> so the scope of smart contract in your definition can only cover areas not already governed by traditional regulatory system / laws.

Correct, if you don't need a smart contract using one won't give you any advantages.

> Imho that doesn't cover a lot.

We're going to have to disagree on that.

> or laws will have to be adapted to grant values to them.

Absent a global government I don't see how that could be done.

> But then it isn't much different from today's contracts.

Well, it is, but not for most normal transactions.

if smart contracts can really be made to work they will be an enabler much like the laser, we didn't really have an application for those either when they were first invented.

But people are already getting creative with them and the DAO is a nice example of what could be done if smart contracts can be reliably built and executed.

I don't think this will happen in the near future because writing a regular contract is hard enough, a smart contract has to be perfect for it to be of value because any bugs will be beyond the regular safe-guards ability to be fixed, you will most likely simply lose your money or your goods without recourse.

> > or laws will have to be adapted to grant values to them.

> Absent a global government I don't see how that could be done.

What's so hard about the judge forcing you to form a new smart contract?

I have zero difficulty imagining a situation where a judge brings me in and says "Now unlock your laptop and sign this Ethereum contract that undoes the previous one".

not a lawyer, but i don't think you need a global government to have legislation covering contracts between two companies from different countries. I suppose the contract decides which juridiction will apply in case of trouble.

But if i understand your point, you see smart contracts just as some kind of tool that could be used in place of regular ones, whenever all the corner cases can be determined in advance and coded against, right ?

In which case we could have state decide which type of smart contract are legal under their juridiction and which aren't. If that's what you mean, that could be interesting indeed. I don't see how that would be applicable in practice : everything can be hacked or tricked, or fall apart, and human always are needed at some point in any autonomous system i know of.