Deepfakes, AI Law & Web3: Navigating the Digital Frontier with Oliver Scherenberg, founder of Scherenberg Legal & Licensing

Today, we're talking to Oliver, a lawyer specializing in Web3 law, about the legal implications of deepfake technology. You're listening to Joel Beasley, Modern CTO.

I was so excited when I saw that I was going to get to talk to you. I first found you when I was scrolling through LinkedIn, and I think you had posted a video of someone using someone else's AI voice. I think Eminem's voice was being used. Can you tell me a little bit about that?

Absolutely. Yeah, that is actually an AI artist who was a friend of mine. I worked with him together in a project for WWF, who was a client of mine here in Germany, and he was advising them from the artist side on an NFT project. That's a friend of mine. He's a creative working in a digital agency, and what he did was to just work with AI. He has been working on AI ever since, and he posted that video of Eminem being used by a European famous DJ. So there was this voice AI that created the sound of him sounding like Eminem. And I thought, well, it shows what is happening, that people cannot trust where the things are real or not anymore with all these AI tools out there. And that is probably what you saw, because I spoke out and said, well, that's a concern. It's a legal concern. It's also a moral concern, and I'm afraid everyone will be scared what is real and what's not in the future.

It was so good. It was exactly as if you were saying the words. And when I saw that, I thought, wow, what is going on in the legal space? Like, what are you guys doing? You're a lawyer. You work at a law firm. You deal with Web3. How are you managing all of this happening?

Well, the thing is, I think for us it's Christmas and Easter at the same time right now for us intellectual property attorneys. Because, I mean, everything that has been going on with Web3 already with NFTs, but also with metaverses, we have all these intellectual property questions—trademark, copyright, licensing, even technical stuff, patent law, personality things, and brand endorsements, all these things that I've been dealing with ever since. And now you get that into a technical environment where people try to understand what is going on before they really do projects, so they need education. That is when Web3 became a thing in my advisory, like a year and a half or two years ago. And the same thing now happened with AI. So it's basically a copyright issue most of the time. People are scared that they're using tools, selling things to their clients, like agencies for example, and they just need legal advice. And I mean, I try to be all over the place. As I say, I try to get all the presents and take them and open them as long as I can still manage it right now.

That is so cool. And so how would I protect myself? I've got a show. I'm 650 episodes into it. There's hundreds and hundreds of high-quality, multi-angle recordings of me and my voice, and more than enough to train any model that you would want to train. How do I prevent somebody from creating some digital copy of Joel and making money off of it?

Well, I'm afraid you cannot. That is exactly what is going on right now. And even about a year or a year and a half ago, just to give you some perspective, I had someone reaching out to me for education in the Web3 space. They wanted to have me as a speaker in their education class for Web3 legal stuff. I said, well, I'm afraid I cannot do that. It's too much time to record all that, to prepare all that. I said no. Everything I need is half an hour of your time. I'll provide you with a text. You will read that text. You will move your head a couple of times, and then all you have to do every once in a while is send, like, one page of text, and the AI will transform it into a video of you saying that stuff. It will be in your voice, in your emotion, so we don't need you anymore. I said, wait a second, no, I'm absolutely not—I'm not into that idea. But what they say: well, okay, let's put it like that. Every Zoom call, every recording that we see would already be sufficient to do exactly that. Maybe you will get better coverage if you have, like, a head movement or something to also train the AI in the visual sense, but it is not required anymore. And that is why I said you will not be able to distinguish truth from, or reality from, fake identities any longer. It will be extremely difficult.

Is it problematic that we're taking old laws and applying it to a new technology? Will we create new laws eventually?

Yes and no. I would say it depends on the legal system. If you come from a legal culture that is used to having a very abstract law, like typically the European, or let's say for example the German law, the Roman law style, you have traditional legal provisions that can be applied to new circumstances, and you give the judge a lot of interpretation, a room of interpretation, whether a new circumstance also works with the existing law. That means that most of the laws that we have in Germany, especially for the civil law, are like over 100 years old and they still work. And I would say most of the newer technology stuff also works with the law that we have, but not everything. And that means you can use the law and apply the law as much as you can, and what is missing needs to be filled up with analogies and with some other sort of, let's say, legal development. And that can be done by the judges before the legislators pick it up and do something that will be added. But yes, indeed, we will need every once in a while new stuff because we cannot deal with everything, especially those things where the new laws simply don't work. And I can give you an example if you want.

Yeah.

Okay. So the example would just be, in traditional intellectual property law, when you have an infringement case for trademark or patent law, for example, the owner of the intellectual property right can ask that the judge says, you, guy who is the infringer, you have to destroy the infringing good. You have to remove it from the market. Which means if you apply the same law to blockchain cases, you will be in trouble as the person infringing, because you cannot easily remove things out of the market once they have been minted and they're, let's say, written in the blockchain. They're basically engraved into stone. So if you really want to comply with this legal situation, what you would need to do as an NFT project is to leave a backdoor open so you can pull your own NFT collection later, just to be maybe in compliance with a judgment that may come in the future. But probably no one would do that because that would be a really, let's say, crazy thing if you get an audit and your project is discovered to have a backdoor open. So it's some sort of balance you need to strike. If you have a risky project and you know you will be in legal trouble within a potential trademark infringement, you may better want to leave the backdoor open, because otherwise you will not be able to comply with the judgment.

I mean, the backdoor essentially negates the entire purpose of the technology, right?

