TimS comments on Are smart contracts AI-complete? - Less Wrong Discussion
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Just to clear some things up:
In some contexts, 'smart contract' is a misnomer: it's just a computer program that resembles a legal contract but does not interact with the government in any way. It just moves money according to agreed-upon rules. I don't think it's common to use both a legal contract and a 'smart contract' to enforce the same agreement.
In the specific case of the project known as 'TheDAO', the terms of service does indeed waive all legal rights and says that whatever the computer program says supersedes all human-world stuff. (https://daohub.org/explainer.html)
All of this stuff is so experimental that there's an exception to everything at this point.
Typically speaking, a legal contract does not interact with the government - only a very small percentage of contracts are adjudicated by a court or reviewed by any government body.
In other words, moving around money, tangible objects, services, and intangible rights is a reasonable shorthand for > 80 % of the things the law would call a contract.