Still, there's much room for improvement in the way contracts are drafted; someday there may well be standardized, machine-parsable ways of expressing common contract concepts, so that readers aren't forced to struggle through the wordsmithing whims of J. Random Lawyer.

(Shameless plug: In that regard, see the Common Draft project that I've been working on, at http://www.CommonDraft.org. It's an organized compendium of contract term sheets and clause language, heavily annotated [and also very much an unfinished work-in-progress].) The long-term goals are (1) eventually to automate 80% of routine contract review work by programmatically comparing the preferred term sheets of Party A and Party B to generate a discussion list of the parties' points of disagreement; and (2) to provide an educational resource that will help people collaborate to do good things together.

Re: Cryptocontracts Will Turn Contract Law Into a Programming Language

#23

Post by lifeisstillgood »

I really do not understand the mechanism - maybe I missed it. But A and B enter a contract - A will pay B 1000 usd for every equity research article published (think blog post someone would pay for). How is that self enforcing? how does anyone but a human decide that was a article worth paying for and it scraped off ten random pages?

Re: Cryptocontracts Will Turn Contract Law Into a Programming Language

#25

Post by tlrobinson »

patrickmay wrote: post #7

Charles Stross anticipated this in Accelerando: "Amber scans the READ ME quickly. Corporate instruments are strong magic, according to Daddy, and this one is exotic by any standards -- a limited company established in Yemen, contorted by the intersection between shari'a and the global legislatosaurus. Understanding it isn't easy, even with a personal net full of subsapient agents that have full access to whole librar…

Interestingly, he is a vocal critic of Bitcoin (as a currency, at least): http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2013/12/why-i-wa...

Re: Cryptocontracts Will Turn Contract Law Into a Programming Language

#27

Post by throwaway092834 »

dctoedt wrote: post #22

Contracts are sort of like computer programs, read and executed by people -- by the parties; by constituencies within a corporate party; and sometimes by judges and juries -- instead of by CPUs. Except that, unlike people: [EDITED FOR STYLE] * CPUs don't come up with imaginative reasons why they supposedly needn't follow a clear, unambiguous program instruction. * CPUs don't experience buyer's remorse and decide they…

"Except that we don't see CPUs being astonishingly creative in coming up with reasons why they shouldn't have to follow a clear, unambiguous program instruction."

That's the compiler's job ;-)

Re: Cryptocontracts Will Turn Contract Law Into a Programming Language

#28

Post by seiji »

[deleted] wrote: post #19
seiji wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Contracts create obligations. Obligations can be substituted with penalties. "We will attempt to acquire you. If we can't, we pay you a breakup fee." If you had formal contracts around informal things like babysitting, you'd end up requiring licensed and bonded babysitters. "Henceforth, unto be known, babysitting shall commence at 1500 on Thursday, June 22, in the year of our lord 2014. Unto forthwith, inability to s…

[deleted]

Not sure what the disconnect is. Everything is a "meatspace activity," but we still have contracts around big things (buying a house, employment, warranties, ...).

Are you asking "how does the software contract get written?" Well, somebody writes it. "Contract programmers," heh.

Re: Cryptocontracts Will Turn Contract Law Into a Programming Language

#29

Post by kens »

I don't want to be negative-HN-commenter, but this seems crazy to me. First, expressing a contract in a programming language is a much harder problem than expressing a contract in English. How would you even express babysitting or lawnmower-borrowing as a program?

Second, lawyers go to great efforts to cover all the cases and even so there are usually things uncovered. Programmatic contracts aren't going to be any better at covering all the cases.

Third, if something unexpected happens (either accidentally or maliciously), you'd be totally out of luck with a programmatic contract. You can think of the court system as exception handling for real-world contracts, and that's a dangerous thing to give up.

Fourth, programmatic contracts are likely to be more expensive than regular contracts. How much would it cost to program a babysitting contract versus telling the babysitter you'll pay $X per hour verbally? And I can't imagine how much it would cost to write code for something complex like a lease.

I can see using Bitcoin-style programmatic contracts for things like escrow payments, but contracts with any sort of real-world interface seem unfeasible.

Source: I'm married to a contract attorney. I've also looked at Bitcoin script in detail, and what kind of contracts it can express.

Re: Cryptocontracts Will Turn Contract Law Into a Programming Language

#30

Post by heydenberk »

A few years ago, the SEC was mulling specifying regulations for high-frequency trading in Python[0][1]. I've wondered about the potential for specifying law in programming languages since then. Formally verified laws would be a wonderful thing.

[0] http://www.itworld.com/government/105650/languages-wall-stre... [1] http://www.itworld.com/government/105031/will-wall-street-re...

Post reply on HN