Kind of, it is. Yeah, that's like that. But I mean, even popular projects like the Bored Ape Yacht Club, as far as I understood, they left their smart contract open so it could be added later, and they just closed it after that has been discovered. So I'm not even sure if that was done on purpose, but some of the projects have been doing that in the past, but they have been all called out because, as you say, it's not really the purpose and what people would expect.

Now, to the fake Joel—you're exactly right. Anyone can boot up an instance and start fine-tuning a model against my recordings. I can't stop them in that way because the information's out there. It's accessible. Do I have any recourse if they start—like, what law would I use if I saw them operating the fake Joel and I wanted to stop them from doing that?

Yeah, so you would, under probably every law that I know, it would be an impersonator case. So you say someone else using my identity is not only harming me because they're violating my privacy rights and pretending to be me, but they're not. And on top of that, so you would have a claim against them. So I think that's the most important thing. You are protected from being impersonated. Now, I think one additional question is, is there some sort of a public right not to be tricked? So is there a—do you have the right to only be confronted with reality? Is there a claim not to be confronted with fake news? And that is an interesting thing. There are jurisdictions where that is actually true, so especially during elections, for example, fake news as such can be a violation of law, and you don't need the person that has been impersonated, like in a deepfake video or something like that, to issue the claim. But everyone has a claim because it's simply a criminal case and not a civil law case anymore.

It's interesting. Now, tell me, what would happen if, let's say, there's a guy named Bob, and Bob is an AI engineer, and he decides, you know, he's doing all these projects. He's got different AIs. He's modeling. He's running experiments across the board, freelancing, so a wide variety of projects. One of his projects, unbeknownst to Bob, decides to impersonate Joel by training its own model. The AI that Bob owns is now training its own model. Who is responsible? Is Bob in trouble, or does Bob have, like, a, hey, look, I just made this AI and it went off and did this crazy thing? Like, hey, I'm a parent and my kids grew up and they're 25 and they're off doing—I'm not liable for that. How does that liability work?

I would say that I'm afraid that depends on the national law that will be applicable, let's say the law.

In your case.

Yeah, exactly. In my case, since I'm a German attorney and I would apply German law, I would say if there is something that Bob provides that makes him foresee that this will happen, or that he provides tools that are really almost built for something like that, then maybe you can bridge over to make him liable. But typically he would not be liable, I would assume. And the simple reason for that is, like, people selling knives are also not liable for the murder that is done later. But only if they sell it as a butcher knife for the slaughter feast downtown or something, then you may be on the hook again. So it depends on how you sell things and what you anticipate as the one providing the tool. Typically the tool provider will not be liable. Rare cases may be an exception.

Do you think we're at a point where—well, first of all, does it already exist, the concept of AI having some sort of rights?

At least not here. Not here in Germany, and I would assume, from the countries that I know, including the US, AI lacks the human factor and therefore cannot be the owner of copyrights, for example, or of moral rights. I would assume that this will stay like that. So most of these rights that require a human will never be applicable to AIs. However, if you just take something into account, you may be a little bit in between. Just as an example, in Germany, if you are a record company, you can own certain rights that are, let's say, partially copyright, kind of copyright rights, and they are then owned by the entity and not by the person. Which means individuals typically have the rights, but as long as individuals and corporations have the right, I would say it's not a too far step to say, well, then maybe one day also programs, like as some sort of an entity, can earn or can have certain rights. I think we're very far away from that still, but some rights may be accessible—not the human ones. I don't think that that will ever happen.

Do you think that AI is currently at the point where it's considered intelligent like a human?

I'm afraid we're getting there, kind of. As far as I understand the technical background, how AIs are trained and how AIs are developed and are developing themselves by learning and learning how to learn, I would assume that something like intelligence may be already what we have right now and what will develop even further. And maybe I can anticipate your next question, whether that is just intelligence and the next one will be emotions or a personality maybe. Well, I think we will see things that come extremely close to personality and to feelings and to things like that. And that is one of the crazy things, and I would also say some of the dangerous things that we see. I'll give you an example. I just saw—but you probably have seen that as well—I just saw an example of people talking to chatbots that are basically impersonating deceased relatives. So instead of just mourning and saying, well, it's really sad that this person is not with us anymore, they recreate a digital twin of this person, train it with individual movies or whatever records that they have of this person, and then create conversations with this unknown individual intelligence, whatever it is. And it is not the person that deceased. So I think that's important to know for everyone, and therefore I think these situations are crazy and very dangerous. But yeah, they may seem emotional then as well.

They need to get on a chat with a therapist.

Yeah, absolutely. They—yeah. And I'm afraid that's one of the cases that we have seen already out there, and these are cases that probably will become regulated as well, because I don't think that that is in anyone's interest to have borderline, like, crazy situations. I don't think it's useful either. I don't think it's healthy either.

But that gives me—that gives me the creepy vibe. Yeah, you know? And when I think of a machine achieving, you know, AGI, intelligence level of a human, greater than that, that doesn't creep me out. But when I hear, like, it's creating this digital twin of a dead relative to interact with, I'm like, that—you should probably just leave that over there.

Yes. And the thing is, it's not in our hands anymore, I'm afraid. So this is exactly what can happen already, that people can do things with the AI that are not under the control or in the control of the people that have developed the AI. So these use cases that we just discussed could be exactly what we will be seeing.

Yeah. Josh has that article up. Microsoft patented a chatbot that would let you talk to dead people, and it was too disturbing for production. Yeah, it made a difference.

