When I posted a light-hearted piece last month proposing a form of written permission be signed before attempting to snuggle with a new love interest -( just to avoid misunderstandings )- I thought I was engaged in humour of the absurd, but now I discover that such consent forms are actually a ‘thing ‘- and a Dutch legal tech firm is marketing a version ( and here I was giving it away for free-!) not only that, but they are putting it on the blockchain!
The firm is Legalthings One, and their product, which has been announced in the legal forums online, but hasn’t made it onto their website yet, is called “Legal Fling”. Its a smart phone app, that allows users to agree to a variety of consensual bedroom behaviours. With a simple swipe ( much less intrusive than wiping out a pen and paper, in the heat of the moment) the users time stamped consent is recorded and uploaded to the Blockchain.
For the uninitiated, blockchain technology is a type of distributed ledger keeping, where data ( like a legal consent) is securely and simultaneously recorded on a large number of widely dispersed computers, all of which have to “agree” in order to verify the authenticity of a piece of data, making the stored data incredibly secure. Data secured by a blockchain is considered tamper-proof, and can be utterly relied upon.
This new technology is getting a lot of attention in the legal community, where it has obvious applications in such things as verifying the authenticity of a contract, which may have gone through many many revisions by multiple parties. Some pioneers are even advocating doing away with land title offices , in favour of a blockchain land registry, but I have to hand it to our Dutch colleagues, a boudoir blockchain is really thinking outside the box !
Seems my old law school prof. was right – the law of contracts can be fun !
THE DILETTANTE 