Seung Yoon Lee (S.Y. Lee) is a media and technology entrepreneur who is the CEO and co-founder of Story Protocol. His work focuses on content creation, intellectual property frameworks, and the impact of emerging technologies like generative AI. ^{[2] [3]}

Education

Lee studied Politics, Philosophy, and Economics at the University of Oxford. ^[4]

Career

Lee started as an intern at the U.S. House of Representatives in 2008 and at the National Assembly of the Republic of Korea in 2009. In 2012, he served as president of the Oxford Union, organizing debates and guest speaker events. In 2013, he interned at McKinsey & Company and contributed as a writer for JoongAng Ilbo until 2017. He co-founded Byline Media Ltd in 2014 and remained its CEO until 2015. In 2015, he founded Radish Fiction, a serialized fiction platform later acquired by Kakao Entertainment in 2021. After the acquisition, he became Kakao Entertainment's global strategy officer, overseeing investment and M&A activities until 2022. In 2022, he co-founded Story Protocol, serving as CEO. He has been a David Rockefeller fellow at the Trilateral Commission since 2017 and joined the Asia Society as a global trustee board member in 2023. ^{[1] [4]}

Interviews

Git for IP

At Korea Blockchain Week, Robin Guo (Andreessen Horowitz) and Lee discussed global IP infrastructure during a fireside chat. Lee described his background in media, entertainment, and technology, highlighting his ventures before founding Story Protocol. He previously worked on a journalism-tech platform aimed at helping bloggers monetize content and later developed Radish, a mobile fiction platform. Observing content discovery and distribution challenges, he founded Story Protocol to address structural issues in IP creation and licensing. Story Protocol aims to create a decentralized system similar to GitHub for IP, where content can be stored, extended, and monetized through licensing modules. He emphasized the potential for blockchain to enable frictionless licensing and expand creative collaboration. Lee also noted the impact of generative AI on content creation, foreseeing a surge in content volume and quality, alongside copyright concerns. ^[5]

Lessons Learned

In a 2021 interview with The Korea Society, Lee previously founded Byline, a crowdfunded journalism platform aimed at supporting investigative journalism. Byline faced challenges scaling as a venture-backed business, prompting Lee to transition leadership to British journalist Peter Jukes, who continues to run it as an independent journalism outlet. Lee later founded Radish Fiction, a mobile platform for serialized storytelling, which Kakao Entertainment eventually acquired. Following the acquisition, Lee became Kakao Entertainment's Global Strategy Officer, overseeing strategy, investments, and M&A activities. ^[6]

Presentations

Programmable IP

At the Convergence: Crypto x AI Summit, Lee discussed the need for a new intellectual property (IP) framework to address challenges posed by generative AI. He explained that past technological advances like the printing press and social media led to content abundance, requiring updated IP structures to manage ownership and compensation. With generative AI rapidly producing new content by synthesizing data rather than reproducing it, traditional copyright laws struggle to handle attribution and compensation effectively. Lee argued that creators must retain ownership of their work and have clear, machine-readable rules for its use to ensure proper credit and financial incentives. He highlighted concerns about large tech companies profiting from creative data without compensating original content owners, warning this could discourage future content creation. Lee proposed a programmable IP layer to support sustainable creative ecosystems in the AI era. ^[7]

Scarcity in AI Era

At ETHDenver 2024, Lee discussed how the rise of AI has led to a rapid increase in content creation, surpassing traditional content production methods. He argued that this abundance creates issues attributing ownership and compensating creators, as existing copyright laws are designed for mechanical reproduction rather than generative AI outputs. Lee highlighted that creators risk losing incentives to contribute to the digital landscape without a new IP framework. He introduced the concept of a "programmable IP layer," designed to allow creators to establish machine-readable licensing terms that AI models can follow. This system aims to protect creators' rights while enabling frictionless interaction between creative assets and software. ^[8]

Panels

Startup Mentors

The YLF Jeju 2021 special event featured social impact and digital intelligence discussions. Panelists included Lee John-hyuk, Song Min-su, Park Yu-hyun, Park Jong-kwan, and S.Y. Lee. Yu-hyun of DQ Institute highlighted her decade-long effort to establish global standards for digital intelligence, emphasizing the need for new skills to address digital risks and inequalities. She founded Influence Zero in response to a high-profile cyber safety case and later collaborated with the World Economic Forum to create international digital literacy standards. S.Y. Lee, founder of Radish, discussed his company's approach to serialized mobile novels, modeled after Hollywood's collaborative writing system, which enabled frequent content releases. The session encouraged interactive dialogue on these initiatives. ^[9]