Maybe the craziest part is this came out in early 2021. So who knows where it is right now? That's kind of nuts.

I think the difference is, back then it was a patent idea of a big tech company, and now it's something everyone can build in their backyard within half an hour. So this is, I think, where the development has gotten us, and that is where things will get a bit out of control, and that is what is happening right now. I think it is super interesting to experiment with all these AI tools, and you probably have done the same thing, like ChatGPT up and down. I even use it partly in my legal profession also for easy conversations or just to play around with it. But it's also something where you can use, for example, the text-to-picture generators or music generators. I think it's extremely cool to do that and to play around with it. But let's just all keep the feet on the ground a little bit and not let us be driven crazy by this new technology and get carried away.

Oh, we're humans. We're definitely getting carried away.

(Oliver Scheerenberg at 00:17:20) We're like—

(Joel Beasley at 00:17:21) That's our—if we can do it, we're doing it. No. But I have one of my more controversial opinions on this being in the tech space. So just so you know, my background, software engineering for seventeen years. I did not build language models.

(Oliver Scheerenberg at 00:17:35) Mhmm.

(Joel Beasley at 00:17:35) I built business logic type, you know, real estate software or, you know, even some legal software and things like that, financial planning software. So I didn't ever work with language models like this. But one of the things people get very emotional about is, oh, it can never, you know, do that like a human. Now I see them saying this to various things. It could never have the creativity of a human. I'm like, you're right. It's like better than a human. Also, they'll say it's not intelligent. It's just crunching numbers and, you know, silicon and microchips firing. I'm like, that's like me saying you're not intelligent. It's just a bunch of neurons firing. Like, how is that any different? Or they'll say, oh, it's not creative. It just takes the collection of its past experiences and does something and mashes them together. I'm like, that's exactly what a human does. And so I kind of feel like we're already there. I mean, it's hard. Yeah. I try to find the argument to prove that we're not there, and I've been struggling with the exception of the biodiversity, the organic structure. With that exception, and here's why it's so hard for me, and I'll finish up. But it's so hard for me because, Oliver, I know so many people that are less intelligent than ChatGPT. It's—yeah. I'm like, you're saying it can't be as intelligent as a human. I'm like, it's intelligent. Yeah.

(Oliver Scheerenberg at 00:18:59) I mean, what is it? Just to give it a little test. What is ChatGPT if ChatGPT was a lawyer? ChatGPT knows every book I have ever seen. ChatGPT still remembers every line of every book I have ever seen. And ChatGPT knows every other book I have not yet seen. So if you put the two of us together in a test room, there's absolutely no chance that I will be the winner of that competition. Well, that may only be facts and not creativity. But ultimately, come on. I mean, every case out there—most of the cases, let's say 95% of the cases—are repetition of cases that we have had before. So we're repeating things that we learned before. And maybe for this 95%, I'm sure AI is the smarter human, if you so want. Or the smarter—maybe not human—but the smarter, well, let's say application, if you so want. For the 5% where we are developing law, where we try to develop things that are different than those that we have seen in the past, or where a painter creates a new style, or where a musician finds a new sort of vibe or style or music. That is where humans will be, I think, until today, maybe even—delete because it's not random. Maybe what they manufacture or come up with right now, while it is in the process of learning, it is probably still based on something that has been there in the past in a certain way. But creating something entirely new that has never been there, not sure about it. And then try just to contradict my own message. What I did one day was to provide DALL-E, so one of these text-to-picture generators, with a prompt saying, provide me with a picture of anything, any style, just to see what will come. And I don't know—I was not really expecting anything in particular—but so it came up with something that was just absolutely not influenced by my prompt. It was maybe influenced by whatever else someone else has done before. And actually, it was—it was like photographic art. So it was abstract things or just angles of a house with the shadow in the background, were super cool pictures, like they really could be in an art gallery. It was not completely clear what it was. Like, you always got these four different pictures. So three were photographic art, really super cool. Not sure what it was. It was a shadow on a wall, something in between. And one was just a picture of, like, a part of a house. But there was nothing that I gave it. And if you so wanted, that has been creative. Maybe not. Maybe it is trained to do something that then creates an output that has a certain predetermination. I don't know. But at least that was surprising for me. I was not expecting anything like that. And probably if I try the same thing today and tell a different AI to provide just anything, any style, then maybe you will be surprised how creative they can already be.

(Joel Beasley at 00:22:22) Yes. And I had this conversation—a part of this conversation—with Isaac, who's on the call today. This morning, I said, look, as we are talking about, we track our content on YouTube, how different things perform and all of that, and the advancement of how quickly AI is going. And I said, to help anchor us, one of the things I always like to do when having these conversations to anchor us is to remind us that a hundred and ten years ago, we got electricity. Like, that's like your great grandparents. And then it wasn't until the nineteen sixties, at least in the United States, where it was ubiquitous. It was everywhere. So that's like your parents, your grandparents. Right?

(Oliver Scheerenberg at 00:22:59) Yeah.

