Dissolve the Analogue & Digital Distinction (338.57 GRIF)

A Chinese court recently confirmed that digital assets have the same legal rights as <a href="https://cointelegraph.com/news/china-court-declares-virtual-assets-as-legal-properties-protected-by-law-report" rel="noopener ugc nofollow" target="_blank">real property</a>. Combined with policy trends in the US and EU, the legal right to exert control over data is here. Build it and they will come. The press is focused on crypto and NFT trading or personally identifiable information (PII), but this misses the larger point. A digital asset is anything that has been digitized. To avoid confusion, I think in terms of objects instead of digital assets or data more generally. An object is anything that can be defined so this terminology removes the distraction of the various formats of data, content, and media. And it is a distraction because the base unit, binary code, is <a href="https://medium.com/coding-in-simple-english/making-sense-of-zeros-and-ones-in-programming-701d84c4cbe0" rel="noopener">the same for anything that is digitized</a>. Using the term objects also facilitates comparison between the virtual and physical worlds. Objects are equivalent in both cases. THE ANALOGUE A painter starts with an idea then turns to his tools such as paint, brushes, and canvas. The suppliers of his tools have no claim on the artistic output, including no right to see the work. The end result is a painting, a discrete object. The painter can sell it or shred it. It can end up in a museum. It might go to private storage. No matter how control is exerted, there can never be more objects than originally created. This is why original pieces of art retain value and replicas do not diminish the original. An owner loaning an object to a museum is an example of an owner delegating responsibility. The museum becomes responsible for controlling access to the object. However, the owner can reclaim their property subject to any agreement that covers the loan. <a href="https://awpr.medium.com/dissolve-the-analogue-virtual-distinction-64d188df647f">Read More</a>