(Joel Beasley at 00:23:00) And so if we've come that far from electricity to where we are today in a hundred and ten years—

(Oliver Scheerenberg at 00:23:08) Yeah. I mean, you really don't even have to go back that far. I have kids aged 11 and 14. They certainly want to have a smartphone. I mean, the older one now has one, but my daughter with 11, she doesn't have one. She doesn't get one because we think it's too early and she will spend too much time on it. And even my son just can use his for an hour and a half every day and then it's cut off. And he says, well, but you never grew up with that, so you don't understand. We need this. We want to interact with our friends. We want to chat. We want to see when the next bus is coming, the next video on YouTube that everyone talks about. I want to see that. And you don't understand that because you haven't had a device like that when you grew up. And it's true. At the same time, it's a bit scary, and every generation probably has its own wow challenges to deal with things that the parents didn't know before. But it's also opportunities out there that are great. But I think you have to be responsible with all of that. You have to be responsible with the use of your phone, of your Internet access, of your car. I mean, of everything. Everything that makes life more comfortable is an advancement, a technology, but it's also a certain burden because it may make you lazy. And I don't know if you've seen the movie WALL-E, for example. That is one of my—I mean, that is an anticipation of the future that would be catastrophic, but I don't think it's that far away from what might happen. So you organize everything to a certain degree that it's just perfect. It's just—you don't have to do anything other than being comfortable and doing whatever you want. And it is nothing. There is no burden. There is nothing you have to do. But once you get too lazy, then it will be almost impossible to even walk properly.

(Joel Beasley at 00:25:04) Have you been to the airport in America recently? But here's what—when you talk about your kids. I have three kids, but they're all under the age of six. So they're younger. They do have some screen technology, and I do go back and forth on it because we live out in a rural area, like out in the woods type area. And we got the nature all around us and all of that. But it's only an hour outside of a major city, Nashville. It's a, like, a music city. And so my wife and I talk about this a lot. When are they gonna get technology? How much technology are we gonna let them have? What amount of time? And it's a hard thing because they need the skills to operate the technology for the future, but you also have to make sure that you develop them as humans before they get necessarily influenced by this infinite screen. And so I think it's what—what the rise of technology has done and the accessibility of it, I think it's put a premium on parenting. Like, you have to be a better parent.

(Oliver Scheerenberg at 00:26:10) And my—

(Joel Beasley at 00:26:10) My wife and I made the conscious decision for her not to work, for us to make less money, her not to work so that she can homeschool the kids. We have to spend time with the kids. We have to, you know, care for them. And and that way, they have good foundational principles and self-care habits, so that when you do layer that deadly but also life-giving tool on top of it, they can interact with that tool having these foundational lessons.

(Oliver Scheerenberg at 00:26:38) And I think that is exactly right, what you're doing. So really congratulations on that decision. I think it's a very, very wise way of treating this challenge as well. And while it is super necessary that kids understand—they do understand. I mean, our kids, even though they didn't have phones, knew how to operate it. Even my 11-year-old, she knows how to work my phone better than I do just because she picks it up every once in a while and she plays something during a car ride and she's immediately into it. So she knows exactly what is going on. But I just want to give you a couple of statistic numbers that I have been coming across just recently. One is the average hour—the average amount of hours—that kids between the age of 14 and 17 in Germany spend online every day.

(Joel Beasley at 00:27:30) Okay.

(Oliver Scheerenberg at 00:27:30) The average amount of hours, what would you think? Eight. Well, that would be five point two, but it excludes school, which means typically kids are at school during that age. They typically go to school at least until one, but until four. If you add five hours to that, that brings you to like to bedtime already, which means if you deduct the time to have dinner, to have a conversation with your parents, maybe do some homework, to go to school and go back to commute, well, basically you have zero time not online, which means in fact that you have no social interaction. And that is where I say what you're doing is so important. Social interaction and the, let's say, the skills to interact with humans—that will be the new superpower, I guess. As much as personal meetings and encounters will be the only true way of knowing that you're not being faked, because the personal interaction guarantees you that the person that is sitting in front of you is the person that is saying the things this person is saying. If you have a video conversation, probably not 100% safe. If you get an email, not safe at all. And if you get whatever other sort of text or voice message, you can basically not be sure anymore. If it's just a picture, you're almost not sure at all anymore. And if you train kids in everything—if you train everyone today—that personal encounters are the superpower of the future, then you need to give them the skill set to interact on a human level. And I think that is what will make the great leaders of the future. They understand technology, but they can pull themselves out of it to act on a non-technical basis.

(Joel Beasley at 00:29:21) I am so glad that we got to meet. I mean, you're coming to very similar conclusions with a very different background and experiences than me, and and that is what I've said on the show a bunch of times. I said, my best guess on where this is going is it's gonna put a premium on in-person events. Meaning, I think we'll see a rise in in-person interactions. And communication is—like you said—it's the new superpower. Your ability to have and maintain genuine relationships, it's the equivalent of being able to hunt back in the, you know, early early human days. Now authenticity—you mentioned that, and I had that as an area I wanted to pick your brain on. Authenticity technology. Over in the United States, we've got DARPA, you know, government technology research. I'm sure you have a variation of that in Germany. There's many awards and there's many contests and prizes, things out there. They're basically trying to incentivize the public to create authenticity technology so that you know you're talking to me right now in a way that can't be spoofed or faked. Have you seen any of that coming in in your intellectual property work or your Web3 work?

(Oliver Scheerenberg at 00:30:35) Nope. I haven't. To be honest, I haven't come across anything of that kind. I know—or I read about it certainly—but I think as much as superpowers in being creative through AI will become a thing, the second superpower of the AI will be to detect what is AI-driven, what is not, which is almost a circular conclusion, which doesn't really work maybe. But if AI tries to detect AI, we will be probably doomed because later in the day, one AI will go play a round of golf with another AI. And I don't know what we will be doing during that time, but I think we're doomed.

(Joel Beasley at 00:31:14) Oh, I think OpenAI—and Josh can fact-check this—but I think they released a statistic, like, a month or two ago that their best detection rate of AI content was I think it was in the twenties. Like, 20% of them. Very low ability to detect. Like, it's not like a 98% accuracy. It's like 20.

(Oliver Scheerenberg at 00:31:35) To be honest, 20% is like—it's terrible because you can roll the dice for 20%. Right? Yeah. That doesn't make any sense. You can throw a coin and you're at 50. Right? So don't use the—20 doesn't make any sense. Right? If it was everything above 50 makes sense. Otherwise, just toss a coin. It's more reliable than you detecting it. Yeah. I know.

(Joel Beasley at 00:32:00) But—Josh, do you have the actual number?

(Intro Narrator at 00:32:03) Yeah. It looks like it's about 26%.

(Joel Beasley at 00:32:06) 26% detection. That's that's horrible.

(Oliver Scheerenberg at 00:32:10) That's not—it's not a good number. It's not a good number at all. But you know what? I—when—right. I just picked up this joke of the AI playing golf with the other AI. I actually did a LinkedIn post about that, I think half a year ago or so, where I said, hey, dear clients, so with all these AI tools out there, is it like that that you will try to replace the lawyer relationship and you will have—you will train an AI to become an attorney? I would have a deal for you. Let's not do that because otherwise, I will train an AI to be a client. And what we should rather do is you train your client AI to communicate with my lawyer AI. You will still pay my bills, and the two of us can go golfing. And only once our AIs go on the golf course, then we're screwed.

(Joel Beasley at 00:33:02) Oh my gosh. You know, that is—I had a health care conversation. Yeah. So I know health care is different in the States, or at least I think it is. Sure you guys have some version of private health care. But yeah. Basically, there's these medical billing specialists, and they exist at the insurance company, and they exist at the doctor's office. And they call, and they negotiate, and they fight with each other and all that stuff to figure out payments and claims. Well, the insurance companies clearly are larger, more connected, and have more money. They built AI tools to start interfacing with these people. And then I was talking with one of the companies that builds those AI tools, and I said, well, how long until the doctor's offices replace their medical—and then it's just your two AIs arguing. Like, that seems—that's hard for me to process.

(Oliver Scheerenberg at 00:33:48) It is. But—and I was only half joking when I made the post—because I think, in fact, that is what is going to happen. Things that can be automated will be automated more and more on each side of the table of the negotiation. And, ultimately, the AI may even become the better negotiator, so there is no point in you doing it yourself. And, ultimately, it may open up that we create passive income by just letting our AI do the stuff, and we just hang out and play golf or go swimming or skiing or spend time with our kids or go hiking, whatever we want to do.

(Oliver Scheerenberg at 00:34:23) That could be cool. But that's unfortunately not what is happening. Also, the Industrial Revolution was not providing that effect to us. It was just everyone working more, people getting poorer and poorer, maybe. So it's not what is happening.

(Oliver Scheerenberg at 00:34:38) It could be cool, but it's probably not the scenario we will be facing.

(Joel Beasley at 00:34:43) I can see me having the conversation one day saying, oh, you know, we're negotiating a real estate deal, or we're negotiating an intellectual property deal. We need to go buy the Oliver model. We need to go buy some hours on the Oliver model. Because that model, we know that model's really good. It's got a success rate.

(Joel Beasley at 00:35:00) It's ranked. And then it just becomes, you know, a money race. It's not like it already isn't in life, but it'll be—it won't be boring, Oliver. The next twenty, thirty years will not be boring.

(Oliver Scheerenberg at 00:35:13) You know what, Joel? What we're doing in the meantime is creating—and I'm just in the process of launching that—we will be creating a virtual law firm where we can meet our clients in a virtual office, which means we are selling NFT tickets for clients to basically buy a voucher of time for legal advisory. They can use that NFT to open the door of the virtual metaverse office or the virtual office that we're building, and they can then meet us there in our avatar dress. So basically, me as the avatar will meet the client avatar in a virtual space.

(Oliver Scheerenberg at 00:35:49) So we don't need to be sure whether it's that person or not. Whoever shows up will get the legal advice. And in the meantime, well, until we automate the other very online, it's probably me behind the avatar, but it's not necessarily me in the future.

(Joel Beasley at 00:36:05) That is so cool. Now you're gonna get a very specific clientele base early days because my parents don't know how to buy an NFT, right? But that's your loss. That's your specialty.

(Joel Beasley at 00:36:16) So it makes sense for you to be innovative there and how you interact with clients because this is your world. This is what you specialize in.

(Oliver Scheerenberg at 00:36:22) Yeah. It's one of the ways. Let's put it like that. And I'm not sure if I would want as an attorney to have only client meetings in the metaverse. It's more a playful way of showing the clients, look.

(Oliver Scheerenberg at 00:36:33) If you have an NFT project, if you have a metaverse project, you are looking for a lawyer, I can probably help you from the legal side. But rest assured, I've also gone through the process of having a project of that kind myself, so I can help you also with the details. I know where your pain points in the project will be, and that maybe will make me the better adviser. If you will meet me in the metaverse office or not, let's see. Let's just play around a little bit, but it's not ultimately where I will be earning most of my money, I guess.

(Joel Beasley at 00:37:03) Yeah. Well, it's what I do. I mean, I tinker with new technologies to better understand them, create little things here and there. And then, you know, as you're doing that, what you're doing is you're showing—you're building respect with your customer base.

(Joel Beasley at 00:37:16) Because they know that they're not gonna go in there and have to explain to you the ABCs of what blockchain is from the ground up. They know that, okay, clearly, he understands that enough that he's operating in the metaverse, and he's got these projects going on. So I personally, from an entrepreneurial perspective, I think it's brilliant.

(Oliver Scheerenberg at 00:37:37) Cool. Thank you so much. Well, I mean, I will send you the invitation once we launch. It will be in the next couple of days while we're doing this recording. You hopefully will see some of that.

(Oliver Scheerenberg at 00:37:47) We're starting a campaign about this new platform that we just relaunched in a couple of days.

(Joel Beasley at 00:37:53) Well, we'll put a link in the show notes so when this does air, people can go check it out. By the way, let's give a shout out for your law firm. Tell me, just what's the plug? What do you—how do you describe yourself? How can people contact you?

(Oliver Scheerenberg at 00:38:04) Cool. Super. So I think the easiest way to contact me is on LinkedIn because that is where I'm most active. My website has never been something I spend a lot of energy on, to be honest, because I didn't find my clients through a website. So I find my clients because they see what I'm doing, because I'm posting, I'm giving speeches, maybe being invited to podcasts or doing interviews or that stuff, or posting myself on LinkedIn relatively actively.

(Oliver Scheerenberg at 00:38:31) So that would be the best way. Oliver Scheerenberg, S-C-H-E-R-E-N-B-E-R-G. You know the name that is on LinkedIn and you would probably best connect with me there. And I'm rather responsive, I would say.

(Joel Beasley at 00:38:44) Is Oliver your legal first name?

(Oliver Scheerenberg at 00:38:46) It's my legal first name. Yes.

(Joel Beasley at 00:38:48) Okay. Because when I saw your name, I was like, Oliver, that's great. That's one of my son's middle name. And I said, well, that's easy. But I saw your last name. I was like, uh—

(Oliver Scheerenberg at 00:38:56) Yeah. No, I've—

(Joel Beasley at 00:38:58) I've talked to a lot of people from a lot of countries, and I know when there's letters in there that I don't know how they sound. I think I know how they sound. I say it in my head, and I'm like, that's not what it is. But you said it beautifully.

(Oliver Scheerenberg at 00:39:09) It is Scissors Mountain. So we have this one US friend of my parents, and she calls my family family Scissors Mountain. That's easier to recognize.

(Joel Beasley at 00:39:20) Is that the direct translation of your last name?

(Oliver Scheerenberg at 00:39:22) Direct translation. Yeah. Scheren, scissors. Berg, mountain.

(Joel Beasley at 00:39:28) What else am I not asking you about what's going on in Web 3.0?

(Oliver Scheerenberg at 00:39:32) Well, maybe if you just ask for the shout out, the platform I was talking about is called Web3Lex, and that is this platform of international attorneys that we're putting together. So we're basically creating a network of people who know what they are doing in the space. So we have experience in blockchain, in Web3, in finance, regulatory law, and tax, all related to Web3. And what we are doing there is creating a knowledge base. So we are curating catalogs of questions, most frequently asked questions for NFTs, DAO, decentralized autonomous organization, metaverse, ENS domains, which are basically the equivalent to the domain names, to the URLs.

(Oliver Scheerenberg at 00:40:13) And so we have these catalogs of questions, and all these people from the different jurisdictions, legal people and tax people, can answer the question from the perspective of their national law. And this knowledge base that we offer for free for the Web3 community, so everyone can go there and get some insight. And that is the first block of the platform. And the second block is that booking system for virtual meetings where our contributors, who are basically the lawyers in that virtual law firm, our contributors can use these offices to have their client meetings. So thank you for giving me the opportunity to make that up.

(Joel Beasley at 00:40:49) So you're developing this platform. So it's not just for your law firm. You're developing a platform so attorneys in different countries can join this, and then you're gonna end up being like an Uber of lawyers type deal.

(Oliver Scheerenberg at 00:41:02) Well, yeah. Let's hope. Maybe not Uber style. But, yeah, I mean, right now, we already launched our beta version of that knowledge base without the metaverse part, without the virtual law firm part, a couple of months ago. And now, really, we're almost immediately right now launching the full version.

(Oliver Scheerenberg at 00:41:21) It's already online, actually, but we will be starting the campaign in the next couple of days. We have about two hundred fifty attorneys from about, I think, forty jurisdictions worldwide already. And we plan to have about 500 lawyers by the end of the year who are contributing with their knowledge and therefore getting the recognition and the visibility on the platform so they will get referrals through the platform that we're promoting heavily. Yeah. And that's indeed a project I have with three other guys and—or one girl and three guys.

(Oliver Scheerenberg at 00:41:52) And, yeah, that's our little startup if you so want. And we're investing quite some time and also resources into that.

(Joel Beasley at 00:41:59) That's amazing. Unstoppable domains that—I think, the ENS, and there's a couple different protocols. Yes. And the browsers, the mainstream browsers have yet to integrate them natively. I've been following it personally because I find it absolutely fascinating because today, you can go get a court order.

(Joel Beasley at 00:42:18) You can shut down any DNS. You can shut down anything that you wanna shut down with a judge, right? But the moment you go to those unstoppable domains, there is no shutting it down, and it's gonna happen.

(Joel Beasley at 00:42:30) And I'm just waiting for it.

(Oliver Scheerenberg at 00:42:32) There are a lot of cases out there already, actually. And what is happening right now in these domain blockchain domain cases, if you so want, since you do not have the provider, you do not know where the people are, you do not have the identity. So even if you get a judgment, and it will be easy, and I know of judgments that have been issued, you will have trouble enforcing them because you don't know whom to serve it, what to do, how to really get that domain out of the blockchain if you someone. That's not happening. So you rather need some sort of dispute resolution mechanism that is basically baked into a smart contract.

(Oliver Scheerenberg at 00:43:09) So you will need some sort of a compliance or governance, rules of governance of these domain providers. That will be something that needs to come from the regulatory or the legislation side. And until then, it's the freaking Wild West right now. So basically every project that I know of from a big corporation does not have their own ENS domain because someone else grabbed it before that, and you just wait for them to make you—to ask for an offer or to make you the request for payment. Otherwise, we'll simply not get it.

(Oliver Scheerenberg at 00:43:41) And the good old rules still apply, but enforcement doesn't work. So that is one of the domains where what you mentioned earlier, enforcement needs to get an upgrade because the rules are not working.

(Joel Beasley at 00:43:54) I don't think that—what would be the incentive to put guardrails in place for enforcement? It seems like the people creating this technology are creating it for the exact reason to not have it be enforced.

(Oliver Scheerenberg at 00:44:06) True. But that has been the same with Napster in the beginning. And Napster, you know the history of Napster. I mean, it was important for the MP3 technology. It actually—Napster and all these file sharing mechanisms helped the MP3 technology to thrive and to really be widespread, widely spread, acceptable.

(Oliver Scheerenberg at 00:44:25) So Napster was super important from the standpoint of the technology adoption, but it was ultimately the copyright infringement from day one, and everyone knew it. So only the fact that you cannot regulate and get hold of people doesn't mean that they will not be held accountable once it works. And if you can get those people who you can get, like, for example, those who operate the wallet software or those who create access to blockchain, or whatever else way how you can force those you know to implement systems that will then allow enforcement, for example, or dispute resolution with an enforceable smart contract, for example. That will be something that will be coming for sure.

(Oliver Scheerenberg at 00:45:12) Otherwise, it is just too much of an anarchy and it will not work. So spaces that are left entirely to people have not worked in the past. I mean, every philosophical approach you can have to people gathering without rules is probably doomed from the beginning. It's not gonna work. People don't work.

(Oliver Scheerenberg at 00:45:33) People need rules. Otherwise, it will simply not be possible for them to interact. Not everyone has the same interests, and therefore you need to get a basic understanding that you can rely on the basic set of principles. Otherwise, societies at large will not work.

(Joel Beasley at 00:45:49) I couldn't have said that better myself. You're exactly right. And it's in our foundation of The United States. You know? United, we stand.

(Joel Beasley at 00:45:57) Divided, we fall. It works really well when we're a homogeneous society. But the moment we're not homogeneous, the moment we're very different is just a slippery slope to chaos because—

(Oliver Scheerenberg at 00:46:08) Yeah.

(Joel Beasley at 00:46:08) You know, that's just how it goes. But yeah. Man, this is fantastic. Now as we wrap up, I just want to have you briefly explain what is web three because there's so many technologies. There's so many people having various definitions of it.

(Joel Beasley at 00:46:24) I don't need something ultra detailed, but just in general, what do you consider web three?

(Oliver Scheerenberg at 00:46:30) Yes. Let's say I not accept predetermined definitions for Web3 because I think everyone may have their own little adjustment to what they consider to be Web3. I don't think there is one correct definition. The same for metaverse. I don't think there is just the one definition that is correct.

(Oliver Scheerenberg at 00:46:50) But let me try to put it in—let me try to describe the way I see Web3. So I think Web3 is, first of all, an Internet you can walk into like a live stream. Like, this is the metaverse part of the Web3. So it is in development of Web 1.0 and Web 2.0, which means it's not read and write and read, write, and own as it is right now, but it's also something that is maybe immersive where you can have digital ownership. That's one of the key principles.

(Oliver Scheerenberg at 00:47:19) So digital ownership is one thing. Metaverse, some sort of immersive experience, is another thing. Technology that will remove intermediaries and make people or make technology more accessible, maybe also on an anonymous basis, at least at the beginning, will be some of the key elements I think that are important. If you try to summarize this chaotic description that I just gave you up, I would say it is a development of the internet. It is an immersive way of accessing the internet.

(Oliver Scheerenberg at 00:47:52) It is an interconnected and interoperable network of, let's say, computer people and platforms that will allow people to interact freely without too much regulatory influence, without corporations dominating the space, but something where the power, but not the ultimate decision making power maybe, is given more to the broader society, and people based on digital ownership. So everything is based on owning yourself, owning your data, owning what happens with you and your future.

(Joel Beasley at 00:48:31) I love it. That was beautifully and wonderfully said. Yeah. I don't have a better definition, so I don't—I'm not—no comment. It was just awesome.

(Joel Beasley at 00:48:39) I mean, it's a hard thing to do. You're exactly right. Everybody has their own variation of it. I kinda see it as, you know, a period in time. You know, it's hard when we discuss generations.

(Oliver Scheerenberg at 00:48:51) Yes.

(Joel Beasley at 00:48:51) You know, they say millennials and Gen X and stuff. There's—it sounds good because they put hard dates on it. But in reality, it's kind of like this blended, imperfect thing. And I really feel like the time we're in right now, the technologies that are popping up, we're in this blended imperfect thing. We won't realize it until we're twenty years in the future and be like, oh, remember that period when IP technology like—intellect or, IP technology, the OSI seven layers or—I hope it's seven layers or I sound stupid, but the OSI concepts and all the foundational concepts of how we built the Internet and how packets travel between computers and backbones and stuff.

(Joel Beasley at 00:49:30) It's easy to look back now and say, okay, that's one whole generation of technology. But it's really hard to put definitions, as you said, while you're in it, while things are just popping up every day.

(Oliver Scheerenberg at 00:49:42) And, you know, the definition that I'm giving today seems more natural than the definition I would have given maybe a year ago because it's already including part of the experience of that past year or year and a half. But the funny thing, and that's also a matter of perspective, Joel. I mean, if I talk to, or let's say last year, I talked to many friends and family who have nothing to do with Web3. And they always say, "Well, what is it that you're doing there? Is that something—I mean, is it serious, or is it this crypto scam kind of thing?"

(Oliver Scheerenberg at 00:50:14) "Are you really putting money into that? Don't you want to do a serious job? I mean, you're an attorney, ultimately, and now you start wearing hoodies and going to conferences, hanging out with these bearded guys. What is it that you're doing?" So they didn't understand back then what NFTs were and why we would need a metaverse, and they don't today.

(Oliver Scheerenberg at 00:50:37) Some of them say, "Well, see, I told you NFTs are not a thing and the metaverse is never going to happen." I say, "Well, let's wait. Let's wait a little. Let's talk in five years. Maybe I was wrong, but I don't think so."

(Oliver Scheerenberg at 00:50:47) Or at least it was a great experience to develop these thoughts, to give some of these really super interesting, also moral or philosophical questions a second thought. I mean, isn't that super cool to just consider a world that is just beginning, with humans in there from different cultures, religions, and jurisdictions, and sex or whatever, no sex, whatever they want to be? Just imagine the situation. When do you get a chance to really found a society from scratch? Where would that happen if not in a virtual space where people can gather?

(Oliver Scheerenberg at 00:51:26) Because there is no real place where people are there. No one is flying to the hidden island somewhere in the Caribbean just to found a state. And if then, maybe it's not attracting the right people. So if this is happening right now, let's have some abstract ideas what that means or what that can bring or where the fears are and where the opportunities lie. I think it is super exciting.

(Oliver Scheerenberg at 00:51:50) And only these thoughts—these thoughts, they have been worth every experiment of the last year and a half that I have been running for Web3.

(Joel Beasley at 00:52:01) Well, it's definitely a fun time. And as you said there, you know, if you look at the different revolutions that we've had, like the industrial revolution and so on, it was usually some technology. It was kind of isolated to maybe a specific geographic region or a certain set of business people that knew each other. As you were going through these big changes, it was not everybody was involved, right? There was a few people involved. But now there is so much innovation in so many categories happening so fast. I have made a living just talking to different people about different topics because there's no way you can catch up with everything. Right now, we're experiencing an explosion of technology. I'm not even shocked anymore.

(Joel Beasley at 00:52:49) I don't know what somebody would have to tell me is real for me to be shocked now, but there is just the number of things that we're doing as a species is just fascinating.

(Oliver Scheerenberg at 00:53:02) Yes. And you know what? One of the key characteristics that I really enjoy in human interactions is a good sense of humor. It can be a black sense of humor. It can even be a dirty sense of humor. It's just fine. But if you can make people laugh, then you will always have an advantage over AI, at least these days. So if you interact in a way that is empathetic or even funny or something like that, that may be the unique identifier of the future even. And it's fun after all. So let's enjoy life as much as we can because there is enough we can be worried about. And if there is a good laugh every once in a while, I think we're not that bad.

(Joel Beasley at 00:53:47) Dude, I 100% agree. One of the trends I've noticed getting to talk to people at all stages in their career is the rare thing that I look for and appreciate the most when I come across it is someone who is late stage in their career and still joyful. They've put in their thirty years. They're an expert, but they're still joyful.

(Joel Beasley at 00:54:10) I mean, a lot of people who are brilliant, well accomplished, and they're direct, and they're clear, and there's nothing wrong with that, right? There's all sorts of different personality types. But me, I tend to connect with, on a different level, the people who can do all those things, plus they're still kid in a candy shop-ish, you know, in their own mature way. And I like that because that is who I want to be. I want to make it all the way through and still have that curiosity at the last day of my career.

(Oliver Scheerenberg at 00:54:42) Fantastic. No, absolutely. And I just want to give you one example, not to end the show or the recording, but to give you an example of something that I just saw yesterday, and I really found it was absolutely great. And this is definitely something an AI could not do.

(Oliver Scheerenberg at 00:54:55) It was a post of someone saying, "Medical experts have found out that it is very good for your health to stand up from your desk, put on your coat, leave the office, and never come back." I mean, that's the type of things that are unexpected in the development of the story, but they are so utterly funny that I enjoy it immensely. And having said that, Joel, I really, really enjoyed the conversation that we've had today. And I hope that we will have a chance to meet in person one day.

(Oliver Scheerenberg at 00:55:33) Just be sure that you're real and to continue the conversation.

(Joel Beasley at 00:55:38) Thank you so much for listening. And if you found this episode useful, please share it with a friend or colleague who you think would get value from it. And if you have topics that you'd like to hear discussed on the podcast, either add me on LinkedIn or send me an email: [email protected]. Every time I get an email or LinkedIn message, it absolutely makes my day and inspires me to keep going.